In this post I will outline a series of SEO tips that will help you rank more highly and get more traffic in 2024 and beyond.
There are 30 tips (and one bonus tip) that you can follow procedurally, day by day, week by week, or pick and mix based on your current situation.
The SEO Rabbit Hole
There is no shortage of SEO information and services out there, and as Google constantly tightens the qualitative net, learning what you can do safely to improve your visibility in a sustainable way is key.
To understand what a safe and sustainable approach looks like you should always be able to explain what you are doing and feel good about it. And, of course, staying up to date with Google’s Search Essentials will always help keep you on the right side of the SEO fence.
At Bowler Hat, we have been helping businesses with their SEO for over 15 years, and our MD has worked in search since 1999, so we are old hands with experience helping thousands of small to medium-sized businesses, and we have tailored these tips directly to you!
If you are struggling or have any comments, we will gladly respond in the comments below or you can get in touch via our contact page.
Firstly… Can You Do SEO Yourself?
It’s a worthwhile question. Elements of SEO can be complex. But for most small businesses, this is not the case. Getting a handle on the basics will often get you most of the way. I am a big believer in the 80/20 rule and for the majority, the 20% of the SEO you can do yourself will get you 80% of the results – so don’t be scared to dive in!
You may run into problems when it comes to some of the more difficult elements like link and authority building, but there are almost certainly improvements you can make before you get to those more complex areas. That said, if you need an expert or simply want to focus on running your business and doing what you do best, then drop us a line and let us help you learn about the variety of SEO packages for small businesses that are out there.
Free SEO Audit & Battle Plan – if you would rather let the pros help then get in touch.
30 Small Business SEO Tips
Right, that’s enough SEO waffle from me. Let’s get to work on improving your SEO with 30 actionable tips. Our advice would be to do these one day at a time and see just how much difference you can make to your online visibility in 30 short days (or, for the time challenged, one a week and see where you are in 30 weeks time which will fly by).
Research & Preparation
I know you are keen to dive in and start the hardcore optimisation, but knowledge is power and the first tip is to do your research. But not any old research. The resources below represent all you need to know to get started doing your own SEO, so you can stop reading endless blogs and searching for the secret answer that is always just one more blog post or SEO tool subscription away.
If you are already well-read in SEO and are just looking for tips, feel free to skip ahead!
i. SEO SWOT Analysis—Download our free SEO SWOT Analysis template to learn where to focus your efforts best.
ii. Google Search Essentials: essential reading. Any SEO work done on your site is your responsibility whether you do it or use an agency. Understanding what Google wants and following those guidelines will ensure you work with the search engine to deliver a website experience your customers and the search engine will love.
iii. Moz Beginners Guide to SEO – this is a good overview. It covers SEO from top to bottom and has some specifics regarding on-page SEO elements. Worth your time.
iv. The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors – this table of factors published by Search Engine Land covers content, architecture, HTML, trust, links, personal & social. Good to get a high-level overview of the areas you should consider.
v. The Art of SEO—This is the SEO Bible. It is the only comprehensive SEO book you will ever need and really the only SEO book worth reading. It’s big and badass. Think of it as a reference guide covering everything you could ever want to know about SEO.
vi. Ultimate Guide to Link Building – The late Eric Ward is probably the most famous link builder in SEO land and has worked with Amazon and eBay. Eric preaches white hat, sustainable link-building strategies, and this book will ensure your link-building and SEO philosophy is on point, which is super important.
If you can spend some time reviewing all of these resources, you will be well-informed when it comes to optimising your website. The Art of SEO and Ultimate Guide to Link Building books should sit on your desk for whenever you need inspiration.
Section 1 – SEO Basic Set-Up
To ensure search engines can understand your site, you will want to sign up using the tools provided by the search engines. These tools provide diagnostic data—directly from the horse’s mouth. You can use the reports here to improve your optimisation.
1. Register with Google Search Console
Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) is a free service that helps you monitor the health of your website. From how well the search engine can access and crawl your site to how many pages are indexed. Search Console will also make recommendations for basic improvements to the HTML of your website.
SEO Tip: Explore all sections in Google Search Console and implement any suggested changes + resolve any issue.
2. Register with Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing also has a set of webmaster tools. It is a copycat set-up to Google, but that’s not to say it is without value. Any diagnostic information from search engines is worth its weight in SEO gold.
