SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is all about tweaking your website to make it more visible on search engines like Google. When you get it right, SEO helps your website climb higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), making it easier for potential customers to find you. It involves a mix of strategies, such as keyword research, link building, and on-page optimization.
In this beginner guide, we’ll explain how to start a basic SEO strategy to grow your business online.
Since 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, it’s important to understand how search engines work if you want to show up on the results page. Here’s a breakdown of the key processes search engines use to deliver results:
Crawling is the first step in the search engine process. No, it has nothing to do with an actual creepy-crawler. It’s when search engines use automated programs called "crawlers" or "spiders" to explore new and updated content online. These crawlers follow links from page to page, gathering data about each website they visit to gather information.
Once your website is crawled, the information is processed and stored in the search engine’s database, which is referred to as an index. This index acts like a search engine’s library, cataloging information so it can be retrieved quickly.
Ranking is how search engines decide the order in which websites appear in search results when you type a question or keywords in the search bar. The goal is to show you the most useful and relevant information first, which means if your website is ranking higher in search results, the more likely people will click on your website.
Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO strategy. It’s all about understanding the language your potential customers use online.
Here’s how to get started:
First, write down a list of words and phrases related to your business.
For example, if you own a bakery, you might start with terms like "cupcakes," "wedding cakes," and "gluten-free bread."
Then, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Start by thinking about the products or services you offer and how people might find them online.
Using the bakery as an example, a customer may search “three-tiered wedding cakes in Riverside, California” or “bridal cakes near me.”
Once you have your initial list, go back and think about synonyms or other variations of the keywords.
For example, a variation of “wedding cakes” that a potential customer may search for could be “bridal cakes.”
Short-tail keywords are very general terms that are usually one to two words long. People usually use short-tail keywords when they first start searching online.
Examples of short-tail keywords are “restaurants”, “shoes”, and “winter coats.”
Since most people's searches start out more general, using short-tail keywords has a high potential to bring potential customers to your website. However, because they are popular keywords that cover such a broad topic, many other websites use them too. This means that it might be harder for your website to show up in search engine results.
On the other hand, long-tail keywords are specific phrases that usually consist of three or more words and attract highly targeted traffic.
Examples of long-tail keywords are “best board games for family vacations” and “how to potty train a new puppy.”
Despite lower search volumes, long-tail keywords make up over 70% of searches. These phrases are easier to rank for and often lead to higher conversion rates, making them invaluable for small business SEO strategies.
Both types of keywords are essential to your SEO strategy, so try to use a mixture of these to increase your visibility online and help your potential customers find your website easily.
There are many keyword tools available online to help you find popular search terms and will even tell you how often they are used. This information can help you create a list of keywords for your website and content.
As we mentioned before, keyword research is crucial for boosting your website’s SEO and attracting the right audience.
Here are some popular tools that can help you find valuable keywords and understand their performance:
Google Trends is an excellent tool for tracking the popularity of search terms over time. It shows how search volumes change throughout the year, helping you identify seasonal trends.
For example, a bakery might use Google Trends to see when searches for "holiday cookies" spike, allowing them to plan their content and promotions accordingly.
Ahrefs' Keyword Generator is a powerful tool that finds new keyword ideas and provides detailed metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty. This means you can discover keywords with high search volumes but are not too competitive, giving you a better chance to rank higher in search results.
For instance, an online fitness coach might find keywords like “at-home workouts” and assess how competitive these terms are, helping them target the right keywords for their content and improve their visibility.
WordStream's Keyword Tool suggests keywords and provides performance data, including estimated CPC (cost per click) and competition levels. This tool is handy for businesses running PPC (paid-per-click) campaigns, as it helps you identify cost-effective keywords.
A local restaurant, for example, can use WordStream to find keywords like “best Italian food in [city]” and determine which terms offer the best return on investment for their ads, maximizing their advertising budget.
Answer The Public is a unique tool that reveals the questions people are asking about specific keywords. It visualizes this data in an easy-to-understand format, showing you the most common queries related to your keywords.
A gardening store could use this tool to find out what questions people have about “organic gardening” and create content that answers these queries, such as “how to start an organic garden.”
