1. Register for a Google Business Profile and make it better.
As a small business owner, if you only do one thing, make it to maximize and collect your GBP.
Users may locate and discover more about your company in Google Maps and Search with the aid of a Google Business Profile.
It's free to establish up and allows you to give them vital information about your company, such as its phone number, hours of operation, and products.
They therefore provide a potent means of drawing in new clients who are looking for what you offer.
The fundamentals of profile optimization are as follows:
Choose the appropriate company type and category.
Add (and maintain) the hours of operation!
Include your contact information.
Include images Add your goods or services
2. List yourself in pertinent directories
It's not always the case that people look up tiny businesses on Google. They also look through reputable review websites and well-known company directories.
Even if they conduct a Google search, they will probably wind up looking through a well-known directory because that's what usually appears first.
For instance, I was looking for a cat sitter recently because I was going on vacation. I typed "cat sitter near me" into Google to begin my search. But since all of the top results were in specialist directories, that's what I eventually found myself browsing.
Discover which directories your rivals are listed in. Since most directory listings link to your website, you can uncover relevant directories by looking through the backlink profiles of your rivals.
How to do it in Ahrefs is as follows:
- Visit our tool for competitive analysis.
- In the "referring domains" mode, select it.
- In the "Not linking to target" field, enter the URL of your website.
- In the "But linking to these competitors" sections, enter the websites of a few rival companies.
- Click on "Show link opportunities."
Using an SEO audit tool like Ahrefs' Site Audit is the simplest way to accomplish this. If you have an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) account, you can utilize this for free. Simply register, crawl your website, and then look for errors in the All problems report:
We can either restore, reroute, or eliminate internal links to the pages in order to resolve this problem.
In order to address new SEO problems before they become problems, you can receive notifications about them if you also schedule routine crawls in Site Audit.
4. Research keywords and make pages for your goods or services.
Consumers frequently look for particular goods or services rather than the services your company offers. Instead of searching for "plumber near me," they would type in "bathroom remodel near me."
When they do this, Google usually displays pages regarding that service rather than the main websites of plumbers.
Without these sites, you may find it difficult to rank for these terms.
However, you may be thinking, "I provide a wide range of services. I can't make pages for everyone of them in the time I have available.
The solution is to conduct keyword research. the process of finding out what terms and phrases your target audience enters into Google. You may find out what goods or services people are most interested in, and then give those pages top priority when you create pages about them.
This is how you do it:
List every item and service you provide.
Paste these into the Keywords Explorer on Ahrefs, being careful to choose your current country.
5. Provide helpful details about products and services to searchers
Creating pages detailing your goods and services is one thing, but you also need to make sure that the information on those pages is relevant to search engines. You can certainly reach halfway there with ease if you know your customers well. However, doing some research is always advised.
As an illustration, I was looking for someone to fix our boiler recently.
This is how my procedure went in brief:
- Looked up "boiler repair near me" on Google.
- I quickly perused the websites and reviews of the top-ranked companies.
- Referred to as the most optimistic
I phoned this company initially as a consequence.
The other engineers might have put this on their pages and understood that customers care about it if they had just done a little keyword research.
In Ahrefs, you can accomplish something as follows:
- Visit the Keywords Explorer
- Look for your good or service online (e.g., "boiler repair").
- Visit the report on matching terms.
- Select the option labeled "Cluster by terms."
6. Create a couple backlinks.
One well-known ranking component is backlinks. The main issue is that obtaining high-quality backlinks is quite difficult. (This is the reason they are a highly useful ranking element.)
Making the most of current connections is a smart place for small firms to start.
Here are some suggestions:
- Provide references for vendors. These frequently appear with a link on their websites.
- Post client highlights online. Write it up and ping them about it, for instance, if you're a plumber who recently assisted with renovations at your neighborhood church. They could put it on their webpage.
- Reach out to stockist websites. Check to verify if the brewery mentions its stockists on its website, for instance, if your store sells a locally brewed craft beer. If it does, all it takes to get featured is a simple request.
7. Request reviews and answer them
In order to foster trust, Google itself suggests small business owners to urge clients to submit reviews and respond to them:
The simplest method to accomplish this, according to Google, is to make a Business Profile and provide them with a link to it. This can be accomplished by attaching a link or QR code to receipts, sending out "thank you" emails, or concluding customer support conversations.
Based on BrightLocal's poll, this should also enhance your "map pack" ranks. According to the report, 17% of SEOs believe that reviews are the most crucial element in rankings.
However, don't stop at requesting and responding to reviews via your Google Business Profile. A lot of users also have faith in other websites. Look for other review sites in the search results when you Google the name of the small business to find out which review sites are most important.
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