10 Helpful SEO Tips for Small Business Owners

Many small business owners who have started the SEO journey have ultimately realized how complex and in-depth search engine optimization can be. Companies that have taken a “do it yourself” attitude have ended up stringing up several popular search terms or simply stuffed keywords together and found themselves with irrelevant web pages with a poor ranking that the web pages only appear when searching specific terms [1]. Lack of proper internet exposure is quite common with many businesses, it is therefore encouraged for small businesses to turn into SEO agencies or put more emphasis on their SEO campaign to their marketing department. Whichever the case, there are several SEO tips that you should always keep mind.

Helpful SEO Tips for Small Business Owners

Helpful SEO Tips for SMEs

Identify the Intended Audience

These are the most important among all SEO tips, any SEO campaign should start with determining the demography of the audience that will be reached by a certain service or good [2]. While it may be easier to focus on the business as the driving force behind the campaign, it is always better to have a more specific approach. By choosing a certain keyword or product, you will have more success in driving traffic towards your site than otherwise.

Expand the Keyword Focus

It is always good to do your own research to find out what other web surfers may look up concerning the product or service you want to market. Among all the SEO tips, this is the one most ignored, people forget that what Google might be looking for might be different from what you type when you are searching for it yourself.

Keyword Density

Of all the SEO tips I have given you, these are the most crucial. You need to get the best balance so as to avoid keyword stuffing that may get your site banned from many search engines. To avoid such an eventuality, try to keep your keyword density to about 2-5%.

Use Dynamic Keywords

SEO tips are all about finding that great keyword to generate traffic, however when one keyword works, start working to find changes in trends that may affect your keyword. It is always good to cycle through your keyword focus and be on the lookout for any other applicable keywords.

Establish a Good Social Media Presence

Social media is still a great tool to generate a lot of web traffic towards your site. Use social media to establish a follower base and as they continue to increase, you will notice an increase in the number of customers visiting your site.

Go Where the Competition isn’t

Many SEO tips out there will tell you to build a great social media presence. However, smart businesses also concentrate on alternative social sites that are up-and-coming such as Pinterest where there is potential to get new customers.

Refine the Page-to-Page Connectivity of your Website

A site that is well-designed should allow users to funnel through the pages effortlessly. If your web pages are properly interlinked, you will find that even the least visited branches will experience increased traffic. Consequently, you will have a better domain authority which will place you higher in the rankings.

Create Original Content Constantly

These will continually give users a reason to keep coming back to your site. Ensure you have new and relevant materials by engaging with a good SEO agency so that people can be convinced of the need to keep interacting with your site.

It takes a lot of patience to get increased traffic to your site, however, if you use the SEO tips mentioned above, you will notice a gradual increase in traffic.

On-Page Enhancements to Help Your SEO

Page Titles

If your page title is not carefully considered then, all the other SEO tips are useless. Each post should have a unique title with all the necessary keywords included. The title should be commensurate with the words that are more likely to be searched by your potential clients. There is no need to have a title that has words very few people may use. Having a good title is vital in ensuring your site shows up.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions go hand in hand with the title. They are used to supply more keywords to your data. For example, if your title reads, ‘How to Make Chocolate Cake,’ use Meta descriptions such as mouthwatering, delicious and chocolatey. Such simple SEO tips add up and improve your site’s ranking.

Meta Tags

Meta tags should be included on each page an should include all the relevant keywords. For an easy way out, you may use a WordPress plugin called ‘All In One SEO Pack.’ These will make it easier for you to include your keywords at the bottom of each post.

URL structure

Many sites giving SEO tips do not mention these but having search engine friendly URLs can improve your search engine results. It has been noted that shorter URLs provide better results. Also, having your title or relevant keywords in the URL can also have a major influence.

Body Tags (H1, H2, etc.)

Articles that have been broken down into sections make it easier for people to read. H1 is given to the main title while H2 and so forth are given to the subsequent headlines. Many SEO tips articles recommend that keywords should be used in these headlines instead of using generic words. Many crawlers use these body tags to determine the important content in a site.

These SEO tips are bound to improve your on-page SEO. It is, therefore, important to use these SEO tips together to improve your site’s traffic. However, if you use each of these SEO tips independently, it will not make much of a difference.

References

Brian Pinkerton. “Finding What People Want: Experiences with the WebCrawler” (PDF). The Second International WWW Conference Chicago, USA, October 17–20, 1994. Retrieved May 7, 2007

Brin and L. Page. The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 30(1–7):107–117, 1998