Many small business owners are extremely frustrated with search engine optimization. They know that 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, and they have been advised by SEO professionals that they can capture this viable traffic if they only start blogging and sharing information for free on the internet.
Most small businesses have even tried their hand at PPC advertising in an attempt to accelerate potential customers coming to their website. Many find this form of digital advertising too expensive and wish they could perform better in the organic rankings.
The frustration for many comes when they start blogging and do not see any appreciable results in terms of organic traffic or customer conversions. They are soon confronted with the drastic reality that over 2 million blog posts are created each day and the words they’re putting out to the internet are a drop in the ocean.
In this article we will cover three practical approaches to search engine optimization any small business owner can use to dramatically turn their SEO digital marketing campaign around.
Write Better Content
Google remains the dominant force in the search engine world with near monopolistic levels of user engagement. Their advertising platform is so ubiquitous that it is used as a verb and they will take in nearly $60 billion dollars in digital ad revenue this year.
Google’s business model is actually built around other people’s content. Though never described in this fashion, Google is essentially a very large website scraper. They crawl other people’s websites and store relevant information to show at google.com with ads presented around the content.
At the core of their business model is the ability to sort through the billions of web pages and display useful information to the end users. While this may seem obvious, content marketers have spent years forming strategies that can capitalize on the traffic Google will ultimately send to a high-value website.
To be successful in SEO is to understand what content Google values so that it is aligned with the search engine algorithm.
Content requirements have been changing and bloggers need to produce much longer pieces than they did a few years ago. The average blog post of a page 1 ranking is over 1500 words and you generally see content on page one that is extremely well researched and answers the search user intent.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the second strategy that will turbo charge your search engine optimization. Many small business owners view email with distain and are very worried about making you feel angry if they send unsolicited email.
That being said, the average ROI on a quick email marketing campaign is 44 to one. While you know it’s not a sexy technology, it still remains one of the top platforms most professionals use on a daily basis.
Email is highly available on mobile devices as well, and users actually prefer to be contacted via email over text or voice phone calls.
Using your email list as a mechanism for distributing excellent content is smart SEO. The people on your email list, provided that you procured that list organically of people who have opted-in, are excellent targets for a new blog post.
Small business owners can build a list from their website using pop-ups that offer free giveaways and other trades. People who opt into this type of offer are declaring their interest in your content and that trust has been established, at least enough to surrender a valid email address.
When your content is ready to launch, use this list to alert these users and bring them back to your website. This initial audience will interact with your content, leave comments, and hopefully share it on their social media profiles. This acts as social proof for future visitors and helps accelerate content distribution.
PPC Retargeting
The final strategy you need to merge with your existing SEO approaches is PPC retargeting. If pay-per-click advertising sounds too expensive, retargeting is a lesser-known strategy that can be quite cost-effective.
As users visit your website, Google will drop a cookie to keep track of those users as they continue to browse the internet. Because Google’s advertising network is so fast, they are able to target these users as they visit other websites such as the New York Times or CNBC.
Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a method for showing ads only to a specific audience who previously visited your website.
Because the audience targeting is so narrow, you are unlikely to run up a large monthly bill using retargeting. Additionally, these are users who visited your website before you showed them an advertisement, which means they have a high likelihood of purchasing.
How is this SEO?
Many digital marketers subscribe to first touch attribution when assigning channels to leads for reporting purposes. If you bring traffic to your website via organic channels, the first touch will be labeled as organic search. This holds true regardless of how you bring that user back to the website to ultimately complete a purchase or convert.
Following this logic, PPC retargeting is an excellent method for boosting your conversion of SEO audiences. It’s an interesting technique that merges organic traffic and advertising a very cost-effective way to make your overall SEO program much more successful.
Conclusions
Some small businesses are very frustrated with search engine optimization and believe it has not fulfilled their expectations. They understand that Google is the dominant force in the search engine market and see how many are benefiting from top ranking positions.
Adjusting how content is produced is a great first step. However, small business owners also need to better coordinate their content launch with their email marketing list and consider other methods of boosting conversion such as PPC remarketing to make the overall program a success.
Guest article written by: 
Adam Stetzer holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and has published on the topics of Internet marketing, absenteeism, employee and customer satisfaction, productivity and safety, and culture. He has founded several technology firms, and is currently CEO at HubShout. In his 25 year career he has worked with companies such as General Electric, Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Verizon, AT&T, Ford, LendingTree, American Express and ChevronTexaco. Adam has advised over 1,000 small business owners and blogs frequently. https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamstetzer/