Small businesses don’t have the resources that larger companies have. They don’t have an in-house team of content marketers and social media experts, which means it’s up to you to take on those responsibilities. 

You need to know how and when to implement SEO best practices so that your website is found by potential customers searching for services like yours. There are many tools that can help you monitor your website’s performance, track keywords and phrases, check backlinks, and more. 

These tools aren’t just beneficial for people with in-depth knowledge of SEO; they’re helpful for anyone who owns a business or is thinking about starting one. 

Read on to learn about the 5 best SEO tools for small businesses and why you should use them.

What Does SEO Have to Do With Your Small Business?

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty of why your business needs SEO, let’s take a look at what it actually is. Digital marketers have a bunch of different terms for things, so it’s best to have a clear idea of what everything means first. 

SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization,” which means that you have a bunch of strategies that help your business rank higher in search results. 

Search engine optimization is the process of improving your website so that it appears higher in search engine results when someone types in a related keyword or phrase. 

For example, if you own an ice cream shop in New York City, you might want your website to show up when someone types “ice cream shops in New York City.”

So, Why Do You Need SEO For Your Small Business?

Now that we know what SEO is and what it does, let’s take a look at why your small business needs it. It’s actually a great way to get your name out there and bring in extra customers. 

Let’s imagine that you own a kids’ clothing store. Customers come in, find exactly what they’re looking for, and leave. What if you could bring more customers into the shop ? 

A higher search ranking would help you do just that. Let’s say you have a really popular ice cream shop. You could bring in customers who would never have found you otherwise. 

SEO helps businesses of all sizes reach a wider audience and bring in more customers, which is great for businesses of all sizes. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you may have to translate your offerings for people who don’t live nearby, and SEO can help you do that. It also helps you stay ahead of your competition. 

If you want to stay relevant, you need to make sure that you’re visible online, or you could miss out on a lot of potential customers.

How Can You Get SEO for Your Small Business?

Now that you know why your business needs SEO, let’s talk about how to get it. You’re probably wondering if it’s something you can do yourself or if you’ll have to hire a professional to do it for you. 

Luckily, you can do it yourself with just a few tools. If you have a website, you’ve already taken the first steps towards getting SEO for your small business. If you don’t, you’ll need to get one set up as soon as possible. Your website is the hub of your marketing efforts. 

There are plenty of tools out there that can help you get SEO for your small business. Some of them are free, some of them will cost you a few dollars per month, and some of them have premium plans that come with added benefits like more help from an expert.

What You Should Know About SEO

SEO is dynamic. The algorithms that govern Google’s search engine change frequently and unpredictably. 

What works one month may not work the next. This means that optimizing your site requires patience and a willingness to try new things when what you’re doing now stops working. 

You don’t need to be an expert in SEO to get your website to appear on the first page of Google’s search results. But you do need to be knowledgeable enough to understand what works and what doesn’t. 

If you don’t have a basic understanding of SEO, then you’re putting your website at a disadvantage. 

And with that being said, in order for you to properly optimize your website, you need to know the basics of how Google’s search engine works.

How to Achieve Great Results with SEO?

Google’s algorithm for ranking websites is complex, but there are a few easy ways to improve your SEO. These include : 

• Keyword research : Before you even begin to write a single blog post or create a website, you need to do a little research and find out which keywords you want to focus on. This step is extremely important because it can determine whether or not your website gets found in search engines like Google or Bing in the first place. 
• Website structure : Your website’s design and layout play a big part in your SEO ranking. In fact, they’re so important they could mean the difference between your website ranking in the first couple of pages of Google or not being found at all! 
• Content : The content you publish on your website is critical in determining your SEO success. If you write posts that are well-researched, with meta description and on-page SEO, interesting, and relevant to your audience, then Google will see you as an authority in your niche. 
• Links : Backlinks are the links other people post on their websites that point to your website. They’re one of the most important factors in determining whether or not Google will rank you high in their search engine results. By the way, be careful about your possible broken links. 

SEMrush

SEMrush is a comprehensive SEO tool that allows you to monitor your website’s performance, track keyword rankings, and optimize your site for better search engine rankings. The tool has a free version as well as paid versions, but the free version is very robust and includes many of the features that a small business owner would need. 

