SEO for Small Businesses: 9 Easy Ways to Win in SERP

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation has become one of the most used digital marketing tactics by businesses in Australia, including small businesses. 

In fact, 86% of small businesses in Australia  had a website in 2018. This indicates that the competition in search results can be fierce. Therefore, SEO for small businesses is a robust choice for winning the competition. 

SEO is a reasonably affordable and readily implemented strategy that small businesses may use to improve the online visibility of their brand and products. With great SEO strategies, small businesses can enhance their website traffic and attract additional clients to increase sales.

This article will guide you to understand how SEO for small businesses can help companies in Australia gain revenue through searches. 

What Is SEO Optimisation for Small Businesses?

SEO for small businesses in the practice of optimising website and online presence to increase traffic from search engines. 

With suitable SEO approaches, you can gain more relevant audiences for your website; therefore, turning them into potential leads or customers. 

This digital marketing method is also suitable for businesses that have offline shops targeting local audiences. 

SEO for Small Businesses vs. Local SEO: What Are the Difference?

Both SEO for small businesses and local SEO may target regional customers, but they are different in some aspects.

The major difference is that any company with a physical location, no matter how big or small, can benefit from local SEO.

On the other hand, SEO for small businesses is applied to any small business with or without a physical location. 

Next, in terms of approach, SEO for small businesses already includes local SEO if your company wants to target regional customers. Moreover, this SEO method involves all aspects, from on-page to off-page optimisation. 

In contrast, local SEO is not only for small businesses. Enterprises or startups can also leverage local SEO based on the local target audience. 

What Will You Get from SEO Small Businesses?

If you are a small business owner wondering how to expand your marketing strategy, then you should definitely try SEO. 

When you implement SEO for small businesses, you can get some advantages as follows:

1. Improve Website Traffic

Optimising your website with SEO will increase your online presence and therefore, improve the traffic to your site. This also applies to your social media sites and Google Business Profile (GBP). 

Moreover, you will have the chance to convert more traffic into clients or customers as you obtain more of it.

2. Boost Brand Awareness

Implementing SEO to your website can put you in the pertinent places in search engines. As a result, many users can easily find your site. Consequently, your brand awareness will also boosted. 

3. Better User Experience

Since the algorithm determines a result's usefulness when ranking pages for search engines, many SEO best practices are equally beneficial for structuring and presenting content on the web in general.

4. Reach Target Audience

SEO can help you reach the target audience at an early stage of their buying process. You may establish credibility and a connection with your target audience by offering high-quality content tackling issues that consumers could be facing from the beginning.

5. Save More Cost

Unlike paid advertising which will stop when you halt the payment, SEO is a cost-effective and sustainable choice even though requires more time. 

If you're prepared to invest the necessary time and energy, SEO is an affordable marketing tactic that can help your company in the long run.

6. Outrank Competitors

You can reach more people, create more leads, and close more deals by improving your online exposure and search engine ranking. By doing this, you may improve your market share and compete with bigger businesses in your sector.

How to Do SEO for Small Businesses

There are many SEO best practices you can do in optimising your small business, which are:

1. Make a Website

The first thing you should do is make a functional, clear, and navigable business website. If you already have one, make sure it represents your brand and helps users navigate any information about your business.

2. Create a Google Business Profile

Businesses may help customers find their store on Google Maps and Google Search by creating a free Google Business Profile. You can set it up as a kind of Google profile to assist people in finding and learning more about your company.

3. Build Google Search Console and Google Analytics

The most important tools for evaluating and assessing the results of your SEO efforts are Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

To determine whether your SEO efforts are effective, you must first establish a fundamental comprehension of the latest engagement and traffic data. 

In addition, you should keep an eye on the data as time goes on to gauge your performance, identify the adjustments beneficial to your company, and chart your development. 

Google Analytics offers detailed information on traffic, user demographics, conversions, and how people interact with your website. Meanwhile, Google Search Console shows statistics and details about how your website shows up in Google Search.

4. Perform Keyword Research

Keyword research is the practice of finding appropriate keywords and phrases for your business, including words that consumers might use to look up information about a company and its products online.

To do so, you can utilise Google Keyword Planner or Sequence Stat which are free tools for targeting and identifying keywords. 

Yet, regardless of the technology you employ, a keyword-targeting approach should strike a balance between the volume of monthly searches a certain keyword or phrase receives and how competitive it is to rank for.

5. Produce Top-Notch and Valuable Content

Content is another important thing other than keyword research that you should pay attention to. It is recommended to create E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) content since Google sees it as valuable and high-quality. 

Relevant keywords should also be included in headers, meta descriptions, alt text, URLs, body, and header structure of SEO-optimized material. 

6. Do On-Page SEO

Another SEO for small businesses you should do is on-page optimisation. On-page SEO optimises HTML elements, site architecture, content, and other elements inside the website. 

7. Leverage Local SEO

For every small business looking to draw in local clients, local SEO for small businesses is a crucial tool. 

Furthermore, 76% of people who used their cellphones to look for something nearby in 2023 went to a business within a day of their searches, and 28% of those searches ended in a purchase.

Optimising local search includes consistent and accurate information in every platform, localised content, mobile-friendly websites, online reviews, and Google Business Profile. 

8. Carry Out Competitor Analysis

You can discover new keywords, learn what kind of material your visitors are interested in, and get a better idea of the online environment for your company by researching your SERP competition.

In general, SERP competitors are businesses or sites competing with you in search engine result pages for visibility.

Additionally, whichever websites you come across in the search engine results pages, you should be aware of your competition so that you can adjust your strategy.

You can examine these websites' keyword usage strategies, site architecture, and content production processes.

9. Build Backlinks

Last but not least, you can do an off-page strategy by building backlinks. Backlinks are the external links from external sites to yours. 

Since low-quality backlinks might hurt your SEO score, it's critical to select reliable websites and refrain from buying connections. Backlinks are a sign of authority and trust that search engines use to determine rankings.

Those are the ins and outs of SEO for small businesses you can implement in your website. Yet, employing SEO on your site can be challenging, especially if you do not have enough resources. 

You do not have to worry because you can partner with SEO companies for small businesses like cmlabs. SEO Services by cmlabs offer cutting-edge strategies, including site audits, content optimisation, and keyword research. Schedule a meeting now and tell us your SEO needs for free!