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SEO For Small Business Owners
How Can SEO Help Small Business Owners?
Free advice on how Search Engine Optimisation can benefit small business owners
A well optimised small business website can pay dividends.
We have optimised a number of websites for local business owners and often hear back from them that they no longer pay for any other form of advertising as all work obtained comes via their website.
One of the secrets of local SEO is realistic expectations and knowing just what to optimise for.
If you are a small local business operating in a 20 mile radius there’s little point trying to rank high in Google nationally or for locations outside your area.
How to use SEO to help small business owners
- Create a list of keywords that are specifically related to the small business
- Optimise the website to appear high for location based search phrases
- Engage with similar local businesses in the area
- Strive to be the go to place when locals search for your services
- Gain trust and authority in your area
UKSBD puts all this together in our local SEO packages that are specifically devised for small local businesses.
written on 2015-10-01
by Terry Simmonds
SEO Services for Small Businesses
We have been providing a range of SEO Services and SEO Packages since 2002 and have now tailored some of these packages to suit the small business we have registered in UK Small Business Directory.
If you currently have a listing with us, and would like to know more about the special SEO services we provide to small business owners please feel free to get in touch.
Let us know your business name, your UK Small Business Directory reference number and the main keywords you are targeting and we will get back to you.
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Free SEO Advice & SEO Tips
The Free SEO Advice fact sheet that SEO Companies wanted to see Banned
SEO Advice to boost Google Rankings – The foundations for SEO Campaigns
There are generally considered to be two types of SEO – On-page optimisation and off-page optimisation, the first part of this Free SEO Advice fact sheet concentrates primarily on On-page optimisation.
SEO Advice Key Points.
The following key points provide you the fundamentals of SEO
Realistic Expectations.
This is what I consider to be the number 1 piece of advice every SEO should share with clients.
Far too many SEO companies take on SEO work when the keywords are totally unrealistic and unachievable on the budget provided. The SEO company don’t care, they still get paid even though they know the targets are unreachable.
A good SEO company will be honest and upfront with you, if you say you have a budget of £200 a month and want to target the phrase Car Insurance they will tell you this is not possible and not take on the project, where as a bad SEO company will tell you it is achievable but may take a long time. 6 months later you are still very poorly ranked, £1,200 out of pocket and the SEO company has earned £1,200
Keyword Research / Competitor Analysis.
On a par, and related to, realistic expectations keyword research and competitor analysis is crucial before any SEO campaign is started.
Knowing which keywords and phrases to target with your SEO campaigns before you start is a must, not only knowing which keywords can potentially generate good traffic, but also knowing which keywords are realistic for you to target and which don’t have competitors targeting them who you can not realistically beat.
Good keyword research and competitor analysis before starting an SEO campaign will pay you dividends and also save you money spent on targeting keywords that will never give you a good ROI.
A Website is a Website – A Page is a Page
It’s important to realise that each page on your website should be optimised as an individual page, but then structured in a way that all pages are bonded together in a search engine friendly way. A common mistake made, is that people just a use default titles and meta descriptions throughout their website rather than providing individual titles for each page relevant to the content on the page.
Navigation and Site Structure.
When constructing a website the structural mark-up and navigation system plays a key role in search engine optimisation.
A good rule of thumb is to imagine Google being a small child when setting out your site.
Use your navigation system to tell Google where to go, tell Google where it is going and tell Google where it is when it gets there.
This is achieved by having a very simple, clear navigation system and by using the correct anchor text in links pointing to pages and the correct titles and content on the pages when it gets there.
It is important that Google doesn’t get lost in your navigation and can quickly and easily find it’s way to any page on your site that it wants to find, just like a small child on its first day at a new school.
Titles and Headings ~ Free SEO Advice
OK you have your navigation and structural mark-up nice and clear, Google has followed a link to a page using Free SEO Advice as the anchor text, it expects the page to be about Free SEO Advice so give it what it expects.
First tell Google it is on a Free SEO Advice page by having Free SEO Advice in the page title, do the same with a main header, provide content about Free SEO Advice and an image of Free SEO Advice using Free SEO Advice as the alt attribute.
(see what I did there 😉 )
Page Content and Layout.
Unlike the above section where I say treat Google like a small child when constructing your navigation system, once Google is reading your content treat it as a mature person, don’t give it content written for a search engine with keyword stuffed pages, give it natural well written creative content.
Creative being the keyword, a good SEO copywriter will provide content that reads naturally but still gets your keywords and phrases in the right places.
As mentioned previously, a page is a page and each page should be different. Google doesn’t like duplicate content and if you have generic text on all your pages it is important that there is a high percentage of unique content on all your important pages, this can sometime be a problem with template based websites which use a standard header, footer and sidebar throughout the site.
A good way of overcoming this is to have different templates for product pages which although look exactly the same, have different (or reduced) content in the header footer and sidebar and which give far more prominence to the main content section of the page.
Be The One People Talk About
Our final bit of SEO Advice isn’t just about what you do on your website but what you do in general.
You need to aim to be the business people talk about when talking about things related to your business.
For instance, if you provide local pest control services and someone asks on your local Facebook community about pest control you want to be the one that people mention.
If someone in a pub asks about pest control you want to be the one mentioned.
If your local newspaper is doing a story about rats, you want to be the person they ring to ask any questions or get a quote.
If a potential client is having work done at their property and they ask a tradesman who they recommend, you want to be the one recommended.
You may wonder how this helps with SEO but trust me – it does
Be the person everyone knows both online and offline and you will soon see the changes in your search engine rankings (assuming your website is well optimised too)
Will Do SEO For Tea & Biscuits
Free SEO Advice ~ Well nearly Free, all these SEO Tips will cost you is a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit
Find out more here: Free SEO Advice
SEO Advice – How to improve your SEO
- Research
- Test
- Gain trust
- Inform
- Write well
- Engage
- React
- Respond
- Understand the searcher
- Know the intention of the searcher
- Optimise for the right keywords
Find out more about Local SEO Services or how to Teach Yourself SEO
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