How to Create an SEO Strategy for Your Small Business
- Rhiannon
- Oct 15, 2022
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 7
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a fantastic way for introverted small business owners to increase their visibility, drive traffic to their website, and generate leads and sales organically, authentically, and without overwhelm. However, so many introverted entrepreneurs and small business owners don't take advantage of SEO because they don't know where to start. This beginner's guide shows you how to create an SEO strategy for your small business, so you can start driving visibility, traffic, and sales in a way that aligns with your values and personality.
When it comes to doing any form of marketing for your independent brand or small business, it really helps to have a strategy in place. SEO is no different. A clear SEO strategy is required if you want to drive relevant organic traffic to your website and ultimately drive more sales. However, creating your SEO strategy need not be complicated.
How to Create an SEO Strategy (Skip to a Section)
Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience
One of the top reasons why small business websites fail to drive growth is a failure to speak to a clear target audience. identifying your niche - i.e. the specific problem you solve, and who you solve it for - is the crucial first step in any marketing strategy, including SEO.
Your target audience will inform every step of your SEO strategy, from keyword research to blogging strategy. Plus, it will prevent you from spreading yourself so thin that you get overwhelmed and head straight for burnout - something that's especially important for introverted entrepreneurs. So, it's well worth taking time to get clear on who your target audience is.
I know that you could probably help lots of different people solve lots of different problems. However, when you are an independent business owner, who is managing your own marketing and spinning all the plates, focusing on ONE thing at a time is crucial. Focusing will help you get better results, quicker, because you'll be establishing your brand as THE expert, solution, or answer to the problem or desire, rather than just one (quiet) voice among many thousands that might or might not be able to help.
How to Identify Your Target Audience
When trying to identify your target audience, consider the following:
Who do you most love working with? Who are your best, happiest clients or customers, who have had the best results or left the best testimonials?
What problem do you most often come across when people enquire? What is it they are trying to achieve or solve?
What do your customers say about your business? What words and phrases commonly come up in customer messages, testimonials, and reviews?
Your target audience does not need to be a sector or demographic. It can be a specific as the values, goals, problems, or obstacles of the people you want to help.
Step 2: Audit Your Website and Make Some Quick Fixes for Quick Wins
SEO is not a five-minute job, and it does not offer immediate results. However, there are usually things you can do today that will help improve your website's organic visibility within a week or so. By auditing your website and fixing common user experience issues such as broken links, you can make some quick wins.
Effective SEO starts with a functional website that offers a good user experience (UX). Your website visitors are potential customers or clients, who must be able to find the information they need, contact you, and carry out the conversion action (e.g. a purchase, booking or enquiry) that you want them to do. Not only is user experience key to driving conversions, it is also part of SEO best practice, and a poorly-built website can impact your rankings. After all, what's the point in people finding your website if they cannot find what they need, get in touch or make the purchase or booking?
Your website does not have to be big, expensive or fancy. However, it does need to be well-structured and functional. The path to checking out, signing up, or enquiring should be easy to follow and require as few steps as possible.
You can audit your website yourself by using it as a customer would. This can help you to spot any issues that need fixing, such as broken links / buttons, checkout issues and missing or outdated information. There are also free website auditing tools available online, which can highlight technical SEO issues.
A word of caution: If using an SEO auditing tool, you will almost certainly receive a list of errors, warnings and notices, along with suggestions for how to fix these issues. I always advice my clients to exercise a degree of caution when following any SEO audit as though it were a checklist. This is because, sometimes, we can actually make things worse in the process of "fixing" them, because the fix causes further SEO issues! For example, I have known business owners to change almost every URL / slug on their website because the audit tells them to shorten it or add a keyword. This inevitably leads to more broken links, redirect chains, and general chaos and confusion for little to no real gain.
Step 3: Carry Out Keyword Research
When you carry out SEO on your website, the aim is to drive organic (free) traffic to your website from search engines such as Google. So, when your target audience searches for relevant products, services or topics, your website can appear on that first page of results.
Your initial SEO strategy will be centred around a list of target keywords, which you will need to select carefully. The number of keywords you target will depend on the size of your website and the type of business. Larger websites will require more keywords, whilst smaller websites and niche businesses may need to target fewer keywords. As a rough guide to get you started, you want to aim for one keyword for every website page.
Your target keywords need to be selected carefully:
They must be relevant to your business
They must be relevant to your audience
They need to have a purpose (i.e. what are people looking for when they use that keyword? Are they seeking information, or are they actively looking to buy? Can you create content to captivate, connect, or convert off the back of that keyword?)
Broadly speaking, you can split keywords into two main categories.
Commercial keywords: The first category contains keywords that directly describe a product or service. These keywords will usually have a relatively high search volume, and they will often be more competitive. However, these keywords are often "high intent", meaning the people searching them are more likely to be actively looking to make a purchase, enquiry or booking. These keywords are likely to appear across your website, especially on your product / service pages.
Informational keywords: The second category contains (usually) longer, more specific keywords. These keywords often include questions or "how to" searches. These keywords are often less competitive, but they may have lower search volumes and a "low intent" because the search engine user is not actively looking to buy something - they are simply seeking information. These keywords can make really good blog topics because they can help you build visibility and credibility among people who are new to your brand and who may one day become customers.
