SEO FOR SMALL BUSINESSES MADE SIMPLE
First of all, these techniques don’t strictly apply to all small businesses, the art of SEO is exactly that. it’s an art. Each business is different and therefore some elements will have and need unique approaches to their service or product types. Some parts of SEO require technical knowledge and others less so. This list is a good foundation on which to build your learning and understanding when taking on SEO for yourself, should you need support or want more expert advice you can check out my SEO Services.
SEO FOR BEGINNERS
1. Find Keywords Google Attributes To Your Site
This is a good first step for any SEO beginner, Use the free Google Keyword Planner tool to help you, input your website’s home page URL and review the keyword ideas Google provides
2. Optimize Content With Relevant Long-tail Keywords
A long-tail keyword phrase has more than two or three words, and shorter keywords are usually highly competitive, which means that other businesses are spending a lot of effort and money getting them to rank and have probably been doing so for quite some time ahead of you. SEO for beginners starts with choosing battles you can win. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for and can drive just as much traffic to your website.
3. Get Keyword Ideas From Customers
Carefully optimize your website with keywords that matter to your business. create a cloud of related relevant keywords your customers use to describe your business, product, or services by asking them face to face, on a website form, or in an email survey. By taking the time to learn this information you can then structure your content around it. Use the same terms they use to describe you on your site optimising the chance of you popping up when they and others like them, use these words and phrases to search for you or even businesses like you.
4. Do Basic On-Page Optimization
After your target keyword study is complete and you have identified your best keyword terms, make sure they’re included in your on-page SEO. This covers the title of your webpage, the body copy of your page, and if possible, the URL. Google uses advanced algorithms to understand your content, not just keywords, but it still helps to make it really clear your page is about a specific keyword.
- A Web page’s title tag is the most important SEO element. Write the main keyword phrase in the beginning of the page title tag. Keep your tags within 64 characters so they show up fully in a Google search result and check all website pages use unique page title tags.
- Meta description tags help attract visitors from the search results page. Include one or two keyword phrases that describe the page’s content, and keep meta descriptions under 160 characters.
- The H1 tag is the header of the page. “Have only one H1 tag per page. This header needs to appeal to the page visitor and describe the page
- Use the page’s designated keyword phrase at least once near the beginning of the content, and also anywhere it makes sense. Don’t use the keyword phrase, its variation or a synonym more than 4-5 times per page
- Alt tags are the floating descriptions that show up when you mouse over an image. It’s usually best practice to use keywords and their variations in the alt text of an image, and also in the image filename
5. Produce Good Content
Really take the time to plan and write content that in your mind will serve your customer, visitor potential client. make it clear to understand, engaging if you can, and link to other useful related content within or off your site where applicable. Try to seek out others to do the same and work together. Many people have seen the benefit of working with other related businesses that produce content and backlink to each other but be careful, some of these have also experienced penalties or spent countless hours building links to no avail. Make sure the content and websites you work with are relatable and the copy blog is good useful content Also, the link itself should not be the goal. While the importance of backlinks has certainly dropped, a high-quality content link is still powerful.
6. Set Up Google Alerts – Track Mentions Of Your Company
This will direct you to find out when you are mentioned online, once you come across a mention, reach out to the journalist or blogger in question to thank them for mentioning your company and to ask them to please consider linking to you in their article.
7. Get Involved On Social Media Sites
Google tracks how well you’re interacting in the social machine, it doesn’t appreciate websites and owners who remain distant from the rest of the social networking sites. The number of likes, comments, shares, and replies is all being watched by Google
This will direct you to find out when you are mentioned online, Once you come across a mention, reach out to the journalist or blogger in question to thank them for mentioning your company and to ask them to please consider linking to you in their article.
8. Use Or Switch to a WordPress Website
WordPress has evolved from a blogging platform to become the content management system of choice in the world’s web design area. One of the big reasons WordPress is favored is because of its flexibility with many free plug-ins. If you’re doing your own SEO, a WordPress site will save you lots of time, energy, and money. One such plugin is Yoast’s SEO Plugin (free edition) although you can also pay for extra features its free service suits just about any small business getting started in SEO. It’s a personal favorite of mine and I recommend it to my clients because it allows the automation and easy integration of important SEO strategies.
9. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly
Again this is where WordPress sways a huge advantage, If you have built your website on WordPress and find your theme is not a responsive design, change to a responsive web design theme or if you are on an older HTML static website build a new responsive website now and begin the reap the benefits and advantages a new responsive web design can offer you
“Responsive design” means it automatically adapts for optimal display on smartphones and tablets, as well as computers. This may be out of your skillset, but it’s important to find someone who can help. Mobile-friendly web design and Responsive web design are not always the exact same thing.
Since 2016, Google has favored sites that expand and contract to the varying and ever-growing screen sizes of mobile devices, if your site is responsive it may appear ahead of nonresponsive websites in mobile search results. If your site appears small on-screen or with elements off the page because it does not “respond” and adapt its own display it is unappealing on mobile devices and makes for a bad user experience. If your website does not respond to screen sizes, people can’t read it and leave quickly (bounce) this tells google your site isn’t liked and in turn, also affects your ranking.
I leave you with some homework, check out MOZ’s beginner’s guide to SEO, It’s not an exciting read, to be honest, but Moz is a leading authority on the topic and the advice is solid.
