If you have a small business, making your website visible in search engines is crucial, and there are several ways you can do this. One method you can use if you hope to perform better than your competitors is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

7 SEO Strategies for Small Businesses

1) Building Links to Your Website

Building links to a website over a long time period can have an impact on your domain authority in search engines. This can subsequently affect your ranking in the results pages, so you must try to acquire the correct type of link from a relevant website.

Your link-building strategy may include niche edits or writing guest blogs. The former involves contacting a website’s owner and requesting a link to be implemented on a specific piece of anchor text, directing the user to your website. 

This helps to build the quality links to your website that you need to appear more authoritative on search engines and increase organic traffic.

2) Business Social Media Accounts

To raise awareness for your brand, you need to maintain and increase the popularity of your business, and one way to do this is through social media. These platforms allow you to post content for potential customers and clients, as well as enable them to share your work with a larger audience.

People also use social media to find an array of products and services. Your business needs a social media presence to attract customers who are using social media as opposed to search engines to find out information.

These social media accounts can be free, depending on which one(s) you use, making them ideal for a small business.

3) User-Friendly Website

There are various ways to make a website user-friendly, and these can improve the user experience when people access your site. For example, less than half the people accessing your website via mobile phones will remain there if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

A site that is not mobile-friendly can see keyword rankings decline as a result, and the inclusion of headings can improve the readability of your pages. This makes accessing and exploring your site easier for your audience.

4) Discover the Correct Keywords

When used correctly, keywords can help to improve your search engine results page rankings and your website’s visibility. This type of SEO for e-commerce businesses doesn’t just include products and relevant terminology, but can also incorporate the location or locations of your business. 

For example, you may implement the phrase ‘London cafe’ on the relevant landing page for your website if your business is a cafe in London.

However, you should avoid keyword stuffing, which can make your content harder to read. This is known as a black hat SEO technique, which are methods that Google can penalise websites for as their algorithm is programmed to find and blacklist these practices.

Instead, implement keywords where appropriate. The common rule is to include a keyword every 200-300 words in your website copy.

5) Plan Your Content

Producing frequent and relevant content is a great way to increase organic traffic. It enables your company to answer some of the queries your target audience searches for online and can improve the chances of them clicking on your site for more information.

When planning content, small businesses can focus on localised keywords and topics. This can make a company stand out against their competitors who are not utilising these strategies. For example, a hotel in Cornwall may create a blog concerning things to do in the local area.

6) Research Search Trends

With the ever-evolving search engine algorithms, you should stay up-to-date with the latest SEO practices and relevant keywords. This gives your business the best chance for online visibility.

This can be done through competitor research, such as seeing what topics are and are not incorporated into their content. It can show what topics are relevant and what is missing, therefore allowing you to produce content with the information that your competitors currently lack.

Tools such as Google Trends allow you to find what is popular online at the moment, as well as past trends. This enables you to establish if any topics are seasonal and can predict if anything will become more relevant in the future.

7) Google Business Profile

Formerly referred to as Google My Business, this allows you to display information about your company on Google, such as the name, location and the offered services. Using Google Business Profile is free and you can form an account to boost the visibility of your website and brand. 

Your business needs a location for this feature, but customers can find your company through Google Maps and you can respond to reviews they leave about your organisation’s products and services.