The New Era of E-commerce for Small Business
For small business owners, the Internet can be one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to market your business and sell products or services. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, shopping habits have changed dramatically with e-commerce, or online shopping, seeing a huge surge over the past three years (E-Commerce Sales Surged During the Pandemic (census.gov)). If you’re a small local business that sells products or services online, or even if you just use it for marketing purposes, search engine optimization, also known as SEO, can be an important tool for driving sales and visibility with locals and visitors to the area.
The Importance of SEO for Local Businesses
The goal of SEO is to ensure your website is within the first batch of results visible to users of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo – this makes them more likely to visit your website and potentially buy your products or schedule a visit to your retail location, restaurant, or farm. Some data suggests that half of all Google searches are seeking local information, and most users use search engines to find information on local businesses (18 Local SEO Statistics That Matter in 2023 | Safari Digital). From our own Local Pulse Survey results (see our first article on the RAIN Blog), we found that online avenues like social media, news sources, and search engines were all popular ways for respondents to determine where they buy their locally sourced products.
Effective SEO Strategies for Small Businesses
In this article we’ll outline eight effective steps you can take to begin your SEO journey for your own small business:
- Website Optimization for Local Search – Make sure your website is optimized for local search by including your business name, address, phone number, and other relevant information such as business hours on your website. This allows for new and returning customers to easily find the information they need to add your shop, farm, or café to their shopping trip or weekend plans.
- Local Keywords for Enhanced Visibility – Use local keywords in your website content to help your business show up in local search results. For our region, using location terms like “Algoma”, “Soo”, “SSM”, or the name of the township you’re located in can not only help residents find your business online but also those who may be passing through or interested in planning a trip to the area. Other key terms that may help you promote your business could be combinations like “local food”, “family-owned”, or “locally owned” since these can help boost visibility for users searching with these more value-based queries.
- Leveraging Google My Business for Local Reach – Create a Google My Business profile to help your business show up in Google Maps and local search results. This free service can help create a great first impression for users searching on Google or Maps since it displays all your important business information, customer reviews, website, and any photos you’d like to add.
- Listing in Local Directories – Get listed in local directories such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other relevant directories to help your business show up in local search results. Many of these websites also give customers a chance to leave reviews for your business to tell others about the great experiences they had.
- The Power of Social Media in Promotion – Use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote your business and engage with customers. Social media can be a great avenue for adding that personal touch to your business, allowing you to tell your story and connect directly with new and existing customers. Most platforms also give people an option to share your posts with their own friends and followers which can be a great way to boost visibility to those who may not have been looking for your content.
- Creating High-Quality, Relevant Content – Create high-quality content that is relevant to your business and target audience to help your website rank higher in search results. Although more time-consuming to create, video content is taking the forefront on most social media platforms and can be much more engaging than a simple photo or text post. ‘Video shopping’, or the practice of promoting a product through video content, has become increasingly prevalent since the peak of the COVID pandemic – we’ll cover this in more depth in our next blog post about leveraging social media as a small business. Finding ways to incorporate videos into your marketing strategy, even those which are relatively short in length and simple to create, can boost your visibility in web searches.
- Backlinks: Building Your Website’s Authority – Get backlinks from other websites to help improve your website’s authority and ranking in search results. Simply put, these are links incorporated in blog posts or articles from other websites which are usually embedded in text like this link to the Buy Algoma, Buy Local website. These links show that your website is a reliable source since it’s been referenced by other websites.
- Ensure your website is mobile friendly – Most people browsing for somewhere to eat or shop are likely using their smartphone, which means it’s important to double check that your website and e-commerce platforms look just as good on their phones as it does on their desktop. Thankfully, many user-friendly website design platforms allow you to switch between desktop and mobile view so you can see how any changes you make will look on both types of devices.
- The Role of Analytics in SEO – Use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to track your website traffic and identify areas for improvement. Once you’ve implemented a few different techniques in your SEO strategy, it’s incredibly helpful to see whether these are working or not. If you notice that web traffic doesn’t seem to be increasing even after making some adjustments, you may need to dive deeper into the technical side of SEO and make sure there aren’t any broken links or errors on your website.
Navigating SEO as a Small Business
Registering your agri-food business as a member of Buy Algoma, Buy Local is a great way to cover these bases automatically. Our website reliably appears on the first page of popular search engines like Google and Bing when users search keyword combinations like “Algoma local food”, meaning that your business will be easily accessible to those searching through our ‘Taste & Shop’ business directory. Navigating SEO as a small business with a handful of employees and limited financial resources can be a daunting and sometimes expensive task, meaning that becoming a Buy Algoma, Buy Local member offers a great return on investment. Simply put, it’s a simple and effective strategy for driving traffic to your business’ website and social media pages without the extra legwork or expense of hiring a firm to do the work for you.
If you think your business would be a good fit for the Buy Algoma, Buy Local program take a minute to look over our membership program. Not only will you get a spot on the website directory, your business will also be featured in our printed local food guides and the online local food map, as well as being promoted through our Facebook and Instagram pages.