There are two major areas of SEO that impact significantly upon the authority and perceived value of your website: onsite content and offsite popularity. Of these two areas, content creation is often considered too costly for a small business budget, despite the fact that it offers a superb opportunity to connect with users and improve search engine visibility.
It is important to remember that these two factors are hugely related; a website that offers high quality content, that is engaging and offers value to their particular customer base, is often rewarded with higher rankings. Content is worth producing even if it’s on a modest scale.
But the point of frustration will inevitably fall back onto budget constraints. How can we produce this content? Graphic designers, photographers and video makers are expensive!
For small businesses, there’s no requirement for shiny graphics, professional designers or developers to swoop in with fancy codes and large bills. The most valuable resources are in-house and online.
Tap into your people: You are the subject matter expert. High levels of expertise can be turned into high quality content, but the focus should be on transforming this knowledge into something that resonates. Don’t “info/data dump” as there is no value add from doing this and the algorithm doesn’t reward commonplace information. Add to it by doing further research and present it in an engaging manner. Diagrams, illustrations, pdfs and slide shares can work well.
Low cost graphics: There are now hundreds of tools that help you to create graphics. Infog.ram for infographics, DataVisualization.ch for data visualization, Toonlet for comic strips. There is something for everything.
Low cost photography: I’m surprised at the amount of people who discount the option of taking photos themselves. Behind-the-scenes photos can be especially effective, especially when incorporated into social. It just requires a smartphone camera, some reading into photography and photo editing apps. It’s a great entry point into photographic content.
Low cost video content: Smart phones come to the rescue yet again. Invest in a stabiliser and tripod as this will make a huge difference to the final product. Lighting units are also important and can be DIY-ed quite simply with cheap hardware store materials. Do video editing on computer software, free or paid, as this is far superior to video editing phone apps. Shoot on-location, behind the scenes, and at industry events. This is personal and extremely authentic.
Online freelancers: Using a freelancer from eLance, oDesk and PeoplePerHour can pay dividends. The trick is to look for professionals just developing their portfolios. They have less experience but can still do great work.
Event targeting: This is a tactic rather than a tool. Create content targeting relevant events, industry and seasonal. This is a great way of riding the wave of popular interest and establishing traction.
Now combine all of these elements together and you’ll have a winning content campaign for small business.
Jessica Xu
SEO Executive
dgm Australia