SEO for Small Business
Most small businesses starting out on the web have much of their own web responsibilities, and they have heard of SEO, but they don’t know what it is, or how to implement it on their website. SEO stands for search engine optimization and is an area of expertise in implementing certain techniques and practices to help your site rank as high as possible on search engine results pages (SERPs). Even professional website technicians have heard of SEO, and wish they knew enough about it to do it well, so how can the small business owner stand a chance?
If you keep in mind that SEO isn’t the only component of your website, then it is possible to take a few small, easy steps to start doing SEO on your own. One of the most important things a small business owner can do is optimize the company website for search engines. Your content should be the backbone of your website, and positive SEO results will come as a result of this solid structure.
You can spend a lot of time effort and money on SEO, and achieve very few if any results if you do not have the quality content to go with it. As a small business owner, saving costs is always part of the bottom line and few people realize that proper SEO can be learned with little effort. Some companies even over-optimize their websites which can have little results for the added effort. Sometimes taking care of the basics is all that is really required.
So where do you begin? Well, one of the first things you can do if you haven’t already done so is to verify your site ownership with Google. Google’s Webmaster Tools offer a lot of useful features such as email forwarding, which offers you emails informing you of any problems found on your site. The problems that Google may find could be site inaccessibility, malicious content, and possible broken links. It’s useful to have this kind of information so that you can troubleshoot your own site.
The next area you can cover is in your content, which should be unique. You will have to focus on the keywords, or words that will be used frequently in the page text. A keyword can be a unique word or phrase that is generally used as the subject of the content. For example, your special keyword(s) or phrase(s) should take up about fifteen percent of the text. Don’t use the keywords so many times that it has a negative effect on your content meaning and readability. You don’t want to discourage your users, and you also don’t want search engines to tag you as spam.
Another area that you can cover while optimizing your site is to go over your design. A great design can be the key to your success. SEO and quality content can help push your site up the search engines, but once they’ve found you, you only get one shot. First impressions always last, so make them count. Remember to interact with your customers online, they are your audience, and your lifeline. Without them your business will fail. Answer their questions, interact with them through social media, whatever you do make them feel engaged and an active part of your site and you will be a success.
