SEO, or search engine optimisation, is a strange beast. It consistently goes through phases of being ‘dead’, despite the number of Google searches alone continuing to increase, with over 5 trillion1 searches being made in 2025, up from 1.2 trillion in 2015.
If you’re a small business owner, you’ll want to show up in search results and LLM (large language model) answers to help drive sales or enquiries from your website. And you do that through SEO, or AEO, or GEO, or whatever other acronym you’ve seen (it’s all SEO). But where on earth do you start?
In a previous blog, we covered the 4 pillars of SEO that you need to know about if you want to successfully do SEO for your business. So we won’t bore you with an introduction again.
Instead, let’s jump straight into 5 basic SEO tips to help your business start ranking in search engine results and LLM answers.
1. Link your website to tracking tools
If you haven’t done so already, get your website linked up to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You can also link it to Bing Webmaster Tools.
These tools are free ways to help you see which pages are performing well and which keywords are driving traffic to your website. It’ll also help you identify drops in traffic, which will allow you to make decisions about which content you may need to update and improve to help it stay at the top of search results.
If you don’t have visibility on where your traffic is coming from, you can’t make informed decisions about your entire digital marketing strategy – not just your SEO strategy. Data gives you insight into what resonates with your customers and where you need to make changes.
2. Do keyword and search intent research
Keyword and search intent research is fundamental to any SEO strategy. You need to understand what your customers are searching for and what kind of content they want to see when they make that search.
Most keyword tools, like Ahrefs or SE Ranking, will allow you to input a keyword and give you an estimate of how many people make that search every month. Many tools will also tell you how difficult it is to rank for that keyword, although each tool will have its own way of calculating this and it doesn’t guarantee that you will rank.
A good strategy for small businesses is to target keywords that have a decent amount of search volume but are relatively easy to rank for. Look for keywords with monthly search volume in the hundreds or even tens, rather than the thousands – it will be harder to compete against larger brands for those popular keywords.
Once you’ve got a few keywords, put them into Google and see what results come up. This will give you an idea of the intent behind a user’s search.
For example, if you search for ‘cocktail dresses’, the first organic (not paid) search results you’ll see are from category pages on clothing websites selling cocktail dresses. That means customers using this term are ready to buy, so want to browse through cocktail dresses right away.
But if you search for ‘styles of cocktail dresses’, you might see an AI Overview, images of different styles of cocktail dresses and blogs about the different types. This indicates that customers are looking for information about cocktail dresses and what they look like before they decide what to buy.
Search intent should always inform what kind of content you decide to create. There’s no point creating a blog post for a keyword that shows product pages in the search results – it’s unlikely to compete with existing content.
When you’ve finalised a list of keywords, group them into clusters where you have one main ‘pillar’ page with supporting pages that include related content and link back to the main page.
3. Create high-quality content
Now you’ve got your keywords, you can begin creating the content. Your content should be unique and genuinely useful to your target audience. Consider how you can add to the conversation without just regurgitating what’s already online.
You should always write for users first, and search engines second. That means you don’t need to obsess over how many times you feature your target keyword in the content, as this could be considered spammy.
Write naturally, and you’ll find that you’ll use relevant words and phrases that are related to your main topic, which will help search engines understand what your content is about.
Make sure to make your content easy to skim. Use subheadings, bullet points, and bold text to help draw your readers’ eye to the most important information. And don’t forget to add a descriptive meta title to your page – this is the ‘blue link’ that shows up in traditional search results and in AI Overviews.
Consider what other media your readers will want to see, other than just written text. Include images and videos that add context to your content and further illustrate your point. Images should always have alternative text, or ‘alt text’, to describe what the image is for visually impaired people who use screen readers.
Adding images and videos also helps you claim more real estate in search results. Your media may show up in a featured snippet or image or video pack, giving users more opportunities to click through to your website or social media channels.
4. Optimise for local search (if you’re a local business)
If you serve a specific location, you should tailor your content to attract nearby customers. As well as keeping your Google Business Profile up to date, you should consider using location-specific keywords in your content.
For example, if you’re a plumber in Norwich, you should ensure that you mention your location on your home page and other relevant pages. Instead of your H1 on your service page being ‘Emergency Plumbing Services’, you could use ‘Emergency Plumbing Services in Norwich’.
Make sure you keep your business information consistent across all platforms. Your name, address and phone number (NAP) should be the same on your website, Google Business Profile, and local directories. If it’s inconsistent, potential customers may lose trust in your business, and it can confuse search engines and LLMs.
5. Keep it consistent
One of the most important things you can do to improve and maintain your SEO success as a small business is to keep your efforts consistent.
Search engines and LLMs like to see that content is updated regularly. Google recently explained that Google’s crawlers frequently visiting your site is a good thing, indicating that you have fresh or relevant content that users want to find.
But being consistent doesn’t mean that you have to write a new landing page or blog post weekly, or even monthly – it’s never right to create content just for the sake of it. That’s why it’s important to create a content plan from your keyword and intent research, so you write about topics that your customers actually want to read about.
And remember tip #1? Using the data you’ve collected about your website, you can see which content is performing better, and which isn’t hitting the mark. It’ll give you an idea of the content you should add to your list to update, helping you keep your SEO work consistent without having to come up with endless topics to write about.
Can I use AI to do my SEO?
After reading these 5 tips, you might be thinking that it sounds like quite a lot of work when you’re already trying to run a business. We can’t lie – SEO does take effort. That’s why there are agencies with decades of SEO experience (like us!) out there to help.
But if you’re not ready to outsource your SEO or marketing to an agency, you might be wondering whether you can use AI to help. And our opinion is no.
AI is a fantastic tool that can help you speed up a range of processes within your business and personal life. It can also be good for inspiration if you’re researching topics to write about for your blog, but we don’t recommend using it for keyword research or copywriting.
There are plenty of LinkedIn influencers around who will tell you they’ve scaled content using AI and are seeing fantastic results in traditional search engines and LLMs at the click of a button. But we’ve already seen how this strategy comes crumbling down.
Google’s March 2026 Core Update focused on scaled content abuse, and many businesses that had used this practice to create hundreds or thousands of pages saw their sites removed from the index. Some were even handed a manual action (like an internet prison sentence). That’s because AI can’t create in-depth, original content like a human can.
Is SEO worth it for small businesses?
We absolutely think that SEO is worth it for small businesses, particularly if you have growth plans. It can be easy to whip together a website, then leave it to sit there while you focus on doing the actual work your business offers.
But if you get the SEO fundamentals right now, it makes it much easier to maintain in the long term. It’ll also be simpler to expand if you add new products or services. SEO is all about branding now that we want to get mentioned in AI as well as traditional search, and building your brand via good SEO practices on your website is only going to put you in good stead for the future.
If you’re in a pickle with your small business’ SEO or you’re getting in a pickle simply thinking about handling SEO yourself, let us help. Drop us a line on 01603 339048 or hello@gingerpicklemarketing.com, and we can have a chat.