Study at Harvard free of cost! Sounds too good to be true?
Well, Nas (you know him if you follow NAS Daily- the chances that you do not are rare) shared in a recent video that he had a dream. But did not have the money to finance that dream. He dreamt of studying at Harvard and his friends always demoralized him by telling him just how expensive it was. Well, it does cost your pocket a lot but he did not give up. It may be that being blessed with the fast Internet like spectrum internet plans and the search engine guru, Google, Nas made it to Harvard. And guess what! He did so free of cost. He only typed two words on Google ‘Harvard Scholarship.’ And that was it!
So, if you are complaining that you are tight on budget and cannot spend money on SEO to boost your business, think again.
Google My Business
This is advice that new and small businesses should go by. Assuming that they do not have extra funds to spare for SEO and alike, they should start at the local level. Targeting the residents of their local village or the areas nearby should be the first step. From there, the business should expand outwards and start reaching out to people living further. But a small business should be slow and steady when expanding. To improve the local SEO, the company/business should optimize its Google My Business page. You might have used this feature before as it was formerly known as Google Places. And is also sometimes referred to as Google Maps. Coming back to the point, there are two things that you need to do before proceeding further with this page:
- Make sure that you own it
- You should be able to access your business’s listings on the Google My Business page
Once you are through these steps, you need to check if all the information pertaining to your business is there on the page. Nothing should be missing. Get very descriptive when filling information on the Google My Business page. Enter the minutest of details while being as specific as possible. Keywords also play a very important part when you are describing your business on this page. So, make sure to make use of as many relevant keywords as possible.
Crisp, relevant and specific.
Remember these three words while you pen down a description of your company or business.
Be Regular
Regularity over here would refer to updating content every other day or week. Content is the life of the online business. Your target audience or customers do not get to see you or interact with you on a one-to-one basis. So, it is important to add engaging content that does not lack quality on your website or company blog regularly. While doing so, make sure that your content is interesting enough to grab the attention of the reader.
No one fancies a boring piece of information. If you believe that you lack the expertise to engage your audience with your writing, hire experienced writers. This will help you to get a good ranking on the Google Search results page. And this is what your sole aim is, isn’t it? Your page or website should rank amongst the first 3-4 other websites when it comes to the search result page. Any place below that would not earn you as many customers as the first couple of spots would.
Hence, adding value content at regular intervals on the website is the key!
Target Long-Tail Keywords
The keywords to have categories to them.
- General competitive
- Long-tail
For a limited budget, the best practice is to focus all your money (and effort, of course) on long-tail keywords. The reason, you ask? Well, long-tail keywords are more specific in nature. For a small business like baking classes in Boston, you cannot afford to compete with other businesses on the keyword ‘baking classes.’ Because:
- You do not have the money to finance this bid
- Your target is not the whole country at this stage, but only the people residing in Boston
Going for a very general keyword would cost you a lot of money. Because there will be a lot of giant business owners who would be competing on the keyword ‘baking classes.’ It will be hard for you to break through the clutter. And also, you want people residing in Boston to know about your business. So, you need to be more specific. Someone living in New Jersey will not be interested in taking classes from you. But someone living in Boston will surely hit you up. So, when you start your new mini business, focus on long-tail keywords.
Link Building
Cannot stress enough on the crucial role that link building plays to get your business noticed. You need to get creative which means you might have to go a bit out of the way when it comes to link building. If a website you befriend, adds a link to your business’s website in its content, the search engine would count it as a vote. It will be a vote to rank your website higher than its usual position. Therefore, it is important for you to build links with renowned names in the industry. Because higher quality links will translate into better rankings for your website. However, it is not that easy to convince someone to add your website’s link in his/her blog or webpage. This requires skills. You should be a people’s person to build links. It is time-consuming and asks of you to post high-quality content so that others start trusting you.
This being said, it is time for you to start acting upon the advice if you have not already. Do not think that a limited budget means your business cannot compete with others in the market. This is just a thought in your brain. Companies like Spectrum compete with their rivals on a regular basis. Searching for a keyword, Spectrum Double Play is making use of a specific keyword as mentioned above. Although, the company is big enough to compete on generalized keywords there are instances when you have no option but to be specific. So, keep in mind that scenarios differ and you have to act according to the requirements of your business.
