Scaling Business Operation n SEO as an Entrepreneur
-
Hi! I'm a 1 man business operating in Singapore doing Delivery Service for Business. Right now my website is ranking at the 3rd page of google, www.vantagedelivery.com
The keywords that i'm looking to rank are delivery service, delivery service singapore.Being alone in the business, i struggle in doing the SEO aspect of the website on a consistent basis. Therefore i'm looking for a scale-able way for me to do SEO in my free-time, perhaps 2 hours a day?
Any recommendation especially with regards to the routine i should be looking at?
With regards blogpost, what are the recommended things to do especially when the crowd of the people who reads blogpost in my industry is close to none?Thanks!
-
Hi there,
May i also then ask why should we do "Regular download / checking of your own site's backlinks"
By this, I mean conducting a regular download from Open Site Explorer of your links and checking to see if they have increased or decreased in number, what the quality is like and which type of links you'd like to get more of. You can also download your links from your Google Webmaster Tools account, but it is good to have more than one source of backlink data because different services usually show a slightly different picture due to their crawling capabilities, etc. Other services that do this include Ahrefs and MajesticSEO.
I would say that if you are going to renew, definitely use a few hours of SEO time a week to get familiar with the toolset and what it can do for you. $99 a month can go a long way if you take advantage of what's on offer, but I agree that it is a waste if you don't use it. The good thing about learning to use the tools yourself is that you can save hundreds of thousands of dollars on consulting if you can do a lot of this yourself. Understanding the tools and what they tell you also means that you will be better able to pick good external consultants in the future if you get to the stage where you can employ / contract someone to do SEO for you.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Jane
-
Right now, we don't have other plan options that are more inexpensive, but we do know people in your situation would benefit from this. I'll be sure to let the proper team know about your thread.
-
Hi Keri,
Thanks for your wise advice... I'll consider when looking at it... As it's quite tuff for me financially on my side as i'm still a One-man business.
Do you guys think you could have a smaller version plans for entrepreneurs like us who only manages their own website and SEO for their company?
-
I'm an employee at Moz, so I'm biased, but I do want to point out that this Q&A is also one of the benefits of being a Pro subscriber. People like Jane often charge over $100 an hour for consultations, and Q&A lets you get a whole month of advice from people in the field for that amount.
-
Hi Jane!
Wow this is a very comprehensive write-up and i fully appreciate the extra mile you go in clarifying all these things...
As a small biz owner, i don't think i have the resources to get so many stuff as i go along in SEO-ing my own business. For e.g. Moz, i don't think i'll renew it as it's really expensive for me considering, i seldom fully utilised it's tools.
May i also then ask why should we do "Regular download / checking of your own site's backlinks"? and what should we do about it ?
Thank you very much:)
-
With two hours a day, I would develop a weekly routine that involves some of the following, some on a daily basis and some once / twice per week depending on what sort of activity / results you are seeing:
- Daily check of Analytics and Webmaster Tools (404 errors, messages, crawl stats, etc.)
- Full set-up of Moz Analytics to take advantage of analysis and tracking here; daily / weekly checking of campaigns (Moz emails weekly updates, which are useful).
- Regular download / checking of your own site's backlinks
- One or two content projects per week (more on this later)
- Regular site crawls with a tool like ScreamingFrog to complement what you're receiving through Moz, checking for on-page errors, redirects, etc.
- Short check of SEO news outlets like this one, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable to ensure you understand algo updates, interesting and relevant new ideas, and industry news, but perhaps without getting bogged down in blog posts / news that is not relevant to your business.
Regarding blog posts / content and low readership, think outside of your target market when it comes to readership. A good example of a company doing this recently was Aviva, a UK insurance company. They didn't optimise the potential links aspect of this, but they could have done so for a very good result.
They conducted a study on the over-spending of first-time parents, showing how much money is "wasted" on things parents / new babies don't really need. The mainstream press covered this pretty well: I actually read about the study in a hard-copy newspaper rather than online. Online, they did not conduct outreach well to take advantage of this study (lots of mentions from newspaper websites, etc. with no links), but the premise of the study was great.
Why was it great? Because insurance is pretty boring. But new babies are not boring to Aviva's target market, and they are not boring to a whole lot of other people besides. The baby industry is worth billions worldwide. They very effectively tapped into a subject that a lot of people would talk about, and that subject is at least somewhat related to what Aviva does (personal / family financial services).
So what about the delivery business?
Well, how about a study on the amount of money lost worldwide from delivery accidents, poor packaging and logistics, etc.? People tend to like stories about the wastage / saving of money at scale.
Or a study showing the average number of miles traveled by different types of products in international shipping, e.g. "the average piece of lamb from New Zealand travels X,000 miles from its farm to grocery stores, given that New Zealand ships lamb to Y countries worldwide. Z,000 tonnes of this is frozen whilst N,000 tonnes is chilled", etc. Tailor this to what you usually ship or leave it generic, focusing on logistics as a whole. As in the Aviva example, it doesn't have to be super tied to what you do - Aviva does not sell nor specifically insure baby products.
What you're looking to do is create content that is relevant to your potential customers and to other people besides, but is not necessarily about your subject matter if your subject matter is pretty boring. Your potential customers or "people in your industry" might not read or write a lot about the industry, but they are people with interests nonetheless, and you can tap into what DOES interest them.
-
You can check out all of the perks here, http://moz.com/perks
I would build everyone you can find that is relevant at first, then give the site a bit and see where you are sitting in the serps. Then you can start more external link building.
-
Hi!
I guess i'll try out the suggestion that you've suggested.
What's the moz perk for whitespark which you mentioned earlier?
What do you think can be next with regards to ranking higher?
