There are three letters that every business owner with an online presence needs to know – SEO!  This stands for Search Engine Optimization.  

According to CEO of Point Global Marketing, Javette Nixon, Search Engine Optimization is an organic way that you can improve your rankings in search results without paying.  Nixon explains that there are things you can do for free to ensure you’re high in those results for specific terms and phrases that people use.

For example, if you need an amazing dress for an event, you might search Google to find a nearby boutique, or you might go on Instagram and look at what your favourite influencer is wearing. If you’re in the business of selling dresses, you want to make sure that your business’s website or social media pages are among the first search results for that category.  You can do this by using descriptive keywords that are closely related to your item.

Use descriptive keywords

“Text is best,” Nixon advises.  “For example, on your Instagram feed, a lot of people have beautiful pictures but no words. A search engine doesn’t efficiently read a picture, but text is very easy to read for algorithms.”

There are two types of keywords that marketers use in their SEOs:

• Short tail keywords: 1-2 words long. Eg. dress or blue dress
• Long tail keywords: 3 or more words. Eg. blue strapless mermaid dress

Do-it-yourself or hire a pro?

Nixon cautions that SEO can take a lot of time, effort and research to do properly. 

“If you have no budget, then what you have is time to learn, but in an ideal circumstance, you really would want to be talking to a qualified marketing professional who specializes in digital to do this,” he says.  

Marketing professionals have access to specialized software that can assist in generating ideal keywords.  Nixon adds that because they may be providing this service for several clients, they are also able to provide economies of scale, which makes it faster than doing it yourself.

Does my business need a website?

Meanwhile, Nixon also recommends having a website for your business, even if you already have a social media presence. 

“If you can figure out if people are using social and how they are using social media, then you can make decisions on whether or not these people would likely buy from a website or from you on social.  You might want a website just to provide information – this is my company, this is me, this is what we do.  But then you want the conversion to happen on social media,” he says.

Another benefit of having a website is that unlike your social media accounts, you own your website. Additionally, he notes that social media platforms frequently go out of trend.  One platform might be big this year, but irrelevant five years from now, but your website will remain constant.

“If you have a website and you’re also on social media, that can actually factor into the relevance of your results because there are more data points,” Nixon adds.  “These data points factor into search results.  It can be something that helps you to go up in the ranking.”

Control your brand’s presence

One final bit of advice from the Point Global boss – control your brand by booking your brand name on various social media platforms, even if you don’t intend to use them.

“Some people acquire multiple channels to secure the naming and branding rights for those channels.  I might want to book my name on Tik Tok even though I don’t use Tik Tok because I don’t want somebody else to book my name.  The idea of capturing somebody’s name and then using it actually happens a lot on social,” he warns.

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