SEO Tip: Set up your site and implement the suggestions.
3. Claim or Create a Google My Business Listing
Google My Business is the digital representation of your physical business. Ensuring your business information is 100% correct on Google My Business is essential. Google your business. Claim your listing if not already done so. Create a listing if one does not exist.
https://www.google.co.uk/business/
SEO Tip: Put some real time and effort into this. Nice pictures. The right business categories. This is the digital representation of your business within Google’s own infrastructure and has massive implications for Local Business SEO, so give it the attention it deserves.
Section 2 – Keyword Research
The foundation of all successful SEO strategies is understanding the search keywords that your potential customers are using.
4. Conduct Keyword Research
Understanding the search terms your customers use is key to correctly optimising your website and digital presence.
For some businesses, this can be simple – plumber, electrician, etc. However, customers will often search for more details, and you should brainstorm around your business category and services. Typically, even simple keyword research will provide you with guidance on structuring and optimising your website.
Some tools are linked below that can help you review how and what people search for, but a good old-fashioned brainstorm is a solid starting point. Then Google the terms and see what variations Google suggests in the search box and at the bottom of the search results page. Keep revising your search terms and building your keyword list.
Some tools that can help here are:
– Google Keyword Planner (part of AdWords)
– https://moz.com/explorer/
– http://keywordtool.io/
SEO Tip: Beyond the tools, Google’s suggestions in the search box and below the results themselves can help you to flesh out your results.
You can of course also use ChatGPT and Gemini to help with your keyword research ideas.
5. Organise Keywords into Logical Groups
It is highly unlikely that your homepage can rank every keyword you want to target. And even if it did, can one page be relevant for all of those terms and give the prospective customer exactly what they need? Unlikely.
Organise your keywords into logical groups to help you know what pages you need and what terms to optimise each page for.
Plumber
Plumbing
Plumbing Company
Emergency Plumber
Emergency Plumbing
247 Plumbing
Bathroom plumbing
Bathroom plumber
Bathroom plumbing company
You get the picture. Organise your keywords into groups and ensure you include them sensibly on the right pages. Remember, our goal here is to help the search engine understand what you do, so we need to overdo things.
SEO Tip: Start with keyword groups of 3 to 7 variations on a theme. You don’t need to get every variation on a term to improve your position, so focus on the popular ones.
6. Target Long-Tail Keywords
The obvious search terms may not always be as useful as they first seem. If you sell shoes then the huge volume for the term “shoes” may seem desirable. However, that is just way too vague a term to convert. More nuanced terms like “red Nike marathon running shoes Birmingham” are far more targeted and suggest a person much closer to making a purchase.
Strategically, you are also far more likely to rank for more specific search terms. So, whilst long tail is often low volume, there is also a huge variety of terms to consider, and those variations add up.
SEO Tip: Combine longer-tail search terms with your business location to target local customers. I recentl
7. Review the Search Landscape
Once you have compiled a list of keywords, search them. Review the results. What does it look like? Do you see competitors? Commercial results? Ads? Or something else? If you see similar businesses and ads, these keywords are likely strongly commercial (which is what you are looking for in most cases).
If you see articles or informational results, you may need to consider what content you create to rank for these terms. Informational results indicate that informational content is required. Commercial results indicate commercial content is required.
SEO Tip: Grade your keywords so you know which ones truly map to your services.
8. Use a Spreadsheet for Keyword Research
Before too long, you will end up with a huge list of search terms and it can be hard to know what to do with them and certainly how to prioritise them. Using a spreadsheet allows you to go beyond just listing the keywords and to better understand the opportunity and value of each search term.
As a starting point, the following fields can be useful:
- Keyword – the search term
- Group – the logical group
- Geography – the locations you wish to rank for
- Targeted page – the page we will optimise for this term
- Usage on-page – is this in use (and how many times)
- Search volume – volume for the keyword
- Current rank – where you are currently listed for this term
- Difficulty – the difficulty (requires a tool like Moz.com)
- Opportunity – how does it look out there? Is there an opportunity?
- Business value – how important is this keyword to your business
- PPC cost per click – this can be a good indication of the value of these clicks
- Priority (1-10)
We tend to gather all of this data and determine a priority. We will then typically order each group of keywords so the higher priority ones are higher in the list (each group listed in priority). Then, when it comes to optimising content, you can make sure you focus on the keywords that represent the best overall opportunity to your business.
