Ayup! Let’s talk DIY SEO for small business owners. Hopefully, you’ve landed here while looking to improve your website’s online presence.
Furthermore, you want to get a fair chunk of it done yourself to keep costs down. Boom! You are my people. That’s exactly how I started ranking websites over ten years ago. With a little time and patience, you can certainly do the same.
FAQ
Absolutely! Any business owner can get as involved as they wish in their own SEO strategy. With that said, you’ll need to devote plenty of time, attention and continual learning to start seeing results.
You can apply many SEO best practices yourself. Start by reading articles similar to this one, then take plenty of free online courses. These can be accessed via Wix Studio, Semrush, Hubspot and many other online learning academies.
Many small businesses simply don’t have the budget to hire a digital marketing specialist. Nevertheless, how and where you show up online is critical to securing your business’s longevity.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an undeniably complex beast. However, this article covers the basic ideas and principles to help set you up for success. Is doing your own SEO going to work for you? Let’s find out 🚀
DIY SEO for Small Business Owners in 10 Steps
1. SEO-Friendly Website Platform
Firstly, consider how (and where) your website is built. Of course, there are plenty of options, but some are better than others for SEO.
WordPress is well renowned as one of the best platforms to help boost your SEO efforts. Paired with a decent web host and a free plugin such as Yoast, you’ll have a guide on each page with tips on how to optimise your content.
Although it can be a little more technical to set up, for now, WordPress would be my first recommendation.
Additionally, Wix and Wix Studio Are fast becoming viable options. Their built-in SEO tools are seriously impressive. They also host the SERP’s Up podcast and offer a wide range of courses and articles to help you grow your online presence.
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2. Set up a Free Semrush Account
Secondly, go ahead and set up a completely free account on Semrush. Admittedly, it may seem slightly overwhelming at first, but trust me—this tool will help you outrank your competitors in the long run.
Semrush is a leader in search engine optimization (SEO) with a variety of useful tools to help businesses discover the best keywords, improve on-page SEO, analyze competitors, build links and gain valuable visibility in search engines, such as Google.
Add your website as your first project. It will then prompt you to set up various tools. The main two I’d suggest initially are the site audit and position tracking.
The site audit will run a quick scan of your entire website. From this, you’ll receive a bunch of suggestions on how to improve the SEO of your site.
With position tracking, you can keep up-to-date with how you’re ranking for specific keywords. For now, you can add your service and area. For example, window cleaner derby.
We’ll research further keywords to target and track in the next section.
Bonus Tip: Quickly learn about Semrush and how it can help your website with its free online courses. These are especially useful as you’re first learning DIY SEO for small business.
3. Keyword Research
Coupled with setting up your audits and position tracking, we’ll also use Semrush for your keyword research.
This helps identify what folks are searching for, as well as how many times and how difficult it is to rank for certain keywords and phrases.
Keyword research is a process of investigation and refinement. The aim of keyword research is not only to identify keywords that relate to your business and target audiences, but also to find ‘good’ keywords that are going to bring you plenty of traffic and not too much stiff competition.
Under Keyword Research on your left-hand menu, select the Keyword Magic Tool. Add your service and area that we used for your possition tracking in the last step.
Sticking with window cleaner derby as an example, you’ll see we’ve now got a whole load of related search terms.
These can either be incorporated into your current service page or used on different pages to target individual keywords/phrases.
Top Tip: If you cover multiple areas, it’s usually advisable to create a new page for each city. For example, you can target Derby on one page, and Nottingham on another. This is a bit of a grey area, as Google doesn’t want duplicate content on your website. At the same time, it will rank you better with it. Talk about mixed messages!
4. Optimise Your Pages, Structure & Images
Next up, you want to dive in and optimise your pages for search engines and potential customers in equal measures.
Yes, we need to make sure it’s rocking up at the top of Google or Bing, but we also need to make sure it’s readable and user-friendly for your visitors.
Again, your free Semrush account can provide plenty of pointers. The On Page SEO Checker will scan your page and, based on your target keywords, provide ideas on how your can improve your ranking.
Additionally, keep your page sizes as low as possible. This makes them quicker to load, which is going to prevent folks from leaving before actually seeing what’s on offer.
Website architecture (also called website structure) is how a site’s pages are organized. A well-structured site helps users and search engines navigate your site. Which can improve your SEO and rankings.
Learn about the best practices for page and website structure (website architecture). Because search engines read your website’s HTML code, it needs to be in a suitable order.
For example, H1 as the main heading, H2 as the subheading and so on. If you’re using WordPress, the Yoast plugin will be your invaluable guide to optimising your pages.
Images should include your relevant keywords in both the title and meta description wherever possible. You should also use the smallest file sizes possible to keep your page size down and loading time up.
5. Online Listings
Almost as important as the website itself are your online business listings. The main one to set up and optimise is your Google Business Profile. Futhermore, you can then sync all of your info to Bing Places for Business.
Bing will not drive anywhere near as much traffic to your site as Google, but it’s quickly growing. Given that it powers other search engines such as Yahoo and Duck Duck Go, it’s definitely worthwhile spending some time and attention here.
A brilliant resource for optimising your Google listing is this YouTube Channel from Zanet Design. Really simple tips and explanations to boost your rankings on Google maps and within the standard search results.
Lastly, add your business to sites such as Yell, Cylex, FreeIndex, and Central Index. The more, the better. These listings all provide a valuable backlink to your website, as well as demonstrating NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency across the web.
