Small Business SEO Services

How We Ranked the Top Providers of Small Business SEO Services

In the following section, we go through the criteria that helped us evaluate the agencies and create our final list. As you’ll see below, we consider the most relevant aspects of small business search engine optimization.

SEO Specialization

As a multi-faceted discipline, SEO can be technical, national, local, or international depending on the business aspect it addresses. Different types of SEO require different approaches so we made sure to filter the companies and consider only the ones that can fit the requirements of small businesses.

Website, Case Studies & Portfolio

Our real evaluation of small business SEO companies begins with a  visit to the company’s website. We believe in the saying “practice what you preach” so we check how good the company’s own SEO is. While we don’t go only for agencies found on Google’s first page, we look at both the broader picture and at the separate SEO elements for a thorough evaluation.

The next step on our quest for the best SEO companies for small business owners is checking for case studies on the agencies’ websites. While these showcase the company’s best work, they still give valuable insight into their efficiency and expertise, approach, creativity, and problem-solving capabilities. We take time to evaluate the results of their top five clients and see whether the company under evaluation managed to meet the goals of the respective customer.

Key Small Business SEO Services

Once we establish that the agency is worth considering based on their previous work, we evaluate them more closely. Namely, we assess their service offering and whether they cover the must-haves.

Competitive Analysis

End-to-end SEO packages include complete digital marketing analysis that will show how you stack up against your top competitors. This will establish the baseline for structure, content, local visibility, and ease the further steps of creating and implementing an actionable plan. 

Keywords Optimization & High-Quality Content

Keyword optimization and high-quality content go hand in hand. A solid small business SEO company would provide robust keyword optimization based on extensive analysis that includes industry/product keywords and competitor analysis, keywords relevance assessment, as well as keyword placement and prediction. 

After the analysis, the content team should produce high-quality content that will tell both the search engines and potential customers who you are and why you’re relevant. Having good content optimized for the right keywords is one of the most important things for ranking.

Authority Building

The best SEO for small business owners isn’t complete without robust authority building. For that purpose, your site needs to contain internal and external links, as well as backlinks. They are all valuable for the success of a site in their own way. Internal links help with boosting new pages in search rankings or show engines how different pages are connected. External links drive to pages outside of your website which boosts popularity, increases relevance, improves reputation, and encourages backlinks which are SEO gold — they help search bots to crawl your site and rank it.

Website Optimization

Good site architecture is what attracts search engine bots to the website. The SEO company for small business should perform architecture optimization and adjust it to meet search engine optimization needs, improve UI/UX, implement a sitemap, and optimize the links. Also, they should optimize the pages using the most important keywords in key places including title, URL, and meta description. Website optimization further means proper usage of visual media, prominent display of customer success stories, appealing visual style, and CTA, as well as mobile optimization. 

Local SEO for Small Business

The best local SEO companies will provide locally-focused services that put you in the forefront of your target audience based on their location. Considering that as a small business, you’ll be targeting a specific location/region, it’s always a plus if the SEO agency knows the ins and outs of local search engine optimization.

Tracking & Reporting

The small business SEO company should offer full transparency into how they implement the strategies and achieve progress and results. For that purpose, they should actively monitor the keyword rankings, organic traffic, and leads, as well as competitors’ rankings and their respective strategies, industry search trends, and more. Based on this analysis the team should provide transparent revenue allocation and monthly status reports, as well as reports on day-to-day analysis to watch for issues.

Client Reviews

Client reviews indicate whether or not the small business SEO service provider is worth its salt. We look for reviews on third-party directories, social media, and Google. First, we make sure that the reviews are from real customers and then we go on to analyze them to gain insight into the level of customer satisfaction. A few bad reviews won’t hurt the company’s ranking but if we notice a reappearing issue that the agency’s team has been unable to solve, we consider it a major red flag and discard the company.

Responsiveness & Flexibility

Proper SEO for small business means close collaboration with the team. The best agencies listed here can perform initial website audits for free and then work closely with clients to create a winning strategy with the clients’ objectives in mind. The presented solution should detail how the team plans to implement the strategies and meet your expectations. They also need to be responsive, communicate on-demand, and be agile enough to adapt to a new industry or clients’ requirements and tweak the campaigns based on it.

Small Business SEO Cost

As a small business, you probably don’t have an unlimited budget. That’s why we took it upon ourselves to include agencies that offer reasonable prices and full transparency. Usually, the fees are custom and are influenced by the client’s industry, goals, locations, keywords, and target audience. Some agencies charge per hour between $125 and $150 while others offer fixed prices for a project as a whole. Depending on the complexity, the average price ranges between $1,000 and $7,500. Regardless of the pricing model, we opt for companies that have a proven track record of delivering the best value for money.

What to Consider Before Hiring a Small Business SEO Company

We’ve presented you with the top choices for small business search engine optimization. But our job here isn’t done — we’ve put together a compact guide that covers the crucial points you need to consider to shortlist and find yourself the perfect candidate.

Define Your Needs

First and foremost, you need to define your needs. Think about what you want to achieve through SEO services for small business owners. Do you want to build your online presence from scratch, or you want to boost traffic and conversions? Maybe you want to make your existing online presence more user and search engine-friendly or you want to tap a new market? All these goals will help you make the initial filtering of the SEO companies and also help the potential teams get a clear picture of whether or not they can help you. 

Industry Expertise

A company might offer the best SEO services for small business but focus on a totally different industry or niche than yours. Maybe you’re in the ecommerce business but the agency has experience with healthcare establishments. That said, you should filter the companies with proven expertise in your field because they will be able to easily recognize the unique elements of your business and implement the best strategies.

Company’s Culture

Take a look at the leadership teams of the different small business SEO companies and the members of the SEO team to learn more about their background. Use the About Us pages on the companies’ sites and their respective LinkedIn profiles. Try and connect with one team member to assess their expertise, ethics and integrity. You need to shortlist the companies whose teams align with your own values and vision.

Consider the Price

You should set a budget that you’re comfortable with — finding the balance between quality and affordability. What you should do is carefully allocate your marketing budget and have a set amount you’re ready to invest in potential small business SEO packages.  Mind you, the investment should be in proportion with the expected returns and benefits.

Schedule a Consultation

To confirm the best fit of the top two or three companies you’ve shortlisted, you need to schedule a consultation. The potential agency should be ready to do some industry research and walk you through some of the strategies they have implemented on similar clients. The consultation will help you get a better feel of the team, their level of commitment and creativity. Use this opportunity to ask them some specific questions that can help you determine which agency offers better small business SEO services for your needs.