From keyword stuffing to paying for ads, there’s a lot of misguided information regarding how to leverage search engine optimization (SEO) for your business website and if you’re not careful, following the wrong advice can result in a loss of potential customers. So, how do you ensure that your business page comes up as one of the top results during a Google search? In this episode, Jon Aidukonis and Gene Marks, along with Sara Noel, Founder of Between the Lines Copywriting, discuss which SEO strategies will help you generate the most clients for your small business.

Executive Summary

0:40 —Today’s Topic: Which SEO Strategies Will Help Me Generate More Traffic for My Small Business’s Website?

1:17 —SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of enhancing your website content so that it appears as one of the first answers on a search engine’s results page.

2:58 —Avoid “keyword stuffing” your content since this method will actually do more harm than good. Instead, use specific descriptors to brand yourself and use them throughout your content.

4:43 —Google’s algorithms will rank websites with authentic sounding copy higher than those with overly promotional content.

6:41 —One way to generate effective SEO descriptors is to think about what your client base is searching for and which SEO terms they would be using to find your business. You should also consider what differentiates you from all the other businesses in your field and then, add those keywords to your content as well.

8:12 —Including your location in your keywords will help you target local clients who are searching for your business; this is especially important if you own a brick-and-mortar storefront.

10:13 —Backlinking, which is when another business provides a link to your website, is another way to improve SEO ranking. You can encourage other businesses and associations to backlink you, either through direct collaboration, guest blogging, or simply asking to be included in any relevant listings and directories that they publish.

13:20 —In order to compete against larger, well-established companies, small business owners should start by thinking about what questions their ideal customers would be asking about their brand or services. By incorporating these answers into their content, they could potentially outrank other well-known brands in a Google search.

15:32 —If you have specific content that generates a lot of traffic, make sure that you’ve included several call-to-action features that will enable them to explore the rest of your site.

15:54 —Because Google tailors all their answers to the location of the person performing the search, you need to include location specific SEO keywords into your website’s content.

17:29 —Ubersuggest.com is a free SEO resource developed by Neil Patel that will not only help you find the keywords that are right for your business, but it will also give you a domain authority score and help you optimize your overall website content.

19:03 —A good website copywriter will not only create conversion content for your business page, but they will also make sure that what they’ve written is fully SEO optimized.

20:59 —You can expect to invest about $4,000 for a copywriter to optimize your website.

23:05 —The worst mistakes that a business owner can make with their website are as follows: hiring a designer who can’t match their brand aesthetic or success level and altering the content that their copywriter has created.

25:01 —Other common website mistakes that business owners make include impersonal content, big blocks of texts, boring headlines, and problematic word count.

27:15 —Because Google is the most widely used search engine, you should be consulting with Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see how you can improve your webpage.

28:42 —Organic marketing will always be a better long term strategy than paid ads because you’ll lose any ad-generated traffic once you stop paying for this service.

31:25 —However, it is worth noting that paid ads can be useful if you’re launching a limited-time campaign or promotion.

33:12 —If your business website already has existing content that you like, you can always consult a copywriter to perform a website audit to find out what works and what needs improvement.

Links

• Between the Lines Copywriting
• The Marks Group
• Ubersuggest
• Google Ads
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console

Transcript

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Jon: Good morning, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Small Biz Ahead, the small business podcast presented by The Hartford. This is Jon Aidukonis. I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are. I am joined as always by my co-host Gene Marks. Gene, how you doing today?

Gene: Hey Jon, I’m doing good. Yeah, this is good. We left our videos on while we’re having this conversation. Should be doing a little bit more of this. I like seeing your smiley face when we talk.

Jon: It’s that virtual empathy. Everyone today we are joined by a special guest. Her name is Sara Noel. She owns Between the Lines Copywriting and she is a marketing strategist. And she’s here today to talk to us a little bit about SEO, which is kind of one of those universal mysteries that I feel that is never fully understood. Sara, we are excited to have you and to dive in to learn a little bit how SEO works and how we can think about it for those locally owned and operated businesses out there.

Sara: Thanks for having me.

Jon: Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us. At a high level, SEO stands for search engine optimization. What does that mean to the layperson?

Sara: Okay. Like you said before, everyone’s confused about what SEO is because it’s a tech term. I think by looking at it under this tech umbrella is why everyone is so, ah, what the heck is that? How do I do that? I don’t understand it at all. Search engine optimization is exactly what it sounds like. You’re optimizing your content for search engines, specifically for Google, probably because when was the last time you heard somebody, “I’m going to go look that up on Bing.” Nobody uses anything else. I’m sorry if you’re listening to this and you’re obsessed with Yahoo or something but for the sake of my answers, we’re going to be talking about Google. If you have a website, that’s primarily what my expertise in, as a website copywriter that’s what I focus on and that’s where I’m able to give the most knowledge is website specific SEO. All you’re doing when you’re optimizing your website for a search engine, it’s just increasing your chances of showing up on that page one of Google.

Jon: Awesome. Now, when I think about SEO and I think about conversations I’ve had kind of casually or with others in the trade, one piece of common advice that I cringe at when I hear is, “Yeah, you just need more keywords.” And I think there is this notion that if you can load up your page with keywords and if you can hide your font in the same color, is there ways you can kind of cheat the system and show up? And I don’t think what many people realize is the millions of ingredients that go into an SEO ranking and how that changes not even day by day but hour by hour. As we’re kind of thinking about how to optimize that content are there a couple high level themes or buckets? Or how do you approach kind of looking at a site and say, “How do I make this content more valuable to Google and hopefully show up in front of the people I’m trying to capture?”

Sara: Well, first of all, I would never advise to do what you just said. Absolutely not. If anyone’s listening to this and thinking, yeah, let me go stuff a bunch of keywords and change the font to something translucent, do not ever do that. That’s going to hurt your chances of showing up anywhere on Google. They’re about to blacklist you from Google for doing that. It’s called keyword stuffing. And I would say that’s the biggest SEO myth or tactic that people think is a good idea that’s a horrible idea. Don’t ever do that.

I would start by making sure that my clients have not done that and advise them against it. But in terms of something that I can give as sort of a high level, this will improve your SEO, does have to do with keywords, just not stuffing them in random places. If you’re a service based business owner, I would recommend thinking about how you can use the keyword that has that service in it. For example, I’m a copywriter. I’m never ranking for number one of copywriter ever. That’s not going to happen. There are businesses that are way bigger than me. I’m sure a university’s copywriting program would rank for that word.

And when I say rank for