9 Small Business SEO Tips For 2023

Brand recognition and visibility are crucial for small businesses, especially in those all-important early days. Simply put: if customers are unaware of you, your company just won’t grow! 

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the finest techniques to increase exposure and generate visitors from searches, producing fantastic results with the right time and effort invested.

It’s estimated that more than 65% of shoppers investigate products online before making a purchase – so it is essential to optimise your online presence, regardless of the sector or market you are in.

Stressed about search engines? Don’t panic! 

Thankfully, there are some handy tricks that can shorten this sometimes lengthy process.

The Dandy team is also here to help with all things SEO, so we’ve put together a tip-top list of the best small business SEO tips to start your SEO strategy with a bang!

9 SEO tips for small businesses

Diving into the world of SEO can be daunting for small business owners and start-ups, here are a few tips to get SEO into your digital marketing strategy from our marketing experts:

1. Set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console

The two most important tools for following your SEO efforts and keeping track of your results are Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

In order to determine whether SEO efforts are being successful, you must first establish an initial grasp of your current traffic and engagement metrics.

To know how you’re doing, track your advancement, and identify the improvements that have had a beneficial impact on your business, you’ll also need to keep an eye on this data as time goes on.

Google Analytics is a platform for analytics that offers comprehensive information on traffic, user engagement, conversions, user demographics, and much more. 

See below for a recent example:

On-page SEO is a term frequently used to describe this. Your metadata, which includes things like title tags, meta descriptions, and at least one header on each page, is where your keywords should be placed the most.

This is Google’s bread and butter for making your business visible in search rankings and search results.

2. Analyse your competitors

You can discover new keywords, learn what kinds of material your visitors want to view, and develop a more comprehensive grasp of the online environment for your company by researching your SERP competition.

The websites you’ll be vying with for exposure on the SERPs (search engine results page) are your SERP competitors.

• Take note of the following while researching SERP rivals for your target keywords:
• Do they rank a specific page or just their home page?
• In what way does the page utilise keywords?
• How are their webpages organised? Look at their header navigation menus for a hint.
• What sort of content are they offering?
• Who is their target audience?

Related Reading: How To Cluster Keywords To Get the Best SEO Results

3. Link building

Another SEO tactic that might raise your ranking and increase organic traffic is link building. Creating links to your website from other websites is known as link building.

Search engines are more likely to regard you as a reliable source when credible websites connect to you (perhaps through a guest post on their blog), which might raise the ranking of your web pages.

However, 93.8% of link builders say link quality is more important than link quantity.

Low-quality backlinks originate from websites with little engagement and little traffic. Links from low-traffic websites are often of little or no use to your website because people are unlikely to see them.

4. Blogging

Blogging helps improve SEO quality and search traffic by establishing your website as an appropriate response to your clients’ inquiries.

SEO-friendly blog posts that make use of a range of on-page SEO techniques can increase your chances of ranking in search results and improve the user experience on your website.

Blogging can also drive organic clicks to your website by assisting you in developing relevant content across a range of different search intents.

There are a variety of reasons why people search online. Blogs have the unique ability to respond to informative, transactional, and navigational search queries, whereas landing pages tend to be more transaction-focused. 

For example, someone who may need to look for a new holiday outfit, may search “summer fashion trends” before deciding what to purchase. If you have a blog on that topic you can get in front of potential customers in the research phase. The same can be said of researching eCommerce purchasing, so you’ll need to produce content to support your products.

More forms of content can result in more clicks on your pages, which will, in turn, boost your SEO even more as you become a trusted informational authority in your industry.

You Might Like: 10 Most Common Content SEO Mistakes From Industry Experts

5. Optimise For Local Search (For Local Businesses)

For small businesses with a physical presence, optimising for local search is a must. Local SEO helps ensure that your business appears in local search results when customers are looking for products or services near them.

Start by conducting keyword research to identify relevant keywords that your potential customers are searching for. For example, if you run a bakery in Manchester, phrases like “best bakery in Manchester” or “fresh bread near me” should be on your radar.

76% of consumers who search for “near me” visit a business within a day.

Make sure these relevant keywords appear in key areas of your website, such as title tags, meta descriptions, and headers. Also, include location-specific content on your site to target local searches, like mentioning neighbourhoods or nearby landmarks.

