The energy crisis, high inflation rates, and high-interest rates are all reasons pointing to an inevitable recession. Small businesses already have a high failure rate of 21.9% for their first year, so a recession will bring on drastic effects for small businesses.

SEO trends are changing due to constant Google updates, AI advancements, and changes in marketing strategies. SEO trends are also changing for small businesses and in 2023 and beyond you will see revolutionary changes to SERPs due to these trends. We have compiled a list of the most important SEO trends that can help you in starting a successful small business.

What are the SEO trends for small businesses?

1. Leveraging Google Business and local listings

Google My Business, now simply called Google Business, is a means to show your business information, address, reviews, contact, and mailing details to users through Google. It is a great way for users to find a small business. In fact, 64% of users contacted a small business using the contact number listed on their Google Business profile. A Google Business profile is not only helpful for small businesses SEO, but it can also improve local SEO.

Google Business is a great tool to use to get discovered on Google and Google Maps. This way, people close to your business address can find you on Google Maps. They can also read reviews regarding your business services, and these reviews build trust and credibility. You can also provide updated information, opening hours, etc. to customers using Google Business.

Small businesses mostly function within a specific geographic region, so making a business profile can also help you in local SEO. A Google study shows that searches with the words “near me” have increased by over 200% and that 97% of users learn about a local business online. This research was conducted in 2019, so think about how much local listings and SEO help in increasing the visibility of small businesses in 2023.

Google Business is free to register, and results in improved rankings and increased sales for small businesses. Maximize your business benefits by leveraging Google Business for your small business’ SEO.

2. Small business websites with the user-first mindset

A business can not thrive without customers. Customers are especially important for small businesses. For the proper optimization of a website, small businesses need to focus on providing the best experience to users. Businesses should prioritize their customers over their short-term gains and benefits. To achieve this, businesses should focus on the following three things:

Providing Personalized Recommendations and Offers:

91% of consumers are more likely to shop from a brand that provides personalized recommendations and offers. Providing personalized recommendations to customers results in boosted conversions. Small businesses should add personalized recommendations to their website as it helps in better understanding their audience by providing options that the customer is sure to use. 

Similarly, sending personalized emails to consumers is a great way to improve sales of a particular product. For example, sending an email about a specific product on sale to a customer who has searched for that product in the past is a sure way of selling that product to the customer.

Adding Clear Call-To-Action (CTA):

Adding a call-to-action button increases the CTR by 5.31%. CTR or Click-Through Rate is the number of clicks a link receives against the total impressions on that webpage. Strive to add a CTA to relevant pages for higher CTR rates. For a product page, add a CTA showing “Add To Cart” or “Buy Now.” Similarly, adding a CTA for the “Login” or “Sign Up” option can increase the number of users signing up for your website. 

Unfortunately,

70% of small businesses do not add any clear CTA and this affects their conversions drastically. Focus on adding a clear CTA that brings more visitors to the website and, therefore, more sales.

UI Modifications:

Your website should be fast, responsive, and solve the customer’s problem quickly. The pages should be simple and easy to navigate with no dead links. If there are products listed, they should have multiple high-quality images that can be zoomed in on. The link structure should be well-optimized. The menu should be straightforward in describing the topics and sub-topics of the website. UX and UI go hand-in-hand and provide great SEO results.

These small changes provide users with a great experience on the website and users generally take no time in becoming long-term clients for businesses that provide personalized content and direct designs with clearer CTAs. In 2023, invest in prioritizing customers over your gains and sales, and sales will escalate with an increase in customers.

3. Small business content strategy based on small clusters and silos

Planning, developing, and managing content is a vital part of a successful SEO strategy. Without content, websites simply cannot rank. Businesses are realizing this, and are now trying to develop a practical content strategy that resonates with their goals. Small businesses are no different. If your business is developing a content strategy, focus on implementing cluster or silos architecture. These two ideas are good for both SEO and site architecture.

Having good website architecture comes with a lot of benefits including:

• Search engines can better crawl and index websites with good architecture.
• Due to interlinking between all pages, Google can better understand the purpose of the website without missing a single page.
• Internal linking also improves website and webpage ranking, consequently improving the rankings of a website.

Silos Architecture

Silos is a type of website architecture in which webpages are organized as groups or categories. These categories are called silos and each silo is isolated and represents a different topic. The silos are interlinked with one another and keep the website content organized. This type of architecture is more effective for SEO because search engines can better crawl and index webpages due to their different categories and interlinking. Silos architecture represents a well-defined relationship between pages and has a clean URL structure which is easier to navigate.

Cluster Architecture

Cluster architecture is a form of website architecture in which pages are organized into groups or categories that are related to a specific keyword. These groups or categories are called clusters and they are interlinked similarly to silos architecture. Users can easily navigate the website as the web pages are grouped together by specific keywords. Cluster architecture improves the relevance of a website related to certain keywords and is flexible for keyword targeting.

The choice between choosing silos or cluster architecture depends upon individual businesses and their goals. If you have planned the content keywords, niches, topics, categories, etc. in advance for at least 200 to 300 pages, then silos architecture is suitable for your website. If you are just starting out and will figure out content topics, keywords etc. on the go, however, then cluster architecture is the way for your website. In 2023, invest in finding the proper website architecture for you and implement it to get more relevancy and higher rankings.

