Web Marketing

Creating a web marketing strategy for your SME

14 October 2023 Eugénie Delhaye
|||

 Why write blog posts about web marketing strategies for SMEs?

As we read about the different blogs and reference websites, we noticed that there were very few articles designated specifically for SMEs. Indeed, there are a plethora of articles on SEO for e-commerce sites; or about blogs and general “websites” without necessarily taking into consideration the specific difficulties that SMEs can experience when setting up a web marketing strategy.

Problems for SMEs

Let’s take a moment to “walk in the shoes” of an SME. What is an SME? An SME (small and medium enterprise) is generally a company with fewer than 10 employees (at least in Quebec).

SMEs can be found in any field of activity; they can be a car garage, a dentist, a small law firm, a hairdresser, a restauranteur, a florist etc. You can quickly notice something these companies have in common: they are not professionals in web marketing.

In addition to that, the person who manages the web marketing strategy in an SME is usually the manager.

In other words, a person who is overworked and who battles every day with issues related to accounting, administration, human resources, clients and the overall success of the business. Needless to say, the manager does not have time to comb through blog articles on topics as varied as: SEO, Google Adwords, website design, content creation etc.

For all these reasons, we’ve decided to summarize the most important things to put in place when an SME executive wants to think about their web marketing strategy.

SME web strategy begins with an online presence

One of the first steps in building a web marketing strategy is the creation of a website.

As specialists in SEO and web marketing, we recommend that you create your website as quickly as possible. Indeed, the positioning of your site on search engines depends in part on the age of your website. Thus, a competitor having created a site equivalent to yours a year before you will most likely be better positioned for similar queries.

Most agencies will offer to make a website in HTML5 or a site on a CMS like WordPress. We strongly advise you to choose a CMS. This way, you will be able to update your content whenever you want. Content creation is a very important aspect of SEO that will allow you to build a long-lasting web marketing strategy tailored for SMEs.

SEO for SMEs

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the key components of any web marketing strategy. The advantage of SEO is that the optimizations you have already put into place are lasting. Many things should be taken into account for prime optimization. We will address most important points one by one regarding of implementation of an SEO strategy for your SME.

  • Keyword research: Keyword research is crucial for any website that seeks to increase its positioning on search engines and is even more so for SMEs. Indeed, we found that many SMEs in Quebec did not take the time to optimize their site for search engines (for those that even have a website). So, you can easily position yourself at the top of the search results for many relevant and non-competitive queries related to your industry.

You will therefore need to identify the most relevant keywords with tools such as the Google Adwords keyword planner, the Moz competition tool or Google Trend to find out more about search trends.

  • The insertion of keywords in your content: keywords must be inserted regularly in your written text content so that search engines can understand that your page is talking about the topic targeted by your keyword. Insert your regularly selected keywords into the paragraphs, titles, URLs, page titles, meta-descriptions, and images on your website. You will then have greater chances of increasing your rankings in the search engines. Remember that you should only target one keyword per page. If you are a mechanic and you are targeting “tire sales”, “car repair”, “car maintenance”, and “buying cheap tires” on the same page, there is a good chance that you will not appear on any of the selected requests. Keep in mind: one keyword per page.
  • Content: The content of your site must be at least 300 words per page (according to Google) but we found better results when pages contain 500 words or more. The most important pages are your service or product pages. Therefore, you must take the time to add relevant content that differentiates you from your competitors on all your pages (for example, by inserting chosen keywords).

We often get questions about home pages. A home page on a website should always be a crossroads for the Internet user. It must be clear and include prompts for the user to very easily find the service or product pages that interest them. The user must understand what is expected of him on each page.

  • Links: Links are a topic of debate in the SEO world. In the case of an SME, we recommend seeking external/inbound links from your partners as a first step. If you have already read up a little on this topic, you have certainly found that you need to contact bloggers to publish content on their site. Sure enough, if you have the time, I strongly encourage you to create quality content on external sites. In the (most likely) case where you do not have the time to do this, we encourage you to go and position your link on local directories (not SEO directories but well known directories in your industry). You can also simply contact the companies you work with regularly to advertise on their site that they are working with you.

All this information constitutes a brief summary of the actions to be implemented as part of a web marketing strategy for an SME.

Of course, we have not addressed all the possible optimization points of SEO (it would take much more than a single article) but we have given you some good tools to let you to do some of the work yourself. The purpose of this article is to summarize the key points to SME executives who would like to start the optimizations on their website and web marketing strategy. Another area you might find interesting is targeted advertising that allows you to use Google to get more business opportunities.

Do not hesitate to ask for help with your web marketing strategy

Finally, if you run out of time do not hesitate to ask for help. You will probably tell us that we are preaching to the choir, but as a company leader you cannot do everything by yourself; what makes money in your company is to understand what your company is selling. In the same way that you hire an accountant 5 to 10 hours a month to do your accounting, you can get help in your web marketing strategy by experts.

If you would like to contact us to learn more about how we can help you with your web marketing strategy, please do not hesitate to contact us here or contact Maxence Pezzetta at 514 572 7758 who will be happy to explain the optimizations you can set up on your site to increase your number of customers.

Do not hesitate to contact us at 514 572 7758 or via our contact form if you wish to speak with an expert who will answer all your questions.

Eugénie Delhaye
Cofondatrice et Spécialiste Marketing Internet et Référencement Naturel (SEO) Ma maîtrise des techniques de référencement, combinée à une analyse minutieuse des tendances du marché, me permet de créer des stratégies SEO sur mesure, efficaces et durables.
Send a message
Free Quote

More reading

Web Marketing |||

Creating a web marketing strategy for your SME

Social Media |

5 tips for good social network management

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) |

Web marketing for construction industries

Social Media |campagne-heineken-euro|campagne-nike-colin-kaepernick|campagne-wwf-rhinoceros|campagne-wwf-ours-polaire|||||

Emotional marketing: become unforgettable

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) |

Web marketing for lawyers: What you need to know

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) |||||

Web marketing: How to write an effective blog post

Youpi!
Scroll top