Only half of small businesses (49%) invest in SEO to improve their business’s visibility. Many small businesses know that SEO is important for their website, but don't know how to get started. SEO can be a bit tricky, time-consuming, and overwhelming if you're not sure what you're doing. But with the help of some experts, you'll be well on your way to succeeding.

With only half of small businesses utilizing SEO, you can gain a massive advantage against your direct local competitors.

These 7 SEO tips for blogs for small businesses will make your life much easier and help you beat those competitors!

1. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

In 2015, Google announced they would cut back on search engine rankings for websites that aren't mobile-friendly. If your website is not mobile friendly you could see a massive decrease in organic traffic from Google!

So make sure your blog posts are easy and quick to read on smartphones by writing short paragraphs and sentences, using bullet points when appropriate, including visuals with links where possible (like infographics). That way it's easier for the reader to navigate their phone around all that great content you created just for them!

Mobile-Friendly Test: This post should show as "mobile-friendly" according to Google guidelines.

2. Include Keywords in Page Titles, Headings, and Content

This one may be a bit obvious, but including keywords in your blog post content, page title, and headings will help you rank higher on search engines. You'll want to make sure that all of these keywords work together so that they appear as natural as possible for readers. You don't want to overstuff with a bunch of keywords and make it unreadable. Google will penalize for keyword stuffing, so keep natural.

Generally, as a rule, you want to use one main keyword and a couple of secondary keywords. These should all be relevant to your content. You want to place your main keyword in your title, one of your headers, your main content, and in your conclusion. Then sprinkle in the secondary keywords naturally.

Keyword Research: This post is optimized with the keyword "SEO tips for blogs" which receives an estimated monthly traffic of 210 visitors from Google according to Ubbersuggest (a free tool you can use to help you find keywords).

It's also crucial not to just arrange those keywords in close proximity, but rather at particular locations within sentences or paragraphs so it doesn't appear machine-written! For example instead of writing "we have great SEO services here are some things we can do for you", try something like "We offer fantastic SEO services that can help take your business to the next level. We're here today with some helpful tips for you!"

For our secondary keywords, we've included a few other relevant words like "blog", "small businesses", etc, but not so much as it feels unnatural or spammy! Instead, we used these words at specific parts of sentences and paragraphs where they would naturally flow better than just plopping them anywhere in their haphazardly.

3. Optimize Your Images With the Right File Name and Alt-Text

When using images on your blog, you want to make sure that they count. Make sure each image is optimized with the right file name and alt text so you can get more mileage out of them!

What do we mean by that? Well, Google is going to read your alt text to try and find out what that image is, so by helping Google do that, you can help your SEO. Don't put any text down though, make it relevant to the image. If possible, include a keyword, but don't force it.

A blog post usually has at least one (if not multiple) accompanying images. We recommend using at least 3 for a 500 word article. This is going to help break up your paragraphs. Each image should be relevant and help express whatever point or topic you're covering in your blog post content.

The file name should accurately describe what's going through your mind when you think about the picture — like "blog-image-one" for example. Don't just add random numbers if it doesn't relate to anything specific, because Google will recognize this as spammy behavior and penalize accordingly.

4. Link to Other Relevant Articles on Your Site and Offsite

This one can seem a bit tricky but it's actually pretty simple. Anchor links are simply hyperlinked phrases that link to other relevant articles on your site or offsite resources (that you've cited) related to your topic.

Here are two examples:

Internal Backlink: 7 SEO Tips for Small Businesses - If we included this naturally in our post, this would be considered a internal link because its going back to our website on another blog we wrote.

External Backlink: As many as 53% of users will abandon a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load from a mobile device - This is a external link because we provided a source to our statistics but it goes to a website other then ours.

You want to include both in your blog.

For another example, we might write something like "we recommend reading this post for more tips" and then include an anchor link taking the reader straight into that particular blog post content! This is great because if they're interested in what you have to say about whatever topic you just finished covering, they'll be able jump directly back there with ease.

When creating anchor links within our own blog posts, we find it helpful to use descriptive words such as "this post" for example. However, you don't want to go overboard and make it look spammy with unnecessary anchor links such as "see this link".

If possible, you want to use a keyword in your anchor text for bonus SEO points.

Anchor links are a great way to keep your readers engaged on your website because they'll be able see what other resources or tips/tricks that might be helpful for them before continuing onto another site. It's also pretty simple to add these into blog posts so there's no excuse!

5. Use Social Media Platforms to Share Your Blog

Over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide. If you're not sharing your content on social media, you are missing out on a ton of traffic.

Using social media is a great way to keep blog traffic coming in. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest are all perfect for sharing things like blog posts because you can share them on multiple networks at once and reach a much larger audience!

In fact, you can double your blog traffic by sharing your blog posts on social media.

In order to get the most out of this strategy, it's important that when sharing these blogs on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter that you add a custom description with relevant keywords and tags about what your post is going to be about!

6. Create a Google My Business Page to help with SEO and Bring in More Traffic

Having a Google My Business page is great for your SEO and driving traffic to your website.

Many small businesses don't realize how important having a Google my business (GMB) profile can be — especially if you want organic traffic coming in from the search engines!

An easy way to set up this profile is by heading over here, logging into or creating an account with google, then following the steps listed on that site. The process should only take you around five minutes so it's well worth doing because of all the benefits involved. It's also completely FREE!

Once you set up your profile, make sure to include accurate information about yourself and what you do. Make sure that all the images are representative of your business as well! If you have a website, be sure to add it in your GMB profile so that customers can click on the link and go right there if they want.

Google really love seeing consistent activity from businesses on their GMB and when crawling their site for content related to what they do. If you are active and updating this page with new information about yourself or pictures of your business, then Google's algorithm will see that as positive crawl behavior.

7. Write Original Content that is Engaging and Interesting

Remember that the goal of your blog is to engage customers and drive traffic to your business. You don't want a bunch of people clicking on your blog because you have a good title but only spend 10 seconds on your page because the main content sucks.

Try to write blog posts that are around 1000 words or more for maximum engagement.

Don't forget about images, videos and other media! The reality is that people love visual content; it helps them engage with posts/content much better than just plain text alone.

You might not think it's important, but getting comments on your blog content can have an impact as well. If readers see other people engaging with your post by commenting, they'll be more likely to comment themselves because they don't feel like their voice isn't being heard.

After all, the goal of blogging is engagement not just having a bunch of people clicking on pages because titles sound but actual content sucks...

If you're struggling for ideas about what topics to write about in order to keep this engagement going, consider doing some research into keywords related specifically to your industry/niche for inspiration. Once you find something interesting look at the top blogs utilizing these keywords and see what they're doing that works.

SEO Tips for Blogs for Small Businesses

I hope I've given you some food for thought and a few new ideas to consider when it comes to blog posts. These are out simple SEO tips for blogs for small businesses. Just remember that SEO and ranking is important, but so is the content itself.

If you want more detailed guidance on creating high-quality blogs or other digital marketing strategies contact us! We'd love to partner with you and make sure your business is successful.

If you are looking for a guest posts, send us a message!