Understanding the details of search engine rankings may seem challenging at first. However, with a grasp of basic search engine optimization (SEO) principles, achieving a prominent position on Google becomes more straightforward.

Despite frequent shifts in Google’s algorithms, the foundational elements of SEO remain consistent. These small business SEO tips draw from tried-and-tested best practices.

The actionable tactics and strategies below are equally relevant for both B2B and B2C ventures. With over a decade of experience working with diverse clients, we’ve found these steps to be effective whether you’re a new business, a solopreneur, or an SMB seeking broader regional or national reach. Often, the hardest part can be taking a critical look at your own site.

SEO Benefits for SMBs

Why bother with SEO? Along with increased visibility and more organic traffic, SEO can provide other benefits based on your situation and industry:

• Greater credibility: Higher search rankings can enhance your business’s perceived authority in your industry.

• Better user experience: SEO often requires improving site usability, leading to a better user experience, which can lead to higher conversion rates.

• Cost-effective marketing: Compared to paid ads, organic SEO provides long-term results with potentially less expenditure.

• Competitive advantage: SEO helps small businesses compete with larger entities by appearing prominently in search results.

On-Page vs Off-Page SEO

Search engine optimization encompasses two practices: on-page SEO (optimizing your website itself) and off-page SEO (external signals that can impact your site’s authority). Both practices can help you gain traffic from search engines, but even Google tells us that to achieve big SEO results, we can start with small, simple changes to a site—this is Google’s approach to managing their own 7000 websites:

“…there are plenty of other ways to drive traffic to your website. Paid media, social posts, and display advertising are just a few. But, when done well, SEO can provide an important — and cost-effective — strategy for organic growth.”

Before exploring off-page strategies, or SEO software, use the SEO guide below to optimize on-page elements, as this might be all your site needs to become search-friendly.

How to do Small Business SEO

Note, if your website is on the Squarespace platform, see our post that is specific to Squarespace’s SEO settings.

Focus on implementing changes step-by-step, rather than trying to do everything at once.

Step 1. Ensure a High-Quality, User-Friendly Website

SMBs are diverse, and so are their online presences. But your website serves as a touchpoint for potential customers, so it’s important to provide an outstanding user experience. If you plan to design your own site, see our article on building a small business website.

Step 2. Address Technical SEO Details

If you use a website builder, such as Squarespace or Wix, essential technical SEO details are handled for you. But if your website is a custom build, ensure your developer handled these items correctly:

• SSL Certificate: An SSL certificate gives your site visitors a secure connection. Over the years, this has become an expected experience on modern websites. Look for “https” versus “http” in the browser.

  In addition, verify that other versions of your website redirect to your preferred version when appropriate. Meaning, if your primary URL is https://example.com, and you click a link that says http://www.example.com, you should be automatically redirected to https://example.com.

• Mobile-friendly: Having a “responsive website” means your content and images automatically resize to fit different devices and screen widths. A mobile-friendly site is critical for Google and your site visitors expect responsive design.

• Sitemap: A sitemap is a list of your page URLs and image metadata for SEO-friendly indexing. Website builders will create and update your sitemap automatically. If you need to create your own sitemap, we suggest using Screaming Frog. See Step #12 for how to submit a sitemap to search engines.

Step 3. Do Keyword Research

Modern SEO is more about topic optimization and searcher intent than simple keywords, but keyword research can help improve your site because you likely will discover related topics and user questions. Businesses often describe their offerings one way, but basic keyword research shows that their ideal customers use different terms to search for those very services or products.

Make a list of the keywords you want a topic page to target. Search for your topics on Google and look at your competition to assess the difficulty of ranking. The stronger the competition, the harder it will be for you to rank above them—consider your competition’s popularity, authority, and social signals.

SEO beginners often ask “where do I add keywords,” but SEO doesn’t work like this. Yes, it is important to use keywords, but SEO is not just inserting keywords and calling it a day. For important pages, you need to ask: “Is this content helpful? Does it satisfy the user’s intent?”

Step 4. Deliver High-Value, Relevant Content

Whether your digital marketing strategy involves ongoing SEO content creation or not, any content on your site needs to be exceptional. You must provide unique, helpful content that answers the questions of your ideal customers (refer to your keyword research above).

