A Small Business Owner’s Guide
In today’s digital marketplace, many small businesses are moving beyond simple websites to more interactive web applications. Whether you’ve invested in a custom booking system, an online store, or a client portal, these powerful tools create new opportunities—and new challenges for being found online. This guide will help you understand how to ensure your web application ranks well in search engines, even if you’re not a technical expert yourself.
Understanding the Challenge: Websites vs. Web Applications
Think of the difference between a brochure and an interactive kiosk—that’s similar to the difference between a traditional website and a web application:
Traditional Website Examples:
- A restaurant’s site with static pages for menu, location, and hours
- A simple business site with “About,” “Services,” and “Contact” pages
- A basic blog where new articles are added periodically
Web Application Examples You Might Use:
- An online booking system where customers schedule appointments
- A client portal where customers access their account information
- An e-commerce system with shopping carts and personalized recommendations
- A membership site with user logins and restricted content
Web applications differ from traditional websites in several important ways:
- They’re more interactive and respond to user actions without loading new pages
- They often require users to log in to access personalized features
- They typically load content dynamically as users interact with them
- They’re more complex “under the hood,” which can make them harder for search engines to understand
For small business owners, the challenge is making sure Google and other search engines can properly see and index all the valuable content in your web application—otherwise, potential customers might never find you.
Making Your Web Application Discoverable
For search engines to find and index your web application, they need to be able to navigate through it—much like a customer would need clear signs to find products in a physical store.
Clear Web Addresses for Every Important Page
What This Means: Each important section or “page” in your web application should have its own unique web address (URL).
Example:
- Poor approach: A salon booking system where all services load at yoursalon.com/#/services with the actual content changing without the URL changing
- Better approach: The same system with individual addresses like yoursalon.com/services/haircuts and yoursalon.com/services/coloring
What To Do: Ask your web developer to ensure each important section has its own unique URL. This might involve setting up what developers call “pretty URLs” or enabling “history mode” in your application.
Creating a Map for Search Engines
What This Means: A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like—a map of your site that helps search engines find all your important content.
What To Do:
- Ask your developer to create an XML sitemap that includes all the important sections of your web application
- Make sure this sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console (a free tool from Google)
- Update your sitemap whenever you add significant new features or content
Why It Matters: Without a proper sitemap, search engines might miss important parts of your web application, especially those behind logins or interactive features.
Connecting Everything with Links
Just as you would place signs in a store directing customers to different departments, your web application needs clear navigation and internal links.
What To Do:
- Ensure your main navigation includes links to all important sections
- Add relevant links within content where appropriate (like “View related services”)
- Make sure your footer contains links to key pages
Even if your web application works by loading content dynamically, these links help both users and search engines find everything important.
Making Your Content Visible to Search Engines
Modern web applications often use special technology (JavaScript) to display content in users’ browsers. This creates a unique challenge: search engines might not see everything your customers see.
The Visibility Challenge
What’s Happening: Imagine if your store window displays were only visible when someone pressed a button—search engines might walk by without ever seeing your products. That’s similar to what happens with many web applications.
Example:
- Potential problem: Your product catalog might show up blank to search engines if it only loads after a user interaction
- Better approach: Having your products visible immediately when the page loads
Solutions to Discuss with Your Developer
There are technical solutions to ensure search engines can see all your content. You don’t need to understand the details, but knowing these terms will help when talking to your web team:
- Server-Side Rendering: This means generating all the content on your web server before sending it to browsers or search engines. It’s like having your store displays pre-assembled rather than requiring each visitor to put them together.
- Pre-rendering for Search Engines: A compromise approach that shows a complete version to search engines while keeping the interactive version for users.
What To Ask Your Developer: “How are we ensuring search engines can see all our content? Are we using server-side rendering or pre-rendering for search engines?”
Speed Matters: Making Your Web Application Fast
Web application speed impacts both user experience and search rankings. Google explicitly rewards faster websites with better search positions.
Why Web Applications Can Be Slow
Web applications often load more code than traditional websites because they’re more complex. It’s like the difference between opening a simple pamphlet versus a complex pop-up book.
Example:
- Poor performance: An appointment booking system that loads all possible calendars and options before showing anything to the user
- Better performance: The same system configured to load the basic interface first, then load additional features as needed
What to Ask Your Web Team About Speed
You don’t need to understand the technical details, but ask these questions:
- “Have we implemented lazy loading for images and non-essential features?”
