This blog will give you an insight about how optimising your website for search engine optimisation (SEO) can help your website be found on search engines. We will also be sharing some tips on how to optimise your website.
Small Business SEO
You might hear a lot about SEO and think it might just be for big businesses. Maybe you think it’s too expensive for a small business, or not very effective. But that’s absolutely not the case. SEO is as, or even more important, for small businesses than large businesses. We’ll tell you why later in this article. But first, what is SEO?
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. Search engine optimisation is how your website increases both the quantity and quality of website traffic by increasing a website’s ranking in search engines. The goal of SEO is to gain a higher search engine ranking and more organic traffic for a website.
Why Is SEO Important for Small Businesses?
If you want potential customers to find your business online, SEO is one of the most effective ways to help. By optimising your small business website for search engines, more people will find your business. Good SEO practices are less expensive than running pay-per-click ads or other costly advertising campaigns.
How Much Does Small Business SEO Cost?
There is no set answer for this, however, we can tell you that the cost of optimising your small business website for search engines depends on several factors. Here are some of the factors that can affect that cost of SEO for your small business:
Your Industry
If you’re in a highly competitive industry for search engine traffic, the cost of SEO for your business might be higher. As a small business, you are most likely not in a highly competitive search traffic industry, which means it may not be as expensive as you might think to hire an SEO agency.
Your Target Audience
The bigger and broader the audience you’re trying to reach is, the more expensive SEO services can be. As a small business, you most likely have a smaller target audience, so this will probably not cost you as much money!
Your Location
The cost of SEO for your business also can depend on where you’re located – and how many locations you have. If you need to optimise websites for several different locations in several different cities, the price of SEO services increases, however, as a small business, you likely will not encounter these high prices.
Tips for Small Business SEO
Local SEO
The number one tip for small business SEO is practice local SEO. Small business SEO and local SEO are very closely related. Local SEO is the technique brick and mortar local businesses utilise to help connect with potential customers in their area.
So how do you practice local SEO? The first step is to list yourself as a local business on Google My Business. Setting up a page for your business on Google My Business allows potential customers to find you on Google Maps and on Google Search. Did you know that more than 70 percent of consumers who performed a local search visited a store within five miles.
Keywords
Every single search performed in a search engine starts with keywords. These are the words or phrases that an Internet user will type into their chosen search engine to perform their search.
For your business, you need to understand what your audience are searching for, so that you can target the content on your website for these particular keywords. This means getting into the mindset of a typical customer of your business and thinking about how they use the Internet.
TIP: Put yourself into the shoes of one of your customers. Write down 10 words or phrases that they would type into a search engine to find a business like yours.
There are many free and paid tools that you can use on the Internet to carry out keyword research. With these tools, you’re looking for good opportunities for your business that you can target.
As an example, we really enjoy using the free keyword research tool – Ubersuggest.
Optimise Your Website
The next step for small business SEO is to make sure your website is optimised well for search engines. What do we mean by that? First of all, make sure your domain name accurately and easily depicts what your business is and where you’re located.
Next, add keywords on page titles and H1 headings that identify your business, its products or services, and your location. You also need to make sure you set your meta titles and descriptions to include your keywords.
Build Your Brand
As a small business, one of the most important things you can do to gain visibility is to build your brand. How do you do that? Make sure you have a logo and tagline that are catchy and easy to remember. It’s also important to make sure your logo and tagline reflect your small business’s values and your field of expertise.
Share Your Expertise By Starting a Blog
One of the ways to build your small business’s brand and your visibility in the community is to represent yourself as an expert in your field. One of the best ways to do this – and to help your website’s search ranking – is by starting a blog. Make sure the blog contains plenty of keywords pertaining to your industry to grab web traffic! You can find keywords relevant to your business by using the Google Keyword Planner.
Content Is Important Too
When most people think about SEO, they think about the technical aspects, like coding and using keywords. But your website’s content is just as important for your search ranking as your website’s loading speed. Search engines these days care about the quality of your content, not just the quantity. So when you’re writing your blog, or any content on your website, keep in mind that the quality of your content is just as important as any other aspect of your website for SEO purposes.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to all the things you do to help your website get a high search ranking that happen off of your website. Some examples of off-page SEO are building links on your website to other websites and also getting other websites to link to your website; guest blogging on other websites; and influencer marketing, where you have a local influencer talk about your business or website on their page. All of these examples of off-page SEO help build your website’s credibility in the eyes of search engines.
