30 SEO Tips for Small Businesses in 2022 (Tried & Tested)
- Dheeraj Soni
- August 25, 2021
- 20 mins read
Google performs 3.5 Billion on average daily searches. As a business person, just think how big you can make from those searches in your specific industry.
You just need guidance from the best and we are here to help you.
In one of our previous posts on thedheerajsoni.com, we had told you about SEO and its benefits for small businesses and why your business actually needs SEO.
If you haven’t read that article you can read it here – If you have started your business website and it’s SEO or if you are already into this,
Here are 30+ SEO Tips For Small Businesses which can make you more SEO dressed from others in Google’s vision.
These tips could help you rank your business website in the top of Google SERPs.
And, ultimately help you get more customers for your business.
Let’s dive in..
1. 30 SEO Tips For Small Businesses
1.1 Setup Google Search Console Account
1.2 Setup Google Analytics Account
1.3 Focus on Keyword’s Intent
1.4 Faster Page Loading Speed
1.5 Don’t Stuff Keywords
1.6 Focus on EAT Factor
1.7 Google My Business Optimisation
1.8 Submission in business listing sites
1.9 Nap Consistency
1.10 Mobile Friendly
1.11 Website Structure
1.12 Internal Linking
1.13 External Linking
1.14 Focus on Topic not Keywords
1.15 Build Content For Humans Not Robots
1.16 Update Your Content On a Regular Basis
1.17 Unique and Fresh Content
1.18 Content Length
1.19 Target Evergreen Content
1.20 Blog regularly
1.21 Regular Site Audit
1.22 Images optimization
1.23 Author visibility
1.24 Add About Us Page
1.25 Add Contact Info
1.26 Add CTA Buttons
1.27 Keep Yourself Updated
1.28 SEO – Not a Quick Result Getter Scheme
1.29 Encourage your Users for Feedback/Reviews
1.30 Provide Best in Your Industry
2. Faqs on SEO Tips For Small Businesses
3. Wrapping Up
30 SEO Tips For Small Businesses
Here are 30 top-notch SEO Tips for Small Businesses which are mainly focused on getting business and high quality and converting Leads organically through Google.
1. Setup Google Search Console Account
The first step after setting up your business website or any kind of website, is a submission of the website in the Google Search Console.
It’s a kind of health checker tool of your website which will let you know about the errors and issues your site is facing.
This tool will let you know, whether your Page is mobile-friendly or not, does it have any crawling issues or not, whether your pages are indexed or not, you can check your backlinks as well in Google search console.
You Can Read It Here – How to Check Backlinks in Google search console.
Additionally, you can check how your website is performing in Google SERPs, which of your keywords are ranking in Google on what position, Everything you can check using this tool.
So this is our first step which could not be avoided.
2. Setup Google Analytics Account
Along with the search console, Google Analytics is also an important tool to which you must connect your website.
It’s a website tracking tool, which will help track the traffic to your website, You can know about your audience that from where you are getting traffic, from which device, the gender of the user and even the internet network they used while browsing to your website.
You can set conversions as well if you run Paid campaigns, it will help you track your paid advertisement campaigns (Google Adwords) as well.
3. Focus on Keyword's Intent - Not Search Volume
As an SEO geek, I have experienced the importance and benefits of different keyword types and their user search intentions.
While doing your Keyword research for small businesses the very first thing to put in mind is the User’s Search Intent of the keyword and not the search volume (that doesn’t mean you should work on Keywords with 0 search volume).
You need to understand users’ search intent while doing your Keyword research, whether it’s an informational-oriented search or a transactional intent search which can convert the user into your customer.
Read Our Complete Guide On Keyword Research for Small Business.
During keyword research, just put yourself in the place of a common Google searcher who is searching for a keyword in your industry.
4. Faster Page Loading Speed
Website Page Speed is one of Google’s ranking factors, as an SEO you must have your website look fast loading.
This is one of the basic things you must not miss during the SEO of your business website, Page Loading Speed comes in Technical SEO.
