Igniting Business Blog

Before the onset of the internet, “word of mouth” was an essential marketing tool for small businesses. Earning a good reputation in one's community meant building relationships with both the public and related businesses that proved helpful to their own customers.

Google aspires to be fair to companies that want consumers to find their websites and to the consumers searching for results that best meet their needs. To achieve these goals, Google updates its algorithms hundreds of times a year. These updates may make searches easier and more efficient for consumers, but they drive business and service sectors to distraction. How to keep your small business’s website ranking well on Google is a question that must be asked weekly, if not daily.

Amid such a digitally dynamic business environment, ranking highly in search engine results has become crucial to your small business’s success. With the majority of consumers turning to the web to find products/services, ensuring that customers can conveniently find your small business when they're searching online is essential.

As you know, simply having a website these days doesn't guarantee leads. The businesses that generate the most leads from their sites are making smart use of search engine optimization (SEO) and keeping up with the ongoing changes. It's all about making sure consumers can find your company online and that they find your business first when they're ready to make purchasing decisions. As search engines are constantly evolving their algorithms, how is a business to know what SEO practices work the best? While there are numerous SEO factors to consider, below are just a few to consider to help your ongoing ranking efforts.

We all know the timeless saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”. On the internet, though, that might not be so true – especially for search engines. Have you ever wondered what a search engine reads/detects when it comes across an image on a web page?

When it comes to writing content for online audiences, ensuring your content is engaging is essential. According to Nielsen Norman Group, around 79% of readers spend time skimming rather than reading online content; only 16% read pages word-by-word. From these statistics, it is evident that many businesses produce content that’s never read. In order for your website to stand out from the crowd, appeal to your target audience, and rank well on Google, it’s important to ensure that you’re producing captivating content.

In a recent blog post, we discussed a few different actions to take to help boost traffic to your blog. However, if your blog has been in operation for a few months but you're not seeing the traffic to your small business blog you’d like to see, there are a number of reasons that could be contributing to the lack of views.

Google continues to revolutionize the way small businesses market their solutions through online advertising, search engines, and Google My Business. Google My Business is a free platform launched in 2014, whose purpose is to give businesses more control of what appears when someone searches for them online.

Increasing traffic to your small business involves creation of a website with both your visitors and search engines in mind. Today, the market is search engine oriented as more and more consumers turn to Google to find a specific service/product. Small businesses with budgetary constraints can greatly benefit from the use of search engine optimization (SEO), as SEO effectively drives traffic to your website without incurring any advertisement costs.

NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number) is a vital part of a thriving local SEO strategy. A citation is a reference to your small business on the web. Citations are a factor that search engines use when deciding how to rank your small business in search results. That citation will often include your NAP, among other details about your small business.