SEO for Small Businesses: The Most Complete Guide in Spanish

SEO for Small Business: Different or More of the Same?

Is it worth talking about  SEO for small businesses  when there is so much already written about SEO in general and so many videos on the Internet that talk about the same thing? Well, after reading this article you will be convinced that, indeed, Search Engine Optimization applied to small and even a good part of medium-sized businesses is a specific “discipline” of Digital Marketing, which must be treated differently from traditional SEO.

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What is SEO?

SEO stands for  Search Engine Optimization  , although many reduce it simply to search engine positioning, that is, “ the process of improving the visibility of a website in organic results (those that are not paid) in search engines and its chances of being found when people search the Internet related to the content of that website .”

However,  Matt Cutts  – one of Google’s leading gurus on these concepts – gave a different translation to the acronym SEO: “ Search Experience Optimization ” or  User Experience Optimization , putting the emphasis above all on whether you are able to “ enrich ” the person who visits your website more than other sites can: that is, whether after the visit, that person leaves your site with knowledge and answers that they didn’t have before, or better yet, with solutions to specific problems or needs that concerned them.

You can find hundreds of definitions on the web, you can read thousands of books about it, but in the end, the essence of it all comes down to this:  your ability to create a positive, satisfying and enriching experience for your website users . That is the true meaning of the SEO concept.

“ But surely that works equally well for small businesses and large corporations? ” – you might say… and wonder if it is really worth differentiating SEO for small businesses from SEO in general. Let’s see below.

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SEO for Small Business: Definition and Limitations

Fortunately, we are no longer in the late 90s of the last century and the world of SEO has not only become much more complex, but is also closely related to  TWO FACTORS  that every small business owner must know and deal with:

1. The Web has grown at a dizzying, exponential rate: from a few million pages at the end of the 20th century to  30 trillion  individual pages in 2013. And if that number sounds too big, how about  Google’s Gary Illes  saying in November 2017 that they recognized the existence of  130 trillion pages . That’s  300% growth in just 4 years . And that means that whatever you do and whatever you write about, you’re going to have to compete with LOOOOOOO many people and LOOOOOOO many pages.
2. Big corporations, the most famous digital marketing gurus, and the greenback boys in general, have not only learned a lot about SEO, but are  investing a lot of effort and money into it . And we’re not just talking about investing in advertising and resources, but also in highly trained people, who are paid very good salaries to dedicate 40-60 hours a week to perfecting their web presence and creating a solid  digital brand .

These two pillars describe the harsh reality that small businesses will have to face:  they cannot compete with the big players in the market, at least not on their own terms .

Gurus will tell you yes and try to sell you the book, software or miracle formula that will supposedly allow you to compete with them and even beat them. Don’t believe them. I remember a brilliant businessman from Guadalajara, Mexico who, in deciding whether to hire me as a consultant, asked me if I could get his small business website to #1 on Google searches for “ tires ,” and he was shocked when I told him that even if he paid me $10 million, I couldn’t do that for him.

We could never compete with the market leading brands like  Michelin ,  Firestone ,  Goodyear , etc. and the giants that sell them like  Tire Kingdom ,  Tires Plus ,  Tire Rack  and others like  Walmart .

However, it could be a different story if we set out to reach the top spots in Google searches for terms such as “ tires in Guadalajara ” or “ cheap tires in Guadalajara ” or “ quality tires in Guadalajara ”, depending on the requirements of your business.

Then it won’t be difficult for you to understand that SEO for small businesses is  your ability to create the most positive, most satisfying and most enriching experience possible for your website users with the resources at your disposal in specific market niches .

And this is not a conformist or pessimistic definition. It is about recognizing that your way of competing with them is not to wear yourself out trying to position yourself in the same place they are already positioned, because you do not have their millions or their people at your disposal.

You can compete, of course, as long as you properly select the market niche(s) with such specific needs that are being minimized, undervalued and/or neglected by the big brands and where you can add and offer value, either due to geographic proximity, the addition of certain functionalities that solve very different problems or the type of close and dynamic relationship that you can establish with potential buyers of your products or services.

SEO for small businesses is first and foremost a niche SEO

This is a reality that you must engrave with blood and fire in the mind and heart of your company, because it implies three fundamental things:

1. You are not going to focus on SEO in general, but on those activities that are important for the market niches that you can satisfy (and that is where you are going to concentrate your limited resources); and
2. You will have to be very selective and select from among the many, hundreds of components and variables that are included in the SEO concept, those that are important, essential to generate a memorable user experience in the selected niches.
3. You’ll need to be very realistic about your expectations, which should include both the timeframe in which you can achieve certain goals, as well as the magnitude of the goals you’ve set for yourself. You may not be able to rank first in everything you’d like, but you can get search engines to crawl, index, and understand your content, while increasing user satisfaction and experience.

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Key Components of SEO for Small Businesses

Google, Bing and other search engine algorithms take into account thousands of variables to index and position your website, but there are two components that are basic and that if you don’t have time for more, they are the two that you should measure and grow if you want to make your SEO investment profitable and optimize the use of your resources:

AUTHORITY : In more colloquial terms, it is the popularity of a website. It is made up of two main elements:

• The number of visitors you receive is one of them. But it is not enough to receive many visitors; the time they remain on your site, the number of pages they visit, the interactions they engage in (clicking on links, filling out a survey, answering a question, using the contact form, etc.) and the bounce rate (those who arrive at your site and leave without visiting other pages) are very important. And here the number of quality external links your website has will be of vital importance: if others consider linking to your site it is because they recognize the importance of your content.
• The number of times your content is shared: the more time they spend on your site, the more interactions they have and the more times they share your content, Google will consider that the “user experience” has been better and will give you greater relevance in search results.

