Today, a website is the primary means of communication for a business. Large companies may have a full staff maintaining it and keeping it fresh. For example, a healthcare service provides various pages on medical care, attached forms, surveys, and contact information. They may have a “social media team,” an “SEO team,” a Google ads “team” and so on and so forth. But you, Mr. or Mrs. Small Business? Your team may be “me, myself, and I.” 
It can require one employee to regularly update HIPAA and medical documentation online. This is one strategy for a company to remain compliant and transparent. These websites can get large and confusing. Without proper search engine optimization (SEO) practices, customers can spend hours searching for the information they need. That’s not good. SEO and website structure go hand-in-hand.
Small- to medium-sized businesses could be losing potential customers if their SEO isn’t working well. But company budgets vary, and paying for a full-time staff of SEO experts to maintain a efforts at online publicity may just not “have budget.” A business owner could be ready to invest in a simple website with a clear message, but they don’t have the budget to pay for the fancy bells and whistles larger companies have. And does that mean they will have to lower their expectations for how much traffic the website can bring on its own? No!
I have good news; this is not an ‘either/or’ situation. It’s about understanding the foundational principles of SEO. And that is, the proper SEO structure embedded in a website will always bring customers to it. So yes, it is possible to achieve a low-maintenance website that continues to attract high-level traffic. Because on-page SEO never dies.
Allow Me to Cook and Bring the Secret Sauce to Your SEO and Website Structure
When searching for something in particular, Google, YouTube, or even ChatGPT are the “search engines” of today. If someone wants to find the best French bakery in San Francisco, a short list may narrow their choices quickly. And if your business is a French bakery, you want to be on that list! But you need to know the ‘secret sauce’ that gets you there. And honestly, it isn’t a secret. You can find plenty of videos on YouTube about it, like this Simplilearn video. Basically, it involves on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Here’s the difference between the two:
- On-page SEO: Is optimizing the website. This includes HTML, meta tags, alt tags, header tags, and schema. It’s identifying keywords that apply to your business and embedding them in these areas. It also includes ensuring those keywords are in the content!
- Off-page SEO: Optimizing outside the website to increase search rankings. This includes backlinks, social media marketing, influencer marketing, social media platforms, and so forth.
Optimizing a small business website is affordable, however. It doesn’t even take a full-time employee. That’s often why people call me. I can help “train” your staff. I will research your business’s keywords and incorporate them into your website to establish a solid SEO foundation. And if you’d want to investigate consulting for SEO, we can talk about that too.
A strong SEO strategy can drive consistent traffic to a website with minimal ongoing maintenance. And if you don’t have the resources to do it yourself, contact me and let me cook for you. If you’re looking for an SEO expert – one who does both consulting and on-on-one training, please give me a call at 415-655-1071.
