SEO 101: A Quick and Easy Guide For Small Businesses

  • By Daniela Bucatele
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For any business, you cannot ignore the power of SEO. SEO essentially aims to drive traffic to your site or blog. More traffic can lead to a high conversion rate and accelerate your business. In addition, solid SEO implementation will keep you relevant in a niche and ensure that you stay ahead of the competition since only 30% of small to medium-sized businesses implement SEO.

However, the proper implementation of SEO can be complex, and not using it correctly could harm your ranking rather than improve it. But there are multiple SEO types you can utilize to boost your rank. Most people are aware of on-page SEO for titles, descriptions, and keywords. But it is primarily professionals who are aware of the other powerful SEO types.

Types of SEO

  • On-Page SEO: When using SEO, many people aren’t aware of the powerful small business branding opportunities that come with it. On-page SEO includes meta content such as title, description, and keywords. All of these can consist of your business name or related topics.
  • Off-Page SEO: Off-page SEO revolves around backlinks. Backlinks are external from your site but linked from other relevant sources similar to or related to your business. Backlinks can significantly improve rankings and SEO.
  • Technical SEO: Code-based SEO aims to optimize a site’s SEO ranking boosting the site’s speed, mobile responsiveness, and structure. Google PageSpeed Insights is an excellent tool for measuring technical SEO.
  • Local SEO: Local SEO uses location-based information and displays are related to your physical location, a user’s physical location, or location-based search. You will also appear on Google Maps with local SEO implementation.

Why Use Multiple SEO Types

The answer to this is simple. Using the many SEO tools available, you can build a solid foundation for SEO that covers all bases. Modern SEO isn’t a one-size-fits-all method, and careful analysis and planning are required. You can do this yourself using WordPress plugins. However, you should be aware that it takes time to master. There are many incredibly talented agencies out there that will develop a comprehensive plan.

A complete SEO plan will give your small business a massive advantage over the competition. As stated, 70% of SMB companies don’t use SEO. Of the ones that do, even fewer use multiple SEO types. The vast majority include only on-page SEO. Suppose you implement a local SEO strategy as well as sound on-page SEO. You are almost guaranteed to rank top of a SERP for a query related to your business.

Proactive SEO

While implementing a solid SEO strategy is all well and good, you need to be proactive. SEO is changing all the time, as are search engine algorithms. In fact, Google amends its web-crawling algorithm that dictates rankings up to 600 times per year. That’s potentially twice per day. Because of this, you need to stay focused on how changes to SEO can impact your site. It isn’t uncommon for a previously high-ranking site to drop in SERPs following a change.

In addition, web concepts also change, and crawlers are often updated to reflect these changes. Mobile devices are a prime example. Not too long ago, how your site was displayed on a mobile device wasn’t taken into consideration. Now, it is a direct factor in determining your site’s ranking. Therefore you should ensure your site is mobile responsive and optimized for fast loading. Google PageSpeed Insights is an excellent tool for measuring these stats.


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