Your Small Business SEO Guide

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not as mysterious as it sounds. Simply put, it provides small businesses with the opportunity to improve their likelihood of being found online – a clever way to reach customers without advertising. Better still, there is much you can do yourself to improve your small business SEO for free. Read here to learn about SEO and discover a few small business SEO tips that you can apply to your business.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search engines are used by millions of people every day to look for information online that they need. The bulk of these searches are made using Google. SEO describes a set of actions and strategies the website owner takes to make their website found more easily. The goal of SEO is to improve the quality and quantity of traffic to a website. This means more than filling pages with keywords. Website holders must focus on site speed, mobile-friendliness, interactivity, and the content of web pages.

Why is SEO important?
Ideally, business wants their website listing to appear on the first page of search engine results. The further down the list of results, the less likely it will be that a potential customer will click through to that site. If your site appears high on the search results rankings, customers will tend to trust your website in terms of functionality and credibility. In addition, appearance on the first page of search results should positively impact brand awareness.

Bearing in mind that most small business SEO is at no cost, it can be a powerful component of the digital strategy. It is also crucial to initiate your small business SEO as soon as possible, as the changes in ranking can be relatively slow to become evident.

Small Business SEO Tips

There are two ways to improve your website performance with SEO: on-page SEO
and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO
On-page SEO is built around the idea of using keywords identified through analysis. Keywords are often employed by users when searching. We select the most appropriate keywords and use them within the website copy and the website’s metadata. Metadata relates to the data that sits in the background part of the website, through which Google crawls to determine the website’s relevance for a search.

Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO involves ongoing, long-term efforts to create links to the website, spreading its web presence. This is achieved in several different ways, such as social media campaigns, maintaining a quality blog with regular posts, linking the website with industry association websites and generally creating link networks back to the website. An essential aspect of establishing an effective SEO for small businesses is to ensure it is functionally operating well. The website should be readily available on mobile screens. The pages should load quickly. All links must be tested.

As in any business, there is a lot to do. Managing the SEO for your business is another trial. Unlike many other facets, though, SEO for small businesses can be executed at minimal expense. Following is a list of tips designed to offer SEO help for small businesses. The bulk of these are free:

Small business SEO tips for your website

1. Before you start, why not consider a free SEO health check. This report will tell you how you are performing currently and what you can do straight away to boost your SEO performance.
2. Build a high-performance website. Refine it and ensure that it is always working at its best. Make sure the site makes sense to navigate. Homepages should link to your other important pages. Services pages should list and link to pages describing individual services. For support in creating an excellent website, click here.
3. Use a basic keyword research tool to help you identify the keywords you should be using when developing content. For information on free keyword research tools, click here.
4. Always research your content before creating it. You must position yourself and your website as the expert.
5. Write website content based on your keyword research.
6. Flesh out your services pages and make sure you answer all the common questions. Ask someone else to read your content and listen to the questions that are raised.
7. Make sure your primary keyword appears in your meta title for each relevant page.
8. Ensure you include relevant links that connect to quality content. Look for opportunities to encourage relevant sites to link to your site.
9. Check the speed at which your website loads.
10. Check your website performance in a mobile setting. More and more people are using their mobile phones to search online.
11. Write a compelling meta title, meta description and URL. This can improve your click-through rate and your Google ranking.
12. Pursue media opportunities. These can be great opportunities to attract new customers and improve your SEO.
13. Consistency can assist in building overall SEO performance.
14. Be patient. It can take a few weeks before the results of your efforts is evident.

SEO can be your most potent marketing tool

You don’t need to spend a fortune to improve SEO for your business but be sure to know that all your competitors are doing everything they can to be searched and discovered before your brand. We’re here to assist by providing SEO help for small business. So, if you still want to do more, please reach out to our SEO experts.