Top tip: Yell will call you and pretend they’re doing you a favour by optimising your listing. Their only goal here is to get you to hand over your money and download their app. No need to do any of those things. Your listing is free, and their paid services are notoriously terrible.
6. Think Local & Think Smaller
Targeting smaller areas can make it much easier to rank well on a search engine than in a huge city. For example, certain pages on this site target both Derby and Burton. Because Burton is much smaller with less competition, we find it easier and quicker to rank there in most instances.
You can even take this method further by targeting specific suburbs of your city. Take a look at your keywords in Semrush to see if enough people are searching for your product or service there.
Referring back to the window cleaner derby search in the screenshot (step 3), we can see that Littleover, Alvaston and Chaddesden might be worth targeting.
7. Strategic Content Marketing
Blog articles based on your area of expertise are essential in helping you build your EEAT (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).
Consistent sharing of educational content positions you as an expert advisor. It shows your audience that you value them and are interested in their success. This grows brand trust, keeps you top of mind, and makes your audience more likely to choose you when ready to make a purchase decision.
With that said, each subject needs to be carefully researched in order to drive traffic to your website. As important as this is, I can’t explain it any better than the two Semrush Accedmy courses I recently took.
Honestly, if you only take one tip from this DIY SEO for small business article, do more SEO and content marketing courses. They really help develop your strategy and help you write articles with true purpose.
Again, these are completely free, and you’ll even get a certificate that you can display on your LinkedIn Profile. If time allows, dive into some of their other courses on SEO, too. This will further compliment the tips and ideas you’re reading about here.
8. Google Search Console
In addition to your Google Business Profile, you’ll want to set up and use Google Search Console. This nifty little tool helps you index your pages much faster than usual. Furthermore, you can keep an eye on the impressions and clicks your site is receiving on Google.
Search console is also useful to check on any schema markup issues. Schema markup is a whole other blog post in itself, but it basically provides search engines with additional information about your article.
FAQ, How to and Reviews are a few popular markups (Yoast is an easy option for a couple of these). Search Console will let you know if anything isn’t quite right, so you can go back and fix it.
Instant indexing – One massive benefit of using Search Console is near-instant indexing. Once you’ve written and published a blog post (step 7), go ahead and enter the link at the top where it says Inspect any URL.
Once it finds your page and lets you know it’s not yet indexed, click Request Indexing. If you’ve got your keywords and page structure right, you can easily be found on Google in under 24 hours.
9. Internal Linking & Backlinks
Internal linking (pages of your site linking to other pages on your site) and backlinks (other websites linking to your site) are extremely important.
What’s the most important page on your website? Usually, it’s your homepage. Make sure this has the most links from other pages pointing to it. Check out the article that accompanies the above diagram on Internal linking from Moz.
This can be from pages on your site but also your blog posts. Most pages on your site should have internal links pointing to them if they’re considered important.
Internal linking is an essential factor for Google and other search engines. But why? Google follows links to discover content on websites and to rank this content in the search results. If a post or page gets many links, this signals to Google that it’s an essential or high-value article. This counts for internal as well as external links.
Backlinks – Initially, start with your online business listings (step 5). These provide a vital link to your website. The more of these you can get, the better.
As your strategic content marketing (step 7) starts to rank well, you’ll find that other websites are linking to your posts. Again, the more of these you can get, the better.
Keep track of your backlinks on Semrush. Although not highly accurate, this is an easy way to see whether the number of sites linking to you is growing or decreasing.
10. Measure & Track Rankings & Traffic
Lastly, you’ll want to keep track of your results. Four tools make this super easy.
- Website Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Semrush
- Bing Webmaster Tools
I don’t personally agree with using Google Analytics because of how they handle/sell the data that they collect. Many website-building platforms come with built-in analytics to help you monitor your stats.
Popular external services that are also GDPR compliant are Plausible and Fathom Analytics. If you’re using WordPress, a free (with a paid upgrade option) plugin called Koko Analytics is more than enough for most users.
Google Search Console also provides a tonne of valuable info and stats on your site. It’s well worth getting familiar with the dashboard and diving into your data here.
Back to your free Semrush account again. Here, you can track up to ten keywords/phrases. This is actually one of my favourite tools. You’ll also get email updates when you go up or down in rankings.
Although it may not be a priority on this DIY SEO for small business list, monitoring your data within Bing Webmaster Tools will give you a good idea of what’s performing well on Bing.
DIY SEO for Small Business Owners – Conclusion
Can I do SEO for my own business? If the steps in this article haven’t sent you running for the hills, then the answer is a resounding yes!
DIY SEO for small business owners is suitable for anyone prepared to devote plenty of time and attention to an ongoing practice.
Although search engine optimisation is a fairly complex subject that’s constantly evolving, it can be broken down into manageable chunks. Learn a bit at a time and set aside a certain number of hours to work on your SEO each week.
It’s important to realise that ranking well on search engines is critical in securing the longevity of your business. If the budget doesn’t allow for hiring a digital marketing agency or freelancer, the more you can do yourself, the better.
My inbox is always open. Drop me a message if you’re having a bash at DIY SEO and stuck on anything.
Thanks for stopping by…
My name’s Mike Hindle. I’m a local SEO specialist and the founder of Clearcut Derby and Leaflet Lion. I love building websites, hiking, exploring, photography and butter beans.