You can check your Page Speed score in Google Pagespeed Insight. which is a Google owned website page speed checker tool.
5. Don't Stuff Keywords
Stuffing keywords is an illegal or black hat SEO technique which google hates. Place your target keywords ideally and naturally while performing the On Page SEO.
You might have heard from many SEO gurus that your keyword ratio should be 1-2%, but the best way to do an ideal and healthy on-page is to keep the keyword ratio below 1%.
Keywords Ratio is nothing but the ratio of the targeted keywords in a particular content or article. Apply your Mathematics here 😉 If you write an article of 1000 words so its 1% would be 10 that means you should place your target keywords 10 times maximum or either less than that.
Advance Learning
6. EAT Factor
Google only ranks the websites it trusts the most. EAT is the abbreviation of the term Expertise, Authority and Trust.
This was an update by Google launched in 2018 which was mainly focused on the trust factor. According to the update, You must have expertise and authority in your particular niche and you have to build trustworthiness in your particular Industry.
How to do it?
The things you can do to maintain your EAT Factor are;
- Make quality backlinks relevant to your Industry.
- Publish reliable and genuine content.
- Put yourself ahead, build your face value will ultimately help you build trustworthiness.
- Provide your expertise certificates (exceptional cases) example; If you’re someone who is providing content related to medicines you must provide your educational certificates behind it in your About page.
7. Google My Business Optimisation
If you have your business website ready OR even if you don’t have your own business website, Don’t worry! Google provides a tool called Google My Business for local businesses.
Here you can list your business (Even your small shop) and optimise it accordingly, additionally, you can add your business website too if you have.
Now add your business in Google My Business and optimise it so you can rank your business on top positions.
Quick Tips to optimise Google My Business:
- Complete every section given by Google My Business while adding yourBusiness.
- Add your contact information for sure.
- Add your website if you have one.
- Write an entire description about your business properly.
- Publish photos or posts consistently.
- Give answers to the questions you’re getting.
- Add the messaging system.
8. Submission in Business Listing Sites
There are too many business listing sites available which allow you to list your business on their websites.
You can list your business website in such sites. This will help you build our website authority as you will get high-quality backlinks from those sites and will also get you business leads as those sites have high traffic which is high converting.
Websites like Justdial and many others allow you to put your business website on their sites.
9. Nap Consistency
The term NAP refers to Name, Address and Phone Number. It is one of the important Local SEO factors.
It directly means that you should provide your genuine business name, the business address and the phone number of the business, as it’s an important Local Search Engine Optimisation Strategy for businesses having their local presence in the offline market.
10. Mobile Friendly
According to certain data, more than 60% of Google searches are performed on mobile devices.
Page/Website Mobile-friendliness is one of the important SEO factors in google, Your website must not have Mobile Friendliness issues i.e Your pages should not have any kind of error while opening in Mobile devices.
Use a decent theme for your website to avoid all these kinds of issues or errors, You can go for Generatepress WordPress Theme if you’re using WordPress CMS.
11. Website Structure
Website structure is again one of the most basic but important SEO factor.
Site structure is nothing but it’s just the way how your page is behaving and how your homepage, categories and different pages are connected with each other.
Having a good website structure could result in better user experience, it could improve your bounce rate as well and might result in getting Leads because if the user is able to easily navigate your different pages without facing any issues, ultimately the chances are way higher of him converting into a customer.
12. Internal Linking
Internal Linking is the practice of referring the pages of a same domain in its own pages, you can understand it with an example; page *A* has a link to page *B* of the same website.
It diverts the traffic you’re getting on your ranked pages into the other outlying pages on your website and improves the crawling efficiency of your website.
Especially for business websites it drives your users to the conversion and could help in getting business leads.
13. External Linking
Just like internal linking, External linking is also an important SEO practice you should never miss.
External linking is opposite to internal linking, here we give a link to the page of a different domain. For example Website, A gave a link to a page of website B in its page.
You can link some helpful pages related to your industry which could be helpful for your users. It enhances the user trust and also helps you better your On-Page SEO outcome.
