Hence, having a strong brand presence on various online platforms to boost sales and maximize profits is crucial for SMEs to survive.
In this high-tech age, customers rely on the internet to look for everything they need. From finding a reliable healthcare advisor to searching for a potential life-partner, from shopping for necessities to buying diamond rings, the internet has become a hub for people to find whatever they need in a jiffy.
A total of 52.2% of the traffic on the internet in 2018 was generated through mobile phones, which shows that the evolution of technology and an increase in the use of smartphones and other handy gadgets has made it crucial for all small-scale businesses to have a website that ranks well on search engines.
Appearing among the top search results is important for businesses because 91% of the searchers don’t prefer visiting the second search results page and more than 50% only look at the first three results appearing on the first page. That is why it is essential to acquire a high search-engine-ranking so that when customers search for a product or service that is similar to yours, they turn to your website only.
The question is how can a small-scale businesses improve their search engine ranking? The answer is simple, they need to exactly follow Google’s best practices that are employing new and innovative SEO tools and strategies to stay on top of the game.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO involves the use of strategies, tactics, and various techniques to increase or divert traffic to a website by increasing its visibility by obtaining a high rank on search engines. The higher a website ranks, the greater is its chance to bypass competition, make new customers, accelerate growth, and increase conversion rates.
Is SEO heavy on pocket? What is the cost of deploying SEO tools to increase web traffic? Do I have the technical skills to use SEO tools? If you are a small-scale business owner with similar questions popping in your mind because you aren’t tech-savvy or have budget constraints, then don’t worry, we will answer all of your questions.
Here are some of the best budget-friendly, DIY tools that you can use to level up your SEO game and search engine ranking:
Google Analytics
Cost: Free
Analytics and data measuring tools are incredibly important for small-scale businesses because they help in increasing web-traffic through understanding customers’ needs and expectations.
Google Analytics is one of the most top-of-the-range web analytics tools available and comes with numerous features that are foolproof and easy to use. All you need to do is – visit their website, create a login ID, link your website and you’re all set to do the nitty-gritty!
Analytics Dashboard provides you with a complete insight into your weak points by highlighting the low-performing pages on your website, the most visited pages on your website, and what number of people visit your page and through which channels.
This handy SEO tool lets you know if your website gets most of its traffic from social media channels (referral traffic) or through Google i.e. organically. You can also find out what kind of gadgets people use to access your website so that you can optimize it accordingly to increase User Experience (UX).
Analytics efficiently helps you to track Return on Investment (ROI) based on your business goals and objectives, add custom alerts, and provides real-time/automate reporting along with many other features to help you build a flawless SEO strategy for your growing business.
BuzzSumo
Cost: Free 7-day Trial, $79/mo.
If you want to give your customers what they are looking for, you need to find out what is in demand. Scanning through various social media platforms to figure out consumer behavior trends, purchasing patterns, and identifying what products or services are most popular can be time-consuming.
BuzzSumo assists businesses in finding out popular content quickly and efficiently.
It is a great tool to do content research and gather insights on the most trending topics on social media. You can use keywords to study search patterns and visit the most competent sites through backlinks to increase your target market.
This handy SEO tool also comes with an Influencer tab that filters influential people in any niche according to the keywords you enter. You can then contact these influencers and ask them to advertise or review your product or service to build a better brand image and customer base.
BuzzSumo also allows you to set up keyword mention alerts, track your competition, and provides up to 12 months of data to boost your SEO via content marketing.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Cost: Free (with limitations)/ £149 per year
The SEO Spider Tool by Screaming Frog is quite famous amongst businesses today. You can use the free version of this tool to do a technical audit that can help you identify the strengths, weaknesses, and potentials of your business website.
This tool enables you to crawl through a website to identify broken links and server errors and allows you to bulk export them to fix.
You can also use the crawling tool to identify missing or duplicating URLs, page titles, and Meta descriptions across your site with an md5 algorithm check.
With The Screaming Frog SEO tools, you can plug into APIs, identify broken or orphaned pages, locate images without alt text and get crawl path reports and do much more (with the paid version) to increase the visibility of your business website on search engines and attract your target market.
Takeaway
70-80% of US consumers research a company before making a purchase. This shows how important it is to keep track of your website’s performance online to make it more clickable so that you can gain more customers. The three SEO tools mentioned here will help your small-scale enterprise in building brand image, customer loyalty, and growth in terms of size and market share.