Keyword Surfer is a handy browser extension that shows keyword data directly in your search results. It displays search volumes, CPC, and related keywords as you browse, making it a convenient tool for on-the-go keyword research.
For example, a graphic designer searching for “logo design services” can quickly see the search volume and related keywords without leaving the search results page.
Once you have a list of potential keywords, it's important to analyze and prioritize them to focus on the ones that will work best for your business.
This process involves researching:
Keyword search volume: How often a keyword is searched.
Keyword difficulty: How hard it is to rank for the keyword on searches
Search intent: What online users are looking to achieve with their searches.
Competition: Others in your industry who are ranking for your keywords.
Luckily, there are tools available to help you with this process, allowing you to make informed decisions about which keywords to use.
These tools help you track your rankings and monitor your SEO performance:
thruuu is a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) analyzer that gives detailed insights into your competitors' rankings. It helps you see where your competitors rank for specific keywords and understand their SEO strategies.
SERP Checker from Accuranker allows you to track your rankings and analyze your SEO performance over time. It provides detailed reports on how your keywords perform in search results and helps you identify trends and opportunities for improvement.
SEOminion is an SEO extension that offers a multi-location SERP simulator and other useful features. It helps you see how your website ranks in different locations and provides tools for on-page SEO analysis, link checking, and more.
Once you've identified your target keywords, it’s time to strategically place them throughout your website.
You’ll use these keywords naturally while creating content, but there are other ways to enhance your SEO efforts to ensure your website is visible to potential customers while they are browsing online.
Optimizing your web pages and content is often referred to as on-page SEO. It’s an essential part of your SEO strategy, helping improve your search engine rankings and user experience. Along with using the keywords you’ve researched within your content, you can also optimize other elements on your website.
Page titles clearly state the main purpose of a section on your website, helping potential customers and search engines understand what your content is about.
To boost your SEO efforts, be sure to include relevant keywords that your potential customers are searching for in your page titles.
For example, imagine you own a travel agency and have a blog section on your website. The topic of your newest blog post is “Travel Tips”, but you’ve been wanting to improve your SEO efforts. So, instead of a generic title like “Travel Tips” you do a little keyword research and title your newest blog, “10 Essential Travel Tips for New International Travelers”.
The new title clearly indicates what readers can expect to learn from the post, and specific keywords like "essential travel tips" and "new international travelers” are likely to be searched for by your potential customers.
Meta descriptions are short summaries of your web page's content, and they appear beneath the title page in the search results. While they may not directly influence the way Google or other search engines rank your site, they can be a deciding factor in whether or not a potential customer decides to click on your site.
Google automatically creates a short summary of your web page’s content, but you can manually create a meta description yourself. If you choose to do this, be sure to add in the keywords you want to be ranked for.
Headings and subheadings allow your potential customers to easily scan your website and help search engines understand how your web page is set up. You can use the keywords you have researched in your headings and subheadings so that search engines can determine whether or not your website matches what an online user is looking for.
One of the easiest ways to enhance your on-page SEO efforts is to use alternative text on your images.
Alternative text, or alt text, is a written description of an image on your website. It ensures that potential customers who rely on screen readers, such as those with visual impairments, can understand the content of your images through the text you provide.
Additionally, since search engines cannot “see” images, alt text helps them understand the content on your website, which can help boost your SEO efforts.
The key to alt text is to naturally include keywords in the most concise way possible.
For example, if you have a photo of a wedding cake on your bakery website, instead of using the original image name of “IMG1234.jpg,” your alt text could be “three-tiered white wedding cake with floral decorations.”
Pro Tip: LOGO.com x Wix websites automatically optimize website images for quality, search, and faster downloads.
On-page SEO tools are essential for optimizing individual pages on your website, helping to improve your search engine rankings and user experience.
Here are a few popular options that can help you:
Google Search Console is a free tool that helps you monitor your site's performance in Google Search and spot issues. It shows which keywords bring visitors to your site, how often your pages appear in search results, and how many people click on your links.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a tool that crawls your website to find technical issues and on-page SEO opportunities. It scans your entire website and reports on things like broken links, duplicate content, and missing meta descriptions.
