Small Business SEO: Best Tips Foster Business Growth

  SEO

 16 Feb, 2024

small-business-seo

Introduction to Small Business SEO:

Are you a small business owner looking to get started with local SEO? But don’t know much about small business SEO? What can make your website more visible?

Marketing is difficult and when it comes to digital marketing it gets even more complex. As there are more than 1.88 billion small business websites, all are battling for better visibility. And here the SEO role comes into the marketing frame to help businesses gain that visibility. Well, you may be new to digital marketing or not very much familiar with Search Engine Optimization(SEO), so, in simple words, SEO is a set of practices designed to improve the visibility and positioning of web pages in organic search results.

Earlier, corporate executives saw search engine optimization just as a strategy rather than a necessity for online success. But with the growing competitiveness of the digital landscape, SEO efforts are becoming a cornerstone for most major corporations or big businesses to stand out in the ocean of content on the Internet. But SEO isn’t only for big businesses. 

In this digital landscape, many small businesses/startups launch but unfortunately fail to ever survive, a very few make it to the five-year mark. For small businesses, it is tough to stand in the market of mixed players but, as a small company or a local business, there’s a lot that you can achieve by leveraging small business SEO. 

Scratch your head thinking “Why to choose SEO only?”

And here we have a justified answer for you with some great stats proving how small business SEO is undeniably the best approach to growing your business and why this is the right time to go with that.

53% of shoppers always do research online before making any purchase.

45% of small businesses don’t have a website.

Even in this digital age when any piece of information is just a click away, almost half of the small businesses don’t have a website, won’t they be missing out on a massive amount of referrals from search engines like Google? Lost sales for them could be an opportunity for you to get more business.

This ultimate guide to small business SEO will help you know everything about small business SEO services and guide you on how to make the most of local searches by walking you through the essential steps.

Let’s take a deep dive in to understand more about small business SEO.

What is Small Business SEO & How it Affects Local Search Ranking factors?

Small Business SEO is nothing but the set of practices that help small businesses to truly succeed in this search landscape and help you convert more clicks to customers as well, so this is a sensible all-around approach for fast business growth organically.

Small businesses SEO Services mainly focused on-

  • Business Website- A business must have a well-structured, fast, mobile-friendly website.
  • Compelling Content- Your content should be unique & demonstrative enough to give your customer a reason why they should choose you over competitors.
  • Content marketing- Right content marketing strategy can put you in front of a wider and potential audience.
  • On-page Optimization- Basic SEO optimization of the website is important so think page titles and meta descriptions.
  • Local SEO Practices- Local businesses need to consider local SEO best practices like Google My Business(GMB).
  • Authority Building- Internal & external Linking is still highly correlated with strong search engine results.
  • Credibility Building- Case studies, portfolios, reviews, and testimonials help in building brand credibility and clinching the deal.

Now, let's see how small business SEO affects local search ranking.

Factors Affecting Local Search Ranking

There are four main ranking factors search engines  takes into account while deciding what to rank in a local search result:

  • Is your website up to the mark, meeting Google algorithmic standards?
  • Where is your business setup located? Is that local to the person who is searching?
  • Is your product/ services relevant to what the person is searching for?
  • Do you have a good digital presence and online reputation?

So, any business when it meets scale in all these aspects will promptly gain more visibility in the local search rather than those that don’t.

If you want to start optimizing your business website in order to rank better, but you are not sure where to start, feel free to reach our small business SEO service consultant

How Small Business SEO Services Benefits Small Businesses?

Small business SEO, or search engine optimization, often takes time to nurture and give real business beneficial results —sometimes up to 12 months or a little more. But once achieved it can drive stable revenue with very little intervention with lasting benefits that can completely overhaul a small business’s bottom line. Let’s see the big benefits of small business SEO.

Big Benefits From Small Business SEO

  1. Help you build brand awareness
  2. Make your website faster and more convenient
  3. Help you gain a competitive edge
  4. Improve your conversion rates
  5. Extend your reach to new potential customers
  6. SEO will get you more targeted traffic
  7. Provide a cost-effective approach for branding your business
  8. Provide long-lasting results

SEO Services for Small Business?

