Below, we offer a few easy steps for the small business owner to improve their SEO and get their website found on search.

If you’re a small-business owner, you’re focused on giving the best service to your clients. That’s a full-time job and then some. While you’re busy meeting your customers’ needs, it can be easy to let some aspects of your business slide…like your website. Has it been years since you last updated your blog? Do most customers still find you through the Yellow Pages or word-of-mouth?

Have you ever experienced this? After hours of writing, rewriting and refining, you’ve finally completed your marketing masterpiece—the blog post that will generate a viral storm whose force will propel your brand to the forefront of the market. You hit “Post” and wait for the clicks to come raining in…

If you use WordPress, you’re likely familiar with Yoast SEO. One of the platform’s most popular plugins, Yoast analyzes content and provides insights on how it can be improved for SEO and readability. However, while it’s a useful tool, using Yoast can be a frustrating experience. If you’re like me, your initial encounters resulted in hours spent tweaking your content to gain the plugin’s approval, often to futile effect. At a certain point, you have to ask yourself, “Is it worth it?” I asked myself that very question, and the answer I found was…well, it’s complicated.

There are several good reasons for business owners to blog, but perhaps the biggest is that, more than ever, SEO is dependent on content. With the demise of “black hat” tactics like keyword stuffing and a re-emphasis on user experience, content has become the core means through which SEO strategies can be effectively implemented. That means if you want your business’ website to perform, you need to produce content. And there’s no better way to broadcast that content than through an active blog.