RELEVANCE : This element is a bit more complex. It is how a page relates to a given search. If you Google “ Banquet Halls Miami ,”  Blue Banquet Hall will always appear (or at least has for over two years now) in the top three results because its relevance to that search (i.e. how well the site can satisfy people who type that phrase into the search engine) is superior to that of other similar websites.

If you understand these two factors, then it won’t be difficult for you to focus on the SEO equation in general, and especially SEO for small businesses, who don’t have the time or money to deal with other factors:

QUALITY CONTENT + WEB TRAFFIC + LINKS TO YOUR CONTENT AND SHARING TIMES

In many academic materials on the subject, you will be told about various coefficients, ratios and multiple indicators. We are not saying that they are not important, but that dealing with them would be as exhausting as investing in a small amusement park in your city and wanting to compete with Disneyland, instead of with other local entertainment businesses.

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Basic SEO Actions for Small Businesses

This basic guide would not be complete if we did not provide you with a list of the fundamental actions you must take to carry out the SEO that is within your reach and that can make a difference in the positioning of your business. Remember that  as Google points out :

Among those small changes are:

CHECK IF YOUR SITE IS ALREADY INDEXED : Go to the Google or Bing search engine and in the search bar type: “ site:mywebsite.com ”, replacing “ mywebsite ” with the real name of your site. If it is not, you should repeat the questions you supposedly asked yourself when designing and uploading it to the web: Is my site secure, does it load quickly and can it be accessed from any device; do I offer quality content? If after making the relevant adjustments you still do not appear, you can use the Google console or contact us for help, especially regarding uploading and keeping up to date a map of your website.

HELP GOOGLE SEE AND UNDERSTAND YOUR CONTENT – Check or have your webmaster check your website’s robot.txt file   to make sure you allow Google to crawl your Javascript and CSS files, not just your HTML (if you don’t understand these terms now, don’t worry – sign up for our newsletter and you’ll soon become familiar with them in a very simple and easy way). Create unique and accurate page titles to avoid confusion, and accurately describe the content of each page. You can also use ” heading tags ” to highlight the most important portions of your text and ” breadcrumb lists ” to help visitors quickly return to a previous section or to the home page.

MAKE SURE YOUR SITE IS EASY AND FLUID TO NAVIGATE : Your website should be organized like a multi-story building or an organizational chart, where on the first level users can access your main content, on the second level that content is explained in more detail and they can go even deeper into knowledge or access your functionalities, which will be on the third level. If people find navigation difficult, they will simply leave your site, leaving a negative impact on the user experience you are trying to generate. Don’t forget that your  URLs  should be kept as simple as possible and don’t forget to show  useful 404 pages  , if possible personalized.

OPTIMIZE, UPDATE AND RE-OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT : 80% of a good user experience is achieved with useful, attractive and optimized content. Your texts should be easy to read, as close as possible to the language your users use in their daily lives, and try to make sure that what you write answers their questions or helps them in some way to solve their needs. Create new, unique, original content and every time you do something to optimize it, think of your end user more than the search engine. Regularly check the links on your website to avoid “ broken links ” and use the “ nofollow ” attribute appropriately to tell Google not to follow certain links on your website and not to grant your page’s reputation to the pages linked to it.

OPTIMIZE YOUR IMAGES : Always use  the “alt” attribute  with your images and try to avoid generic names like “ image1 ” or very long file names. An  image “sitemap”  can be very helpful to Google’s robot. Use file types that are compatible with JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and WebP image formats.

OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE FOR MOBILE DEVICES – More and more traffic is coming from tablets and especially smartphones. If your site doesn’t display well on them, you’ll be losing hundreds or thousands of visitors and many ranking points. You should test your pages with different types of devices and even different browsers to put yourself in the shoes of your site’s users. Most WordPress themes are already optimized for mobile, and if you use some other platform or content management system, then it’s probably easiest to start with the option that includes the mobile version from the beginning.

PROMOTE YOUR WEBSITE IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE : SEO for small businesses cannot, no matter how much you want it, include the huge budgets that larger companies invest in Adwords, Facebook Ads and other platforms, but if you dedicate a modest investment well made, then it will undoubtedly be reflected in your results. Now, don’t limit yourself to that. There are  many ways to promote your site , and most of them require very little or no money at all: from social networks to business cards, not forgetting word of mouth and of course, email marketing.

MEASURE AND EVALUATE CONSTANTLY : If there is one thing that sets SEP for small businesses apart from SEO in general, it is this very useful and vital part. What is not measured cannot be perfected, and even if you do not have the necessary budget to pay Marketing Agencies that can monitor you and offer you voluminous reports; nor can you buy expensive software or even pay high monthly fees for online measurement tools, you can AND SHOULD properly monitor your digital presence with the tools at your disposal: using Google Analytics  is free; and periodically checking on  Alexa.com  how the popularity of your website moves does not cost you a cent either.

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By way of conclusions

SEO is a complex science, still very new, where we all learn every day, and which moves along with the changes in the algorithms of Google and other search engines, which occur almost daily. You will have to go a long way to learn more and more details and little “tricks”, but if you are guided by what we have told you above, you will know that you will at least be meeting the basic requirements of this important component of Digital Marketing.