SEOlyzer analyzes your website's logs to identify ways to improve your SEO. It shows you how search engines are crawling your site and highlights any issues affecting your rankings. By providing real-time data on crawl behavior, page speed, and error rates, SEOlyzer helps you make informed decisions about your SEO strategy.
Detailed SEO is a Chrome extension that gives you on-page SEO analysis directly in your browser. It provides insights into elements like meta tags, headers, and internal links, helping you optimize your content quickly and easily. This tool is handy for quick SEO checks and making immediate improvements.
Rank Math SEO is a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your content with built-in suggestions. It provides real-time analysis of your posts and pages, offering tips on improving your keyword usage, readability, and overall SEO. This tool integrates smoothly with WordPress, making it easy to make SEO improvements without needing technical expertise.
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your own website. These links are called "backlinks."
When another website links to yours, it signals to search engines like Google that your website has credible information and improves your visibility online. Think of it like an endorsement from one website to another, showing that your website is trustworthy.
Backlinks are one of the top factors search engines use to rank websites. More quality backlinks generally mean better search rankings and better search rankings mean that your website is more likely to be visited by potential customers.
Are you ready to find out how you can get other websites to link to yours and improve your SEO efforts? It all starts with creating amazing content.
When you think of content, your mind may automatically jump to making videos on social media. But content is much more than that! It's the information—or media—used to communicate and connect with your target audience (the people you want to become customers).
When you create content for your small business, you're aiming for two things: giving your target audience something they'll find helpful and helping your website show up in search results. An added bonus of creating great content is that other websites will want to link to yours.
A few types of content that encourage other websites to link to yours include:
Have you ever visited a website that was a nightmare to read? Did you stick around? Probably not!
Readability is how easy it is for potential customers to read and understand the text on your website.
The best way to ensure that your website is readable is to use simple language and avoid technical terms (aka, jargon). Short sentences and paragraphs, bulleted lists, and clear headings make it easier for online visitors and search engines to understand the content on your website.
When your website is easily readable, it improves the user experience, leading to potential customers staying on your website for longer periods of time. This signals search engines (such as Google or Bing) that your website is user-friendly and, as a result, improves your search engine rankings.
A call-to-action (CTA) guides visitors to take specific actions, such as contacting you, making a purchase, or signing up for a newsletter. Effective CTAs can play an important role in SEO for small businesses by improving user engagement and overall website performance.
CTAs use action verbs like "Get" or "Discover," add urgency with words like "Now" or "Limited Time," and highlight the user's benefit. The key is to keep CTAs short, ideally 2-5 words for buttons, and use first-person language for more engagement.
For design and placement, make your CTAs stand out with contrasting colors that match your business, and ensure they are noticeable but not overpowering.
A few examples of CTAs are:
Google isn’t the only popular search engine being used by consumers to find products and services anymore.
According to a Forbes Advisor study, younger generations are using social media as their go-to search engine. 35% of Millennials and 46% of Gen Zers prefer using social media to find new products and services.
The same study showed that the top platforms that are being used as search engines are:
So, how can you use your business’s social media to enhance your SEO efforts? Start by using the keywords you researched.
When you create content for your social media platforms, you can use the list of keywords that you collected to make it easier for potential customers to find your content. When you consistently create great content that your target audience finds valuable, your engagement goes up, leading to more likes, comments, and shares.
These social shares enhance your SEO efforts because they create backlinks to your content, improving your website’s authority and signaling to search engines that your content is relevant and popular. This can lead to higher search rankings and greater visibility for your business online.
If you're a small business owner using a website builder like LOGO.com x Wix, you're in luck.
The Wix platform includes an "SEO Setup Checklist" designed specifically for business owners who may not be SEO experts.
This feature guides you through:
This checklist ensures you get all crucial SEO elements, providing a solid foundation for your website's search engine performance. The best part? Wix walks you through each step of the process, making sure that your website will be found by your target customers.
From keyword research and content creation to technical SEO and user experience optimization – you can significantly improve your online visibility and attract more potential customers using these SEO strategies.
Remember, SEO is an ongoing process that requires patience and consistent effort. Start with the basics, monitor your progress using the recommended tools, and gradually implement more advanced techniques as you grow. With time and dedication, you'll see your website climb the search engine rankings, driving more organic traffic and ultimately contributing to your business's success.
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