14. Focus on topic not keywords
Remember, not all your web pages are going to be converting for you, rather going for business getting keywords only additionally blog about some informational or educational keywords as well.
For example; If you’re selling Computer Peripherals then you can post some informational content related to them which could be let’s say Types of Monitors or anything else which could be informational and help your users.
This would also help you build trust in the user’s eye.
15. Build Content For Humans Not Robots
Sometimes, in the process of making the content more On-Page SEO optimised, Many people just stuff the keywords very unnaturally and unnecessarily.
Which ultimately makes the content unreadable and non-user-friendly.
Make sure, While writing your content you must be talking to your users, not to the Google crawlers. Always read your content on your own first and if you find it fully readable then only make it to the public.
Don’t just focus on stuffing keywords and making it more SEO friendly, If your content is not human friendly i.e Readable then your content is not at all SEO friendly and at last it is not going to rank on Google.
16. Update Your Content On Regular Basis
We all love fresh content, no one will consume old or outdated content.
Similarly, Google too loves new and updated content as it prior gives the most latest and genuine content to its users.
Updating your content regularly could create a great impact on your rankings. You should keep your already published posts and content by adding some new information in it or by doing some changes in the same.
After updating your content, make sure to submit the URL of the same in the Google Search Console again even though it’s indexed. It will let Google know that you’ve made some changes to that page.
17. Unique and Fresh Content
Content is always the king and it’s going to be the same even in the future.
So content is the most important thing which you should focus on, Google only ranks the website having unique and fresh content.
If you copy or use generated content, you are not going to rank at all! Few years ago this thing worked but as time passed Google has become smarter.
So never copy content, make it by your own creativity. Or you can hire freelance content writers from several websites like Fiverr.
18. Content Length
Content is important and it’s length is even more important when it comes to blogging (Ultimately).
Micro content might not work in Google, it could be used in social media but when it comes in a blog your content Length should be good.
Talking about myself, I decide the content length according to the competitors. I check the top pages and check their content length, and according to the average length of all websites, I used to write for myself.
But 1k words should be a good piece of content, or a Blog post.
19. Target Evergreen Content
Rather than targeting season or one season keywords, You can go for evergreen content or keywords.
This will help you to get potential customers anytime. Seasonal keywords which are only being searched in a specific time zone of the year could be profitable but for a very limited time.
This also helps you increase the trustworthiness of your business website
20. Blog regularly
As I told you that if you blog apart from your business pages, it’s very good for a website as it will get you better-converting users.
If you blog, publish articles then do it regularly and consistently. Google always loves websites who are consistent and regular with their work. Additionally it also increases the crawler efficiency of your website because it’s regularly getting updated.
So it could be an additional benefit for you to rank, If you blog regularly.
21. Regular Site Audit
Regular Site Audit or Analysis is the thing that most people avoid and then face problems and errors.
You must audit your website regularly so you can know about the issues or errors it’s been facing and you can solve them.
You can hire someone or you can use free tools available on Google. The best thing you can do is you can use Ahrefs webmaster Tool where you just have to submit your website and it will regularly send you your website audit report on your email.
22. Images optimisation
You must be using images in your blog posts and pages, and Images too could be optimised in terms of SEO.
Alt tags refers to alternative tags, it helps when an image is unable to load in a page, so it automatically shows the Alt tags in place of the image. It’s called image SEO optimization.
You can add the Alt Tag and Title tags in the images that you use, adding Alt tags is very easy in wordpress or any other CMS you’re using.
If you are not using wordpress, then must switch to it as it’s the easiest CMS to manage and also comes in a low budget.
23. Author visibility
It’s better for the users to whom they are reading. Adding an author section below every of your Page could be a good practice to do.
You can tell the people about your own and your expertise and experience in your industry which could help you in getting more leads as people will always go with experience.
This also helps you increase the trustworthiness of your business website.
24. Add About Us Page
These are some basic things that you must not avoid. To have some basic pages like About Us is still very important for any kind of website.
