Unpopular opinion, but every business needs to invest in some level of search engine optimization (SEO) for their website. It’s not if, it’s how much. This may scare the small business owner, but it doesn’t need to.

Before covid, you could argue this point but after covid, that argument dries up. During the pandemic, 90% of Americans said the internet was essential. Google searches soared. People searched for everything —  more often and in greater volume than they have before, and they’re still searching.

The good news is SEO doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing venture, especially for a small business. If you do these 5 basic SEO steps, you’ll have a good foundation upon which to build.

1. Create your small business profile in Google.

This is free and alerts the Google bots that you exist. It’s also how you get your business to automatically appear when someone searches for you specifically. You’ll want to add a photo, enter your contact information and website. You’ll also want to enter your hours of operation, but keep in mind that you’ll need to update these as needed. Google is pretty good about sending email reminders to update your entry during the holidays, which is helpful.

2. Search like your customer.

Head over to Google and put yourself in your customer’s mindset. What might words might they use to search for your business? What question would they ask that you can answer? Enter these into the search bar to see the results. Does your business belong in the results? If so, make a note of the words and phrases you searched on. You can then keep these in mind for the next steps. And pat yourself on the back because you just did some simple “keyword / keyphrase research.” Write these down on a piece of paper (or better yet, put them into a spreadsheet.)

Then assign a unique search term/phrase to each of your pages. If you use the same search word for multiple pages, they end up competing with each other.

3. Optimize your website page titles.

Let’s put those keywords/phrases to use. Whether your website is on WordPress, Squarespace or another platform, optimizing your page titles (also called “title tag”) is important. It’s also easy to do. This tells Google what content each page on your website contains. It’s what shows up in the search results and also what appears to the user in their browser tab. Simply follow this formula: PageSubject | BusinessName | Location. So, for instance, my home page is Content Writing Agency | The Write Difference | Cleveland, Ohio.

For your “page subject,” keep in mind the search results you used in step 2. Rather than title my About page as “About,” I’ve titled it Copywriter Cleveland | The Write Difference. No one is going to search “about,” but they will search “copywriter Cleveland.”

4. Set your URLs up for SEO success.

Much like the page title, your URL aids in telling Google what the page is about. The more Google recognizes the value your content provides, the more likely it is to serve up that page when someone searches. Going back to my About page, if you look at the URL, it’s actually https://thewritedifference.com/copywriter-cleveland. I’m focused on “copywriter Cleveland” as the search term.

5. Write your key meta descriptions.

Your meta description is the content that appears in search results. When you search, how do you choose which result to click on? It’s usually based on the meta description. You’ll want to write for humans reading it but keep the bots in mind. Please those searched words and phrases from step 2 as close to the beginning of your meta description as possible.

While ideally every page should have this section filled out, at the very least, fill it out for your main pages. Again, SEO doesn’t have to be all or nothing. With every meta description you write, you’re one step closer to improved optimization.

Voilá! You’ve started the process of optimizing your website.

When you’re ready, you can engage us here at The Write Difference, one of the Best Cleveland SEO Companies. The foundation you laid will give us a baseline from which to work. We’ll help take your small business website to the next level.