The small business beginners guide to SEO

Mastering SEO: a simple guide for small business owners to boost search rankings

When you hear about search rankings, search engine optimisation, known most commonly as ‘SEO’ is the term you need to know about.  It doesn’t matter what you do, or the size of your business, SEO is a must for any business.

As John Battelle confirms:

“Search, a marketing method that didn’t exist a decade ago, provides the most efficient and inexpensive way for businesses to find leads.” — John Battelle

And these stats speak for themselves.

• A Forbes study revealed 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, Google being the king

• Google currently has a 90% market share and is the number 1 traffic referrer in the world 

• Research from Semrush found that the first page of search results captures more than 99% of all clicks

• Organic search accounts for 53% of all website traffic, making it the most significant driver of online visibility (PageOptimizer)

So surely this presents a robust business case why every business needs to invest heavily in SEO. But it rarely is this straight forward particularly for smaller businesses that can't afford the luxury of employing an SEO consultant.  The good news is there are many things you can do that are easy to implement and you won't need to invest any budget.

So here are my ten top tips that will make a massive difference to where you appear on search engines. I’ve implemented most of these for clients and seen a huge impact across just six months. 

1. Know your keywords

Before you start any SEO, you'll need to identify your keywords. By this, we mean the common words and phrases your customers are searching for. 

There are some great free tools out there to help like BuzzSumo and of course you should speak to your customers to ask what they search/would look for.   I also tend to start off by using Google and seeing what else Google appears under ‘People also ask’.  This can be really insightful.

2. Optimise your title tags, meta tags and alt tags

Once you know your keywords, you need to create title tags and meta tags. If you’re using a website platform like WordPress, Wix or SquareSpace this should be relatively easy as they all have SEO Plug Ins and will guide you through the process so you use the correct format.  Title tags should be up to 60 characters long and contain a primary keyword, whilst meta descriptions should be no longer than 320 characters.

Remember your images need to be the optimum size too. I use a free compressing tool to do this.  You also should add an alt tag to the image.  This is the description of the image and should be a maximum of 125 characters.

3. Check load speeds 

Load speeds are now a critical component of SEO.   A one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% loss in conversions according to data from Strange Loop.  I would strongly advise removing anything that slows down your site including widgets and pop ups. 

4. Nail the mobile experience

Ensure you have a user-friendly mobile version of your site and pay particular attention to the load speed on mobile.  

Be warned, it can take some time to get the mobile version of the site right and you may need to adapt your desk top version to get the optimum user experience across different devices and screens.   Test your site on your mobile checking all the links and pages as if you were a customer.

5. Create weekly blogs

Blogging is an important aspect of SEO and can yield great results. However, you can’t just churn out content. A bit like backlinks it needs to be high quality and relevant.   

Long blog posts that are educational and informative are a great investment that could pay off.  For SEO, the ideal blog post length is 2,100-2,400 words, according to HubSpot.  This can be time consuming but I would recommend that you spend just 10% of your time investing in these high quality blog posts as you can see with my infographic below.

A blog is a big commitment.  You shouldn't just dive into it without thinking through your content plan for the year and considering the type of content that your customers would find useful.  Thankfully there are lots of free tools to help and AI can help both with content generation and copywriting and optimisation of blogs.

6. Repurpose blog posts as videos

Google loves video and it has increased dramatically in popularity.  Videos will help you to get 157% more organic traffic from search engines.  

If you already have a large back catalogue of written blogs, then turn these into short videos.  If you do this, then adding subtitles is a must.

To get the full SEO potential of your videos, it is recommended to host the videos on your own website, rather than YouTube etc.

7. Add internal links to new pages

You should be adding new pages to your site on a regular basis, particularly if you have a company blog.  

Internal links help with SEO. Add internal links from top-ranking pages on your site to pages that need a boost. 

8. Ensure there are no broken links

It may sound obvious, but it is surprising how many broken links I come across at Sharp Thinking when working with clients and undertaking website reviews.  To avoid this, check your website at least once a year.

9. Register for a Google Business Profile

If there is one thing you commit to, you MUST register your business online with Google to create a Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business. 

A Google Business Profile allows you to leverage local searches through being seen on Google Maps as well as Google searches and as nearly half of all Google searches are local, it is a critical one to do.

A Google Business Profile listing adds credibility to your business, particularly if you have customer reviews. Ask friendly customers to complete a review on Google for you (and hound them until they do!). And make sure you complete your profile by adding a telephone number, images and opening hours.  

Finally, a Google Business Profile has a posts function which allows you to upload blog posts.  Try and do this once a week along with adding photos of your business.

10. Leverage directory listings

You don’t need to pay for this. There are plenty of free sites you can get your business listed with. Submitting your business to directories is ideal for local citations. These are multiple consistent mentions of your business information on local business directories. Search engines use these mentions as a trust signal. Plus, consistent NAP (name, address and phone number) mentions of your business will help you to rank in local Google search results.

Free listings include Bing, Yell, Yelp, Thomson Local, Scoot, Free Index, Hot Frog, La Cartes, 192, 118118, Cyclex, Locanto, Approved Business, UK Small Business Directory, Opening Times, Yalwa, Brown Book, Local Data Search, Business Magnet, Opendi and The Trade Finder. Set aside half a day to do it.  Once it is done, you'll have that listing for a very long time.

11. Seek out back-link opportunities

Links are an important way to improve your online visibility. This can be a time-consuming exercise, but over time the dividends will pay off. Backlinks are an online link from an external website which links to your site. Sadly the days have gone where you can simply have a link from anyone and everyone.  Google now gives weighting to authoritative and relevant sites.

A way to do this is to seek out PR opportunities and or guest blog with similar businesses in your field or share the same target audience.   

Time and patience will win in the end

SEO is a regular commitment. Sadly, it isn’t a tick box exercise, although some of these exercises only need to be done once like registering for a Google Business Profile. 

The Google algorithm regularly changes and so do your competitors, which means you need to monitor where you appear week to week and put strategies in place to improve rankings month to month.

Patience is also required. It takes a long time to build your SEO presence organically and sometimes, it can be trial and error. If you can't afford an exteral agency or freelance consultant to manage this for you, try and spend an an hour a week (excluding the blog creation) on one of the areas identified above.  Gradually, you will see progress.

If you would like a chat to take your marketing to the next level, then feel free to drop me a line.  Or sign up to my newsletter for more tips on all things marketing.

Have a read of 10 tips to having a high converting website or 12 time saving apps for your small business.