It is a good idea to target a spread of keywords, perhaps leaning into the less competitive ones to start with. You can always go back in 3 months, reassess your keywords and start targeting more competitive ones. The example below illustrates why your choice of keywords is so important to SEO success.
Example: Online Retailer Selling Horse Riding Boots
An online retailer of riding boots will probably want to target obvious keywords such as “horse riding boots”, “ladies riding boots” and “children’s riding boots”. The keyword “horse riding boots” has a search volume of over 8,000 and a keyword difficulty of 30 (SE Ranking, April 2024). It has a commercial intent, meaning people use this keyword when they are looking to make a purchase (in this case they're looking to buy riding boots). This makes it a relatively valuable but also a very competitive keyword.
On the other hand, “how much are horse riding boots” has a search volume of 10 and a keyword difficulty of 13 (SE Ranking, April 2024). This makes it an easier keyword to rank for. However, the search intent is informational, meaning people use this keyword to carry out research. They aren't actively looking to make a purchase at this time.
Which of these keywords should our online equestrian retailer target? There is no right or wrong answer, as it depends on so many factors. One is easy to rank for but won't bring many sales (at least not as quickly), whilst the other is more difficult to rank for but could lead to significant sales if you can get onto that first page! My advice would be to target both. Use "horse riding boots" on a product or category page for long-term visibility growth, and "how much are horse riding boots" for a blog article that compares the various brands and types of riding boot that the retailer stocks and gives you a quicker result.
Free Keyword Research Tools
There are several free or cheap keyword research tools available. Google Trends, Ahrefs and Chat GPT are three options, and they will help you get started. I use SE Ranking, which allows my clients to benefit from keyword research that is based on recent, detailed data and in-depth insights that you cannot get using free tools.
Keyword Allocation
Every page of your website that you want to optimise for search engines needs a focus keyword, and this should ideally be unique to each page (although this is not always possible). Ideally, you should also allocate secondary keywords to each page. This will take some time, because you will need to organise your keywords based on where they are most relevant, factoring in search intent, competition and search volume.
Step 4: Essential On-Page SEO
This next bit sounds a bit technical, but it’s actually basic SEO and you can absolutely DIY it. Every page on your website needs an SEO title, an SEO description (also known as meta titles and descriptions) and a h1 (header 1) tag.
Your CMS will show you how to update your SEO titles, SEO descriptions, and h1 tags. If you aren’t sure, visit the help section for your CMS or take a look at my Wix SEO Essentials course if you want step-by-step guidance on essential SEO for your Wix website.
SEO Titles & Descriptions
If you don’t specify SEO titles or descriptions, Google will just pull one from the text on the page. SEO titles and descriptions are what you see when you search for something in Google. Each search result has an SEO title (in blue) and an SEO description (in black / grey), and they are used by search engines and search engine users to identify what the website page is about.
Your SEO title should be around 55-60 characters long and it should include your focus keyword. Your SEO description should also include your focus keyword, but it should be around 155-160 characters long. Use an online character counter to check the length of your SEO titles and descriptions.
Your website CMS should indicate where you need to enter your SEO titles and descriptions (it's really straightforward in WordPress, Wix and Shopify). If you aren’t sure, visit the help section for your CMS or take a look at my Wix SEO Essentials course.
For more detailed instructions, read my how-to guides on writing SEO Titles and SEO Descriptions.
H1 Tags
H1 (header 1) tags also tell Google and your readers what is on the website page. They appear on the page itself, usually at the top. In your CMS, they will be marked or formatted as “h1”. Again, refer to your website CMS help section for assistance.
Your H1 should include your focus keyword. It needs to clearly state what the page is about, and it should be different from your SEO Title.
SEO Essentials Courses for Beginners
If you have a WordPress, Wix or Shopify website and you want step-by-step guides and extra tips on writing and adding your SEO titles and descriptions, my SEO Essentials courses are a great place to start. Each course comes with full lifetime access, so you will receive any updates or extras as they become available, at no additional cost to you. Visit the Purple Horse Marketing Academy to enrol!
Step 5: Create Your SEO Strategy Schedule
You now have your basic SEO strategy mapped out. This will form the foundations of your wider SEO efforts, which you can carry out over several weeks or months depending on your time constraints.
Depending on how much time you have to commit to your SEO, you could aim to optimise one or two pages every month and write a blog article each month. This involves adding keywords to your website text, writing optimised blog articles for your target audience and optimising the images on your website. I will cover on-page SEO and blogging in further detail in my other guides.
Once you have completed the steps in this guide, you will have made a really good start on your SEO strategy. Whilst this stage may seem tedious, it will allow you to embark on your SEO campaign safe in the knowledge that you are on the right track, and it can offer some quick wins when you optimise the right pages for attainable keywords.
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About the Author
Rhiannon is an independent marketing consultant and Associate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (ACIM). She helps introverted entrepreneurs liberate themselves from marketing burnout, and use SEO, blogging, and email marketing to grow their businesses authentically - without exhausting launches, constant social media visibility, or feeling like they have to be someone they're not.
