SEO for Small Businesses: How to Drive Customers and Sales to Your Website

Our guide to SEO for Small Businesses will give you some practical tips to take away and implement on your own website. If you want customers to find your website in just a few clicks? Making your website easily findable is important for business growth, especially if you own an ecommerce site or startup.

To drive more visitors to your website, it needs to rank highly on consumers’ search engine results. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can help you achieve that.

Why is My Website Search Ranking Important?

We use Google, Bing, and other search engines to find everything these days – from reading breaking news and restaurant reviews to hiring plumbers and shopping online.

Most of the time, you’d only click on the first two or three links in your search engine results. Ever noticed that? These highly ranked webpages usually offer sufficient info, and the right service or product to satisfy your queries.

Meanwhile, we often ignore the millions of other links that show up lower on our search results.

That’s where SEO can benefit your website (and your business). Optimising your webpages can help propel them into the top 3 rankings of what your customers are looking for.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process to make your website relevant to your potential customers’ search queries.

A user starts their search query by typing specific words into the search engine bar. If your small business offers a product or service that this user is searching for, your website content should utilise these keywords.

How Does Google Rank My Website?

Google and other search engines use web crawlers that regularly scan and index webpages over the Internet regardless of the size of your business website.

Every page’s authority and relevancy are rated and organised into a search index according to the crawler’s algorithm.

Predicting the exact ranking factors that Google web crawler’s algorithm uses isn’t easy, as the algorithm is frequently updated.

However, based on past research on the Google crawler’s algorithm, your webpages’ content organisation, keyword choices, and how well you present them to the crawler and relevant customers can boost your SEO rankings.

Google Trends: Find the Keywords Your Customers Are Likely to Use

A keyword is a word that describes the content on your webpage or blog post. When your customers search for your products or services online, they are most likely to use these keywords.

A keyword is a word that describes the content on your webpage or blog post. Let’s say you’re selling fitness supplements and home gym equipment online to customers in the United Kingdom. You want to increase sales of your whey protein powder, energy drinks, dumbbells, and weight benches.

And… voila! In just two sentences, you’ve found some keywords that define your business and website:

“fitness supplement”

“home gym”

“whey proteinr”

“energy drink”

“dumbbell”

“weight bench”

Now find out how popular these keywords are among your prospective customers. One of the most effective tools for keyword research is Google Trends. This free tool rates how often a search term or topic has been used among UK consumers in the past 12 months.

Source: Google Trends

If your product sales depend on seasonal timing, you would notice a spike in search popularity for “dumbbell”, “whey protein”, and “energy drink” in February. With the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, your customers are free to travel almost anywhere now.

As we’re able to mingle in public, your clients might start focusing on improving their physical appearances. (Those lockdown days when we were cooped up at home while bingeing on Netflix and snacks are over.)

So your customers wish to look good in public. They could be working out more at home or at the gym. Hence, the increased usage of certain keywords that are related to your fitness products.

There are other effective keyword research tools (both free and paid) out there such as Google Keyword Planner and SEMRush.

Focus on Your Business’s Unique Selling Points

Your business is competing against numerous companies with similar products. To stand out from the crowd, you should optimise for keywords that differentiate your products from the rest of the market.

Perhaps your energy drink is made from organic ingredients. It has been scientifically proven to help users recover 25% faster after a workout – compared to regular energy beverages.

Then you should optimise your website content with long-tailed keywords or keyphrases like “organic energy drinks with 25% faster post-workout recovery”.

Source: Google

The Importance of Titles and Meta Descriptions for SEO

Online fitness hub ‘mens health’ is a good example of how a website can utilise its keywords effectively (“fitness”, “nutrition”, “health”, etc.).

Just like them, you need to integrate the keywords that are relevant to your customers into these sections:

1. Website URL: A short, simple, relevant, and memorable link that describes your business’ name clearly
2. Webpage title: Insert the name of your business here. It should be an easy-to-remember name that identifies what your web page is about for both customers and search engine crawlers.
3. Meta description: A summary for users to understand what your webpage is about. It should be between 140 and 160 characters long.

How Do I ”Use” These Keywords on My Website?

You usually get to pick your website URL (or domain name) when you subscribe to a website hosting plan. Web hosting companies provide services that allow you to publish your website on the internet.

Then, to create, organise, and update your content, you will require a content management system (CMS). One of the most popular free CMS is WordPress.

If you are using WordPress, you can download SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, Rankmath or Squirrly to optimise your webpages.

Publish Quality Content Without Keyword Stuffing

Whether it’s product descriptions or blog posts, always remember that you’re publishing content for your customers. Inserting the keyword “organic energy drink” five times in three sentences will look awkward for your website visitors.

Integrate your keywords into captivating content that is easily readable for humans.

How Your Website’s User Experience (UX) Affect SEO

According to SEO portal Search Engine Journal, Google has stated that your website’s User Experience (UX) plays a vital role when it comes to search rankings.

So it’s important to enhance these UX elements on your online store:

• Loading speed

  Long waiting times will discourage customers from visiting your website. To avoid that, use optimised images that are no larger than 125kb each. To keep your images sharp and clear yet small in size, try using online WebP, JPEG and PNG compression tool TinyJPG.

• Responsive website

  We use our mobile phones to conduct banking transactions, invest, shop, study, socialise, and so much more. So ensure your website has a great responsive design that automatically adjusts its layout for different screen sizes – including PC, mobile, and tablet.

• Smooth navigation

  An organised interface and sitemap enable your customers to find what they want easily and quickly.

• Ensure your site has no broken links

  You could be window shopping online and then suddenly, there’s this gorgeous handbag in the product section. It’s love at first sight. You eagerly click on the link.

However, instead of more gorgeous images and tantalising promo descriptions, you end up on a 404 error page. Disappointed, you leave the page. Broken links can disrupt your customers’ online shopping experience.

Source: Kinsta

Analyse Your Competitors’ SEO

Just like what we have done with Men’s Health and Blackmores, you should always conduct research on your competitors’ SEO efforts.

Visit their websites. Observe how they integrate their keywords into the webpage title, meta descriptions, homepage, and other parts of their sites.

Emulate what they’re doing right and then improve upon it. Avoid any SEO mistakes they have made.

Need Some Help With SEO?

SEO can be technical and complex at times. Whilst you may be able to implement some of these tips yourself, it can be time consuming and difficult.

That’s why we have been working with businesses for over 15 years, taking care of SEO for them.

Interested? Find out more about how TU Marketing can do more than provide SEO tips for small businesses. Find out how we can help you generate ore leads online. Get in touch today.