5 Small Business SEO Tips to Help You Get Started
When done successfully, Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) can help drive more traffic to your small business’ website, increasing your customer base and your bottom line.
In this post, you’ll learn five important tips to consider when you're getting started with small business SEO.
Are there different types of SEO? Is one better than another?
Search Engine Optimization is divided into two main categories: paid SEO and organic SEO. Paid SEO—or PPC—includes the paid ads you see in search results on Google, YouTube, Amazon, etc. Organic SEO means the non-paid results that appear because each page is optimized for relevant keywords.
Depending on your business goals, one type of SEO might be more effective than the other. Deciding which one is right for you really comes down to two factors: your budget and your timeline.
Paid SEO Pros and Cons
The biggest advantage to paid SEO is that it’s immediate—customers searching for given terms will see your website right away.
The biggest drawback to paid SEO is that ads can be very expensive. Most ads operate on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, which can range from a few cents to several hundred dollars per click.
Another disadvantage is that as soon as you stop paying for ads, your site no longer appears in search. There’s no relationship between paid ads and organic SEO—they are completely different tactics.
Some businesses find success with paid ads, while others focus solely on organic results. If you decide to buy ads, give it a few months to see if they are working.
Organic SEO Pros and Cons
With organic SEO, the biggest advantage is that it lasts. Once you have your SEO tactics in place and you have a maintenance plan, Google will keep you in the same relative position.
Another plus for organic SEO is that it’s generally much more affordable than paid ads. The price of most small business SEO services is well worth the value you’ll get in new customers and more sales.
Plus, if you want to learn how to do your own SEO, you can make adjustments yourself, without having to rely on ads or an SEO firm to do the work for you.
The downside of organic SEO is that it can take three to six months—sometimes longer—for your web pages to appear in Google results. Some of my clients don’t want to wait, so they look into buyings ads, but most abandon that plan because of the cost and they want their sites to show up on Google in the long run.
Check out this excellent article to learn more about paid vs. organic SEO.
How do I know if SEO will benefit my business?
It might sound strange for someone like me—who does SEO for a living—to not recommend my services for everyone, but it’s true that not every business will gain value from SEO.
When to pursue SEO
One way to see if SEO is right for you, is to simply do a Google search for keywords that are relevant to your products or services. Try a few different searches and look through the search results.
Do you see top competitors or colleagues in your field? Or do you see generic results for those terms, like Wikipedia pages, explainer videos, or “best of” business listing sites like Yelp?
If your competitors show up, it's likely that customers are using Google to search for businesses like yours, and you’ll want to include SEO in your marketing strategy. Otherwise, you could be missing big opportunities to sell to new customers.
Doing keyword research is the next step in determining whether or not SEO will help your business. Using a tool like ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer (do the 7 days for $7 trial) or moz.com/explorer (offers a 30-day free trial), you can see the exact terms people are actually searching for, and how popular they are Google.
Your research will reveal whether or not people are searching for your essential terms. If they are, SEO is right for you.
When not to pursue SEO
If you Google your products and services and don’t see any websites that are similar to your own, SEO may not send more customers your way. And if your keyword research reveals that people aren’t Googling your terms, focus on other marketing tactics.
For example, I worked with a financial planning client in Fairbanks, Alaska who was considering hiring me to optimize her site. When I researched her keywords and her competitors, I found that no one in Fairbanks was searching for a financial planner.
That told me that her potential customers were finding financial planners through other means like word of mouth or traditional advertising. I told her that SEO wasn't worth her time or financial investment because it wouldn’t drive more traffic to her website, and she wouldn't get new customers from search.
Another scenario where SEO may not be right for you is if you’re trying to attract a national audience and the competition is very high.
For example, let’s say you’re a business coach and you want to sell an online business school course. You might find that many people are searching for “online b school” but when you look at search results, you see major players like Marie Forleo and Coursera.