- “Are we using code splitting to load only what’s needed for each page?”
- “What’s our Google PageSpeed score for mobile and desktop?”
- “Do we have a caching strategy for our application data?”
Helping Search Engines Understand Your Content
Search engines want to understand what your web application offers. You can help them by providing extra information through structured data.
Structured Data: Digital Labels for Your Content
What It Is: Structured data is like adding detailed digital labels to your content that search engines can read. It helps them understand what type of business you have, what services you offer, or what products you sell.
Why It Matters: With proper structured data, search engines can:
- Show rich results (with stars, prices, or other enhanced features) in search listings
- Better understand the purpose of your web application
- More accurately match your content to relevant searches
What to Ask Your Developer:
- “Have we implemented structured data for our business type?”
- “Do our product or service pages have appropriate structured data?”
- “Is our structured data being generated dynamically to match changing content?”
Mobile Optimization: Beyond Just Looking Good
With most searches now happening on mobile devices, Google primarily looks at the mobile version of your web application when deciding rankings.
Making Your Web Application Mobile-Friendly
Basic Requirements:
- Text should be readable without zooming
- All content should be accessible on smaller screens
- Buttons and links should be easy to tap with a finger
- No horizontal scrolling required
Going Beyond Basics:
Consider a Progressive Web App (PWA): This is a special type of web application that works more like a native mobile app.
Example:
- Standard approach: A customer portal that requires internet access and loads slowly on mobile
- PWA approach: The same portal that loads instantly, works offline, and can be added to the home screen like a regular app
What to Ask: “Have we considered converting our web application to a Progressive Web App to improve mobile performance?”
Touch-Friendly Design
People use fingers, not mouse pointers, on mobile devices.
What to Check:
- Make sure buttons are large enough to tap (at least finger-sized)
- Ensure dropdown menus work well with touch
- Test all interactive features on actual mobile devices
JavaScript and Search Engines: A Special Challenge
JavaScript is the technology that makes web applications interactive, but it creates special challenges for search engines.
What Small Business Owners Should Know
You don’t need to understand the technical details of JavaScript, but be aware that:
- Search engines have gotten better at processing JavaScript but still struggle with complex applications
- Some search engines handle JavaScript better than others (Google is best, others may lag behind)
- The more your application relies on JavaScript for displaying important content, the more you need specialized SEO approaches
What to Ask Your Developer: “How are we handling JavaScript SEO challenges? Are we implementing any fallbacks for search engines that don’t process JavaScript well?”
Tracking and Measuring Success
For web applications, standard website analytics often don’t tell the whole story.
Beyond Page Views: What to Track
Important Metrics for Web Applications:
- Feature usage (Which tools do users actually use?)
- User flows (How do visitors move through your application?)
- Conversion paths (What steps lead to bookings, purchases, or sign-ups?)
- Technical metrics (How fast does your application load? Where do users encounter errors?)
What to Ask Your Analytics Provider:
- “How are we tracking interactions within our web application, not just page views?”
- “Can we set up custom event tracking for important user actions?”
- “Are we monitoring for JavaScript errors that might impact users?”
SEO-Specific Monitoring
Beyond standard analytics, consider:
- Setting up Google Search Console to monitor how your application appears in search
- Regular technical SEO audits specifically for web applications
- Crawl error monitoring to catch when search engines have trouble accessing your content
Making It Work for Your Small Business
Technical SEO for web applications can seem overwhelming, but remember:
- You don’t need to understand all the technical details – but knowing the right questions to ask your web team is powerful
- Improvements can be gradual – start with the basics like good URLs and proper sitemaps
- The effort pays off – properly optimized web applications can significantly outperform competitors in search results
Action Steps for Small Business Owners
- Schedule a meeting with your web developer to discuss the SEO status of your web application
- Use the questions provided throughout this article as a checklist
- Prioritize fixing issues that affect visibility of your most important content and features
- Consider a professional technical SEO audit if your web application is critical to your business
Conclusion
As a small business owner, your web application represents a significant investment. Ensuring it’s properly optimized for search engines helps protect that investment by making your application discoverable to potential customers. While the technical details may be complex, understanding the basic principles and asking the right questions will help you work effectively with your web team to improve your search visibility and drive more business.