4. Small business seeing an increased need to build off-page authority

If a website is only doing technical and on-page SEO, it will not rank on the top pages. The competition is high and if you want your business to remain on the top, you have to focus on off-page SEO too. Businesses are understanding that without off-page SEO implementations, they will not find new audiences. Off-page SEO also makes a website trustworthy while simultaneously improving its authority.

Off-page SEO significantly boosts rankings. Studies show that the top result on Google has 3.8 times more backlinks than the results on positions number 2-10. This means that in order to rank on Google, your website should provide unique value to the users and brands so that they share and refer your website to others. If a lot of brands are mentioning or citing your website, it tells Google that your website has authority and provides value to users, which will automatically improve your rankings.

Link building, brand mentions, guest posting, and social media optimization are all aspects of off-page SEO that you should focus on for your small business. This will not only help you in increasing the domain authority, but it will also help you in finding newer audiences on social media sites. All of these elements will certainly improve the rankings of your small business website.

5. Small businesses increasingly focusing on optimizing existing content

Creating new content is extremely easy compared to optimizing existing content. If you do not have the time to create new content, focus on improving and optimizing the existing content as it brings many benefits such as:

Improving Webpage Quality:

Google favors updated content. Optimizing the existing content not only updates its information but also improves the quality of content. Similarly, Google’s guidelines for webpages are changing, so optimizing the content to update it according to Google’s latest guidelines also improves content quality.

Increasing Webpage Value:

A webpage that is old may have a large number of websites linking to it. These backlinks increase the authority of the website, which helps in the SEO of the website. The older the page, the more users have visited the webpage, so optimizing already existing content is better than creating an entirely new piece of content on a specific topic.

For optimizing the existing content, follow the steps below:

1. Identify the content that is in need of optimization.
2. Leverage tools and Google Search Console for assessing ranking drops and traffic.
3. Optimize the content relative to the latest relevant keywords.
4. Update the statistics and information on the webpage so that your content is most updated and valuable.
5. Optimize a content part for featured snippets.

Optimizing content for your small business brings a lot of value to your website. You can also update the number of satisfied customers while educating your audience about the latest services you offer. In 2023, your main focus should be on optimizing the already existing content so that both Google and people love your content.

6. Increased adoption of AI in SEO

AI advancements bring an opportunity for small business owners regarding SEO. Businesses are using AI for automating various repetitive tasks. Not only this, but they are also planning and optimizing content, adding meta descriptions, performing keyword research, and creating SEO reports. These are all tasks that AI performs so that businesses can channel their efforts and energy on other important tasks. 

Using AI for content planning is advantageous because AI tools tell you about the best topics that you can rank for your business. Additionally, AI analyzes the top-ranking websites of your niche and keyword(s), and provides you with outlines and briefs that help in ranking you on the top of SERPs. These tools can improve your website’s performance.

By using AI tools, your small business’s website will get increased visibility and rankings, thus improving your website’s performance while analyzing the weak points of your website. Start leveraging AI tools for the SEO of your website, because this is certainly going to bear fruits in the long run.

7. Thinking mobile first, whether it’s your app or website

Studies show that there will be 5.2 billion internet users in 2023 and this figure is expected to reach 6.1 billion by 2028. Additionally, 59.72% of internet traffic comes from mobile phones. Google strongly recommends creating a mobile-friendly website as Google monitors and evaluates websites using mobile-first indexing. This means that for a website with a mobile version and a desktop version, Google will index the mobile version first by default. Invest in creating a mobile-friendly website because most of the audience you will get will come from mobile phones.

Having a mobile-first approach for your website is ever-green because mobile phone users are only going to rapidly increase. Mobile websites also improve the user experience, which is another ranking factor for SEO. For creating a mobile-friendly website for your small business, follow the steps below:

• Use a responsive web design that makes a website accessible from a variety of devices including mobile phones, tablets, and desktops.
• Do not use fragment URLs.
• Verify the desktop and mobile versions using Google Search Console.
• Verify that the same structured data is present on both website versions.
• Use the same “alt text” on both website versions.
• Make sure that the title, captions, file names and meta description are the same on both website versions.
• Update all of the content on both website versions so that the page quality is the same across all versions.

Your primary focus should be on creating a mobile-responsive website, as it is the most important trend for the SEO of small businesses. Having a mobile-friendly website improves visibility, increases dwell time, and makes the website more engaging. In 2023 and beyond, don’t miss out on implementing and creating a mobile-responsive website. Learn more about building a mobile-responsive website by watching the below video:

AI SEO tools to help your small business succeed in 2023

Modern problems require modern solutions, and we at Outranking love to create unique solutions for businesses so that you can mainly focus on meeting your business goals. Our AI tools for SEO are specifically designed to plan, optimize, and create content that is original and unique, thereby helping you sky-rocketing your businesses’ rankings and visibility.

At Outranking, we help businesses and enterprises meet their SEO goals by using advanced AI technologies. Our tools help in the following:

• Creating SEO content for your small business.
• Optimizing content for on-page SEO.
• Creating SEO content briefs that will guide you to craft the perfect pieces of content.
• Optimizing the existing content for improving visibility and increasing page value.
• Creating a unique content strategy that brings success.
• Creating outlines that cover everything about a specific keyword.
• AI editor to increase the SEO of your website.
• Performing extensive keyword research using our SEO keyword strategy tool.

With over 12,000 organizations and popular multinational brands such as IKEA trusting us for their content creation needs, you can surely count us in for your small business SEO needs.