SEO Tip: We have a keyword research spreadsheet template we use for client jobs – drop us a line via the contact page and we will be happy to share that with you.
9. Test Your Keywords With PPC
This may seem a strange suggestion for a set of SEO tips, but it is very easy to overestimate the value of a given keyword. By running a short-term PPC campaign, you can test the water and determine if clicks for that keyword will lead to the actions you hope for (sales, leads etc).
SEO Tip: Buy 100 clicks for a given keyword and review results. Ideally, you will need conversion tracking configured here and linked to Google AdWords so you can grade the commercial viability of a search term.
Section 3 – Website SEO
Once we have our keywords grouped, we can review and optimise our website. You have complete control here, so your website SEO offers the best overall opportunity to improve your rankings.
10. Website Pages
Armed with your grouped list of keywords, do you have all the pages you need on your site? Using our example of a plumber offering bathroom, kitchen and emergency call-out services, we will need pages for all of these areas:
www.example.com
www.example.com/emergency-plumbing/
www.example.com/bathroom-plumbing/
www.example.com/kitchen-plumbing/
SEO Tip: Having a relevant page for each term allows you improve results for the keywords relevant to that page/service and to directly speak to the intent beyond the user search.
11. Website Structure
Building on the pages you have on your website is how you structure those pages. A good structure can help search engines understand your website. A useful memory aid here is to think of your website as a filing cabinet. We have the cabinet (site), draws within the cabinet (sections), files within the draw (subsections) and individual documents (pages).
So where your business may have services, products and locations, we can organise these documents within the overall structure of the site.
Plumber - locations - - Birmingham - - Sutton Coldfield - services - - kitchen - - bathroom - - emergency - contact
Then you can start to create nicely organised and descriptive URLs.
www.example.com www.example.com/services/ www.example.com/services/plumbing/ www.example.com/services/plumbing/emergency-plumber/ www.example.com/services/plumbing/bathroom-plumber/ www.example.com/services/electrical/ www.example.com/services/electrical/wiring/ www.example.com/services/electrical/lighting/ www.example.com/products/ www.example.com/products/shoes/ www.example.com/products/dresses/ www.example.com/locations/ www.example.com/locations/birmingham/ www.example.com/locations/london/
This seems complicated, but really we are just getting organised. A search engine is a machine learning system, so organisation will help the system understand your site and what you do.
SEO Tip: Think of the entities that you have in your business: services, products, locations etc. These should then become the main sections of your website.
12. Manually Crawl Your Site
You can get a big picture view of your site using crawling software like Screaming Frog. The free version will crawl up to 500 pages, which is enough for most small business websites. If you have more than 500 pages then it is well worth the licence fee.
The software examines your site and provides details on a page-by-page basis. You can then review the major on-page SEO elements and ensure everything lines up tab-by-tab.
URLs Page Titles Meta Description Header Tags (H1, H2)
Work through these four main tabs to make sure your URLs, page titles, meta descriptions and H1 tags are sensibly optimised.
Consistency really is key with SEO – get everything lined up and send a very clear signal to Google regarding the content of the page and the terms you want to be found for.
SEO Tip: You can export all the crawl data (or individual tabs) out to a spreadsheet and work on improving your page titles and meta descriptions there. These can then be applied to your site via your content management system (CMS).
13. Check Indexed Content
Screaming Frog will give you an idea of the number of HTML pages on your site. You should have a rough idea but this will confirm. You can then double-check how many pages you have indexed in Google Search Console.
You can also get a quick and dirty index count by typing your URL and the site command.
You want this to make sense – if you have a website with 10 pages then you want to see 10 pages indexed. If you see only a single page indexed or hundreds, something does not add up and you likely have technical issues that will need further investigation.
SEO Tip:
- If the total number of HTML pages roughly matches the number of indexed pages then move on.
- If you have fewer pages indexed than you have on your site, investigate why a number of pages are not indexed.
- If you have more indexed pages than you have on your site, investigate what these pages are and whether they need removing.
