Six Website Tips For Small Business SEO Success

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The Latest Small Business SEO Tips & Tricks You Need to Know Now

A massive 99.7% of US companies are classed as small businesses. That’s a whole lot of companies out there, trying to get their message across. So how can you compete with the big players, and get your message across using your website? Here are our top tips for making a big splash, using small business SEO.

Your Website is Your Foundation

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is what gets your website found.

SEO is complex, and it changes frequently – and you need to use different SEO tactics for your small business.

No matter what you do, you have to always remember that the foundation of your business online is your website.

Your ability to improve your business’ online visibility will always be predicated on the foundation its built upon.

This, in turn, means, that it is imperative to always have your website optimized for SEO.

Small Business SEO Tips

Laser Focus

You need to take some time to think about what is really unique about your business.

Are there services you provide that are specific to your area?

Do you serve a particular niche?

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, and think about what they get from you that they don’t get other places.

Furthermore, think about each stage of your customer’s buying cycle and make sure your content addresses the pain points of each stage.

Localized Keyword Research

Do your research so you know what your visitors enter into a search engine so they can find your site. You’re particularly looking for ‘long-tail keywords‘ which are often complete phrases that searchers use, for example, ‘Air conditioning service in Ohio’.

The advantage here is that there are likely to be thousands of businesses like yours around the world, but using small business SEO and adding in your location you are helping more local customers to find you.

Great Content

Once you’ve determined who is your target market(s), and the keyword phrases they use to find your goods and services, you need to have great content and information that capitalizes on these things.

Remember, the goal of search engines is to help their user find the information they are looking for.

They’ve developed complex algorithms that work out the site that is offering the best information.

One way they do that is by judging the quality of your content.

If you create quality service and product pages, blog posts, and articles that are genuinely useful for your customers, you will rank better on Google.

Latent Semantic Indexing

The algorithms judge your content using ‘latent semantic indexing’ (LSI), that’s where they know that if you’re writing about catering, you’re also likely to include words like, ‘menu, buffet, waitresses’, etc.

Featured Snippets

One of the latest SEO ideas is this: If you include questions in your post (with the H2 tag) and the answer beneath, you could get chosen for the ‘featured answer’ slot on the search page, putting you in prime position to grab that customer.

That likelihood increases if you have that page coded in structured data like Schema markup.

User Experience

Here’s some small business SEO to know – the more users that click on your links, and stay longer and engage deeper on your site, the higher your site will rise in the rankings.

That’s because of search engines like Google and Bing! etc. realize that you have something their users want. 

So how can you make sure you get chosen?

Looking the Part

Branding

Like a good book, you need a great cover. A good first impression goes a long way in helping your brand and business gain acceptance by your target markets.

Investing in branding, including your logo and website, will help lure people in.

Page Formatting

Formatting your page content properly will help visitors stay and engage with your content.

Use headers and plenty of white space between sentences and paragraphs  

By using headers and avoiding congested-looking page content, users will know at a glance whether or not this page is helpful for their immediate need. This will increase user engagement.

A clean and fresh layout will encourage visitors to stay on your site for longer and that will help your page get recognized and referred by the search engines.

Intuitive Site Architecture

Lo and behold, the easier and more intuitive a site is to navigate, the better the user experience. The better the user experience, the lower the bounce rate. The lower the bounce rate, the better your website ranks in search engine results pages.

So it’s imperative that your site is designed and structured in a way that encourages visitors to engage further with your great content.

Features such as header and footer menus, breadcrumb navigation, internal linking, and clear CTAs (calls to action) are all elements of a good user-experience focused website.

Small Doesn’t Mean Invisible

Using these small business SEO techniques, tips and tricks will help you to become more visible. While it can be tough to compete, as a small business, SEO is there to help.

Think local, focus on your customers, and make sure your site is top-notch and you shouldn’t have any problem attracting visitors and converting them into customers.

And if we can help? Get in touch today.