SEO for small shops: how to win customers without living glued to ads

Every time someone tells me "I don't sell online because I don't have a budget for ads", I want to sit them down in the workshop with a coffee and explain this calmly. Because advertising is a tap: while you pay, water flows, and the day you turn it off, it's over. SEO is a well: sure, it takes work to dig, but once it's done it gives you water every single day.

In short: SEO for small shops means getting your store to show up on Google, on Google Maps and in AI assistants when someone searches for what you sell, without paying for every visit.

What SEO is, explained the way I'd explain it to my mum

Google is the busiest street in the world. SEO is getting your shop window onto the best corner of that street. And here's the beautiful part: that corner can't be bought. You earn it by being the one who best answers what people are looking for. I've spent 28 years fighting to get shop windows onto the best corners of cities like Paris and London, and I swear the logic online is exactly the same: location, clarity and making people want to walk in.

The three shop windows a small store has to look after

1. Local SEO: your shop on the map

When someone searches "ceramics shop in Zamora" or "clothing alterations near me", Google first shows a map with a handful of businesses. That map comes from your Google Business Profile. It's free and it's by far the most profitable thing a neighbourhood shop can do. What I always check:

• +Name, address and phone number exactly the same everywhere: your website, your profile, your social media and directories. To the millimetre.
• +The right categories: the main one and the secondary ones that really describe what you do.
• +Real, up-to-date opening hours, holidays included. Nothing annoys people more than turning up to a closed shutter.
• +Real photos: the shop, the window, the products, you. No stock photos.
• +Posts with new arrivals, events and products, like a shop window you keep changing.

And I'm telling you from my own experience: I've seen profiles stuck for months over details as silly as an address missing the floor number. Google is very picky about consistency. If something doesn't add up, it won't tell you: it simply won't show you.

2. Product SEO: being found for what you sell

Nobody searches for "Model 23B". People search for "hand-embroidered t-shirt", "handmade ceramic mug" or "original gift made in Zamora". So your categories and product pages have to speak the way your customers speak: clear titles with the words people use, your own descriptions (never the supplier's copied text, Google has seen it a thousand times), photos with proper alt text and a structure that makes sense at first glance.

3. SEO for artificial intelligence: getting machines to recommend you

This is new and it's serious. More and more people ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI answers directly: "where can I buy a handmade gift in Zamora?". Optimising for that is called GEO. How do you get an AI to mention you? With content that answers specific questions clearly (like this article), with your business details consistent everywhere, with reviews, and with other websites talking about you: local press, blogs, industry directories. AI trusts what it sees repeated and confirmed by several sources.

Reviews: your reputation ranks too

Reviews are good old word of mouth, but in writing and in front of everyone. They help Google show you on the map and, above all, they help people make up their minds. My advice: ask for them when the customer is happy (at the till, when handing over an order), reply to every one of them, good and bad, politely and with your own name, and never, ever buy them. Fake ones smell from a mile away, and Google can smell them too.

What the snake oil sellers won't tell you

• +SEO isn't instant. We're talking months, not days. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
• +Nobody can guarantee you the top spot on Google. If someone does, run.
• +It isn't stuffing keywords everywhere. That stopped working twenty years ago and today it can even get you penalised.
• +Bringing visitors to a website that doesn't convince is pointless. SEO brings people in, but the website is what sells.

My 30-day SEO plan for a small shop

• +Week 1: a complete, reviewed Google Business Profile, with real photos and up-to-date hours.
• +Week 2: titles and descriptions of your ten most important pages or products, rewritten with the words your customers use.
• +Week 3: ask your best customers for reviews and reply to all the ones you already have.
• +Week 4: sign up for Google Search Console and write a useful piece of content answering a real question you get asked in the shop.

Thirty days, without spending a penny on ads. It won't make you rich overnight, but you start digging your well. And in a few months, while others keep paying for every visit, you'll have people walking in on their own. Through the street door and the online one.