Small Business SEO: 8 Essential Steps To Search Engine Success!

SEO is crucial for small businesses in 2025 when everyone is turning to their smartphones to find and buy things. Without leveraging small business SEO, you’re missing out on endless opportunities to show up for people already looking for what you offer. 

SEO also allows you to compete with larger brands. Organic search engine rankings aren’t determined based on the highest bidder, like paid search ads. They’re based on how well a webpage aligns with its ranking factors. 

In this guide, I’ll show you 8 essential steps to grow your small business with SEO and finally see some success from the search engine! And, you'll even get a free checklist to remember everything!

Table Of Contents

Understand The Basics Of Small Business SEO

Conduct Effective Keyword Research

Optimize for Search Engine Crawlability & User Experience

Create High-Quality, Engaging Content

Build Backlinks To Your Small Business Website

Optimize for Local SEO

Focus On Video SEO

Monitor and Improve Your Small Business’s SEO Performance

Small Business SEO: A Recap

Small Business SEO Services For SERIOUS Search Engine Success

1. Understand the Basics of Small Business SEO

Whether you decide to hire small business SEO services or attempt it yourself, you need to know how it all works and why it’s so important to your bottom line. 

Search Engine Optimization is the work of making your website as aligned with a search engine’s ranking factors as it can, so it can show up as high as possible on the list, also called the search engine results page (SERP), for a specific query. 

Why? Because the higher you rank, the more traffic you’ll likely get. Take a look at this example of a SERP for “Small Business Blogs” 

Now, not all keywords will have the same SERP features, but for “Small Business Blogs,” you’ll likely get some suggestions like this, showing the most popular blogs about small businesses. Next, there are a few listings. These are the top 3 SERP positions, and that number one spot is the most sought-after rank position. To do that, you need to optimize your web pages as best you can for Google’s ranking factors, and that is why SEO is so important for small businesses.

How Many Google Ranking Factors Are There?

There are over 200 ranking factors that contribute to where your website will land on the SERPs. Some of the heaviest-weighing factors include:

• Content 

• Keywords 

• Backlinks (also called Inbound Links)

• User Experience

To better target each ranking factor, it’s best to categorize them into separate areas of SEO:

• On-Page SEO: What’s on your page, including content, keywords, etc. 

• Off-Page SEO: Social signals and off-site elements, like backlinks, listings, etc. 

• Technical SEO: Backend elements, like internal links, page loading speed, and mobile-friendliness. 

2. Conduct Effective Keyword Research

Effective keyword research is the most critical part of small business SEO. If you’re not targeting the right keywords or none at all, you’re not showing up in the SERPs. For small businesses, that means going after long-tail keywords. 

Long-tail keywords are a small business's secret weapon to rank high. These keywords are a little longer (3-5 words) than a short-tail keyword (1-2 words), and while some have lower search traffic, they have less competition, which is your big opportunity to slip in. 

They’re also a great way to show yourself to a more targeted audience, whether topically or geographically. So, instead of “hair salon,” you’d be much better off targeting a long-tail keyword like “hair salon for curly hair,” or even better, a keyword that targets your specific area, like “hair salon in Dallas, TX.”  

Where To Find The Best Keywords For Your Small Business

There are great SEO and keyword research tools out there that show you all the right info you need to create an effective strategy (i.e. competition rates, search traffic, search intent, etc.) and write high-ranking content for your small business. You can also take a look at your competitors’ keywords for inspiration. 

My Top 3 Keyword Research Tools: 

• Semrush Keyword Magic Tool 

• Ubersuggest’s Keyword Research Tool

• Moz Keyword Keyword Explorer 

3. Optimize for Search Engine Crawlability & User Experience 

Before keywords can help you rank on search engine results pages, your website has to be found (crawled) and categorized (indexed). That’s where technical and on-page SEO come in. 

Making Your Website Mobile-Friendly

First and foremost, you need to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Most website builders have adaptive design templates that can transition seamlessly between desktop and mobile views. But if you've made a lot of customizations in desktop mode, it can affect the way it looks on mobile (I found that out the hard–and embarrassing–way). You can check by using your website editor’s “preview mode” on the mobile setting.

