SEO Strategy for Small Businesses in 2023

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy that involves optimizing a website's content and technical aspects to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). With the right SEO strategy, a small business can increase its discoverability and website traffic, leading to more sales and revenue. In this beginner's guide to SEO, we'll explore some basic tactics that small businesses can use to optimize their website for search engines. If you’re looking for a beginner’s guide to Technical SEO, you can find that here (insert link).

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Conduct Keyword Research

The first step to a successful SEO strategy is keyword research. It involves finding relevant keywords and phrases that people use to search for products or services similar to what a business offers. Small businesses can use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to identify popular keywords in their industry. Once you have a list of keywords, use them in your website's content, including your homepage, landing pages, blog posts, and product descriptions.

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Optimize Website Content

In addition to using relevant keywords, small businesses should also optimize their website content for search engines. This involves creating high-quality content that provides value to visitors. Content can include blog posts, infographics, videos, or product descriptions. When creating content, focus on providing value to visitors, using clear and concise language, and incorporating relevant keywords. Simplicity is often your friend when communicating with prospective customers. They have a problem, you solve it and create certain advantages, here are the next steps.

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Build Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. They are an essential part of SEO because search engines consider them as a vote of confidence in your website's authority and relevance. To build backlinks, small businesses can guest post on other websites, participate in online communities, and reach out to other websites for link-building opportunities. The more high-quality backlinks a website has, the more authoritative it appears to search engines.

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Use On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization involves optimizing the technical aspects of a website to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index its pages. This includes optimizing page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and URLs. Additionally, small businesses should ensure their website is mobile-friendly, has fast loading times, and is easy to navigate.

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Optimize Local SEO

For small businesses that rely on local customers, local SEO is essential. It involves optimizing a website's content and technical aspects for location-based searches. Small businesses can use Google My Business to create a business listing, claim and verify their listing, and ensure their business information is accurate and up-to-date. Additionally, they can include location-based keywords in their website content and build backlinks from local websites.

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Schemas for Structured Data

Schemas are used to provide structured data to Google about a website's content. This structured data is in a specific format, which helps Google understand the website's content better. For example, a website that sells products can use a schema to define the product name, price, availability, and reviews. This helps Google understand the website's content better and improves the website's chances of ranking higher in search results. For example, let's say you have a recipe website. You can use a schema to define the recipe name, ingredients, cooking time, and nutritional information. This will make it easier for Google to understand what your website is about and help it rank higher in search results.

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Optimizing Images

Large images can slow down a website's loading time, which can negatively impact its SEO performance. To avoid this, it's essential to scale down images and optimize them for web use. This can be done using image editing software or online tools. By reducing the image size, the website can load faster, which can help improve its SEO ranking. For example, if you have a high-quality image on your website that is over 1 MB in size, you can use an online tool to compress the image and reduce its size. This will help the website load faster, improving its user experience and SEO performance.

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Utilizing Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a file that tells search engine crawlers which pages on a website to crawl and which to ignore. This can be useful for pages that are not in use or have no value for search engine crawlers. By using robots.txt, you can ensure that search engine crawlers focus on the pages that matter, improving the website's SEO performance.

For example, let's say you have a test page on your website that you don't want search engine crawlers to index. By using the robots.txt file, you can tell search engines not to crawl that page, so it won't appear in search results.

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Google Rewards Value

Google values high-quality content that provides value to visitors. This means that small businesses should focus on creating valuable content that is informative, engaging, and relevant to their audience. By doing this, they can improve their website's SEO performance and increase its chances of ranking higher in search results. For example, let's say you have a blog that provides information about home maintenance. By creating in-depth and informative blog posts about topics such as plumbing, electrical, and heating systems, you can provide value to your audience and improve your website's SEO performance.

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Internal Linking

Internal linking is the process of linking pages within a website. This helps visitors and search engines navigate the website more easily and can improve user experience. By using internal linking, small businesses can promote related content and improve their website's SEO performance. For example, let's say you have a blog post about the benefits of exercising. You can link to other relevant blog posts on your website that provide more information about exercise and fitness, making it easier for visitors to find related content.

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As you can tell, there are numerous ways to increase SEO, and business owners need not get overwhelmed by all the steps provided above. Instead of trying to bite off more you can chew, identify a few areas that would be easy to execute on, such as setting up a Google My Business page, or adding alt tags to all your website images. From there, you can continue to build on what you have in place and before long you'll be outranking your competitors!

The Courtside Group offers free SEO consultations. If you're curious about the areas of opportunity on your company website, reach out to info@thecourtsidegroup.com to request a consultation. We will comb through your website and provide an actionable report about how to improve SEO so you can get more customers and drive more sales.