If you’re a small business SEO should be playing a large part of your marketing game.
It’s simply not enough to have a website. Your potential customers are doing their research online everyday. So what are you doing to help those people find you?
Your website should be doing all the work. And by work, I mean working its SEO magic to help you rank on Google and get found more easily by your target audience.
But it’s not that simple, is it?
SEO is not that straightforward, it doesn’t give you instant results and these days, every man, woman and their dog is claiming to be an SEO expert trying to tell you that their way is the best way.
Frustrating… I hear ya!
I’m emailed daily from so-called SEO experts trying to get me to buy into their service… And I’m sure you are too!
Small Business SEO
But truth be told, SEO strategies for small business are not hard to learn or expensive. There are plenty of simple things you can do daily to boost your SEO and drive traffic to your website for FREE!
To show you just how easy it is, I’ve put together 10 small business SEO pro tips that you can start implementing today.
Pro Tip #1: Set Up Google Analytics
Before you begin, you need to set up Google Analytics to track your website’s SEO performance. The earlier you can track your website performance the better, but if you haven’t yet done it and your website has been up for a while, that’s okay. Better late than never. You can start tracking from today.
Google analytics will show you how much traffic you are getting to your website, where that traffic is coming from, what content people are viewing, how long they stay on your site and a whole lot more.
Google Analytics is the tool that will show if your small business SEO efforts are working or not.
This handy guide steps you through the setup of Google Analytics.
Pro Tip #2: Set Up Google Search Console
Google Search Console is another tool you should set up as soon as your site is live. It’s part of Google’s Webmaster Tools and, just like Google Analytics, gives you insights into your website that helps you play a bigger SEO game.
By setting up Google Search Console you are telling Google what content you want to be searched by their bots and listed in any google searches and what content you don’t want to be searchable.
Google Search Console will also show you what errors there are on your website and tips on how to fix them.
Moz has a great beginners guide about setting up Google Search Console.
Pro Tip #3: Optimise Your Website Speed
Google loves a fast loading website, so one of the first things you should be doing to boost your SEO is optimising your website in terms of speed and functionality.
There are some great FREE online tools such as Pingdom and GTMetrics, that can help you identify how fast your website is and if there are any errors, such as broken links, coding errors etc, that are slowing down your site and affecting the Google bots ability to crawl your content.
At the very least you should be fixing any broken links and errors on your site along with reducing the file size of all your images so they load faster.
Also consider how many scrollers and other moving objects you use on your site as they can also affect your page speed.
Pro Tip #4: Find Great Keywords
I know this article is about how you can drive traffic to your website for free, but if you are going to spend any money on SEO then keyword research is the area you want to invest in.
Choosing the right keywords to use within your content can make all the difference to your online reach and the traffic coming to your site.
Your aim is to find keywords that your target audience are typing into Google, have a fairly good search volume and are not highly competitive. A good place to start is to brainstorm some keywords people might be searching to find you.
For example, if you are a photography coach and you sell courses in Brisbane, then your target audience may type into the search bar ‘learn to be a photographer’ or ‘photography courses brisbane’.
When you have your list of keywords you need to run some analysis on them to find the monthly search volume and the competitive score.
There are some great tools like Long Tail Pro that offer free trials and will give you the data you need. Or, you can check out my SEO Traffic Builder Blueprint where I not only do the keyword research for you, but I get you started with killer blog heading as well.
Pro Tip #5: Create Great Content
In the eyes of Google, content really is king so the absolute best way you can boost your small business SEO and increase the traffic coming to your website is to create great content on a regular basis.
Content that is relevant, engaging and informative. Content that solves people’s problems.
Quality content is highly valuable to Google and highly valuable to your business. If you consistently produce good quality content on your website and your audience is responding to it, then Google will see this and show this content to more people.
I cannot say it enough… Google loves great content!
I hear a lot of groans when I talk about blogging to help SEO. As a small business, it can be hard to find the time to fit in blogging, but if you are serious about wanting to drive more traffic to your website, then content, particularly writing blog articles, is the golden ticket to ranking higher in Google searches.
If you’re struggling to get into the blogging flow? I’ve compiled an extensive list of infographics that can help with your blogging if you are struggling in this area.
Pro Tip #6: Optimise On-Page SEO
Having good keywords is great. Writing good content is also great. But when you combine the two and incorporate your keywords into your content in just the right places, then you have really hit the SEO sweet spot!
On-Page SEO is about using your keywords in all the right places.
Gone are the days where you try to use your keywords as much as possible within your content (also known as keyword stuffing). This technique will do more harm than good nowadays. Good quality SEO is all about being strategic in where you use your keywords.
Including your keywords in your headings, sub-headings, meta description, URL and in optimal places throughout your content is enough for the Google bots register the topic of your content and deliver it to people who are searching for content just like yours.
I give you a full rundown on On-Page SEO in my SEO Traffic Builder Blueprint.
Pro Tip #7: Optimise Off-Page SEO
Including your keywords in your content is just one part of the puzzle. Off-page SEO is also important to help your content rank higher.
This includes using your keywords in your image ALT tags, your page tags and your image filenames.
There are plenty of tools, like the Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin that will help optimise your on and off page SEO for all your content.
Pro Tip #8: Market Your Content
Writing good content on your website always requires a strong marketing plan to back it up. This is one thing that will go a long way to boosting your SEO, yet many small businesses are overlooking it.
What is the point in creating great content if no-one is going to see it?!
Share, share, share and then share again!
Share your content on all your Social Media channels. Share with your audience via email. Post to popular content sites such as Medium. Ask your friends and family to share and look for ways you can boost your content by requesting backlinks from complementary sites.
And then when you have done all that, set up a schedule where your content is repeatedly shared over a longer period of time. Good content is always relevant and SEO is a slow burn, so make a plan to share your content regularly and repeatedly.
Pro Tip #9: Small Business SEO Collaborations
Sharing your content with other websites and receiving backlinks to your content is a great way to boost your SEO. Writing guest posts for other websites, particularly authority sites, is also a fantastic way to drive traffic back to your site.
Think about all the leading sites in your industry that you and your audience follow and, provided they aren’t direct competitors, ask if they accept guest blog posts. If so, give them an awesome article that gives great value and shows your authority in your field. Don’t forget to include a kick-ass bio with relevant links back to your website.
Pro Tip #10: Track, Tweak, Refine
Remember, SEO takes time. It can take a few months for Google to register your content and for the traffic to start increasing on your website.
Don’t be disheartened if you don’t get results immediately. Just keep working at creating and sharing your content and building your backlinks.
If, after 3 months, you’re not seeing any results on particular blog posts, you can go back and look at ways to refine the content and increase the appeal to your audience.
Also monitor what content is doing well and work to create more content like this. Give your audience what they want.
These are just 10 pro tips to help boost your small business SEO and drive traffic to your website. If you work your way through this list and work at building your website SEO on a consistent basis, your business will reap the rewards.
All of these tips don’t cost a cent to implement, apart from your time, and can result in thousands of dollars in business. So, set yourself some time today and get started on your small business SEO plan.
Don’t forget, if you get stuck, get your customised SEO Traffic Builder Blueprint to help you get started.