Must create a separate page where you tell about your business to your users and Google. This helps your users to know about your business.
You can make a very good impression of your business by writing the best about it by making people aware of the same.
25. Add Contact Info
Always add your contact information in your business website, better to make a separate page of Contact because this is one of the most important page your website must have.
If any of the users on your website wants to connect with you, he/she can easily click the contact page and can connect to you. Additionally, it increases the trust worthiness as well to an extent.
26. Add CTA Buttons
Adding a “Call To Action” button might end up in getting a better conversion rate.
You must add a Call To Action button i.e CTA in your every page that’s appealing the user to make a purchase or contact you.
This would ultimately help you get better conversion comparable to a non-button page. If you visit a page that’s giving you a contact number which you need to copy yourself and then save into your list and then Whatsapp…huh..! You might not prefer that right?
So better to have a single one-click button to directly take any action whether to buy or contact or anything your business provides.
27. Keep Yourself Updated
Google keeps on changing and updating its algorithm, and if you are unaware of them you might suffer.
You must be updated with Google’s updates and changes that Google keeps doing frequently. You can follow Google’s social media accounts where it posts all it’s updates Or you can follow some blogs like SearchEngine Journal to keep yourself updated about the Google Search Algorithms.
This will ultimately help you in your SEO for small business websites.
28. SEO - Not a quick result getter scheme
The first thing you must keep in mind while working on SEO for a small business website is that SEO is not a quick result-getter scheme at all.
If you can’t be patient then SEO is not for you! This might be harsh but it’s a fact SEO takes time and you must have patience for a better output.
But trust me, It feels the best when you start rolling in customers organically from Google when SEO starts showing it’s work off.
IF you’re not someone who can’t wait for the SEO to work, can go with paid ads called PPC.
29. Encourage your users for feedback/reviews - Testimonials
Testimonials or reviews are the best evidence of the worthiness of your business.
Encouraging reviews and feedback from the users you’re getting is the best practice you must not miss.
If you haven’t added your business to Google My Business, you must add as I already told you.
Users can review and post their feedback to your business page (Google my business page) which helps Google to understand whether to rank your business or not (In terms of business listing), Additionally it also helps users to choose the business according to its ratings.
You must encourage your users to drop their feedback and reviews about your business and services. And you can add those reviews as Testimonials on your business website.
This is the best practice to increase and consolidate your Worthiness in Google’s and user’s point of view.
30. Provide best in your industry (Business POV)
No one likes to buy average products! As a business point of view, always be the best and provide the best in your industry.
Just think if you are getting something good then you will probably buy that thing from the same person again and again whenever needed, similarly if you provide the best the more your trustworthiness increases and the bigger your business gets.
FAQs
In a nutshell, Yes! SEO really works for small businesses or even anyone. If it’s
properly followed and done it will definitely help.
You need to follow all the basics first of all, like making your website user friendly, mobile friendly, good site structure, good pagespeed, all necessary pages, submitted in Google Search Console and Analytics, and must have added your business to business listing websites (You can search for them in Google) and this all can work for you if done properly.
The most important is content, have a good, unique and user friendly content, Stuff Keywords naturally in a ratio below 1% and have your Title and headings
placed properly.
That’s how you can go off the mark.
If you want to do SEO, you must learn it from any source whether online or offline, It’s not a big deal. But you can’t just go for it without having any basic knowledge.
Wrapping Up
So that was the guide of SEO Tips For Small Businesses, Hope you like it and may this would be very helpful for you and your business.
Just follow the basic things while getting started and then slowly go for advanced strategies like creating backlinks and else. Make sure that trustworthiness is the most important factor when it comes to business,
If you rank anyhow and get customers but you’re not getting value then you can’t sustain your position and will go down forever.
So always provide the best and expect the best, make sure to keep yourself updated and be aware of frequent changes and updates by Google.
That’s all for this guide, share if it helped and read our keyword research guide for small businesses too.
Thanks for reading, Cheers.
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