SEO For Small Businesses
Small businesses are perpetually at a disadvantage compared to large businesses especially when it comes to advertising budget and resources. Large businesses often have much larger websites and authority as well which can be daunting to compete against. There are some potential advantages however especially when it comes to subject-matter expertise and customer service. As your small business SEO consultant, I will work with you to identify these advantages and work to ensure that your small business website will stand out from the competition.
Be The Authority In Your Niche
While it is possible as a small business to rank for and acquire traffic from keywords with good search volume, it is more important to figure out exactly what is most important to your business so you can be laser-focused on that. Owning your niche is way easier and profitable than trying to beat out much larger, corporate-owned entities.
Here is a small auction house that has started to see organic search traffic and impression growth since implementing my SEO audit and content recommendations which included meta title and H1 / H2 tag updates, fixing their internal linking issues, implementing 301 redirects, canonical URLs and adding below-the-fold content on their category pages. They are in a low search volume vertical but in their very specific niche they are quickly gaining better rankings and traffic. The average prices for their lots are quite high so this traffic is beneficial. This goes to show that it’s critical to identify what your niche is and own it. Search volume is only worth as much as how relevant the traffic is.
Another small business website that I work with has seen a +48% in YOY increase in organic search sessions since Google’s August 2024 Core Update. I had been applying entity-based semantic search principles to the site content for much of the year. With Google’s Helpful Content algorithm it’s essential to pay close attention to your content and ensure that it’s beneficial to the user. It would make sense to review all existing content to ensure it is current and up to par in terms of quality.
Small Business SEO Strategy
Once we’ve identified your business needs, then I will tailor an SEO site audit to your needs. A lot of SEOs will just do generic site audits for all businesses and just call it a day. That’s not an effective way to work. Every business and website is unique. As a small business you don’t have time and resources to address every little thing so it’s important to prioritize based on what can deliver true value. Sometimes, I may even have to suggest changing your web platform or template if your current site is too limited to achieve your SEO and business objectives. I have worked with numerous website platforms and technologies over the years so I have a good understanding of the pros and cons to various decisions.
Local SEO For Small Businesses
If your small business has a physical location or onsite services then ranking for local search should be one of your top priorities if not your top priority. This is especially true if your target search queries return local SEO results. I talk to people all the time in my day-to-day life who would benefit from some local SEO efforts but the thought that they could get search engine traffic from Google had never crossed their mind, much less having a Google My Business profile. Local search is your competitive advantage over businesses with a national or global footprint.