14 SEO tips for small business owners

Did you know that there are approximately 8.5 billion Google searches happening every single day? That’s about 99,000 search queries per second. So if you’ve never considered how your business performs in Google Searches, well now is the time to get serious about it!

The key to success when it comes to Google is one important thing: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). We reckon that you’ve heard this acronym before in your time as a small business owner, but have you given much thought to how you can use it to help grow your small business online?

If you’d like to learn more about SEO for small business, keep reading! We’re sharing the benefits of SEO along with simple, actionable SEO tips for small business owners just like you.

What is SEO and why should small businesses care about it?

Simply put, SEO is – as the name suggests – all about the actions you can take to optimise your website to improve your visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). The main objective of SEO is to allow your target audience to find you when they’re searching for relevant keywords on search engines like Google.

The reason this is so important is that being more visible on these search engines will drive more organic traffic to your website, thus increasing the likelihood of your customers clicking onto your site, which then increases the chances of them making a purchase or other type of conversion (like signing up for your newsletter).

Check out these SEO tips for small business owners

Top SEO tips for small business owners

There are so many different things you can do when it comes to SEO for your business website. That’s why there’s a huge industry of SEO professionals (like us) who work day in and day out to help optimise websites for small businesses (like yours).

We like to keep things practical here at LYF Solutions, and we also deeply believe in empowering small business owners to learn as many skills as they can to increase their digital literacy. So we’re sharing all our top SEO tips for small businesses right here!

1. Consistently share quality content

One of the easiest ways to score high on SEO is to create high-quality, informative, and engaging content that adds value to your target’s audiences’ lives. When you consistently deliver this quality content to your audience, you’re showing search engines that your website is full of valuable, relevant content that will be useful to your target audience.

2. Prioritise user experience (UX)

It is vital that you ensure your website is user-friendly, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate. Having a pretty site means nothing when your customers feel frustrated by their experience on your website! This is especially important for the mobile version of your website. As of July 2023, 56% of web traffic searches take place on mobile. If you’re not capturing that market with a top-notch mobile experience, then you could be missing out on a lot of potential customers.

3. Do some keyword research

First, a quick definition of keywords: in the context of SEO, keywords are specific words or phrases strategically incorporated into your website’s content to improve its visibility in search engine results and attract relevant organic traffic to your website. Keywords are the foundation of SEO, and an element you cannot afford to ignore.

While a lot of the more common SEO keywords are likely oversaturated by bigger retail and corporate businesses, keyword research can provide you with unexpected keywords that are relevant to your small business. In fact, research has found that long-tailed keywords (keywords that are constructed more like a short 3 to 4-word phrase or sentence) get 1.76x more clicks in organic SERPs.
We encourage you to explore tools like SEMrush, Moz, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest for keyword research, or outsourcing to ethical SEO specialists like our team here at LYF Solutions!

4. Use meta titles and meta descriptions effectively

It’s time to get strategic about the meta titles and meta descriptions for all your website pages! Being thoughtful in the way you construct meta titles and descriptions can take some practice, but it’s truly worth it.

Meta titles and descriptions don’t just function as a summary of what people can expect when they click on the link, but also serve as a way to capture their attention and stand out from the rest of the results on the same SERPs!

Here are some things to keep in mind when coming up with good meta titles:

Meta titles between 15-40 characters have an 8.6% higher CTR than lengthier ones.
Meta titles that contain a question had a 14.1% higher CTR than those that don’t
Meta titles with titles with emotional sentiments had a 7% higher CTR.

Now, when it comes to meta descriptions – things get a little tricky. Google rewrites meta descriptions 62.78% of the time. However, that doesn’t mean you should neglect your meta descriptions! In fact, 43% of people click on a given result solely based on the meta description. Be sure to write a summary of the web page in a way that resonates with your audience and makes them want to get to know more.

5. Monitor your analytics (and respond accordingly)

There are many tools out there that will help you track your website’s traffic, engagement, and conversion metrics. A popular one is Google Analytics, which is our website analytics tool of choice!

Tracking your website’s performance on tools like Google Analytics is important as a small business because it is a clear, data-led representation of your customers’ journey through your website. It answers important questions like what your customer journey looks like before a conversion or where your customers tend to drop off. This data then allows you to make small (or big) changes to your website to optimise it and increase conversions.
However, we totally understand how complex and time-consuming this whole process can be. That’s why we’ve got a whole team that specialises in Google Analytics! We help take the stress out of setting up your analytics and figuring out the metrics that actually matter specifically to your biz.

6. Keep your website updated

It’s important to keep your website content fresh and consistently up-to-date. This ensures that your website remains relevant to your audience and it is something that Google has indicated as very important for SEO. Whether you’re adding new keywords (that your keyword research from step 3 helped you find, of course) or adding more recent references to your content, it’s important that you schedule time to keep your website fresh every quarter or so.

7. Use relevant keywords in your product descriptions

This is one of the best SEO tips for eCommerce sites! Make sure you’re using relevant SEO keywords in all your product descriptions and category pages. This ensures that search engines will be able to lead potential customers directly to the products they’re searching for! It only takes a little bit more effort to include these keywords, so take the time to put this tip into practice at every opportunity.

