Houston businesses have many options for promoting their products and services. As a small business owner in Houston, you can use many of the same strategies that large corporations use. If you have a website, then you need to get targeted traffic. One way to get more visitors is by using search engine marketing (SEM) techniques. The best practices of online marketing help you to rank higher on search engines, to take advantage of the millions of people searching the Internet every day.
1. Responsive Website
The first thing you need to do is create a mobile friendly, or responsive, website as part of search engine marketing. As more people use mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops to do their online searches, you need to make certain your website is mobile friendly. A responsive website automatically adapts to the size of any mobile device screen so visitors get a readable website. Google’s latest algorithm change now labels websites as mobile friendly, allowing consumers to choose a website based on whether it is responsive. Without a responsive website, you lose a large number of potential customers.
2. Search Engine Optimization
SEO, or search engine optimization, is still important for getting targeted traffic to your website. You have to create a list of keywords that potential customers might use when searching for your products and services. You can then add these keywords to the title of pages, in the meta descriptions and in the content of your pages, to get the attention of search engines. In turn, your targeted audience will find your website.
3. Local Search
Another important part of SEO is now localization. As a small business in Houston, Texas, you want to use local search methods such as, adding the city, and state you live in, to your web pages.
You can also add Houston and/or Texas in the title, meta descriptions and content. Many people now look for local companies to do business with. Studies show that you have a much better chance of ranking higher for keywords in your location than with the general search results.
4. Paid Search
Using paid search is another way to get traffic from search engines. By placing ads on search engines you can greatly increase traffic to your website. The trick is creating ad copy that resonates with your target audience. The ads have to get the reader’s attention, and engage them so they want to click on the link that takes them to your website. Although Google is the most popular search engine, you want to place ads on other search engines as well, such as Bing. Placing ads on Google is very expensive, so if you are a small business, you will find paid search on Bing or Yahoo to be more affordable.
Search engine marketing is necessary to stay competitive. If you want to grow your Houston business, whether it is a brick-and-mortar store, or an online company, you need to use search engines as part of your marketing plan.
For full search engine marketing strategies in Houston, contact Convergent1 today!
