Guerrilla Marketing: A Free 7 step SEO Checklist
Creating content that converts requires skill. With all the business that’s being conducted on the internet, and with all the content out there that’s constantly competing and vying for attention, it’s hard to know how to produce content that doesn’t fall flat. In this article, I’ll be going over a checklist of how small businesses and entrepreneurs can use SEO for Guerrilla marketing. This will help to leverage your content with SEO, using free techniques to create content that gets more conversions.
If we want to know how to use SEO, first we should understand how search engines work. If you went through your own history on Google, what percentage of your use was looking to solve a problem? For most users, this will likely be a large percentage. Since this is a huge portion of Google’s business, they make money if they help to help find a solution as fast as possible. It does this through automated robots that automatically sort through any page that they can find. Automated robots “crawl” pages to find information for users. These little robots move through pages on the internet through links constantly, looking for new or updated web pages. Once the robot gets the data, it stores all the web pages that it can find on an index.
The exact formulas that search engines use are proprietary. However, there are still ways that we know work. Since we can’t access those formulas directly, we can work from what we know from other companies that are currently getting ahead. A lot of information is from trial and error, and from what search engines have revealed about how they work. Here are some basics do’s and don’ts:
1. Set goals; Identify your ideal customer.
This may seem obvious, but if you don’t know what you want the customer to do, you won’t be effective. This is where it all starts, and for the small business owner using Guerrilla marketing, we want to optimize our results around the ideal customer. To do this, you must know the 5 w’s, (who, what, when, where, and why) of who is browsing your site. If you know what those are, you come that much closer to achieving your goals. Build your experience around that particular individual, and try to imagine their age, gender, and hobbies. This is called a buyer persona. This is an integral part of your plan. Put yourself in their shoes. What other websites do they frequent? How can you replicate what works across industries to help your page grow? Once you have the ideal customer in your mind, we can start building.
2. Keywords matter!
Create lists of keywords to attract the right customers. There are two types of keywords, general words (short tail), and lot of words (long tail). An example of a short tail keywords would be “SEO,” or “Marketing course.” Tags like these are usually very broad, and because of that, competition is usually stiff, as other companies have been competing for those spots for 10+ years. For getting ahead with Guerrilla marketing, what you want to do is find long tail keywords. You can dominate terms like these because the reduced competition allows you to get ahead. While terms like “SEO” are highly competitive, terms like “SEO webmaster traffic assistance” are not. Daragh Walsh, in his complete digital marketing course on Udemy recommends that you collect about 30-50 keywords to use. Then find terms that get 500- 2,500 searches a month, and then build content around those keywords. A good tool for this is Google Keyword planner. This also shows how competitive a keywords is, based on what other companies are paying per click.
3. Create great titles.
David Ogilvy, said: “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.” If you don’t write a good title, people won’t open your article! Ideally, they should be under 50 characters for headlines, anything longer than that could be too long. Spend time thinking of snappy headlines that encourage clicks. Being really specific and including numbers is a great way to attract attention. An example would be: “SEO: 10 ways to boost your business organically.” Try to match your title exactly to your long tail keyword.
4. Make sure that your website is mobile friendly.
More than ever before, people are out on the street using their mobile to get information. Oftentimes, if your website isn’t formatted properly, they will click away, and that can hurt your ranking as a result. Google has a free tool to measure how mobile friendly your site is. Consider optimizing your webpage by using smaller photos, and by having less material to load on your webpage. This will enhance their experience, and keeps your potential customer around longer. If your website is not optimized, it can hurt your conversions. It can literally double conversions if you have faster load times.
5. Speak the customers language.
In our businesses and respective fields, we often have our own jargon that comes to us naturally, but for a customer, that won’t naturally be the way that they search for information. For example, instead of “PC Fixes in 2021,” do something like: “PC not turning on.” For blogs, search engines (like Google) prefer longer articles, but if it is too long, people may click away. You also want to keep in mind, that if you try to cram a lot of keywords into an article on purpose, search engines have evolved to detect that, and it can lower your search result rankings. You need to be first, as it gets a disproportionate amount of clicks. As a small business using Guerrilla marketing, this is key!
6. Collaborate to create backlinks.
Backlinks are links from one website to another, that are essentially like a vote, or an endorsement, saying that that website is legit, or has value. Many small pages that link to one place create a bigger presence for a webpage. This is like having a lot of little ‘thumbs up.’ Not all backlinks are created equal. From an SEO perspective, a backlink from a website with authority can make you almost as big as the one that mentioned you from one link alone. This can be done by networking, and by collaboration with owners of other websites. Work with other entrepreneurs, doing podcasts and interviews. Then in the description, you can provide links that lead back to your own site. If that seems a little too intimidating, worry not! You can do this in a small way by putting links on your FB, instagram, that track back to your website to help it grow on your own, but keep in mind it will likely be a lot smaller.
7. Track everything!
In his Book, no B.S. Grassroots Marketing, Dan Kennedy says: “If you can’t track it, don’t do it.” If you don’t use these tools, how will you ever know what is working? If you want to be effective, pay attention to what works, and keep doing more of it. Google Analytics is a tool that allows you to see where traffic is coming from, and what is converting. It also shows graphs and charts that lay everything out in an easy to read fashion. Your efforts using Guerrilla marketing will be most effective with SMART goals, implementation, and improvement.
And those are the 7 basics that you can do to boost your SEO for your small business. Remember, the goal at the end of the day is to boost your business or website, and if you use SEO effectively, it can help your search engine results grow organically so you get more conversions without spending money. This is always the goal of anyone using Guerrilla Marketing! Using SEO properly can contribute to your business goals, and if you track them, and improve on them, you’ll be on the right track to creating SEO that sticks.
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