SEO for Small-Medium Business: Where to Start?

How do I know if my website has good SEO rankings?
What can I do with digital marketing on a small budget?
What online tools do you recommend?

I can’t tell you how many times new business owners reach out to me with questions around digital marketing - specifically SEO and SEM (search engine optimization and search engine marketing). They’ve just acquired a small-medium business and are trying to wrap their heads around marketing performance… or maybe they haven’t done any digital marketing to date and are just trying to see what they can accomplish now with a small budget.

If you want to begin SEO efforts for your business website without a costly investment, I’ve put together a simple process that we will cover in this article:

Step 1: Get proper admin access to your website and Google tools
Step 2: Research keywords to identify the search traffic you want to target
Step 3: Run an SEO audit using a 3rd party (there are free versions)
Step 4: Use AI tools like ChatGPT to help you write content using those keywords
Step 5: Track your performance

It’s important to note that this is not a complete solution for successful digital marketing. There is so much more to it than SEO/keyword ranking to include: email campaigns, competitor analysis, website engagement, social media, etc. This is really just to serve as a “what can I do now with little budget” guide on getting started.

Step 1: Get Admin Access

Before you can do anything, find out who manages your website and request “owner” or “admin” access to your website management platform (Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, etc). Next, find out if you have the following tools integrated with your website and get the highest level of access for these too. If you don’t have accounts for these tools, I recommend setting them up since they are the foundation for measuring your digital marketing efforts and tracking performance.

Google Analytics: understand how people are getting to your website and what they’re doing while on the site
Google Search Console: understand what people are searching for to get to your site
Google Ads: identify keywords to target and manage ad budget (if running ads)

Step 2: Research Your Keywords

After you’ve been given access to Google Ads (or you’ve set up an account), you can now use Google’s free tool, Keyword Planner, to research potential keywords & search terms to see what is most popular and most competitive/expensive.
Once you’ve built out a list of 20-40 keywords and search terms, you can now decide how you want to capture that search volume:

Organic (or free): Take some of the best keywords (with high search volume) and incorporate them into more webpage headlines and content on your website. You can also use ChatGPT to write a blog article for you using the keywords and search phrases. (more on that later)
Paid: Build google ads targeting your keywords and let Google give you the best recommendations on how much to bid on ad placement. It’s important to note that you will want to have a proper lead capture landing page in place on your site so you can track those who come from Google Ads. Don't know what this is? We can build this for you.

Step 3: Conduct SEO audit on your website for $129

You’ll want to use a 3rd party tool to skim your website and detect any potential issues that would hurt your SEO (broken links, missing headers, duplicate pages). I always recommend Semrush to my clients because they offer a free version and a basic $129/month plan to get more insights into search keywords and trends you want to target. You can run reports using the $129/month plan and then cancel after the first month if you just want to audit once.

After your audit is complete, it will give you a report to review. Don’t be worried if you see anywhere from 100 to 1000 issues with your site because many of these can be quick fixes and Semrush will guide on how to fix it (*see image*).
**Or you can reach out to us to fix all of these issues for you!**

Step 4: Use ChatGPT to help write SEO-friendly content

This is one of the best uses of ChatGPT out there. A blog article that would normally take hours to write a few years ago, can now be done in a matter of seconds. You will need to provide a prompt and it may take a few tries to get it right, but start with a search term you’ve identified – for example, let’s say it’s “HVAC maintenance” then tell ChatGPT to “write a blog article about tips for finding the best HVAC maintenance.” You’re then given a lengthy, SEO-friendly blog article with introduction, tips, and conclusion for your website. Obviously, you will still need to tweak the content so that it is accurate and incorporates your business as a solution provider, but overall you’ll be amazed at the quality of content you receive.

Fun Fact: We did NOT use ChatGPT to write this article :)

Step 5: Track Your Performance

The Google tools that I mentioned earlier are your best friends here. Once you’ve started publishing new content on your website and/or running Google Ads, you will want to go back to your Google Analytics dashboard to view the change in traffic. You can even ask Google Analytics specific questions such as “How many users came from Google Ads last month?”

In Google Search Console (above), you can view the top search queries visitors are using to get to your site as well as your performance position in search results. These insights will help guide you in identifying what tactics are working or where you can continue to improve.

Have more questions?

Feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin - we help small-medium businesses understand the tools available to them and we can answer specfic questions you have or help manage SEO efforts for you!