Improve User Experience (UX) 

Aside from mobile-friendliness, your website’s design should be intended for the best possible user experience. That means a simple, aesthetically pleasing design that’s easy to navigate and organized for visitors to find what they need in a snap. Also, avoid annoying pop-ups and the overuse of ad space that frustrates users. 

Optimizing Page Speed 

Another important ranking factor is page loading speed, not just for the sake of SEO, but also for bounce rates. No one wants to wait for your web page to load. If it’s not ready to go in a couple of seconds, visitors will just leave and go RIGHT to the competition. Find your Page Loading Speed on Google’s Page Speed Insights or by running a Semrush site audit.

Images: 

Image file sizes can drastically slow down your website’s page loading speed, but luckily, fixing that is the easiest solution for a slow-loading page. The file size for each image on a web page should be 500 KB or lower. They should never exceed 2MB. If your image files are too big, compress images (make the files smaller) using Canva or by using a free online converter tool, like CompressJPEG.

HTML Code Issues:

This can be a tricky part to understand for most website owners, and I totally understand that. Coding isn’t my forte either. But it’s essential to know that your text-to-code ratio can affect your page loading speed. So, if you haven’t 

Implement Structured Data (Schema Markup)

Structured data is bits of code that help search engines better describe the contents of a web page. Using structured data doesn’t just help with indexing, it makes you eligible to show up for Google's Rich Results. Website builders like Wix make it easy to implement structured data and improve your search engine visibility. Use this intro to structured data markup by Google to get started.

On-Page & Content Optimization: 

On-page SEO is all about optimizing the elements on a webpage, specifically the metadata and content. 

URLs:

The URLs are a website’s address. They’re structured pretty simply; every page on your site would have the same prefix, with the slug being the identifier for search engines. Make sure your URL slugs are short and to the point and contain your keyword, or at least, part of it. Also, page hierarchy should be used to create a stronger site structure for easier indexing and better navigation. For example, this post’s parent page is my general blog post page. 

Title Tags:

Title tags, also called SEO titles or meta titles, are the titles of a webpage seen on the SERP. An optimized title tag should:

• Include the page’s focus word

• Be 50-70 characters long 

• Entice the reader to click through

Meta Descriptions:

Meta descriptions are an often forgotten element, leaving excerpts to fill the empty space, but they’re also a huge opportunity to help your SEO ranking and clickthrough rates. An optimized meta description:

• Briefly describe the topic and what people get from reading

• Is 150 characters or under (2-3 short sentences is usually perfect)

• Includes the page’s focus keyword

• Has a short CTA (if there’s room)

Page Content:

Above the metadata of your web pages, it’s much more important for search engines to see that your actual content is optimized for your target keyword(s). If you need to gauge how many times to use a keyword in your content, check out Semrushe’s On-Page toolkit. Or, you can do it the old-fashioned way, by checking the top 3 SERP listings and using CTRL+F to see how many times they’ve used it. At the minimum, your keywords should appear:

• in the first 100 words 

• naturally in the content

• in some of your headings and subheadings. (Also, make sure your headings and subheads are tagged properly [Page Title=H1, Headings=H2, and Subheadings=H3, H4]).

Image Alt Text: 

Alt text is the alternative text that shows up to describe an image if it’s not loaded, or for people with visibility issues, who rely on metadata to describe what’s on a page (which is really what alt text is for, it’s just a bonus that’s it’s beneficial for SEO). Write descriptive and optimized text for your images. You can also use AI to help, but always double-check and try to reword it yourself. 

Link Your Website Pages Together

Internal linking boosts page authority and improves navigation. The more incoming internal links a page has, the better its page authority will be. And, it also helps your visitors find everything they need in one spot. So, make sure to add links to other pages on your site, wherever it’s necessary. For example, I’m talking to you about SEO for Small businesses today, so not only would it be a smart business practice for me to link my SEO Service page, but it also gives me opportunities to link to my other SEO-related pages and blog posts. 

