Small business SEO checklist: How to improve your rankings
As a small business owner, you have to contend with competing against larger businesses in your sector in Google’s search results. At times, it probably feels like an impossible task. It’s not. Sure, it’s difficult – but not impossible. If you’re looking to improve your small business SEO and improve your rankings, here’s my easy-to-follow list of different areas of SEO that you can focus on to start rising up the rankings.
Improving your SEO rankings as a small business
Ask yourself: How will customers benefit from your service or product?
Your target audience should be at the centre of your SEO strategy. Without audience research, you’re unlikely to make an impact in search and are more likely to waste your valuable time (not to mention, money). Always check the data when it comes to creating SEO content – write blog posts and articles specifically targeting what users are already searching for.
If your product or service can help the customer in some way, shout about it.
Keyword research
Any SEO for small businesses should start with:
Finding target keywords that match the buyer’s intent
Looking at what your competition is trying to rank for in search results
To do keyword research well, you’re not just trying to get your small business to rank on Google – you’re aiming to bring good quality traffic to your small business website. Good quality traffic = more opportunity to convert visitors into customers.
Once you know a buyer’s search intent – be it informational or transactional – you have a greater chance to determine which keywords you need to optimise for.
Competitor keywords and analysis
Whenever I work with clients on an SEO copywriting project, I always ask to see any competitor analysis. For small businesses, this can be a vital part of their SEO strategy – especially if your business is niche or the sector is small. Finding out what keywords your competitors are ranking for allows you to look for opportunities – and, eventually, decide on which search terms you’re aiming to rank for.
Optimise your pages
If the website pages of a small business are well-optimised, they stand a better chance of competing with larger companies for higher ranking positions. Optimising your pages does not mean stuffing your keywords into every page as much as possible – Google doesn’t like that, and nor do readers. Rather, it is about using every reasonable opportunity to add your target keywords to your site.
To optimise your pages for SEO, you should:
Write interesting meta titles and descriptions
Update body content to ensure it contains relevant keywords and flows well
Use your target keywords in image and video alt tags
Use relevant internal links
Not sure how to optimise your small business SEO for Google? As an SEO copywriter for small businesses, I can help. Get in touch.
Fix any technical SEO issues
Although your website might look good at the front end, often there are technical issues lurking behind the scenes which negatively affect SEO for small businesses. So before you begin adding SEO content to your site, it’s worth fixing any problems.
Some of the most common technical SEO problems to consider are:
Speed of site
Broken links or 404 page errors
Duplicate content
Poor Robots.txt file
If you’re looking to improve your small business’s SEO, you will need to optimise the technical elements of your site. By doing so, search engines can better index and crawl your site, which will have a positive impact on search results. I also advise new small business clients to invest in a quick SEO audit, as this can help to identify problems sooner rather than later.
Get local links
Link building remains a part of any small business SEO strategy. If you are a small business owner, have you ever considered getting links from websites in your local area? If not, those links can help you to improve your rankings, so it’s definitely worth thinking about now!
If you are a popular business in an active community, it’s likely that other businesses will be happy to link to your site – and often, all you need to do to make it happen is to ask them.
Ask for reviews
Plenty of online users look for product and service reviews before considering a purchase. Reviews are especially important for small businesses, as they have to work harder at building a positive reputation, compared with larger companies (sad, but true).
One of the best ways to increase the number of reviews you receive is to give customers an incentive to leave a review. Once they do review you, make sure you respond. It is your chance to show new visitors that your small business is run by people who prioritise their customers.
Need SEO content for your small business? Get in touch.
