SEO (search engine optimization) is more than just a buzz word. Even if your small business operates in a hyperlocal market, optimizing your website for search engines (or just Google) can increase website traffic and sales. But what is SEO? And how can a small business get started optimizing a website for better search engine traffic and rankings? SEO is a broad topic, but let’s explore the essentials so you can get started using small business SEO strategies.

What is SEO?

SEO, or “search engine optimization”, is a multi-faceted process that involves changing aspects of your website or web presence to help make your site more “visible” to search engines.

Note that SEO is not the same as paid advertisements. You can pay for ads through Google Adsense or other search engine advertising services to help your business land on a search engine results page.

SEO, however, involves adjusting different webpage and website features and adding content to your website. With the right optimization, you massively increase the chance that your web pages land higher up the list for Google or other search engine results for the keywords that matter most for your business.

SEO is an integral part of what’s called “organic search results”. These are the unpaid results on a search engine results page. That said, SEO is far easier to process when you understand what criteria search engines like Google use to rank websites.

How Do Search Engines Work?

Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo do not share all of the details regarding how their algorithms work to rank web pages. In fact, they’re particularly and purposefully coy on that end to help ensure websites constantly update and improve content.

Still, all search engines work similarly, by first performing an action called “crawling”. When you enter a search term into Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other search engines, the algorithm powering the search engine “crawls” the web, looking for the web pages that fit your search term.

Which websites rank the highest in a search term will vary by search engine, but note that Google accounts for over 70 percent of all search traffic. For Google, the web pages that rank the highest typically incorporate the following as much as possible:

Unique, well-written content directly addressing the search term
Easily read and navigated content
Content written by subject-matter authorities or known authors
Multiple references to the targeted keywords across different parts of the web page (headings, content, and other areas)
Long-form content (1,000 to 2,000 words or longer)
Images that include explanatory alt tags (a brief description of the image) that include the keyword (note that alt tags are also read by text-to-speech programs for the blind, making it important that your alt tags are readable)
A mobile version of your website
A mixture of inbound and outbound links
A strong backlink profile
A Google My Business listing (important for businesses with a physical location)

As stated, web companies operating search engines don’t reveal all of their cards. However, Google offers a helpful SEO starter guide. The company repeatedly comes back to two important acronyms: EAT and YMYL.

EAT and YMYL

In 2018, Google made a large change to its search engine algorithm. Alongside a few key updates, the company further emphasized the importance of these concepts: expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EAT) and Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)

Google employs what they call human quality raters. These individuals use Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines(pdf) to determine the quality of web pages. Obviously, not all web pages are human-reviewed, but Google employs these human individuals to help tweak and perfect its rating metrics. And these individuals specifically look for the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of pages, and pay particular attention to pages that impact an individual’s money (e.g., the website wants visitors to purchase a product or service) and life (such as sites that give informative advice).

We could spend hours talking about the intricacies of these, but we recommend you check out a few additional guides on EAT and YMYL.

The better aligned your website is to EAT, the better chance it has of ranking. Small business owners should plan strategically about how to ensure their site establishes itself as an expert in the field, with authority and trustworthiness.

In general:

Expertise is established by showing visitors to your site that you are an expert in the area in which your small business operates. This is often accomplished by creating high-quality, unique content through on-site blogs, or through link building to get your name and company mentioned on other websites.
Authoritativeness is similar to expertise but can be seen directly through who is producing the content for your site. For example, if you’re publishing blogs, consider making sure they come with a byline instead of having no author listed. And if you’re outsourcing content to freelancers, give them bylines, and find freelance writers who have bylines across other sites with writing on similar topics. The more content your site produces with the same writers, the more those writers become established as experts in a field, adding to the strength of your website’s authoritativeness.
Trustworthiness comes down to whether your website presents itself as a source visitors can trust. This can cover everything from making sure your website protects user information with SSL encryption and secured online payment methods to ensuring that you never link to questionable or misleading content in your blogs and landing pages.

Local SEO Is Important for Small Businesses

Not all small businesses have a local presence. However, if your business heavily relies on a physical, local operation, you’ll need to focus as much as possible on local SEO tactics.

Local SEO is anything you do to your website and your web presence to help Google and other search engines tie you to a physical location. In doing so, when potential customers search online using keywords critical to your business, Google is more likely to list your business in those searches.

For Local SEO, there are a few critical first steps.

1. Sign up for Google My Business

Do you know how some businesses’ website pop up with name, address, phone information, and a map link after you search for certain keywords or phrases? For example, “dentists near me”:

When businesses appear at the top of web searches with this critical information, it’s because they’ve registered with the search engine’s business listing service.

Any registered business can sign up. Just use the following link:

Google My Business (free)
Bing Places for Business (free)
Yahoo! Small Business (charges a fee, but you can still get listed for free with a basic listing)

Get local listings in registries, review sites, and databases

Search engines base part of their ranking metrics on mentions. The more your business is mentioned across the web, the better. For locally-based businesses, it’s important to get listed in multiple registries, review sites, and databases.

You’ll want to make sure your business is mentioned and listed in major locations, including:

The Yellow Pages
Better Business Bureau
Yelp
Foursquare
City Search
Facebook

You can outsource this service, or hire a marketing specialist to help get your website listed on websites that matter for your business.

The most important strategy to remember is consistency. Make sure every website lists your business with the same information, and in the same format. E.g., make sure your company name, web address, physical address, and phone number are always listed the same way. Inaccuracies can reduce the quality of your local SEO.

Update landing pages to reference your location and keywords

Does your website mention the physical location? How often? And in what context? Google and other search engines crawl your website dynamically. They don’t just pinpoint individual words and phrases but get a holistic understanding of your website. Context matters.

If your website services a specific town, city, or region, it needs to have those locations mentioned not just in multiple places on your website, but within the context of the services you provide. For example, if you run a beauty salon in Laguna Beach, you’ll want multiple mentions of the words “beauty salon” and “Laguna Beach” on your website in close proximity (typically together as one phrase, but also within the same sentence, paragraph, or on the same page).

Again, the better Google and other search engines are able to determine where your site is located and what your site is all about, the better your pages will rank organically.

Avoid overoptimization!

Overoptimization is a danger that some small businesses fall into early in the game. Overoptimization includes keyword stuffing and other tactics that reduce the authenticity of the site. Keywords will always be important, but search engines, and especially Google, more appreciate a logical, natural flow to the language on the page.

As such, make sure you don’t have an excessively high keyword ratio on your pages. Search engines will decrease your ranking if it’s obvious you’re just stuffing keywords without thought to authentic writing.

How to Get Started with Small Business SEO

Any small business can get started with SEO strategies. Some are easy for almost any business owner to accomplish in just a few minutes.

To get started incorporating SEO strategies into your business, we recommend:

Signing up for local business listings, including Google My Business
Ensuring you have a mobile-friendly version fo your website
Purchasing and implementing SSL encryption for your website
Updating existing landing pages with contextual keywords and phrases
Providing byline authorship for existing blog content
Developing a content strategy
Developing a link-building strategy

Although SEO is now fundamentally important for most businesses, not all small business owners will have the skillset or time to work on their own SEO strategy. If you need expert assistance with every aspect of SEO, including local SEO strategies, content marketing, and link building, contact Madison Ave Media for a complimentary consultation.

Small Business Owner's Guide to SEO