SEO for small businesses is a process to optimize and improve ranking online. It helps search engines like Google to properly understand your pages, content, and listings to better rank them for relevant search queries.
It’s an organic way to improve your online presence, improve brand awareness, and drive consistent quality traffic to your doorstep. Further, it’ll help generate qualified leads that can increase your sales & revenue. Here are a few DIY tips that small businesses can implement right away:
4 DIY Tips Small Businesses Can Implement to Improve Their SEO & Ranking
1) Optimize Local Web Presence
Most of the sales for small businesses come from their local customers. Thus, it makes sense to optimize your local web presence. It starts with adding and claiming your Google Business Profile. Once you’ve claimed & verified your GBP, update business info like Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP), working hours, and location marker.
Build more local citations and links for your GBP profile. Next is to encourage and incentivize customers to leave a review. These are the most used local SEO ranking factors and conversion factors as described in this infographic on local SEO. Local SEO Ranking Factor
2) Optimize Website with Keywords
Keywords are search terms that customers use to find your small business online. Including relevant keywords that your target audience uses to find services similar to yours can help improve your rankings.
What else you can do is research long-tail, LSI, and location-specific keywords using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or others. Prepare a list of keywords in excel that you can use when optimizing your website content.
You can also use keyword research tools to determine your competitors’ keywords. That way, you can get ideas on the best topics to write about to stay ahead.
Meanwhile, data analytics tools can help you track your keyword performance, allowing you toleverage them better in your SEO and content marketing campaigns.
3) Write Content That Aligns With Your Brand
Content marketing and incorporating different content types help boost the visibility of your small business across the internet. Research & write content about what you offer to your customers, best practices to use your products/services, create expert local guides and how-to content, and also, incorporate videos.
Another benefit of content marketing is you can target additional keywords that were previously not targeted and rank high for them on Google.
Diversifying your content is a great way to do it, allowing you to cater to wider audiences andgain the attention of search engine bots. You can create a FAQ page, write how-to guides, upload audio content, or publish video tutorials and infographics optimized for SEO. This strategy is effective in boosting your traffic and conversion rates.
4) Improve Page Experience
According to Matt Jackson, internal links help reduce bounce rate, which is vital for SEO and user experience. These links help improve your website’s credibility, making your content a helpful resource for online users.
When you provide high-authority, relevant internal links to your content, online users will likely use your web pages again because of the richness and breadth of the info you offer. They don’t have to go elsewhere to clarify jargon or seek more details about a certain topic related to your brand. You already provide them with everything they need to answer their online query.
Aside from link building, you can also improve user experience by determining and implementing page signals.
Last year, Google announced that its page experience update will introduce a set of new ranking factors. This includes Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, & CLS), Mobile-friendliness, site security, and no intrusive interstitials.
Each ranking signal holds a significant value for improving the page experience. You can evaluate the page experience of your website pages through tools like PageSpeed Insights, Mobile-friendly test, Lighthouse, etc. These tools provide you with insights on how you can improve your page experience and ultimately rankings for your website.
Conclusion
Small businesses can do SEO themselves if only they have the right knowledge and best practices to follow. However, the process is time-consuming and outcomes may not be as per your expectations. Thus, you’ll have to keep up with the industry trends and bring in the right dedicated team to work on your small business SEO requirements.
