Search engine optimization (SEO) may seem like a daunting subject for the average small business owner. That’s exactly why Real American Marketing offers a robust SEO Consulting package for continued support and on-going success for your marketing strategy.

1. Strategic Analysis

First, we evaluate your current marketing efforts with a strategic analysis formula. Elements such as your website, social media channels, and email campaigns are observed. This allows us to determine where you are and which goals you want to aim for.

2. Market Research

Next, we conduct market research. We define your target audience, note their characteristics and behavior, in order to understand how best to engage with them. You want to broadcast your message wherever your audience tends to “hang out” online. For example, let’s say your main selling item is a plush llama for babies and toddlers. Theoretically, your audience would be mostly comprised of mothers; women ages 18-35. On what platforms do these potential customers “hang out”? Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest (and maybe Tik Tok, too). You would want to build a presence on those channels, showcase your 5-star product, and engage with potential customers. Market research also includes studying your specific industry; current trends and latest developments within the industry will provide keen insights. The final element we consider in market research is your competition. A competitive analysis shows who else is selling similar products or services and how they are driving traffic to their content. Perhaps they post two blogs per week or test their product on Instagram stories occasionally. We also look at their web presence and see how they appear in the search results. By making these observations, we can infer what practices you should adopt and what trends you should avoid.

3. Determining Keywords

The next element of developing an SEO plan involves keywords. After learning about your target audience and conducting market research, we will be well-informed on which keywords would be most relevant to integrate into your content. By using targeted keywords in blog posts and on webpages, search engines will have an easier way to locate your content and rank it in the search engine results page (SERPs). It is important to note that your content should not be overloaded with keywords, otherwise the search engine bots will classify it as spam. The best thing you can do is write for your audience, not the algorithm. Real people will be searching for and reading your content. Craft your message to them and the search engines will follow suit.

4. On-Page SEO

With every website we build, we configure on-page SEO. On-page SEO elements include titles, meta descriptions, and headings. The keyword you want to focus on should be included in the title of the webpage. A meta description is a brief, two-sentence summary of what the page is about and will display in the search results. And headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are used to structure your content into a hierarchy. Each of these items are set up before the webpage or blog post is published.

In conclusion, there are two important factors to remember when implementing an SEO strategy. One, this strategy takes time to fully develop into measurable results. Optimizing content to rank higher in search engines is an on-going process that will not display results overnight. Two, as we mentioned, your content should be crafted for actual human readers, not bots. If you stuff keywords, your content will be flagged as spam, which will render counterproductive results. Overall, your web presence is highly affected by SEO (or lack thereof). Building a robust marketing strategy includes installing an SEO plan for your content. Let our experts tailor an SEO strategy for your business today!