How Can Small Businesses Outrank Larger Websites on Google?

If you are a small business owner and new to the SEO playing field, you may feel that you don’t stand a chance against companies with larger websites in search results.

The good news is that small business sites CAN outrank larger sites on Google as long as you are patient and put forth the effort.

Target the Right Keyphrases

It is important to realize that you will not rank #1 on Google for “Insurance Company” overnight. This is because “Insurance Company” is very broad and very competitive. You can decrease the amount of competition by narrowing your service down to a location. For example, “Insurance Company Michigan”. Another benefit to including a location in the key phrase is you will receive more targeted traffic. Unless you are providing services nationwide, you really don’t want to be receiving calls from people out of state, where you may not even be licensed to do work.

You can decrease the competition of a phrase even further by targeting counties or cities instead of a state. For example, “Mortgage Lender in Oakland County”. You can target multiple cities and multiple counties but you are focusing on one location at a time. So one day you may publish content optimized for Macomb County, and the next piece of content can be optimized for Wayne County. This way you are essentially optimizing your site for the entire state of Michigan, in less time than it may take to rank for “Mortgage Company Michigan”.

You can still target Michigan in your keyphrase but realize the larger the location the more competitive the search results will be.

Another approach would be to niche your keyphrase down to a specific service that people are looking for. For example “Hot Stone Massage in Michigan”, may be less competitive than “Massage Therapist in Michigan”.

Yes it is true that some larger companies already rank well for these key phrases, but by choosing the right key phrases you can outrank these larger sites in a shorter period of time.

Provide Your Visitors Something of Value

When you are optimizing your website, it is important to keep the end user in mind. A lot of web designers put too much emphasis on creating content that is Google friendly and forget about their visitors.

Remember, Google’s goal is to display sites that are relevant to a person’s search criteria AND provide content that is valuable. So although you may be making your content relevant by using the proper keywords, you still need to provide your visitors something of value.

Post content on a regular basis that keeps people coming back. Posting fresh content regularly is also an indication to Google that your site contains up to date information, and that itself is considered more valuable than a site with stale content that has not been updated.

Some ideas for valuable content could be information that is helpful to the user. Post blog articles that are informative and provide tips. For example, if you are a Financial Planner, you may want to post an article about when to start saving for retirement. If you are in the clothing industry, write a blog article on how to buy jeans that are the perfect fit.

Make Sure Your Site is Crawlable

Even if you publish amazing content and include the best keywords, you still need to be sure your site is crawlable. In other words, make it easy for Google to index your pages.

Make sure your all of your content is easy to find and not hidden 3 pages deep into your website. Both users and web crawlers find your website by using links in your navigation. With that being said, it is crucial to have all of your links clearly visible and in the main navigation if possible. Also double check for any links that may be broken.

Also, make sure your content can be read by everyone. Avoid flash animation or content that can only be seen by executing code first.

You would be surprised at the amount of larger companies with websites that are a mess with broken links and buried content. Remember, every little bit helps. The more you do to perfect and optimize your website, the easier it will be to climb to the top of the search results.