  • High Quality Content Marketing
  • Perform Competition Research
  • Keyword Research To Technical

Small Business SEO Tips to Get Your Site Rank Higher

  1. Set Up Google Analytics & Search Console
  2. Strong Your Keyword Research
  3. Study Your SERP Competitors
  4. Plan Your Site Structure 
  5. Find & Fix Basic SEO Issues
  6. Create Great Content That Communicates well
  7. Optimize Meta Tags & Title Tags
  8. Create Relevant Online Listings for Your Business
  9. Build High Authority & Relevant Links
  10. Set up your  Google My Business Profile

1. Set Up Google Search Console & Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a tool that helps you track website traffic and conversions, see growth, and understand how its audience behaves on using your site.

Google Search Console helps you, monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results.

Google Search Console and Google Analytics are powerful tools that can help you track progress & gain real insights about user behavior and your website performance. Based on that you can make the right decisions to increase your website's visibility.  And the great thing is that you don’t need to pay a single penny because both are available free of charge.

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and get these set up for your business today and gain business-driven insights. Check how to set up Google Analytics for a website.

2. Strengthen Your Keyword Research

“Keyword” refers to the words and phrases that people enter into a search engine to find relevant information that they're looking for. Strong keyword research provides you with specific search data that can help you know: What are people searching for? And help you gain insights like- where you rank for keywords, which keywords are easy to rank for, and which keywords your competitors are ranking for.

The power of keyword research lies merely in a great understanding of your target market and how they are searching for your content, services, or products. So for strong keyword research first figure out your target market, use the best keyword research tools and study your competitor’s keywords that they are ranking for.

3. Study Your SERP Competitors

Studying SERP competitors enables you to identify market gaps and how tough your competitors are, how they are marketing their products and services, and what keywords they are ranking for. All this helps you identify specific and unique traits that are appealing to customers. 

Identifying and harnessing these traits will enable you to market your business more effectively than your competitors and bring in potential customers. Over time, this will help you improve your own marketing position and drive more business.

Read more on how to study competitor analysis.

4. Plan Your Site Structure 

Site structure is a vital aspect of your small business SEO for both its usability and organic findability. Many sites lack a well planned and organized structure to guide visitors to the information they're looking for generally suffers a high bounce rate and result in a lower ranking on SERP. Having a clear site structure also leads to a better understanding of your site by Google, as it indicates to Google which pages of your site are most important. And accordingly Google crawlers crawl and rank your site pages.  This clearly means your  site's structure influences your search engine ranking.

Once you are done with keyword research, take the time to map out the website pages that you need based on your keyword research, as well as carefully consider your customers' engagement behavior with your business.

5. Find & Fix Basic SEO Issues

Once you have the right site structure and list of potential keywords, next you have to optimize your website and fix some basic issues like- Broken links, a slow site speed, sitemap errors, duplicate content, improper meta details, and many more. Any of these technical issues could prevent your site from getting ranking high.

Here you might wonder how to find and fix those issues? So, first, you need to perform an SEO audit of your website, using any Site Audit tool for the same. Once the tool crawls your site, it will present all the issues with a dashboard of recommendations.

As shown in the image below.

If you are not technically very sound, looking for a trustable small business SEO company for small business SEO services, feel free to reach our consultant.

6. Create Great Content That Communicates well

In 1996, Bill Gates wrote an essay and coined the phrase that “content is king”, so why does he call it the king? A unique high-quality, interesting, and relevant content holds visitor attention and contributes significantly to the success of companies on the Internet.

Google values its customers and is committed to delivering a good user experience. Content is one of Google's top three ranking factors, and it often affects your visibility online. 

Content not only helps users to easily understand your offering in a more effective way and but it also helps search engines to understand what your page is about. When it comes to creating content, think carefully about your target audiences, what they expect from your brand. Content provides a great way to educate users about your product, inform them of how your business can assist them. So make sure to have unique high-quality content. Or you can go for any good small business SEO companies that provide content writing services under their package.

7. Optimize Meta Tags & Title Tags

Meta tags are invisible tags that provide data about your web page to search engines and website visitors and make it easier for search engines to determine what your content is about, and thus are vital for small business SEO.

Title tags are displayed above each listing on Google. 

Meta descriptions are the lines displayed next to the title tags, providing more information about a web page.

While writing meta tags & title tags make sure to use target keywords in titles with words like how, why, what, and where - to help people understand what they will find on the page. And making your meta description meaningful and descriptive, matching your content, sounds like giving a solution to their pain point will help you gain more traction.

8. Create Relevant Online Listings for Your Business

Getting your business listed on relevant niche directories and local listings sites can help you to build relevant links while appearing on pages that rank on Google. But here you have to make sure your business details are accurate on different online web directories and listing websites.

