What Is SEO For Small Businesses? (+5 Key Tips To Rank Higher)
As a small business owner, you are constantly looking for ways to increase the number of customers. You might have come across SEO, but what is SEO for small businesses actually? Well, this article answers that question, and explains briefly how to do it yourself. At the end of the article, I added 5 key tips you need to improve SEO performance for your small business.
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What Is SEO For Small Businesses & Why It’s Important?
SEO for small businesses means that you optimize your website to be more visible in search engines for potential customers. If you do SEO the right way, you’ll show up when someone is actively looking for something you offer. The first organic results have some trust automatically, which makes it easier to convert these searchers into loyal customers.
As a small business owner, you want to grow the amount of customers. SEO helps you be found for relevant searches like “plumber near me” or “real estate firm near me.” This will convert searchers into customers organically (for free).
The big advantage of SEO is that it’s durable and will bring long-term customers to your business. With ads, traffic stops once you stop paying.
How To Do SEO For Small Businesses (Mini-Guide)
SEO is only profitable and will bring you new loyal customers if you rank on the first page, preferably in the top 3. So, you need to do SEO the right way for your local business. It all starts with doing the basics right. The basics include:
- Content optimization (on-page SEO)
- Link building (off-page SEO)
- A fast loading and mobile-friendly website (technical SEO)
A lot of websites won’t optimize all three of them, which are opportunities for your website to rank on the first page of Google, especially when you focus on local searches. Here is how you do it.
Content optimization (on-page SEO)
The first step is optimizing your content. Ensure your content matches the search intent of the users. You’ll need to be there and be the right fit for the searchers at the right moment. Optimize your content for your targeted keywords. Start by doing thorough keyword research. As a small business, I recommend starting with long-tail keywords as they have lower competition and searchers know exactly what they want, which makes them more likely to convert.
Here is a list of the elements you need to optimize:
To be sure you created great content, follow the E-E-A-T guidelines. E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Google evaluates this content with these elements. So, write from personal experiences, show that you know what you’re talking about, and try to actually help your visitors.
Set up Google Search Console to keep track of your performance in Google Search. You can track impressions, click-through rate, average position and total clicks.
Link building (off-page SEO)
Another important part of making your website more visible in Google and increasing traffic to your website is the off-page SEO aspect. A significant part of the so called off-page SEO is link building. This is building backlinks to your website. A backlink is a clickable link from another website to your website. These are seen as signs of trust in the eyes of Google.
To be more visible and rank higher in local searches on Google, you’ll need to optimize a few things:
- Optimize your Google My Business profile
- Citations (with NAP consistency)
- Reviews
- Local backlinks
To explain it briefly and clearly, optimize your Google My Business profile, as this shows up in Google Map Pack. A lot of people use this to find contact information. Verify your profile, upload high-quality images and use keywords in your description. Ensure your contact information is filled out correctly. Additionally, if you have time try to post every week as well, this shows your business is active.
Citations are online mentions on other websites of your business, with your name, address and phone number on display. Ensure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across your citations.
Ask your loyal clients to leave reviews after you helped them. Reviews are social proof and show that your business is active and trustworthy.
Local backlinks show Google that other businesses in your area trust your business. This is a powerful signal. The fastest and easiest way to acquire these local backlinks is through partnerships and sponsorships. Sponsorships are the best way. For example, if you are a physiotherapist, you can sponsor the match ball of your local football team and ask for a link to your website in return.
A fast loading and mobile-friendly website (technical SEO)
The third pillar is the technical part of your website. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and fast-loading. Aim for a loading time under three seconds.
You can test your current page speed with Google PageSpeed Insights, this is a tool from Google itself.
Do these things to improve your website speed instantly:
- Compress images with TinyPNG.
- Resize images to the right format.
- Use lazy loading (probably in your website settings).
These are just a few tips, I have written a full article on website speed in case you want to dive more into the technical parts.
Most searchers use a mobile device. It’s important that your website is mobile-friendly or you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers.
Most website builders have a responsive design integrated, so check how your website looks on mobile devices and make changes where necessary.
5 Key Tips To Rank Higher In Google
You have an answer to the question “What is SEO for small businesses?” and how to actually optimize your website, I’d like to give you 5 additional key tips to improve your SEO even more.
Target low competition, high volume keywords
Most broad keywords are very competitive and the chances of you ranking are very slim. That’s why you need to target local searches or low-competition, high-volume keywords. Low-competition, high-volume keywords are often found with long-tail keywords. Local searches are area specific.
If you want to target a big city but see that the competition is too high, start with more local villages near the big city. The competition is most likely to be lower here.
Start guest posting
Guest posting is a way to show expertise while gaining authority for your website with backlinks. Guest posts are a great way to acquire backlinks and reach a new audience that is interested in the content that you’re writing about. The audience already trusts the platform, so they are more likely to trust you, follow you, and convert into customers.
Reach out to other websites in your niche and ask to write a guest post for them. It’s a win-win. They have content to post, and you can expand your reach and gain a contextual backlink. Sometimes it’s possible that they ask for money to do this, if the website has a lot of traffic and has high authority, this might be worth it. So, before paying, do your research.
Build topical clusters
Google loves topical authority. It shows that you are an expert on a certain topic. You do this by creating topical clusters. This means you start with a pillar page and build supporting pages around subtopics.
Your pillar page covers the topic completely. Then, you create supporting pages around the subtopics of the pillar page. You link from the pillar page to the supporting pages and the other way around. If possible, link from one supporting page to another supporting page.
For example, if you have a gym, you create one pillar page about fitness where you cover all the elements in the fitness industry. Don’t go too deep into the subtopics, that’s what the supporting pages are for. In this case, this would be a supporting page about diet, home workouts, cardio, exercises at the gym, etc.
Use Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that you can use during your keyword research. It shows volume, competition and additional keyword ideas.
It replaces a paid tool like SEMrush.
Update old content
Update your content as Google prioritizes fresh content that matches the searchers intent and needs. You show Google that your website is active, relevant, and up-to-date.
Rankings of old pages will decrease compared to competitors who update their content regularly.
