#3 ~ Essential SEO for Small Businesses

Nicolette Ford

Hi, and welcome back to Bots & Brains, the Intelligent Marketing Podcast by Social Matrix! Written by humans. Performed by robots. I'm Nicolette Ford, and I'm here with Lorraine Windsor. Lorraine, how are you doing?

Lorraine Windsor

I'm all good, Nic! Sun's out for once in South East London—makes a nice change, doesn't it?

Lorraine Windsor

Anyway, this one’s a biggie. SEO. Those three letters that terrify small business owners. Gonna try and make it a little less scary today, if we can. Welcome to the Essential SEO for Small Businesses episode.

Nicolette Ford

Absolutely. I remember my very first SEO meeting, about 20 years ago, when I was still working in financial compliance. Someone said, "We need to help the spiders crawl the website." I genuinely imagined little spiders crawling around in a server somewhere. Terms like "crawling" and "index" can sound baffling if you’re not living and breathing digital marketing every day. But, in fact, spiders crawling around the internet, constantly searching for new content to add to their database, is actually a really helpful analogy.

Lorraine Windsor

Oh, hundred percent. It's one of those things. It sounds all techy, but it's just Google trying to figure out what your website's about so it knows when to show it to people.

Lorraine Windsor

So, Nic, shall we break down how the whole "crawling, indexing, ranking" thing works? In real human language, not SEO-speak?

Nicolette Ford

Yeah, let’s ditch the jargon.

Nicolette Ford

I love a good analogy when it comes to explaining complicated things. So, imagine Google's index as a massive library, and individual websites as the books in the library. Before Google can recommend a book to a searcher, it needs to know what information it holds. Are you with me so far?

Lorraine Windsor

Yes. Google's bots (or spiders, or crawlers), crawl the internet, going page by page, following links, and trying to read everything. If your site’s easy to navigate, with links between pages, the bots can easily index your site's pages in the right places.

Nicolette Ford

That brings us to the index. Remember, the index is a mahoosive library of web pages.

Nicolette Ford

If you’re not indexed, you’re invisible. No one can find your pages. I wonder how many listeners realise, that if their website pages are not linked together, the chances are, Google will never know they belong together and worse, may never even find some of the pages of their website on the internet. No indexing, no showing up in search results!

Nicolette Ford

Speaking of search results, when someone searches on Google, or any of the other search engines, Google looks at hundreds of things before deciding to show your site in search results. It will base it's decision on things like the usefulness of your content to the searcher, whether you have trustworthy links in to and out of your site and a myriad of other things.

Nicolette Ford

The more healthy, easy to navigate, and well structured your site is, and the more useful your content is to the searcher, the more likely your site will be near the top of the search results.

Lorraine Windsor

Right—and most people, they’re not clicking through to page two, let’s be honest. So, SEO—Search Engine Optimisation—is just helping Google (and other search engines, but mainly Google) find your site, understand what it's about, and trust that you're a good bet for their users. Nic, how would you explain SEO in digital marketing for someone who makes cakes, for example?

Nicolette Ford

I’d say, think of SEO as making your website friendly, not just for people, but for the robots that decide whether you show up on Google. So, when someone looks for lemon drizzle cake near Beckenham, you want to be on that list. Paid ads are there, of course, but 75% of people never get past the first page of organic results. And that top result, organic, not paid, gets almost 28% of all clicks. It’s about being visible without paying for every single customer who finds you.

Lorraine Windsor

And it’s not about magic tricks or gaming the system. Good SEO is just making it easy for Google to see you’re the best answer for that search. Keep it genuine, and consistent, and over time, you’ll see results. It works alongside your social posts, your emails, and any other kind of marketing you do, but a well-optimised page keeps earning you customers even while you sleep! That’s my kind of SEO, and the effects are lasting.

Nicolette Ford

Let’s get into the nuts and bolts, then—the actual stuff you can do for SEO. There are three big parts: on-page, off-page, and technical. Lorraine, want to walk us through what on-page SEO looks like for a local bakery?

Lorraine Windsor

Yeah, I love a food example. So, imagine you run “Sally’s Sourdough” on your high street. On your homepage, you’d use clear headings, like "Fresh Sourdough Bread in Bromley."

Lorraine Windsor

Your content answers questions, like, “Do you deliver?” in your FAQs, and you mention the kinds of bread you make on your products page, but you do it naturally—no “sourdough, sourdough, sourdough” every two seconds! That's called keyword stuffing and the search engines will penalise your site for that these days.