Using A Pillar Strategy For Internal Link Building 

A pillar strategy is a content-led SEO strategy that helps small businesses target more keywords, create better content, and build more internal links. This strategy consists of content pillars and topic clusters. Content pillars are the main categories or areas of focus for your business, which you would cover on a pillar page, mentioning all topics that fall under it, called topic clusters, but leaving room for separate topic cluster pages to cover each topic more extensively, and linking back to the pillar page. You’d also link each topic page on your pillar page, creating a stonewall-strong internal linking structure.  

4. Create High-Quality, Engaging Content

Having optimized website content is great, but if you really want to see more search engine growth, you’ve got to start a business blog. The key to substantial and sustaining growth on search engines is to keep writing SEO-optimized blog content. And blogging is the best way to do that. Plus, it’s a great way to connect with your ideal audience. 

Write In-Depth, SEO-Optimized Content About Topics Related To Your Small Business

Write in-depth, long-form blog posts that are related to your services or products, or even your industry. Posts over 1000 words tend to rank better since Google prioritizes comprehensive coverage of topics to be as helpful as possible to the searcher. So, make sure you’re writing in-depth and giving the most helpful and relevant information possible.  

Use E-E-A-T Guidelines To Create Helpful, High-Quality Blog Posts

A part of Google’s prioritization of in-depth content is called E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness). It’s not exactly a ranking factor, but it’s Google’s way of establishing which page has the most helpful and relevant content for a search query. For you, this means using your personal experiences like real-life examples and industry expertise to establish authority and instill trustworthiness. 

Optimize For Voice Search 

Things are changing for search engines. More and more searches are coming from voice searchers. Make sure to look at the “people also asked” and “related searches” of each keyword to make sure you’re optimizing for all types of searchers. Also, optimize your content to answer question-based queries. 

Write In The Right Tone Of Voice To Connect With Readers

Your tone of voice will depend on your brand, audience, and the topic at hand, but conversational-toned content tends to increase engagement better than any other tone of voice, in my experience. Personally, I like to create content that reads as if I was speaking right to you (without my social anxiety and ADHD-caused awkwardness and with the ability to cut myself off when I talk too much–).

Add Multi-Media To Your Blog Posts

If your blog posts are nothing but a wall of words, I’ll bet that your engagement rates are NIL. I love reading books as much as the next nerdy girl, but let me tell you something—the internet doesn’t like novels. Well, not on small business websites and blogs, anyway. It’s 2025, the time of visual content dominating everyone’s attention. So, you need to give your content some multi-media medicine to get those engagement rates back to where they should be. 

Images:

Images are necessary for blog posts, whether to break up the post for readability or add relevant and aesthetically pleasing pizzazz to your content. Either way, images are the key to engagement. Plus, it’s a great way to show up in the SERP Images feature. Add a few images to your blog post, and make sure your image files are optimized, (small file size, optimized file name, and alt text). 

Infographics: 

Infographics are illustrations used to help visualize what an article says, to explain complex information, or to create a succinct alternative way to understand what’s going on in a piece of content. Basically, it’s the article version of the movie world, where Morgan Freeman shows up to explain everything.

Add an infographic where you think it would make sense (for long headings with lots of subheads, or to summarize your whole article in list form) or to help your readers understand your point. Again, don’t forget to optimize the infographic files.

Video: 

Adding video content to blogs is a relatively newer SEO trend, but it’s been seeing a lot of results. Video content can help you show up for the SERP videos feature, as well as help strengthen your blog post’s engagement rates, even more than regular images. Create videos to add to your blog posts, to introduce your content to a brand-new audience. 

Keep Your Content Updated

Part of creating consistently high-quality content is going back and refreshing or updating blog posts with new information as it comes to you. Or, if you’ve something with a date or year, (Example: Top Ten Hair Trends of 2021), you should update that for the current year, and republish. 

Also, make sure that your links are all working and up-to-date. Broken links and 404 pages hurt your small business’s SEO. So, if your page links change or you find broken links on your site, remove or redirect them immediately.

Repurpose Content for Maximum Reach

Another HUGE opportunity to create good content and promote your business is to repurpose and cross-post your content across different platforms. That doesn’t just mean posting your infographics on Pinterest either (although it’s definitely recommended).

