SEO for small business websites provides tips for optimizing a website for search engines on a limited budget. Key recommendations include focusing on technical SEO basics like page speed, content writing, and keyword research to understand customer intent. Regular content updates and promotion across social media can help drive traffic while technical issues are addressed. Measurement of results is important to identify areas for ongoing improvement through testing and experimentation.

1. SEO for
small business websites
Sandra Wendland
6th Feb 2018
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2. Questions
• Do you maintain your own business website?
• Do you outsource technical website tasks?
• Do you write your own web content?
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3. First organic entries
Google Map entries
Google Adwords
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4. Featured snippet (position 0)
First organic entries
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5. Google extracting
info from
Wikipedia
Recipes show
rating
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6. Google
• Over 250 ranking factors
• Rankbrain (machine intelligence)
• Engagement (measuring data off-site and on-site)
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7. • SEO is dead
• SEO is evolving
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8. What to focus on in 2018
• Technical SEO
• HTTPS
• Page speed
• Content
• Search intent
• Voice search
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9. SEO for small business websites: some
questions entrepreneurs have (1/2)
• I don’t want to invent the wheel, so what basics do I need to know
about SEO or do myself?
• What are the top 3 mistakes that I have to avoid?
• Is SEO and web design totally connected, or can I outsource this to
separate providers?
• How do I select an SEO provider?
• How regular should I, or my provider, work actively on the SEO to
keep the good results? Or: what is my decay-time?
• Should I do SEO in every language of my website?
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10. SEO for small business websites: some
questions entrepreneurs have (2/2)
• Is SEO scalable? Meaning: if I have set up my SEO properly, that with every
added search word, I have proportionally more results? Or do I have
diminishing returns, every time I add a search word, or content
improvement? Where do I reach the optimum in money and effect?
• How do I measure success with SEO? Proof that it works!
• What are the content activities I should do that help with better SEO
results? Like: weekly blog publication, news items, reposting other people’s
content… etc?
• Wie kann man sicherstellen, dass man als Firma von den Zielkunden
gefunden wird (und nicht von den «Falschen»)?
• Kann man Adwords durch gutes SEO ersetzen? Wie macht man das am
effizientesten?
• SEO inhouse or extern ?
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11. Small business owner: What to do?
• Limited time
• Limited resources
• Outsource or DIY?
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12. Be nimble, be agile
Use your smallness as an advantage
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13. Do your marketing homework
• What market segment are you trying to reach?
• Who is your potential client?
• What is your core message?
• How would you present your services/products in a telephone call/face-to-
face meeting?
• What kind of words does your potential client use when referring to your
services/products?
• Customer questions and feedback are extremely useful for content
development and keyword research
• See: http://chiperoni.ch/wordpress/2017/11/seo-for-b2b-services-and-
products-how-to-get-started/
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14. Follow best practises for on-page SEO
• Page title/meta descriptions
• Internal links
• Unique page, URL, page title, meta description and content
• Don't copy content from other sites or make duplicates of your own content
• Alt image tag
• Heading 1 and 2
• Primary keywords
• Related terms
• Approx. 500 to 2,500 words
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15. Learn the basics of SEO
• Read an "Intro to SEO" guideline
• MOZ https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
• Backlinko https://backlinko.com/seo-this-year
• Google https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184
• Take an online course (e.g. at Udemy)
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16. Employ words, phrases, and concepts commonly
associated with the query (topic research)
• Research tools
• Google Keyword Planner (only paying AdWord clients see detailed data)
• SEMRush
• Google Search Engine Results (SERP) pages
• Think in terms of topics rather than keywords
• In addition to search volume, look at search intent
• Don’t target content without first understanding the searcher
• Look at Google SERPs, auto-suggest, related searches to determine search intent
• Look for gaps to target
• Related terms
• Moz Bar
• Ryte.com > Content success
• Answer the Public
• Write for humans not bots
• Solve the searcher's query
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19. Usability matters
• Text fonts and page layout are important
• Use Heading 2s, bullet lists, images
• Add videos, slides, podcasts to increase engagement
• Use plain language, write conversationally
• Use clear messaging for call-to-action buttons
"On an average web page, users read 20% of the words.“
• Test your web pages (e.g. using Nielsen’s Think Aloud method, or A/B
testing)
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20. Check
• Does your site match the intended purpose?
• Does it answer your client's questions?
• Mobile first: Check your site looks good on your smartphone
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21. Plan your content
• Set up an editorial calendar with deadlines
• If you have a business blog, write a blog at regular intervals
• Freshness is (still) a ranking factor.
• Blogging helps you to find out what works or what doesn’t
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22. Promote your site
• Send out regular email updates/newsletter
• Point to new content
• Content amplification/share on social media
• A social media link isn't a ranking factor but it helps with getting attention; getting indexed by
Google bot; building a community
• Network online and offline
• Present at barcamps, meetups, business conferences
• Engage on social media
• Buy some online paid ads at Linkedin, Facebook and Google Adwords
• Integrate your offline and online sales activities
• It is all digital today!
• Earn backlinks from relevant sites
• Your topics must be related; don’t buy backlinks
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23. Expect local search to increase
• Keep your Google My Business entry up-to-date
• Ask your clients to add a review
• Respond to review
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24. Fix your technical SEO
• Fast web hosting
• Page speed
• Get rid of bloat in your CMS (e.g. test your WordPress themes/plugins for speed)
• Google Page Speed Insights
• Lighthouse web developer tool for Chrome
• Make sure your web pages get indexed
• Google Search Console is your friend
• Minimum of crawl errors
• Get rid of duplicate page titles, meta descriptions, broken links
• Get HTTPS
• Add structured data to your web pages
• Schema
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25. Measure. Add improvements. Repeat
• A page isn't getting any traffic?
• Why? Go back and try and figure out why.
• Thin content?
• Improving Low Quality Content is Better Than Deleting It
• How to improve:
• Show the page to 3 to 5 people and ask them for feedback
• Add an additional paragraph, improve the text and layout, add visuals
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26. Resources
• https://searchengineland.com/5-ways-seo-experts-say-optimize-rankbrain-273458
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/rankbrain/
• https://varvy.com/matching-user-intent.html
• https://www.bdc.ca/en/blog/pages/seo-basics-entrepreneurs-easy-tips-optimizing-website.aspx
• https://searchengineland.com/small-business-seo-questions-answered-276500
• https://moz.com/blog/rank-in-2018-seo-checklist
• https://moz.com/blog/how-google-gives-us-insight-into-searcher-intent-through-the-results-whiteboard-friday
• https://searchengineland.com/rank-position-0-3-simple-steps-featured-snippets-primer-275941
• http://chiperoni.ch/wordpress/2017/11/seo-for-b2b-services-and-products-how-to-get-started/
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/plain-language-experts/
• https://searchengineland.com/add-schema-markup-site-using-google-tag-manager-272516
• https://www.facebook.com/netnode.ch/videos/1703065746381150/
• http://www.sem-deutschland.de/semantische-seo/
• http://www.sem-deutschland.de/welche-bedeutung-hat-machine-learning-fuer-seo-2/
• https://www.seokratie.de/holistik-seo/
• https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/everything-about-semantic-search/
• https://www.netnode.ch/blog/alle-textsorten-fuer-blogs
• https://moz.com/blog/write-for-seo-2018
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27. Tools
• Google Analytics/Google Search Console/Google My Business/Google
Keyword Planner/Google Tag Manager/Google Page Speed
Insight/Lighthouse
• Ryte
• SEMRush
• Linkdex
• Brightedge
• Buzzsumo
• MOZ
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28. Connect
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandrawendland/
Private blog
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