Small Site SEO

How we use SEO to increase traffic and visibility for businesses with small websites and small budgets

We have partnered with hundreds of clients ranging from national corporations to local startups.  One of the common queries we hear is in regard to digital marketing, and specifically about whether or not they should be investing their budget into SEO (search engine optimisation).

SEO is a digital marketing tactic that focuses on improving your ranking in organic (non-paid) search engine results. It requires not only building search engine-friendly sites, but also creating a better online experience for your customers.

Some new business owners believe their website is too small for SEO — if no one is visiting your site, why put the effort into SEO tactics?

But in fact, SEO is particularly important for these businesses, as it can improve their online visibility, drive traffic, increase awareness and gain them more leads.

For companies with a low marketing budget, SEO can be one of the most affordable and effective means of getting noticed. You may not see immediate traffic growth, but SEO will help build a foundation for your site that lasts long into the future.

Moreover, the quality of traffic from SEO is normally much higher than from other methods, such as PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. SEO is more likely to attract an engaged, authentic, organic audience who are interested in what you have to offer — which is why we recommend it for the majority of our clients, big and small.

Read on to find out how we maximise digital presence and perform SEO techniques on even the smallest sites.

Create a content strategy

Quality content is key for SEO and for your users. Your website content should be unique, relevant and current. This will improve accessibility and usability for crawlers and visitors alike.

Blogging is one common and popular method of content marketing; this ensures your site is being updated with fresh, keyword-rich content on a regular basis. But quality content is more than just text — it could also involve social media posts, optimised images, videos or anything else that increases engagement and search traffic.

Before we begin blindly creating content, we need to devise a solid strategy. A content strategy is a guideline to dictate how and why your content will be created, managed and promoted. We will typically take you through the following steps:

1. Define your goals

Your content strategy should be specific to your brand, audience and circumstances. With it, you should be able to answer questions like ‘what are we doing?’ and ‘why are we doing it?’. Think about where you want your business to be in one/five/ten years, and how your content can help you reach that vision. nucleo will help you set SMART goals to guide the way.

2. Define your audience

In order to create an effective content strategy, we need to know who your audience currently is and who you want to target in the future. That means finding out things like:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Income level
• Internet use (what other sites do they visit?)
• Social use (what channels do they use to communicate? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc)

Google Analytics is a great way to gain insight about who your audience is and what they want. You can also ask about our market research surveys to learn more.

3. Review your content

We’ll take an in-depth look at your existing content to identify the:

• Subject matter — What is the content about? Is it a hard-sell (looking specifically at your products/services)? Is it educational? Is it entertaining?
• Length — Is the content short and sweet, or long and comprehensive?
• Tone — What is the mood of the content? Is it funny, authoritative, professional, cutesy? What reaction were you hoping for?
• Relevance — Is the content still relevant today, or is it dated to the time it was published?
• Features — What is the content comprised of? Is it a blog post, video, image, infographic, etc? Does it have proper SEO features (title tags, meta descriptions, keywords, etc)?

More importantly, we’ll analyse the effectiveness and success of your existing content (with regard to traffic, engagement, social shares, conversions and so forth) to help us understand how we can replicate positive results in the future.

Build a loyal following

Some of the main goals of SEO are to drive traffic, generate leads, and build authority for your brand. Unsurprisingly, these objectives become far easier when you nurture a following of people who trust you.

Marketing is interactive. Your brand can communicate with customers through your content, your site, over social media, in the comments section of a blog, and so on. By doing so, you can work to establish your brand as trustworthy, reliable and authentic.

As mentioned above, it’s crucial that you know who your audience is and what they want. This is the only way that we can accurately target them and get them to come to (and stay on) your site.

The most important piece of advice here is take a personal approach toward your audience. Businesses with a minimal following are actually in the ideal position to get it right from the beginning. Starting off with a small but trusting customer base is the first step to gathering a larger audience down the road.

Optimise the website

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a ‘mobile version’ of a site and a ‘mobile-friendly’ site are the same thing. True optimisation requires a lot more work that simply fitting a version of your site onto a smaller screen.

At nucleo, we design responsive sites that offer a seamless experience across any device or browser. This involves eliminating pop-ups, maximising page speed, optimising images, and optimising touchscreen navigation through the size and positioning of text, links and buttons (or ‘designing for the fat finger’, to quote Moz).

Studies have shown that over 30 percent of people use a smartphone for product research; 84 percent of people will also use their phone to help them shop while in a store. With people spending more and more time on their tablets and mobile devices, you cannot afford to offer a lacklustre online experience.

nucleo is well-versed in mobile SEO practices. We’ll look at your site design, structure, speed and more to ensure visitors can not only find your website, but will also enjoy an optimised user experience.

Get the best SEO benefits

You don’t need a big website — or a big budget — to start getting the benefits of SEO.

nucleo has the experience and expertise to help grow your brand, optimise your site, and get you noticed. Whether you’re a large corporation, a smaller enterprise or a startup company, whether your website needs a refresh or you’re starting from scratch, whether you’re getting consistent traffic or none at all — get in touch with us to start using SEO to improve your website.