How to Do SEO Without a Website

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is often mentioned within the context of a website. And most of the SEO tips that are being spread on social media, and the internet in general, are all about website SEO.

But you actually don't need to have a website in order to practice SEO for your business. One of the best ways you can do SEO without a website is through a Google My Business (GMB) listing. A GMB listing is an online business listing that ranks locally on Google.

While a Google My Business listing is one of the best ways to do SEO without a website in my opinion, there are also many more ways to do SEO, especially local SEO, without a website. If you want to check out some of those other ways, scroll to the bottom of this article.

What is a GMB Listing

So what exactly is a Google My Business listing? Well no one better qualified than Google themselves could explain it better, so here is Google's official explanation below:

"Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. To help customers find your business, and to tell them your story, you can verify your business and edit your business information."

The reason I recommend a GMB listing for small businesses is because most local businesses rely on local customers for their business. And since GMB listings rank locally on Google, they're an amazing source of traffic to your business, all for free!

Benefits of a GMB Listing

There are three primary benefits to having a GMB listing for your business:

1. They let you manage your information.
2. They let you interact with customers.
3. And they let you understand & expand your online presence.

Manage Your Information

A Google My Business listing allows you to list basic info such as your business's phone number, email, address, business hours, and online posts similar to Facebook posts. This info will be shown to a user if they click on your GMB listing.

Interact with Your Customers

Another powerful element to a GMB listing is the ability for your customers to leave reviews about your business. You, as the business owner, can even respond to those reviews! A GMB listing also has the functionality for potential customers to send you a message through Google My Business.

Understanding & Expanding Your Online Presence

Google My Business also gives you powerful insights into everything related to your GMB listing. These insights include things like post views, GMB listing views, phone call clicks, and A LOT more! Using this data, you can make smart decisions on how to get more local exposure through your GMB listing.

How to Setup a GMB Listing

Setting up a GMB listing is extremely easy. Simply go to business.google.com and create a listing by clicking on the Manage Now button. You'll then be prompted to enter in your business's basic information such as your business name, phone number, email address, business hours, location, and a lot more.

It's very important that when you enter in this information, it matches identically to the information on other local citations. These citations could be a Facebook page or a Yelp listing.

In fact, there is a free tool by Moz.com that allows you to run a free audit on local citations to make sure your business's information is identical across all your local citations. Watch this TikTok on YouTube where I show you exactly how to perform this free audit.

How Does SEO Work for a GMB Listing

Google My Business listings are designed to rank locally. So for example, if you were a CrossFit gym in Denver, your Google My Business listing would include your gym's Denver address. And then when a person in Denver searches on Google for something like "CrossFit gym near me", your Google My Business listing could show up.

Now notice I said, "should". There are different factors that will factor in when Google decides which GMB listings to show first. The primary factor is location. Google will rank a GMB listing that is within 5 miles of the users location vs a GMB listing that is 50 miles away.

The second important factor is something that you can actually control, and that is how active your GMB listing is. An active listing will continuously post new content, add new photos, and reply to new reviews. You should also know that a GMB post will expire after 1 week, so you can kind of use that as a reminder of when to make another post on your GMB listing.

Other Ways to Do SEO Without a Website

Ok, so now that you know what a GMB listing is, how it can help your business, and also how to optimize it for SEO, here are a few more ways you can do SEO without a website. This is great if you're wanting to expand further than a GMB listing or if you already have one.

Social Media

Social media is a great way to do SEO and even fill up more spots on the first page of Google for your business. And since social media websites have such high authority, they can rank high on Google for your business fairly quickly!

Other Local Citations

I've already told you about the best local citation, a Google My Business listing. But it's definitely not the only one out there. In fact, there are literally hundreds of local citations ranging from a Yelp listing to an online Yellowpages listing. These local citations do really well at ranking on Google, but they are also great ways to take advantage of the SEO within these local citation websites!

In fact, there is an online SEO tool called FatJoe.com that will help you setup 100+ local citations automatically. You can learn exactly how to do that in my other article here...

A YouTube Channel

Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world? Did you also know that Google owns YouTube? This is extremely powerful because not only does YouTube videos rank on YouTube, they also rank on Google as well! Don't think a YouTube channel could benefit your business? My personal YouTube channel currently at the time of this article has 1K+ subscribers. This might now sound like a lot, but my channel has gotten a total of over 640K+ views!

A Podcast

Yep, you read that correctly. A podcast can actually help you do SEO without having a website! How is this possible you asked? Well, in addition to a podcast ranking on platforms such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify, Google announced that podcasts will now start to be shown in Google search results for search queries!

So that was a little bit on how to do SEO without a website. If you have any questions on SEO for your business, feel free to contact me at FitrMedia.com or booking a free, no-obligation website strategy call with me! Feel free to book a call even if you don't have a website!