SEO For SMEs

Ultimate SEO Guide for SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises)

SEO for SMEs should be part of the business and marketing strategy of entrepreneurs. According to our experience at Marketzilla, when we perform audits S EO to local companies, we found that most of them do not comply with SEO basics. Nor do they have a marketing strategy aligned with their commercial strategy and points of sale. In commercial terms, they usually have a lack of potential customers. This is why the Local SEO can be the best ally to recover or expand the business.

Content updated on 26/12/2024

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What is an SME?

An SME is a small or medium-sized enterprise. This acronym is derived from the English term "SME", which stands for "Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. SMEs are enterprises that generally have a limited number of employees and a moderate turnover. They are very important for the economy because they are often an important source of employment and innovation. Although SMEs do not have the size of large corporations, they are often more flexible and can adapt quickly to market changes.

According to data from the National Statistical Institute (INE) of Spain, small and medium-sized enterprises represent more than 99% of all enterprises in the country. This high percentage is due to the large number of family-owned and small businesses that are part of the Spanish economy. In addition to their number, SMEs also play a crucial role in job creation. According to the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain, the SMEs provide employment for around 65%-70% of workers in the private sector.

These figures show that SMEs are a fundamental component of the Spanish economy. They add value both in terms of employment generation and wealth creation.

What is SEO for SMEs?

Optimisation SEOSEO is a set of practices and strategies designed to increase the visibility of a website on Google. In the context of a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME), SEO can play a crucial role in the growth and success of the business. For an SME, SEO has multiple benefits. Firstly, it increases the visibility of your business online. This can increase traffic to your website and physical business. This traffic can be converted into sales and leads, all of which directly drives business growth.

In addition, a good SEO strategy helps an SME to compete more effectively with larger companies. By means of keyword optimisation and the creation of quality content, you can rank in the top results. For a local company It is relatively easier to position in local and regional results than it is for a national or international competitor. This is because of the local presence in sales outlets that an SME has and that a national company often does not reach. This competitive advantage in terms of SEO can be definitive to be first in Google in your market or sales area.

Finally, by helping the SMEs to grow and succeed, SEO also contributes to the wealth and prosperity of a country. SMEs represent a significant part of the Spanish economy and are an important source of employment. By encouraging the growth of these companies, SEO strengthens the economy as a whole and creates more employment opportunities.

What are the main benefits of SEO for SMEs?

Failure to appear on the first page of Google for the keywords If you want to attract the growing online search market, you need to be competitive through your business. Therefore, if you want to attract the growing market of online search, you must be competitive through your web and your Google My Business. To be clear about the importance of local seo with respect to SMEs let us review the following SEO statistics:

46% of total Google searches are local searches (directly related to SMEs).
97% of users searched online to find a business
Every month, users visit 1.5 billion locations related to their Google searches.
28% of the purchases are made after a local search.
78% of mobile searches result in an offline purchase (in the physical premises of the SME).

SOURCE: Digital Safari

Main benefits derived from the SEO strategy for your SME:

Increased visibility and online presence: Nowadays, branding strategies involve positioning yourself on page 1 of Google. Being in the top 3 of Google is synonymous with prestige, recognition and generates notoriety. Apart from that, these positions attract the highest volume of traffic.
Increased sales: Apart from the notoriety generated, the Google top 3 attracts a lot of traffic to your website and map listing. If your website is well designed from the point of view of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) you will generate more sales and therefore revenue for your company.
Increased domain and brand authority: The domain authority increases when you improve your backlink profile (linkbuilding). When your content starts to rank in Google, other websites will link to you, this will flow linkjuice through backlinks to your website. This increases your Domain Authority (DA). In addition, by becoming a reference in the sector, your perceived authority will be greater (brand awareness). All of this leads to improved conversion rates and therefore sales.
Higher conversion rate: By increasing traffic to your website and physical business you will sell more. More leads will convert into customers even if you keep the same number of leads. conversion rate.
Improving competitiveness: By developing an SEO strategy for your SME you will be able to compete with much larger companies that do not have the local capacity and flexibility. Therefore, you will be much more competitive.
Ability to measure results: Digital marketing investment is measurable through tools such as: Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, Semrushamong others.

