SEO Basics for Small Business Websites: A Plain Checklist

You don't need an agency to get the basics of SEO right. Google's own SEO Starter Guide says the goal is to help search engines and people understand your content, and most of its advice is about clear, honest pages. This checklist turns it into steps for a small business site.

This article is part of our local SEO guide for small businesses. It follows Google's guide, checked on 20 September 2026.

1. Make sure Google can find your pages

Google says it discovers most pages automatically through links, and that you usually don't need to do anything except publish your site. You can help by submitting a sitemap and by making sure every page is linked from somewhere else on your site.

2. Write a unique title for every page

Google asks for titles that are unique to the page, clear and concise, and that accurately describe its contents. It also suggests including the site name, location and page-specific information to help people decide whether to click. A service business can put the service and the town near the start.

Use our meta title and description checker to see how yours will look and whether it will be cut off.

3. Write a description for every page

A meta description should be short, unique to that page, and summarise its most relevant points in one or two sentences. It is the text people may see under your title in results.

4. Use headings to organise the page

Break long pages into sections with headings so people can scan them. Google's guide notes that semantic heading order matters for accessibility, so use one main heading and put sub-headings in a sensible order.

5. Use readable URLs

Use URLs that contain meaningful words, such as example.com/services/boiler-repair, rather than random IDs.

6. Add images with descriptive alt text

Place high quality images near the text they relate to, and give each a descriptive alt text that explains how it relates to the content. This also helps people using screen readers.

7. Link sensibly

Use descriptive link text, link to trustworthy sources, and link between your own pages. If people can add comments or links to your site, Google's guide says to use nofollow on those.

8. Publish helpful, reliable content

Google's guide calls for content that is easy to read and well organised, unique, up to date, and helpful, reliable and people-first. For a local business, that means:

• a page for each main service, saying what it is, who it's for and how to book
• your real address, phone number and opening hours where visitors can see them
• honest answers to the questions customers actually ask

9. Keep your business details consistent

Your name, address, phone number and hours should match your website, your Business Profile and any other listing. Mark them up with local business schema so they're unambiguous.

A quick self-check

• Does every page have a unique title and description?
• Can a visitor find your phone number and address in one click?
• Do all images have alt text?
• Is every page reachable through a link from another page?
• Has anything on the site gone out of date?

Fix the answers that are "no", and then move on to reviews. See how to get more Google reviews.