Tayyab Shaikh‘s premium guides for small business owners ? With more and more customers going online, looking for the best products or services near them, they are more likely to engage with the business they searched for within a day. To get maximum visibility, your business should be at the top of the list when someone queries for the product or service you offer. But getting on to the top of local search results is not that easy, especially after Google changed their local pack to the new 3-pack listings, like that of the above image.
Are affordable SEO services important? Tayyab Shaikh thinks yes, and here is why : As a small business owner you are looking to attract more qualified visitors and leads to your website in order to increase your company’s revenue. SEO essentially drives “free” traffic to your site. The problem is that all your competitors are also trying to get that free traffic. Everyone wants to be on Google’s 1st page or Google’s Local 3-Pack, but there’s only a limited number of spots and too many websites competing for them. We’ll discuss the difference between an affordable search engine optimization firm and a cheap SEO company in the next few paragraphs. But first, let’s lay down a foundation on the topic of SEO and where it fits in the terms of lead generation.
Tayyab Shaikh on SEO for small business: It used to be that people found local businesses through the printed Yellow Pages directory (to our surprise, they still exist, lol). But in the 21st century, online directories have become the ubiquitous norm. We’ve all used Yelp to find good eats, and there are hundreds more online directories these days. These directories are termed “citations” in the SEO world and are said to account for >10% of local ranking factors. So you definitely want to be listed in as many of these as possible, and more importantly, to be accurately listed in each citation.
As a small business owner, you should be focusing on keywords relevant to your niche. Using such keywords, you can reach out to a limited but more specific audience. For instance, if you sell shoes online, “genuine leather shoes” might work better than the most popular keywords for you. That’s because the competition for long-tail keywords or specific phrase keyword is relatively low.
Tayyab Shaikh on marketing for small business: If you land a featured snippet, you have an advantage over other websites. The visibility alone could pay off for your company. Yes, some searchers won’t click when the featured snippet answers their questions, but you get the benefit of any clicks it does attract. Different types of content, including a paragraph, table, list, chart, etc., are eligible for featured snippets. In 2020, Ahrefs, which has more than 110 million keywords in its database, released detailed findings from its featured snippets research. One interesting finding is that 12.3% of queries return SERPs with a featured snippet. I think that means there are plenty of opportunities to earn a spot for relevant terms.a chart from ahrefs study showing the finding that only 123 percent of all queries have a featured snippet. Discover additional details at Tayyab Shaikh.