Having an online presence is crucial for your small business. However, to boost your online visibility, attract organic traffic, and beat your online competition, you need SEO.
With the right SEO tips for your small businesses, you can increase your site’s ranking on Google’s SERP, drawing customers to your business.
Unlike other marketing strategies, SEO is cost-effective, offering you more bang for your buck. Below, we outline 7 SEO tips for small businesses in 2024.
What are the Best Small Business SEO tips?
Here are some of the best SEO tips for small business websites:
- Create a quality website
- Set up a Google My Business Profile
- Conduct keyword research
- Build backlinks
- Optimize your website for voice search
- Optimize on-page components
- Implement schema markups
SEO Tips for Small Businesses
Below are 7 SEO advice for small business owners:
1. Create Quality Website
First impression matters, and they are the most lasting. If you have a shoddy website, expect visitors to bounce or ignore it for a competitor with a more user-friendly website.
Common properties of a shoddy website are:
- Poor navigation
- Slow loading speed
- Unresponsive design
- Poor readability
- Zero organization
- Annoying ads
If your website has one or more of these properties, fix it. Visitors love websites that make life easier for them, especially those with easy navigation, responsive design, fast loading speed, etc.
2. Set up a Google My Business Profile
Google My Business is a free tool that allows local business owners manage how their business appears on Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Shopping. It helps increase businesses’ online visibility, driving foot traffic to their physical stores.
GMB is ideal for businesses that serve customers in a particular area. Whether you run a local restaurant, daycare facility, dental clinic, or law firm, setting up a GMB profile is crucial for your small business.
In addition to boosting your online visibility, GMB serves as a touch point for your business. Your GMB profile allows you to share important information, like your phone number, email address, and business hours, with users.
To optimize your GMB profile, follow these steps:
- Include quality photos of your business premises, products, services, etc.
- Include your contact information.
- Include your products or services.
- Choose the right business category and type
- Include tour operating hours and ensure they are up to date
3. Conduct keyword research
Conducting keyword research is a crucial SEO tip for small businesses. It helps business owners understand the search intent of their target audience, which is important to creating a content strategy that relates to them. This results in more traffic—which translates to more potential for sales.
Keyword research also offers your business a competitive advantage. By spotting gaps in the market and creating contents that fill them, your small business can stand out from its competitors.
To conduct keyword research, identify phrases people are likely to search for when trying to find your business or the product/services you sell.
Next, check the volume of the search terms to determine how many people are searching for the phrase. The higher the volume, the harder it’ll be to rank for such terms.
Consider choosing phrases or terms with lower volume and lower difficulty. Then, create high-quality content around those phrases using them in areas like:
- Title tag or meta description
- Paragraph
- H1 heading
- URL
- Subheadings
- Image file names and alt attribute tags
4. Build Backlinks
It’s no secret that backlinks can improve your site ranking. However, getting high-quality and relevant backlinks isn’t as easy as it seems. If pulled off, including backlinks in your content is a big win for your business.
First, high-quality backlinks can channel traffic to your website, increasing brand awareness and conversion rates. Additionally, backlinks from reputable and authoritative sites can increase your website’s authority and trustworthiness.
To build high-quality backlinks, create linkable assets, such as data-backed studies, infographics, etc. Guest posting is another common way to build quality links. You can also consider earning links by ranking for statistical keywords.
5. Optimize your Website for Voice Search
According to statistics, 1 billion voice searches occur each month via mobile and voice search devices, making it one of the fastest and easiest ways for people to find information.
By optimizing your website for voice search, you can reach more customers, improving brand awareness while driving traffic to your website.
Optimizing your website for voice search also helps improve customer experience, as it provides visitors with a seamless means to find information.
To optimize your website for voice search, follow these tips:
- Research keywords
- Select keywords you want to target and analyze them
- Audit and optimize your website content
- Optimize for mobile and different speakers (Alexia, Siri, Google Home, etc.)
- Create content
- Monitor your performance
With the number of people using digital voice assistants expected to continue growing, integrating this SEO tip for small businesses will help you boost your local presence. It’ll also ensure that you stay ahead of the competition.
NB: Check out the benefits of SEO for small business.
6. Optimize on-page components
Optimizing on-page components is another important small business SEO tip.
Titles
To optimize titles for SEO, follow these tips:
- Use your target keywords at the beginning of the title
- Titles should be 55-60 characters long
- Use numbers to encourage users to click through
- Titles should be simple yet attention-grabbing
- Titles should accurately describe what your content is about
Meta description
The meta description contains a snippet of what a page is about. Here are some tips on how to optimize meta descriptions:
- Include CTA
- Make it unique
- It should match the page content
- Meta descriptions should be 155 characters
- Use active voice and ensure it is actionable
- Use your target keyword in the mate descriptions (possibly at the beginning)
Headers
Headers are elements that help organize the content of an article. Below are some best practices for writing heading tags.
- Including relevant keywords in heading tags
- Use H1 for the title of the page
- Make your heading tags compelling
- Ensure that they are logically structured
- Use h2 to H6 to break up your page content.
7. Implement Schema Markup
Implementing schema markup on your website is one of the best SEO tips for small businesses. Schema markup is a special code that helps search engines like Google understand the content of a page.
The result? Your page becomes more visible, resulting in higher click-through rates and increased traffic to your webpage.
Adding schema markup can also help your content appear in rich results, positioning you as an authority in your niche.
Whether you run a local business, hospital, nail salon, dental office, or whatnot, there are different types of schema for various purposes.
You can include schema to your website via third-party tools and plugins like Yoast SEO, Schema Pro, All in One SEO pack, etc.
By implementing this SEO tip for small businesses, you’ll improve your website visibility, drawing more traffic to your site.
Implementing the Best SEO Tips for Small Businesses
As a small business owner with a limited budget, you need SEO to thrive. With the right SEO tips for your small business, you can boost your website visibility and traffic, making it easy for prospects to find and buy from you.
The right SEO advice can also help position your brand as an authority in your niche, increasing your trust and credibility. Implement these small business SEO tips to scale your business to greater heights!
FAQS
What is the Importance of SEO for small businesses?
SEO can help small businesses boost their online visibility, resulting in more leads. When well nurtured, these leads can turn to paying customers.
SEO can also help improve brand visibility. By creating quality content and optimizing your website for keywords related to your business, you can claim the top spot on Google.
Does SEO really work for small businesses?
Yes, SEO works for small businesses. It helps increase website visibility, drive sales, and boost brand awareness. SEO for small businesses also helps in building credibility and authority.
Is SEO worth it for a small business?
Yes, SEO is worth it for small businesses thanks to the long-term benefits it offers. This includes driving traffic to your website, improving user experience, and offering you a competitive edge over your competitors.
