You already know that SEO (search engine optimization) is a vital part of marketing your business. But do you know the nuts and bolts of current SEO practices? Here we divulge 8 key processes to help your small business rise up the rankings.

SEO refers to the practice of optimizing a website to enable it to rank higher on search engine searches. SEO encompasses every aspect of a website; from its design, structure, and code, to its content, keywords, and inbound links.

Digital marketers and webmasters have been tinkering with SEO since the mid 1990s, which is roughly when the first search engines began to catalogue website pages. Since then, optimization methods for search engine rankings have been dramatically stepped up, with marketers and business owners becoming increasingly obsessed with online visibility.

Today, SEO is a multi-billion dollar global industry. Major search engines continue to tweak and shake their prized algorithms, sometimes multiple times a year, as part of a constant quest to weed out poor SEO practices and reward good quality, user-friendly content. So it’s never enough to rely on information you learned 12 months ago.

Here are the most important steps that can guide you through small business SEO success in 2016, with help from CJG Digital Marketing: