Thursday 28 April 2016

Small Business SEO

What is small business SEO?

Small business SEO is the optimisation for your business website in the search engines.  If that still went over your head then let me break that down even further.

Everytime a search is made in one of the search engines such as Google, Bing or any other search engines you will be presented with a page full of results.  This page is known as the search engine results page or SERPS for short.  The results you see on the first page will have been optimised for the search query. So for example.

“Dog groomers wales”  will show the following results:


All of the above website pages have been optimised for the search query “Dog groomers wales”. 

This technique is known as search engine optimisation or SEO for short.  SEO simply is optimising your website for potential customers when they are searching for your product or information. 

As you can image for a small business owner SEO can mean the difference between a constant flow of customers to having a website that does nothing for your business.

If you have a small business website that doesn’t bring in any customers then your SEO is not working, or maybe your site is not optimised at all and sadly if you don’t rank in the search engines then your website may as well not exist.

How will SEO benefit your small business?

Right now there are potential customers looking for what you are selling or providing.  There is someone, somewhere with their bank card in their hand waiting to hand over their money, but if your not at the top of the search engines then those customers are spending their money with your competitors.

When explaining what SEO can do to one of our clients websites I first like to ask them; “how much is a single customer worth per month to your small business?” then I provide them with some data.  So if you’re a dentist in Cardiff and your looking for extra customers then let me run some search numbers by you.

There are over 3020 searches a month for “Dentist Cardiff”



1990 for “Cardiff Dental”



150 searches a month for “Penarth Dentist”


The list could go on and on, from a quick 5 minute search you can see that there are thousands of searches each month for dental services in Cardiff, now if you’re a dentist with a website that isn’t optimised for any of those terms then you are throwing away money.

For smaller businesses there are a lot of people searching for what you have to offer.  For example there are over 80 a month searching for legal advice online in Pontypridd.



60 people from Pontypridd a month are looking for a law firm.



There are 610 people a month looking for “Swansea builders”



Or 860 possible customers looking for “Builders in Cardiff”


I could search all day and make screen shots, but there is honestly no point.  Whatever industry you are in, big or small there will be someone online searching for your service.  The job of SEO is to get you in front of those people so that they can choose to purchase from you and not your competitors.

To make this example easier, lets just say there are 200 customers a month searching for the product you sell, and lets say 1 customer is worth between £2000 - £5000.  If your website were to get just one of those 200 searches a month then that could mean that your small business could be earning an extra £60,000 a year.  That is the power of SEO.

Is small business SEO expensive?

Like everything, SEO costs money and the cost of SEO will be determined on the competition of the keywords you want to go after.  SEO can also take a few months to see a return on investment but the rewards can last for years.

At WeeAre we research what keywords we believe are achievable to rank for and depending on your budget we will choose words or phrases that you will want to rank for in the future.  We tend to choose a wide variety of keywords so that you can rank for lower competition phrases which have lower amounts of traffic as well as phrases with higher competition and higher search volume.  This results in getting traffic as soon as possible.

We bill for our SEO services on a monthly cycle.  We feel this gives you the maximum flexibility so that you are not tied into any lengthy contracts.  We want you to be happy with the service that we provide and not pressured into anything you don’t want.  If you would like to discuss starting an SEO service today then check out web design penarth they have some great prices.

If your still not decided on if SEO is for your small business then keep on reading.

Why Small Business SEO is important

There are many ways to get customers to your business. Yellow Pages, Radio and Newspaper ads, flyers, online ads etc.  But the problem with all of the above is that they cost money every time you want to use them.   Yes SEO costs money, but when you get to that first page, every click that gets sent to your website doesn’t cost you a penny.  Compare that to online ads which could cost £2-20+ a click depending on your niche/industry.  Online ads or PPC are effective, but depending on your industry it could cost you a lot of money to compete with your competitors.

SEO on the other hand is like free traffic.  Once you are on the first page then each and every lead sent to your website doesn’t cost you. 

SEO without a doubt is the most cost effective way of bringing new customers to your business.   SEO is also very targeted, people searching for the service you are offering want to spend their money, compare that to putting an ad in the local newspaper, how many of these people are interested in buying what you are selling? 

If you run a search in your industry right now, for example “dog trainers in wales” and you see your competitors on the first page then you know that they are spending money on SEO each month and that is why they are outranking you and taking money right out of your pocket.  SEO can’t be achieved by luck, it takes good quality research and planning to be executed correctly.  So how exactly does SEO work, and what can you do to compete with your competitors?

How does SEO Work?

Search Engine Optimisation is broken down into two separate areas, both equally as important as the other.  The first being on page optimisation.

On page optimisation is everything that is on your website, this could be the text, imagery and even the code that makes up your site.  This is why it is very important that your website is built to be search engine friendly.  If the search engines cant read the code on your website then it is going to struggle to know what your website is about, and because of this your website is going to find it hard to rank. 

If you hire us to build your website then you will be thankful to know that all of our sites are built to be search engine friendly, they are also built to be mobile responsive as standard.  Your website should be mobile responsive as this is also a ranking factor that the search engines take into consideration when deciding where to place your small business website.

Getting your on page optimisation is essential if you want to rank your small business website for any keywords or search terms.  On page SEO tells the search engines what your site is about, the importance of certain keywords on the site and how to understand the keywords that you have chosen.  If you help the search engines to understand your site then you are already in a good position to move forward to the second part of SEO.

The second part of SEO is off page optimisation.  This is primarily made of links pointing to your website.  This could be from other relevant blogs or social media sites like facebook, twitter, linkedin, pinterest and many more.

Off page optimisation done wrong can ruin your online presence.  Get your off page optimisation wrong and not only will you not rank but you could face a penalty and have your website black listed from the search engines.  Poor link building practices have ruined businesses time and time again. 

Don’t fall victim to a cheap SEO service which may do your business more harm than good. 

We have been practising different SEO techniques for years and we follow good link building practises and because of this our clients rank and our sites don’t get penalised.   We can create quality links to your website through a few different techniques, one of which is creating quality content that others want to link to.   

If you would like to hire us to improve your rankings in the search engine then you should contact web design pontypridd.

Other things to consider for your small business SEO.

This section can become a little technical at times so if you are reading it and you start to think I have no idea what I have just read then don’t worry.  You don’t have to understand the next few paragraphs, I have included them so you can get a better understanding on what we do, but this section is optional.

The software that your website is built on can affect your SEO quite a bit.  For example, we build all of our websites on top of a content management system called wordpress.  You probably have heard of wordpress as it powers over 23% of the websites on the internet.  Companies like NASA, CNN and Forbes all use wordpress and there is a good reason for this.

Out of the box wordpress is easy to use, and makes managing your on page optimisation easy.  You can change the permalinks which is the link of a post after your domain.  For example a site could be

Yoursite.com/post=123

Or with wordpress

Yoursite.com/dog-groomers-in-wales

Which of the above do you think tells the search engines what your web page is about?

Wordpress Plugins for SEO

If your not a techie then you may want to skip this section, but if your interested in learning a little about what plugins are and how they can assist you with your SEO for your business then keep on reading.

A plugin is an additional piece of software which can be added to your website.  Wordpress offers some great plugins that can assist your small business SEO attempts, one of which we use is a plugin called Yoast SEO.  Yoast SEO allows you to create sitemaps which the search engines loves along with many other options that start to become a bit techie, but don’t worry we assure you they help your website in ranking.

SEO and your businesses credibility

Think back to a time where there were no search engines, just a big yellow book that ruled the business world.  The Yellow Pages.  If you were looking for a plumber in wales would you go for the guy on the first plumber page or the 7th? Most people went for the first guy as that guy seemed more credible.  The same applies to the search engine result pages.  If your on the 2nd page then your customers don’t even know you exist.  Get on the first page and your business suddenly becomes more trustworthy.

A good SEO campaign can instil trust with your clients, your business is seen as more credible and if you sell good this can only help the sales process.

SEO is good for business branding

SEO first and foremost is about getting traffic to your website and then converting those visitors into customers, but SEO can also help with branding.  Most searchers don’t search just once for a product or service they will search many times.  Quite often the terms in which the user will type will change so one search could be “dog groomers wales”, the second time they search they could look for “dog grooming services in wales” and the third time “dog grooming in wales”.  All three searches are slightly different, but if your website is showing for all three terms then you will instantly gain more credibility with that searcher and chances are they are going to click through to your business.

SEO and ROI

SEO doesn’t interrupt users when they are listening to their favourite song in the car in the mornings, it doesn’t interrupt users from finding out who killed who on their favourite TV show.  Instead SEO allows you to market only to people who are looking for your product or service.  These people want what you are selling, they just need to find you first.  With SEO you don’t have to convince a potential customer that they need your product, you just have to convince them that you’re the right company to purchase from.

Small business SEO Summary

Phew, if you got this far then you should now have a better understanding of what SEO is and hopefully you now know what SEO can do for your small business.  If your still confused on SEO don’t worry you don’t need to know the difference between on page and off page optimisation.  SEO can be a complicated subject, but even by getting the basics right you could get ahead of your competitors. 

SEO can be the most effective way of getting new customers to your business each and every month.

If you would like to discuss hiring us for your small business SEO then click here and we can give you a quote today.













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