What SEO principles are you familiar with – Small business SEO is a set of techniques and best practices that help organizations stand out online. That is, it is possible to achieve better search engine positions and attract the ideal client’s attention. In short: SEO helps increase conversions and sales.
The digital world is a vast space disputed by companies as is the real world. However, in the traditional arena, there is a fight for freedom in a place of good visibility or advertising opportunities on radio/television and other media.

The dispute involves various other media online, the main one being undoubtedly the Google results page (and different SERPs). To stand out on this page, businesses have two options:

  • paid advertisements;
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

In this sense, understanding the principles of SEO for small businesses is essential since it is beneficial for managers to demonstrate their value to directors, develop the online brand without the need for significant expenses, better-investing resources and generate better results.

If you poverty to be a part of the vast and rewarding universe of SEO and absorb the top tips for success, carefully follow the topics below.

What is SEO?

SEO is the name given to the strategies and techniques that optimize a website to ensure better positioning in search results. That is to say; it is a set of good practices that adjust the content to satisfy the rules of the search engines and, therefore, allow a website to be found.

As today’s consumption has changed, with the Internet playing a pivotal role in educating people before they buy, SEO has become a veritable gold mine. The area has become decisive for many companies because it represents the possibility of growing the business through digital efforts.

After all, the dispute that used to be the preserve of offline marketing has come to the virtual world. Positions on the results pages are the object of competition since the sites that appear first are more likely to capture the user’s attention and the desired click.

Hubspot data proves it: 75% of people don’t even make it past the first page of results. Other research from Zero Limit Web shows that 67.6% of clicks typically go to the first 5 organic results of a SERP .

What SEO principles are you familiar with

SEO is a set of actions that generate organic traffic, thus being an alternative to paid channels, and ads in sponsored links.

In this sense, it is also worth noting the opposite reasoning: these practices prevent the domain from being punished by search systems according to their rules and definitions. It is a way to keep the company secure and accessible in the digital environment. The On-Page refers to all the changes that can be made within site, such as the internal configuration related to each content. It includes using meta tags, good titles, meta descriptions, URLs, images, and heading tags, among others.

The Off Page, for its part, refers to the optimizations carried out outside the site, such as backlinks, mentions of the brand, direct searches and others.

How important is it too small businesses?

It is common for SEO to be confused with strategies that work best only for large companies. Many professionals feed into this concept, as they believe that organic optimization is similar to the logic of how sponsored links work.

However, we know that small businesses have a smaller and more controlled budget than large corporations. For this reason, they cannot invest as much in paid media and ads, which leads to losing some spaces. On the other hand, this only reinforces the power and importance of SEO.

Search engine optimization practices help smaller businesses establish their domains as relevant on the web without spending much money on ads. By mapping keywords and using precise strategies, the right customers find the sites, which puts them in the sales funnel.

This means that using these approaches increases organic traffic, brand awareness, educates the public, and sets people up for conversions.

What SEO principles are you familiar with

Therefore, it is a configuration that generates results in the medium and long term from the highest generation of leads and sales. These benefits are solid and long-lasting, converting into revenue and keeping the company firm in the SERPs. Unlike, for example, the temporary visibility of an ad or campaign.

A company that invests in SEO from an earlier stage can develop the credibility and authority it needs to gain high performance in the digital world. The proper techniques give smaller companies a chance to compete head-to-head.

In practice, this can mean a change of address, for example. Instead of competing for keywords that compete with large corporations, SMEs can work with specific terms which refer precisely to what their client is looking for.

This already positions the company in the ideal SERPs, where the consumers are and allows it to generate value for this audience.

In addition to this, it is worth mentioning that organic results are more reliable for users since they are not seen as mere advertising.

Customers, therefore, find content that appears organically more valuable and less focused on simply selling for the sake of selling. This way, businesses that emphasize SEO techniques can rank well in the SERPs and still gain an advantage over sponsored links.

9 Tips on How to Do SEO for Small Businesses

Now, let’s dive deeper with 9 practical small business SEO tips.

1. Relevant content

The first piece of advice is not even a technique but rather refers to the value that quality content generates. Although SEO trends will always change, this one has stayed relevant over the years.

We are, thinking ,of SEO in an entrenched Content Marketing strategy, which is crucial for this strategy to work.

For search engines, content is significant, since the algorithms try to show users exactly what is most relevant, clear and deep for them. So, develop valuable, unique, complete materials that satisfy the demands, clarify doubts, and present practical solutions for your Buyer Persona.

It is essential to emphasize that orientation and education should be prioritized. Teach your audience about the area, fight objections, and create instructions for them daily. Arrange to talk less about your brand and products directly and instead focus more on important topics to people in an advisory tone.

