Five SEO Tips for Small Business Owners

Search engine optimization or SEO is essential for any business, and these SEO tips for small business owners are a great place to get started. Small businesses may not have the SEO budget that big businesses do, but they still need to compete and attract clients. SEO doesn’t have to be scary. There are some easy tips and entry points for a small business looking to get into SEO, or one that wants to revamp its organic rankings.

Before we get started, it’s important to define what SEO is.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. There are two primary forms of online search—paid and organic. Paid search covers things like Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords, and other paid forms of driving traffic to your website. SEO deals with organic search. Organic search involves how your web pages rank in search engines like Google. As an added bonus, good Google SEO rankings can also help lower the costs of your campaigns in Google Ads.

What goes into SEO?

A lot of SEO relates to the keywords you use on your website. Picking the right keywords and putting them in the right locations are both part of SEO. More advanced SEO involves building backlinks to your website from other sites with high domain authority. Backlinks are essentially links to your website from other external sites. Think of a backlink like a referral. If your foodie friend gives you a recommendation to a restaurant, you’re going to view the restaurant more favorably. If a website with a high domain score has a link to your site, search engines will rank your site more favorably because some of that other website’s good reputation rubs off on your site. Be careful when it comes to building backlinks, though, as backlinks from sites with low domain authority scores can actually harm your website’s search rankings.

SEO Small Business Tips

While some SEO tactics like backlinks can get complicated, here are five easy SEO tips that any business can follow.

1. Research – When creating or revamping your website copy, don’t just assume that you know what terms will drive traffic to your website. Do research to determine what terms people are actually searching for online. There are a number of free and paid tools you can use for keyword research, including Google Ads, Keyword Tool Io, Ahrefs, Moz, Ubersuggest, and more. These tools will help you identify keywords and other search terms consumers put into search engines.

2. Choosing the Right Keywords – After doing the research, you want to pick the keywords that best fit your business. There are more factors than just search volume that go into this. The terms that attract the most traffic may not be the best fit for your intended audience.

Pay attention to both regular keywords and long-tail keywords. A regular or standard keyword might be something like “vacation.” That keyword will generate high traffic but it’s also very generic. There will probably be a lot of traffic for this keyword. If you run a business for active biking and hiking vacations, you might want to optimize for more specific and longer keywords like “biking vacation in Colorado” or “hiking tours in the Rockies.”

The idea here is that someone searching for “biking vacation in Colorado” is probably more like to convert and buy a ticket to one of your tours than someone searching for “vacation.” Someone searching for “vacation” is likely to be earlier in their buying journey than someone with a more specific search. Additionally, there will probably be many people searching for the term “vacation” who would never consider an active vacation like the ones your company provides. While the search volume might be lower for “biking vacation in Colorado,” the people who search for it are likely a better fit for your business. Competition may also be easier for the specific “biking vacation in Colorado” as opposed to the popular and generic term “vacation.”

Ideally, different pages on your website should be optimized for different terms. You should also use a mixture of keywords and long-tail keywords to attract traffic to your website.

3. The Right Number of Keywords – Gone are the days when search engines gave the highest rankings to the pages that used the keyword the most. In those early days of the internet, some web developers used to write the keyword over and over again in white at the bottom of the page to boost their search results.

Search engines use algorithms that are more sophisticated now, and better able to track features that improve the user experience. Sometimes, using a keyword too many times can actually lower your page rankings. Search engines like Google keep their algorithms tightly under wraps, so it’s impossible to know exactly how Google decides site rankings. A good rule of thumb is that you should use between one and four keywords for every 500 words. In addition, the language on your site should be simple and easy to understand.

4. Location, Location, Location – It’s not just real estate anymore—the old adage of “location, location, location,” applies to keywords and SEO, too. Ideally, your focus keyword should be in the first line of copy. It’s also important to use keywords in titles, sub-headings, product descriptions, and in at least one item in your lists.

You should also use keywords in your URLs, navigation bars, and in company information pieces.

5. Tittle Tags, Meta Description, and Alt Image Tags – It’s important to use keywords in places that you might not immediately think of, including page title tags and meta descriptions, and in your alt image tags. Alt image tags are text tags that appear in placed of images on screen readers or other accessibility devices for people who might have trouble viewing or reading your site. Without an alt image tag, the screen reader will simple say “image” with no other description.

Search engines like sites with alt image tags, and they like sites even more when these alt image tags contain your keywords.

Getting Started with SEO

Following these SEO small business tips will help your website search ranking and provide a better experience for your customers. Websites are ranked on the experience they provide to their users.

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