Those websites have a massive advantage in the amount of content they have online, and you’d need to create a similar amount in order to show up with them in search. If you try to optimize a smaller site for a very competitive term, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to break through to page 1.
Where should I start with SEO for my website?
If you decide that SEO is right for you, the first place to start is finding the right terms for your website.
Begin with keyword research
You want to uncover the exact keywords that your customers are typing in, so you can optimize your site and show Google that you deserve to show up for those terms.
Selecting the wrong keywords is like building a house on a cracked foundation. Everything you do after that point is risky, and probably won't have a big payoff, because it's built on weak information. You want the strongest foundation possible, so you have the highest probability of success in SEO. And it all starts with finding the right keywords.
If you skip the research and try to guess which keywords are right for your site, you might miss huge opportunities by guessing the wrong terms or phrases that customers are using on Google.
For example, the phrase “local real estate” is not the same as “homes for sale in [my town].” Those are two very different terms and if you pick the wrong one, customers may not find you.
The 3 elements of successful keyword research
The best way to find the right terms for your website is to:
List the terms you’d like to rank for
Find out if your customers are actually searching for those terms
See how hard it will to be to rank for those terms
Start with a long list of potential keywords for your business. What terms and phrases would you like to show up for?
Do your own Google searches to see which sites come up for terms related to the products or services you offer. Read through those sites—are you seeing any keywords showing up over and over? Add them to your list.
Now you’ll want to start narrowing your list and removing any terms that are either too broad or too technical. For example, a dentist might list the words “health” and “dental occlusion” as keyword ideas.
The word “health” is too broad—people searching for that term could be looking for many different things, not necessarily a dentist.
And it’s unlikely that clients will search for “dental occlusion” when researching who can treat their overbite.
So it’s important to find terms that are specific enough to attract clients, but not so specific that no one is searching for them.
Use software like ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer or moz.com/explorer to see each term’s volume (searches per month) and rule out any phrases that have a volume under 10.
Then, the last piece of the keyword research puzzle is to determine how competitive each term is.
In the same software, look for each term’s difficulty score, which estimates how hard it will be to rank for a given term. Keywords with a difficulty score above 29 will be very difficult to rank highly for without a lot of content, so stick with terms below 30.
Keyword research is just the beginning of the search engine optimization process. Want more? Check out my Get Found SEO course for service-based businesses, where you’ll learn exactly how to get your website ranking higher on Google.
What is one thing I can start today that will help my SEO?
If you’re getting started with SEO, set up your free Google Search Console account to understand the health of your website SEO. Be sure to submit your sitemap (typically yourwebsitename.com/sitemap.xml) and wait a day or two for data to appear.
You can use Google Search Console to discover:
all the pages that Google can see on your site,
specific search terms people are using to find your site,
whether or not Google is detecting search errors on any of your pages
and much more.
Look under Coverage and make sure all the website pages you want on Google aren’t blocked or showing an error.
Then review your search queries under Performance. Do you want customers to find you for these terms? What terms aren’t you seeing? Add those to your keyword list and start your research.
Search Console offers a lot more information about how your site is appearing to Google. Click around and dig into Google’s Search Console help to learn more about this powerful tool.
How do I know if SEO is working?
After you’ve completed your keyword research, added your keywords across your site, and fixed any errors, use Google Search Console to submit your new pages and track your success. Because you’ve optimized your site, you’ll see new keywords appear and you’ll be able to monitor your progress on Google over time.
Most business owners think SEO is a mysterious black box that’s impossible to crack. But with these tips, you can pull back the curtain on your site’s Google search rankings and put some changes in place to make search engine optimization work for you.
Amy Falcione owns and operates Big Picture Marketing, a Bozeman, Montana SEO firm where she fixes website SEO so her clients show up higher on Google. She also created Get Found Courses, online SEO classes for small businesses. When she's not researching keywords and optimizing websites, Amy loves drinking tea, walking her dog Roscoe, and exploring Montana’s trails.