14. Build Content for People, Not Search Engines
Search engines don’t buy your products or services. People do. Yet all too often, content is bent out of shape to make it better for search engines. Well, I have news for you folks – 1999 called and wants its SEO back. Write content for real people. Weave in your marketing copy. Think of keywords and work them in where possible. People first. Search engines follow.
The easiest way to do this is to read your own website. Really read it. As if you were there for the very first time. If it makes life easier, copy the text into a plain text document and really read it. Often, this process alone can reveal huge improvements. Improving engagement on your site can improve your SEO results, so make sure your content is every bit as good as possible.
SEO Tip: This one is important – if you can’t write engaging sales copy then consider using a marketing company or freelance writer who can help.
15. Optimise Your Navigation
One of the many signals that Google uses to understand your website is internal navigation. Your site’s nav should help the search engine understand the context of a given page. Ideally, the navigation aligns with the structure of the site.
Consider a site with three services:
Home Services - plumbing - electrical - building Contact
Then the navigation here would simplify following that model. Possibly using a two-tier (drop-down) menu for the services element.
SEO Tip: Don’t forget to also carefully interlink your content. Where you have a product or service, link to it from your blog posts using natural search terms in a way that makes sense within the context of the article.
16. Optimise for Clicks
Your search engine listings are very much adverts for your business. So, it is important to ensure that the copy is enticing and persuades users to take the next step and click through to your site. Get your marketing head-on and write your page titles and meta descriptions like you were writing adverts and watch your click-through rates (and rankings) improve.
- Crawl your site in Screaming Frog
- Review all your page titles
- Review all your meta descriptions
- Rewrite them to optimise for click-through rates
You can review your CTR (Click Through Rate) in Google Search Console. You can make this figure even more useful by filtering around specific pages or search terms. Get a baseline and focus on getting clicks every bit as much as you focus on improving your rankings.
SEO Tip: There is often a temptation to over-optimise page titles and ignore meta descriptions, but these are crucial in driving users to your site. Optimise them sensibly and focus on increasing clicks to drive users from the search results to your site.
17. Branding the Search Results
Whilst you are reviewing your page titles, determine if you can add your business name or brand to the page titles or meta descriptions. I quite like having the brand at the end of the page title, but depending on the length of your titles this may not work for you.
SEO Services | Bowler Hat Technical SEO Audits | Bowler Hat
If you have complicated or long page titles, you can add your brand to the meta description. I tend to feel this has less visual impact, but it is an option.
Review the page titles tab in Screaming Frog. You can export just your page titles and/or meta descriptions and work in those spreadsheets to keep everything organised.
SEO Tip: A key consideration in marketing is awareness. Every time your listing is shown, that is an ad impression, and an opportunity to drive brand awareness. Use that opportunity to get your name out there.
18. Page Experience
Google Search Console has a section that allows you to review three key areas relating to page experience:
- Page Experience
- Core Web Vitals
- Mobile Usability
Within these reports, you can get diagnostic data direct from Google that you can use to improve your pages. In some cases, if your site is old, slow and riddled with issues you may need to look at a new site.
SEO Tip: Review the data in these reports and use this to improve page experience which can help improve rankings but will certainly help improve conversions.
19. Optimise Your Images
Images are often a neglected element of search engine optimisation. For some businesses, image search or image results blended into the standard search engine results offer an opportunity to drive awareness and traffic. But even for businesses where image search is not so relevant, images offer a way to provide additional context on the page.
Image optimisation is pretty simple stuff:
- Optimise image names
- Add sensible alt text for all images
- Add your branding into your images should they appear within image results
- Consider the context and where the image appears on the page
You don’t want to do anything daft here and cram images with keywords, but rather be descriptive and use images to add context. If you have a 24/7 emergency plumbing service then have an image showing a plumber turning up to an emergency in the dark of night.
Page: emergency-plumbing.html
Image Name: emergency-plumber.jpg
Alt-text: emergency plumber called out at 3 AM to fix a burst pipe
There is nothing spammy there. It’s simply descriptive and adds context.
If you sell products then the opportunity is often amplified and where many products tend to have random names (hgx76xy.jpg and generic alt text (or none at all).
SEO Tip: Optimise your images to improve your on-page optimisation and increase the likelihood of driving traffic from Google image search results.
