The world of SEO, search engine optimization, can be daunting for small business owners who are struggling to manage so many facets of their business all at once. Optimizing your website to get found by Google and other search engines is not something that you can do once, set it and forget it. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint — adding new content and making continual improvements over time will add up to help your website achieve optimal positions in search engine results. Here are 15 must-know SEO tips and tricks for small business owners.

Content Marketing

1. Update your website regularly

Google loves fresh, relevant content. This is why having a blog as part of your website can give you a big boost in SEO. How often you should update depends on your industry, how much news you have to share, and how much time you have to write new content. Aim to write a new blog post at least once a week to start. As you get the hang of it, you can post more frequently, but keep in mind: quality over quantity.

2. Content is king!

You may have seen some blogs that feature mostly pictures, and perhaps a line or two of text, with an image source or caption. Pictures are great for illustrating a point but pictures alone can’t tell the whole story. A blog post is your chance to really position yourself as an expert in your field. You can add much more information than in a Facebook post or a tweet, so shoot for at least 250-300 words per post. Some industry experts say that 1,500 words is an ideal length for a blog post, although the length of your post depends on the topic. Be sure to break up your content into short, easy-to-read paragraphs. Huge chunks of text are great for novels, but can be hard to read on a computer screen.

3. Be relevant and unique

Be sure to create original content that is relevant to your industry. Just like in high school, plagiarism is a big no-no. Google doesn’t like to see duplicate content, so please don’t copy and paste content from elsewhere to your own site. If you want to reference a quote or snippet of content, credit it appropriately, and link back the the original source where you found it.

On Page Factors, Meet Search Engine Results

4. Page titles

Title tags (the purple text in the search engine results pictured above) are one of the most important factors in SEO, so be sure to write them with search engines AND users in mind. Google and other search engines want to provide users with the most relevant search results, so use your title tags to help inform this. Title tags should include relevant keyword phrases that describe what your page is about. Brevity is key though — keep it under 65-70 characters in length. Any longer and your title tags will get abbreviated when they appear in search engine results.

5. Meta descriptions

Your page’s meta description helps inform both search engines and possible visitors to your website what your page is about. Write relevant meta descriptions, and it is likely Google will use them for the snippets that show when your page appears in search engine results. (In the image above, the meta description is the two lines of text at the bottom.) Include keywords that accurately summarize what your page is about, but keep it under 155 characters in length.

6. Google Authorship

Google loves to toot its own horn, which is why setting up Google Authorship can be an easy way to improve your status and rankings. In the search results example above, Cyrus Shepard has linked his posts on Moz to his Google+ profile. Google no longer shows author profiles in the search results, but by setting up Google Authorship, you’re letting Google know that all of the content you write, whether it’s on your own blog or for another website, came from the same person. It helps Google see you as an expert on a subject.

7. WordPress SEO by Yoast

If you use WordPress to run your website or blog, the plugin WordPress SEO by Yoast is a handy tool to check your on-page SEO factors before you publish. Choose a focus keyword to build your post around. Create an optimized SEO title tag and meta description, and see a snippet preview of how your page might appear in search results. You’ll also get a handy SEO button that will change colors as you develop your content. Red means you’ve still got some improvement to do. Yellow means you’re on your way, and green means you’ve created a great piece of content that search engines are likely to love!

Link Love

8. Outbound linking

Share the link love, and link to relevant news articles and websites in your industry when it makes sense to include them in your posts. When linking to other websites, set your link to open in a new browser tab or window.

9. To thine own self be true

Link back to your own pages and posts where appropriate. Internal linking not only helps users find additional relevant content on your website (and gives them a reason to stay on your site longer!), it also helps search engine spiders to crawl your site. When linking internally, your links should open within the same browser or window.

10. Don’t be a spammer

If it feels like spam, it probably is. Google is constantly improving its algorithms and cracking down on spammy link practices. Even things that might have been common place a few years ago, like guest blogging, are on the decline as spammers have turned something that started off as a legitimate way to build links back to your website into something that often feels, well, icky. Guest blogging and commenting on other blogs can still be okay of course, but relevance and quality are key.

Paint a Picture: Images

11. Naming your images

Images are one easy way for small business owners to boost their SEO, and it all starts with how you name your images. Use descriptive keywords in your image names. Instead of leaving your files named with a string of auto-generated letters and numbers, give them a name that will help real people AND search engines know what the image shows. Example:

Bad image name: DSC12345.jpg
Good image name: cute-floral-print-Betsey-Johnson-dress.jpg

12. Image alt text and title text

Alt text and image titles offer another way to help both users and search engine spiders understand what your pictures are about. You may have noticed that on some websites if you hover over an image with your mouse, a box of descriptive text pops up. Be sure to fill out your alt text and titles when uploading images to your site. Include a short yet relevant descriptive blurb to let people know what your image is about.

13. Optimize your image file size

Giant image files can slow down your website, and if there is one thing both users and search engines hate, it’s websites that take forever to load! While many content management systems have a way to shrink the display size of your images, it’s best to optimize your image files before you even upload them to your site. Resize your images to be no wider than the width of your blog or website pages. If your blog width is set to 600 pixels, make all of your images no wider than that. Next, save your images in an optimized format. Many photo editing programs (I use IrfanView on PC, and Pixelmator on Mac) offer a “Save for Web” feature to optimize the file size. Your images will load faster, creating happy website visitors!

14. Create sharable images

Pinterest can be a great referral source of website traffic. Creating images for Pinterest is a bit different than the images you’ll use elsewhere on the web. Pinterest users love images that also feature words. (Bonus points for infographics!) Images that are taller than they are wide perform well on Pinterest because of the scrolling view that Pinterest provides. Not a photo wiz? No problem — a friend recently introduced me to a handy online tool called Canva. I used it to create the image at the very top of this post, which you can bet I will be pinning!

15. Don’t hide behind images

Images are important, but don’t hide all of your content inside one! Search engine spiders can’t read text that is hidden inside an image the way that a human eye can. If you want to create a visual image with text for Pinterest, be sure to write the related text in the body of your page as well.

Follow these 15 SEO tips and you’ll be off to a great start!

15 SEO Tips and Tricks for Small Businesses