Mueller shares SEO tips for small businesses

In a recent Google Search Central SEO office-hours webinar, John Mueller discussed how small businesses can use search engine optimisation (SEO), and whether your product name should be in your headings.

Mueller suggested that the way SEO is being done by small businesses isn’t keeping up with the changing times, and continued to say that much content on the web aimed at helping small businesses is based on old methods.

Many starter and beginner guides talk about optimising your site for search by adjusting attributes like the title elements in the HTML code of a site, which shows that many have been written some time ago and are now outdated. Small business SEO has now been simplified with plugins on platforms like WordPress (for example, Yoast SEO) that enable you to optimise your metadata without having to edit any code on your website.

In the webinar, Mueller said:

“It’s something to kind of keep in mind that the SEO starter guides, when you look at them, they might feel like super technical, but actually the work that you do is a lot more like filling in fields, and making sure that the links are there, and things like that.”

What is metadata?

Metadata includes meta titles and meta descriptions used by search engines to find out what your website is about, and plugins like Yoast for WordPress make it easier for you to edit these. When you are using search engines like Google, you will see the meta title and meta description as below:

Mueller concluded the discussion by saying that future SEO starter guides for small businesses will be updated and will include fewer technical changes due to the shift in the way websites are being built.

At Engage Web, we offer copywriting and search engine optimisation for businesses who want to increase traffic to their website. Find out more by getting in touch with us today.

• About
• Latest Posts

Jonathon Roberts

Jonathon lives and breathes marketing, boasting a degree in Business Management and Marketing Management and a diverse list of experiences both professional and voluntary. Having grown up in the thick of the digital and social media age, he has been quick to dive into online marketing and search engine optimisation in his career and spare time, spanning such fields as academics, local business and sport.

Latest posts by Jonathon Roberts (see all)

• Key takeaways from Google’s latest search reviews update - November 10, 2023
• Mobile-first indexing: what is it, and why has it taken so long? - November 3, 2023
• Google updates structured data understanding - October 31, 2023