SEO 101 for Busy Business Owners can take a lot of time or very little time, depending on the results you want and how deeply involved you choose to be. This article walks through the foundational SEO concepts busy business owners need to understand, no matter how hands-on they plan to be.
The fastest and easiest path is to hire an agency to help maximize organic results and, if budget allows, have them or someone else handle paid ads.
But you do not have to follow that path.
We’ve written this article to give you the major and foundational steps you must consider implementing if you want to have any type of success with whatever level of SEO effort you decide to put into your business.
Before we get into these steps, it’s important to realize that Google, still the king of the search engine, has been very clear about what they value.
They summarize it as E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Your website content should be written from the perspective of EEAT and designed to answer the real questions people have about you, your business, and whether you are someone they can trust.
With that as the backdrop, here are the major steps, listed in order of priority.
(1) Realize that SEO is an ongoing effort
This is where many business owners get tripped up and it’s why it’s listed first.
Search engines favor active websites. That means sites that are updated, improved, and cared for over time. Maximizing SEO is not a one-and-done project, especially if you consider your competitors will be enhancing their websites as well.
Updates and improvements include things like periodically redesigning your website, refreshing and expanding content, and consistently adding new material that reflects your experience and expertise.
Yeah, this takes some time. But it is usually far more manageable than people expect, especially when broken into small, consistent actions.
And the results over time will be worth it.
(2) Develop a deep understanding of your ideal client
This is foundational not only for SEO, but for your entire business.
All of your website content should reflect what your ideal client wants, needs, fears, and is trying to solve.
When this is clear, everything else becomes easier, from the offers you create to the content you write.
This understanding naturally becomes the source of your keywords, so you don’t have to guess what people might search for. You are answering the questions they already have.
From a business perspective, this also helps you develop products and services that people actually want, instead of hoping something sticks.
(3) Have your mission, vision, and core values clearly spelled out
People knowing you builds trust.
And when the right people find you, they should quickly know whether you are someone they want to work with or not. That is a good thing, even if it disqualifies some visitors.
Hint: Your About page is often the second most visited page on a website. When someone hears about you and searches for your name or business, that page frequently appears high in the search results.
So don't treat it as an afterthought.
And the good thing is, once you’ve got it, you rarely need to make changes - it becomes solid, evergreen content.
(4) As Donald Miller says, make sure your site passes the grunt test
Imagine a grunting caveman surfing the web and landing on your website.
You have only a few seconds to communicate what matters. How would you do it?
At a minimum, they should be able to quickly answer:
- What do you do?
- Is this for me?
- What is my next step if I want to learn more?
Years ago, one of my colleagues put it this way: “For our customers, we should put the cookies on the lower shelf.”
Make things easy.
When you do that, you help both humans and search engines understand exactly what your business is about and when to surface your site in search results.
(5) Create a list of the top 10 to 20 questions your ideal client has and answer any objections they might have.
Start with ten questions since that’s manageable for most. Then dig deeper as time goes.
Generate these questions from your ideal client avatar and the real problems they are trying to solve. Add in objections you hear during sales conversations or consultations, and act like your customer from time-to-time.
In your answers, you will naturally uncover excellent long-tail keywords. These are typically three or more words, highly specific, and tied to clear intent. These are often easier to rank for and convert better than broad keywords.
And of course you’ll grease the skids in your conversations with potential customers!
(6) Make sure your site is technically sound
You do not need perfection, but you do need solid fundamentals.
This includes:
- Working toward a fast website. Use PageSpeed Insights as a guide. You do not need every score to be green, although that is a good long-term goal.
- Removing broken links. A good SEO tool can help monitor this.
- Making sure your site has an SSL certificate so visitors can browse securely using HTTPS.
- Keeping navigation clean so people and search engines can find what they need with a minimal number of clicks. Search engines only want to crawl so deep as they have their own “crawl budget”.
- Ensuring your site is mobile-friendly, since so much browsing now happens on phones.
These steps help search engines quickly understand what your site is about so they can index it properly.
(7) Minimize your use of AI-generated content
Do not use AI to write your content for you.
Use it to refine ideas, improve clarity, and help you think through topics. Your content should come from your experience and expertise.
Search engines are getting better at detecting low-quality, mass-produced content. Over time, AI slop will be ignored, and could even be penalized.
If you hire someone to write content for you, one way to spot-check quality is to use an AI detection tool such as Grammarly or another option on the market.
(8) Have a Google Business Profile and actively collect reviews
For many businesses, this is one of the highest-impact SEO activities available.
Reviews tied to a Google Business Profile help improve your visibility, especially for local searches.
Strong reviews reinforce trust, and trust is a key part of EEAT.
(9) Track your marketing efforts
If you are going to invest time in SEO, you should measure the results.
Use Google Analytics alongside your own internal KPIs to get a clearer picture of what is working and what is not.
This allows you to calculate ROI and make better decisions over time.
(10) Have a presence on the social media platforms your ideal client uses
Search may not always begin for your ideal client with google or any other search engine.
Some people start their research on Instagram, LinkedIn, or even TikTok. When they do, they will read comments and see how you respond before they decide to reach out, or even dig deeper into your business.
Social media can feel overwhelming, but you can repurpose your content starting with the one social platform your audience uses.
(11) Use an SEO tool that prioritizes ongoing work for you
Time is so limited. Invest into and use tools to save you time.
A good SEO tool can do that for you, helping you to focus on what matters most.
It can prioritize tasks, discover issues, and suggest content ideas so you are not guessing or spinning your wheels.
Consistency matters more than intensity.
What SEO services do Pro Website Creators offer?
Improving visibility in unpaid search results comes down to doing the right things consistently across content, technical setup, and authority building.
There are several ways Pro Website Creators offer SEO services, depending on how hands-on you want to be and how much time you want to invest.
Do It Yourself (DIY)
You run your SEO, and we support you with tools and guidance.
This includes unlimited support questions, access to our SEO platform, reporting, backlink monitoring, and our SEO Academy so you know exactly what to work on, when to work on it, and why.
Done WITH You (DWY)
You stay involved, but we work with you to guide the strategy and execution more closely.
This includes everything in DIY, plus a 60-minute initial strategy session, monthly 30-minute check-ins, and hands-on help with keyword research and aligning SEO with your sales pipeline.
Done FOR You (DFY)
This includes everything in DIY and DWY, and we handle the heavy lifting.
Additionally, this covers technical SEO, content optimization, keyword strategy, local SEO, reporting, and ongoing monthly strategy calls.
You can see the details here of each option:
https://prowebsitecreators.com/seo-services/
So whatever approach you choose, Do It Yourself, Done With You, or Done For You, choose one and commit to it.
And remember: Consistency wins.
