Boost Your Online Visibility: Small Business SEO Strategies for Success
Image Source Bee Your Business
Introduction: Understanding the Importance of SEO for Small Businesses
The importance of SEO can’t be overstated. Yes, social media has risen in popularity as the everyday communication method for companies but a website and Google searches are still an enormous opportunity to reach more people, organically.
SEO for small businesses is even more important. You are fighting with major competition for eyes on your site. Not taking this seriously can tank your website and even your business. An initial audit and setup are needed to ensure the base of your small business SEO is on solid ground, but ongoing maintenance is where substantial gains can be seen.
In this post, I will dive into the basics of an SEO framework and even hit on some local SEO strategies. This is for the SEO curious, the SEO diy’er, and those just interested more in SEO. Now buckle up and let’s get started.
Identifying and Targeting the Right Keywords for Small Business SEO
After reading you are going to feel pretty dangerous and will want to start updating things left and right. But please hold on and follow your specific update plan. A crucial step with your website is identifying which keywords you want to rank for. This is as simple as writing down or typing out every keyword you want a client to find you by typing it in a Google search.
And by every word I mean every single word. This process will take some time so get a snack, find a comfy seat, and snuggle in.
For example, if you own a furniture business you could put a sofa chair or reclining sofa chair—we aren’t editing this list yet just getting ideas. Now keep in mind that generic terms will be harder to rank for but that’s okay—again we aren’t editing yet. Niching down your keyword research for your small business will eventually get you ranking. SEO is a long game and will require keyword optimization.
There are a lot of free tools out there including Google Trends, Ahrefs, SemRUSH, and the current one I’m using, Ubersuggest. I did upgrade to the pro lifetime license but you can use the free version and still get great value.
Once you land on a product you like stick with it. I’m guilty of switching back and forth—comparing results for the same words! Talk about analysis paralysis. Save yourself some time and just choose one. Your brain will thank you.
With your list start to group like topics together—you’ll start to see patterns. This is where you will start to see long-tail keywords start to emerge. What are long-tail keywords—they are longer, more specific variations of your base keyword.
I’ll stick with the furniture store example. If your main keyword is sofa chair then a long-tail keyword would be blue reclining sofa chair. It's related but will also capture the search results for that more specific query.
Optimizing Your Website Structure and Content for Improved SEO Performance
An easily overlooked website optimization tip is to use only one H1 tag per webpage. Weird one to start with—I know—but this hurts a lot of small business websites out there and Google is not a fan. An H1 or title tag tells Google what the page is about. This tag should be descriptive. This should give the reader a clear expectation of what to expect when venturing further down the page.
The most common mistake I see when visiting websites—I made this early in my SEO life—is putting the company name and leaving it like that. It may look good but doesn’t tell the visitor what to expect—unless your business name is “Expert Plumber in Madison, Wisconsin.” (Disclaimer: that was a made-up name and any similarities to a real business are coincidental.)
For those beginning to dabble in SEO a great free resource is Exposure Ninja. They have a very simple, easy-to-follow guide to on-page SEO tips but I will summarize the main list.
Create the best page content
Keywords
Internal links
External (relevant links)
Images or other visual tools
Headings
Create an easy-to-read page slug (URL)
Write title and heading tags
Write a meta-description
Check the site speed
If you follow these main areas you will have a far easier time being found with a repeatable checklist. Once you get the main structure down it will be important to make sure that your content optimization is on point. The content on each page should be consistent with the keyword being used for that page. If something doesn’t fit—move it.
Let’s not overcomplicate the easily complicated.
Leveraging Google My Business and Local Listings to Enhance Local SEO Presence
Do you target local clients for your business? I heard this SEO strategy a lot but since I’m an entrepreneur who doesn’t have a storefront I didn’t look much further.
Then I read something—I wish I could remember where I saw it but alas—I ended up getting a virtual PO box and started the Google My Business process. Virtual is a bit of a stretch though since there is a physical location but the business will just scan everything and I access it through a portal.
Once you get approved from Google you now need to do a Google My Business optimization which includes consistent business updates—4 times a month—responding to reviews, and keeping all vital info up-to-date. Then you can start to look at local directory listings for your business like the Yellow Pages, Better Business Bureau, and Yelp. These listings will help the citation building for local SEO.
Taking the time to get these options completed will help drive local traffic to your business and increase relevancy. Hello, more organic traffic!!
The Power of Quality Backlinks in Small Business SEO Strategy
Search engines love authority so creating a backlink-building strategy will cement you as an authority. The plan I go after is guest posting for backlinks on larger more authoritative blogs. How do you even do that? Simple—search for “guest posting (insert niche)” and start going through the businesses that pop up. You will get a byline and a backlink to your site.
Another link outreach tactic is to find journalists or publications in your niche and pitch yourself or things you have written for them to link to in an article they create. This will require research and email outreach but if relationship building is what you like then this is a viable option.
It will take time to start to see the benefits of these strategies but will pay off.
Measuring Success and Fine-Tuning Your Small Business SEO Efforts
Investing in SEO for your business will need time to marinate before you’ll see sustained growth. To follow these results you will need an SEO analytics tool to follow what's working and what isn’t. The go-to every morning for me is Google Search Console (GSC). This free tool allows you to see what you are ranking for and how many clicks you are getting. I would recommend reading this post Cracking the Google Code to get set up with the main analytics tools.
Here’s a true, hopefully, relatable story—when I started my website I wrote titles and paragraphs or info that sounded good to me, published, and hoped for the best.
This did not work.
I knew better but wanted to get the site up—which is better than not publishing—but mistakes were made. After the excitement wore off and I saw no action—I did what I should’ve done at the beginning and systematically updated the site. Building in continuous optimization techniques I started to see measurable gains in traffic. Take it from me—this works.
Tracking SEO performance metrics doesn’t need to take a ton of time either. Plan out what you want to track and make it a weekly task to check in on GSC to make sure you see progress.
I will keep banging this drum but a website blog is very much still important. If you don’t have one consider starting one. Consistent blog posts will organically drive traffic to your site while you sleep.
Conclusion: Implement These Small Business SEO Strategies to Drive Organic Growth and Increase Visibility Online
Congrats, you’ve made it this far! This is a lengthy but distilled version of the importance of an SEO strategy for your small business. Remember the following:
Have a keyword strategy that matches your business goals
Optimize your website structure and content
Local SEO is a goldmine of opportunities
Make quality content to increase the success of your backlinking efforts
Measure your efforts over time with analytics
I promise SEO is not a trick and needs to go hand in hand with quality content. You can have great content and zero traffic because the SEO was left behind. On the flip side, you can have great SEO but crap content and Google still won’t show you because there isn’t any value being given to the visitors or your site. SEO is a long-game strategy that needs to be given the right attention in your small business SEO strategy.
P.S. To get you started on the right foot I’m offering you a FREE, no-obligation website SEO report. Just follow this link to get started.
