SEO basics for small businesses that actually move the needle

SEO advice tends to be written for businesses with a marketing department. If you are running a small business and doing this yourself, most of it is noise. Here is the short list that actually matters.

1. Be specific about what you do and where

Small businesses rarely win broad terms. You will not outrank the big agencies for “web design”. You have a real chance at “web design for accountants in Devon”.

Say those specific things in plain text on your pages. Not in an image, not only in the footer.

2. Sort your Google Business Profile

For a local business this is often worth more than your entire website. It is free, it takes an afternoon, and it puts you in the map results.

• Complete every field, especially services and areas served.
• Add real photos, and keep adding them.
• Ask happy clients for reviews, and reply to all of them.
• Make sure your name, address and phone number match your website exactly.

3. Give each page one clear job

One page, one topic, one main question answered. A page trying to cover photography, branding and websites at once ranks for none of them.

Each page needs a sensible title, a short description, one clear main heading, and words that a real person would actually search.

4. Answer the questions your customers ask

The questions you get asked on every enquiry call are the same ones people type into search. Write those answers down as pages or posts.

“What does it cost”, “how long does it take”, “what happens if it goes wrong”. Dull questions, high intent, and very little competition because most businesses will not answer them publicly.

5. Make sure it works on a phone and loads quickly

Most people will find you on a phone. If it is slow, or the menu does not work, they leave. No amount of keywords fixes that.

6. Be patient and consistent

SEO is slow. One or two genuinely useful pages a month, kept up for a year, beats twenty thin pages in one week and then silence.

What to ignore

• Buying backlinks. Risky and mostly worthless.
• Stuffing keywords. It reads badly and does not work.
• Chasing a perfect score in a plugin. Green lights are not rankings.
• Rewriting everything every few months. Give things time to settle.

The unglamorous truth is that being genuinely clear and genuinely useful is most of SEO for a business your size.