With the rise of the digital revolution, people and companies have been doing business more online. According to data, over 73% of companies in the USA have an online presence. Internationally, 64% of the companies have an online presence of some sort. In this regard, small online businesses are not that different.
In 2025, there are over eleven million businesses with a website. This means only one thing: that everybody needs to handle SEO for small businesses and, with it, content marketing is something that.
If you run a small online business and desire to expand it, or even make it an international success, learning more about content marketing and SEO for small businesses is essential. By applying the fundamentals of SEO for small businesses, you will increase lead generation by up to 500%. By understanding how content marketing works, you will manage to put your small online business ahead of your competition.
Some claim that SEO is dead, i.e., that a small online business doesn’t stand a chance on the international market without paid ads. Moreover, with the dawn of AI, the way we surf the internet has changed. In other words, according to them, SEO is finished.
Our advice is not to listen much to such voices. Suppose you want to find out more about the importance of SEO for small businesses in 2025. In that case, you can read our articles on the best SEO practices for small businesses, as well as what to do and what to avoid in content marketing and SEO for small businesses.
In what follows, you will learn some fundamental strategies that you need to apply in SEO for your small online business. Read them, think them through, and tell us what you consider in the comment section.
Start with Buyer Intent
To create the best content-marketing strategy, you must first understand who your target audience is. Who are the people you address with your business? What do they want? What is the buyer’s intent?
Knowing this, you can easily develop a content marketing strategy that will map your customer journey from the moment he or she becomes aware of a certain problem to the moment he or she considers purchasing your product.
Besides that, knowing the buyer’s intent helps you draw a map of what your online content will include. You will know what and how to write because you will know to whom you are writing. Content marketing is crucial for your small online business’s success. That’s why it is important to do it properly.
Understanding your buyer’s intent will also help you create a keyword strategy. In other words, you will know better which words and phrases to use in your content. This is central for your business when working on SEO for small businesses.
The right keywords may place your website on the first page of a Google search. The wrong keywords will ensure that your website will never be found by the right people.
Focus on Content That’s Low Effort but High Impact
SEO for small businesses is a long-term process. You will not achieve results overnight. That’s why after you have chosen the keywords on which you will build your SEO strategy, it’s time to consider the type of content you will publish.
What goes online under your brand affects who finds your business and what they will think about it. That’s why, at this stage, focus on content that is low on effort but high on impact.
This is probably the best way to use content marketing to your advantage. It’s a way in which you ensure that your SEO for small businesses will reap the results that you were after all along.
What kind of content should you focus on at this stage of your small online business? Focus of content that’s evergreen. It’s the type of content that provides information to the public that is useful and easy to understand.
How-to articles, listicles, case studies, and FAQs—these are examples of online content that is low effort and high impact. It’s low effort because crafting quality content shouldn’t take a lot of time. A practical, evergreen article would take you just two or three days to write, edit, and publish (if you have expertise on the subject), but the value it brings to your small online business will be felt for years to come.
Just with a Google search and the right keywords in the query, a potential client may find your small online business. He or she, impressed and persuaded by your online content, will want to contact you for your services. This is why evergreen content is so valuable when it comes to SEO for small businesses. Long-term, you can thrive, survive, and fail in the business world based on the low-effort, high-impact content that you post.
The Basics of On-Page SEO
If you don’t know much about technical SEO, now it’s the time to learn. As the owner of a small online business, you need to understand it. This is crucial. SEO for small businesses isn’t just about using the right keywords but knowing where to place them on the page. That’s why it is called “on-page SEO,” and it is exactly that which puts some pages ahead of others in search results.
As an entrepreneur, you will have to understand a couple of technical notions about SEO for small businesses.
Here are some notions that you should familiarize yourself with, right now, if you want your small online business to thrive.
Title
The title is the first thing that Google will recognize on your page. While many times the title of a webpage is often identical to the headline, understand that they are not the same.
The headline is simply the opening phrase or sentence on a page. It’s the title of your article
“How to Grow Your Business in Just Three Weeks”
“Three Mail Strategies to Boost Your Small Online Business”
“The Secrets to Success in Online Business”
These are examples of headlines that may appear on a webpage. On the other hand, a title is more technical. If you inspect the code of any webpage, you will, at one point, find a sequence that starts with <title> followed by a string of words (usually identical to the headline) and ends in </title>
This sequence is what matters for your SEO efforts. The main keyword needs to be included here. And while most times this is the case, because the headline includes it and the headline is identical to the title, sometimes, your title will differ from the headline.
Regardless of what the headline contains, the title always needs to include the keyword that you are focusing your SEO for small businesses efforts on.
Specialists claim that the title shouldn’t be longer than 65 words. That’s why it is a good idea that if your headline contains more words, you can simply modify the title to contain 65 words or fewer.
Metadescriptions
The metadescription is a short piece of text that describes what the webpage is about. It often appears in the search queries under the title of the page.
While some argue that the metadescription doesn’t affect SEO, some argue that it still matters. A good metadescription tells Google what the piece of content is about. That’s why it may put your webpage ahead of others without one.
Never forget to add your keyword in the metadescription. Without it, Google will not understand who would be interested in the webpage.
You can add a metadescription in the webpage’s code. In the <Head> section of the HTML code, introduce the function <Meta>, followed by a short 50-character description, and end with a </meta>. If you use WordPress to upload your content, then a special section for it can be found there.
