Are you a small business owner who wants to generate more leads or sales and wonders how to improve SEO for small business website?
Undoubtedly, digital marketing is a vast field that can help you gain visibility from the target audience.
But what’s the point of creating an eye-pleasing, beautiful website if your customers can’t find it?
Among various online marketing methods out there, SEO (search engine optimization) is considered one of the best ones. The reason is SEO is not just cost-effective but result-effective as well.
SEO is a way to help customers find your website when they search on major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It is a long-term process, but it’s worth it. Once you implement the SEO strategy the right way, it can help you generate a good amount of inbound traffic consistently.
In this post, we will walk you through a step-by-step SEO guide so that you can drive more organic traffic to your small business.
No matter whether you are a dentist, contractor, doctor, wellness coach, lawyer, real estate agent, or any other local business owner, properly executing the below points would help you improve your website SEO.
How To Improve SEO for Your Small Business?
For small business owners, SEO can play a crucial role in generating more sales and revenue. Here are the ways you can improve the SEO of your small business:
1. Find the right keywords
Keyword research is one of the most essential parts of the entire SEO process. It is the foundation of SEO. If you are not giving the best on this step, your entire SEO strategy will fall apart. Not picking the right keywords means you may end up selecting keywords with too little volume, too much competition, or wrong intent. As a result, you will have difficulty ranking for the relevant keywords, and there is a high chance that you may end up ranking for the wrong phrases.
That’s why keyword research and mapping need to be an important part of your SEO strategy. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to discover keywords relevant to your industry and audience. Consider long-tail keywords that reflect specific user queries. Incorporate these keywords naturally into your website’s content, including titles, headings, meta descriptions, and body text.
2. Focus on link building
Link building is also an important part of SEO. It is nothing but getting links back from high-authority websites. When it comes to link building, your focus should be on quality, not on quantity. Over time, Google has made so many changes to its algorithm. Getting links from low-authority websites in bulk doesn’t have any SEO benefit.
So, develop a robust link-building strategy by obtaining backlinks from authoritative and relevant websites. Guest posting, partnerships, and collaborations within your industry can help acquire quality backlinks.
3. Publish high-quality content
If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, publishing high-quality content consistently is a must. You want to make sure you create and publish content that resonates with your target audience. You can draft informative blog posts, articles, videos, or infographics that address their pain points, offer solutions, or provide valuable information. Consistency in publishing and maintaining quality will not only engage your audience but also attract organic traffic.
4. Social media
Properly leveraging various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can also benefit in terms of SEO. More than Google, Bing gives more priority to social signals. Utilize social media platforms to promote your content and engage with your audience. Share your blog posts, updates, and valuable industry insights. Encourage sharing, comments, and discussions to increase brand visibility and drive traffic back to your website.
5. Ensure user-friendliness
Your website needs to be user-friendly, and it’s an important ranking factor. Users visiting your website should not face any difficulty in terms of navigation, speed, responsiveness, etc. Improve site speed, ensure mobile responsiveness, and simplify navigation. Make content easily accessible and readable. A good user experience encourages visitors to stay longer on your site, reducing bounce rates and improving search engine rankings.
6. Fix technical issues
Make sure you perform your website’s technical audit on a regular basis. This way, you can find technical issues and quickly fix those issues. Technical fixes include resolving broken links, fixing crawl errors, and eliminating duplicate content. Apart from this, it also includes implementing structured data markup to help search engines understand your content better. Also, ensure your website is secure by using HTTPS. To perform a technical audit, you can use NxtGen’s free website SEO report or a tool like Screaming Frog for detailed analysis.
7. Optimize on-page elements
Optimize on-page elements for each page of your website. On-page factors are performed within the website. These include crafting compelling title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and permalinks and incorporating relevant keywords. Use alt tags to describe images, improving accessibility and search visibility.
8. Setup GBP
If you have a physical location for your small business, it’s highly recommended that you set up your GBP (Google Business Profile). This way, you can increase your chances of getting more leads. Setting up GBP can help you generate leads from your website as well as your GBP listing.
Google Business Profile optimization includes adding profile titles, descriptions, categories, business hours, photos, videos, etc. Encourage customer reviews as they can positively impact local search rankings.
9. Don’t overstuff keywords
The mistake we often see many people make is that they overdo keyword optimization. While using keywords is essential, avoid overusing them. For the sake of using the targeted keywords, you don’t want to ruin the content flow. Maintain a natural flow of language within your content. Focus on providing value to your readers rather than stuffing keywords unnaturally, which can harm user experience and SEO rankings.
10. Track results
Regularly monitor your website’s performance using tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and SEMrush. You want to monitor your desired keyword positions, traffic, backlink profile, etc. Analyze traffic, keyword performance, user behaviour, and conversion rates. Use these insights to fine-tune your SEO strategy, adapting it based on what works best for your business.
Final Thoughts
Unlike other marketing methods, SEO is not a one-time task. It’s not like you can execute the strategy once and start generating massive organic traffic. It’s an ongoing journey that requires constant effort.
Consistency, adaptability, and a willingness to evolve with changing algorithms and user behaviours are key. Embrace analytics to track progress, learn from insights, and refine strategies accordingly.
As a small business owner, you should look at SEO as a way to connect with your target audience and not to climb search rankings. Providing high-quality content, optimizing your website for users as well as search engines, and getting links from authoritative sites would ultimately help you get more organic traffic.
