1. SEO for Small Business
Authored by Nik Ranger
Webfirm’s SEO Specialist

2. INTRODUCTION.
A LITTLE ABOUT ME.
● I’ve worked as a Search Professional
for 4 years
● I specialise in creating SEO strategies,
site auditing and finding opportunities
to surpass your competitors
● SEMrush Finalist for the Search
Professional Of The Year 2018
● In my free time I’m an Electric violinist,
surrealist illustrator and videographer
Brands I’ve worked with in my career

3. SMALL BUSINESSES
IN AUSTRALIA.
● There are 2,065,523 small businesses in Australia
● They are prevalent in all sectors of the Australian economy across all regions
● Over nine in ten Australian businesses are small businesses
● Small business owners pay around 12% of total company tax revenue
● They account for 33% of Australia’s GDP
● They employ over 40% of Australia’s workforce

4. WHAT IS SEO
AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
● SEO is an acronym for
Search Engine Optimisation.
● It’s the process of making your site
visible in Search Engine Results
Pages (SERP) to bring relevant,
meaningful organic traffic to your
website.

5. Local SEO and Small Business SEO are
closely-related, because small business is more
often than not community driven. So that’s largely
what we’ll cover in this presentation.

6. HOW TO GET YOUR SMALL
BUSINESS FOUND ONLINE
● The Mechanisms of Search: How SEO Works For Your Business
● Your Niche Topic & Keyword Targeting
● Writing Content & How To Get Your Business Found
● Your Business’s Brand
● Google My Business
● Local Ranking Factors - Structured Data
● Business Ratings & Reviews
● Business Community Link Sharing
● Overall Takeaway

7. BEFORE WE BEGIN,
HERE’S MY ASSUMPTIONS:
✓ You’ve already set up Google Search Console
✓ You’ve already set up Google Analytics
✓ You’ve already set up Google Tag Manager
✓ You’ve already conducted a Technical SEO audit on your site

8. THE MECHANISMS OF SEARCH
HOW SEO WORKS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
First, I’m going to walk you through some marketing 101
you might have learned at business school and show you
how that’s still 100% applicable to the real world of
online business.

9. When your customers
are searching online,
99.5% of the time
they’re not looking to
buy.

10. THE PURCHASE FUNNEL
B2C
• Search for
information
• Learn about products
• Read Reviews and
compare products
• Put product in cart
• Review shopping cart
and go to checkout
• Transaction
completed
Lead
Generation
Lead
Nurture
Sales
Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Intent
Evaluation
Purchase
B2B
• Search for information
• Buyers examine specific
product and reviews
• Buyers share research on
products and brands with
other stakeholders
• Buyer gets product demo
• Buyer gets contract
proposal
• Transaction completed

11. ● Generally speaking, what you write on
your website is how you get found.
● You want to make sure you have
relevant information to be found for
the right search intent.
● When your page is indexed (added to
the search directory) by a Googlebot,
it detects what your page is about
from certain factors that you have on
and off your page.
YOUR NICHE TOPIC
AND KEYWORD TARGETING
Page
Page Page
Page Page Page Page
Page Page Page Page Page Page

12. YOUR NICHE TOPIC
AND KEYWORD TARGETING
● Optimise your existing pages and
create pages that reflect each point of
the purchase funnel.
● This process is called a silo.
● Each page in your silo is centred
around keywords in your topic. Page
Page Page
Page Page Page Page
Page Page Page Page Page Page

13. NICHE TOPIC = A SET OF KEYWORDS TO TARGET
● Determining your niche topic is vital for local
or small businesses.
● If you have a clear niche, you can compete
locally with large national brands – despite
their multi-million dollar advertising budgets.
43%
Shop In
Bed
20%
Shop In
Bathroom
20%
Shop In
Car
23%
Shop In
Office
10%
Shop While
Out Drinking
Purchase
Reviews
Demo Trial
Research
Interest in Product or
Brand
Learns Product Exists
Niche Topic

14. 70% of search
queries are long tail
Long tail keywords
convert 2.5x more
frequently
PurchaseReviews Demo TrialResearch
Interest in
Product or
Brand
Learns Product
Exists
THE SEARCH
DEMAND CURVE

15. WRITING CONTENT &
HOW TO GET YOUR BUSINESS FOUND
● Your small business SEO will get a
significant boost from the right content.
● Make sure when looking at your content
strategy to plan out your content with the
five factors.
● Ensure you’re writing content for all the
questions your customers have about what
you do and how you’re different from your
competitors.

16. • Each page has a primary target keyword reflects the
purchasing journey of your customers.
• Focus on making an awesome first impression on your
potential customer.
PurchaseReviews Demo TrialResearch
Interest in
Product or
Brand
Learns
Product Exists
guitar effects
boss gt-8 for
sale
which guitar
effects
processor is
best
Music store
near me
guitar effects
boss gt-8
guitar effects
vs processor
guitar effects
that sound
like violin
what guitar
effects are
used in songs

17. OPTIMISING YOUR PAGE
FOR YOUR TOPIC KEYWORDS
● URL: Recognisable to the
customer that they’re clicking
through to the right page
● Title: primary target keyword
● Meta Description: Gives a
short description of topic and
your brand and call to action
https://www.predikkta.com/products/free-serp-optimizer-tool.html

