Historically, family-run small businesses have struggled for visibility against goliath corporations with bottomless pockets. However, modern small business SEO has helped level the playing field for entrepreneurs and their websites. SEO churns the best return on investment of any marketing channel, especially for small businesses. That’s why it is imperative that small businesses understand how search engines work.
Keyword Research
Small business seo is a great way for small businesses to compete against larger competitors in their industry. Whether your goal is more website visits, sales, or inquiries, SEO can help you level the playing field and drive more traffic to your business. The first step in small business seo is to conduct keyword research. This can be done using several tools, including Google Suggest and Rank Tracker. Start by typing in a seed keyword that describes your business, and then see what types of search terms come up underneath it.
From there, you can start identifying potential keywords to target. Ideally, you want to select keywords with high search volume and low keyword difficulty. These keywords will have the most chance of driving traffic to your site and generating conversions.
On-Page Optimization
Small business seo can be tricky. You’re not only competing against other local businesses, but also publishers, big brands and all the other informational sources that appear in search results. And with a limited budget, you may not be able to hire the dedicated team or agency that your bigger competitors can afford. On-page optimization is the process of tweaking a web page’s content, tags and internal links to improve search visibility and rankings. It includes things like adding your target keywords to the page title, incorporating them into the body copy and making sure that each page on the site has a clear value proposition.
Another important aspect of on-page optimization is optimizing your website structure and URLs. Using a logical system for your URLs can help Google understand the structure of your website and surface pages in searches that are relevant to user queries. Ensure that each page on your site has a unique title tag and meta description that accurately describe the content of the page.
Link Building
Most small business owners know that building links is the hardest part of SEO. But many don’t know how to go about it. And even if they did, they probably don’t have the resources to create the 10X content that every article on link building says you need in order to improve your domain authority. One proven link-building strategy that almost anyone can execute is reaching out to local businesses and organizations that would be willing to collaborate with you on a piece of relevant content for their website or blog. This is a form of digital PR that builds brand awareness and credibility – it just happens to help you rank, too.
Another low-hanging fruit is finding unlinked mentions of your company online and contacting the webmaster to ask if you can be added as a link to their site. Obviously, this should only be done with quality, relevant websites. But it can be a great way to quickly get more links.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO covers everything that helps search engines crawl, index and render pages. It includes things like making sure your website is running on HTTPS, ensuring images have proper alt tags and that you are using structured data. For small businesses, effective technical SEO is a must. It’s the foundation that allows on-page and link building strategies to work in tandem and drive results.
The Bottom Lines
It’s also the reason why you should be using Google Analytics and Search Console (or alternative tools). They’re free, easy to set up and use, and will give you the information you need to see your ranking progress.
