SEO Best Practices and Tools for Small Businesses: A Beginner’s Guide to AI

You’ve probably heard about SEO. You may know that it stands for Search Engine Optimization and understand why it’s important: so Google can find your website but how it works may be a mystery to you.

You know Google must know who you are. It can make or break a business. There are plenty of folks who don’t write for SEO and they aren’t getting the traffic they need to quit their day job or grow their current business.  If you rely on Google Ads for new business while ignoring SEO you could be saving a lot of cash.

It would cost my Video Company $7.70 to place a Google ad for the keyword – Vermont Wedding Videographer, but with good SEO can share the same page with me.

Where should you begin?

I mentioned in my previous post, introducing this process we’ll learn together. SEO is not fixed and with AI tools it can’t be ignored.  Today, we’ll walk through some SEO best practices using AI tools to simplify the process. These steps will help you optimize your website for better visibility and search rankings. As an example, I’ll use my own site, Forever Lucky Films.

Why SEO Best Practices are the First Step

Before diving into advanced SEO strategies, you need a solid foundation. Think of SEO like building a house for your information—you start with the foundation, not the roof. This is the foundation and it includes:

• Targeting the right keywords. – Words you use, matching what people are matching
• Optimizing titles and meta descriptions – Elevates the importance of the keywords
• Improving website speed and mobile-friendliness – Search Engines what to recommend quality sites. 
• Using internal links and creating high-quality content – Linking your work with related work to show your expertise. 

These essentials ensure search engines like Google can understand and rank your site correctly. It may sound like a daunting first step, but tools both AI and on the web make it easier.

Three AI Tools to Simplify SEO

Here are three AI tools that will help you follow SEO best practices:

1. Surfer SEO
2. Ubersuggest
3. Yoast SEO

Let’s break down how each tool works and how I’ve used them for my website, Forever Lucky Films.

1. Surfer SEO: Your Data-Driven SEO Assistant

Surfer SEO helps you create optimized content based on what’s already ranking. It analyzes top-performing competitors and suggests the ideal structure for your own content. With Surfer SEO, you’ll know:

• The ideal word count
• Which keywords to include and how often
• How to organize your headings

How I Used It for Forever Lucky Films:
When my site’s rankings dropped, I used Surfer SEO to compare my homepage with top-ranking wedding videography sites. Here’s what it recommended:

• Increase my word count and include keywords like “Vermont wedding videography” and “Vermont wedding photographer”

Pro Tip: The Surfer SEO Chrome extension is free and analyzes SEO for any page, including competitors’ sites. It’s a great way to start without a paid plan.

2. Ubersuggest: Free Keyword Research and SEO Insights

Ubersuggest is a fantastic free tool for small business owners to find keywords and track SEO performance. It offers three free searches daily and helps identify SEO opportunities for your website.

How I Used It for Forever Lucky Films:
I used Ubersuggest to search for the keyword “Vermont wedding videographer” and found a few things to help.

• The keyword has a search volume of 70 and an SEO difficulty score of 34.
• Ubersuggest recommended related keywords like “Vermont video production” and “Vermont wedding barn Bridport VT.”
• It also highlighted other relevant keyword ideas such as “best Vermont wedding venues” with a volume of 170 and “Vermont wedding photographers” with a volume of 480.

With this data, I can refine my content and focus on including these additional keywords to improve search rankings. Even more helpful it offers some content ideas.  I was relieved to find at least something of mine in the results.

Pro Tip: Like SEO Surger, Ubersuggest offers a paid plan, but the free version allows three searches daily. Use it to identify low-competition, high-volume keywords and track your SEO progress over time.

3. Yoast SEO: A Beginner-Friendly SEO Plugin

If your website runs on WordPress like mine does, Yoast SEO is a must-have plugin. It checks your content for essential SEO elements, like:

• Keyword usage in titles and headings
• Readability, including sentence structure
• Meta descriptions and preview snippets

How I Used It for Forever Lucky Films:
I use Yoast SEO to optimize my WordPress site for keywords like “Vermont wedding videography.” Yoast:

• Ensures my focus keyword appears in the title, meta description, and first paragraph.
• Offers a search preview to refine titles and meta descriptions for better click-through rates.

Yoast uses a simple traffic light system—green means good, yellow means close, and red means you need improvements. It’s easy and effective, especially for beginners. I don’t hit green all the time but if you install this on your website and notice a lot of red you have your work cut out for you.  AI comes to the rescue.

How to Apply These AI Tools to Your Business

Here’s how you can start following SEO best practices today:

• Step 1: Download the Surfer SEO Chrome extension and analyze your homepage or top-performing page. Note the recommended changes for keywords, headings, and word count.
• Step 2: Use Ubersuggest to research new keywords and SEO opportunities. Go wider.  For example how well does Forever Lucky Films rank as New England Wedding Videographer?   Not great.  That’s where it gets tricky.  Where are my priorities?
• Step 3: If you’re on WordPress, install Yoast SEO and check whether your focus keywords are in the right spots. Use ChatGPT to help you adjust your meta descriptions and titles for better engagement.

One Simple Step You Can Take Today

To see immediate results, download the free Surfer SEO Chrome extension and audit your homepage. You’ll get valuable insights into what’s working and where you can improve.

With these AI tools—Surfer SEO, Ubersuggest, and Yoast SEO—you can build a solid SEO foundation and improve your website’s performance. SEO doesn’t have to be overwhelming! Start small, follow these best practices, and watch your site grow in visibility and traffic.

Stay tuned for my next post, where we’ll cover Structuring Content for Google and explore how AI can help you create well-organized content that search engines love.