Are you an entrepreneur or small business with a website that isn’t bringing you leads? Are you struggling to get eyes on your content, putting a ton of effort into blogs with no readers, and getting a trickle of website traffic with no conversions? Then you’re in the right place! I’m sharing some of the fundamental trade secrets for search engine optimization- my best SEO tips for beginners and entrepreneurs!

Remember: it doesn’t matter how amazing your services are, how talented you are, or how gorgeous your portfolio is if your dream clients CAN’T DISCOVER YOU among all the noise and competition in the search results!

SEO is complex, and there is a LOT that goes into being FULLY optimized for search. However, there’s no reason why you can’t at least achieve healthy SEO by getting the basics in order. If a professional builds your website, it will be properly designed and formatted with a healthy SEO skeleton in place, in addition to being optimized for mobile and include an intuitive user experience, or UX. 

Beyond that, use these basic tips to DIY your SEO!

SEO tips for beginners and entrepreneurs 

Keyword research 

Create a list of  long, medium, and short-tail keywords relevant to your services, plus common variations of them. Include these naturally on each page of your site, in your blogs, and in your image’s alt text. How do you do keyword research? Great question! I use the following free tools:

• Google suggest- this is my favorite way and the one I’ve found most effective. Download my free step by step guide to using it here and watch your SEO steadily increase!

• Google Keyword Planner

• Keysearch

Meta descriptions & image alt text

Use free tools like Google’s “People also ask” and Google Suggest to create 60-150 character, keyword rich meta descriptions for every page on your site. Don’t forget to include keywords in all your title tags and SLUGS! If every page doesn’t have an optimized meta description, you are totally screwing yourself when it comes to SEO!

Same goes for image alt text- these are invisible tags you give every image on your website. It’s another opportunity to add relevant, searchable keywords appropriately to the images on your website. Check every image and video you have and add keyword rich alt text!

Mobile & site speed optimization

Mobile, site speed, loading times affect SEO in a big way. Remember, people are looking at hundreds of websites. If yours takes forever to load, loads improperly, or is messy on mobile, users will go back and go to the next website suggested by Google. I use the free GTmetrix tool to run site speed tests and get feedback on what I can improve!

By the way, be sure to grab my ULTIMATE website & blogging SEO checklist for beginners free here! It gives you a detailed, step-by-step guide to DIYing your SEO!

Local SEO

Clearly write where you’re located & 3 to 5 areas that you serve. Include this in your footer and naturally in your copy. You can even make separate service pages for your website that focus on each area you serve. Don’t forget to create a Google My Business listing if you’re a brick and mortar business- this is HUGELY helpful!

Blog blog blog

After getting the basic on and off page SEO done, blogging is the BEST organic driver of SEO. I will die on this hill! New, consistent content encourages Google to crawl and serve your site to searchers and allows you to answer googleable questions to drive traffic to your site. Again, use Google Suggest (learn how here) to get SEO blog titles, provide value to potential clients, and include 3-5 relevant internal links in each blog.

Did these SEO tips for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and beginners help you? I hope so! Let me know what questions you have in the comments, and be sure to grab my FREE detailed SEO guide for DIYers here!

Looking for more? Contact us to learn how we can help you optimize your website for SEO, build a brand, or build you a gorgeous, brand new website in less than 1 week or 1 day!