Many young adults are interested in pursuing entrepreneurship. CNBC reports that 60% of teens are more interested in starting their own business than applying for a traditional job. They’re mainly inspired by celebrities and social media influencers who succeeded in taking this path.
While it’s great that teens have big aspirations, they must prepare accordingly to be successful, like the trailblazers in our post “6 Successful Companies Founded by TeenEntrepreneurs”. For instance,Dell founder Michael Dell worked for hours in his college dorm to build what is now known as one of the largest tech companies worldwide. However, when embarking on your own journey as an aspiring young entrepreneur, you can take it slow.
In today's Digital Age, you can start by learning how to market your future business using Search Engine Optimization(SEO)—the process of improving a website’s visibility online. Here are some SEO essentials you need to know:
Keyword Research
SEO relies on keywords. By knowing which keywords related to your business people use on search engines like Google, you can work toward attracting more visitors to your website. For example, if you establish a skincare brand, you must research what cosmetic terms people always search for. If they are looking for “sensitive skin products,” you must incorporate these words into your site. By doing so, potential consumers can conduct searches, encounter your site, and become more likely to buy your products.
To start doing keyword research, you can experiment with SEO keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner. You can input a topic, then see its related keyword ideas and regular search range. When you finally establish your business, it’s important to regularly conduct these searches to anticipate changing trends in consumer behavior.
Content Marketing
Content marketing attracts, engages, and retains an audience on your website by creating and sharing relevant blog posts, videos, and similar content. Entrepreneur shares that content marketing enables businesses to sustain brand loyalty, generate online sales, and improve brand awareness. This is because you share relevant content with users, allowing them to get valuable information through your site and encouraging them to purchase your products.
However, you cannot post whatever comes to mind and expect people to interact with it. Your website’s content must be evergreen, meaning it won’t quickly go out of trend. Some examples are how-to and “history of” articles regarding your business' offerings. You can also learn more by taking a content marketing certification course.
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Link Development
Link development involves getting another website to link out to yours. This process is vital for SEO because it helps crawlers—programs utilized by search engines to collect web data—find your content. When crawlers find a good quantity and quality of links to your website, you rank higher on search engine results. This increases traffic and engagement, creating a buzz around your business. SEO company Ayima Kickstart claims that link development is one of the most expensive and difficult aspects of SEO to master because it’s challenging to choose the right and valuable pages from your website that others should link to.
Getting link development right for your budding business will involve starting early. You can guest post on authoritative websites or share your own site's blog posts on social media to encourage other sites to link back to you. That way, you'll build momentum and make link development easier for your business moving forward.
On-page SEO
Apart from the above essentials, you should also consider learning to optimize the web pages where these elements will appear. This is called on-page SEO. Digital Uncovered explains that on-page SEO involves tasks like fixing your page loading times, optimizing title tags, and placing alternative texts on images. These will improve your future website’s rankings on search results and its user experience for mobile and PC, encouraging more people to visit and browse your site.
You can use on-page SEO tools like Semrush to make this task easier. Since you’re still learning, you can also read guides and advice online from sites like HubSpot.
As a young and aspiring entrepreneur, you’ll encounter SEO sooner or later for your future business. Learn these essentials today to get a head start on your career!