Lorraine Windsor

You also add meta tags in your page titles and descriptions. For example, “See our cake selection” or “Contact us" together with short descriptions, show up on Google searches. You know, the short paragraph directly under the page title in search results. They make people want to click. There's lots of other things you can do, but we don't have enough time to talk about all of it here.

Nicolette Ford

Exactly. To begin with, you should help both real people and Google understand what you do and why you’re a good fit for the searcher, and encourage them to click with your page title and description.

Nicolette Ford

Then there’s off-page SEO, which is how the rest of the internet talks about you. Think of getting links from local news, food blogs, or even shoutouts on social media. Google considers these “votes” for your site. If a reputable blog links to Sally’s Sourdough website, that’s a trust signal. The more authoritative those sources, the better.

Lorraine Windsor

And then you’ve got technical SEO, which for a lot of people sounds like a headache, but it's absolutely vital. That’s making sure your site loads quickly - nobody wants to wait, do they? Mobile-friendly is a big one. About half of all searches are made from mobile devices, so if people have to zoom in to press your menu, they’re gone. Fixing broken links, updating your sitemap, getting your security set up, those are the things people don’t see, but Google sees all! If you have broken links or a slow site, you're less likely to show up in searches.

Nicolette Ford

This is where tools like Google Search Console come in. It tells you if Google’s having trouble reading your site, or if people are Googling “best birthday cakes Bromley” and already finding you. Actually, Lorraine, I think you had a great story about a café and breadcrumb navigation?

Lorraine Windsor

Oh yeah! That was this little café in Catford—South East London. Their site was a bit all over the place, so I helped them add breadcrumb navigation—those little links at the top showing the page path. Not only did it make it easier for people, but within two weeks, they were showing up higher in local results! Sometimes a tiny change can make a massive difference. Technical tweaks aren’t exciting, but Google notices, trust me.

Nicolette Ford

So, to sum up, on-page SEO is what’s actually on your site, off-page is what others say about you, and technical SEO is the behind-the-scenes plumbing. All three need attention, but you can start with small steps. Good titles, clear content, and some local mentions go a long way.

Lorraine Windsor

This is the heart of it: why does SEO matter, especially if you’re a small business? Here’s the thing. 53% of all trackable website traffic comes from organic search, not ads or social media. Social’s great, but it’s not where most new customers begin. Google, on the other hand? That’s where everyone is looking when they’re ready to buy or take action.

Nicolette Ford

Exactly. And people searching for, say, “vegan cake delivery Beckenham” aren’t just browsing—they've got high intent. They want to buy a vegan cake, right now, near Beckenham. That’s the power of long-tail keywords! Small businesses can beat the big chains by focusing on these very specific, purchase-ready searches. You might struggle to rank for just “cake,” but you can definitely win with “eggless chocolate cake Dulwich.”

Lorraine Windsor

Yeah, and this is how you can level the playing field. A lot of big brands get lazy with local stuff. If you’re the one mentioning your area, your services, and keeping your Google Business Profile up to date, AND you can get into that Map Pack, those three listings with the map at the top. That means phone calls, visits, real business, not only website hits.

Nicolette Ford

Many businesses I've met, completely ignore their site’s SEO. They think, “Oh, it’s fine, I’m on social, people know me.” Next thing, a direct competitor with no real social presence is suddenly above them in search. It turns out, letting your site go stale or ignoring basics like your meta tags DOES matter. Keyword stuffing—where you cram the same word everywhere—does more harm than good. And if you forget local search tweaks, you’re invisible to neighbours who are ready to buy from you.

Lorraine Windsor

Totally agree. And it’s easy to let things slide. It's easy to forget about checking your Google Search Console, or letting your business hours go out of date. But the flip side is that small, regular updates make a huge difference over time. You don’t have to overhaul everything at once, just like we talked about in that digital marketing partner episode, little steps eventually equal big results.

Nicolette Ford

Absolutely. Even small improvements like clear headlines, helpful content, and a few local links, can show Google you’re active and trustworthy. And once you’re ranking well, that’s free clicks, free leads, and more customers. Doesn’t get much better than that!

Lorraine Windsor

Alright, that wraps up Essential SEO for Small Businesses. As always, keep it simple and be consistent. Don’t try to do everything at once.

Lorraine Windsor

Next week, we’ll dig further into technical SEO, which we find is the right part of SEO to begin with. So, hit subscribe or follow if you haven’t already.

Nicolette Ford

Thanks for joining us, everyone, from all of us at Bots & Brains. See you next time!