20. Don’t Over-Optimise
Seriously, don’t overdo it. Search engines are smart. Use your keywords where it makes sense to use them. Ideally, your URLs, navigation, page titles, H1 tags, and meta descriptions will all align and this should make it crystal clear what a given page is about without the need for SEO stupidity.
Things not to do:
- There is no need to use broken language to work search terms into your copy.
- Don’t stuff the page with keywords
- Don’t use your keywords more than is natural to do so
- Don’t hide text or links in an effort to get more keywords on the page
Things to do:
- Review page titles
- Review meta descriptions
- Review your page copy
- Make sure everything lines up – consistency is key!
SEO Tip: Work your keywords into the page titles, meta descriptions and page copy, but don’t overdo it or you may do more harm than good.
Note: For those of you hungry for more information on how to optimise your website, I recently wrote a detailed overview of the intersection of website design and SEO for my Search Engine Land Column that goes into far more granular detail.
Section 4 – Local SEO
SEO for local businesses is a whole subcategory known as Local SEO (makes sense right?). Whilst there are many commonalities with traditional SEO, there are some specific tactics required for local businesses.
21. Business Listings
In local SEO terminology, business listings are known as citations. A citation is simply a mention of your business on a relevant site. Sometimes that mention will include a link. Sometimes it won’t.
The trick here is to identify the sites where your business should be listed. So in the UK, we are talking about the major business directories like Yell.com and Thompson. We are also talking about any sites that are relevant to your location or your business area. If you are a builder and there is a directory of building services then you want to be listed. If you are in Birmingham and there is a list of all businesses in Birmingham, you want to be listed.
There are some lists of citation sources, but often the best way to find relevant sites is to start Googling around your business area and location. You will soon compile a list that you can use as your starting point. You may also find you already have a listing, so be sure to update and optimise any existing ones (rather than duplicating them).
Consistency is key here again:
- Have a consistent description that mentions your services and target geographic areas
- Select the correct business categories
- Add any other content like images or reviews if possible to make these listings valuable
- Keep everything else consistent (see NAP below)
SEO Tip: When optimising citations, use the correct category and a description of your business that sensibly includes your main keywords (services and location typically).
22. NAP Consistency
NAP is shorthand for Name, Address and Phone number. It should really be NAP+W as the website address is also important here. All this really means is that your name and address should be consistent across the web.
As an example, our business has several potential name variations:
BowlerHat Bowler Hat BowlerHat Solutions BowlerHat Internet Services BowlerHat Internet Services Ltd Bowler Hat Solutions Bowler Hat Internet Services Bowler Hat Internet Services Ltd
This is a combination of a legacy URL (solutions), the official business name, and the abbreviated name we really go by (Bowler Hat). Our logo also has no gap between the Bowler and Hat so that has further created an issue here.
So with eight variations, there are these eight different businesses? Is our authority splintered across these listings? Whilst this seems almost daft, getting your name, address and phone number consistent across the web is super important for strong local search engine rankings. Take an in-depth look at NAP consistency here.
SEO Tip: Ensure your name, address, phone number, and website address is consistent in all areas where your business is listed across the web.
23. Location Pages
If your business has multiple locations then a page for each of these locations is strongly recommended. Customers will interact with a specific location and having a page that specifically covers that location is essential in developing strong Local SEO visibility.
Typical content for these includes:
- Address
- Local phone number
- Services provided at this location (with links to service pages ideally)
- Location-specific team members
- Case studies & portfolio items specific to this location
- Reviews and testimonials specific to this location
- Location-specific social media channels
These pages should be well structured within the overall site to clearly indicate:
www.example.com www.example.com/locations/ www.example.com/location-a/ www.example.com/location-b/
The goal here is to create organic search landing pages that strongly demonstrate why a potential customer would engage with your business. These pages will then rank in the local search results and organically doubling your visibility on the search engine result pages.
SEO Tip: Create pages for each physical location and align these with your local SEO campaign & Google My Business listing. The Yoast WordPress SEO plugin can help create these pages with ease!
24. Areas Covered
In many cases, a local business will only have one physical location but may cover many areas. In this instance, pages can be created that demonstrate work conducted at that location. These pages will differ somewhat to location pages in that there is not a physical office in each location. The focus should be on personalising these pages around the specific location so often focusing more on work done and customer testimonials.
