You should try this first. Open a browser and search for the term "banana", the search engine will show you a banana.
With the same browser now search for the term "apple". Surprise, no fruit, the first result on google will show you Apple Inc, apple.com, or iphones.
Strange! Right? - that is SEO.
What is SEO and why does it matter?
In short, SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. In reality, SEO is how to configure your website to influence search engines to show your website for the desired query.
Wouldn't it be awesome if your website appears first on google when some query the keyword "apple"? Well, not that easy!
Your website is NOT just a business card, it is your money-making machine.
Commonly known in business: Location, Location, Location. A website is SEO, CRO, and strategy. A source of traffic, a storefront with customer interaction communication and sales transactions.
Google has an approximately 92% market share of searches, with about 100,000 searches every second. Meaning if a website is not indexed by Google it will not be visible, i.e. zero traffic.
You as a small business owner must be looking to generate more leads and sales. Digital Marketing is becoming very competitive and costly. As such business owners need to adapt and learn the basics.
Must-have SEO for Local / Small Business
Marketing is subject to business decisions and is constrained by owners' goals and budgets.
For zero budget, the free resources and the bare minimum are listed.
- A fairly well-designed website - must be mobile responsive, and loads fast.
- Google Business (ending soon will be replaced by Google Maps)
- Google Maps (free listing)
- Bing Places (free listing)
- Apple Map (free Listing)
- Google Analytics (free account and reports GA3 will be replaced by GA 4 soon)
- Google Search Console (free account and reports)
- Bing Webmaster (free account and reports)
- Yelp (claim your free business and never pay for the paid version)
- Facebook Page (free account and reports)
- Twitter (free account)
- Business Directory Listing (i.e. Yellow Page, White Pages, Angie List)
We see many local business owners and contractors managing their digital marketing which is wonderful and highly suggested. We recommend that owners get involved with the big picture and help generate content as they know their business better than anyone else. Owners, however, should not necessarily manage the details or website development - preferably leave that for the experts.
Understand this First
Zero conflict of interest benefits you.
The reports from Google Analytics and Google Search Console are owned and operated by Google LLC and thus independent of your SEO expert. That is the reason why you want to create GA and GSC accounts and then provide access to your digital marketing agency - you are in control.
Trust but verify.
Google Analytics Reports for SEO
The 3 basic must-have reports from Google Analytics. There is more but I am willing to settle for 3 now.
Audience / Overview Report
This report shows total traffic and shows many valuable metrics including:
- Total Trafic Curve
- Returning Visitors vs New Visitors
- Country (critical for Local Customers)
As you can see the report is showing a year-over-year increase of 4000 unique visitors. Going from 2003 to 5985 that is a 200% growth rate.
We have witnessed some new visitor growth rates in the range of 500% to 1700%. Some even claim to have achieved 7 and 8 folds increase.
Marketing Channels Report
This report shows all marketing channels including:
- Organic, Paid Search, Direct, Referrals, Email Campaigns, Social Media, Direct, etc...
- User / Engagement / Pages Visited
- Goal Conversion Rate / Goal Completion
From this report, we usually calculate campaign performance. It helps us in many ways, most importantly we use it as a diagnostic tool to discover issues and identify problems, and to a less extent, we use it to measure ROI.
Goal Conversion Report
This report shows Goals Conversion Rate and quickly shows low using a virtual page concept:
We claimed that a website should be treated as a money-making machine. So if there is enough traffic and there is no conversion (clicks) it means something is wrong. i.e. we are not providing what the customer came in to find.
We treat problems like the ones shown in the report as an opportunity for improvement.
Google Search Console Reports for SEO
Again 3 most basic reports, but there is much more!
Main Google Search Consol Graph
The graph shows, the clicks, the impressions, Click Thru Rate, and position.
The Graph could be used to compare progress. As shown in the report there is an increase in the overall click for that website. We have seen in real-life impression improvement of 1000% over a period of just a few months. We said impression and clicks because if there are no impressions (visibility) there will be no clicks.
Pages Report on Google Search Console
Information-based decisions, problem finding then problem-solving. The GSC is our map to categorize low performing webpages on a given website.
Although the numbers, (impressions, and clicks), are real in the report picture below, we overlayed and modified the URL to respect the privacy of the client.
Few takeaways from the report
- The main page is NOT the most dominant page, the pages arima and excel-vba have more impressions and more clicks. Wonder why? Professional SEO for small businesses is the answer.
- The number of clicks and impressions have a high correlation. In theory, the higher the impression the higher the clicks. But that is not always true.
- The most dominant page arima has 70,000 impressions while the page roi has only 10,000 impressions even though they are "identical pages" - notice the quote and quote. So do not be surprised if you see that arima has 10 more clicks compared to roi page. So what's wrong?
- It is clear that ROI is the least performing page, so we consider it to be a low-hanging fruit aka opportunity.
- This website has 41 pages and each page is ranked for about 1000 keywords or more. That's why the website ranks for 112,000 keywords. Some experts could rank a website for millions of keywords and bring valuable traffic.
- Do you know how many web pages and how many keywords google ranked your website for?
Keywords Report Google Search Console
You searched for "apple" and google showed an iPhone. This report speaks volumes and will tell business owners what each and every page in their website ranks for and what it does not rank for. It also shows the position. Crazy enough we discover keywords that we ranked for without aiming for those keywords.
From the page report, we selected the page URL arima. The first to notice in the keyword report is that the page ranks for 780 search phrases. The keyword report shows all variations of the keyword 'arima', 'time series analysis', 'data science', sarimax, etc.
Small business owners could slice and dice these kinds of reports and find the keyword that makes the most sense to their business objectives. Given the high ROI of SEO, it is very competitive. As such it might be a challenge for business owners to rank for the exact keywords they wish for. But at least with these reports, they are much better informed about what is available. One thing is for sure, there are many untapped niche opportunities that our team discovered while performing these and similar analyses.
Final Thoughts
You should by now have the bare-minimum tools to run SEO for local business or SEO for small business. Even with zero budget, you have a list of proven freebies.
Words of caution, many freebies won't last for too long. Take advantage of those free items now! There were many more "free" SEO tools in the past, but those tools are either no longer available or are subject to costly monthly subscriptions.
You should also have developed the knowledge to be able to negotiate a good SEO proposal, we do not recommend you negotiate on price but rather focus on measurable performance.
Focus on providing good products and services, no matter how good the SEO plan you have in place. Your business will grow more and faster with good Customer Life Value (CLV).
Keep in mind, that digital marketing is dynamic and is subject to many updates. So feel free to re-visit this page as we will edit it with more up-to-date information. Stay Tuned.