SEO hacks for small businesses
- Snazz the Edit
- Sep 26
- 6 min read
Latest trends and actionable strategies for 2025
In an ever evolving digital landscape, small businesses need to adapt their website through a range of challenges to stay competitive, from algorithm changes and AI optimisation (AIO) to social media SEO, paid ads and traditional SEO.
There’s a fine balance between providing relevant data to enable bots to understand the context of what you do through your website and maintaining a natural, relatable human tone of voice. Beyond that, effective SEO also requires knowledge of how to track, analyse and make smart decisions on the data gathered post optimisation.
Designthropology has carved a niche in SEO for small creative businesses, making website designs perform better, informed by data-driven strategies.
This article delves into foundational SEO tips, easy wins, as well as some 2025 trends to be aware of.
There may be a little geekiness in places, but in general, I'll aim to keep it simple for those new to learning SEO to those already familiar with some concepts.
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of optimising your website to improve its visibility in search results, with a focus on Google as the dominant search engine. Optimising for SEO not only helps Google's crawler bots index your page effectively and contextually so it matches the searcher’s intent, but also forms part of a long term strategy that helps your site appear organically week after week without paying for ads.
Why is SEO important?
If you’re not getting enough clicks or eye balls on your website, and not making it easy for customers to find you - you could be leaving a lot of business and revenue on the table, leading potential customers to competitors who are already optimising their websites.
Rankings on page 1 (particularly the top 3 organic results) receive the most clicks. The clicks significantly decrease when on page 2, so it’s more important than ever to implement an SEO strategy so your website appears where it needs to be.
How long does SEO take to work?
Organic SEO can play a significant part in driving long term business growth and discoverability. It can take at least 3-6 months (depending on industry and niche) and other factors to see tangible results.
11 SEO Tips for small business owners
As an SEO strategist at Designthropology, here’s my top general tips I include in executing my comprehensive SEO strategy with clients:
Not all webpages need optimising
First of all decide which pages are your most important pages that visitors will discover you through - think homepage, service page, offer landing pages for keyword optimisation. All pages ideally need to meet basic SEO standards (headings, layout, mobile-responsive) but typically you don’t need to prioritise optimising individual projects, contact or about pages.
Keyword research
Think of broad overarching keywords that describe your service or product that your ideal customers are likely to search for. These will be your seed keywords. By brainstorming topic seeds related to your business’s product and service, you can then generate keywords that you can target in your content.
The aim is to rank highly for the terms that your potential customers will be searching for. Ideally pick keywords with decent traffic volume and low competition. For some niches, low-competition keywords often have tiny volume, while competitive ones are unavoidable.
Long-tail keywords are usually a better bet for small businesses, since they’re more achievable and often bring higher conversion intent. For example, instead of targeting ‘photographer’ (very broad and competitive), you might target ‘affordable wedding photographer in Surrey’.
There are plenty of free and paid tools to help with keyword research and generating keyword ideas. Such as:
Tool Tip: Note SEO tools are not 100% accurate or correlate with each other as they all gather search data differently and data changes frequently - my approach would be to try a few tools and compare them to get a ballpark range of monthly keyword volumes and difficulty scores.
Keep a record of relevant keywords in a spreadsheet, noting monthly search volumes and keyword difficulty scores. Then map them to your priority web pages.
Each page will ideally have one primary target keyword, one secondary keyword, plus a few supporting keywords (be mindful not to use too many to prevent keyword stuffing).
Prioritise above the fold content
According to heatmap data, content above the fold line (content you see on screen before scrolling down a page) consistently gets the most attention and engagement tends to drop further down the page (Mouseflow). Make sure your above the fold section clearly communicates who you are, what you offer and that you have clear navigation and call to actions to lead them towards what you want them to do next.
Prioritise mobile
Since 2019, Google indexes the mobile version of websites. Make sure the layout is responsive and easy to navigate on a small screen. Avoid too many scrolling animations - overstimulating some viewers and weighing down the page. Google can index content inside expandable sections (like accordions or dropdowns), but avoid hiding the most important messaging or critical keywords.
Calls to action on content heavy pages
Make sure to include call to actions every so often, particularly on pages with long form content, requiring lots of scrolling on mobile, so visitors don’t become disengaged and exit the website prematurely.
Optimise for image search
Add descriptive alt tags, human readable file names with keywords separated by hyphens.
Website speed and performance
Using next gen formats like .webp and .avif for images and .webm for video content. Optimal websites load in less than 2 seconds.
Tool tip: Chrome lighthouse is a popular free browser extension tool that you can use to audit mobile and desktop speeds on specific pages.
Build credibility and expertise with backlinks
If you’re a location based business, earning links from local sources, media, services or organisations is like digital word of mouth. Consider guest posting on other reputable websites where there is quality and natural relevance. This not only builds reputation, it gives Google a signal that your site is trustworthy, popular and worth ranking highly on search engine result pages, so much so that other websites are proud to mention your brand.
Consider brand positioning, citations and EEAT signals
Appearing in AI search matters more than ever now with Google AI Overview now appearing at the top of many searches, some including references to websites that you want to be included on. Being clear on your brand messaging is important. What do you want your brand to be known for? Most affordable, best value, award winning? Small brands should focus on EEAT signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Building EEAT signals through reviews, author bios, press mentions, and authoritative content helps increase your chances of being referenced in AI search results and positions you as the go-to expert in your industry.
Include social proof and trust signals
Include testimonials on your website, set up a Google Business Profile (Google Reviews can be cited in AI mentions) or include user generated content to show real customers interacting with your brand service or product.
Get tracking tools in place and submit a sitemap
If you aren’t measuring, you are guessing. You need to keep a close eye on your traffic, and search performance in order to get where you want to go.
Free tools to get started with measuring your SEO efforts include:
Create an account on Google Search Console - it provides insights on how well pages and content is performing, keywords ranked for and more.
Once you’ve optimised your webpages, it’s best practice to submit a sitemap via search console - it's an easy step and quick win, providing valuable data to Google about how your website is structured especially if you have many pages.
Create a Google Analytics 4 account - use this to track form submissions, see where visitors come from, what they look at, how long they stay and where from - filtering from country down to more granular detail in towns and cities.
Conclusion
In 2025 and beyond, small businesses can’t afford to ignore SEO. Websites remain a vital marketing tool for businesses, where success comes from focusing on the essentials: optimising high-value pages, using smart keyword research, improving speed and mobile experience, and building trust through reviews, backlinks, and clear brand positioning.
With AI-driven search shaping visibility, being seen as credible and authoritative matters more than ever.
By combining data-driven SEO with authentic storytelling, small businesses can rise above competitors, attract the right audience, and create sustainable long-term growth online.
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