Thanks!
-
Not really - the links you find that they have that are viable for you to pursue will be fairly obvious. Just be diligent. I do agree with Prestashop - because you are engaged in such a specific location citations will be very good for you.
-
Hi Billy,
I totally agree that i should work on my link building. But after much reading, it seems like content is placed on a high emphasis which i think i do not have much ideas for content.
Anything i should take note while doing competitive link analysis too?
Thanks!
-
Citations are links. They do improve the results with google places, but at the same time they also help with queries like "delivery in singapore" or things like "package delivery in singapore". Local citation sites generally have good rankings, so where they might have out ranked you in the past, your result might be the one that pops up, or if they pass link juice, it could be what it needs to drive your site up in the serps.
-
Citations will help you rank for location specific queries as well. Also - I do think you should work on your link building some more. Do a competitive link analysis - you have competitors with much stronger link profiles.
-
Hi!
Thanks for your fast response. But was just wondring:
Don't i need more links right now as most of my-page optimisation are quite ok already?
Isn't citation all about improving rankings over at Google Places? -
I do not know if you have already done it, but for a company like yours I would bang out as many local citations as I could. Singapore is supported by whitespark.ca, I would use them to find citations and fill them out. https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder I am pretty sure they have a Moz perk too. You could also get them to build them for you, their rates are pretty affordable.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Title Too Long - Seo importance
Hey; What do you think Title Too Long for Seo importance my site adress almost all page Title Too Long warning is showing http://prntscr.com/ndykgw from many sites this way, how much difference does this order make?
Local Website Optimization | | mesutcandan0 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
Local SEO + Searcher Intent Targeting for Home Builder
Good Morning, All! I work for a home builder - www.HibbsHomes.com. Their site has hundreds of pages and blogs and I'm looking at consolidating many of them as they're older and use an older SEO strategy. Can you take a look at their portfolio? http://hibbshomes.com/custom-home-builders-st-louis/st-louis-custom-homes-portfolio/ I'm wondering if I should consolidate the various projects into their own pages by house type and city - rather than having all on one page? Both for SEO and for easier searchability. How would you organize this for these? The benefit to setting up city pages is the local SEO rank (St Louis has so many suburbs). The benefit to setting up pages by home style or size would be for user experience. How do I improve this for both? And... how do I optimize for conversions better?
Local Website Optimization | | stldanni1 -
Best SEO practice for project galley (image gallery) ? I need SEO Professionals advice.
Hi, i Have a website that is powerful and i dont want to hurt it. http://dreamgaragedoor.com/ right now i need a projects gallery page that people goes there to find out the models and products and services images. i have created the page and it would be 6 slider in the page and each slider has at least 10 images inside. first question is having this much images would or wouldnt hurt my webiste. second what ALT should i use for this many pictures in 1 page. for example i think having ALT like below in one page would be bad SEO wise. Sliding-gate-1, Sliding-gate-2, Sliding-gate-3, Sliding-gate-4,... please take a look at the gallery page and let me have your pro ideas. http://dreamgaragedoor.com/galleries/ thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Mishel2980 -
Company sells home appliances and commercial appliances. What is the best way to differentiate the two on our site for the best user experience/SEO?
Should we structure it starting at the homepage with the user selecting for home or for business, that way they have to make a selection before moving further OR should we somehow differentiate in the navigation using the top menu tabs, dropdowns, etc?
Local Website Optimization | | dkeipper1 -
Will subdomains with duplicate content hurt my SEO? (solutions to ranking in different areas)
My client has offices in various areas of the US, and we are working to have each location/area rank well in their specific geographical location. For example, the client has offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas & St Louis. Would it be best to: Set up the site structure to have an individual page devoted to each location/area so there's unique content relevant to that particular office? This keeps everything under the same, universal domain & would allow us to tailor the content & all SEO components towards Chicago (or other location). ( example.com/chicago-office/ ; example.com/atlanta-office/ ; example.com/dallas-office/ ; etc. ) Set up subdomains for each location/area...using the basically the same content (due to same service, just different location)? But not sure if search engines consider this duplicate content from the same user...thus penalizing us. Furthermore, even if the subdomains are considered different users...what do search engines think of the duplicate content? ( chicago.example.com ; atlanta.example.com ; dallas.example.com ; etc. ) 3) Set up subdomains for each location/area...and draft unique content on each subdomain so search engines don't penalize the subdomains' pages for duplicate content? Does separating the site into subdomains dilute the overall site's quality score? Can anyone provide any thoughts on this subject? Are there any other solutions anyone would suggest?
Local Website Optimization | | SearchParty0 -
Google Panda 4.0 update - Good for Small businesses?
Hi guys, We recently did a post on Google Panda 4.0 release. Check this here. Have you seen any notable changes in rankings for your website? Do you think that this update will benefit small businesses/websites? Looking forward to your comments.
Local Website Optimization | | FRL2 -
How slow can a website be, but still be ok for visitors and seo?
Hello to all, my site http://www.allspecialtybuildings.com is a barn construction site. Our visitors are usually local. I am worried about page speed. I have been using Google Page Insight, and Gtmetrix. Although I cannot figure out browser leveraging, I have a 79 / 93 google score and for gtmetrix 98/87 score. Load times vary between 2.13 secs to 2.54 secs What is acceptable? I want to make sure I get Google love for a decent page speed, but for me these times are great. Bad times are like 7 seconds and higher. I have thought about a CDN, yet I have read horror stories too. I have ZERO idea of how to use a CDN, or if I need it. I just want a fast site that is both user and Google speed friendly. So my question is, what is a slow speed for a website? Is under 3 seconds considered ok? or bad for seo? But any advice is greatly appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | asbchris0