Small Business SEO Tips
I created a mini-series on Instagram last year and titled it #needtoknowseo. SEO is quite possibly one of the MOST important components of marketing, but it’s often the most overlooked. It’s placed very low on the priority list for most small businesses. Once I started learning more about SEO, I quickly discovered that partially why small businesses didn’t prioritize it is likely because their website designer didn’t either.
It’s why I came up with the company name, Beyond Design Co. Because I truly believe designing a good brand is important, but having a solid digital marketing strategy is equally as important. And, you’d be amazed at how many meticulously designed websites are out there, but in terms of SEO — they’re seriously lacking.
Below are some tips and tricks I have learned over the years while building client websites. So, whether you’re DIYing your own website or are looking to hire a marketer - be sure to read through this post.
1.0 What is SEO?
First things first, let’s talk about what SEO is. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
A well-optimized website will rank on the first page of a search engine {Google, Bing, etc} when somebody types in a given search term {keyword} to find a product or service {your business}.
Keywords play an integral role in increasing your search rankings. If only ranking first, second or third was as easy as finding the right keyword. But unfortunately, it's not. And, SEO is a lot more complex than just keywords.
2.0 Small Businesses & SEO
But, before I get into the knitty gritty details about how to choose the right keywords, I want to first share the importance and value of SEO for small businesses.
Simply put, your website and digital footprint is today’s version of a business card. Research shows that people often search for a company’s website first before they proceed with making a purchase or selecting a service.
93% of online experiences begin with a search engine
81% of people perform some type of online research before making a large purchase
86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps
72% of consumers who perform a local search visit a store within 5 miles of their current location
So, how do people find your website and business online? Ah, great question!
3.0 SEO vs. Paid Ads
Wait, hold up. I thought I could just pay for Google ads and generate a bunch of website traffic and call it good. Unfortunately, it's not that easy.
70-80% of people ignore paid search results, choosing to only click on organic search results.
While there is a place for paid ads, many studies show that organic SEO is arguably more powerful than paid ads.
4.0 Simple SEO Audit
Okay, so I’ve perhaps persuaded you that SEO is important, but how does an actual business owner make sure they’re headed in the right direction? There are simple things that a trained eye can spot immediately and determine if a website is worth it’s weight in SEO gold.
4.1 GOOGLE SEARCH: Head over to Google and type in your business name (or your competitors). Does your site show up when your company name is googled?
Every company should rank #1 on Google when they type in their company name. If you don’t, your site is not optimized or your business name is common and you have lots of competition. Either way, you need to invest time and/or resources into getting your site optimized.
Additionally, do you have a meta description? Is it indexed? Do you have a Google “My Business” listing set up? These are all little things that show Google you care about SEO and your digital footprint.
4.2 ASSESS HOMEPAGE: Click on your website and assess your page. Do you have the little lock icon in the browser bar? This signifies that your site is secure and Google really appreciates that. Do you have your primary keyword strategically placed throughout your site (URL, Title Tag, Main Headline, Image Names)?
These are all simple things that can be done to truly help Google understand the layout of your site.
4.3 RUN TECHNICAL AUDIT: There is a lot of technical stuff that goes on behind the scenes that matters tremendously to Google. So, instead of giving you a crash course on that because it would take days, I’ll steer you in the direction of 3 of my favorite SEO audit tools online (see links at bottom of post).
5.0 Small Business Keyword Research
The first step in any SEO project is to identify what the primary keyword will be for each page. To conduct that research, I use a number of a different sites. But, here are some general tips on keywords:
5.1 SELECT PRIMARY KEYWORDS FOR EACH PAGE: Your site should and can rank for many keywords/keyword combos. But, the primary keyword for each page should be identified and used strategically throughout that said page.
Essentially, each page on your site should have a different targeted keyword.
5.2 LOCAL BUSINESS KEYWORD FORMULA: The standard keyword formula for local, small businesses consists of:
{type of business + the location}
When researching keywords, make sure you type in every combo imaginable to see which keywords have the highest search volume but low paid competition. Keyword research tools will help you determine which keyword combos are worth pursuing by giving you a ranking difficulty score.
5.3 KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS: Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Wordstream, Ubbersuggest & Answer the Public. They are all free and provide great insight into what people are searching online to find a service or product (see links to tools at the bottom of this post).
