3 Optimization Errors That Can Harm Your Small Business Marketing Success
Mobile technology, free Google marketing tools, and website templates that make it easier than ever to create a website are allowing small business owners to connect with potential customers like never before. However, marketing online can be a slippery slope, especially if you have never created your own content before. While search engine optimization, or SEO, can be vital to the success of your website and your marketing campaign, there are several common optimization errors you should avoid when you first start to create your content that may eliminate problems in your marketing strategy later on.
1. Writing for Search Engines, Not People
While you might be tempted to write content that will catch the attention of Google and other major search engines, this might do more harm than good. Effective optimization is important for any marketing campaign, whether you are writing about your products or a blog related to them, but once you start adding keywords and phrases that have been placed there specifically for search engines, the content starts to lose its natural flow and becomes less readable for your human audience.
The more naturally you integrate your keywords, the more readable your content becomes, and the more likely your readers are to share it on social media. For example, if you sell medical supplies and are writing a blog related to health technology information on GW Online, it is important to remember that your target audience consists of your human readers, not a search engine.
2. Failing to Optimize Your Social Media
Google has recently begun to include social media hits in its search results, which means the content you post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms must be correctly optimized for it to have any impact. While you might wonder how to optimize content on a site that only allows you post 140 characters at a time, as is the case on Twitter, the site offers several tools, such as hashtags, to make your keywords searchable.
For example, if your keyword or phrase is related to the healthcare field, such as “respiratory therapy” and you want people to learn more about the topic, you can create a hashtag out of that phrase and compose a tweet that includes it so that your post becomes searchable to anyone using Twitter.
3. Incorrect Keyword Density
You may believe that keyword density is the secret to online marketing success. However, most experienced content creators and SEO experts will probably tell you that it might seriously harm your chances of creating a successful page and even lead to Google penalties. Recent changes to Google’s algorithm is allowing the search engine giant to target sites that practice keyword stuffing and penalize them by lowering their rankings.
To avoid this, try to move away from creating content based on keyword ratio and focus more on adding your keywords in anchor text and headers. This gives you the opportunity to create quality content that is not stuffed with keywords, which can lower the risk of Google penalties.
Handling your own small business marketing can be daunting. However, when you take the time to understand the rules of SEO and how to use them effectively, your chances of success can be greater.
