Stop wasting money on SEO from the good ole’ days. SEO has faced challenges with endless streams of Google algorithms bombarding the internet, weeding out those who have been trying to game the system.
Sites that provide content that truly meets a user’s needs is now becoming the winner when it comes to ranking a local business… or any business for that matter.
Simply making sure that your website is organized in a pleasant, easy to navigate around way, that will enhance a user’s experience rather than confusing them, now works best.
Basic SEO is still vital to any website, as it offers help to the internet search engines so their scripts (called spiders) can easily understand what your website is all about.
Basic SEO
The most important things that a local business can do to help with your basic SEO are the following:
- Always host your website local to your business. Hosting your website outside your province or country will only serve to confuse search engines as to the actual location of your business, and make it more difficult for your site to rank locally.
- On-page SEO, which is vital to your website’s basic SEO, and has been since the day the internet became a “thing”.
- Setup a FREE Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) for your business, in order to get listed quicker on Google, which is the main search engine that most devices now come loaded with by default.
And, for those of you who are not quite convinced as to the importance of this step, please check out what Darren Shaw from Whitespark had to say about this, on the 3rd of January 2023. - Be sure to create a FREE Google Analytics account, where you can verify your website ownership and setup tracking so that you can quickly determine where your traffic is coming from.
- Create social media accounts for your business, being sure to only select the social media accounts where your potential clients / customers hang out, and be sure to post regularly, but NEVER salesy.
- Get listed in online directories making sure that your NAP details (Name, Address and Phone) are listed EXACTLY the same everywhere on the internet.
- Google does not recognize spammy links, but if you do have them on your website, then by all means check into disavowing those links.
Gone are the days that you can expect the former SEO agency to create several backlinks to your websites from websites they own, and get your site to rank well in search engines.
All you need to do now is keep your SEO real.
Don’t stuff keywords, don’t try drowning the internet with backlinks from irrelevant websites.
Now that you’ve cleaned up your website, have your basic SEO in order, and you’re sharing helpful, relevant to your niche content with your customers favourite social media accounts, it’s time to check into other avenues, such as creating press releases.
These are perfect for making announcements of ANYTHING new to your business, be it a new service, product …or even the addition of a new staff member.
And, don’t forget other great online tools that you can now use, such as:
- Podcasts,
- Slideshows, and
- Video sites,
Let’s make 2023 a time for you to STOP WASTING MONEY and start CREATING DEMAND for your products and services.
On thing that you can review for a way to stop wasting money is: What task(s) could you have somebody else do for a low cost but that you’ve been doing yourself?
You could start right now to audit every dollar that goes out… and decide subjectively, what the bottom 30% of those dollars are?
As my accountant would say it…
If you spent one million dollars, then you need to be able to determine what the worst $100,000 (or more!) was that you spent, and cut it.
Now, take that $100,000 and use it for modern marketing – demand!
So many small business owners say that they’re going to cut costs but then you don’t create demand and so you lose even more.
Demand creation for your small business in 2023 is what it’s all about, and that is why I care about things like YouTube shorts. It’s free organic reach with vital SEO energy.
That’s why I care about making content for branding, or rebranding your business from, let’s say, the “ABC Dental Clinic”.
Do you know why so many businesses are named the way they are (some call them ABC companies!)?
Back when the Yellow Pages used to dominate our world, when someone would go searching for a dentist, lawyer, or chiropractor, the first business that showed up was the ABC dentist, lawyer (or law firm), or chiropractor.
This helped businesses get found – much like ranking among the first search results on Google, today.
So, you need to understand that 37 years ago, businesses were named in such a way as to be the first results offered in the Yellow Pages.
Now, it’s time to find the modern way to get your business found!
I’m very excited about 2023. I want small businesses to win this year.
Many small businesses will go out of business simply because they go on doing things like they’ve always done before, instead of auditing bad spending and putting it to a massive offense.
This doesn’t have to happen to you.
You can check out my other posts shared on this site, learn from them and then implement them, all free of charge.
Maybe that wasn’t smart of me to put that part in, but nonetheless, I want YOU to win!
Massive offense is always about modern marketing, so hire me… or hire someone else – I don’t honestly care. Just please understand…
Modern marketing will set you free in 2023!
If 2022 was the year that you started to open your doors and peek outside, and you finally began to venture, then 2023 will be the year those doors are broken down and you embrace all that is possible.
Things that you dreamed about before the shops and stadiums were shuttered closed, and the dreams you held to or discovered when it felt like the world was ending.
Well, the world did NOT end.
And, through all of that, you discovered you could shoulder more than you could ever have imagined that you could… and, you made it.
It’s time to take that spirit of energy into the new year. It’s time to channel that strength into not just handling more than you thought you could, but creating more than you thought you could.
Let us celebrate the New Year because it represents how far we’ve come and the endless opportunities that happen when you build on those foundations.
I want to celebrate you and all that you have accomplished and dreamed of, and all of the amazing things yet to come. I wish you a Happy New Year and all the prosperity you can imagine.
If you think that I can help you with that prosperity, remember – as always, I am always only an email away.
Credit for Header: Photo 110014631 © Oleg Dudko | Dreamstime.com