When your online listings are correct and consistent, it signals to search engines that your business is legitimate and trusted. And when search engines like Google and Bing trust your business and improve visibility organically, more customers will see it in search results, resulting in a lot more relevant traffic to your websites, even if they don't search by your brand name directly.

9. Build High Authority & Relevant Links

Link building is one of the best small business SEO practices and the most important ranking factor for Google. Sites with high authority backlinks gain more credibility and trust. Another important aspect of link quality is relevance, it is not just about getting links but it should be relevant to the particular niche. If a website gets a backlink from a  relevant niche website, the link's vote will be worth more.

Quality backlinks are from high domain authority websites, they are also more valuable than other backlinks. The more high-authority backlinks you build, the better your rankings will be and yes don’t forget about relevancy.

10. Set up your  Google My Business Profile

Have you ever heard about GMB or “Google My Business”? Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations providing the ability to list your business location on Google Maps and local search results. Using Google My Business profile, you can display all necessary information about your business, including the opening/closing times, contact details, or a link to your website. It also helps customers find your business easily, and to tell them your story, you can verify your business and edit your business information at your convenience. 

You can read more about  Google My Business here.

Hope the Small Business SEO tips described help you to get your site rank higher. So to help you more, next we have curated a list of the best small business SEO tools that you can start with.

List of best SEO tools For Small Business SEO

How to Choose The Best Small Business SEO Company?

Here are some best practices to help you choose a good small business SEO company-

1. Look at the SEO agency’s past performance to determine if their small business SEO services drive meaningful results for their previous clients.

2. Check their references and client reviews to judge their satisfaction level with the provided small business SEO services. 

3. Deep dive into their portfolio and case studies. Case studies to understand how they deal with different challenges and help client businesses to meet the market expectations. and their portfolios are more like their work samples to help you make sure that the company is not like a few other small business SEO companies that claim to be best but fail to deliver result-driven quality small business SEO services.

4. Ask past or current clients about their experience as it can help you gain the company’s performance insights. You can learn about their small business SEO service including their strengths and weaknesses, plus you can preview their strategic approach and reporting process.

5. Meet the SEO company and ask the following small business SEO service-related questions. After the above four steps, still, if something made you scratch your head. Curate a list of questions before fixing the meeting their contact person like-

  • What will be your approach to delivering results?
  • How will you adapt that strategy to our business?
  • What metrics define “success” for you?
  • How long will it take to see expected results?
  • What would be your approach for mobile users?
  • What would be your approach for conducting keyword research?
  • What would be your approach for link-building and influencer marketing?
  • What SEO tools do you use?
  • What all do you cover under your small business SEO services?
  • What would be your format to generate reports?
  • What are your charges for small business SEO services?
  • How do you stay up-to-date with Google updates and meet industry demand and changes?

Avoid these major mistakes while choosing a small business SEO company

  • Choosing “cheap” SEO services
  • Browsing only local SEO companies only
  • Agreed upon black-hat SEO practices

Final Thoughts On Small Business SEO Services

In this digital evolution era, SEO becomes more important than ever. And when it comes to small businesses, it is ever more important for fast business growth. Although it doesn’t work overnight and takes a comparatively long time to bring results. But once achieved it not only drives stable revenue but strengthens your market and online presence as well.

If you don’t have enough time and aren’t confident in your abilities to execute SEO practices properly, outsourcing small business SEO services might be the best choice for you. JanBask is a leading small business SEO expert serving the industry for more than a decade. Our team works closely with clients, and adapt tested approaches that align with the company’s objectives. We ensure to deliver result-oriented small business SEO services to meet your business goals with the industry’s leading best SEO practices.

If you still have any questions about how SEO can boost digital visibility and attract more leads in a sustainable, long-term strategy, feel free to reach us.

Have you found this small business SEO service-based article helpful? Don’t forget to comment below!!

SEO Services for Small Business?

  • High Quality Content Marketing
  • Perform Competition Research
  • Keyword Research To Technical

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Cruz Peterson

Hi there! I am impressed with the information your team has mentioned in the above article. As I was looking out for similar information related to SEO tools and ways to use them. Thanks a lot!

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Malakai Sanders

I am convinced by you regarding choosing cheap SEO services but How to do that? I am not finding a way to choose cheap SEO services for better outcomes.