Non-technical ways SMB’s can boost visibility online

Simple SEO tips for any business owner

Looking for ways to boost your online visibility without hiring an expensive SEO firm? Don’t get me wrong there is a point where your business will need to hire someone like me to take over the SEO work needed to boost your websites visibility but if that is just not in the cards, here are a few DIY SEO tips.

Social Media / Directory Listings

Sometimes setting up social profiles is half the battle which is why all too often I see business owners only connected to one or two social sites. I promise you it is worth it to set up all of them, not only for SEO but for your online brand. Fast forward 5 years from now, you want to set up Pinterest for your Dental office and someone has the URL you want. Do it now, keep the content consistent, meaning same local phone number, same URL endings, same address etc.

Set up:
If you are on a tight budget, hire a high school student who can wiz through setting up all of the profiles you need, have them keep track of all of the username and passwords they set up

Next step: Complete set-up with (the reputable) directories for SEO
I love Moz Local for this. It’s $89 per year. They pull content from your Google business page and Facebook page and submit it to the “Good” directories (like Angie’s List, BBB, Super Pages Judy’s Book, Yelp Etc.) which is huge for local SEO.

You have just invested less than $200 for some really powerful links back to your site.

Public Relations

I don’t want to offend any of my PR colleagues out there by pretending I am a PR expert. But I have learned enough over the years from some of the best to put a “PR lite program” together for my clients. PR is the new link building in my opinion. 5 years ago link building consisted of SEO’ spamming the internet with fake directories, fake websites and fake links to get your website to the first page of Google. Google said, no thanks and penalized all of those black hat techniques. Some SEO influencers and speakers are even saying we should lose the term link building altogether.

What it comes down to is relationships. Every local radio station and TV station lists the reporter email addresses on their websites. Twitter is also a great place to connect with reporters. Spend some time researching do’s and dont’s of PR before you start reaching out but if you can make some good connections and eventually be featured, the link back to your site from the online version is powerful! Not to mention the great exposure. We don’t often think of PR as an SEO strategy but it is one of the strongest!

To hear the audio version of this post tune into my podcast interview with Legal Mornings HERE.