Pragmatic SEO for the Busy Business Owner
If you're a business owner, you're likely juggling countless daily tasks. SEO might seem like another complex job on your to-do list, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s a straightforward guide, with very clear actions, to help you boost your online presence without getting bogged down in technical details.
Before we start… SEO101
Search Engine Optimisation is optimising your pages/website for search engines.
That means we need to make it as easy as possible for Google (or Bing) (but let’s be honest, Google) to see your site and have its bots crawl it to index all your content. Then when someone searches it knows what’s on your site and can serve up anything relevant to their search.
Bots ‘indexing’ your site is Google’s way of understanding what’s on the internet to ensure it is serving the most relevant results to people searching.
Bots (sometimes referred to as spiders) are machines that will look at all the content on your site, specifically things like:
Your content, keywords, metadata, etc…
How your site interacts with other sites - links, backlinks…
How it operates for the user - speed, mobile friendliness…
And ~200 other variables, which are updated and tweaked frequently..
It’ll take all this information, add it to its algorithm, and then rank your page. The next time someone searches for something that’s on your page, Google now knows what’s there - and if it’s relevant and ranked highly enough, will present your page in its results page.
Disclosure: There is a lot more information out there about how SEO works. And if you want to get technical, you absolutely should. If that’s the case, stop here and go do that. If you’re happy to start with some very easy fundamentals that are easy for you to implement, we will leave the technical explanation and jump into the ‘doing’ part of this.
1. Claim and optimise Your Google Business Listing
Let’s start with the easiest one first. This is hygiene - but it’s often overlooked. If you have a physical shopfront customers need to find, this should be priority number one for very obvious reasons.
Action Step: Claim and complete your Google My Business profile. This might require Google to post something to validate that you’re at the address (at least it did the last time I had to set this up!). Then just make sure your business name, address, phone number, website and hours of operation are correct.
You can add photos of your team, happy customers, and your products - treat it like an extension of your social media account. All this makes your business more visible to local customers searching online.
You can also encourage customers to leave reviews, ideally good ones. It’s worthwhile getting control of your account for that alone. I’ve worked with clients who had no idea how scathing some of the feedback was on their Google Business page and wondered why they had such a bad reputation!
2. Get Found with Keywords
One of the things we know now is that Google’s bots are going to crawl your website to see what’s on it. That means you need to have used terms and words your customers might be using on your site so Google knows you’re putting down what they want to pick up.
Action: Write down a list of 5-10 words or phrases that your customers might use to find your business. These could be things like “best pizza in [your town]” or “affordable lawn care.” Use these keywords across your website in places like headlines, tags, alt text (the text that displays when elements of your page don’t load), product descriptions, and blog posts. This helps search engines understand what your site is about.
Warning: don’t stuff it. In the early days of search engines, algorithms were easier to hack and you could ‘stuff’ pages with keywords in a way that made no sense, and provided no value to the user… but still rank higher. Those days are gone, and you’ll actually be penalised by Google for doing it. Instead, focus on working the terms and phrases into where they make sense.
3. Improve Your Website’s User Experience
User Experience, or UX is an entire field of expertise so I’m not going to pretend for a second that we’re even scratching the surface with this tip. BUT fundamentally, UX is there to improve the experience of users who visit your website (weird with a name like that, right?)
Action Step: Check that your website is easy to navigate and find things on - particularly the things which make you money!
I’d tell you to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, but we already know how hard that is. So instead invest in some qualitative research. Just ask a friend, ideally one who would be in your target market demographic (but not 100% required), and ask them to perform a task on your website from the home page, and watch over their shoulder. Pick something easy, like ‘find out more about our returns policy’. Can they find that information? Or something more important like, ‘find a number to call to book an appointment’. What you ask them to explore will be relative to what you do, but you get the point. If they can’t do what they came to the site to do, then you have a problem and might need to look at your navigation, your linking strategy, or something else which helps improve the user’s experience on your site. If your user testing fails, start by asking, ‘where would you have gone to look for/find out X’ and start there.
The other thing which is fundamental is to ensure your site is mobile-friendly. Most/all websites are now mobile friendly out of the box, which makes things easier. But, make sure if and when you’re playing with the site and adding or removing content, you view it on mobile to make sure it’s still readable. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve published content which was great on desktop, but when the page converted to mobile was illegible or messy to the point it couldn’t be consumed.
Pro tip: You don’t need to actually do that on a mobile either, as browsers like Chrome can display multiple device resolutions. Right click and select ‘inspect’ on any page. Then click the little icon which looks like a laptop with a phone in front of it at the very top middle will switch it over. You can then select from a variety of devices to see how it renders your website.
