Top-4 Digital Priorities for SME’s in 2022

2021 was a year of triumphs, rebounds and comebacks—and it has been a big year for small businesses.

Even as small business owners face more hurdles, like the ongoing supply chain crisis, they continue to embody resiliency and consumers continue to show up for them. Even recently, the National Retail Federation estimated that more than 58 million shoppers were expected to shop on Small Business Saturday last month.

The past year was also a moment for marketers to regroup and rethink how to best serve this growing small business community. At Forbes, we wanted to know how small businesses were  responding to the current environment, planning for their organizations’ future and fostering innovation.

So we surveyed 500 small business owners in the U.S. to arm marketers with the data they needed to serve this community wisely. And according to the data, the mood is optimistic. 

While 41% of small business owners said they saw either negative or no growth over the past fiscal year, more than half of respondents (58%) said their organization will emerge stronger than before the pandemic. The same research also found five areas small business owners will be investing in the next year. What are they?

Customer experience

Small business owners are advancing digital transformations, and customers are top of mind. More than 80% of respondents in the Forbes Small Business Survey said they’d be focusing on the customer experience next year. One-third said serving more customers is the primary goal for new tech investments.

When looking at what tech to invest in, small business owners want to empower their teams, and 3 in 4 plan to increase employees' abilities to create transformative customer experiences. 

It’s also no surprise that many small business owners are also looking to data to help them uplevel their customer experience and serve a wider audience. Our survey found that 45% plan to purchase customer analytics software over the next year.

Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives

Diversity, equity and inclusion will remain a huge focus for brands next year, regardless of the company’s size. Even so, our survey found that 62% of small business owners plan to invest in more DE&I initiatives in 2022. 

While Forbes isn’t a small business, we too are committed to fostering a diverse, equitable and inclusive company while helping small businesses thrive. It’s also one of the reasons why we launched Forbes EQ—a dedicated space for businesses, entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations from and serving underrepresented groups to share stories and expertise with the Forbes.com audience via the BrandVoice content marketing platform. 

Technology

Technology is going to be front and center for small business owners in 2022, according to 78% of survey respondents who said technology would be a top investment. But they don’t plan to invest in just any technology. 

Our data showed that small business owners are expecting to face the following challenges (and looking for solutions for) increasing investment in new technologies (46%), continuous innovation (43%), implementing more digital transformation initiatives (41%) and improving internal processes/workflows (38%).

Our data also showed that a whopping 80% have either already invested in cloud or plan to in the next year. The main focus of all these investments? To serve more customers—and to do it well. 

Talent and workforce

Today, small business owners want to give their employee experience a boost, with 73% saying talent would be a top investment in 2022. To empower their staff, 36% said their focus will be on improving employees' mental health and well-being, while 35% said their sights are set on maintaining employees’ work-life balance.

In another Forbes survey earlier this year, we also found that over three-quarters of CxOs said they’ve already expanded parental leave and established clear boundaries around working hours to attract and retain female talent. With “The Great Resignation” still in full swing, focusing on talent will stay top of mind for small businesses in 2022.  

The new year is almost here, and small businesses are all looking ahead. As Amber Venz Box, the cofounder and president of LTK, said at Forbes Small Business Summit earlier this fall, “as an entrepreneur or small business owner, you need to be a futurist.” And to reach small businesses, marketers will need to be futurists too.

SEO Strategies For 2022: How To Maintain Strong Rankings

As we kick off a new year, it's important to be aware of the latest SEO strategies and trends that you can use in order to maintain strong rankings in 2022. From quality content to user experience, below are five strategies to start exploring now.

1. Create quality content.

Google prioritizes high-quality, relevant content over everything else when it comes to ranking websites in search results. Creating quality content with keywords in mind has helped my website rank for more than 51,000 organic keywords related to my business and ensure that potential customers find us when they are looking for branding and marketing partners.

That said, creating quality content isn’t only about including relevant keywords, it is also about writing for your audience. Based on my 25 years of experience in content marketing, here are some tips to ensure your content is interesting and accessible:

• Base your content on a unique value proposition. For example, if you offer eco-friendly junk disposal and recycling services, you may want to write articles that detail the kind of waste you can recycle and the process you follow to efficiently manage the trash/junk collected from various residential and commercial properties.

• Use advanced SEO keyword research tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs to zero in on your ideal target keywords. Then, write your content to help people find the information they are actually searching for. Your target keywords could be “eco-friendly waste disposal,” “safe waste disposal” or “sustainable waste management.”

• Also, include keywords in the title tags, meta descriptions and URL slugs to make it easier for search engines to find them and understand what your content is all about.

• Make sure you have a call to action (CTA) at the end of each piece of content that encourages readers to take an action. For example, your CTA might be “Dispose of waste without harming the environment” or “Call us for waste recycling and disposal.”

If you do not have the time or resources to create great content, consider hiring an expert who can handle this process for you. I also recommend using Surfer, a paid tool that helps you conduct analysis on search engine results pages (SERP), understand search intent and include various key phrases in the right frequency to outrank other articles in search results. It also tells you which key phrases to include in your heading tags and the number of times to include each phrase in the body of your content. This is the one tool that is powering all of my content upgrades and new content plans for the past year and has been helping me rank better.

2. Leverage ethical link-building practices.

Link building is a decade-old SEO technique but it is still relevant today. However, you have to be careful as Google has penalized websites in the past for acquiring spammy or low-quality links. If done correctly, it can help improve your website’s rankings. Here’s how:

• Use guest blogging to share your content with the world, build quality backlinks and improve your search rankings. I myself contribute to Forbes Councils, HuffPost, CMI and more than 120 other reputable publications on topics related to business growth and marketing.

• Participate in interviews, expert roundups and podcasts to gain links from authoritative sources and media outlets.

• Have a social media strategy in place to promote each of your articles through various channels. Also, ensure that it is easy for people to share your quality content on social media.

• Track and reclaim your own broken links as well as your competitor’s broken links to get them replaced by links to resources on your website.

3. Optimize all images.

If you want your site to load quickly, it is important to optimize all images. This means compressing images as much as possible without sacrificing quality. You can use a tool like TinyPNG to achieve this. You should also optimize your images with keywords related to the context of that image to help search engines understand your content better.

4. Improve the user experience.

If you want to rank higher on the SERPs, I recommend optimizing your site architecture, improving your site speed and enhancing your site security.

Here are a few more tips to improve the user experience of your website visitors:

• Make sure your web pages load fast. You can test the loading speed of your web pages on both desktop and mobile devices using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool for free. It also gives you suggestions to make your website faster.

• Build a structured website so visitors can easily navigate your website to find the products and services they are looking for.

• Integrate a secure sockets layer to encrypt all data transmitted to and from your website.

• Make sure your site is mobile-friendly using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. This free tool will also help you find ways to improve the responsiveness of your website.

• Make sure the content of each page is interesting, engaging and relevant. And regularly update your website with fresh content.

5. Repurpose your content.

You should repurpose your content to optimize your website for a number of different ranking factors. There are several ways to do this:

• Create an infographic or slide deck from your blog posts and post it on your site.

• Create a slide deck from blog posts and post it to Slideshare, which is owned by LinkedIn.

• Turn your blog posts into a podcast and post them on iTunes or SoundCloud.

• Create a video tutorial from your blog posts and post it to YouTube.

• Write a guest post for another website using ideas from one of your old blog posts.

• Update your older blog posts with new information, data, images and videos.

SEO will continue to be an important part of digital marketing in 2022. By following the simple tips mentioned above, you can ensure that your website maintains a strong ranking.