Army of one – Working as a solo SEO at a small business

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Jun 2, 2022 / by
Army of one – Working as a solo SEO at a small business

The pandemic completely blew the doors off the job market with millions using the opportunity to change their lives around and either join or start small businesses. But with so many new businesses out there, competition has never been more of an issue and marketing has never been more important. Online marketing, in particular.

This is where good old fashioned SEO comes in. Because, if you’ve started a new business, chances are it’s either just you right now or at very least a skeleton crew of two or three. In such an environment, people are forced to wear a lot of very different hats and one of those is the online marketing hat. But you don’t need an entire marketing team to do SEO well, at least on a relatively small scale.

Why SEO?

Search engine optimisation has been around for almost as long as search engines themselves and while it’s changed a lot over the years, the fundamentals remain the same – creating content to boost your business’s search engine ranking. For small businesses and sole traders, it’s a no brainer as it’s cheaper than paid ads and works organically to seek out potential customers using keywords that relate to your business.

But where to begin if you’re the sole marketer working on building the online profile of a brand new business? Let’s begin, shall we?

Content comes first

In the early cowboy days of SEO, it was common practice to stuff a webpage on your site full of keywords and hope for the best. That doesn’t fly anymore. Today, it’s all about quality over quantity and content that is not only decent but relevant. Start populating your site with content that relates to your business and that informs, educates and inspires the reader. Even more importantly, make sure it’s content that’s easy to read.

Don’t be afraid to outsource

If you are not a natural writer then there are plenty of skilled copywriters online ready and willing to take your money. But be sure to shop around before settling on the first Uni graduate that knows their way around the lingo.

Make SEO a priority

When starting a new business on your lonesome, marketing can seem like the least important part of the process. You want to get your product or service perfect first, right? That’s all well and good but if nobody is aware you exist, all the product testing in the world will yield pitiful results. If you wait until everything else is finished before starting your SEO campaign, it’ll never get done and you’ll end up paying Google a small fortune to get similar results through PPC ads instead.

Be specific

The businesses that thrive online are those that begin by focusing on a niche and then expand organically as that niche begins to gain traction. Don’t try to be all things to all people because you’ll never beat Amazon. The same is true of SEO. So don’t waste your time creating boilerplate content. By all means, make it evergreen but don’t make it vague and all-encompassing. The more focused, the better.

Above all else, don’t give up. Chances are you’ll hit more than a few hurdles along the way but as long as you keep your content strong and utilise the full force of Google Analytics to your advantage, you’ll soon be SEOing with the best of them.