How to design an SEO strategy for an SME?

1. Understand the business:

The SEO expert o SEO Agency must understand your business strategy, as the SEO strategy must serve that strategy to achieve objectives.
On the other hand, it must be aligned with the digital part (web, social media and map sheet) competitive advantages, PUV (unique selling proposition) and reasons why they should buy from you and not from your competitors.
The SEO strategy must be aligned with the ideal customer profile.

2. Initial SEO audit:

It should focus on three main pillars:

Technical SEO: Study of loading speedpossible indexing problems, technical errors that affect how Google understands the page (Robots.txt, Sitmap, etc.).
SEO Onpage: Structure of the website, web design from a CRO point of view, titles, meta descriptions, keyword analysis, interlinking, and a long etcetera of extremely important tasks to achieve the target positioning.
Offpage SEO: Study of the link profile of both our website and that of our main competitors for the main keywords. Establishment of a strategy of LINKBUILDING effective.

What are the best SEO tactics for small and medium-sized businesses?

You can open or improve your Google My Business page. Optimising the GMB listing is extremely important to rank for the main keywords in the top 3 positions on the map. When a user is close to your business, traffic and phone calls will come through your listing and not through your website. If you are not well positioned they will go to your competition.
By applying local web positioning you can drive more traffic to your website and local business.
You can capture the email and name of your potential customers and then set up an email marketing campaign to sell to them in the medium term. In marketing we say "out of sight, out of mind".
We can order reviews actively recruiting our local customers for our Google My Business page. Then use those testimonials on our website, including printed business material, advertisements and on social media. The testimonial is an excellent growth hacking o local guerrilla marketing.
You can use collaborative marketing ideas or techniques with other complementary small businesses. Look for businesses that can be complementary to yours, not competitors. A gym could organise a nutrition talk together with a weight loss centre. Join forces, communicate it on both websites, social media and customer databases.
In reference to the previous point, you could organise a referral marketing tactic or a buddy programme. If you invite a friend to the nutritional talk, you will receive a 50% discount on the next installment and an ebook with a nutritional plan. Then it's up to the gym and the nutrition centre to recruit those invited friends.
All these actions are great reasons to develop new content attacking keywords for your website. Think about local content that can be developed; events, talks, concerts, contests, among others, will position very well in your province and even region.
Your presence on the number 1 page of Google for multiple keywords generates brand recognition. Nowadays, being in the top positions of Google is tantamount to quality, prestige and notoriety.
You can hire an agency of local digital marketing to build a local SEO strategy.

How to do Local SEO for my SME?

There are a multitude of actions that you can take to do in terms of SEO for Local SMEs. Here is a list of some of the most important ones:

Development of a Unique Selling Proposition or USP: It's about a central idea that drives your marketing strategy. A concept that sells the most important benefit for your local target audience or buyer persona. It should also differentiate you from the offer of other competing local businesses. If the PUV generates customer action, even better.
You must define the zone of influence or geographical area of action and dissemination.
Identify the local search keywords that best define your business.
Position keywords that contain location parameters. For example "santa cruz de tenerife italian restaurant".
Identify your local, provincial and regional competitors. You must analyse their strategy outside the offline or online environment. However, the most important thing is to analyse their online strategy. How many users you receive, bounce rate, loading speed of your website, how many keywords you have positioned. Apart from these parameters, how many keywords on page 1 of Google, traffic you receive for each keyword. This is some of the information you should know and compare with your current online status.
Review your Google My Business page and improve it. You can download our Local SEO Guide by leaving your details at the bottom of the page. You will learn how to do this in the guide in detail.
Open profiles on social networks where your competitor is getting engagement.
Try paid search campaigns or SEM positioning.
Identify a marketing budget to organise your monthly actions.