But, by turning your blog posts into social media posts, YouTube videos, or even podcast episodes (or vice-versa), you can maximize the reach of your business AND strengthen your content SEO all at the same time.  

Create multiple bite-sized posts from your long-form content as well, to get even MORE promotional material out of it! And don’t forget to link blog posts in your monthly newsletters or email campaigns! Be Oprah, spreading your content to the audience like a fab freebie. EVERYONE gets your content!

5. Build Backlinks To Your Small Business Website 

If I can give you any golden nuggets of small business SEO advice, it’s to build backlinks to your content. The more high-domain backlinks you have to your website, the higher your domain authority will be, which means ranking higher. Backlinking is also another benefit of blogging for small businesses because blog posts statistically get the most backlinks of all web page types. Focus on high-domain, relevant websites. Let’s talk about some ways to get backlinks for your small business website. 

Use Tools To Find Good Backlinking Opportunities 

The first backlinking tip I’ll give you is to get some help. You may not have to hire a link-building specialist, but Semrush’s link-building tool can help you find a lot of good backlinking opportunities for your content with help in the outreach process AND  can even run a backlink audit to find competitor backlinks and toxic links you need to get rid of. 

Get Listed On Directories And Related Websites

A great link-building technique for small businesses I use is to get backlinks from local directories, related blogs, and industry websites. For example, if you’re a salon, you can get backlinks from your local business directories and salon or product line directories. You can also get great backlinking opportunities by letting hairstyling blogs use your social media or gallery images in their blog posts. 

Guest Posting On Relevant Websites 

Guest blogging gets your small business in front of a brand-new audience that may not have seen you before and it’s almost like a recommendation or credibility badge, in the eyes of your readers. Tons of high-authority websites (keeping with the salon example, Allure, Elle, etc) offer guest posting opportunities, so you can write a blog post, submit it to a related website, get that backlink, and watch the traffic start pouring in. 

Collaborate With Other Local Businesses 

One of the oldest and most traditional link-building methods (which was never originally thought of as a link-building method) is collaborating with other local and related businesses for mutual linking opportunities. Businesses you partner with, affiliates, and even some local partnerships or team-ups, are all natural and strong link-building opportunities for everyone! All you have to do is reach out! 

Create Shareable and Linkworthy Content 

Other than blog posts, there are 2 other serious backlink magnets: infographics and data. Create link-worthy infographics and research (like case studies) to attract natural backlinks to your content. 

6. Optimize for Local SEO

Local audiences make up the bulk of most small business’s target audience. Whether you have a physical location or not, you need to optimize for local SEO just as much as regular SEO. 

Claim and Optimize Your Google Business Profile 

Claim your business location and optimize your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). Here’s what a good Google Business Profile needs:

• Accurate business title and category 

• Optimized description 

• Linked products or listed services

• Links to website and social media 

• Locations and their operating hours

• Images and videos from your website and social media 

• Questions and answers section with FAQs answered by you

Keep Your NAPs Consistent 

Keep NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) consistent across the web. If you list your phone number as (123)-456-7890 in one place, it shouldn’t be 1234567890 or 123 456 7890 in other places. The same goes for your zip/postal code or state/province abbreviations. If you use it in one place, you’ve got to use it in the same way everywhere else you list it. 

Promote Good Reviews 

Your online reputation isn’t just a heavy ranking factor for local SEO, it’s also a game-changer for your clients. Positive reviews can make or break a visitor’s decision to interact with your small business. Encourage your current or past customers to leave positive reviews on Google and Yelp.

Create Content Optimized For Local Searches 

Another crucial local SEO strategy for small businesses is creating locally relevant content and focusing on location-specific keywords, like “near me” searches. Make sure to include location-specific queries in your keyword research and content strategy.

List Your Locations EVERYWHERE

List your location (or all of them) on your footer, so they appear on every page. Also, if you have multiple locations, it would be beneficial to have a page for each location that lists its contact formation so you can cover all relevant keywords for each location. 

Build Listings & Links On Local Directories 

Local business directories are local SEO gold. These are typically really high-domain websites that naturally link back to local businesses, relevant to their site’s content or not. Everything’s relevant, since it’s all location-based. Submit business info to local directories like your city’s local business directory, local chamber of commerce website, Bing Places, Yelp, TripAdvisor, or other location-based directories.  

