How to do Digital Marketing Better for Free

Small businesses often underestimate the importance of web design. In today’s digital world, potential customers will make a judgment about your business based on your website. If your website is hard to navigate, poorly designed, or doesn’t show up at all when they search for you, they’re not going to trust you with their business.

And even worse, if you don’t have a website at all, you might as well not have a business to speak of. In order to be successful, small businesses need to invest in SEO optimization and mobile-friendly design. So here are a few tips I have for small businesses looking to improve their SEO.

Poor Mobile Experience

One of the most common mistakes is not optimizing your website for mobile viewers. This is a major problem because the majority of website traffic now comes from people using mobile devices. If your website is not designed to be mobile-friendly, you will have a tough time getting people to stay on your site, let alone make a purchase.

Mobile optimization is essential for small businesses that want to ensure they are visible to their target audience. There are a number of ways to optimize your site for mobile users, including using responsive design and making sure your content is properly formatted for small screens. In addition, you need to make sure your website loads quickly on mobile devices and that your menus and buttons are easy to navigate. By taking these steps, you can ensure that your small business website isn’t holding you back from potential business growth.

Lazy Calls to action.

A recent study shows that the most popular call to action for small businesses is “schedule a call”. However, this Call to action was great 5 years ago when most people didn’t have the feature, but now that everyone does it, nobody actually calls. SEO and website conversions are essential for growing my small business.

A well-crafted SEO strategy will help my website rank higher in search engines and drive organic traffic to my site. Once visitors are on my site, I need to have effective calls to action that encourage them to take the next step in the buyer’s journey. Without effective calls to action, my website will not convert visitors into leads or customers.

I need to make sure my website has a clear purpose and that my calls to action are aligned with that purpose. If my website’s goal is to generate leads, then my call to action should be designed to capture contact information. If my website’s goal is to sell a product, then my call to action should be designed to initiate a purchase. By understanding the purpose of my website and creating effective calls to action, I can increase website conversions and grow my small business.

Some great examples of not-lazy calls to action are:

• Content quizzes that help users lean towards a specific purchase.
• Having pricing details listed immediately w/ a free sign up tier
• a Chat bot to answer questions quickly and efficiently
• An interactive free quote button that allows users the ability to learn and investigate your product or services on their own.

Having a Website with Too Much Flash or Animation

Having a website with too much flash or animation is not ideal. Websites should have fast loading times and be easy to navigate when visitors don’t have an internet connection that can handle the animations, sounds etc.

But if your site takes longer than expected even though you are using less aggressive features like text over images then this could potentially cause frustration for users.  So make sure you test out your site when everything is said and done with a bunch of different internet speeds before setting on a final design.

Duplicated Content On Your Website

Avoiding duplicate content on your website is important for two reasons.

Firstly, it can signal that you are not passionate enough about what’s happening within the industry to create new material instead of just recycling old things with updated graphics or text.

Secondly—and perhaps more importantly- duplicates have been shown time after time as an SEO nightmare waiting around every corner! It doesn’t take much research before coming across someone else’s post which includes almost identical information except for different words here and there – these kinds of subtle mistakes make all the difference when ranking high up Google search results pages (SERPs).

One way I get around that on my own website is by using AI tools or free stock image resources. For the image below, I used Dall-E from Open Labs but that’s through invite only. Unsplash.com is another great free resource for content images.

For making sure I’m writing truly great and original content, I use Copy.Ai. It’s a phenomenal resource for Blog Posts and even for writing about your brand. Disclaimer: as an affiliate of Copy.ai, I may be compensated for a purchase made after clicking the link above. 

Jasper.ai is another great tool I have used in the past but it’s a bit too pricey for me.

Broken Links :,(

There is nothing more frustrating than finding what might be the answer to all your questions… only to find that the link to that answer is broken! Users get more frustrated when finding a broken link than anything else. In fact, a broken link almost always leads to a user leaving your site and usually doesn’t come back.

A broken link almost always means that digital management was lacking in some way – either too many pages with unlinked destinations or simply no tracking mechanism at all to keep track of where users were going on their journey through your site! When you click a link, you expect it to take you somewhere and if it doesn’t, most users just leave the site and go find an answer somewhere else.

No Online Reviews / Ignoring Online Reviews

What if we told you that the most important marketing tactic for small businesses is reviewing? Of course, it’s not a surprise. People want to avoid bad decisions made by others when they’re unsure of their own preferences – even more so with online shopping where there are no physical items for them to explore.

Humans are creatures of comfort that want to avoid any purchase decision that hasn’t already been vetted by our fellow purchasors. Just imagine what amazon product are you more likely to purchase. The $25 product with 1000+ 5 star reviews or the $15 product with 25 5-star reviews?

So what now?

If you’re making any of these common website mistakes, your small business SEO is suffering silently. Luckily, it’s not too late to make the necessary changes and see an improvement in your ranking. At Big Red Jelly, we specialize in helping small businesses improve their online presence. We can audit your website and identify what changes need to be made, or build you a new website that follows the best web design practices. Visit bigredjelly.com and let them know Preston sent you.