Welcome to our SEO lab. The place to come for SEO help Search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about knowledge. Some is acquired. Some is passed down from Google themselves. And some is learnt over a few years of figuring out what works… and what doesn’t.

In this SEO guide, we’ll be dropping some SEO tips for small businesses, running through some easy wins that will make a difference. These are all techniques that we know work, and can increase your clicks, customers, and ultimately revenue.

There’ll be a little of our ‘nerdiness’ in places, but in general, we’ll keep it as simple as possible. So… want SEO help for small business? Let’s dive right in…

Check out this video about “3 Easy SEO Hacks to Skyrocket Your Small Business in 2025!”

#1 – Conduct Keyword Research

The first of our SEO tips – think of keyword activity as the basis of SEO. Your customers are typing in terms into search engines, looking for products and services. ‘Wallpaper design Birmingham’ or ‘Wallpaper shop Midlands’, for example. Keyword research is about brainstorming topic seeds related to your business’s product and service, and then generating keywords that you can target in your content. The aim is to rank highly for the terms that your potential customers will be searching for.

Don’t worry, there are plenty of tools for SEO help – with both the brainstorming, and the generation of keywords themselves (think SEO help tools such as Ubersuggest, Ahrefs and Semrush).

Prioritise midtail keywords of 4-6 words, and remember the magic formula – as an SME you should be going for fairly decent traffic volume, allied with low competition (keyword difficulty). Why? Because you are an SME with a growing website, you can make easier SEO kills with lower competition keywords, rather than trying to compete with the big boys.

Get going by making a spreadsheet with your topic seeds, then plan out your targeted keywords, recording search volume and keyword difficulty.

#2 – Write Helpful, Digestible, Long-Form Content

Now you have your keywords, it’s time to get publishing. Google loves in-depth content. For this reason, shoot for blog articles and web pages of between 1,500-3,000 words. But if it’s a wall of text, your reader bails. Make it juicy, visual, and scannable. That’s why we’ve broken this article into numbered sections. You can also use an AI SEO Writer to help draft long-form, keyword-rich articles that stay engaging for readers.

Headings can be a big SEO help. Ensure that posts and pages make use of H1, H2 and H3 headings. List articles such as this, or ‘Top 5s’, ‘Top 6s’ and Top 7s’ work well, as does bolding up sections of your text, to make them stand out.

You should make use of the right visuals to break up text. Images, original ones ideally, are great. And so are homemade infographics.

Also… there is something called Schema mark-up. This is essentially structured data in the form of code, that can help Google understand your content better. You can make use of this by implementing Schema calls such as FAQs – don’t worry about this too much, Schema mark-up is easy to implement via content management systems such as WordPress.

#3 – Optimise, Optimise, Optimise

… Optimise.

Because we can’t say it enough. If you are producing content, as you should do, you need to optimise it in order to get the most SEO help for small business strategies. 

We are talking about article and page text, metadata (meta title and meta description), and URLs. These should be optimised with your keywords, as this helps Google to read you and rank you highly for the search terms you want.

Here is a quick checklist of SEO tips for optimisation:

  • Title tag: Aim for ≤60 characters, keyword front-loaded (“Widget Repair Guide 2025 – Nautilus”).
  • Meta description: Up to 155 characters; with keyword and call‑to‑action included.
  • URL slug: Short, clean, keyword‑rich (e.g. /widget-repair-guide).
  • H2/H3s: Use natural variations of your keyword.
  • Internal links: At least 2–3 from existing blog content.
  • Image ALT text: This describes your images with keywords.

As well as optimising the content you publish, you should also be optimising the existing content you have on your site. Aim for 5 pages a week.

Quick SEO Tips – keep your keyword use consistent, but natural. Don’t ‘crowbar in’ keywords – write the content first, then fit them in where they are most appropriate.

#4 – Work on your site and page speed

Let’s put the bottom line at the top – ultimately, Google has told us that site speed is taken into account in its search rankings.

Basically, a slow site is bad. Users bounce and Google penalises. Leaving SEO aside for a second, it also comes down to user experience – after all, who has the patience to wait around for a site to load?

