100 SEO Tips For Small Businesses

By Mark Walters
mark@seomark.co.uk or Contact Form or Google+ or Facebook or LinkedIn

1. No SEO means no visitors from search engines. If you dont do it then search engines
cant categorise and rank your site for keywords relevant to your business.

2. Both on-site SEO and off-site SEO are required. You cant achieve good results doing
one without the other.

3. Start doing SEO now. The longer you leave it to start, the further ahead your
competitors will be, and the harder it becomes to rank higher than them.

4. Know your competition. Find out what the sites ranking on the 1st page for the
keywords that you want to rank for have done, on-site and off-site, to get there.

5. No two websites are the same. An SEO strategy that worked for someone elses site
isnt guaranteed to work for yours because there are so many variables.

6. SEO doesnt have to be expensive. You can get big results on a small budget if you
invest time in creating good content and building online relationships.

7. SEO results arent instant. The results of SEO work done today might not become
apparent, and might not be credited by search engines, for weeks, or even months.

8. The newer your website is, the more patient you will need to be. It takes time to build
authority and trust, and until youve developed both, you shouldnt expect to outrank
older, more established sites.

9. Never consider your website to be finished. If you want your site to continue to rank
higher, attract more visitors and make more sales, then you should always be adding to
and improving it.

10. Adapt to algorithm updates. To attain and retain good rankings you need to adapt your
SEO strategy as search engines evolve over time.

11. You dont need to submit your website to search engines. They have evolved beyond
the point of needing to be directly notified when a new website, or page on a website, is
created.

12. Get advice directly from Google. Via their Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Help
Videos.
13. Dont risk Google penalties. As they have a significant share of the search market, a
penalty from them results in a significant, and often long-term, loss of visitors to your
site.

14. Youre ultimately responsible for all of SEO work done on your website. Search
engines wont remove a penalty on the basis that you didnt do, and didnt know the
specifics of, the SEO work on your site.

15. Set-up and use Google Webmaster Tools. To find out, among other things, what
keywords your site is ranking for and which other sites are linking to yours.

16. Set-up and use Google Analytics. To find out, among other things, how many visitors
your site gets, the keywords they use to find it, and what pages they visit.

17. Set-up a Google+ page for your business. Doing so builds trust with Google and
improves rankings for localised keywords.

18. Diversify your traffic sources. Google is a great source of traffic but being 100% reliant
on them for visitors puts you in a vulnerable position.

19. Use Pay Per Click in addition to SEO. If you can afford to do both, then do both, as
although PPC can be costly, you can get visitors to your site straight away for any
keywords that you want.

20. Low quality equals high risk. Low quality backlinks and/or low quality on-site content
can easily result in your site being penalised by search engines.

21. Create content primarily for people, not search engines. Theres no point creating
content that ranks well if it doesnt help people, interest them, or persuade them to buy
from you.

22. Remove duplicate content. You can be penalised for having the same, or very similar,
content on multiple pages of your site.

23. Remove, merge or add to pages with little content on them. Having lots of content-
light pages, with short page view times, can result in search engines downgrading all of
your sites keyword rankings.

24. Dont copy content from other websites. If search engines find that content on your site
has been taken from elsewhere they may downgrade rankings for some, or even all, of
your webpages.

25. Claim authorship of your content. Linking your Google+ account to your content
improves both rankings and click-through-rate.
26. Ensure your content is good enough to be on the 1st page. If your content isnt better
than the content already on the 1st page for a keyword then your site doesnt deserve to
rank there.

27. Make your content engaging for visitors. The more engaging it is, the longer people
will stay on your site, and high viewing times signal to search engines that your site
deserves good rankings.

28. Create videos. They increase the amount of time that people spend on your site and also
allow you to get links from video sharing sites.

29. Create stats/charts/graphs/infographics. People are more likely to share and link to
these types of content than plain written content.

30. More content equals more rankings, more visitors and more sales. Search engines
reward, and visitors trust more, sites that are filled with lots of pages of good quality
content.

