SEO Tips for Small Business
SEO tips for small business are important because SEO is a cost effective way for small businesses to increase traffic to their website. Getting found on Google is the first step towards more sales and more business. More traffic to your website, along with a well-designed website that helps convert visitors to leads, ultimately translates to more sales and more growth for your business.
What is SEO?
As many of you may know Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website more visible to search engines like Google. Websites with stronger SEO will appear higher on search engine results pages, which is great for business as it means that more people are likely to find you and visit your website.
Many people only look at the results on the first or second page of a Google before either clicking on one of the links, or searching for something else. That’s why SEO is so important. If you can’t be found you won’t get the organic search traffic coming to your website.
To assist you with your understanding of SEO and help you succeed in business, we have included some simple and useful tips that you can use to improve the SEO for your small business.
Create a Google My Business listing
An important step that some businesses are yet to implement is to ensure that your site appears in local searches on Google Maps. If you haven’t done so already, make sure to add your small business to Google my Business so you can be found online. This is important as it helps improve your business visibility online.
Keyword research – Do your research when selecting keywords
It is important to research what your target audience is searching for before selecting the keywords that you use in your web content. Start by putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and simply ask yourself, “what would I type into Google if I wanted to find a specific product or service like the ones I offer in my business?”
Make sure your website pages contain content (including keywords and phrases) that people are searching for often.
If you are using Google Ads, you can use their keyword tool to research your potential keywords. The Google Keyword tool (often called the Google Keyword Planner) provides lots of information on the volume of searches that people are undertaking and also helps you discover new Keywords.
For small businesses just starting out with SEO, it is a good idea to think of niche keywords that might bring in a smaller yet more targeted group of potential customers. You can also focus on ‘long tail keywords’, which are a combination or 3 or more words or phrases. Although long tail keywords have lower search volumes, they tend to attract more relevant or higher quality traffic.
Write Unique and Relevant Meta Descriptions for every webpage
One of the most important SEO tips that many people neglect is the well-crafted meta description. The meta description is the summarized content of your page that you see in the Google search results. It is basically the first section that people see when Google serves up your page to search users. It is created for the benefit of users and search engines. These Meta descriptions are created in the back end of your website.
Titles and Meta Descriptions
Check your web pages and any blog posts. Ensure that your titles and meta descriptions include the relevant keywords and phrases that your customers would be searching for. To assist with your ranking, they need to be the appropriate length and contain your keywords.
Include internal links in your web content
Internal links refer to links to other pages of your website. By including these in your web copy, it increases the chance that people will visit other pages of your website. It also signals to Google what other content can be found within your website.
Include pictures in your copy
When Including images in your web copy it is important to make sure the filename of your images and videos contain your desired keywords and that you include relevant alt tags. Also, generally speaking, images and videos tend to be more engaging than large blocks of text, so it is a good idea to include these in your content. However make sure the size of these is optimised for web.
Page speed is important to SEO
Make sure you optimise the size of your media files so that large files do not slow down the speed of your website. That includes both, photos, images, video files etc.
To check the speed of your website you can use this tool at: https://tools.pingdom.com/
Install an SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate is a type of digital certificate that provides added security to your website. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and it adds authentication for a website and enables an encrypted connection. These days Google favours HTTPS sites. Switching to HTTPS helps you avoid your SEO and google ranking being penalised and/or downgraded.
Remember it can take a while to see the benefits of SEO and it also takes time and some specialised skills to optimise the website structure and content so that it can improve your search results. However, improving your SEO is worth the investment in the long run as you achieve the result of more traffic and ultimately more customers.
Some of the components of SEO are technical, and if you aren’t confident in this area, then you may need to outsource some areas. If it feels daunting to tackle SEO, it can be a good idea to hire a small business marketing agency who can do the appropriate research and come up with a plan to improve your SEO for you, however there are also lots of resources online to assist you. If you would like to learn more about SEO and the ways we can help, please contact us.
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Stay positive, healthy and well, we are here to support you and help you achieve business success.
The Small Chilli Marketing Team