Not all of our SEO tips for small businesses are ‘DIY’, necessarily. Site speed is related to web design and development. Some of you might not be familiar with the various elements that affect site speed. For this side of SEO, it can be sensible to bring in professional web developers

The Nautilus fast lane to sorting out your site speed looks like this:

  • Audit with a tool such as Google PageSpeed & Lighthouse
  • Compress images when needed and inline above-the-fold  (the part of a web page that is immediately visible) CSS (the style sheet of a web page)
  • Use lazy loading (defers loading of non-critical elements until they are needed) for content below the fold
  • Employ caching plugins and a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for fast, global delivery – if you are unfamiliar, don’t worry, your web developer can advise
  • Consider lightweight frameworks – no bloat

You or Your Web Developer Should:

  1. Run speed tests
  2. Implement quick fixes (e.g. image compression, caching)
  3. Monitor improvements weekly (with tools such as PageSpeed, GTmetrix)

#5 – Go Mobile First

It’s a fact – more searches happen on mobile than on any other device type. This isn’t a new development – mobile actually overtook other device types as far back as 2015.

Plus, Google bots actually crawl mobile-first. And so you must prioritise the mobile version of your site. You can do this with the following SEO tips:

  • Checking mobile performance via Lighthouse
  • Fixing text readability, button spacing, viewport meta tags
  • Ensuring pop‑ups are friendly, not disruptive
  • Using mobile-responsive design; and test properly

It all starts with a mobile audit, followed by making mobile enhancements and ongoing testing to ensure everything is in order.

#6 – Build Smart Backlinks

Backlinks – that is, a link to a page on your website from another website – are accepted as being a big SEO help. Think of them as signalling a ‘vote of confidence’ to Google. But in order to get this SEO boost, you need to get quality backlinks.

There are smart, and slightly less intelligent ways to go around building backlinks. You’ll see them for sale, on everything from online ads to marketplace sites such as People Per Hour and Fiverr. But a word of warning – some of the companies that claim to sell you quality backlinks may actually be placing links on sites that Google isn’t too keen on; these can include suspect addresses on ‘private blog networks’, which have been penalised in the past.

Don’t sweat it – that’s just the worst that could happen. You have plenty of choices when it comes to backlinks. You could build them yourself through outreach. Try providing valuable content – whether that’s an article, infographic, or exclusive interview – to media platforms such as magazines and news provides. In exchange for this offer, they can include a backlink to your site; and this could be worth its weight in ‘SEO gold’.

The key to achieving backlinks is to offer something of genuine value. Chat with relevant bloggers and offer guest posts. Sign up for an email circular called HARO, which can put you in touch with journalists looking for comments on a range of issues. Register for local directories that will happily include your web address in a relevant list for your service or product.

Backlink building takes time, so you might like to call in the expertise of a link building specialist that can also be your SEO guide, or a PR agency. They will also be more attuned to the subtleties of outreach, such as how to approach journalists.

#7 – Increase Your Social Proof

User-generated content also counts towards SEO. The more good reviews online, the better.

If you are a B2B organisation, it is likely that your client testimonials will be found on your website, rather than on a more public platform. But if you are consumer-facing, make it a matter of course to encourage happy customers to leave a review on Google or Facebook. You could also incorporate these reviews onto your website.

Two more SEO tips… Make use of the Review Schema markup to enhance your search listings. This is specifically important for star ratings. It is a way to help Google understand and display your service or product ratings directly on results pages.

And shout your good reviews from the rooftops! You could place a monthly showcase of positive reviews on your site. Not only is it excellent marketing, but there is a good school of thought that it will have a positive impact on your ranking positions, too.

#8 – Optimise for Voice and Visual Search

Why does it matter? Because sales of smart speakers – devices that have integrated virtual assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant and can perform searches using vocal commands as a cue – are on the rise. This is a market that is forecast to reach a value of £26 billion by the year 2032, so really, we shouldn’t ignore it.

You can do this by making use of conversational questions (long-tail keywords, question‑style) in your content, as these tend to be how people will make voice searches. If you are a locally-focused business, ensure ‘near me’ plays a part in your keyword phrases.

Image search is also important, and adding structured image titles and alt tags all helps for Google Lens – Google’s image recognition tool that allows searches to be made from visual cues.

#9 – Get What You Need from Analytics and Reporting

The last of our SEO tips for small businesses? If you aren’t measuring, you are guessing. You need to keep a close eye on your traffic, and your search performance, in order to get where you want to go.

Google Analytics gives you information on visitors to your site, what they look at, how long they stay and where they are from, as well as plenty of other metrics. You can compare your performance over different time periods, which gives you an excellent overview of how your site is performing.

Then there is Google Search Console, which deals specifically with your performance on the world’s most popular search engine. It allows you to drill down into how well your posts and pages are ranking, and provides peace of mind – after all, you want to know that your SEO activities are working.

Think of it as a ‘hack mine’ that allows you to see what works best. Armed with clues for how to get traffic, you will have so much more direction for your SEO strategy.

How’s your website shaping up this year? Find SEO help for small business – reach out to Nautilus for a custom audit, and find out where you can make some simple SEO wins.