Many business owners in Nigeria think that customers would automatically come pouring into their office so long as they have a website. They believe that SEO for business owners is a myth. Are you one of them?
Do you think that merely having a ‘basic’ website, which in most cases is nothing more than an online brochure, will lead to new customers patronising your product or service?
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Having a website is just a tiny piece of your overall marketing puzzle. You will need more than this to have a solid online presence. For your site to be helpful, other parts of the puzzle in the form of search engine optimisation, pay per click advertisements, search engine marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and so on, all need to be present.
I will focus on search engine optimisation (SEO) for this article. I’ll leave the other topics for another day and another post.
What Are the Necessary SEO Activities?
The necessary SEO activities are on-page SEO and off-page SEO. The most important thing you can do to improve your search engine rankings is make sure your website has good content. This includes ensuring all pages on your site are well written and optimised with keywords. Other on-page and off-page SEO activities can be broken down as follows:
On-page SEO Techniques
On-page SEO involves the actual regular fine-tuning of your website’s code and other elements on the site itself for proper crawling, indexing and ranking by the search engines.
Ensure that your on-page optimisation has been performed correctly per each search engine’s optimisation rules.
On-page S.E.O is a crucial part of Search engine optimisation, and it’ll help your site to remain ranked in your company topics and keywords in leading search engines for a long time.
Be clear on the issues you will focus on in your content. Place your keywords correctly in Meta tags and do some research to know the latest trend.
If you have the flare for techie stuff, you may do any of these on-page optimisations by yourself in your starting stage without spending your money on SEO.
If you don’t have a flair for writing and creating content, then you might have to employ someone in-house or outsource your content writing and content creation to digital agencies like Mauco Enterprises.
Regarding your on-page SEO, you need to pay attention to:
Website Indexing
Ensure that search engines correctly index all the pages of your website. If they do not index your site, people searching for your product or service on Google or Bing will not see your website listed. This situation can be detrimental to growing your business online.
Meta Robots ‘NO INDEX’
This meta tag is a unique tag that you need to use with caution. Although it has its benefits when applied well, you better not mess with it if you’re not an expert.
What does it do? When applied to your web page or the entire website, the no-index tag will instruct search engine bots and spiders that crawl your page not to index it.
This tag is mainly used to hide specific pages from search engines you don’t want the public to see. Web developers also use it to protect websites under construction or maintenance from search engines until the web developer is ready to launch the site to the public.
Site Speed
You need to ensure that your website is super fast. When loading, the speed of your website is an essential factor that Google’s algorithm uses in ranking your site.
Ideally, pages on your website should load in three seconds! This figure is the benchmark recommended by Google. However, the most well-optimised web page will load in under eight seconds.
The longer your webpage takes to load, the higher the chances that your website visitors and potential customers will abandon your site. No one has time for a slow-loading website. Gone are the days of the ‘worldwide wait’.
Robots.txt File
As its name suggests, a Robots.txt file is a file in the root folder of your website. This file provides instructions to search engine bots and crawlers visiting your site what it permits them to do or not.
It’s best to leave this file alone for your web developer to handle rather than poking into it yourself, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.
URL Canonicalisation
Ever noticed that sometimes they write a URL, such as “www.mauconline.net” or “mauconline.net” well, technically, you need to choose one of the above and stick to it.
Otherwise, you will send the wrong signals to search engines as they will not know which version should get indexed and ranked, which will ultimately be detrimental to your website.
Which one is better is merely a matter of preference. I prefer to go without the www.
Optimise Your Website for Mobile
Mobile and smartphones are today’s requirements for every individual to cope-up with the marketplace.
While constructing your site, keep this in mind. Always try to optimise based on choices and views.
Sites, specially designed for mobile screen performance, are simple to get for search engine crawlers, and you might have some additional benefits to remain ahead in position.
Give proper attention to writing your title tag and meta description because they are critical in getting a mobile audience to engage with your content.
Sitemap Creation
You can find various websites with less traffic flow because they don’t have a sitemap. This reduced traffic is why XML Sitemap is vital for ranking any site.
Content Creation
Content is king in the digital online marketing world. You need to create excellent shareable content in various formats such as blog posts, infographics, slide presentations, videos, and so on.
Choose your company keyword first and juggle those keywords on your website body content obviously to get ranked on these keywords.
Remember, don’t insert your primary keywords forcefully on your content. You may get penalised by Google.
You may create a blog connected with your site to update your content regularly.
Avoid writing a spammy title and using spammy link building tactics in your content creation process. This can have adverse effects on your search engine optimization campaign. Once you create great content with consistency, you don’t need to worry about link building. It will happen organically over time.
