Top 5 SEO Tips for Small Business Websites
There is lots of information online and in print about search engine optimization (SEO). For the most part that information is targeted toward people who make content online professionally: website designers, Youtubers, TikTok content creators, etc. Not a lot of this information is packaged for someone who has a business that has a website, but who doesn’t exclusively make online content. Below, I outline my top five tips that you need to understand and prioritize about SEO for your small business’ website.
First, for those who need it, let’s quickly define search engine optimization. SEO simply refers to guidelines and best practices for getting your content to feed out when someone searches for relevant information online. SEO helps your customers to find you, especially when they don’t already know who you are. It’s one thing to get your website to show up when someone puts your exact business name into a search engine. It’s another to get your business’ website to show up when someone does a more general search (for example, “plumbers near me”).
Tip #5: Useful Headings
It can be tempting to try to make every heading as flashy as possible, or to skip headings if you’re in a hurry and just get to the content. I like to think of headings as labels. Most people skim content online. Content with easy to understand, relevant, short headings is easier to flag when skimmed.
This is also true for search engines. Their algorithms use headings to categorize information and understand what your content is trying to communicate. For this reason, they need the same thing your customers do: useful headings.
Tip #4: Spelling and Grammar
It is important for search engine algorithms to be able to understand your content in order to group it with similar content and feed it out to your customers. Spelling and grammar errors make your content more difficult to understand for both search engines and your customers. The algorithm won’t be able to pull keywords and phrases out of your content if those words are misspelled. It’s best to give everything a thorough once over to make sure your website is easy for everyone to understand.
Tip #3: Updates
Search engines – and more importantly, customers – don’t like information that is out of date. If your content is outdated, it will likely be suppressed by the algorithm so that more recent content can be found. This doesn’t mean you need to go back and make superficial edits to your website constantly to stay relevant (search engines can actually detect and filter out that kind of activity). Instead, it’s important to keep adding information that is relevant to your customers to your website on an ongoing basis. Try not to sweat this tip too much. If something has changed and your customers need to know about it (contact information, features/services changes, etc.), then search engines also want you to make those updates to your website.
Tip #2: Image Alt Text
The alt text for the images on your website isn’t displayed on your average screen, so it might be tempting to skip filling it in. You’re busy. I encourage you to reconsider this impulse. Not only is alt text an incredibly important accessibility feature, it can also help with SEO. Alt text helps users with visual impairments access your content. Screen readers (technology that converts visual information like your website into audio information) need alt text to function properly. An added bonus to filling out the alt text sections for the images on your website is that alt text also helps the search engine algorithms to read your website. Alt text doesn’t need to be complicated or time consuming to fill out. It should be a simple, straight forward, short description of what the image is depicting.
Tip #1: Focus on Your Customer
SEO is important. If the algorithm can’t find your website, it can’t feed your website to your customers; but SEO isn’t everything. Worrying too much about what the algorithm does or doesn’t want to see is a trap. This is how business owners drive themselves crazy trying to invent new tricks to get the algorithm to notice them. Ultimately, search engines want the same thing that your customers do: relevant up to date information that is well written and easy to access. So just focus on your customer and let the search engines worry about doing their job. If you’ve followed the four other tips above when adding content to your website you should be all set.