18. BASIC ANATOMY OF A PAGE
• H1: Secondary relevant keyword
• H2: Captures all the derivative questions of
your topics
– eg. Guitar Pedals Guide,
– Multi Effects Processor,
– What Guitar Pedals Should I Get?
• H3: Captures all the answers
– eg. What are the types of pedals you
can get?
– What are they best used for?
– What’s the lifespan?
– How much are they?
– What do I need to use one?
– Who else uses it in their set up?
(Testimonials)
ResearchExample:
Photo
Photo
Video
Video
Demo Trial
Purchase
Reviews
Contact Us
Interest in
Product or
Brand
Learns
Product
Exists

19. HOW TO CHOOSE KEYWORDS
(ROUGH GUIDE)
• When writing your content, be realistic about
the chances of getting that content to rank in
search.
• If you are in a highly competitive market,
content works very well as a marketing tool
and as input for social media, but it doesn’t
guarantee you’ll get you that number one
spot in Google, and that’s OK.
• Manage your expectations.
Highest Avg. Monthly
Search Volume
Relevant Niche Keyword
Highest CPC, Best
Commercial Value
Lowest Competition
Value
Adhering to Trends:
Consistent or increasing,
monitor change

20. WRITING CONTENT &
HOW TO GET YOUR BUSINESS FOUND
● When creating content, it’s really
important to keep in mind how you’re
going to amplify it.
● Amplifying content using social
media, PPC Ads (Google Ads, Bing
Ads etc) will directly send traffic to
where you want.
Page
Page Page
Page Page Page Page
Page Page Page Page Page Page
Topic
Information
Silo
Social
Media
Social Media
&
PPC Ads
Non Branded
Organic
Traffic
Branded
Organic
Traffic

21. WRITING CONTENT &
HOW TO GET YOUR BUSINESS FOUND
● If you’re making valuable informative
content, other websites referencing your
content create backlinks. People engaging,
sharing and clicking on your content
improves your Click Through Rate (CTR).
● Your pages are like candidates. Backlinks
are like votes. Google organises their SERP
by popularity. More votes and attention
(CTR), the better chance you’ll win top spot in
the SERP.
Page
Page Page
Page Page Page Page
Page Page Page Page Page Page
Topic
Information
Silo
Social
Media
Social Media
&
PPC Ads
Non Branded
Organic
Traffic
Branded
Organic
Traffic

22. There are many correlations in the
data that would suggest that Google
favours branding. Generally
speaking, well known brands get
better rankings with fewer
backlinks (votes).
YOUR BUSINESS’S BRAND

23. Otherwise big brands
will get showcased in
the SERPs and small
companies will get left
in the dust.
For small brands
however, they need to
work twice as hard
because they’re not as
well known.
Brand Logo &
Colours
Social Reach &
Influencer
Marketing
Company
Values &
Ethics
Point Of
Difference
Community
Engagement
Unique
Personality
6 Ways To Build Your Brand

24. Branded Organic
Traffic
If you have a clear niche,
you can compete
locally with large
national brands –
despite their
multi-million dollar
advertising budgets.
If you build up your brand
awareness, build trust and
authority with your
customers, they will
associate you with quality
and you’ll be uniquely
searched.
Non-Branded Organic
Traffic

25. • There are many things that influence your local rankings,
but there is one very obvious one: your address details or
NAP, which stands for Name, Address, Phone number.
• Make sure you use the exact same NAP details on both your
website and your Google My Business listing and include
your website link to your listing too. This is the only way for
Google to understand the relationship between them.
• Google My Business really is your friend if you want to rank
in your specific geographical area, so get your details right.
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Fill Out All Of
Information
Verify Your Business
in the right category
Consistent NAP
On GMB and Website
Add Photos of Store,
Products and Staff

26. • Structured data is a standardised list of
attributes and entities that are all
supported by the big search engines
(Google, Bing, Yahoo).
• Structured data helps organise and
showcase your information in search.
• Be sure to add your NAP these in the
correct formatting (in code), using
schema.org.
LOCAL RANKING FACTORS
Your Essential Must Do!

27. • Google My Business, like Facebook, allows
others to leave a review of your company. If
your company has a good rating, people will
be more likely to click through to your
website from either of these two platforms.
Make sure you monitor and maintain these
reviews.
• If you get a negative review for any reason,
react by responding and solving your
customer’s problem. Then, once you have, ask
them to change their review afterward. In
other words, turn that dissatisfied customer
into a brand ambassador.
RATINGS AND REVIEWS

28. • Social ‘proof’, like the ratings and reviews
mentioned above, should be backed up with a
few links from local directories.
• You should get a listing on these sites, for the
obvious reason that this means you also get a
link to your website. If you can get some links
from other related local websites in that
directory, that will also help your site’s
findability.
• Note that links from other local websites
should be from sites that are in a related
profession.
BUSINESS COMMUNITY LINK SHARING

29. OVERALL TAKEAWAY - HOW TO ACTION
THESE STEPS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
✓ Prioritise keyword research for your business & pick your niche topics
✓ Organise your website around your niche topics
✓ Amplify new pages with social media & PPC ads
✓ Brand campaign - get yourself out there
✓ Optimise your Google My Business profile and set up Structured Data
✓ Get reviews for your business and respond to both positive and negative comments
✓ Build profiles on directory listings
✓ Monitor results in Google Search Console and Google Analytics

30. Thanks for having me!
Contact me for more info
THANKS FOR LISTENING.
webfirm.com
1300 932 347
Level 2/419 Collins Street
nikea.ranger@webfirm.com