Search engine algorithms continue to become more sophisticated, and providing quality content is one of the most important factors to rank in search. So, as Google gets better at providing relevant search results, what can you do?

• Create content that addresses searcher intent.

• Write as naturally as possible. Do not overuse one word or phrase—instead, use many phrases and concepts that are associated with your main topic. 

• Focus on quality over quantity. If you have many pages of poor quality, combine your content into fewer pages of higher quality.

As you write content—services pages or blog posts—be careful not to over-optimize your pages, as this can have a negative impact. There is not a keyword density or SEO word count that you should use, but you might use a keyword in a page’s title tag, heading, and a few times in the main content. Our recommendation is to write first, then review your copy for keywords and related terms.

Again, when you truly focus on your readers, you’ll provide search engines with enough information to know what a page is about. Business blogging is not appropriate for every small business, but if you do blog, learn how to write effective blog posts. Note, after you nail down a consistent and solid content strategy, you might also begin to see traffic from Google Discover.

Step 5. Optimize Page Title Tags

The title tag of any page—service page, blog post, product, event—is what shows in Google search results. If you aren’t familiar with this field, see Moz’s free title tag preview tool to learn how your title tags will look in search.

Titles can be keyword rich, but should not be spammy. The title tag of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page’s content, and also entice users to click through to your site. Title tag best practices:

• If you need the entire title to show on desktop searches, keep titles under ~60 characters.

• Ensure each page’s title is unique, descriptive, and engaging.

• Keywords matter, but avoid titles that are just a list of keywords or repeated variations.

If you don’t follow suggested best practices, Google might rewrite your title. All-in-all their rewriting is designed to help sites with title tag issues, but it can be avoided by following Google’s best practices.

Step 6. Use Keywords in Headings

Using keywords in headings and meta descriptions can be helpful as it tells your site visitors more about a page.

• Headings: It is common to use a keyword in the <h1> tag. Then organize other content clearly with sub-headings using <h2> and <h3> tags. Note, when building a page with different sections, Google says multiple H1 elements on different parts of the page are acceptable when done properly.

• Meta descriptions: You can also use keywords in meta descriptions. These are the short summaries of your pages that appear on search engine result pages (SERPs). While meta descriptions are not a ranking factor, highly relevant descriptions can encourage people to visit your site. Write naturally to encourage click-throughs from the SERPs. But remember, even if you write what you think is a great description, Google will often pull other text from the page to better answer a searcher’s query.

Step 7. Streamline URL Structures

URL best practices include:

• Keeping URLs short and easy to read. For example, a blog post with the title "How Your Small Business Can Learn to do SEO" might have the following URL: www.example.com/blog/small-business-seo

• Using hyphens (-) between words for readability.

⚠️ Caution: If you change an existing URL, you are actually moving a web page. Implement URL redirects to prevent broken links.

Step 8. Optimize Images

Images should be optimized. Fast-loading images improve overall page speed, which improves user experience. Use online compression tools to reduce the file size of images before uploading to your website.

Use descriptive words in your file names and image alt text to give search engines more information. Alt text is also important for accessibility. And most search engines have an image search function—images from your website showing up in these results can lead more visitors to your website. As with everything on your site, keep these bits of content readable and relevant.

Step 9. Eliminate Duplicate Content

Most website administrators are aware that duplicating content from another site is discouraged. But for optimization purposes, you also want to avoid repetitive content on your own site—you don’t need duplicated title tags or multiple pages competing for the same query.

Beyond Google Search Console, SEO tools such as Screaming Frog can help analyze your site and identify issues. Be careful when interpreting data from these tools—you need to apply common sense to any results. Many of the “issues” beginners think they have, aren’t issues at all—read up on SEO misinformation.

Step 10. Link Internally for Better Navigation and SEO

One of the most important steps is to look for internal linking opportunities. Relevant pages or blog posts can be linked to within your content, not just from your main navigation menu. This helps both site visitors and search engines explore and discover your content.

Step 11. Clearly Display Your Location for Local SEO

It is very important for local businesses to follow local SEO best practices. If you are a brick-and-mortar business, your physical address should be displayed on your site. Make it easy for your customers to find you. And almost every SMB website should include a Contact page, learn about contact page optimization.

