Even for the savviest SEO professionals getting to the top of Google for competitive key terms is one of the most difficult aspects of the job. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in the industry, finding your way to the top of the search engine results pages for highly competitive terms doesn’t get any easier.

If you think getting to the top of the search engine results pages is hard work, imagine managing a small business while trying to increase the number of customers and organic visibility of your website without any real knowledge of digital marketing. Not only is search engine optimisation probably not your specialty if you’re a small business owner, but you’re probably also strapped for time, funds, and resources to try and make it happen. 

To make things a little bit easier we’ve put together a list of top tips that small businesses can follow to improve the search engine visibility of their website, positively impact their search rankings, and improve the quality of leads that they are receiving through their website. The tips that we have compiled are specifically designed for small business owners who want to make a tangible impact on their business with limited time and Resources.

Optimise Your Google Business Listing

Google my business is one of the most important aspects of your local SEO strategy. For small business owners, claiming and maintaining your Google business listing is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your local search visibility. Google my business is completely free, simple to set up, and easy to maintain.

The first thing that you need to do is claim your Google my business listing and go through the steps of verification in order to have control of the account. Depending on your area of business this could mean waiting for a postcard in the mail will you could be able to do a phone or email verification on the spot.

When you’re filling out your Google business listing it’s important to include as much detail as possible in order to give yourself the best chance of improving local searches ability. Your category selection will impact the way that users find and interact with your business using filters so it’s important that you choose the most accurate category for your business. Google my business is a low time, but high reward investment that will significantly improve your local reach and allow you to interact with customers and keep them up to date with changes to your business.

Look at Technical SEO

While the term technical SEO may seem intimidating for small business owners who are not all their web server, there are a number of simple optimisations that you can make that will significantly improve the search appearance of your business. if you are not confident with working on your website and have no idea where to start, you can always hire an SEO company in Perth that can help you with your project.

For those who wanted to try their hand at improving the technical SEO of their website here are a few things that you should start to look at:

• Image optimisation – this relates to image size and alt tags
• Page load speed – use the Google page load tool to test how fast your pages load
• Address broken links within your website
• Remove duplicate content
• Canonical enhancements
• Metadata – including page titles, meta descriptions, H tags

Conclusion

These are just a few simple areas that small business owners can start to look at if they want to improve their local search visibility. All of the tips mentioned on this page add up to having a very big impact on your small business local SEO and can dramatically improve the number of leaves that you are generating through your website.