When a business is small and needs to make a name for itself, it’s important for teams to consider small business SEO (search engine optimisation). Search engines help us make crucial decisions by answering questions. In fact, the first five organic results make up 67.6% of clicks through to websites. SEO for small business is an essential in our marketing arsenal: to be competitive, you need to be seen.
Understandably, it can be hard to know where to start. With our handy guide, your small business can get up to speed and focus on what matters most.
What is SEO?
SEO is an effective strategy for driving traffic to your website. By optimising your site and filling it with content people want to read, you can help it appear higher on search results.
But having a good website alone isn’t enough. You need to demonstrate that your site is engaging and worthwhile to the right audience. You can achieve this by using:
- Local SEO – ensuring you are identified as a local business to relevant prospects
- Keyword research – finding the terms searchers will use to find your website
- Publishing content – regularly producing useful content, such as a blog
- Writing for humans – ensuring your website is easily navigated and read.
Through these techniques, you can perform effective SEO for small business.
Four top tips
Good small business SEO has content at its core: answering user questions and encouraging a strong user experience. It should also look at offsite methods, such as local SEO and backlinks.
Local SEO
Small businesses often work with nearby clients. Indeed, 90% of internet users searched for local businesses in 2021. To benefit from these searches, you need to optimise for local queries. This means when people perform ‘near me’ searches, your site is more likely to appear.
First and foremost, you must ensure your business’ physical location – in particular, the town or city you are based in – is on your website. This especially applies to page footers and contact pages.
At least one page must have your full address and contact details on it. The golden rule is to include your NAP (or name, address, and phone number), and ensure this is consistent across all entries, everywhere.
A Google My Business Profile will register you on Google Maps, an absolute essential in SEO for small business. This allows Google to present your business as a physical entity and makes you more visible. Searchers can view pictures of your business, get your contact details, and leave (no doubt glowing!) reviews.
Once this is done, you can start adding structured data to your site. This involves integrating specific coding (with Schema.org). It draws information from your site’s meta data to produce ‘rich snippets’ that appear in Google searches, alongside organic results. This could include a particular product, and your NAP details.
Keyword research
Keywords are the lifeblood of SEO. If your website contains enough relevant words, it is more likely to rank high in organic searches. To ensure you are using the correct words, you must perform good keyword research.
By using tools such as Google Ads, you can discover what keywords associated with your services are frequently used. You can then tailor your pages around these words. They can be worked into the text, headings, URLs and meta data.
An important consideration is ‘search intent’. For example, users searching for the word ‘buy’ frequently suggests they want to purchase something. ‘Sign up’ suggests they want to be on a mailing list. These are known as transactional keywords, and you can tailor your pages accordingly. However, if they are searching for questions about a service, this implies they are only sourcing information.
This can be combined with a local SEO approach. By including the name of your town or city in your keywords, you can get a clear picture of what your likely prospects want from you and your website.
Publish content
Once you know what your prospects want from your website, you can start tailoring your content. A regular update of content is great for small business SEO.
If you’re running your own small business, chances are you’re an expert in your field. Your website is your chance to prove that authority. Using your keyword research, you can see what people are searching for and produce great content answering these questions.
An FAQ page can help, but a regularly updated blog tells Google your site is active. By publishing high-quality content, you can build a following of engaged readers. Better still, it gives other websites a good reason to link to you, which further boosts your SEO.
Write for humans
Your keyword research tells you what words to use in your content. However, overusing these keywords makes your page clunky and unreadable. This will lead to a high ‘bounce rate’, as more people exit your website quickly, negatively impacting your SEO.
In short, your website needs to be well-designed and well-written. A website people want to use, and not just a collection of ticked ‘small business SEO’ boxes. This is why choosing the right keywords for the local area you are targeting is so important.
As well as ensuring your text is optimised and well-written, your site should be easily navigable and with good loading times.
Where do I start?
These four tips give a small business owner a lot to think about. With research, content and implementation to consider, where should you focus your energies?
If you have time on your hands and are able to produce great content, we recommend bringing in an SEO consultant. At beefound.agency, we can guide your content and implementation, and help make your work bring in greater traffic to your site.
If the thought of writing blogs fills you with dread, there’s no need to panic. We offer an expansive range of full SEO services, including content marketing.
