Thanks to rapid technological development, which made the global market a lot smaller and more accessible, being a solopreneur is no longer something that only a handful of brave souls opt for. In fact, solopreneurship has gone mainstream. About 41 million Americans, which comprise over one-fourth of the US workforce, are starting and operating their own businesses – and that includes freelancers, consultants, and eCommerce business owners.
One of the things that set solopreneurs apart is that they aren’t necessarily looking to expand their businesses. Above all else, they want to be in full control of their time and finances. However, with great freedom comes great responsibility.
Not only will you be required to be a jack of trades and master of most of them, but you will also have to make all the day-to-day decisions as a solopreneur. Apart from being able to offer an excellent service or product to your clients, the most important aspect of solopreneurship is getting your business in front of your audience. And to do that, SEO is something you need to tackle early on.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at which
Focus on Content Quality
Seeing as you’re running the whole show, you will probably have no marketing budget to speak of. In order to compensate for that, you will have to reach your clients by relying on organic marketing, and for that, you will need to produce great content. It’s the number one
What do we mean by great content?
Well, it’s content that provides value to the user by conveying useful information, providing education, or inspiring the user to take action, whether it’s in the form of text, video, or an image. Needless to say, it has to be relevant to your target audience.
This applies to both content that is on your website, as well as your blog. In fact, having a blog is probably the best way to improve the visibility of your business. How so?
Your website can only have so many pages before it becomes difficult to navigate. Luckily, you can have a lot more pages on your blog. With each new post, your business will become more visible online. Not only will you be able to tackle a wide variety of relevant keywords, but by producing useful content, you will also establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
Furthermore, great content is more likely to be shared on social media, and that social proof is also something that search engines look at when ranking your website. Finally, you should make sure to publish on a regular and frequent basis, because that signals search engine spiders to update their search content more often. And it works on humans too. If they see that you haven’t published anything new in a while, they’ll go somewhere else. To maintain a tight grasp on their attention and stay on track with your content strategy, use an editorial calendar.
Optimize Page Speed
Page speed is definitely one of the most important ranking factors, and ever since Google has rolled its mobile-first indexing, it’s become essential. For example, taking just one second longer to load a page could cost Amazon $1.6 billion dollars in sales.
Faster page speed goes toward a better user experience, which is also one of the ranking factors. In order to improve it, you should:
- Minify CSS, Javascript, and HTML
- Reduce the number of redirects
- Start using a CDN
- Enable browser caching
- Enable compression
- Reduce server response time
- Make your images smaller
The last point is probably the easiest and least technical of them. By smaller, we don’t necessarily mean smaller resolution, but smaller file size. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools and tips on how to optimize images by compressing them without a significant loss in image quality.
Research Keywords
Keyword stuffing is no longer a thing, but keywords are still as relevant as ever. Although search engines are getting more intelligent at figuring out what your content is about, they still rely on keywords when ranking your content.
Now, when targeting keywords in your niche, you shouldn’t just target keywords and phrases that are broad and generic. For instance, if you are running an eCommerce shop that sells cameras and camera-related equipment, you should target more specific keywords, such as “affordable digital cameras” as opposed to just “digital cameras”.
The first one also signals intent, since pricing is included in the phrase. In addition to using common sense, there are plenty of other methods you can rely on to come up with relevant keywords, such as:
- Keyword research tools
- Google’s related searches
- Long-tail keywords on places like Quora, Reddit, as well as inside Google’s Autocomplete
Try and keep the keyword density under three percent, so that your content flows naturally. As we’ve pointed out before, keyword stuffing is no longer a viable option, and Google will penalize you for it.
As for where you should place your keywords, try and put one inside your post’s headline, as well as the first subheading. Also, your keyword should be featured inside the meta description, as well as inside the URL of the page you are optimizing. However, inserting it in every subheading, paragraph, and URL can get you penalized, so be careful.
Write Guest Posts
Guest posting allows you to improve your business’ visibility in several different ways.
First of all, by writing a guest post on a high-quality blog or website, you are establishing yourself as an authority in your niche.
Second, high-quality backlinks are among the most important
Third, you are exposing yourself to a new audience, and they will click on the link leading back to your website, blog, or landing page, driving more traffic your way – which further bolsters your
Cultivate an Active Social Media Presence
Being on social media is a must nowadays because social signals are becoming more important in the world of
Finally, today’s customers love to interact with businesses and brands online, which means you need to be there for them.
Stay up to Date
SEO is changing all the time, which means you will have to keep up with all the latest developments – especially when it comes to search engine algorithm updates, social media, and different Google features.
Between that, content production, social media activity, creating a product or service, and actually running your own business, you will often be spread too thin. It would be a good idea to hire help from time to time, or even permanently. For instance, you can find a freelancer to help you shoulder some of the burden when needed. You’ll still get to call all the shots, without having to expand.
Conclusion
As you can see, being a solopreneur is not easy, especially when it comes to