Typical content for these pages is similar to the location pages detailed above, yet the weighting would be more towards the work conducted:
- Local address
- Local phone number
- Services provided at this location (with links to service pages ideally)
- Location specific team members
- Case studies & portfolio items specific to this location
- Reviews and testimonials specific to this location
- Location specific social media channels
These pages should be well structured within the overall site to clearly indicate:
www.example.com www.example.com/areas-covered/ www.example.com/areas-covered/location-a/ www.example.com/areas-covered/location-b/
These pages will typically not rank in the local search results as they are not tied to a specific address, but rather they will rank in the organic results.
When done well, location pages can be combined with areas covered pages to serve multiple physical locations and several areas at each location:
www.example.com
www.example.com/locations/
www.example.com/locations/birmingham/
www.example.com/locations/birmingham/sutton-coldfield/
www.example.com/locations/birmingham/moseley/
SEO Tip: Create unique pages that detail work done in a given area to target smaller areas such as towns within a given area.
25. Content Philosophy
Search engines want to return the best and most relevant result. There are many external signals but the one you have complete control over is your website and the content on the page. Review all competitor pages. Ensure yours is better. Get customers and other people in the business to feedback.
A sensible approach here can be to look at what questions your customers have and use that to flesh out your content. What does a prospective customer need to make a decision? What are your competitors good at?
Conduct a SWOT analysis for each competitor and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Then ensure you strike at the weaknesses and at least match them on their strengths. The fact is that most small business websites have very weak content so a focus on being the best will improve search engine visibility for a wide range of terms.
Some content ideas include:
- Reviews
- Testimonials
- Case studies
- Videos
- Product and service details
- FAQs
Really think this one through and ensure your content helps the customer in making a decision to use your business over the competition.
With SEO, it is easy to just obsess of the technical, but what Google really cares about is providing the best results to their users. Be the best result. Make your pages better than anyone else’s. That is true SEO and will get further than hours spent obsessing over the latest technical SEO fad.
SEO Tip: Ensure your content is more comprehensive than that of your competitors for improved rankings and results.
Section 5 – Performance Optimisation & Monitoring
Fast sites are happy sites with happy users. Google loves happy search engine users. And there is a range of tools out there to monitor website performance.
26. Core Web Vitals
We have touched on this above but the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console provides a real world review of how fast your pages load for users.
Google also has a simple tool you can use to test for mobile speed:
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
We now live in a multi-device mobile-first world. Most small businesses will see the first contact from prospects on mobile phones.
In all likelihood, you will want to talk to your web host or developer if your site is slow so they can look at how it can be sped up – the key factor here is to be aware and working on keeping that site as fast as possible.
For a comprehensive overview of how to truly optimise for mobile beyond just responsive design check out my recent Search Engine Land column: Mobile optimisation as a competitive advantage.
SEO Tip: The test site tool provides an output that you can use to review how mobile-friendly your site is, hosting and website performance along with a series of optimisation suggestions. Use this tool to fine-tune the performance of your website.
27. Monitor Your Website Performance
Page speed relies on many factors with the way the site is built, optimised for performance and the hosting being key factors. So testing for speed is something that should be done on a continuous basis to ensure your site is always available and always responding.
A recent statistic from Google research details that for every additional second it takes a page to load, conversions can fall by 20% – so ensure your site is blistering fast 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
- Review site speed in Google Analytics: Behaviour > Page Speed
- Monitor messages from search console re uptime and availability
- Utilise page speed testing tools: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
- Consider using a third-party continuous testing tool like www.pingdom.com
SEO Tip: Most small business sites perform poorly so a fast site can be a competitive advantage. Do the optimisation and keep monitoring to get a competitive advantage over the competition.
Section 6 – Link Building and Authority
Search engine visibility is still strongly dependent upon having a strong link profile. This becomes more of a factor in more lucrative and competitive markets.
28. Small Business Link Building Strategy
Link building should generally be the last job as you want to squeeze as much performance as possible from all other optimisation strategies – so, before you dive in, make sure you have your site well optimised, have created best of class content and have got your local SEO ducks in a row.
Then when it comes to building links that will improve your SEO, you will want to concentrate on two key factors:
- Basics – make sure your site is listed anywhere it should be listed. Relevant trade bodies, well used directories, suppliers etc.