31. Add a blog to your website. Doing so makes it quick and simple to add new pages of
content to your site.

32. Create content to post on other websites and blogs. People are much more likely to
link to you if you provide them with content to use on their site.

33. Balance creating content with marketing content. If you create content without
marketing it then people will struggle to find it, and if they cant find it they cant link to
it or share it.

34. Write a unique, descriptive title for every page. Within 65 characters you need to make
the topic of a page clear to both humans and search engines.

35. Write a unique, descriptive meta description for every page. Within 160 characters
you need to describe the topic of a page in a way that persuades people to click on your
site instead of the other sites listed in the search results.

36. Research keywords before optimising for them. If you choose the wrong keywords,
regardless of what you do for on-site and off-site SEO, youll get very few visitors and/or
visitors who dont convert into sales.

37. Use Googles Keyword Tool. It provides a good list of words and phrases related to
the keyword ideas that you enter into it.

38. Get keyword ideas from other people. They (customers, suppliers, partners, friends,
etc.) see your business differently to you and may associate different words and phrases
with it.
39. Target relevant keywords. The more relevant your keywords are, the easier and quicker
it is to rank for them, and the higher the percentage of visitors who will become buyers.

40. Target keywords with commercial intent. You want visitors who are ready to spend
money rather than those who are just looking for information.

41. Long-tail keywords are a great source of traffic. Its quicker and cheaper to rank for
longer, specific keyword phrases, and more than 40% of searches are comprised of four
or more words.

42. Dedicate 1 page of your website to each keyword that youre targeting. Doing so
makes it simpler for search engines to categorise and rank your pages.

43. Add keywords in the right places. Theyre less important than they used to be, but you
should still include them in urls, page titles, meta descriptions, header tags and image alt
tags.

44. Avoid keyword stuffing. Youre much more likely to be penalised than credited if you
use a keyword phrase repeatedly on a page.

45. Backlinks affect rankings more than anything else. The number and quality of links
pointing to your site will largely determine in what position your site ranks.

46. Dont set backlink targets. Link building should be a steady, consistent, on-going
process, that doesnt stop when you reach a certain number.

47. Get backlinks from relevant sources. Search engines want to display relevant results
for each keyword, and links from relevant pages/sites are a strong signal to them that
your site is relevant.

48. Get backlinks from trusted sources. Links from trustworthy sites signal to search
engines that your site is trustworthy too.

49. Be prepared to work for high quality backlinks. Generally, the more easily you can
acquire a link, the less value it will likely have.

50. Be wary of paying people to link to your website. Buying backlinks can, and does
work, however, theres a definite risk involved if you buy cheap ones and/or from people
who openly sell them.

51. Dont get involved in link networks. The benefit of getting links from networks is low,
whereas the risk of being penalised and losing rankings is high.

52. Diversify your backlink profile. Get different types of links from a wide range of IP
addresses.
53. Build backlinks to every page of your website that you want to rank. Get people to
link to the inner-pages of your site the ones you want to rank for specific keywords as
well as to the homepage.

54. Existing relationships are an instant source of backlinks. Some of your suppliers,
partners and customers will link to your site if you ask them to do so.

55. Get the good backlinks that your competition already has. If someone has already
linked to one of your competitors then theres a reasonable chance that theyll link to you
also if you give them a good reason to.

56. Get some backlinks with your target keywords as the link text. This type of link is
important, but should make up less than 25% of your backlink profile.

57. The majority of your backlinks should be branded. A backlink profile without lots of
branded links (like Company Name and www.companyname.co.uk) signals to search
engines that youve been using manipulative link building tactics.

58. Know whos linking to you. Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to Traffic and then
Links to check how many sites are linking to yours and which sites they are.

59. Sign up for Ahrefs, Majestic SEO or Open Site Explorer. Doing so gives you access to
extensive backlink data for your site and also your competitors sites.

60. Every page of your website should be linked to from at least one other page. Search
engines dont include pages in their results that arent linked to either internally (from
another page of the same site) or externally (from another site).

