Green Apple Sales Blog

The #1 thing small businesses struggle with is Search Engine Optimization. That is, having your website show up at the top of Google whenever someone searches for your business, or is looking for a business in your industry.

You NEED to be at the top, there’s no doubt about it. The businesses that are there right now, if they’re ranking for the right keyword, are crushing it right now. As a trained SEO expert (in addition to having an even better one at Green Apple Sales), I’m going to share a few of the top strategies small businesses can use to get to the top of Google. But first…

These some interesting items to note:

• For any search, on average, the #2 result gets about 40% less views than the #1 result
• The #5 result gets an average of 60% less views than the #1 result
• Each result after the #5 result gets an average of 20% less views than the one before it

What does this tell you?

1. If you’re not #1, you’re missing the boat and your traffic is suffering because of it.
2. If you’re not #1, then one of your competitors IS. And they’re probably taking the majority of your internet-driven business
3. If you get to the #1 position, you’re going to see a very positive increase in traffic, leads, business, sales, etc.

I hope those are good enough reasons for you. More business and more sales? Of course that’s a good deal!

So now the big question… How do you climb to the top of the search engines? How does the mysterious “Search Engine Optimization for Small Businesses” really work?

Here are some tips for you that you need to be implementing yesterday:

1. Target the Right Keywords!

So many times business owners can’t seem to rank because they are targeting the totally wrong keywords.You need to choose the keywords that are:

1. Less popular (less searched-for)
2. Local-related

Here’s an example: let’s say you have an auto repair shop in Joliet, IL. If you tried to rank for “Auto Repair” or “Auto Repair Shop” in Google, not only is there ridiculous competition for it that would take tons of money and time to rank for, but it’s completely untargeted!

That’s a general, nation-wide search we’re talking about, so yeah you might be at the top of Google for “Auto Repair Shop”, but what if 60% of the searches came from Orange County, CA? What if only a handful of people that searched for that phrase were even in Illinois? You wouldn’t be able to service those customers and you’d have wasted tons of time and money!

So instead of going “wide” as they call it, you want to target keywords that are highly relevant to your business. Instead of choosing “Auto Repair Shop”, you’d want to target “Auto Repair Shop in Joliet IL” or “Auto Repair Joliet IL”. Those searches only get a fraction of what a general search gets, but it’s infinitely more targeted. If someone searched for Auto Repair Shop Joliet IL, you know 3 things:

1. The person is most likely in Joliet, IL.
2. They have an automobile that they need to repair.
3. They’re looking for a local business that can do it.

See how that’s so much better? Sure, “Auto Repair Joliet IL” may only get 100 searches a month, as opposed to the 800,000/month searches “Auto Repair Shop” gets, but if none of the people searching for that are anywhere near Joliet, IL, it doesn’t matter.

Final note on this: choose the right keywords. Target the keywords that highly correlate to your business, and preferably use a local keyword (such as Joliet, Plainfield, or whatever town/city you’re in).

2. Get Relevant, One-Way Links Back To Your Site

I wanted to mention this simply because there’s so much information out there, in addition to expensive services based around that information, that just isn’t accurate.

One very popular way to get backlinks in the past (as in the last 4-5 years) was to enter your website in tons of different directories and participate in link exchanges.

Newsflash: link directories and link exchanges are almost useless anymore.

There are still services out there that actually charge upwards of $300 to “enter” your website in thousands of directories, but these links mean next to nothing to the search engines.

You need relevant, one-way links; that’s the key. If you “exchange” links with another site or company, you’re essentially just zeroing out that link, so that’s useless. As an SEO specialist, I’ll dominate any site that does link exchanges or only has links from directories. Hands down, every time.

The interesting thing is that most small business owners, those trying to rank for keywords on a local level and small-scale, don’t know how to get the quantity of relevant, one-way backlinks to their site, so when I step in there I can make sure your site gets to the #1 position.

And finally, the last tip I want to share with you:

3. Do Your Research; Keep Up-To-Date on the Search Engines!

The best thing you can ever do to compete in the search engines is to do your own research! I can’t stress this enough. The search engines are always changing, always updating to make damn sure they provide people with the most relevant search results.

By the time any given book makes it to publication, there’s usually things in it that are either different or entirely obsolete. Often times, the internet changes so quickly that even former “specialists” or “experts” are out-dated.

At Green Apple Sales, we have people dedicated researching, testing, and tweaking SEO concepts on a daily basis, so we’re always up to date with how the search engines are ranking websites. It’s that kind of knowledge and power we bring to the plate when we rank YOUR website at the top of Google.

But it all starts with doing your own research, discovering things for yourself that others might charge you hundreds for that don’t even work any more.

That concludes today’s article on SEO For Small Businesses. I hope you learned something. If you have ANY questions at all, DO NOT hesitate to call us at 312-569-9420. I’d be more than happy to go over anything and help in any way I can.

See you in the next post!

312-569-9420

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