Beginner’s Guide To Small Business SEO
Today, nearly every small business has a website. It’s practically a prerequisite for company growth in the 21st century. But just because you have a site doesn’t mean that people will find you when they search for your business online. In this guide, we’ll explore the SEO basics for small businesses and how it can help your small business thrive online.
Since competition is fierce in search engine optimization (SEO), it’s of utmost importance to understand the ins and outs of this practice to give your company an edge over other businesses in your industry. Let’s review some small business website SEO tips that might improve the ranking of your website.
Create a proper website structure
The first thing you’ll want to do when working on your SEO strategy is to build a proper site structure. This means organizing your website’s content so that it’s easily accessible to search engines. You’ll want to avoid a “spammy” structure that looks like it was hacked together by a child who’s just learning how to code.
There are a few ways to go about creating a site structure that works for SEO. First, you’ll want to establish your main pages. These are the pages that represent your business’s core offerings and serve as homes for the rest of your content. These pages will be your landing pages, and they should have a strong call to action.
The next thing you’ll want to do is fill in the gaps. These are the pages that are tangential to your main offerings. These pages should still be strongly linked to your core offerings, but they don’t need to be as in-depth.
Make Sure There Are No Broken Pages and Links on Your Website
One of the easiest ways to turn off visitors to your website is by making broken pages or having broken links. If a visitor clicks onto a page that doesn’t exist or a link leads them to a 404 error page, they’ll leave your website and probably never return. To avoid this, you want to regularly check your website for broken links and pages that don’t exist.
On top of that, you should also check if the link is or dofollow or nofollow. What is a dofollow and no follow link? What do they do?
Dofollow links are more powerful than nofollow links. Their main goal is to allow search engines to point back to your website. Every time you use a dofollow link on your website, you strengthen its authority.
Nofollow links are hyperlinks with a rel=“nofollow” tag; they usually don’t impact the search engine rankings.
It’s best to check your website for broken links as often as possible because broken pages and links can turn away a lot of traffic.
Make Sure Every Page Has a Proper Meta Title and Description
If you’ve ever clicked on a website link in the search results and found yourself lost in a jumbled mess of words and images, you’ve experienced the terror of a poor meta title and description. These two important pieces of website code are what people see when they find your site in a search engine. They’re like the “click here” button that tells people what your site is about and what they’ll find when they click.
The meta title is usually one or two sentences that describe what your site is about. The meta description is usually one or two short paragraphs that encapsulate your site in a few sentences. If you don’t have a meta title and description, or if they’re poorly written, people won’t be able to find your website in the search results.
This website explains how to make your website more attractive for Google. Overall, there are tons of online tutorials that can help you improve SEO for small business owners. You just need some time and patience to learn how to create a website that ranks well on search engines.
The good news is that there are no expensive software or coding requirements. All you need is a basic understanding of how search engines work and a desire to make your website more visible online.
Polish Your Written Content to Perfection
You might think you’ve done everything right on your website. You’ve got a great site structure, broken links are few and far between, and your meta title and description are perfect. But all of that is for naught if your content is poorly written. Content is also important for marketing and SEO.
All small local businesses have to have some type of written content on their website — whether it’s product descriptions, services offered, or something else entirely. If your content is poorly written, people will not want to stay on your website. They won’t want to include your website in their Google search results.
Get Citations by Listing Your Company’s Name in Relevant Places
If you’re an online business, people will want to know you exist. You can’t just sit there and hope that people come to your site by chance. You can let them know about your website by getting citations. These are listings on other people’s websites that let Google know that you’re out there. Google uses these citations to see which websites are linking to you and vice versa.
Conclusion
As you can see, SEO is a complicated practice that requires a lot of legwork. If you have the time and energy to put into it, by all means, do so. You can go to seventech to learn more about the most effective business tools that can improve the positions of your website. If not, investing in an SEO company can help.
An SEO company will be able to do everything listed in this guide and more. They will be able to help your business thrive online by optimizing your website for search engines. With their assistance, you’ll be able to grow your business and attract more customers from comfort.
