If you’re a small business owner you’ve likely heard that SEO or search engine optimization is essential to your online visibility. But with all of its technical jargon, search engine optimization can seem overwhelming – especially if you’re already feeling like your resources are stretched thin.
The good news is that SEO isn’t as complicated as it seems. And you don’t need to master everything overnight.
With a few fundamentals and a little bit of strategic content planning, you can improve your website visibility and start attracting relevant visitors.
Here’s a look at some of the SEO basics that will make the biggest impact in improving your positioning in Google searches.
What is SEO?
To start, let’s clarify what SEO is. If you’ve taken the time to Google something before, you’ll have noticed that there is a hierarchy to the results page. When someone uses a search engine to inquire about something relevant to your business, search engine optimization helps you appear higher on the list of results.
This is a huge benefit because the higher up your site appears, the more likely it is to receive clicks. Very few people take the time to scroll the entire first page of results, let alone click through the hundreds or thousands of additional pages of results that come after.
Of course, just because a website appears at the top in a search doesn’t mean it’s the most valuable resource for you as the searcher. But once a site begins gaining traffic, it generally continues to do so thanks to the momentum of search algorithms and user behaviour.
As small business owners, it can feel daunting to try and compete with larger organizations dedicating more time on content, more resources on website updates, and a greater budget on paid ads – all actions which are helping to boost their site authority and trustworthiness with search engines.
However, with a focus on quality content, relevance, and technical best practices, small businesses can absolutely compete for top positioning.
Before we dive into optimizing your website, it’s helpful to understand the three foundational elements of SEO: technical, on-page, and off-page.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO covers the back-end factors that influence your website’s performance. This includes elements like how fast your site loads, mobile-friendliness, site security, and whether or not it’s crawl-able by search engines like Google.
If your site isn’t performing well on a technical level, even the best content in the world might not rank.
To optimize your technical SEO, follow these best practices.
Improve page loading time.
Free tools like PageSpeed Insights allow you to test your website speed and diagnose any major performance issues.
Optimize images by compressing their size, use efficient coding practices, and enable caching to accelerate site speed and avoid slow load times.
Ensure your site has a responsive design.
Your website should look and function seamlessly across devices. This means buttons should be easy to tap, text should be readable (ideally without zooming), and navigation should remain intuitive no matter if someone is visiting your site via phone, tablet, or desktop computer.
A responsive design automatically adjusts to fit the user’s device, providing a consistent, user-friendly experience that keeps visitors engaged and reduces bounce rates.
Purchase or renew your site SSL certificate.
An SSL (HTTPS) ensures data is encrypted and secure, which can indicate to users that a website is safe. To see if you have a current SSL certificate for your website, click the slider icon to the left of your URL and look for the padlock icon indicating a secure connection.
Boost your site’s “crawl-ability.”
Search engines use bots to ‘crawl’ the internet for content. New and updated information is stored and indexed when found, so it can be pulled from when someone uses the search engine.
Your content must be in a search engine’s index in order to appear in results, meaning you want your site to be easily crawl-able.
To improve your site crawl-ability,
- Build your website’s internal linking structure by linking other internal pages within your site content.
- Create logical URL structures when making new web pages. For example, opt for shorter URLs and use dashes between words to help the indexing process.
- Prioritize fast loading speeds by reducing image sizes.
- Avoid duplicate content. For example rather than republishing the same blog twice, make edits to the old one and change the publishing date.
- Check for and fix any broken links.
- Use appropriate paragraph and heading structure to format your content.
- Use white space to break up paragraphs and improve content readability.
These best practices will help bots find new content on your site easily.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO involves all of the content and elements you control directly on your site.This includes keyword usage, meta descriptions, headlines, image alt text, and written content.
Optimizing on-page SEO revolves around the intentional formatting of your website to indicate to search engines and readers what your content is about.
Know your keywords and keyphrases.
Keywords and phrases help inform search engines as to what your content is about.
For example, within the blog you’re currently reading, “SEO” is a key focus. The word is referenced many times in a variety of contexts and indicates to Google that this post is about search engine optimization. When you’re writing your own content for blogs and pages on your website, keep this concept in mind – focusing on clarity and readability.
