For many small business owners, search engine optimisation is a challenging task. Fortunately, there are other SEO tricks you can do today to help you find your business online. Here are 10 simple SEO tips for small businesses which can be easily accomplished in just a few hours.

1. Create a Google My Business account

Google has made it very easy for your business to be found online. One of the ways that they have done this is with their My Business account. Simply login to your businesses’ Google account, go to “google.com/business” and click on the Start button. The process is easy and quick and will allow your business to show in local search results.

2. Blog and then blog some more

Content production is one of the number one methods of moving the website up in search rankings. A good thumb rule for blogging is to keep your posts between 300-500 words, make sure the content is important to your business, and then share your posts on all your platforms of social media.

3. Use friendly URLs

Make sure that your URL path is “friendly,” meaning that it tells search engines and customers what your page is about. For example, if you have a dog grooming business, your URL for services should look like “www.doggrooming.com/services” and not “www.doggrooming.com/?page_id=59”.

4. Use a local SEO plugin

One of our favorite SEO plugins is Local SEO by Yoast. This plugin lets you insert a Google Map on your website and makes your contact website more accessible. For a single location, a one-year license is just $69, and well worth the expense.

5. Add your target location area to your website title

This is another trick that makes it easy for customers and search engines to see where your business is located and also location served. To change your site title (on WordPress), click on Settings -> General and fill in the Site Title and Tagline for your site.

6. Complete a Meta Description for each page

Your meta description is the content on a Google search under your company name. If you’re not filling out this in yourself, Google can do it for you from the content of your post. The drawback with this is that you don’t have power of what Google chooses and it can be options from your menu and not what your page is about at all. We recommend a plugin like Yoast SEO for WordPress for meta description and keywords.

7. Encourage reviews of your business

Links from quality websites is one of the top ways to bump your search result listing. Review websites like Yelp can really help with this. Encourage your customers to submit a review of your business regularly.

8. Create content for other websites

Ask if you can write a guest blog post for a business or organization in your field or location. This will create a backlink to your website that can help boost your search presence. It also helps create relationships with other businesses that can be beneficial for you both.

9. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

Google puts high emphasis on Websites that are mobile-friendly. In reality, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, the search results will penalize you. If your website is not mobile-friendly, it might be time to start updating a website

10. Check your Google Analytics account regularly

Google Analytics can provide a wealth of information such as where your website visitors are accessing your site from, search queries and more. Understanding this information can help you target locations and keywords that you might not be using to your advantage.

Caveat one: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t expect things to happen overnight. It will take time to execute a strong SEO plan and change. Please give us a shout if you need help with your SEO web site!