If you own a website, you’ve probably been approached by SEO specialists – some with good intentions, and some not so much – telling you that you’re missing out on traffic by not optimising your website.
And while some opportunities might be exaggerated, the truth is that if you’ve not had SEO in mind when you built your small business’ website, there probably is a lot you could do to help improve your chances of being seen in search results on traditional search engines like Google and Bing, along with large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, and other channels like YouTube, Instagram and Reddit.
But where do you start?
In this article, we’ll explain the 4 pillars of SEO and why it’s worth small businesses investing in SEO as a long-term marketing strategy.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It’s a technique used to improve a website’s visibility in search engines like Google. The goal is to appear at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) for as many relevant keywords as possible. And since the #1 result is 10 times more likely to get a click than the #10 result, you want to do all you can to get there.
These days, many SEO professionals also aim to improve brand visibility in LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity, as well as on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, if it’s relevant to the business.
That’s why many in the industry are saying that SEO also stands for search EVERYWHERE optimisation – because you need to focus on getting your business seen across the internet.
But that’s a whole other jar of pickles. For this article, we’ll just talk about optimising your website for search engines and LLMs, because the techniques are largely the same (no matter what that AI software founder told you on LinkedIn).
The 4 pillars of SEO
You can split SEO into 4 ‘pillars’: technical, on-page, off-page, and content. Each one is important for helping search engine crawlers ‘read’ your website and make ‘decisions’ about whether your content, and therefore your business, is authoritative and trustworthy.
Technical
Technical SEO refers to the practice of ensuring that search engines can discover your website and read its content. It means working on the backend of your website, like ensuring HTML, CSS and JavaScript are used correctly.
Another aspect of technical SEO is ensuring that your site loads quickly and can be used easily on mobile devices and a range of screen sizes. If your website is slow or difficult to use, potential customers are likely to leave before they buy or fill out a contact form.
Luckily, if you had your website built for you, then the development team should have ensured that the technical SEO was up to scratch during the build. For small businesses, getting the fundamentals right is often enough – but as you grow, you’ll need to keep an eye on your website’s structure and other technical aspects to ensure that your website still follows best practice.
On-page
On-page SEO is where you optimise individual pages on your website to help them rank higher in search results and therefore gain more traffic. Each page should have a focus keyword or topic, and on-page elements should reference it, whether it’s by including the exact keyword or a phrase related to it.
The most straightforward on-page elements you can optimise are meta titles and descriptions, headings, internal links and alt text.
Meta titles are the page titles that search engines show in search results when they display your webpage. They should tell the user what your page is about, and should contain a focus keyword or phrase without being too spammy.
Meta descriptions are the snippets of text that you see under the title of a webpage in search results. They can give more context to a user about the page. Google often shows a different piece of text based on what the user has searched for, so we don’t recommend spending lots of time crafting meta descriptions.
Headings are useful to readers and search engines to help them understand what each section of content is about. They help readers skim and find the information that’s most important to them. Every page on your website should have an H1 heading, which tells users what the page is about, then you can use H2s, H3s and so on to show the hierarchy of information, just like this article does.
Internal links are one of the most underutilised parts of on-page SEO. An internal link is a link on your website that goes to another page on your website, and they are vital for helping users continue their journey through your site. They also help search engine crawlers discover your content and understand your website’s structure. It can be useful to include internal links from your webpages that are performing well to other relevant pages to help boost those pages – a technique known in the industry as ‘spreading link equity’.
Alt text stands for alternative text, which is the description given to an image on your webpage. It shows up when an image can’t be displayed, but it’s also used by screen readers to describe an image to blind and visually impaired users.
In the past, SEOs used to stuff alt text with keywords to help them rank in image search, but these days it’s important to use short, accurate alt text to tell users what an image is about. This also helps search engines to understand what an image is, so it’s a win-win.
Content
Content is probably the most important part of SEO. While you need to get the technical SEO fundamentals right, content will move the needle most for small businesses.
Your website should contain high-quality, authoritative content that your customers will want to read, engage with and share. The content may come in the form of blog posts, service pages or product descriptions (if you’re an eCommerce business). To understand the content that you should create, you’ll need to conduct keyword research.
There are lots of tools that can help you with your keyword research. Some have free versions, such as Moz and Ahrefs, while others like SE Ranking and SEMRush offer free trials before a paid subscription.
The content you create should satisfy the user’s search intent. That means thinking about what kind of content the user wants to see when they put a query into a search engine.
You should aim to create ‘topical authority’ with your content. Google’s search quality rater guidelines state that content should demonstrate aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or E-E-A-T. You can do this by creating unique, relevant content that offers original insights to your customers.
Off-page
Off-page SEO is the name given to actions that you take outside of your website to try to improve its rankings in search results. The largest part of off-page SEO is building backlinks, but for local businesses, there’s also local SEO.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links that point to your website from other websites. They act as ‘votes’ for your website, showing users and search engines that your content is good quality. When you have lots of backlinks from reputable websites, it can improve your search rankings.
For small businesses, getting backlinks can be difficult. You can try guest blogging, where you write an article for another website in exchange for a link to your site, or you could create ‘linkable assets’ like infographics and other useful content that naturally attract links from other websites. You could also run a PR campaign for a new product or service launch.
The tricky part is actually getting other websites to link to you. It can take a lot of effort to reach out to businesses and build relationships with them, which is why backlinks are so valuable.
Local SEO
If you’re a local business, you’ll want to focus on getting enquiries from customers who actually live in your target area. To do that, you’ll need to ensure you’re visible in local search results.
While there are technically some aspects of local SEO that happen on-page, most of it happens off-page. You can build local citations, which means getting your business and website featured on directories such as Yell and any specific to your industry or niche.
You should also claim your Google Business Profile, ensuring that you keep your business information consistent across this and other places on the internet, and ask customers to leave you reviews. According to one study, the number of reviews and keywords in reviews are most important when it comes to Google ranking your business at the top of local search results.
Having a good-quality Google Business Profile will help you appear in the Map Pack, which is a search results feature that shows the top 3 businesses that are relevant to the user’s search query. This often shows up above traditional search results, so it’s a highly valuable spot to be in to attract local customers.
So there we have it – the 4 pillars of SEO. Now you know the basics, you can start putting together a strategy to help improve your visibility in search results. But where will you find the time? That’s where we come in.
Our SEO services are tailored to your business, ensuring they match your objectives, priorities and budget. If you fancy a chat, use our enquiry form, give us a call, or send us a message on WhatsApp.