5 SEO tips for small businesses

seo tips for smaller businesses

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SEO can be a struggle for any business, but it seems an entirely uphill struggle when you are a smaller business looking to rank. In this post we’re going to look at SEO tips for smaller businesses. How you can build your rankings, and what you should expect when it comes to SEO.

Though there are a number of things that can give your SEO a quick and noticeable boost in rankings. We’re going to look at 5 reasonably easy tips for SEO for small businesses today.

The first thing we should clarify is SEO doesn’t always bring quick results. It’s not a one-time thing you complete and leave. It takes time and patience. You will need to be prepared to put in some consistent efforts to your SEO, but oh does it pay off if you do.

So what things can you focus on to get your smaller sized business noticed?

Decide what you wish to rank for

Whether you want to rank for products or services, you need to decide exactly what those are. Then build your content around that. SEO is not the same as it used to be. You can no longer stuff loads of keywords into your pages and blogs to make them appear high in rankings. You have to carefully consider your content, to include relevant keywords, but in a manner that is user friendly. The overall focus should be to actually help with the query the user has.

Once you know what you wish to be found for, you can look at the page structure for your website, and potential blogs. To begin with, it may be easier to try and focus on one key term or idea for your page. To give it the best chance of ranking.

Establish your online presence

Small businesses are often in the position where they don’t have a lot of spare budget to spend on a fancy website straight away. But you don’t need all the bells and whistles to get started. A small site, with a few pages, perhaps with a blog you can utilise for new content, and social pages linked are all you really need to get started. However, you should be considering a mobile optimised website. As no matter what your size of business, you can’t escape that the majority of people now shop and browse on their phones.

You should look at a website on a suitable and relevant domain. Which can feature a little more about you, and why people should consider your services or products. This is your foundation, and where you should hope to push your online visitors to. You should also install Google Analytics when you build your site, as this will come in useful later!

You can then use a blog feature to update new content, showcase new products, highlight great feedback from customers, and also inform customers of issues relevant to your products or services. Finally you should look at social media to capture the attention of new clients from different sources and pull them back to your site. Social also does wonders for building up your site authority, as well as building the number of results in rankings.

Build up your internal linking

Link building is huge when it comes to SEO. In basics, the more people who link to your site the better. However, when you’re first setting out, having others link to you can be difficult, so you should perhaps focus on internal linking first. Ensure all of your pages or blogs link to other relevant content if possible. So for example, at the bottom of this blog you will find a link to our SEO blog category. Because you are reading a blog on SEO, we can assume you may be interested in reading more content that is relevant to that subject. Within those other SEO blogs are links to our SEO page, which talks about our SEO offering.

This is good practice in general as it provides a better experience for the user, but also helps bots that crawl your site to establish where your content fits in to the web.

 

Build up your local presence

We have another blog purely on this topic coming up soon, but local is something you really need to be considering. Since Google’s pigeon update, location has become a much bigger factor in rankings, and one that as a smaller business you can take advantage of.

Consider your local listings pages, such as Google+ page, which should match your address on your website exactly. Then remember to check through other directory listings for your business, and again ensure they all match the same address. Moz has just released a great feature called Moz Local, which will help you get started in this process.

Also consider building local ties (as you would offline too). So if you are working with another local business, talk about it! Make sure you have references back to them, and they backlink to you.

Track and assess

Use tools such as Google Analytics, or Moz to assess the traffic to your site, and how they are finding you. Google analytics is great for figures and feedback on traffic, but is a little lax these days on providing which keywords people have used to find you. Moz does a much more in-depth report on where you are ranking for selecting keywords, and if that has improved or dropped.

Then actually use your tracked data to build your content and your site in general. If people are finding you through slightly different phrases than you expected, then change your content slightly to reflect the tone people are using to find you, to help others find you. More people finding your website through a certain social network, focus more on that network.

SEO is an ongoing process, and one that you have to monitor and act upon to see continued results, so though it may seem a lot of work, continuing your efforts is worth it in the long run.

 

We have plenty of tips throughout our blogs on how you can build your SEO once you have become established. However, if you are still struggling with SEO, then why not give us a call? We work with businesses of all sizes, and look at each company’s individual needs before suggesting any way forward. Call us on 01543 495752 today and speak to one of our friendly team.

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