Climbing up the ladder to search engine success can be a painful journey for small businesses, but it’s no good having an online presence if you’re ten pages back on Google. Wherever you are, you need to stay ahead of your closest rivals if you want to succeed. Here are 5 SEO tips for small businesses:
- Get some help
Google is a tricky and clever beast, but there are ways to appeal to it. One of the things it respects is your brand’s popularity in web publications relevant to your industry or location. Getting mentioned is a plus, and getting linked back to is even better. Multiple links to your page from a reputable and relevant website will be hugely beneficial.
- Be niche
Being specific always helps. If your keyword density is high (if a keyword or phrase is featured a lot of times) it’s more likely that your website will be found by relevant searches. A website that is well prepared for search engines will feature keywords that its potential visitor base will use. Always try to speak the language of your target market.
- Speed up
Google hates slow websites. Nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and will abandon a site that hasn’t loaded in 3 seconds. Google picks up on this, as it recognises a swift exit as a bad experience. Improve your hosting plan and make any images internet friendly.
- Make your website mobile responsive
Another negative website attribute that isn’t good for SEO is a website that hasn’t been optimised for mobile usage. With more people than ever using their phones to browse the web, it’s essential to offer them the same positive experience they’d get on a computer. Otherwise, they’ll become frustrated and look elsewhere, and Google will notice.
- Use your header tags properly
The header tag (the <h1> tag in HTML) is the title of your post, and should contain your target keywords – ones that relate to your page’s title and to the content within the page. The h2 tag works as a subheading and should contain similar keywords to your h1 tag. It’s the keywords that do the brunt of the work; make sure you’re getting the best out of them.
SEO is not nearly as difficult to master as it could initially lead you to believe. Once you’ve put in a little bit of effort and regularly utilised these tips, you’ll start seeing improvements within a couple of months. The Google beast can always be tamed if you know how.
Want to learn more about SEO? Our digital marketing team are always here to offer some no obligation advice. Get in touch on 01462 262020, email hello@focus7int.com or via our contact page