5 Simple SEO Tips for Small Business Owners

Don’t let search engine optimization (SEO) overwhelm you. There are simple changes you can make that don’t require you to be an expert. As a small business owner, you’re looking for new ways to grow your business and reach new clients. While social media and word of mouth are important to your business, so is SEO. How many times do you search for information daily? There is an opportunity to reach a large audience. Use these 5 simple SEO tips for small business owners to improve your website.

Your business should appear consistent online

Double-check that your website, Google business profile, and social media profiles all have the same information for your business name, address, and phone number. An important factor in SEO is providing easily accessible information to searchers. Inconsistencies confuse customers, and can easily be avoided.

Use heading and paragraph tags for SEO

What’s the most important information on your page? Heading tags are used to help Google interpret which information is the most to least important beginning with H1 tags (also known as title tags). Blocks of text should be written with the paragraph tag. In addition to helping search engines, using tags makes your website accessible. Get in the habit of checking it each time you add text to your website.

Optimizing your branding images for SEO

Large images affect your website speed.

Unfortunately, when you have slow website speeds people aren’t likely to wait around for your website to load and will head back to search results. This signals to Google that your website isn’t worth pushing to the top. Search results are largely based on relevancy. If people stick around and interact with your website content, it means that your website is valuable to searchers.

To avoid slow speeds ensure that your images aren’t too large. There are a variety of tools that can be used to reduce the size of images. To find the right size, check the size recommendations on your website builder. It can vary a bit across platforms, but it’s typically around 1500px.

Using keywords to help your website’s SEO

Using keywords that customers/clients are searching for is important in helping you rank in results. Just be careful of “keyword stuffing.” That means don’t squeeze in as many keywords as you can and don’t overuse the same one. This will have a negative effect on search engines. Use keywords in a natural way that makes sense when reading.

Start using a keyword research tool to get keyword ideas. A few spots that are helpful to include keywords are your website page title, heading tags, and paragraph copy.

Track your website activity with tools

Google Search Console and Google Analytics are free tools that you can use to track your website activity. For instance, average position in rankings, the most visited pages on your website, and how people are finding your website. If you haven’t connected these to your website, this is where you should start. Once you set it up for the first time, it can take some time to gather information for your website. After your data has loaded, I encourage you to look around. The information might surprise you.