If you have a home-based business and you think SEO is only for the brick and mortar businesses, you couldn’t be further from the truth! SEO is important to all businesses, no matter how big or small they are. Your home business is your livelihood and treating it like any other business is incredibly important! Here are top reasons for including SEO marketing in your strategy for improving your home business.
Treat Your Business Like a Business
Most home-based businesses treat themselves as “small and insignificant”. They tell themselves “I will never be as big or important as that other company.” The truth of the matter is, you are important or you wouldn’t be in business, to begin with! You have found some niche or need to fulfill and that is something to be proud of. Don’t compare your business to anyone else but rather get inspired to be the best you can. A positive attitude about the product/service you are providing will be reflected in all that you do and help lead you to a path of success that is unlike any other. So, let’s explore some SEO tricks that can help you:
The Website
So you work from home, that doesn’t mean your website has to reflect it or even mention it. It’s not important if you work out of the home or in an office somewhere. What is important is that you offer a product or service that is valuable to the person viewing your web page. Here are some guidelines for your website that will improve your site, pull in plenty of traffic, and turn visitors into sales:
- Clean page with your logo everywhere
- Contact information should be at the bottom of every page
- Have one page devoted to how to contact and all the social networking you do
- Include client testimonials
- Blog with industry appropriate material and updated often
- A page devoted to how you came to be the boss
- Product/services offered page – plenty of information explaining what you do
- Share buttons to social media everywhere, tweak them so that you will be notified when someone uses them
The Blog
The blog can be one of the most daunting aspects of the website for any business owner. Content marketing is a huge help to your SEO and can really engage your target market. Bottom line, if you aren’t a writer, find someone who is. When you aren’t a writer, it’s better to pay someone else to take the task off to-do list. However, if you are an excellent writer and have the time to maintain the blog, then save the money and do it yourself.
How often you update the blog is up to you. We recommend that you update the blog one to three times a week. It creates fresh activity that the spiders (web crawlers) will take notice of. It’s also good if you decide to use Google Adsense for ads on your website (extra passive income!).
What to write should be limited to what is specifically related to your business. If you are a home bakery you could:
- Highlight a specific new baked good you are adding to your menu
- Change of laws in your home state that affects home bakeries
- Change of menu, especially if you are removing a menu item
- The joys of gluten free baked goods
- A famous chef coming to town or near your town
- Review of your favorite food blogs/magazines/websites
- A recipe that you want to share with the world
Within those posts, include links to other pages on your website so that people are encouraged to really see what you do. By including blog posts about your industry, it lends you credibility, creates engagement, and builds traffic over time. This helps search engines find you and increase your ranking.
SEO often sounds like a scary endeavor for those who don’t really understand the power of the internet. You will quickly learn what works for you and what doesn’t. Some SEO results will come in quicker than others. Remember, your home business is just as valuable as any other.
