Part 1 Of A 3 part Blog Series

3 Things A Small Business Owner can do to start marketing

1. SEO Basics (You Are Here)
2. Content Marketing (Click Here)
3. Paid Advertising (Click Here)

SEO BASICS - WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AND WHY A WEBSITE ISN'T NEEDED TO START IN 2021

Marketing is shrouded with buzz words and terms like search engine optimization, growth hacking, big data analytics, hyperlocal, and KPIs that no one would ever (and should never) fully understand, unless you were in the industry. Our team lives and breathes marketing each and every single day, and also recognizes that most entrepreneurs have a lot of other things on their plate, like running their business for example. To do our part, we are actively publishing articles explaining these terms and any new ones that come up so that you don't have to try and decipher what they mean on your own.

Simple Nguyen, LLC

This article is part 1 of a 3 part series on how any small business owner can begin marketing themselves without paying a marketing agency until it makes sense to hire one. This guide can also help educate business owners, who are already utilizing a marketing agency, to ask highly targeted questions and better understand what the agency is doing for them.

 

Considering a marketing agency for search engine services? We’d love an opportunity to chat!

SEO Basics Overview

So... What Even Is SEO?!

The term “SEO” (search-engine optimization) is thrown around pretty frequently and having the basics down is vital for building your online reputation, brand recognition, and generating new potential customers. To put it into simpler terms, when potential clients visit a search engine, like Google, the keywords they type in generate their search results. Google inherently shows results that they think would be the most helpful and beneficial to the user. Implementing proper search engine optimization tactics will help your website appear more favorable and helpful to search engines and their results.  

 

 

Properly optimizing the SEO on your website is a great cost efficient way of doing just that because once you are properly SEO-optimized for your ideal search terms, Google will naturally rank you higher on those results and place you higher when someone searches for your selected term. 

 

 

The remainder of this article will be highlighting the importance of local SEO so that even if you don’t have a website, you can still get started with the SEO process yourself. If you do have a website, I would highly recommend following the tips below to build out your profiles, as website SEO and local SEO both work hand-in-hand in boosting your digital presence. 

 

 

If you’re looking for a more advanced guide on website SEO, feel free to click the link below!

 

Advanced Guide To SEO

No Website, No Problem. Turn To Local SEO.

If this is your first venture into marketing, you know that purchasing a website can be a very expensive process so even if you don’t have a website set up yet, you can still improve your small business’ online presence and start the initial SEO process through local SEO.  It will help start your business off with a presence for no cost at all, and help generate more traffic to your storefront and/or inquiry calls. 


Begin your online presence by setting up profiles on highly reputed 3rd-party review sites:

Google My Business – https://www.google.com/business/

Facebook Business Page – https://www.facebook.com/business/pages

Bing Places – https://www.bingplaces.com/

Yelp – https://biz.yelp.com/

Now Go Out And Get Reviews!

Having online reviews is the modern day version of word-of-mouth advertising and it has been proven to persuade new customers to utilize your business, or finalize their decision in not using it. Think about the last time you were searching for a trendy new coffee shop to work from. You may have asked a few friends for recommendations, scavenge through Yelp, only to end up on Google to read more reviews and find directions. Those online reviews are vital in a new potential customer decision to go with your business, or a competitors’. Google accounts for close to 93% of the search engine market share according to Statista, so we will focus a majority of our efforts on it. 

 

As a multi-family property investor, whenever I’m looking at hiring a contractor for whatever service I may be needing at the time, whether it is for a roof, fence, flooring, or paint, I start my search on Google by typing in “contractors near me.” 

Local Google search in Fort Worth for fencing companies near me

The top 3 results before hitting the “view all” button is what we marketers call the local 3-pack. I’ll start digging into the credentials of those top 3 results, but typically don’t go past them. All other local businesses don’t even come into consideration, even if it may have been a better fit.

 

Even worse, if a business does not have a Google My Business page built out, they do not even pull up in the search for a new contractor. Unfortunately, this situation plays out daily, regardless of the quality of work or service provided.

 

To further drive this point home, in a study done by searchenginejournal where they analyzed over 80 million keyword strings and billions of search results, they have found that the first result in Google Search has an average of 28.5% of all clicks. Comparatively, the tenth result pulls in 2.5% of all clicks.

So how do you get into the coveted local 3-pack?

 

Google heavily factors in reviews for search rankings, especially their own service, Google My Business. Having a ton of reviews on GMB heavily affects your local search ranking and pushes it up (or down if negative). In order to get more Google reviews, you should reach out to your existing customer base and see if they would be willing to leave you a review. 

 

However, make sure you do not explicitly ask for a positive 5-star review because Google makes it clear in their terms of service that they will terminate your listing if you do. 

Well there you have it! This was our basic guide to SEO and how you can get started with it, without needing a website. This is done through establishing presence on highly reputable 3rd party websites, most importantly – Google My Business. From there, you build up your reputation through reviews, and start diving into local backlinks!

 

Leave us a comment or reach out if you have questions with any of the things discussed above!

 

We’d love to work with you. Click here to reach out!

Business Owners - Read More From Our Series!

Section header for content marketing

Content Marketing

January 12, 2021 No Comments

Content marketing is any information, like a newsletter, article, email, video, or ebook, that provides reliable and valuable information. Users look forward to reading this stuff!

Read More »

Paid Advertising

January 19, 2021 No Comments

Paid advertising is exactly how it sounds – it is any advertising that you need to pay for. You are paying the owner of that ad space to use for your own ads instead of theirs!

Read More »

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