20-Item Checklist To Help Small Businesses SEO Ranking

Search engine optimization (SEO) can boost a small business's SERP ranking. Maximizing keywords and employing smart marketing tactics are some of the more basic steps that help you reach the top levels of SERPs.

Here is a 20-item list of small business SEO essentials that can boost your SEO rank in no time:

• Five on-page SEO strategies to boost content.
• Five off-page SEO strategies to get more traffic.
• Five technical SEO tips that get amazing results.
• Five local SEO tips to rank up on local SERPs.

There is a lot to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

Want to learn more about the Digital Authority Partners approach to SEO? Watch this video!

Five On-Page SEO Elements You Need

The concept of on-page SEO covers most of the elements that visitors see on your website (and some that they do not). For the most part, they are objects that engage users or ones they can interact with, such as links, images, and blogs. 

Here are five ways to boost your on-page SEO: 

• A critical factor in on-page SEO is the consistency of the content that you produce. The style and tone of your published content should remain largely the same to make your brand familiar to the target market. Create a style guide for content writers to follow. 
• Pay attention to your meta tags to benefit from on-page SEO. Finding the right keywords helps, but knowing where to add them is just as crucial. Written content, headlines, and meta descriptions tell search engines what the content is about.
• High-quality content is a hallmark of good SEO because search engines and users base the value of content on its quality and accuracy. Follow Google’s experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) rating system to unlock your content’s potential.
• Prepare for zero-click searches by setting up your content for featured snippets. Do this by using question prompts in your headers and writing simply and concisely in your paragraphs. Getting a featured snippet spot puts you at the top of the SERPs.
• Variety in content is vital because it keeps your website from becoming boring and predictable. Add rich media such as animated images, photos, and videos to show more of your brand’s unique personality. Use content to form genuine connections with people.

Five Off-Page SEO Elements to Practice

Off-page SEO includes most actions that bring more traffic to your website. For instance, posting on forums and giving expert insights on other people’s platforms is another way to achieve the same result. Here are five off-page SEO tactics to utilize:

• To do small business SEO right, build your brand. That means having a clear and unique brand identity that you can leverage in marketing campaigns. It makes your brand easier to pick out in a crowded marketplace and attracts people from your target market.
• Set up other digital marketing channels to increase your reach and visibility online. For example, social media platforms are a great way to reach parts of your target market that are frequently on their mobile devices. Other platforms include webinars and podcasts.
• Use social media platforms to listen and assess the state of your brand and marketing campaigns. Comments from users can tell you a lot about what people truly feel about your products and services and how they compare to those of both major and minor competitors.
• Investing in paid marketing is a good idea for a small business with a small budget for ads. Keywords are fundamental to this strategy, so starting with that in mind simultaneously helps organic and paid small business SEO efforts.
• Build backlinks from authoritative and reputable sources, such as trusted local news sites and known bloggers with a strong online following. You do not have to wait to see if people link to you. Start an outreach campaign to find good SEO partners.

Five Technical SEO Tips for Top Results

Unlike the previous two, technical SEO is a broad and sometimes vague aspect of SEO. Under it are many backend elements that affect search results, such as security, URLs, and loading speed, all of which are critical to small business SEO. Here are five technical SEO fixes to use:

• Play an active role in how search engine bots crawl and index your website by creating and submitting an XML sitemap and robots.txt to them. Do not limit yourself to Google, Bing, or Yahoo because smaller search services, such as DuckDuckGo, matter too.
• Regarding technical SEO, site structure and URLs are another point to remember. As the website grows, more pages accumulate, meaning the URLs for each page become longer. Therefore, organizing your site structure is critical.
• Reinforce security with a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate and malware scanner to protect your data and your users while they are on the website. This is good for SEO because browsers and plug-ins advise users to avoid sites without SSL.
• SEO dictates that fast load speeds are optimal because they can otherwise degrade the user experience (UX). Along with responsive design, it is also one of the metrics that search engines consider when ranking your content on SERPs. 
• The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a US federal law that governs the usability and accessibility of private businesses, including their websites. This means optimizing your website for less restrictive use to better serve all sectors of your audience is required.

Five Local SEO Strategies to Rank High

The last major type of SEO that every small business SEO strategy needs is local SEO, designed to capture your target market's local segment. This is particularly important for a small business because the local area is the easiest to reach. Here are five local SEO tactics to apply:

• Start local SEO by registering or claiming your Google My Business (GMB) profile and filling in all the applicable information (e.g., name, address, phone number, store hours, website). Sign up for other local listings and directories to improve your reach.
• Although high-quality content is the standard to follow, with local strategies, you need to make local content. Find inspiration in events that are relevant to your immediate area. Find ways to tie your products and services into the content without overt marketing.
• Not everyone will give positive feedback on your brand, so learning how to manage brand reputation is important. Use these opportunities to interact with the target market. You might even convert other people into customers.
• Keep in contact with your target market through content and marketing. Converting a lead into a customer is entirely separate from keeping them as a customer. Positive forms of interaction (e.g., sending news, offers, and discounts) help nurture customer relationships.
• Another way to keep your brand relevant and fresh in people’s minds is to start a referral program. This helps grow your customer base while maintaining contact with the existing regulars that you have made over time. Additionally, the program should be fair to all parties.

Summing Up

All small businesses benefit from SEO, and having a straightforward checklist like this helps immensely and provides a clear direction for managing your website and ranking on SERPs. Unlike paid marketing, though, SEO works at a much slower pace but can show better results.

Need help boosting your small business's SEO strategy? Contact Digital Authority Partners (DAP) to learn how we can help.