Step 12. Submit an XML Sitemap to Search Engines

Create a Google Search Console account and submit your sitemap to Google. You can do the same with Bing Webmaster Tools. Website builders providing automatic sitemaps often use this URL for the sitemap: www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

When you create new content or make updates, it can take a while for search engines to notice changes made to your site. But by using the free search tools offered by Google and Bing, you can speed up the crawling process. 

Step 13. Ensure Your Favicon Displays Properly

Your favicon is the small icon that represents your brand that is typically seen in a browser’s address bar, in a bookmark list, etc. Favicons do not directly impact rankings, but they may influence click-through rates (CTR). Google displays favicons on both mobile and desktop search.

If a favicon goes against Google’s guidelines, then in search results it might be reset to Google’s default globe icon. Learn about favicon optimization.

Step 14. Noindex Low-Value Category and Tag Pages

Most sites will want to use a noindex directive for auto-generated category and tag pages. Categories and tags are organizational tools to aggregate content and they don’t usually offer unique content themselves. Often times Google ignores these low value pages, but if you hide the pages then search engines spend their time crawling the more important pages on your site.

Step 15. Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices

Ensure you site operates as well on mobile as it does on desktop. Page speed is important for mobile users, you can use Google’s speed tools to check your site, but again use common sense when interpreting the results.

Step 16. Create a Custom 404 Page

A 404 status code is a signal that says an original page is missing—also known as a broken link. As your website grows, broken links are inevitable. At some point, a site visitor will mistype a URL or click a link that you forgot to change.

Most website builders offer a default 404 page, but if desired, you can build a custom page. What do your site visitors see if they visit a bad link? See for yourself by trying to visit a URL that doesn’t exist on your website: www.yourdomain.com/xyz

Step 17. Add Structured Data

Many website builders automatically add structured data for you, but you might want to explore adding structured data to your site.

Step 18. Take the Next Steps

After optimizing your site, you can promote your content to increase traffic to your website via social media marketing or email marketing. If you are a local business, setup a Google Business Profile.

Step 19. Seek SEO Help When Needed

Remember, when you launch a new website, you need to allow time for Google to crawl the site. This said, almost any site should be findable for brand name within a week or two of launch—if you are struggling to find your brand online, schedule an SEO consultation. And if you’ve followed the best practices above and aren’t seeing traction after a few months or so, then it is time to seek help. Learn how to hire an SEO.

Common SEO Challenges for SMBs

DIY SEO seems easy, but it’s also why websites struggle. Limited budgets and time constraints are common issues, but SMBs also face other obstacles also when it comes to digital marketing and SEO:

• Lack of SEO expertise: This leads to ineffective strategies and wasted time and resources. We see many small businesses in forums overthinking SEO and jumping through unnecessary hoops due to “SEO scans” or reports from SEO tools. Consider training your team on SEO basics.

• Competition with larger brands: Larger brands typically have more resources and established domain authority, so small businesses will likely need to find niches or local markets where they can excel. Seasoned SEOs can guide you in developing a content strategy grounded in years of knowledge and intuition.

• Tracking and analytics: Setting up and interpreting analytics can be complex. But tracking the right key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you make data-driven decisions and understand the progress of your SEO efforts. 

Keep in mind, SEO is a long-term game. The seeds you plant today might not bear fruit for months or longer. Small businesses will need to commit to a plan of steady growth over time, rather than expect quick wins. But the first step is to address basic website issues related to technical SEO and on-page SEO.

Final Thoughts

The SEO tips above provide a guide for auditing your website. Overall, small business SEO boils down to the fact that your website should clearly tell people about your business and provide helpful, quality content. And it should be properly structured, secure and load quickly. Adhering to proven SEO best practices can often suffice—many SMBs find that there’s no need for complex SEO tools, plugins, or ongoing SEO retainers.

And remember, SEO can take time. As Google points out, it can take anywhere from 4 months to a year to implement improvements and see the resulting benefits, so get started soon. If you are just beginning, your business might want to use a faster channel like ads until your SEO efforts kick in.

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