Small businesses could do better with digital marketing if they focused more on SEO gold. SEO has enormous value when marketers discover how to rank at the top of major search engines like Google.

I just released my 30-page 2020 study, “Small Businesses Aren’t Mining SEO Gold,” which evaluated what effort 200 businesses are making with search engine optimization.

Basically, they’re not trying hard enough. Here are some of the highlights:

• 77% don’t include effective keywords in page content headers.
• 60% don’t include useful keyword phrases in SEO page titles.
• 33% have 50 backlinks or less.
• 25% have fewer than 10 pages.
• 85% don’t offer educational content.
• 80% are mobile-friendly.

Search engines have been around since the early ’90s so small businesses have had plenty of opportunities to learn what it takes to succeed. Unfortunately, they’re not leveraging enough best practices at the same time.