It also experiments with formats, including exploring trends such as interactive content. In this sense, it is worth studying the search intention to create each piece of content.

It is also essential that content production is organized and planned by the most important principles and best practices. In this way, the writing, for example, must already be born obeying the SEO writing rules to optimize the results.

2. Keyword

Keyword research is an essential action for any SEO strategy. It guides the production of content to satisfy existing public demands, mapping the terms used in the engines.

From the use of specific tools for this purpose, management can raise important expressions and evaluate: how much is being disputed and how much can be generated in terms of access.

In this sense, it is worth noting the particularities and subcategories. We have the long tail keyword, a more extended, more specific expression, and the head-tail keyword, which refers to shorter, more general terms.

Of course, specific terms are less competitive and can connect your brand directly with your audience. Therefore, it is interesting to have a workshop focused on them.

In some scenarios, when customers search for a long tail, they are ready to purchase or hire a service. Likewise, when they prefer more open and shorter deadlines, they want to learn more about a topic without needing to look for a solution.

However, good planning also considers the need to consider the classification of head tails and balances the creation of materials for both types.

3. Page optimization

Another tip is on-page settings, which prepare your site to obey search engine guidelines. In this sense, it is worth weight the work with the strategies that we have already mentioned:

  • sets good titles that summarize the page well, contain the keyword and capture attention;
  • use heading tags as a way to structure content and answer people’s questions;
  • uses images;
  • set URLs well;
  • among other.

4. Link Building

We can also mention Link Building, which covers the connections between pages. Establishing a coordinated effort to link pages that are related to each other is essential, using relevant terms.

Thus, you generate value for the user, allowing them to browse your site and find more answers, and point out to the search engine an internal organization that deserves a good positioning.

Also, posts must obey some rules regarding links. It is a good practice, for example, to insert 3 links every 500 words of a text.

Think carefully about the order of these links, as the ones that appear first are the most relevant. For keywords important to the business, try to link to entire posts, the longest and most detailed ones.

In the case of external links, the recommendation is always to try to connect to more authoritative and credible sites in the market. The image below explains in more detail why.

 5. SEO local

One of the changes in the world of SEO brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic was the increased emphasis on local SEO. This is because local consumption has become more critical, as people tend to stay home longer and avoid moving.

Additionally, local SEO is associated with face-to-face visits: according to Google, 76% of people who do local research visit the business within 24 hours.

So, make sure to bet on these strategies. Work with optimized keywords to highlight the geographic aspect (instead of ranking for “marketing courses”, focusing on “marketing courses in CDMX”) and develop content oriented to the needs of your community.

Another good approach is to set up your business page on Google My Business, with features related to location, opening hours, a direct links to the website, and other information.

6. User experience (UX)

We are in the era of experience, and this is not outside of search engine optimization. Thinking about UX is essential to optimize websites since Google highly values ​​those who think about the customer and improve their pages to serve them better.

So try to tune your site’s speed, navigability, responsiveness, and usability in general. The idea is to offer a website that is easy to use, with essential information visible and easy to navigate.

7. Security

Another aspect of extreme importance in improving the positioning of the SERPs is security.

One specific tip related to this is to set up SSL certificates for your website, which will make the domain more secure, with encryption to receive information and will place a security icon next to the URL. Currently, Google values ​​and supports sites with SSL.

8. Search intent

We talked briefly about search intents, but we need to dig deeper. Our penultimate recommendation is to pay more attention to this factor and plan content based on it. There are three main intentions for an Internet query:

  • transactional;
  • navigation;

The transactional intention is associated with the demand for a product/service at a stage close to the purchase decision. The client knows his problem well and knows more or less what the solutions are. So he has to go to some website and make the transaction.

Navigation intent is a transition where the user consults a website name or a brand to access the website. Informational intent, on the other hand, focuses on seeking valuable information and education on a topic. Generally, at this point, the consumer is far from making a purchase decision.

9. Content update

Finally, we need to talk about the longevity of your content. Google thoroughly analyzes whether your posts are up to date before deciding where to rank in the SERPs. Thus, a good practice is to always update the publications and add recent information, relevant to the current moment, so that the publications continue to be valuable to the client.

As we have seen, small business SEO is the key to success in the virtual world. Using these techniques, brands stand out on search results pages, attract customer attention and start a conversation with them. All this without spending on ads and user preference.

To ensure a consistently well-performing strategy, you need to monitor SEO and analyze related metrics . This way, you get an idea of ​​what is working and what is not, so that you can make the necessary adjustments. Always analyze the traffic, clicks and location of your pages using tools like Google Analytics .

Now that you are familiar with this topic and know what to do, take advantage and discover what Black Hat SEO is to understand what you should avoid in your company.