5.4 KEYWORD PLACEMENT: Ensure your targeted keyword for each page is placed in the below places (see 4.1 Graphic):
Title Tag
URL
H1 or H2
Throughout Your Copy
Image File Names
Alt Descriptions
5.5 PLACING KEYWORDS IN COPY: There are keyword density tools available to help business owners and designers figure out if the keyword density is right. I highly recommend running your blog post or website through these tools to ensure you have the right density. Google doesn’t like keyword-stuffing, but barely having any text or keywords to crawl is also a major miss. The industry standard is to include 500 words on your homepage for ample room for keyword placement. For blogs, posts that use 1500-2500 words typically perform better than those with fewer than 1000.
So, in terms of SEO, more is often better. Not less.
6.0 Create Content
You want to create meaningful content when you create your website. A blog is ideal. I have clients with blogs and some without blogs. You would be amazed at how much more traffic a website with a blog brings in then one without. And, the more traffic, the higher in rankings you’ll climb. If bandwidth to write meaningful content doesn’t exist for your business, you have a few options:
6.1 HIRE HELP: You can hire out your blog writing . There are plenty of really great blog writing services out there. You could also hire a freelance blog writer.
or
6.2 CREATE RESOURCE PAGES: At minimum, you can create a resources page. The resources page would have several sub-pages filled with content-rich information about your specific industry, services or products.
Quality Content > More Website Traffic > Site Credibility > Higher Google Rankings
7.0 Optimize Images
There are a few ways to optimize images. The first is limiting the file size. The bigger the file, the longer it takes to load, hurting your page load time and ultimately your rankings. The second is naming your file strategically and using alt descriptions.
7.1 FILE SIZE: My favorite resource for image size reduction online is tinypng.com. It’s free and it doesn’t require an account. Simply upload your images to the site, optimize them for your website and download them.
7.2 NAMING FILES: Make sure your file names include your keyword and so do your alt descriptions. Use hyphens for naming your files. So for example:
these-blog-post-images-have-keywords-in-them.png
8.0 Create & Maintain Online Listings
Online listings (a.k.a. Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, etc.) help ensure your digital footprint online is legit. Additionally you want to set up all of your social accounts and sync them to your site.
8.1 CHOOSING A LOCAL CITATION SERVICE: If you are a local business or service, ensure you have as many local listings set up online. Don’t want to spend days creating accounts for everything? Use a system like Bright Local or Yext to set up and manage all of your listings. These platforms are paid services. But, if you own storefront, it’s well worth the investment.
8.2 DON’T FORGET SOCIAL MEDIA: Being active on social is also important. Driving your followers to your website is crucial. Don’t have time to manage it? Hire it out. I personally know of a few amazing social media managers who would be more than willing to help manage your account.
9.0 Backlink Strategy for Small Businesses
There are 2 types of link stats that we care about in SEO.
9.1 INTERNAL LINK STRUCTURE: Do you have a large amount of links placed strategically to other pages within your site? If not, it’s important that you do. Having a strong internal link structure is important to keep website visitors on your site longer, therefore increasing rankings.
9.2 BACKLINKS: Second, you also want a large quantity of backlinks. A backlink is a fancy term for a link on somebody else’s site that links back to yours. So, how do you create them? Backlinks take time. It’s a slow process. But, below are some of my favorite methods to get backlinks for small businesses. Keep in mind, you can buy backlinks or pay for backlinks services, but the Google algorithm can sniff it out.
Instead, I encourage clients to build backlinks slowly, consistently and most importantly — naturally.
Create local online listings (using local citation service that monitors dofollow links).
Create content that people will want to share, and ask that you receive credit via a website link when they use it on their site.
Create videos that people will want to share and embed them on your site.
Write or create content for local sources and have them link to your site.
Join associations or organizations that will link back to you.
Free SEO Tools Online
Congrats, you’ve made it through my long blog post about SEO! Now, what?
Are you ready to get started on getting your site found on Google?
If so, save all of these *FREE* tools as bookmarks on your web browser. Or, connect with me via email or social, and I can put together a custom quote for your project! Head over to my services page to learn more about what I offer. And, as always, don’t hesitate to reach out for any questions!
ABOUT BEYOND DESIGN CO.
Beyond Design Co. is a branding and website design studio located in Oklahoma, serving clients nationwide. Head over to the services page to learn more. Ready to start your next project? Contact me today!