In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial for small businesses. Whether you’re just starting out or have been in business for years, search engine optimization (SEO) can help your company get noticed by potential customers. The good news? You don’t need to be an SEO expert to make a big impact. Here’s a guide to simple SEO tasks you can tackle, categorized by the time they take and how often you should do them. Contents Quick Wins: 5-30 Minute SEO Tasks Claim Your Google Business Profile (Once) Head to Google Business Profile and claim your business. Fill out all the details, including your address, phone number, website, and business hours. This helps your business appear in local search results and Google Maps. Optimize Your Page Titles and Meta Descriptions (Once or Periodically) Review your website’s pages and ensure each has a unique, keyword-rich title and meta description. Tools like Yoast SEO (for WordPress) can help you craft these. Add Alt Text to Images (Once or Periodically) Go through your website and add descriptive alt text to images. This improves accessibility and helps search engines understand your content. Submit Your Website to Search Engines (Once) Use tools like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap. This ensures search engines can crawl and index your site. Check Your Website’s Mobile-Friendliness (Once) Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure your site looks great on mobile devices. If it doesn’t, consider updating your design. Moderate Effort: 1 to 2-Hour SEO Tasks Perform Keyword Research (Once or Periodically) Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO strategy. It helps you understand what your potential customers are searching for and how you can tailor your content to meet their needs. For most businesses, it’s wise to pick a specific, but high volume (and likely high competition) primary keyword for your home page, with more specific and long-tail keywords the deeper you get into your site. Basic Keyword-to-Website Page Assignment Example Let’s say we’re assigning keywords to pages of a plumber’s website, whose service area is the greater Atlanta area. A plumber would have multiple services they offer, and likely want to market to specific neighborhoods. In this example, as a local service business, here’s a basic setup for some of the plumber’s pages to give you an idea: Home Page (ex. plumberinatlanta.com): Primary Keyword: “Plumber in Atlanta” Drain Cleaning Page (ex. plumberinatlanta.com/services/drain-cleaning/): Primary Keyword: “Drain Cleaning Service in Atlanta” Clogged Toilets Page (ex. plumberinatlanta.com/services/clogged-toilets/): Primary Keyword: “Clogged Toilet Service in Atlanta” Keyword Research Tools: Find the Right Keywords for Your Business So, where do you begin? This is where the tools of the SEO trade start to come into your life. Knowing how a few of these tools work is highly recommended, so that you can get what you need and learn which tool gets you what you want to see, faster, and more accurately. You can also use one tool to sort of validify the data you get from another. Naturally, there are about a million tools, ranging from the most basic of the basic, to the confusingly complex. Here are some of the best tools—both free and paid—that can help you uncover valuable keywords: Free Keyword Research Tools Google Keyword Planner: Discover keywords with search volume and competition data. Super basic stuff, but it can even give you seasonality trends per month of the year. This one is a must-know. Try it here. Ubersuggest: Get keyword suggestions, SEO difficulty, and content ideas. Try it here. AnswerThePublic: Visualize search queries and generate content ideas. Try it here. Google Trends: Identify trending keywords and topics. This is generally a great place to look for hot topics to write blog posts or long-form content that’s often news-worthy, which can get you some links. Try it here. Paid Keyword Research Tools SEMrush: My go-to, comprehensive SEO tool for keyword research and competitor analysis. There’s a lot more to SEMrush than that, but its keyword research and competitive analysis suites are some of the industry’s best – and at a lower cost than most of the other paid platforms. Ahrefs: An industry standard. Advanced tool for keyword and mostly known for their backlink analysis. Learn more. Moz Keyword Explorer: Offers keyword suggestions and a priority score. Moz used to be the top dog in the early days, but they’ve since declined and not kept up in a lot of ways – particularly the design and functionality of their platform. Learn more. Quick Wins: 5-30 Minute SEO Tasks Tips for Effective Keyword Research Focus a lot of your effort on finding on long-tail keywords for your sub-pages (e.g., “best coffee shop in Denver”) for easier rankings early on. Once you’ve gained some traction and authority in the space for these lower competition words and phrases, you’ll have an easier time ranking for the big, lofty, broad keyword on your homepage. Analyze competitors’ keywords using tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs. You can also use your eyeballs to see what’s in the headings in each of their pages, or the words in their website’s main navigation are usually a good indication of what they’re targeting and prioritizing. Prioritize search intent (informational, transactional, etc.) when selecting keywords. You want to answer the right question (or solve the right problem) for the right person, at the right time in their journey. Use local keywords (e.g., “plumber in Atlanta”) to attract nearby customers, if appropriate. Create or Update Your “About Us” Page (Once / As Needed) Write a compelling “About Us” page that includes your target keywords and tells your story. This builds trust and improves your SEO. Some reasons you might update this more than once, outside of a website redesign, would be to add key staff photos and bios if desired, or to share some community event your company recently took part in, possibly to post awards, etc. Claim and Optimize Local Listings (Once) Beyond Google, claim your business on platforms like Yelp, Bing