H Tags
Your headline has a different font size than the rest of your content. The same is the case for sub-headlines. This is done by changing the size of the text using the <H> function.
Often, the headline has the biggest font size available <H1>. It is then followed by the sub-headlines that come with a <H2> or a <H3> size. The rest of the text comes in, of course, smaller fonts.
Regarding SEO for small businesses, what you place in various places on a webpage matters. To rank higher in search engines, it is important to place the main keyword in the main headline of the webpage. Also, if the content contains subheadlines, you should place the main keyword in at least one. Of course, last but not least, your main keyword must appear in the main text. At least once, it must show in the first paragraph, and then it should make up 2-3% of the whole text.
Internal Linking
One overlooked SEO strategy is internal linking. You need to help Google’s spiders crawl your website better. How can you do it better than on your website’s pages to link to other webpages?
This allows Google to understand what your website is about and which keywords it should use to rank your content.
There is evidence that the more complex the internal linking web is, the more authority Google gives to your website. That’s why we recommend you link to other webpages of your website often. How often? At least once on each newly published article and at most three times in an article.
Remember that the anchor text matters a lot in this process. If you want to link back to an article titled “Best SEO Practices for Small Online Businesses,” the anchor text on the newly published article should be related to the content. Your anchor text should be “SEO for small businesses” or “Small online business.”
When you create an anchor text, it shouldn’t be a simple “Click here” but a well-developed description relevant to the topic. Search engines give more value to such content, and potential clients will be more inclined to click on that text.
Distribution & Amplification
Once you are done with the on-page SEO for your small online business, it’s time to think about how more people will find out about your website.
Content has the magical property of amplifying. The more exposure it gets, the more people find your content. The more people find your content, the better ranking it will get on Google and other search engines. The result? Even more exposure.
This is the intersection between an inspiring content marketing strategy and SEO best practices for small businesses.
How can you better distribute your content once you have it on your website? What will make people revisit again and recommend your website to others?
We want to make a couple of points about distribution and amplification. If you don’t agree, discuss with us different (alternative) content marketing strategies for small online businesses.
Share your articles with your newsletter lists. If you didn’t know already, you should offer subscription options for potential clients. What you do is that in exchange for their emails, they will receive something in return. That priceless thing that they will be receiving can be the content that you are sharing online.
This is a great strategy to remain relevant to your target audience. Many people still receive their news via email. Use it to your advantage and send the latest articles to your readers. They might even forward your articles to someone else.
Create partnerships
Another great way to make your voice heard, gain new followers, and improve your SEO for small businesses is through strategic partnerships. How can you go about it? You can start by finding people who are offering guest posting possibilities. This means that they let others publish content on their websites.
Why is this relevant to you and your small online business? Two important ways in which such a partnership helps you.
- You will get more exposure. Often, the deal is that you post on someone else’s website, and, in return, you receive a backlink to your website. This will get you more visitors.
- That backlink is a treasure from an SEO perspective. By receiving a backlink, you are telling Google that other people are considering your opinion, i.e., you are an authority in Google’s eyes. If there is one strategy for SEO for small businesses that will certainly help you rank higher in Google, it is this one.
Get listed on local directories
This option still holds for small online businesses, and Expose Ninja has proven it. If you are running a small online business—or a small business in general—it is wise to list it on every local directory you can find.
Yes, Google considers directory listings as spammy for websites and international businesses. However, when it comes to local, it is wise to find every directory and list your business on it.
You can start it by registering your business on Google’s Business Profile. Also, using Google, you can find the most relevant local directories on which you can add your small online business.
Repurposing
One other way in which you can redistribute and amplify your online content is by repurposing it. What does this entail?
Take your latest published online article and create a Facebook post about it. Also, if you have a LinkedIn account, don’t be shy about promoting it there. Instagram can still be a great way to promote your online content, especially if you like telling a story. For your Facebook or Instagram account, you may create an intriguing infographic. If you are on Quora.com, you can send your articles as links in the answer.
There are many ways in which you can repurpose a piece of content. Sometimes, creativity can take you a long way upfront.
Measuring What Matters
Now that you have your content online and have done every SEO procedure for small businesses, it’s time to measure your performance. How will you do that? There are a couple of tools that you will need on your entrepreneurial journey.
For starters, you cannot run a website without Google Analytics. It’s free to use, and it will give you all the KPIs that you need to know.
Another one, also part of the Google family, is Google Console; it will give you all the relevant data that you need about your website and how it performs on the internet.
Another piece of advice that we want to offer you regarding measuring is to subscribe to SEMrush or HubSpot and take advantage of their numerous tools. Which one is best for you depends on your goals. However, with one day of research, you can conclude which of the two would be the better fit for your small online business.
Although some like to claim that SEO is dead, it has never been more alive. The rise of artificial intelligence has transformed SEO for small businesses into a craft that requires more time and attention from you, the ambitious entrepreneur.
In this article, you have been presented with a couple of aspects that you need to know before you get started on your journey. Of course, content marketing and SEO for small businesses require constant effort. You will have to learn and collaborate with others to get your website more popular and turn your business idea into a real success.
For starters, you can check our articles on the subject. Content marketing and SEO for small businesses have been covered in various articles on our website. Another great resource that can get you started with SEO is the content on the topic found on Google’s academy.
By now, you have a very general idea of what SEO for small businesses entails, but never forget that before writing to a machine, you need to write to people. Never forget that.
