Our 11 secrets for massive organic traffic through SEO and Content Marketing

You're a small business and you know that no one looks at yellow pages anymore, so it's likely that they're searching for your kind of business online. You want to be found on Google, but SEO is too expensive for you - what should you do?

In this blog we break down the secrets to massive organic traffic to SEO and Content Marketing. Follow these 11 steps to drastically improve your ranking on Google.

Google My Business

Step 1 - Claim your Google My Business:

The first thing you need to do is claim your 'Google My Business profile'. This is essential so that people know this is your business and not someone else's. Click HERE to see how.

Step 2 - Have a strategy for reviews:

You need to make sure you focus on attracting reviews and one way to do this is to ask your clients. You can send them a direct link by searching your business on Google, clicking on the reviews and once in that screen your can take the URL from the web browser you are in, copy it and then send it to your clients. It's a good idea to get good at understanding how to leave a review so you can walk your clients through this.

Make sure you answer positive and negative reviews. You want to engage with these in a correct manner. If there are negative reviews, then answer them politely and try to fix whatever it is that could be wrong in your business. If there is something wrong, then let them know how you plan to fix it. If there is simply a complaint, then handle it in a way that is calm and amicable. Fighting fire with fire never works well especially when other potential customers may be reading your reviews in the future and watching how you handled them.

Step 3 - Add a video:

Creating a video that goes for no longer than 30 seconds can be effective. This could be of your introducing your business, your staff, doing a virtual tour or whatever it is that you feel might be necessary and interesting. Not enough people leverage videos and it's great if you can start doing it.

Step 4 - Photos of your location:

This is important so that people can identify your location when they are driving or walking by. Also adding photos of the inside of your location can really help people create an image of how it feels to be inside. Photos of your staff with a big smile on their faces can go a long way. People want to feel comfortable and safe when coming to your location and what better way to help with that than SMILE!

Adding photos of your products and perhaps other customers enjoying your products or services is another thing that not many people leverage. If you add these to your Google My Business, it can really help your rank well.

Website Structure

Step 5 - Standard website home page layout:

You always want to give a clear idea about what your business offers, whether it's the range of services or products. Make sure you state this first up. Then typically beneath this you would put two to four paragraphs about your business talking about what you do, amount of years you have been in business, what sets you apart from your competition and areas you serve. From here you would give information about where your business is located and could possibly include a map here. A video about your business would also fit in well here and explainer videos are a great way of getting across what you're all about. You can then also use these videos on your Google My Business home page and test out how this goes. Finally, adding in your opening hours of your business are important here. A lot of people forget this and it's such a simple thing to include and can be the deciding factor of whether a customer visits you or not because people are time poor and won't bother risking driving out and see if you're open.

Step 6 - Create location pages:

You need to create location specific pages for the surrounding areas around you and the extended areas that you service. Custom tailoring the information on each page is essential to keeping the authenticity of these pages consistent and making them relatable to the person reading. You can talk about things like how long it takes to get between the location your business is in and the location specific to the page your writing, how that location is special to your business, what relevance that location may have to your business, etc.

The next part to this is to cross link these pages to one another so they can jump from one page to the next. This helps these pages rank higher when you cross link them.

Step 7 - Add services pages:

You need to add as many services pages as possible. If you have 10 services then add 10 services pages, vice versa if you have 2 services or 50 services. Creating services pages individually will help you better rank for those services individually.

Step 8 - Create a reviews page on your website:

Make sure you're using proper schema markup data on these pages. Doing this allows people to see the star ratings when they're searching for you on Google this helps your listing stand out and get more clicks.

Step 9 - Apply the other schema markups at the same time:

You may as well use all the other schema markups while you're at it such as the local business schema markup, restaurants and lawyers will also have their own schema markup, you can also use geo coordination’s markup and if you have opening hours you can also use that through schema markup as well.

Step 10 - Create content for your static services pages:

Really delve into describing your services. You can go into what sets you apart, why your services are amazing, the people on your team, the qualifications they have that makes you better, the amount of years you have been in business, the tools and technologies that you use for your services, some past use cases and testimonials.

Step 11 - Content posts for local business is easy:

If you can post high quality content just once a month and in your content mention things like your location, people, landmarks, events, neighbourhoods, institutions, etc. this show Google that you’re a local and relevant business.

Pro tip: if you create content around your local community events you will rank higher for all the local terms including your service-related terms. Nobody does this which is why it's so important that you do! :)