- Digital PR – tools like HARO will allow you to help journalists looking for expert input for articles. Usually, input given here will provide a backlink to your website.
- Guest Posts – many sites will allow you to make a guest post which is relevant to their audience. This can generate improved exposure and credibility along with a backlink – but be careful with this tactic and ensure the posts truly add value to the site where they are placed. Quality trumps quantity here every single time!
You can further improve this strategy by creating useful content on your website and linking to that content in your digital PR and guest post contributions. This allows you to use relevant anchor text to point to articles on your site. These articles should expand upon on a point in the linking article and should add value to the linking page.
As an example, you may have an article about 5 plumbing jobs you can do yourself. You could then link to this with terms like “DIY Plumbing Jobs”, “plumbing jobs you can do yourself”. This allows you to get a branded link to your homepage and a link to a relevant piece of content on your website and typically further improves your results.
There are some caveats here and quality is important, so I cover this in far more detail in another Search Engine Land post, Organic Traffic and Link Building for Small Businesses.
SEO Tip: Use Digital PR & Guest Posts to build safe, branded links to your small business website. Further, optimise this site by creating relevant content articles and linking to those in your contributions.
Section 7 – Analytics, Measurement and Conversion Rate Optimisation
Getting your SEO dialled in for your Small Business Website will improve traffic yet we must understand those users to truly maximise results. This is where Analytics and Conversion Rate Optimisation comes into play.
29. Install Google Tag Manager (GTM)
Google Tag Manager is the modern way to manage tags on your website. This can simplify deploying and managing all the tags needed for digital marketing (analytics, Facebook etc) but it can also speed up your site. Fast site = happy users = happy search engine.
https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/
SEO Tip: Use Google Tag Manager to simplify adding tags to your website and improve page loading times to improve SEO.
30. Install Google Analytics
With Google Tag Manager (GTM) installed you will want to install Google Analytics (or move your analytics installation from the hardcode to Tag Manager.
SEO Tip: Install Google Analytics under Google Tag Manager for fast, flexible analytics data.
Bonus Tip!
31. Add Conversion Tracking to Forms, emails & Phone Numbers
This is super important but all too often ignored. Google Analytics allows you to link site visitors with actions such as form submissions and phone numbers dialled. Adding conversion tracking like this allows us to understand which pages and traffic sources drive leads and sales.
If you can get to grips with GTM (Google Tag Manager) then track anything important – forms, downloads, email clicks, phone number clicks – track it, measure it, improve it.
In an ideal world, having some level of PPC also helps here as we can see exactly what keywords convert clicks to customers and then feed that intelligence back into our organic search campaigns.
There are many ways to achieve this and the specifics will depend upon your set up – drop a comment below if you are struggling and we will feedback.
SEO Tip: Track everything so you know what works! This is digital marketing. Stop guessing what works! Use conversion tracking on forms. Use a tool like Mediahawk to track phone numbers. Use a tool like Inspectlet or Hotjar to get a far improved picture of how users interact with your pages.
Summary
SEO is not voodoo, and in 2022 it is certainly not a series of dirty tricks. Optimising your site is a case of getting many factors aligned and working together. Keywords. URLs and page names. Navigation. Page optimisation. Page copy. Areas covered. If all of these factors are perfectly aligned then we help the search engine understand what you do and where you do it.
When it comes down to it, a search engine is just a tool that connects a question with an answer. For the results to be strong, the search engine has to be completely confident in what you do and where you do it.
Free SEO Audit & Action Plan – Get a free manual review and video call with one of our SEO professionals – more details.
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20 Responses
Hi Marcus,
Great article covering almost all of the SEO activity required for small business SEO. Although some elements of SEO can be complex, it’s true that for the most part, these activities can be done by anyone.
Unfortunately, most clients I work with are either totally overwhelmed by the technical aspects of SEO, or simply do not have the time to do it themselves. A dentist, lawyer, or plumber are too busy running their business to bother with tracking their Google analytics, let alone keyword research.
But for someone with some time and inclination, I believe your list will set them on the right track to better SEO!
Cheers!
Hey – absolutely agree. For many folks it can be overwhelming and a real time suck. In part I wanted to try and break it down into manageable chunks and create a logical procedure that folks could follow. I would always recommend using a pro if you can as you will get better results in less time. But, for new businesses or those that need to improve their SEO without generating yet another bill – hopefully this helps. 🙂
Hi Marcus, this is an invaluable, concise guide for small business owners, packed with clear actionable tips. Hadn’t heard of HARO so checked it out and signed up. Cheers.
