SEO for Small Businesses 101: A Checklist

SEO has always played a major role in the digital marketing strategies of small businesses. Knowing the importance of getting online can be for a company’s bottom dollar, small business SEO is necessary to get ahead of the competition while increasing a business’s visibility with clients. With the help of SEO, increased traffic is delivered to the companies’ websites which leads casual users to turn into potential clients or customers.

Those who have been utilizing SEO to help their small businesses grow can attest to how effective and convenient it is. Businesses that have been benefiting from SEO marketing can also tell you how their businesses have grown their exposure to a larger number of people, including their target market.

But if you’re interested in getting started with SEO, where do you even begin? There’s a lot of talk about optimization,  page speed, Schema markup, titles and metas…what does it all mean? And where do you even begin?

For those who are planning to start utilizing SEO to help their business, just follow this beginner SEO checklist.

SEO Checklist for Small Businesses

1. You need to know where your final destination is. What is the end result of all this work? Write down your goal that SEO could help achieve. By knowing first what you’re optimizing your website for will give you an idea of your progress.
2. Make sure you brainstorm on effective keywords and search queries will work to reach your goal. In order to know the effectiveness of your keywords or that search phrase that would lead your target market to your site, you need to do some research.
3. Research your chosen keywords. After you have determined which keywords or phrases you want to be related with, check if there is much potential with it.
4. Make changes to your keywords if necessary. Based on your research regarding the most effective keywords for you, you may make changes or choose another keyword that is more effective.
5. You also need to analyze the current search engine results page, also known as SERPs, for your keywords. You will be able to determine who is ranking high in your chosen keywords.
6. Now that you know your competition, know what they are doing right and avoid their mistakes. This should give you a fighting chance in competing with them.
7. Make use of the tools available to help you with your SEO. Utilize Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other tools to help you manage your SEO.
8. Review and evaluate the design or layout of your site. The design and look of your site are one of the most effective SEO tools you can manipulate.
9. Optimize the SEO-related tags on your site. This includes the title of your page and your meta description, the one or two-line summary the search engines display in the search results.
10. Create a designated email address for your site. Don’t use your personal email for your site in order to manage the correspondence efficiently.

There are still other strategies that can help you with your SEO for small businesses. There is much to learn about SEO if you are a beginner but it will be all worth it if you focus on your goal.