Many new solopreneurs cringe when they hear the word SEO or search engine optimization. Getting yourself to rank at the top of search engines seems like a huge responsibility, knowing that there are billions of websites competing for those top positions.
If you’re not aware how search engines work and how to effectively promote yourself online, you’re going to lose out. Should you start outsourcing your SEO needs to a third party provider just because you’re repelled by the idea of it? Not so fast.
Read through to the end of this blog post and you will realize that marketing your solopreneur business doesn’t have to be costly and stressful. There are simple SEO strategies you can implement today to increase your chances of attracting more visitors and conversions.
Solopreneur SEO Marketing Tips
Don’t just write content, write quality content.
Since you’re running your business all by yourself, perhaps your means of marketing is by word-of-mouth. You tell your friends and family about it and encourage them to do the same. If you haven’t started creating content on your website yet, you have to start doing it now.
Without content, you won’t be able to reach as many audiences as you want. Content is the holy grail of SEO marketing. Blog posts inform readers about your business. They build brand awareness. And if your content pieces provide value, people are more likely to share them on social media.
Research keywords relevant to your business.
Keyword research is an indispensable part of your content. By researching keywords, you are targeting words or phrases that people commonly use to look for information related to your solopreneur business. For example, if you are a fitness coach, possible keywords that attract people to your website are “free workout resource” or “simple workout videos.”
There are free keyword research tools that automate the process. Great options I recommend include KWFinder, Moz Keyword Explorer, and Keywordtool.io. Incorporate your keywords naturally into your blog post headlines, title tags, headings, and body of your posts. Avoid keyword stuffing.
Keep your website fast.
With more people using their smartphones to shop and do business online, speed is now of paramount importance. Slow loading websites erode people’s trust and create a poor experience. You can just imagine yourself as a customer who’s about to order an online service but has to wait for a web page to load. Normally, your next move would be to leave the website and look for another service provider.
A lot of things could slow down your website – heavy images, an excessive number of plugins, and issues with your web hosting service. Find out whether your site is suffering from slow speed. Check your speed using GTmetrix or PageSpeed Insights.
Claim local business listings.
Don’t take local search for granted if you have a brick and mortar store. In this case, make sure that you claim your local business listing online. A local business listing, also called a local citation, is an online profile that features the important details of your business. Such details are your business name, category, address, store hours, pictures of your shop, and phone number.
Since your potential customers look for products and services online, being listed on top business listing websites helps you be found. Customers can also leave their ratings and reviews, and these are extremely beneficial for boosting your credibility. Websites where you should claim your business listing, are the following:
Install the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.
Are you running your website on the WordPress platform? If so, the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin will check every piece of content you write in real-time in terms of SEO and readability. Yoast SEO is designed for online business owners who want to be sure that everything they publish on their blog appeals to search engines and readers.
Inside the plugin, you’ll be able to enter your main keyword based on what you’ve researched. Some aspects of your content that will be analyzed by Yoast SEO include the presence of inbound and outbound links, meta description, images, sentence length, and the number of words per paragraph. The tool is completely free to install and will work wonders for your business.
Final Thoughts
You can apply these simple tips starting today, with little to no help. SEO is a tried and true way to grow your audience size over the long term. Nothing is impossible for you, a solopreneur, who uses the tools and strategies at your disposal to your advantage.