In addition, claim and optimise your Google Business Profile to provide accurate information about your business, such as your address, opening hours, and contact details. Doing so will increase your chances of appearing in local search results and Google Maps, bringing more foot traffic through your doors.

6. Check your page speed

Source

Page speed can make or break your SEO success, especially for mobile users. Did you know that more than half of website visits are abandoned if a site takes more than 3 seconds to load on mobile? 

Put simply, slow websites are a no-go. They eat away at your site traffic and, ultimately, your bottom line. 

To help, we recommend tools like X to help you check your page speed on both mobile and desktop devices, and there are a number of technical fixes you can make to improve page loading speeds with tools like Page Speed Insights or using Core Web Vitals data if you have enough.

Review your site structure 

Search engines like Google don’t make sense of your website like humans do. They’re more like information organisers, in that they search through vast libraries of documents (web pages) to find the most relevant information for the query entered into their database.

The better your website is organised, the easier it is for the search engines to find relevant information and promote it for topically relevant queries on search engines. That’s where your site structure comes into play. 

Your website’s structure is made up of a few different core components that help users and search engines understand the information presented and how each page relates to each other. 

These components include:

• Internal linking
• Taxonomy
• Click depth
• URL structure

By testing and optimising these factors, you can make sure all of the information your website provides is organised well enough to reach its full potential.

Optimise for site-wide topics, not just keywords

If you’re interested in boosting SEO results for your business, you’ve probably already heard about keywords and how to optimise web pages or blog content towards them. This isn’t necessarily wrong, but the SEO landscape has changed in recent years, and search engines now like to categorise things by topic—or “entity” in technical terms—rather than simple key words.

Stuffing your site full of keywords with no depth or breadth to your coverage of the topic won’t work anymore. You need to know what central topics your site relates to, and then cover those topics in a comprehensive, valuable and organised way. 

Tools like InLinks are great for getting an idea of how well your site covers different topics and clustering keywords together by topic for new content. The Content Team here at Dandy also uses the InLinks Content Editor for auditing topical coverage in content.

Google Business Profiles

Google is the best search referrer, regardless of whether you’re searching for web or foot traffic. 

A Google Business Profile makes it more likely that customers will find your company when looking for similar goods and services in their area.

Searchers can find your business by using the information on your Google Business Profile listing. 

Additionally, a Google Business Profile helps your local SEO. In particular, when customers use Google Maps to search for nearby businesses, a listing for a local business is more likely to show up.

What is small business SEO?

Small businesses SEO is the practise of improving your website and online visibility to increase traffic from Google and other search engines.

This includes bringing more qualified leads, clients, and customers to your website from search engine results pages. Essentially, SEO helps you climb the ladder of search engine rankings, the aim is to get onto page one of Google results!

Simply put, small business SEO is a subset of general SEO, but with a more narrow focus and with fewer resources.

Additionally, if your small business or local business has a physical location, you should put an emphasis on local SEO or local search results.

Why is SEO important for small businesses in 2025?

You’re not the only one who questions whether SEO is worth the effort. In fact, only 36% of small businesses have an SEO strategy in place. However, to develop trust, generate leads, and increase conversion rates for your marketing efforts, search engine optimisation is one tool you need at your disposal.

Organic search continues to be a primary driver of website traffic, and businesses that appear on the first page of Google search results are more likely to be discovered by potential customers. Without SEO, small businesses risk being overshadowed by competitors who invest in optimising their online presence.

Key benefits include:

• Enhanced Visibility: SEO helps your business appear in front of the right audience at the right time.
• Cost-Effective Marketing: Unlike paid ads, organic search traffic is free and sustainable over time.
• Local Reach: A solid local SEO strategy ensures your business appears in local search results, making it easier for nearby customers to find you.

We don’t need to overstate the obvious here – SEO works, it’s as simple as that!

Still not sure? Take a look at some of our case studies to see how SEO rocketed small businesses up the rankings.

Looking for an SEO agency to boost your small business’ presence online?

So there you have it, those were just a few of our top marketing tips for small and local businesses to incorporate SEO in their digital marketing strategy.

But, as you know, SEO as a whole project is huge, so why not let Dandy take the reins?

Get in contact with Dandy right now if you want to increase your search rankings, traffic, and engagement but lack the time or expertise to do it. We are a full-service digital marketing company with over 10 years of expertise offering our clients top-notch SEO management services.Check out our SEO packages or Book Your Free SEO Audit today!

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