The free version of SEMrush allows you to : 

• Track organic and paid search performance for 1 website and 25 keywords : Track organic and paid search performance for up to 5 social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• Monitor your brand and competitors : Track organic and paid search for your company name and other related keywords, with the option to view your results in a graph or table. 
• Get estimated traffic numbers for your keywords : Check your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) metrics, including your website’s URL, page load time, your top competitors’ URLs, your backlinks, and your anchor text.
• Easily view your website’s page load times and see how long they take to load : Create projects to track keywords, websites, social media pages, and blogs.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most basic SEO tools, but it’s also one of the most important ones. This tool allows you to track website traffic (and where it’s coming from), monitor your conversion rates, and see how long customers on average are staying on your site. 

You should be using Google Analytics to track your website and see how it performs. But if you’re only using it as a basic tool, you’re not getting all of the benefits. If you use basic Google Analytics, you’re not going to be able to : 

• See where your traffic is coming from. You’ll be able to see how many visitors you have, but you won’t be able to break that down by source, like where they found your website, if they came from a particular link, or what search engine they used.
• Determine whether your customers are converting. If you have eCommerce or you sell your products or services online, you want to know if your customers are buying from you, and how many are buying. Google Analytics can tell you that so you know what you need to do to improve your sales.
• See how long your customers are staying on your website. You can use this information to see if you need to make any changes to the way you’re presenting your information. 

If customers are staying longer on your website, that’s a good sign. You can use this data to see where visitors are clicking away, too. That might tell you what information they’re looking for that you’re not providing.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool allows you to plug in a keyword to see how many people are searching for it monthly, and the competition level for that keyword. This is another SEO tool that you should be using for all of your marketing efforts. You can use this tool to : 

• Find keywords to target for your content. If you’re writing blog posts for your website, you want to make sure you’re writing about topics that people are searching for. 

Using the keyword tool can help you find the best and most popular keywords to write about, so you can get more traffic to your website.

• See the competition level. You want to make sure the keywords you’re targeting are ones that you can rank for. If you’re going after keywords with a high competition level, you’re not going to be able to rank well for those terms.
• See how many people are searching for a particular keyword. Knowing how many people search for a term each month can help you decide if that’s a keyword you want to go after or not. 

It can also help you decide how many articles to write about that keyword and what order to put them in. You may want to create more than one article about a popular keyword if you can’t fit everything you want to say into one post.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that allows users to optimize the title, the description, and the URLs of their posts. Though the tool may seem basic, it has been proven to have a significant impact on SEO. Yoast SEO is a free SEO tool that allows you to : 

• Improve your on-page SEO. Yoast SEO allows you to input the title, description, and URL for each of your posts. It then checks your post for SEO issues and gives you a green, yellow, or red light next to the post title to let you know if you need to edit the title or description.

Yoast SEO also allows you to check your page load speed, create Google Search Console projects, and shows you the grade for the page you’re currently on, letting you know if it’s optimized for SEO or not.

• Improve your SEO for Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Yoast SEO works for all three search engines, so you don’t have to switch between SEO tools. It allows you to fully optimize your website for the best SEO possible so that people find you when they search for a term related to your business or service.
• Improve your SEO for social media. Yoast SEO allows you to optimize your social media posts for the best SEO possible. You can create posts with the best titles and descriptions and ensure they’re optimized so they’re easily discoverable on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Moz Pro

Moz Pro is another comprehensive SEO tool that allows you to monitor your website’s performance, track keyword rankings, and optimize your site for better search engine rankings. 

The tool has a free version as well as paid versions, but the free version is very robust and includes many of the features that a small business owner would need. 

Moz Pro allows you to : 

• Track organic and paid search performance for 1 website and 25 keywords : Track organic and paid search performance for up to 5 social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
• Monitor your brand and competitors : Track organic and paid search for your company name and other related keywords, with the option to view your results in a graph or table.
• Get estimated traffic numbers for your keywords : Check your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) metrics, including your website’s URL, page load time, your top competitors’ URLs, your backlinks, and your anchor text.
• Easily view your website’s page load times and see how long they take to load : Create projects to track keywords, websites, social media pages, and blogs.