SEO for any small business isn’t easy, and great organic search rankings don’t happen overnight.
But, SEO is something that should not be overlooked if you want to improve your online rankings to grow your business.
After all, everyone wants to be on Page 1 of Google!
It comes down to one question:
What can you start doing today to help improve your rankings?
The following SEO checklist will help you prioritize your SEO tasks to start moving the needle to get found online. Some you can do on your own, and others you might want to leave to the experts to keep your sanity and optimize results.
The following SEO list includes:
- 8 SEO tasks to address
- Why each task is important
- Suggested resources you can use to get the job done
- The time commitment involved
1. Figure Out What Problems You Solve For Your Customers
Before jumping into SEO, you must first understand the nature of what your business provides to your customers.
Your website should make these things clear with the right messaging and page content:
- What do you offer?
- What pain points do you solve for your customers?
- What benefits do your products or services provide?
- What makes you unique and why is that of value to your prospects?
- How, when, and where do customers determine they need your product or service?
The answers to these questions will drive your keyword research and content creation, among other tasks.
Resources: Whiteboard
Time Commitment: Low-Medium
2. Find Out What Your Competitors Are Doing – Then Do It Better
Online competitors might be different than competitors within your local area. For SEO purposes, you want to analyze your competitors that are showing up in the top 5 to 10 positions of Google search results for your targeted keywords.
When doing a competitive analysis you’ll find out:
- Who your top organic competitors are
- What keywords those sites are ranking for
- Number and quality of their backlinks
- Competitor keyword position tracking
- Keywords they have missed that you can target
Resources: SEMrush, SpyFu, Majestic. Or contact us, we’ll provide you with a free competitor analysis.
Time Commitment: Medium-High
3. Optimize Your Website Pages
On-page optimization is more than just putting keywords on the page.
Content and SEO go hand-in-hand. Without one, your efforts on the other are seriously diminished. Without the right content, it’s impossible for your site to rank in search engines. Therefore, it’s crucial to write and structure quality content that is properly structured and naturally written using your targeted keywords. Use every reasonable (i.e., non-spammy) opportunity to add your targeted keywords to your site pages.
Optimize these four things:
- Title tags – Title tags are displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable headline for a given result and are important for usability, SEO, and social sharing.
- Meta descriptions – Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched-for phrase is within the description, so optimizing the meta description is crucial for on-page SEO
- Image Alt tags – For all images on your site, be sure to include an ALT tag within the IMG tag. Doing so will provide a clear text alternative of the image for screen reader users, and also supports good SEO.
- Site content – Content SEO is important because search engines, such as Google, read your website, so the words you use on your site determine whether or not your site will rank in their results pages. Here are the 3 major elements you need to consider to produce content that will make your website rank well: keyword strategy, site structure and copywriting.
Resources: Ahrefs, SEMRush, Yoast. Or contact us, we’ll handle your site optimization for you!
Time Commitment: High
4. Optimize Your Google My Business Page
Google My Business is important for every business. It’s free, easy to update, and can make a big impact, especially on branded search results pages.
The first step toward optimizing your Google My Business listing is claiming and verifying it: https://www.google.com/business.
Be sure to fill out as many fields as you can and include photos (and videos if you have them) to enhance your listing.
Read our other post for more action steps: How to Use Google My Business to Optimize Your Online Presence.
Resources: See link above to claim your business page.
Time Commitment: Low-Medium
5. Manage Business Listings and Citations
In addition to Google My Business, you need to control the accuracy of your business data. Consistency is crucial.
Data aggregators like Neustar, Localeze, and Factual share information about businesses, including the name, address, and phone number (NAP).
Make sure your business’s NAP information is consistent and accurate. Business listings and citations (i.e., online mentions of a business) can help improve your local online presence.
Resources: Yext, MozLocal, WhiteSpark. Or contact us, we’ll handle it for you!
Time Commitment: Low-Medium
6. Fix Your Website’s Technical SEO Issues
Your website might look fine on the outside, but if there are technical problems “under the roof” it will likely impact your rankings and traffic.
You need to clean up website issues so search engines can properly crawl and index your web pages.
Some of the most common technical SEO problems have to do with:
- Speed
- Duplicate content
- Broken links
- Improper use of canonical link elements
- Un-optimized pages
Resources: Google Search Console, SEMRush, SpyFu. Or contact us, we’ll provide you with a free technical site audit so you know exactly what issues you need to fix.
Time Commitment: High
7. Get Reviews
Reviews are one of the leading search ranking factors. Plus, you can improve your conversions by getting reviews and feedback from your customers.
In today’s digital age, 93% of customers say that their buying decisions are influenced by online reviews.
Online reviews have major implications through their ability to affect:
- Your rankings in search engines
- Which search results are displayed (and clicked on)
- Customer purchasing decisions
That makes online reviews as critical to your SEO strategy as building citations and on-site optimization.
Different paid services can help you organize and manage a review campaign, as well as adding needed schema markup to your on-site reviews.
Resources: Get5Stars, WPReviewPro. Or contact us, we’ll handle online review management for you!
Time Commitment: Medium-High
8. Get Links from Relevant Websites
Most small business owners never think about links, but Google wants to see quality links to your website. Getting links (also known as backlinks) to your site can help improve your rankings, which can mean more sales.
A backlink should serve the following criteria:
- Link back to your website
- Provide the opportunity to speak to your audience
Here are just a few types of backlink ideas to go after:
- Industry-specific websites
- Your City’s business directory
- Other businesses that also have websites and are open to having a partners page
- Charities that you could sponsor as a small business owner or volunteer for that offers a featured volunteers page
- The sites your competitors are on – this goes without saying but we’re saying it anyway!
- As a member of your local Chamber of Commerce
- Newspapers or media outlets that do features on your product or service
- Events that you participate in that have a website
- The list goes on and on
Resources: Majestic, Ahrefs, SpyFu. Or contact us, we’ll handle it for you!
Time Commitment: Medium-High
We take the guesswork out of success.
This list is a consolidated version of some of the things you can do to improve your rankings.
Even if these 8 steps seem overwhelming, the important thing is to just do something.
Set goals you know you can accomplish and start working your way through the list.
If you get stuck, we’re happy to answer any questions you have.
Don’t want to do it yourself?
We can handle one or all of these important SEO tasks to drive long-term online results for your business!
