How to Use SEO to Help Your Small Business Grow

4 Ways to Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

​If you're a small business owner, it's more important than ever to make sure your website is optimized for search engines. Why? Because people are increasingly turning to the internet—not Yellow Pages or other traditional sources—to find local businesses. In fact, a recent study by Google found that 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses. 

What does this mean for you? It means that...

What does this mean for you? It means that if your website isn't optimized for search engines, you could be missing out on a lot of potential customers. Fortunately, there are some easy things you can do to improve your website's SEO. In this blog post, we'll share four tips on how to use SEO to help your small business grow.

1. Do keyword research. Keyword research is essential for on-page optimization. On-page optimization is the process of making sure your website's content is relevant and keyword-rich—in other words, making sure your website includes the words and phrases people are actually searching for when they're looking for businesses like yours. 

There are a number of free and paid keyword research tools available online, such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer. Once you've done your research and identified a few target keywords, be sure to sprinkle them throughout your website's content—in the titles and headers, in the body copy, in the meta tags, etc. 

​2. Optimize your website for local search. Type just about any product or service into your favorite online search engine and the words "near me" will come up in the auto-suggestion field. If you want your small business to show up in local search results, it's important to optimize your website for local search. Local search optimization is similar to regular SEO, but with a few key differences. 

One difference is that with local SEO, you need to include location-specific keywords (e.g., "plumber New York," "attorney Los Angeles"). You should also include your business's address and phone number on every page of your website, as well as in the Meta tags (if you're not sure what Meta tags are, don't worry—we'll get to that in a minute). Finally, be sure to claim your Google My Business listing and populate it with accurate information about your business (hours of operation, services offered, etc.). 

3. Build backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites that lead back to your website. They act sort of like digital word-of-mouth marketing; the more backlinks you have pointing to your website, the more credible—and therefore trustworthy—your site will appear to search engines like Google. And when your site is more credible and trustworthy, that means better search engine rankings for you. 

​There are a few ways to build backlinks. One is through link building campaigns. Another is by creating great content that others will want to link to. Yet another is by leveraging social media (more on that in a minute). 

4. Use social media wisely. Social media can be a great way to connect with potential and current customers—but only if it's used wisely from an SEO standpoint. That means using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn not only to share links to your website but also to create interesting and engaging content that will encourage people to follow you and share your posts with their own followers (thus increasing the reach of your social media efforts and resulting in more traffic to your website). The longer visitors spend on your website, the better for your SEO. However, certain search engines will penalize your website if visitors quickly click off your website in less than few seconds. They read that data as you luring visitors to your website under clickbait links or other false pretenses.

These are just a few ways you can use SEO to help your small business grow. By following these tips, you can improve your visibility in search engine results pages—and ultimately attract more visitors (and customers) to your site.

​Looking for some additional hands-on help? Reach out to us today to get started.