10 Tips On How To Improve SEO For Small Business

As a small business, every decision is important as it could impact the company as a whole. Every business owner will always find ways how to attract more customers to increase revenue. In the digital world, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most popular marketing strategies to drive organic traffic online as well as boost the overall online presence. If you wish to step up your digital marketing game and would like to learn how to improve SEO for small businesses, this article will show you exactly how.

Jump to 10 Tips on Improving SEO for Small Business

What is SEO and how does SEO work? 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website pages to increase your online presence on search engines such as Google and boost conversions. With SEO, businesses can appear for relevant keywords such as for a specific service or product. 

When your website follows the factors that influence the search engine results, then it will increase the chances of appearing higher in rankings. Some of the factors include quality of your content, backlinks, mobile-responsiveness, and so on. 

Why do you need SEO?

As a small business, you might be wonder is it even worth it to invest in SEO? Well, SEO is important for small businesses as it can help to market your product or services. Since customers are always searching for specific products or services on search engines, your business will be missing out on potential leads or sales. Besides that, SEO also helps to spread brand awareness for your small business. This increases the target audience reach so that more people are familiar with your brand. 

Factors affecting SEO

There are several factors that affect SEO. Some of those factors include: 

• Quality and relevance: Google priotizes content which are relevant to the user’s search intent. It should be original and matches the user’s needs.  
• Backlinks: These backlinks include links fro authoritativve websites. The more backlinks your website gets, the more credible it is to Google. 
• Keywords: When you use relevant keywords throughout your website, it helps the search engine crawlers to know what your website is about and match with the user’s query.  
• Mobile-friendliness: Since most users use mobile devices these days to browse websites, search engines also place emphasize on the mobile-responsiveness of websites. 
• Domain authority: This includes how credible or authoritative your website are within your niche. Established websites tend to have high domain authority. 
• Website loading speed: The overall page loading speed also contributes to SEO as search engines favours website which load fast. 
• Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T): Google also takes into account the E-A-T of the website which is the overall credibility and the expertise within the industry. 

Examples of Good SEO

If you need some references on what is considered to be good SEO, here are some of them: 

Example 1: Cleaning services company 

Question: How to clean bathroom effectively? 

Recommended content to rank for: An article about steps on how to clean the bathroom effectively.

Example 2: Cosmetics company 

Question: Which eyeshadow shade should I use? 

Recommended content to rank for: A step-by-step guide on how to choose the best eyeshadow shade. 

Example 3: Dog grooming company

Question: What kind of shampoo can I use for my dog’s fur? 

Recommended content to rank for: An article about how to choose the right shampoo based on the dog’s fur. 

10 Tips On How To Improve SEO For Small Businesses

Getting to know the top tips for boosting your SEO presence is important so that you can implement them effectively. Here are some of the best ways on how to improve SEO for small businesses:

1. Own a good website 

One of the most important ways to improve SEO for small businesses is to create a good website. Since SEO involves optimizing the website, it’s important to ensure the website follows the SEO best practices such as a user-friendly interface, and clear and structured headings. 

2. Generate quality content 

Content is king when it comes to SEO. You should always ensure that your content is original and provides value to your audience. This includes the website page content as well as blog articles. Do remember to include relevant keywords within your content to boost your rankings in search engines. 

3. Create a Google My Business Profile

Another important tip on how to improve SEO for small businesses is to have a Google My Business (GMB) Profile. This is crucial as it helps your business to appear on both Google Search and Google Maps, which is where Google displays the first top results on search engines. Ensure that the information of your business is accurate such as the address, contact number, and opening hours. 

Here’s a quick guide on how to set up your GMB profile:

Step 1: Sign up for a Google Business Profile using your Google account. 

Step 2: Verify your business on Google. This can be done either through text, phone, email or video. 

Step 3: Update your business information. Once your account has been verified, you can fill up your business details and ensure they are accurate.   

4. Perform keyword research 

Keyword research is important for SEO as it will ensure your website appears for those specific keywords on search engines. There are many keyword tools you can use such as Ahrefs or SEMrush to find the relevant keywords for your business. 