Google’s Keyword Planner is one example of a tool you can use to help determine what people are searching for related to your expertise. Use this information to plan content on your site, so it’s more relevant to your audience.
Note: keyword stuffing (trying to fit so many key words or phrases into your content that it becomes nonsensical), is not helpful and will end up harming your SEO rather than improving it. Focus on using keywords naturally for more success.
Edit your meta descriptions.
Meta descriptions are the short summaries of webpages that appear on search engine results pages below the page title and URL. They offer a little more insight into the page’s contents.
When building your website it’s important to write relevant, appropriate summaries of each page so that both search engines and readers know if the page offers what they’re looking for.
If you don’t add these manually, search engines will do their best to pull relevant information which may or may not capture the essence of your page appropriately.
Format your text appropriately.
Use headlines, subheadings, and paragraphs to break up your text.
H1, H2, H3, and P1, P2 font formats (among others) are labeled in this way for a reason! They indicate a hierarchy of text relevance that is important to follow.
H1 indicates the main title of your page, followed by H2 for important subheadings, H3 for further subheadings, and so on.
Proper use of these formatting tools can help search engines quickly read your webpage and understand its contents.
Utilize internal links.
Where relevant, link to related blog posts or service pages on your own website to build site structure and improve navigation.
This linking structure can direct the flow of traffic on your website, and can help search engines understand how users are navigating through your website.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO is about building authority and trust. Backlinks, consistent citations, gaining social media signals and collecting online reviews fall under this category.
These external factors help search engines see that your website is reputable, relevant and worth ranking.
To optimize off-page SEO, utilize these strategies.
Accumulate backlinks.
Prioritize collaboration with other businesses to accumulate backlinks. Backlinks are when other trusted sources link back to your website within their content.
Media features, guest blogging, appearing on podcasts, and collaborating on social media posts or paid offers are all ways you can start building backlinks.
Take advantage of online directories.
Get listed on industry and local directories such as Yelp, YellowPages, and local Chamber sites to further build out your backlinks.
Ensure your website is linked, the description of what you offer and who you serve is clear, and that your contact information is consistent and accurate across each of these platforms.
Ask for feedback and reviews.
Don’t be afraid to ask for customer and client feedback (especially from happy customers!).
Reviews, especially on your Google Business Profile act as social proof that can help boost the validity of your online presence.
Respond to all reviews professionally, even the negative ones. We talk more about this in our blog on local SEO!
Ensure NAP Consistency.
NAP refers to your business name, address, and phone number. This information must be identical across all platforms including website, directories, and social media profiles.
If there are inconsistencies found, it can hurt the legitimacy of your business in the eyes of both search engines and users online.
Check your social media profiles, website pages, online directories, Google Business Profile, and any other platforms you’re active on. This is especially important if your business has changed locations in recent years!
Build a consistent social media strategy.
Social signals refers to engagement metrics including likes, shares, and comments, that a webpage or piece of content gets online. These social signals contribute to increased brand visibility and awareness that can help increase related searches to your company, and boost your legitimacy online.
By posting consistent, valuable content across relevant platforms, you’ll increase engagement and build a social presence that supports your overall business goals.
Check out this blog on content planning for social media, for suggestions on how to get started.
Use Schema Markup.
Schema markup is a type of code you can add to your website to help search engines understand your site. This is especially true for events, products, and local businesses.
When implemented, it can help search engines pull additional, relevant information into the search results – like pricing, product availability, additional links to specific products, star ratings, and more.
For more on structured data and how to implement it on your website, check out this Google guide, or reach out to me directly!
SEO isn’t a one-time effort. It involves building a long-term strategy that includes ongoing updates as your business evolves.
Here are some additional tweaks you can make within your marketing that will support you in your efforts to build an online presence that stands out.
Creating Content That Ranks and Resonates
Google rewards helpful, trustworthy, and high-quality content. And your audience is looking for it too!
Prospective clients want to gain a sense of what you offer and how you can support them, before they agree to give you their information or credit card number.