How to Create SEO Optimised Content to rank your local SME business?

In order to create a blog that is competitive in search engines you must:

Use the tool Answer the Public in order to find content ideas and ways in which users search for your topic.
Develop each URL of your page by targeting a specific keyword, which should also be the H1 of the page.
The content must be unpublished, not copied. Google is able to detect any plagiarised fragment from another website. This will lead to penalties from Google and a loss of ranking in the search engine. This problem is also called "duplicate content".
It is important that your website loads in less than 3 seconds. A good website, with quality content but that loads slowly, will not rank well in Google.
Add seo optimised images to your content. If you can add a video about your article or topic, all the better. Video increases the user's permanence on the website or session time. Video increases interest and engagement. These factors are important for Google and favour your web positioning.
The content should be written in short sentences, straight to the point and of high informative quality. Remember that voice searches using smartphones are growing exponentially in local SEO. Therefore, we must take into account that a voice search is executed differently than a written search.
Write at least 2 new articles per month of 1000 words each. With images and video included.
Study at least the content structure of the top 3 first page rankings for the keyword you are trying to rank for.

How to select SEO services for SMEs?

Once you know how to organise a SEO strategy for SMEs. It's time to take action and decide how you can implement the service in your small or medium-sized business. Here are some options:

Try to implement the strategy yourself: This is an option that we do not recommend due to the learning curve. SEO is complex and although we have summarised in this article what should be done, it is much more extensive and detailed. It requires a deep knowledge of a multitude of tools, some of them even paid ones such as Semrush, Bright Localamong others.
The learning curve for optimal and combined use of all the tools involved is at least two years.
To this we have to add the experience of use, trial and error in any application.
In addition to an ideal SEO profile, it includes in-depth knowledge of strategic marketing to successfully implement the strategy.

Hire a SEO Consultant freelance:

An external SEO consultant can be a solution if your SME is not in a highly competitive market and your business goals are not very ambitious. Otherwise, you will need a more trained, comprehensive and professional team to be able to take your company to the top results, perhaps nationally or internationally.

Hire an SEO Agency for your SME:

An SEO Agency will be more successful when your objectives are very demanding in a highly competitive market with a national or international scope. You will require several professional profiles to be able to achieve the objectives working in an orchestrated way as they do in an SEO Agency:

SEO Expert
Web designer and developer
Graphic designer
SEM Expert
Digital marketing strategy expert
Social media expert
CRO Expert

How much should I invest in SEO strategy for my SME?

The investment depends directly on the difficulty of the SEO strategy. Business objectives of the company, as well as the starting point of the business. The difficulty of the strategy is determined by the number of competitors that are competing for a group of keywords. It is therefore very important to carry out a thorough SEO audit initial analysis of parameters such as:

Current web survey
Current survey of direct competition
Keyword analysis
Study of the commercial strategy and how it can be aligned with the SEO strategy.
Study of the company's differentiating factors that make it unique.
Assessing the level of difficulty of positioning

You should bear in mind that the budget may be increased by the redesign or complete redesign of your website. It is common for SMEs not to have a website adapted to SEO. They do not have any SEO strategy applied, the design is poor and affects the CRO. In most cases, it requires redoing the website again in order to begin to draw up a competitive SEO plan with guarantees.

What is the estimated SEO fee for an SME?

Prices can vary greatly depending on some of the factors listed above. Below is the process we follow at MARKETZILLA SEO AGENCY for a typical SME with a physical location, website and targeting a local market:

FREE initial audit (15min)
In-depth audit (1-2 hours of initial study) typically between 250 and 350€.
In the case that the website needs to be rebuilt, prices can range from 1500 to 2500€ (these prices do not include ecommerce).
Monthly SEO strategy on web and Google my Business from 600€.

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