Top 10 SEO Tips for Small Businesses

Building a website for your small business is good. But, it is just the beginning. The real challenge lies in helping your potential customers find you before they resort to your competitors.

That’s how you drive more traffic to your website and boost sales.

Optimizing your business site for search engines like Google is SUPER important to improve your online discoverability and be quickly visible to your prospects.

Not sure where to begin? Check out the 10 must-know SEO tips for small businesses below.

 

Conduct Keyword Research 

Finding out keywords that people use to find businesses like yours is important to improve your online search appearances.

So, perform focused keyword research to identify the right keywords that will help you appear at the top of search results.

You can use reliable keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Semrush or Ahrefs to shortlist appropriate keywords.

Use selected keywords in appropriate places of your content for your pages to rank higher on SERPs.

BEWARE. Keyword stuffing shall have a negative impact on your website’s SEO. So, make sure you place your keywords naturally in your content.

 

Build Powerful Backlinks

Backlinks are an important Google ranking factor. The more the number of sites that link back to you, the better it is for your SEO.

However, not all backlinks are equal.

While high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites help you rank higher, spammy backlinks from low-quality sites can lead to a search engine penalty and bring down your ranking considerably.

That said, make it a point to reach out to authoritative sites in your niche to earn powerful backlinks that strengthen your backlink profile and get a SERP boost.

 

Create User-Engaging Content

Search engines aim at helping users find answers to their queries online. So, high-quality, user-engaging content is your trump to attract more visitors to your website.

Create great content that adds value to your target audience and addresses their pain points. If possible, come up with long-form content like ultimate guides to allow your readers to know everything about a topic in one place.

Have a content strategy in place and publish high-quality content consistently to increase user engagement.

Also, refresh existing content from time to time to maintain relevance.

 

Perform an SEO Audit

SEO is not just about creating assets optimized for search engines. It is also about optimizing what is already available.

Many small businesses miss out on SEO audits. But, practically, SEO audit is as important as the other search engine optimization practices.

When you conduct an SEO audit, you can identify and fix broken links, find new keyword opportunities, improvise on your titles and meta descriptions and so much more.

This way, you increase the chances of your site ranking higher. Remember, every small step takes you a bit closer to ranking #1 on Google.

If the SEO audit is too complex to carry out on your own, you can take help from a trusted partner offering professional SEO services. That should lift some load off your shoulders.

 

Build a Robust Internal Linking Structure

Internal links are as crucial as external links for SEO.

Why?

If you don’t link your web pages internally, the search engine bots have a hard time indexing and ranking them.

So, with internal linking, you make it easier for the search engines to crawl, index and rank pages that may otherwise go unnoticed.

This way, internal links make way for faster indexing and ranking.

Besides, internal links help visitors navigate to relevant pages on your site without any hassle.

That, again, complements a smooth user experience and fuels your Google ranking.

 

Include Schema Markup

Schema markup is another effective technique to boost your search engine ranking.

How?

Once you add a schema markup or structured data to your web page, it generates a rich snippet that’s visible in search results.

This way, you give a specific context to your page and allow the search engine to comprehend better what the page is about.

That said, rich snippets improve your online visibility and click-through rate (CTR) incredibly.

 

Improve Page Loading Speed

No user wants to wait longer for pages to load. They are likely to exit a website that takes more than two seconds to load.

What does that mean for SEO?

When users leave a website as soon as they land on it, the site’s bounce rate goes up. An increased bounce rate is not a healthy sign in terms of SEO.

Leverage the Google PageSpeed Insights tool to check your web page across browsers and optimize them for a faster page loading time.

 

Optimize for Mobile Devices

More than half of online searches today happen on mobile devices. You certainly don’t want to miss out on such massive business opportunities, right?

That’s why it is more essential than ever to optimize your website for mobile devices.

This way, you ensure a smooth user experience for people visiting your site via mobile devices like smartphones, tablets and more.

Run Google’s mobile-friendly test to know how your site performs on mobile devices and make improvements accordingly.

 

Go Social

Social media platforms are an excellent way to attract more followers to your brand and increase customer engagement.

Create official handles for your small business on popular social media networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram.

Put up interesting posts, including images, videos, infographics and text-based content on a regular basis to tell your followers how your business can benefit them.

An unwavering social media presence bolsters your Google ranking and brings more new prospects your way.

 

Measure Results

SEO is never a one-time game. It is rather an ongoing process where you keep making improvements in alignment with algorithm updates to beat your competitors and reach or stay at the top of Google.

But, the question is, how do you know your SEO efforts are working?

Set KPIs and quantify the results of your SEO campaigns using Google Analytics. It’s that simple.

Measuring your SEO performance will help you understand where you stand in the business marathon and reach new milestones in the long run.