How Small Businesses Can Play Big in the Internet Market

How Small Businesses Can Play Big in the Internet Market

Every business strives to expand its audience. The best way to do so is to create a website. It doesn’t matter if you have a business blog, online store, or even a one pager.

How Small Businesses Can Play Big in the Internet Market

You can’t simply avoid SEO standards. If you’ve joined the game, then you need to play by the rules.

The first advice all specialists give to every business is to hire an agency. And there’s some truth to the idea that you will probably get more than you will spend. But in most cases, small businesses can’t afford the expense of paying for an agency’s services.

In this article, I’ll share some essential highlights on how to find appropriate keywords, as well as what mistakes to avoid while running a business blog.

Where to Start

There are two common types of business blogs. The first one is just a site that provides relevant information about your products and services.

It includes contact information, everything related to support, and any updates and news about your company.

The second type consists of all this information, but also has informative posts about your industry. Of course, somewhere at the bottom of these article will be small CTA and a few links to your products.

We’ll mostly talk about the second type of business blog using the example of a gift store.

Here is what it would like:

Gift store business blog

So how do you find the right keywords that will bring you a lot of traffic and, as a result, income growth?

First, create a list of the main topics related to your product or service. For example, if you run a gift shop, your list would include anything related to gift-giving occasions, celebrations, events, and holidays.

Or your blog could focus on decoration and gift-wrapping. What you include depends on the actual list of your products.

Create a spreadsheet to collect all of your keywords in one place. Then divide them into few groups and start adding to your list.

There are two simple ways to find new ideas

This method is so simple that many people even don’t think about it. Just type your keyword into the Google search line and scroll down the page. You’ll see a “Searches related to…” section:Google search birthday gift

“Birthday present ideas for …” is an evergreen topic. There is always something to write about when it comes to this subject. Of course, you should mention that all these “ideas” are available in your shop at an affordable price!

Check all your groups in Google using this method, and add your results to the spreadsheet. No matter what kind of small business you have, you’ll be able to collect a lot of new phrases this way.

2. Wikipedia

This method is an even simpler way for getting ideas. Find your main product at the Wiki and explore:

Wikepedia gift giving

We see here many different occasions for gift-giving, as well as ideas for items. Also, you can think about adding your own based on what you find.

And you can see related topics:

Gift giving wiki related topics

Some of them are useless, but some still can inspire you with great ideas.

Continue with an SEO Tool

After collecting some initial ideas, you can work with SEO tool such as Serpstat. It is a multifunctional platform for keyword research, site audit, rank tracking, backlink analysis, and competitor analysis. In this case, you would use it for keyword research.

If you enter the queries you’ve collected before into Serpstat search bar, you’ll see:

Serpstat queries

Search Volume tells you the keyword’s monthly search volume. This number will let you know if this phrase is widespread and if you should use it.

But you should also pay attention the Keyword Difficulty feature. It will help you to figure out what it takes to get to the top spots in SERP for the desired keyword, namely positions 1 through 10.

Serpstat shows little tips when you hover the mouse over the number. In our case, it’s about 40, which is a middle score.

So if you see that your keyword is widespread, take a look a look at KD feature. If it’s too high, it probably won’t be worth your effort.

The competition feature shows the level of competition for the keyword in paid search, as well as the keyword’s cost-per-click (CPC).

And take a look at ads keywords (paid keywords related to the researched query):

Google ads keywords

PPC is one of the most efficient ways to promote your blog. Think about trying it.Click To Tweet

Then move on to the organic keywords to see the whole list:

Organic keywords

You’ve already divided your keywords into a few groups, such as birthday gift, gift-wrapping, decoration, etc.

Check these main keywords at the SEO tool, export them to Exel, and filter them. Remove all the useless ones (for example, ones with the wrong geolocation), and start using them in your articles and product descriptions.

Most Common Mistakes

Here are the most common mistakes people make when researching keywords for SEO purposes.

  • collecting 100 keywords and thinking that’s enough
  • choosing keywords that are too competitive (the KD feature will help with this)
  • using keywords that are too low in frequency
  • overusing keywords
  • using keywords in an unnatural way (e.g., gift shop cheap Texas)

What Else to Do

In addition to keyword research, you need to:

  • regularly add new posts so the Google bot will visit your site more often
  • write high-quality, unique content
  • keep an eye on your competitors (avoid their mistakes, steal and improve on their good ideas, and adapt those ideas for your blog)
  • try PPC advertising
  • do a site audit (use Serpstat or Netpeak Spider) to fix all technical errors on your site
  • get qualitative backlinks

Final Thoughts

SEO is a whole world with its own audience and rules. And writing practical, compelling content is no longer enough to break into the top of the SERP.

Keyword research is a crucial step if you want your business to win an internet market audience. And it is just one of many steps in this “big game.”

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