When creating content, focus on E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust. Share your knowledge, offer helpful information, and write in a way that speaks to your personality and professionalism.
Write with your ideal customer in mind, answering real questions they have. What challenges are they facing? What information are they looking for? Create an FAQ section or write blog posts that give your audience related content.
For example, a florist might write a blog post titled, “What to include in a sympathy card?” A therapist might write a blog outlining, “5 ways to reduce stress this summer season,” or a home contractor could share, “How to winterize your cottage in Ontario.”
These topics directly link to things that their respective audiences might be looking for, as well as reinforce their authority on the subject matter. They also offer the reader quick wins which help to build a sense of trust with their business offerings.
Consider how you can apply these insights within your own content. How can you genuinely help your audience?
As you create, make sure to structure your content appropriately. Use clear headings, short paragraphs, white space, bullet points, and strategic formatting so that posts and pages are easy to skim.
Finally, don’t forget to repurpose your content! You don’t need to recreate the wheel every time. One blog post can become multiple social media posts, a newsletter topic, and even a part of your website’s FAQ section.
Search Has Changed: Shift Your SEO Strategy to Account for AI
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: AI. Artificial intelligence is changing a host of industries, SEO included.
With the introduction of AI search tools, crawlers are now more semantic-based as compared to keyword-match based.
Simply put, as long as you provide good information about what you do, where you’re located, and what your service area is, you can rank for search queries like, “Cafe in Montreal,” without having that exact term within your digital touch-points.
This isn’t to say you don’t need to know your keywords or that you shouldn’t embed relevant information into your website or social media profiles. It does mean that your focus needs to shift more to ensuring that AI search tools are able to easily read and comprehend your content.
Google is also testing a search generative experience. This is an AI-powered search experience where results appear as generated summaries, rather than just links. These summaries may pull from your site, but won’t always link directly.
That means it’s more important than ever to create content that is clear, direct, and optimized for AI.
Here’s how to respond to this shift:
- Answer real questions clearly and concisely on your website.
- Avoid vague, general content and refrain from using too much jargon.
- Use schema markup and structured content so Google can understand your content.
- Make sure your expertise is visible. Use “about” pages, credentials, and testimonials to increase your trustworthiness.
- Optimize for voice and conversational search. Write the way people speak!
- AI summaries may reference Google Business Profile information and reviews, so make sure that this online directory is up-to-date for your business.
SEO isn’t just about keywords anymore. It’s about context, clarity, and credibility coming together so that Google can deliver the most relevant information based on the assumed intent of the specific inquiry.
Optimizing your website accordingly is essential to ensure that you remain visible and relevant.
Track What’s Working and Shift Accordingly
If you don’t measure your results, you can’t catch areas of opportunity or make improvements to boost your visibility.
Monitor your traffic, top-performing pages, keyword positions, referral traffic (how are people finding your website?), and conversion goals like form submissions or phone calls.
Consider using these tools to support your SEO strategy:
- Google Analytics 4: Tracks traffic, bounce rates, and time on page.
- Google Search Console: See what keywords you rank for, and look for indexing issues.
- Ubersuggest or Mangools: Track search rankings over time.
Take the time to analyze what’s working and what isn’t, so you can shift your SEO strategy accordingly.
SEO Wins You Can Do This Week
Not sure where to start? Here are a few quick wins you can tackle this week.
- Update your Google Business Profile with fresh photos and a new post.
- Review and improve your website page titles and meta descriptions.
- Add alt text to your site images to make them more accessible and indexable.
- Write or update your FAQ page to target common search inquiries.
- Update your LinkedIn personal and business profiles. LinkedIn is searchable in Google and can therefore provide reach beyond the social media platform itself!
- Claim any missing directory listings for your business.
- Ask two or three happy clients to leave Google Reviews for your business.
- Add your location to your homepage headline, meta titles, and key service pages to boost local SEO.
- Test how your site appears in Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and update pages to clearly answer key questions.
- Set up Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console if you haven’t already.
You don’t need to do everything at once. Start where you are, build your digital presence from there, and remember that SEO is a long game. When you take consistent, intentional steps to improve your visibility and build trust, you’ll see results over time.