Off-page SEO Techniques
Involves everything else that takes place off-site that goes into promoting your website and its content to be highly ranked in search engine result pages (SERP’s).
Off-page SEO includes but is not limited to backlinks, social shares, mentions, earned paid media, and so on.
Influencer Outreach
Search for influencers in your niche who can help you promote your content, products, and services to their loyal followers.
Contribute as Guest Author
Seek out opportunities to contribute articles to relevant blogs in your industry. Don’t guest posts to gain links.
Instead, see it as an opportunity to attract a new audience of potential customers to your brand. The links you get are secondary.
See to add value to your audience when they consume your content.
Social Media Engagement
Cultivate and grow an online following for your brand on relevant social networks where your target audience hangs out.
You need to be present, human, and proactive with your fans and followers concerning social media marketing.
The more your brand engages in social media, the better your chances of building a loyal following.
Local Promotion
Continuously focus on promoting your site in the local market. By choosing local keywords, you may get some fast and straightforward ranking to enhance your company reach into the local market.
The primary benefit is you need not spend a ton of cash for targeting a local audience as you would if you were aiming for a global audience, for instance.
A great place to start is claiming a spot on Google My Business. This is a great business listing that is awesome for your local promotion and search rankings. It also helps to improve your presence on Google Maps.
Forums, Directories, Bookmarking and Sharing
Get your website listed in the relevant industry and niche directories appropriate for your off-page SEO.
Social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and so on are also suitable.
Which Is Better On-page or Off-page SEO?
For best results, you need both on-page and off-page SEO. It’s not a choice of doing one or the other. Do both.
I don’t expect the average business owner to be passionate about all this techie stuff. Therefore, there’s nothing wrong if, at this stage, you are thinking of getting an SEO consultant or an SEO agency to handle all this SEO service stuff on your behalf, right?
To get started, read this article on “How to Select an Awesome SEO Agency That’s Right for Your Brand” to help you out, so you don’t fall into the wrong hands.
Also, when selecting an SEO specialist or an SEO agency to partner with, make sure they explain SEO to you in simple terms that you can understand and avoid all the techie SEO jargon and descriptions.
Ensure that the SEO company or agency you select will assist you in incorporating these ten tips for an effective SEO strategy and overall marketing strategy.
Avoid any so-called SEO specialist or agency that tries to sell you on any of these old SEO myths. Please don’t fall for it.
Also, make sure that they provide regular updates or reports on all their activities and their impact on your digital marketing and business in general.
Closing Thoughts on SEO for Business Owners
As a business owner in the harsh Nigerian environment, you already have loads of things to contend with, and SEO might not be your passion.
If you find all this stuff annoying or too technical, I understand. Your best option is to outsource your SEO to Mauco Enterprises, located in Lagos, Nigeria.
We provide SEO services for business owners in Nigeria, and we have the experience and tools required.
Contact SEO experts in Nigeria now and let us explore the possibility of partnering with you to help you get the best business SEO in Nigeria. We will also provide a complimentary SEO audit.
FAQ
Is SEO worth it for small businesses?
Though organic search requires more time and effort, it is still worth the effort and time it takes to run an effective campaign. In addition to being cheaper to invest in, organic search results receive far more clicks than PPC, and they are trusted more often than PPC.
What is the best SEO for a small business?
The best SEO tactic for a small business is blogging. This is one of the easiest ways to drive organic traffic to your website on a small budget. If you’re looking to grow your business, you should consider blogging. However, if you want to rank high organically, you need to create great content around popular or trending search queries to attract quality backlinks from other websites.
How can a small business grow its SEO?
Fresh and relevant content is key to achieving top rankings. Provide regular updates to your company website/blog with topical content. It will help your small business look modern and relevant, help your SEO, and inspire your customers to visit your small business.
Does SEO work for businesses?
Search engine optimization is essential because it keeps the search results fair. Your site will generate more traffic and clicks if you rank higher on results pages. By improving user experience, SEO makes it easier for customers to become repeat customers. In addition, SEO is also cost-effective.
Related Article(s)
- How to Find the Best Local SEO Company in Nigeria
- The Top Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- How to Promote Your Local Business with Google My Business
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- Are Social Signals Still Important for SEO?
- How to Know If an Online Marketing Expert Is Actually Credible
- Is Content Marketing Becoming the New SEO?
- What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
- How to Select an Awesome SEO Agency That’s Right for Your Brand
- 10 Reliable Tips for an Effective SEO Strategy This Year
- How to Be an SEO Expert in 2023
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