Hey Ewan – thanks for the feedback. Hope you enjoy! 🙂
FANTASTIC step-by-step guide to SEO – all good fundamentals and smb’s would be wise to follow this guide to a T.
Hey, thanks Andy.
It would take more than 30 days just to read all the information you are referring to in this post. Very misleading headline, but very good at getting me to click through.
Hey Bob
The idea is that one tip could be acted on each day. So whilst you would not get to SEO nirvana in 30 days – you would radically improve things. Sorry if you felt that was a bit too optimistic. It’s a fine line between inspiration and click bait! 🙂
There is some foundation reading there which is not part of the tips as it is so hard to know what level someone would jump in at. Some tips are a bit longer than others but my idea was if you could devote an hour a day for 30 days you will be in a far better place.
If I can help with anything give me a shout in the comments here – happy to feedback.
Cheers
Marcus
Thanks for sharing. This is the most complete overview on how to improve SEO, I have ever seen!
Hey Linda – thanks, very kind. 🙂
Excellent list of steps any small business owner can take to see an improvement in their search engine rankings. Nice job!
Thanks John. 🙂
Is there a benefit in hiring a pro to carry out the link outreach, or would you do it in-house?
It just depends. Do you have experience in link outreach? Do you have the tools that make this a whole bunch easier? Do you have any spare time? I am always a fan of hiring a pro where possible else this gets put on the to do list and never gets progressed. Hope that helps! 🙂
Thanks for this great Article Marcus, clearly you spent some time. Anyone new to SEO could benefit by bookmarking this one.
Points 14 & 16 both regard on page copy/content. This seems to be an area of weakness for many SEOs. This can be a problem if we can’t address why our clients have no additional conversions after we have driven ten times the traffic to their site. Having a few of the basics down can really add to the value given and keep your clients happy. And yes page speed is huge nowadays as you mention in 27… I find that optimizing images (regarding file size) can have a sizable impact on page load times also.
To Raquel’s question: It is always about the opportunity cost… meaning: A pro is almost always going to execute the tasks faster due to familiarity/knowledge/and repetition so if you can afford to spend the 100’s of hours researching and applying the SEO skills set then, by all means, do it. That said, almost anyone can shingle a house, but can you do it safely and finish it before the rain comes?
Hey. Glad you enjoyed. 🙂 The pro question is an important one. Especially with SEO. There is just so much info out there and it is easy to overdo things and damage your SEO as it is to make improvements. The analogy for me is any kind of DIY on my house. I am just hopeless. It takes me forever. I make a bad job of things. It looks crappy. I may as well do a few hours of what I am good at and pay someone to come in and sort out these DIY jobs. Play to your strengths. The idea here though was to outline some areas in a sensible order so everyone could make some sensible, procedural changes. Certainly hope it helps some small businesses out there.
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for the information. Does having seperate websites/domains for the three main products but all having the same name, address and phone number help SEO or hurt SEO?
Cheers,
David
Hey David. If you can give me an example I can give you some more informed feedback here but… as a general rule of thumb you always want to have the least possible amount of websites.
Some specific advice / reasons with the caveat I have not seen your site:
It is highly likely you would benefit from merging the three sites together into one authoritative site that is well structured. Better for users. Better for search engines.
Hope that helps!
Marcus
I have found that small business owners from the old generation actually don’t have time to do SEO by themselves in addition are not willing to learn those scary things like digital marketing. And they have been bombarded from all over the place with SEO offers for just $45… you get the point. How do you deal with those to get them even interested? Thank you
It is tough but the only answer is always education. We try and help small business owners understand where the costs come from and what is involved. If we understand where you are and where you want to be we can figure out what is needed to get there. We try and put out helpful content around topics like How Much Does SEO Cost to try and help people understand the variables: https://searchengineland.com/much-seo-cost-277110.
Interestingly a lot of jobs we lose on price, tend to come back to us 6 or 12 months down the road when the cheaper option has ended up being a waste of time and money. Sometimes we all have to learn from our mistakes but hopefully, we come back better informed.
Hope that helps!
Marcus