8. Place keywords strategically

Place your keywords strategically throughout web page titles, headings, sub-headings, body text, and image filenames. Do not spam keywords everywhere – it’s not any more effective and can actually hurt your website’s SEO over the long run! Make sure you’re sprinkling keywords naturally throughout your website.

9. Optimise all your images with keywords

You know how they say that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’? Well, this can be taken quite literally when it comes to SEO. While you can’t quite include a thousand keywords with every photo, you can ensure that all the relevant keywords are included in file names and alt text. These keywords will be discoverable when people search through sites like Google Images, which can result in additional traffic to your site.

10. Don’t forget local SEO!

If you run a business with a physical location, then you need to ensure your Google My Business profile is up to date and that you’re utilising localised keywords in your content. In fact, strive to create content that is focused on the local area and which would appeal to the people who live there (or those who are visiting). The importance of local SEO cannot be overstated – 46% of all Google searches have local intent (meaning the searches are constrained to a specific area) and businesses with a claimed Google My Business listing receive 7x more clicks than unclaimed listings.

11. Strike a balance between on-page SEO and off-page SEO

It’s a common misconception that SEO only happens on a business’ website (also known as on-page SEO). Unfortunately, so many small business owners focus completely on their on-page SEO that they neglect the equally important off-page SEO practices that can help grow their business!

So what’s the difference between on-page SEO VS off-page SEO? Simply put, on-page SEO are all the things you do on your website to directly attract web traffic, whereas off-page SEO includes all the things you do away from your website which will indirectly attract web traffic. The tips here are mostly on-page SEO but we’ll share a few off-page SEO ideas further down.

12. Optimise your URLs

URLs are all the characters that appear after the backslash following your web domain address. A great SEO tip related to URLs is to create short, relevant, but still descriptive URLs that reflect the unique content of all your web pages. You’ll see in the URL for this page that instead of “/14-top-seo-tips-for-small-businesses”, we went for the shorter and quippier “/small-business-seo-tips”.

13. Practice internal linking

A sign of a relevant, useful website is one that keeps users on for long lengths of time. You want people to discover your website on a search engine, read through the landing page that they click on, then continue their journey throughout your website (hopefully resulting in a conversion!).

A great way to ensure that your website visitors keep clicking through your website is to provide plenty of opportunities for them to click on links to other pages on your website.

On an eCommerce website, you can achieve this on your product pages using sections like “often purchased with”. For other types of websites, linking from one page to another can work – perhaps including a link to your Services page on your About page. And one of the easiest ways to practice internal linking for any type of website is through blogs, which are an excellent way to utilise keywords as well.

14. Find opportunities to appear in Featured Snippets

Featured snippets, also referred to as ‘Position 0’ in Google search results, are text excerpts placed at the top of a search page. This prominent spot on SERPs offers users a swift response to their query, particularly when their search is information-oriented. Focus on creating content that answers long-tail questions, and make sure your copy content contains accurate and relevant answers to those questions.

On-page SEO VS off-page SEO

The tips above contain quite a few examples of on-page SEO, which simply means all the SEO activities that happen directly on your website itself in order to attract web traffic. But we’d like to spend a bit more time sharing a few off-page SEO activities that you can do to encourage indirect web traffic to your site too.

Examples of off-page SEO:

Link building – Backlinking is an SEO practice where one website links to another. When another website links to your website, it encourages direct traffic from their website to theirs. You can generate backlinks through link-building activities such as guest posting on other websites’ blogs, influencer marketing, or brand partnerships.
Social media marketing – Both organic and paid social media marketing can increase your brand visibility and direct more traffic to your website.
Influencer marketing – Speaking of social media, consider if your business could benefit from an influencer marketing campaign. Whether you go through an agency or approach influencers directly, this type of partnership can expose your brand to new audiences and encourage more people to visit your website. You could even gain potential backlinks, especially if you offer affiliate marketing as a part of your deal with your influencers.
Online directories – If your industry has an online directory, make sure your business is on it! These directories are more relevant in some industries compared to others, but it’s best practice to get on every directory you can.
Email marketing – Did you know that 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month? If you’re not providing consistent value to your email subscribers and getting those conversations, you need to start ASAP.

When it comes to on-page SEO VS off-page SEO, it’s important to remember that it’s not about doing one or the other – you need to put time and effort into both of these types of SEO practices to achieve success!

Use SEO tips for small business owners to grow your business

There’s no avoiding the fact that SEO is vital to small businesses. In an increasingly competitive digital world, businesses need to do all they can to stand out and engage with their potential customers!

If you want to improve on your business’ SEO but don’t know where to start, we can help. Our team of SEO specialists can help you with a variety of SEO activities, including keyword research, SEO copywriting, and back linking. Learn more about our SEO services here.

LYF implements its ethical core values in all aspects of its business , which is why many environmentally conscious clients opt to use the company for all of their needs — from hosting and web design to digital marketing. Those core values include creativity, simplicity, understanding client needs, and a passion for the company's work and mission.

I want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for all the work you have done for us over the years. Not only are you super efficient and professional but you are so creative and thanks to you, our businesses have grown through your expertise in marketing, web design, SEO, social media and graphic design. If anyone is looking for these services, look no further and contact Ray.

LYF Solutions provide a high-value online marketing solution for businesses that want results, and want to be assured that they will get what they pay for without the hassle of having to constantly follow up. LYF provides a holistic, all-encompassing online marketing solution to drive sales, and expand your business.