7. Focus on Video SEO

A new-but-hard-hitting SEO trend I’m recommending all my clients jump on is video SEO. I said this earlier, but I’ll say it again– we’re living in a visual content era, meaning producing video content for your small business is a huge promotional and SEO asset. I’m not just talking about adding video to your blog posts or creating reels or TikToks, either. I’m talking about YouTube. 

Set Up A YouTube Channel For Your Small Business  

If your small business doesn’t have a YouTube channel, you’re missing out on getting double the opportunities for your business. Because, guess what? YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. Whether it’s a long-form video or not, it’s a huge benefit to any small business, and you can use subscribers to create leads, forward them back to your website, and repurpose that content. There’s no end to the way that can boost your bottom line. 

Optimize Your Videos & Add To Website 

Just like a regular search engine, YouTube video titles and descriptions are what get your videos to show up for a particular query and invoke people to click through. Create optimized titles and descriptions for your videos, and don’t forget to tag them properly, so you can show up in related queries and recommended videos. Also, use closed captioning and provide transcripts for your videos to ensure better accessibility and indexing. And finally, post your videos to your website to cross-promote your content. 

8. Monitor and Improve Your Small Business’s SEO Performance

Even after you’ve worked on your small business’s SEO, it’s not over yet. SEO is an ongoing thing that includes monitoring your performance and improving as you go along. But, now that you’ve gotten the initial setup done, it’s only going to get easier from here. 

Audit Your Website Regularly 

Make sure to perform regular SEO audits to stay on top of any issues or changes to your website and it’s effect on SEO. You can easily do this through Semrush’s free trial every month to stay ahead of the game. 

Track Your Rankings And Traffic 

Track your website’s rankings and traffic using Google Analytics & Google Search Console. You can easily connect them through your Google account and website platform. Monitor which pages are bringing in the most and least traffic. What’s different about the page getting more traffic? How can you replicate that on a lower-performing page? Also, identify which keywords are driving the most traffic to your site, and consider that in your ongoing strategy revisions. 

Keep An Eye On The Competition

Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz to analyze competitors and monitor their progress compared to yours. This helps you stay ahead of content and keyword gaps, and Semrush’s tool gives insightful tips that pick up on new competitors and ways you can dominate them. 

Never Stop Updating & Optimizing 

While you’re monitoring your small business SEO, tweak and revise your strategy based on your findings. You may find that you’ll be focusing on different things than you thought, and it may seem repetitive to keep optimizing and updating content, but I can promise that it’s worth it! 

Stay Updated with Small Business SEO Trends

Don’t wait for an unexpected algorithm change or new ranking factor to screw things up for you! Stay updated on small business SEO trends to easily adapt to new features and search engine changes. Make sure to follow Google’s algorithm update and update immediately. You can also get good trend forecasts and insights by joining SEO communities like Search Engine Journal, Neil Patel Blog, or my blog.

Small Business SEO: A Recap

Small business SEO is the best investment you can make! It may take some time to implement and see results, but it delivers long-term benefits, and again, has the highest ROI of ANY marketing stream. 

With these steps, and by consistently improving your strategies and creating high-quality content, you’re sure to see substantial SEO results. Grab my free Small Business SEO Checklist before you go to make sure you’re getting everything done. 

Small Business SEO Checklist.pdf

Download PDF • 79KB

Small Business SEO Services For SERIOUS Search Engine Success 

Small business SEO is a lot to take on for someone already running a business. Trust, me I know. If you don’t want to risk “DIY” SEO or just want the maximum results you can, you’ve got to invest in SEO consulting or small business SEO services. 

Going further than free tools and checklists, my SEO services for small businesses create impactful results and adapt to your specific goals. From auditing to optimizing, and creating competitive strategies to kick the competition to the curb, I’ve got your back.  

Check out my small business SEO case studies to see the result I can bring your business or contact me to get a free estimate. Let’s whip your Small business’s SEO into shape, and start getting your business the online visibility it deserves!