SEO for Small Businesses

SEO for Small Businesses

Search Engine Optimisation for Small Businesses

Most businesses, large and small, have websites, but relatively few of those websites are successful in search engine results. So for those businesses which depend on visitors coming to their website, they could have a pretty big problem if their website isn't found!

According to a study by AHrefs...

90.63% of web pages get NO traffic from Google!

Unfortunately many websites never make it high enough in search results to attract visitors. It can take some time and effort to get amongst your competitors, and continued effort to get ahead of them.

That's where SEO come in, and where we can help.

How important is SEO?

How important SEO is to your business will depend on what you want from your website. As a business it is no longer enough to just be online because to succeed, your website needs to be found.

But not all businesses have the same level of competition.

It's fairly easy to be ranked #1 in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) if people enter a search term for your business name. But competing with other businesses based on business type and the services you provide can be a lot tougher.

If you're a plumber in Leeds, or an electrician in Hull, you will have a lot of competition, so more effort would be needed to get your website seen even at town level. Compare that to the level of competition a Tesla dealer in entire county of Yorkshire would have.

Yes, the Tesla dealer would have competition with dealerships for other car brands, but if the search term is Tesla dealer in Yorkshire the level of competition in the search engines is relatively small.

Not all businesses have the same level of competition

What does SEO involve?

Ideally your website should be built with SEO as a key consideration right from the start of the development sate, and not just an add-on at the end.

But even if you have a website which has been live for some time, things can be done to improve your effectiveness with search engines.

Website SEO Audit

To begin with your website should be reviewed for things including:

Competitor analysis:

• Which of your competitors are appearing in the top search engine results?
• What are they doing to give them such a high position?
• A gap analysis would be carried out to assess the content and structure of your website in comparison to your competitors.

Checking for website errors:

• Checking for broken links
• Checking for missing images
• Fixing any website errors found.

Review for improvements to your website:

• Website content review and enhancements.
• Keyword research analysis and improvements.
• Checking how the major tags such as <title>, <h1> and <h2> etc are being used.
• Page load speed analysis.
• Website architecture analysis.
• Page structure validation using the W3C validator.
• Internal links - analysis and review of existing internal links and identifying opportunities for improvement.
• Improve Inbound linking (also known as backlinking)
• Improve outbound linking
• Determine strategy for the use of landing pages.

Google submissions:

• Google validation and submitting.
• Google Analytics tag installation, validation, analysis and monitoring.
• Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) listing to help your business to stand out when people are searching in your area for the services you provide.

Bing submissions:

• Submission to the Bing search engine
• Submission to Bing Places which will help potential customers find your website when searching for businesses like yours on Bing.

What do you need to do next?

We can take a look at your current website as part of our free website audit and also conduct some high level preliminary analysis to see what competition you're up against in the search engine results. We can then mail you back with some feedback and suggestions.

That will be FREE and without obligation.

If you want to take things any further, we can discuss a plan, timeline and costs. At the very least you will have had a free website audit!