Small Business SEO - 5 Simple Tips For Your Website

When setting up any business it’s important to consider how your potential customers will find you. Word of mouth is a good start, but it’s highly unlikely that your enterprise will reach its full potential without some sort of website.

Creating a website is one thing, but getting it to appear in Google search results is another. There comes the issue of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

The fact that there are hundreds of agencies dedicated to helping companies improve their SEO performance shows what a large area it covers. For any small business, whether you offer a dog walking service, are a massage therapist or personal trainer, it is sometimes ideal to employ an agency to give you a helping hand when it comes to SEO.

However, there are things you can do yourself to give your website the best chance of succeeding. Here are our top 5 things to remember when creating your SEO strategy.

Make use of free tools

You don’t have to splash thousands of pounds on working with an agency to get some handle on your website’s SEO performance. There are an abundance of free tools available to use. You can even find paid-for tools offering free trials.

To rank well on Google, it’s probably best to start off by listening to what Google is telling you. By registering for Google My Business, you can put your services on the map (literally). You can then get an insight into what phrases your website is or isn’t ranking for.

Other products such as SEM Rush and Moz offer free trials, though you may be interested in a paid-for account. If you are running a WordPress website for your business, Yoast SEO is a free plug-in that helps you to ensure your web pages are optimised in the backend.

Do your keyword research

Probably the fundamental aspect of getting your website to rank, is to know which keywords to target. If you are a personal trainer, it’s no good simply targeting the phrase ‘personal trainer’ with the text on your website. The competition is simply too high for a small business to thrive on that alone.

Instead, use Google’s Keyword Planner to find out which phrases that might be relative to your business are searched for regularly. Just put your business name in and the services you are offering and Google will give you a list of potential words to target.

Another option is Answer The Public which will give a list of common search terms in relation to your query. Remember, the content on your website should go about answering a search query or providing the perfect response for the user.

Build up a list of keywords and try and put together plenty of content on your website relevant to those queries. Don’t simply stuff dozens and dozens of keywords into your text though, Google is smarter than that. Ensure the content you provide is relevant whilst keyword rich.

Don't underestimate the power of a blog

One way of presenting this extra information on your website is through a blog. Regular posts not only give you a chance to improve keyword references on your website but also help improve your perceived kudos among your potential customers.

Find out what questions your clients and potential clients commonly have and set out to answer them. By becoming a source of knowledge on your business area, you can improve your credibility as a professional within your industry.

New content is also a good pointer for a positive SEO strategy. Google doesn’t like stale content or websites that can quickly be out of date. Instead try to keep your site as fresh as you can, with regular, relevant content.

Seek out link building opportunities

Having links from outside your business to your website tell Google that there is some value in what you are saying. For example, if a high-ranking dog care website referenced your blog on dog walking locations in the UK, Google could judge your page to be a good source for the relevant topic.

‘Link Juice’, a theoretical measure of your website’s strength will be awarded off the back of links to your pages. By attempting to build up a bank of links from good, spam-free websites to your page can help your Google ranking.

Produce some good content and do some outreach to websites that have something in common with you to see if they will link to your piece or website.

SEO is not all about just what your visitors see

What you write on your website will no doubt be a major part of your SEO strategy, but it’s not the be-all-and-end-all. Some knowledge of what is required in the backend of your website will help you succeed.

Two things to remember relate to the ‘Tags’ that you place on your website content. Firstly, when uploading any imagery to your website, ensure you specify an ‘Alt Tag’. This should tell Google, and anyone using a screen reader for the visually impaired exactly what you are showing on your site.

Secondly, ‘Meta Tags’ and ‘Meta Descriptions’ do essentially the same thing for the page as a whole. These tags are what shows on Google search results. They should be informative, feature the keywords you are trying to target and perfectly sum up what’s on the page.

Having some idea of SEO principles when creating your website is a great way to help your site rank in Google. With businesses set out to guide other enterprises through their SEO development it is clearly a huge area. But by taking these simple steps your website should start off on the right track.

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