The Ultimate SEO Guide For Small Businesses in London

Why SEO Matters For Small Businesses In London?

The primary goal of SEO is to get more visitors to your website organically, i-e without spending anything on the ads. How you use that traffic in your favor depends on your business type.

You might be an e-commerce store selling physical products or a small company providing services in a specific city like London. In case of e-commerce store, you’d need traffic to convert for sales and for services business, the website should be optimised for generating more leads which ultimately then result in sales.

SEO is a broad term, that covers a huge scale of methods that could be implemented. But to create an effective strategy, one should know which practices are best for what businesses, because every business has different goals and different areas to succeed in.

Although SEO is cheaper than ads, a waste of time and resources is still a loss, no matter how big or small. That is why we should always try to be careful right from the start. The strategies meant for big businesses, if applied to small ones, will not give productive results and vice versa. Read this post local SEO vs general SEO to decide which approach is best for your business.

Among many marketing strategies, SEO is the best choice for small businesses in London, considering the inflation rate and the need for sustainability in the fast paced environment of the city. 

There are two strong reasons, first, as we know SEO is cheaper, which means small businesses don’t have to worry that much about budget. Second is the strong trend of searching for local businesses in London as the volume of searches for local businesses in London is high. Without volume, there is no reason to do SEO. 

Let me clarify with an example. In villages, people don’t usually search for wedding planners. So if you provide wedding planning services in that area, there are hardly any online searches related to your expertise, which means no traffic to your website.

Types of Businesses

The first thing you have to do is clarify what type of business you want to grow and what its potential and limitations are. Because mostly, the businesses that want to grow only in London provide their services in that area only and have a physical presence as well. For such types of businesses, Local SEO services should always be the priority. 

If you have a business that can provide services regardless of location, you don’t need to prioritise local SEO.

The general type of SEO can be implemented on any business, regardless of whether they provide services physically or remotely in a targeted area. For example, if someone is searching for a virtual coach in London. The customers don’t need to locate its address, they just want someone who gives coaching services and is from London. So adding Google My Business is not the main concern here, which plays a major part in Local SEO. 

key Elements of SEO For Small Businesses

I suppose you already know the basic practices of SEO. If you don’t, head over to (What is search engine optimisation or SEO)[Link]. This guide will discuss how SEO can be adjusted especially for small businesses in London. 

If you are unsure that you have the time or ideas to implement all these SEO best practices, it is best to avail these SEO services from an expert in the field.

Best Type Of Keyword Research

The keyword research saves small businesses from contesting with big companies. The short tail keywords have high search volume, and ranking on them can get massive traffic. But seeing their potential, many big companies are already competing with each other. They have limitless budgets, as compared to small businesses. 

So trying to rank on these keywords can be hard, time taking and would require significant budget, which normally wouldn’t be profitable for small businesses.

On the other hand, long tail keywords, although have lower search volume if compared. But their benefits cannot be ignored when they are relevant to your business in London. Plenty of long tail keywords when grouped together can have pretty good search volume which we can use to create content and target the potential customers.  

Users Interests:

Optimised keyword research also helps you find out interests of the users depending upon the intent of the keyword. So to save the resources and get maximum returns you present the customers with what you have to offer by aligning it with their interests.

Keyword research matters a lot for small businesses in London because it will let us find the exact terms people are searching on the internet related to your businesses. What are their demands, what type of information they are looking for? A profound keyword research lets you understand your target audience which can help you in the offline world as well.  

Content:

Creating content is a great way to utilize those keywords and let the search engine know that we bring the required expertise in the relevant topic.
 
You need to focus on both transactional and informational keywords. Informational keywords may not directly benefit your business but it helps Google understand that you create value for the users. And who knows the user that lands on that informational page might end up availing the services/products you have to offer. Afterall, it all starts with awareness, sin’t it?

Google values the content which follows the E-E-A-T formula. And if you have even some years of experience, you can create content, that helps solve real problems of real people you come in contact with. 

Backlinks:

Backlinks that are created need to be diverse in terms of keywords, platforms, etc. Meaning it isn’t a good idea to have most of the backlinks from same sites or on same anchor texts. Anchor texts should be distributed properly to avoid getting hit by Google.

Quality backlinks for the small business websites mean some of them should be from the area that the business is primarily targeting. It is a good practice to analyse your competitors’ backlinks profile using tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, MozPro, etc. After analysis you will have the clear idea of what kind of backlinks you need to have in order beat your competitors considering all other SEO factors have been properly managed.