Facebook’s business page services are incredibly appealing to small business owners. Firstly, they require no knowledge of user interface design, or worse — coding. Secondly, Facebook comes with a well-established user base of several million potential customers.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly for small to medium-sized business owners, all of these benefits are free. What’s not to like?
 

In the earlier days of search engine optimization (SEO), keyword usage within a website’s content determined its ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Since sophisticated algorithms were uncommon back then, keywords were the “way to go” in SEO. But not any more....

Much of modern SEO is focused on backlinks, authority, social media engagement, and other off-page factors. And while there's no argument over how important these are, they're not the end of the story.

On-page SEO is just as important as ever. Old-school tricks may no longer be enough to power a site up the rankings alone, but without a solid contribution from on-page optimization, a site won't rank for anything competitive.

Competitive research is one of the most important factors in SEO, but it is often reduced to a minor role later on in the process. Analyzing the competition, though, is vital for success, allowing you to understand the road ahead. You can use your research to see how difficult ranking for search terms will be, where each site is getting their backlinks from, and discover easy opportunities to provide a better result for searchers. The following techniques can be used at the start of the SEO process, putting you in the best possible position to gain relevant rankings.