5. Gain high-quality backlinks 

Besides content, backlinks are another key factor when it comes to SEO. A few ways how you can gain backlinks would be to contact website owners or authoritative websites to include a link back to your website.

6. Monitor your website analytics 

A key strategy to boost your SEO performance would be to consistently check your website analytics through various tools such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics. By regularly monitoring your website’s SEO performance, you can get a rough idea of whether your current SEO strategy is effective or not and change accordingly. 

Here’s a quick guide on how to setup a Google Analytics account: 

Step 1: Create a Google Analytics account using your Google account. Key in your details required by Google.  

Step 2: Add a property. You will need to adjust the reporting time zone, industry category, and other details required to use Google Analaytics effectively. 

Step 3: Add a data stream. This would be the location or the website URL of where you intend to track the analytics from. 

Step 4: Add the relevant tags to for data collection purposes. This requires a few different ways but it depends on your website the way your it was hosted or built. 

Step 5: Adjust the other settings accordingly. You can collect the data and measure the results based on the other settings. 

Here’s a quick guide on how to setup a Google Search Console account: 

Step 1: Create a Google account. 

Step 2: Add your website URL into Google Search Console. This requires verification to verify that you’re the legit website owner. 

Step 3: Familiarize yourself with Google Search and Search Console. You can learn more about how to use the tools so that you can analyse the data effectively by reading guides online.

Step 4: Monitor Search Console consistently or when your site content gets updated. It’s important to keep track on the unusual activities or events occurring on their website on a monthly basis. 

7. Optimize website for On-page SEO 

On-page SEO involves optimizing your website to appear higher on search engines. Some of them include changing the title tags and meta descriptions as well as adding internal links within the website pages. 

8. Perform SEO audit regularly 

An SEO audit involves checking the technical aspects of SEO such as the website speed, broken links, duplicated content, and so on. It may require a person with technical knowledge to identify any potential issues as certain coding is required like HTML or Javascript. 

9. Implement Local SEO strategies

Local SEO is important for small businesses as getting the attention of local customers contributes to overall sales. For instance, a few of the local SEO strategies are to include your city or region keywords through your website content as well as encourage customers to leave reviews on your Google My Business profiles. Consider getting your business listed in local directories as well.

10. Optimize website for mobile

Optimizing your website for mobile is also one of the crucial tips on how to improve SEO for small businesses. These days, many customers are using their mobile devices to search for a specific product or service. Google also emphasizes and places importance on mobile-responsive websites and ranks them higher on search results. This not only helps to boost SEO but also improves the overall user experience as well.

Benefits of SEO for Small Business 

SEO offers numerous benefits for small businesses. Here are the top advantages of implementing SEO for your business: 

1. Boost online visibility and presence 

With SEO, small businesses can increase their overall visibility and presence as the website will appear in search engines more often and at the top of the search results. Thus, more potential customers are able to notice the business and increase the chance of sales. 

2. Reach the targeted audience effectively 

SEO helps small businesses to gain the attention of the target audience. For example, customers who are searching for specific services or products will look up the terms on search engines. Hence, these customers are more likely to turn into actual paying customers.

3. Increase brand awareness 

Customers will usually take notice of the businesses that are at the top of search results. If you implement SEO for your business, many will notice your brand and gain more credibility. 

4. Improve overall website traffic

All businesses wish to gain more website traffic. With SEO, small businesses are able to increase their organic traffic to the website which becomes more stable as SEO is a long-term strategy and grows over time. 

How can small businesses get started with SEO?

If you’re a small business owner and ready to kickstart your SEO journey, you should conduct a technical and content audit. Through these audits, you can identify what your website is currently lacking and know the right steps needed to work on your SEO. 

Technical audit involves adjusting the website structure or backend accordingly should there require any improvement. This includes duplicate meta tags, website speed and broken links. 

Content audit involves coming up with new content as well as updating old content if required to further improve. This includes website content, engagement, organic traffic, backlinks and current ranking keywords. 

Conclusion 

Learning how to improve SEO for small businesses is advantageous as it could help increase the chance of conversions as well as gain more website visibility on search results. Each of these tips will improve your website and ensure maximum success in the digital world. You can learn more in depth about Local SEO from our useful guide.