While there are hundreds of qualified internet marketing firms that are ready to lend a helping hand in providing effective SEO strategies to your company, not all small businesses have the budget to hire professional SEO experts. Fortunately, search engine optimization does not involve magic tricks or secret recipes. Anyone can effectively promote their business without the need of technical knowledge or advanced programming skills.

Below are the best practices and basic concepts of SEO for small businesses.

Identify the right keywords

SEO is all about determining the right keyword that best describes your business and, at the same time, users type in on search engines to get to your website. Find out what combination of words or phrases do your customers use when they search for your product or service. Identifying the right keyword is the first step to a successful SEO campaign.

Integrate keywords onto your website

The moment you find out which keywords or key phrases your customers type in on search engines, take advantage of these by inserting them in the right places on your website. The proper places where your keywords should be found include the title tag, meta description of the page, headers or article titles, body or content, links, and even image alt tags. This will let Google or other search engines know that your page is, in fact, related and relevant to the search query of the user.

Strive to go local

This means that when a user types in a keyword or key phrase with a geographical location attached to it (for example: 24/7 wine store orange county), your website should show up in search results. This is a way for small businesses to level the playing field against bigger companies online. To register your business online and show up on local search results, go to google.com/business. The placement can be an excellent tool for businesses with physical locations to reach a local audience.

Take advantage of online directories

To further enhance your local presence, take advantage of online business directories by submitting your business information to them. The more listings you have online, the higher your chance to show up on the first page of search engine’s result page when users type in keywords related to your business.

Encourage feedback and reviews

Are your customers happy about your service? Encourage them to leave positive reviews and feedback online that other users can use as reference when reviewing your business. In addition, these reviews can help search engines identify the quality of your online presence, and use that data to influence search rankings.

Search engine optimisation is not a rocket science. As long as you know the basic steps and right strategies, even small businesses can compete against and beat large companies in terms of search rankings and online visibility. Should you need advice about your presence online, we would be more than glad to help you out.