SEO Basics for Small Business Websites: Titles, Structured Data, Sitemaps and llms.txt
A good-looking website that nobody finds does not win customers. The good news is that most of what search engines need from a small business site is not a secret or a trick. It is a short list of basics, done consistently on every page. This post walks through that list.
One page, one topic, one clear title
Every important page should answer one question and say so in its title. The title tag is what appears as the blue link in Google results, so make it specific: what the page offers and who it is for. "Services" is vague. "Web Development Services for Growing Businesses" tells both the searcher and the search engine what they will find.
Each page also needs a short meta description, one main heading (H1) that matches the topic, and clear subheadings underneath. Search engines read this structure the way a person skims a page.
Write for the questions customers actually ask
Think about what a customer types before they find you: the service, the problem, often the location. A page for each main service, written in plain language with real details, beats one long page that lists everything. Frequently asked questions are useful here too, because they match how people phrase searches.
Link your pages to each other
Internal links help visitors move to the next useful page, and they help search engines understand which pages matter and how they relate. Link service pages to related projects, projects to the service they came from, and blog posts to both. This website does exactly that: every post links to the services and projects it relates to, and the footer links to every page.
Structured data: describe the page in the search engine's language
Structured data (JSON-LD) is a small block of code that tells search engines what a page is: an article, a service, a list of FAQs, a breadcrumb trail back to the home page. It does not change what visitors see, but it can make your listing richer and your site easier to understand. Use the schema.org types that honestly match each page, and nothing more.
Sitemaps and robots.txt
A sitemap lists every page you want found, so search engines do not have to discover deep pages by chance. A robots.txt file tells crawlers what they may read and where the sitemap is. Both take minutes to set up and are worth submitting in Google Search Console.
llms.txt for AI search
More people now ask AI assistants for recommendations instead of searching. An llms.txt file is a short plain-text summary of your site written for AI tools: who you are, what you offer and which pages matter. This site has one at jasperfernandez.com/llms.txt, and so does the Vespa Club Davao website.
Speed and mobile matter too
Search engines favour pages that load quickly and work well on phones, because visitors do. Compress large images, avoid loading code you do not use, and test every page on a real phone. I cover the trade-offs between page builders and hand-coded sites in hand-coded site or page builder.
Keep it maintained
SEO is not a one-time task. Keep content current, fix broken links, and make sure updates do not quietly break pages that already rank. The release habits in my deployment checklist apply to websites as much as to apps.
A quick checklist
- A specific title and description on every page
- One H1 per page and clear subheadings
- A page for each main service, written in plain language
- Internal links between services, projects and posts
- Structured data that matches each page
- A sitemap, robots.txt and llms.txt
- Fast pages that work well on phones
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