61. Have direct links from your homepage to your most important pages. Doing so
passes authority from the homepage to your important pages and improves the rankings
of those pages.

62. Add in-content links to other relevant pages on your website. Whilst not as valuable
as external links, internal links do still pass authority and signal to search engines what
pages to rank for which keywords.

63. Remove unnecessary outbound links. Only link to pages on other sites that you think
visitors to your site would find helpful and/or interesting.

64. Link out to relevant websites and blogs. People generally notice if you link to them,
and if you link to them, theres a reasonable chance that theyll link back to you if you
have good site.

65. Leave comments on relevant websites and blogs. Doing so builds trust and
relationships with people both the site owners and visitors to those sites.
66. Interact with bloggers in your industry. The better people with relevant blogs know
you (through social sites, forums, email, etc.) the more likely theyll be to link to your
site and to share your content.

67. Contact small businesses with relevant websites. A good relationship, in which you
help promote each others sites, makes SEO simpler and cheaper for you and for them.

68. Write press releases to share news and opinions. This is a good way to get content on,
and links from, sites outside of your industry and circle of connections.

69. Phone people to develop online relationships. Emails can easily be ignored or
forgotten, but phone calls not so much.

70. Use your website to build trust and relationships. The more relationships you have,
and the more people trust you, the more people will talk about you, link to you, and,
ultimately, buy from you.

71. Add your address and phone number to every page of your website. This builds trust
and improves rankings if youre targeting keyword phrases that contain your town/city
name.

72. Get listed in industry and local directories. Most directories are worthless, however,
there should be at least 10 that are relevant to your area or industry.

73. Ask customers to leave reviews on Google+ and local directories. Positive reviews
improve your rankings in Googles local listings and can be accessed directly from the
search results.

74. Be personal in a way that big businesses cant be. Putting your individuality and
personality across throughout the off-site SEO process (outreach emails, guest posts,
Tweets, etc.) makes others more likely to engage with you.

75. Use social websites to promote other peoples content as well as your
own. People generally know if youve taken action on social sites to help them, and if
they see that youve helped them, the chances of them helping you out in return are much
higher.

76. Add social sharing buttons to your website. The easier you make it for people to share
your content, the more likely they will be to do so.

77. Social media isnt a replacement for SEO. Your social strategy should be part of, or
should run alongside, your SEO strategy.

78. Search engines ranks webpages, not websites. Whether or not a page ranks for a
particular keyword depends largely on the quality of that individual page, and not the
quality of your site as a whole.
 79. Small businesses can rank higher than big businesses. Its not uncommon for a page
on a small businesss site to rank higher than a page on the site of a big, national
company.

80. Know where youre ranking. Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to Traffic and then
Search Queries to check where your site is ranking for keywords.

81. Aim to be in the top 3, not just the top 10. If your site isnt ranked in the top 3 positions
for a keyword then youll only get a small percentage (less than 10%) of the traffic from
searches for that keyword.

82. Rankings can be misleading. The number of 1st page rankings you have is irrelevant if
those rankings dont convert to visitor numbers and, ultimately, sales.

83. Dont worry about PageRank. Sites with a low PR can, and often do, outrank sites with
a high PR.

84. Choose between using www or not using www. Ensure that your site is set to load at
either www.domainname.co.uk or domainname.co.uk not both.

85. Adopt a flat website architecture. Any page of your site should be accessible within 3
clicks from your homepage.

86. Use a simple, clear URL structure. People should be able to guess the topic of a page
by looking only at its URL.

87. Use header tags. Include variations of your target keyword phrases in a pages H1 and
H2 tags.

88. Use rich snippets. They provide additional data about your site to search engines and can
improve the appearance of your sites listing in search results.

89. Use 301 redirects. If you change the url of a page on your site, but dont redirect the old
url to the new one, any links pointing to the old one will be wasted.

90. Set-up a useful 404 error page. Linking to your best content from your 404 page means
that visitors who see it are less likely to leave your site.

Source: http://www.seomark.co.uk/small-business-seo-tips/#ixzz2uPwTueBt