4. Create Quality Content
Content is the cornerstone of SEO. Both from the practical selling of your products and services, but also offering value to your prospects before you try and convert them into customers. Remember: In most B2B buying scenarios a customer is 70% of the way through their purchase journey before they contact a sales rep. So if most of the work converting a prospect into a customer has happened before you get them on the phone, how are you supposed to speak to them? By answering the questions they search for online first!
I have written quite a bit on content marketing in other posts. And today is just quick actions you can take tomorrow to improve your site ranking. But the principle is the same - create useful information your customers can get value from (i.e. what I’m hopefully doing for you here)
Action Step: Write a blog post or an FAQ section answering common questions your customers have. For example, if you run a plumbing business, write a post on “How to Unclog a Drain.” This does two things. Shows that you know what you’re talking about and helps customers searching for a solution to a problem to solve it… for free.
No, I’m not insane. If you’re the one person in the world running a plumbing business that only unclogs drains, give me a second to explain this. If you think teaching all your customers how to DIY your service is going to put you out of business I can nearly guarantee you…
A portion of the people reading your FAQ will take your advice and fix the problem.
Another portion will try to fix it and fail.
And another won’t even bother trying at all.
If those last two groups you’ve tried to help, and built up trust with (aka create a value exchange) still have a blocked drain who are they going to call to unclog it? Some random plumbing company? Or the experts who tried to help them by explaining how to do it?
And when the first group who successfully fixed their drain with your guidance have a larger problem they’re not confident solving, who are they likely to call? You've helped them out, asked for nothing, and now they owe you!
5. Get Backlinks
Backlinks are, as the name suggests, links back to your site. Why is this important? If other websites are linking to your site, Google views that as a good thing, because you obviously have something valuable to share. More backlinks contribute to a higher page rank and more domain authority. Talent recognises talent, and Google recognises if websites with high ‘domain authority’ are linking to your site, you’re probably not a bad site either.
Sidebar: Domain Authority is one of those 200 odd metrics pulled into Google’s search algorithm, which rates how important/relevant/reliable your site is. The higher the domain authority is better and what influences range from site traffic, through to things like your literal domain - e.g. anything with ‘.gov’ can be assumed to be safe and reputable … in most countries.
Action Step: Reach out to local businesses or industry-related blogs to see if you can write a guest post or collaborate on content. If you’ve written an FAQ as I suggested above, this might be a good start. You can also create sharable (think videos, infographics, etc.) content from your FAQ style work above. Get this on your socials and get people linking to your site!
6. Track Your Progress
Peter Drucker taught us, ‘What gets measured gets improved’. SEO is no exception to this rule, but where do you start?
There are many tools you can use to measure your site’s performance on search engines. SEMrush is my personal preference as it has everything you need to cover the full gamut of SEO measurement. It also has great tools to help with all the points mentioned in this article, so worth a look if you really want to take SEO seriously.
Considering this is just a primer, let’s keep this simple. How do you know if SEO is working? Easy! You see an increase in visitors to your site from search engines.
Action Step: Use Google Analytics to see how many people are visiting your site and which pages they’re looking at. Don’t worry about understanding every detail; just check regularly to see if your traffic is increasing and what source it’s coming from. Adjust your content based on what’s working - more of what people are engaging with. Less of what they’re not.
I’m as aware as you are that you can’t pay the bills with site visitors or page views. So if you’re seeing organic search traffic improve and your conversion count isn’t - look into the UX. As we covered above, see where people are entering (which of your amazing FAQs they’re accessing), if they’re leaving straight away (bouncing) or, if they’re going around your site, the pages they visit. This should give you a hint as to why customers aren’t converting and what you can do about it. More on that in this deeper dive into conversion rate optimisation (CRO).
Other tips:
Consistency Matters: Make small SEO improvements regularly instead of trying everything simultaneously.
Think Like a Customer: We touched on this in UX, but always consider what your customers need and how you can make their experience better. From what you write about, to how you set your site up.
Leverage Social Media: Share your blog posts and updates on social media to drive traffic back to your site.
Conclusion
By taking these simple, actionable steps, you can enhance your online visibility and attract more customers without dedicating too much time or effort. Remember:
Claim your Google Places account.
Include terms your customers would search for that describe your business
Play around with how people get around your site so it’s easy to use
Write a blog post or anything that helps add value to your customer
Get backlinks from other organisations - ideally with high domain authority.
Track your progress! Increasing organic traffic is a start, but conversions pay the bills.
Focus on these basics, and you'll gradually see improvements in how your business is found online.