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More and more people are turning their skills or passions into a side hustle. In the ever-increasing digital world, physical creations have become more valuable, which is ideal if you’re a skilled craftsman or woman. But while your craft-focused side hustle might start out as a bit of fun, you’ll soon find yourself wanting to grow your side hustle into a fully fledged business. But it goes without saying that you won’t have access to a big marketing budget, which might make it hard to pursue paid channels like PPC. The solution may lie in a marketing channel that has stood the test of time: Search Engine Optimisation. Here are some SEO basics that you could apply to your side hustle.
Understand Your Audience
One of the most important things in business is to understand your audience. When it comes to SEO, this becomes doubly important. If you don’t understand what your customers are searching for, how can you optimise your website to target them? The answer is, you can’t.
Use Google Search Console to find out what search terms users type before landing on your website; don’t just assume they use the same search terms as you. Obviously, this will be different for everyone, but let’s take the example of a website selling customisable photo books. Are users searching for customised photo books or personalised photo books? Are they searching for handmade books or a certain material?
Optimise Product Pages
Once you understand what users are looking for, these become your keywords. And they’ll form the basis of your SEO strategy. A big part of SEO is optimising your website for chosen keywords. Introducing SEO to your product pages can help them rank for keywords, taking users directly to the most relevant page for their search.
Optimising these pages includes integrating keywords into product descriptions, page titles, alt text and FAQs. Although optimising pages also goes beyond keywords and you’ll need to optimise a page from a usability perspective. This includes things like page speed, layout and accessibility.
Blogs To Target Unaware Customers
The above information is great for targeting users who are searching for your product. But what about those who aren’t? These types of users are often overlooked, but they make up a massive, untapped audience.
If you are selling handmade ornaments, for example, your keywords are probably along the lines of decorative ornaments, handmade sculptures and unique decorations. While these represent high-intent users, there are far more people searching for personalised or handmade gifts.
These types of users don’t fully know what they want, but blogs are your chance to convince them. In this situation, you could write a blog covering the best personalised gifts for wedding presents before weighting the contents of the blog in favour of the products on your website.
Build Authority
The steps laid out above should improve your visibility across search engines, but it’s also important to realise that SEO is never complete. You’ll need to continually build the authority of your website to see the best results from SEO. This includes building high-quality backlinks to your website, attracting positive reviews and setting up and optimising a Google Business profile.
Final Thoughts
SEO isn’t just for big brands, and the fact that it’s an organic channel means it’s perhaps the most relevant marketing channel for side hustles and small businesses that don’t have the luxury of big budgets. Just considering the basics of SEO that we have discussed in this article should be enough to see an improvement in traffic. If your side hustle does experience growth as a result, the next step may be to consider paid channels such as Google Shopping.
More and more people are turning their skills or passions into a side hustle. In the ever-increasing digital world, physical creations have become more valuable, which is ideal if you’re a skilled craftsman or woman. But while your craft-focused side hustle might start out as a bit of fun, you’ll soon find yourself wanting to grow your side hustle into a fully fledged business. But it goes without saying that you won’t have access to a big marketing budget, which might make it hard to pursue paid channels like PPC. The solution may lie in a marketing channel that has stood the test of time: Search Engine Optimisation. Here are some SEO basics that you could apply to your side hustle.
Understand Your Audience
One of the most important things in business is to understand your audience. When it comes to SEO, this becomes doubly important. If you don’t understand what your customers are searching for, how can you optimise your website to target them? The answer is, you can’t.
Use Google Search Console to find out what search terms users type before landing on your website; don’t just assume they use the same search terms as you. Obviously, this will be different for everyone, but let’s take the example of a website selling customisable photo books. Are users searching for customised photo books or personalised photo books? Are they searching for handmade books or a certain material?
Optimise Product Pages
Once you understand what users are looking for, these become your keywords. And they’ll form the basis of your SEO strategy. A big part of SEO is optimising your website for chosen keywords. Introducing SEO to your product pages can help them rank for keywords, taking users directly to the most relevant page for their search.
Optimising these pages includes integrating keywords into product descriptions, page titles, alt text and FAQs. Although optimising pages also goes beyond keywords and you’ll need to optimise a page from a usability perspective. This includes things like page speed, layout and accessibility.
Blogs To Target Unaware Customers
The above information is great for targeting users who are searching for your product. But what about those who aren’t? These types of users are often overlooked, but they make up a massive, untapped audience.
If you are selling handmade ornaments, for example, your keywords are probably along the lines of decorative ornaments, handmade sculptures and unique decorations. While these represent high-intent users, there are far more people searching for personalised or handmade gifts.
These types of users don’t fully know what they want, but blogs are your chance to convince them. In this situation, you could write a blog covering the best personalised gifts for wedding presents before weighting the contents of the blog in favour of the products on your website.
Build Authority
The steps laid out above should improve your visibility across search engines, but it’s also important to realise that SEO is never complete. You’ll need to continually build the authority of your website to see the best results from SEO. This includes building high-quality backlinks to your website, attracting positive reviews and setting up and optimising a Google Business profile.
Final Thoughts
SEO isn’t just for big brands, and the fact that it’s an organic channel means it’s perhaps the most relevant marketing channel for side hustles and small businesses that don’t have the luxury of big budgets. Just considering the basics of SEO that we have discussed in this article should be enough to see an improvement in traffic. If your side hustle does experience growth as a result, the next step may be to consider paid channels such as Google Shopping.
