As a small business owner, you need all the business that you can get. This means that you may need to look for ways to generate traffic from both paid and organic traffic sources. While paid traffic sources are good, organic sources are even better.

And to get the best organic traffic, you will need SEO. With the right SEO methodologies, you will find your business thriving and generating more profits. The good thing is employing good SEO practices makes all this possible.

Here are the best SEO practices that we have seen work for countless clients and in many businesses. It makes sense that by duplicating the same actions, you will benefit from their rewards.

1. Consistent Content Production Means Increased Engagement

Content is king. If you consistently produce excellent content, you will enjoy a loyal following of customers and fans that will help spread word about your business. That is a fact!

Many small business owners are often in the habit of pumping out generic content that adds no value to their visitors. Don’t be one of them. Remember, no one cares about you. The only reason they probably checked out your business was because they felt that you could solve their problems.

So, thrill and impress your audience. Dare to be different. Start creating audience-targeted content that specifically addresses their problems. Content doesn’t just have to be text, it could be videos, podcasts and infographics. In fact, we would recommend a mix of all these content types for maximum engagement… and make them attractive.

For example, instead of writing a blog post with the title “Waste Clogs Your Drains”, you could switch to something hip like “15 Ways You’re Clogging Up Your Drain and What to Do About it”. As you can see, it offers the multiple benefits of being precise, addresses a specific problem and offers multiple solutions – that’s the triple whammy effect.

2. Data Gathering and the Use of Analytics

Would you drive a car blind or with your eyes closed? Odds are you wouldn’t. But, we see that over and over with many small businesses. Otherwise smart business owners neglect to track their traffic and see where they’re getting results and where they aren’t. This is bad business, however way you look at it.

You should invest in data gathering and analysing every element of your website. This includes traffic, most visited pages, most searched for keywords, most clicked links and many other elements.

With that data, you can then redouble your efforts on what works and jettison those things that don’t. Think of data gathering and use of analytics as factors that can help you generate even more profits for your business.

3. Local Search Optimisation

Did you know that the average Australian now looks up businesses on their mobiles and PCs before visiting the business in person? This is why you must optimise your websites for local exposure and rankings.

If you own a local business, it makes sense that the bulk of your clientele will come from your local area. For instance, if you are a roofing contractor in Melbourne, chances are that the majority of your clients will come from Melbourne and nearby areas –if you’re really good and have decent exposure.

So, optimise your website and business for local search.
Look for and build local citations, claim your Google business listings, have your business reviewed on local review websites like Womo and Yelp… in short, do everything that will make the search engines see your business as being highly relevant to a specific geographic area.

4. Good Keyword Optimisation

Think of keywords as those search phrases that people enter into the search engines to find whatever they need. Only this time, do some decent on-page and off-page optimisation. Find relevant keywords that are closely associated with your business and optimise your website for those keywords.

This is how you carry out good keyword optimisation. Also, be sure to avoid keyword-stuffing (that’s adding too many keywords to your website and making it look like spam) and do the keyword insertion naturally.

5. The Use of Diverse Anchor Text

Anchor text is basically a link that is masked as words. You know those blue clickable words that take you to other websites or pages? Those are anchor text.

Many small business owners make the mistake of repeating a single anchor text –which is likely be their keyword – throughout and off their website. Yet, they wonder why search engines penalise them by not letting them rank. This is a classic example of bad SEO.

The key to successful SEO is to make it seem as natural as possible.

Anything else and you’re practicing bad SEO. That said, the best practice is to vary your anchor text. The more diverse they are, the better for your business.

6. Focus on Link Quality Rather Than Quantity

Yes, we know that many supposed SEO gurus tell you to build as many links as possible. While this can technically help, they do more harm than good if their quality is very poor.

Also, remember that Google and other search engines have an algorithm that’s designed to detect anomalies. For instance, a newly launched website cannot suddenly start getting tens or hundreds of natural and earned links from other industries within a few days of it being launched. That has to take some time.

So, when this happens, it automatically tips them off that something unnatural is happening. This is why you need to focus on building high quality links or earn those links.

These are just some of the steps and processes we follow here at eTraffic to help our clients get long lasting search engine rankings. We know what works and how to go about it as evidenced by our many, many satisfied clients.

If you need excellent, long lasting search engine rankings for your business, get in touch with us and let’s see how we can help you.