What’s the best way to improve my ranking with SEO tactics tailored for small business sites?

The short answer is yes, it’s possible to improve your ranking with SEO handled organically (i.e., using those Search Engine Optimization strategies, which aren’t employing Pay-Per-Click “sponsored search” ads). And below I’m going to share some use-proven tactics to help you get everything in place to that point – without paying too much time or effort. Here are some simple yet useful tactics, which would work best on small business sites and brand-new startups in particular. So, let’s quickly run through each of them.

How to Improve Organic Ranking Using SEO for Small Business Sites

Given that the Search Engine Optimization isn’t just for well-established websites or big online projects solely, there are still many different things that work pretty fine on small/brand-new sites. And here are my best findings, which you can do with your own hands – quickly and at ease. Consider the following simple tactics that will improve your organic ranking and general SEO effort right from the day one with it.

Identify Your Niche

From the viewpoint of a small business or arguably any locally-targeted project, choosing the right niche is the most important thing over there to be done first and foremost. If you already target a more or less clear niche, the next challenge is to successfully emphasize what exactly makes your brand or product/service so unique – ultimately, to successfully compete against multi-million brands dominating around your small endeavor. And here is when SEO finally comes into play. All you need is to focus mainly on long-tail keywords, in line with running in-depth research to make them even more specifically-targeted – and you’re already halfway done.

Fine Branding on Tight Budget

Your next big challenge is to create a fine and visually appealing logo and tagline, that will represent your business in a clear & concise manner (ideally – without even further explanation). As for me, I personally recommend including your main field of expertise, as well as the core target keywords that would be best-fitting for revealing your main business values. That way, you can simply gain enough public recognition (at least for the initial stages of your business promotion), in line with contributing much to organic SEO – just sharing your own expertise (i.e., high-quality on-page articles, purely relevant to your product/service, and giving you a strong voice in the industry), setting fruitful activity on social media (i.e., personal business profiles delivering original posts closely on topic, which can give you a great deal with lead generation, broader public awareness, and, of course, will earn you a lot of organic links in return to contribute to your overall off-page SEO effort). That’s it.

Go Local

Given that optimizing yourself for local search is arguably the smartest way of gaining quick and strong niche domination for every website, local SEO is particularly efficient for brand-new sites and small business startups. That’s why I recommend focusing your SEO effort on the following locally-oriented ranking factors, such as:

• Filling accurate NAP data in your GMB listing, amid picking the maximum fitting primary/secondary business categories.
• Maintaining NAP data consistency throughout all local listings/business directories you’re submitting.
• Creating a correct formatting structure with schema.org markup (or specific plugin found in open access).
• Getting hyper-localized Page Titles and Meta Descriptions (i.e., making them rich with the name of the city/town or region served with your small business).
• Getting your site submitted to the leading big data aggregators, such as Yelp, Bestoftheweb, SuperPages, YP.com, etc.