Intro To SEO For Small Business

What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is the process of improving your website's ranking in organic (non-paid) search results.

The basic idea behind search engine optimization, is that a site should be constructed in a way that is search engine friendly. 

Let's assume that you have an existing business and you want to get more traffic to your website. The first thing you need to understand is that a large part of SEO is centered around keywords. For example, when someone goes to a search engine and types in a search term, they are entering keywords.  If you would like your website to be found by this searcher, with these words, then you must have the same words on your website.

As you might expect, you have competition. If for example, the first page of Google results displays 10 links, and there are 11 competitors, someone will be on page 2.

Keyword Research

You might think you know what people want. You might actually be too close to the problem, however. Depending on your industry, you may have jargon or other terms that are used to describe your products and services, which may or may not be the same words that people use to find what you offer.

Another common mistake is to believe that you will be successful if you are on page one of Google for a particular word or phrase that you think is important, but which really is very little search volume. In other words, not too many people are interested in the term other than you.

That's where keyword research comes in. There are numerous tools on the Internet to help you find out what words people are using to find what you offer. Not only do these tools tell you which words people are using, but they also tell you which words are most popular, providing you with specific search volume per month, as well as how much advertisers are paying to advertise with various keywords.

As I said, there are a lot of tools available to use when doing keyword research. There is also your current website traffic, which has a lot of useful keyword information you should look at. Between the data you already have available to you in your website traffic history, along with the use of third-party keyword tools, and your own understanding of your industry you're well on your way to developing a solid keyword list.

Site  Structure

Along with keywords, your website's organizational structure is also very important in SEO. Your website should be organized in such a way that related concepts are grouped together. For example, you might take your keyword list and organize the related topics into a logical folder structure.  If you have an online cookware shop, for example, your site might be organized by cutlery, gourmet food, knives, etc.

The Underlying Technology

The technology or platform that one uses to display and/or manage website content is a very important consideration.  For example, when I develop new sites, I use the Plone CMS.  This content management system is designed out-of-the-box to be search engine friendly. Additionally, there are other plug-ins for this CMS, as well as techniques I use, to help control and improve my visibility in the search engine result pages (SERPS).

Optimizing Pages 

Once you have your basic site structure set up, and you have a solid list of keywords, you will begin creating pages on your website.  Each page will have a title, a name (as in file name), and content (known on the street as text, photos, and video).

Page titles should contain your most important keywords. Page title should be unique. In other words, you should not have two pages in your website with the same exact title.

How you use HTML to layout your page effects your search engine results. For example, if you include <h1>, <H2>, and other header tags to highlight words on your page, then these words have a higher value with respect to search engines than the same words used in regular body text.  The same is true,to some degree, when using bold HTML markup, and words contained in links on your page.

People First, Search Engines Second

In general, it is recommended that when creating web pages, you write them so that they are easy to read for humans.  Some people try to create pages specifically to attract search engine traffic. They stuff their important keywords into the pages and repeat them in the hope that they will get more traffic. Keyword stuffing is definitely not recommended. Not only is this unpleasant to read, potentially turning off your customers, but search engines have strict policies against this type of behavior, and may penalize your website.

Instead of having pages with a long solid block of text, consider using more:

white space

 bold text

Headers such as H1, H2, H3

to break up the text and make it easier to follow.

Links

Now that you've written some great content, and used your keywords, there is still no guarantee of traffic from search engines. Many people new to the Internet, and Internet marketing, assume that if they build a website people will come. This is simply not the case. 

You must have links on other websites pointing to yours. It's not enough to have a lot of links however, these must be quality links as well. In fact, if you have too many links from bad quality websites, or websites "in bad neighborhoods" then you might actually be penalized by the search engines.

Not all links are created equal.

As I said, quality links are important. The quality of the website linking to you is important, the number of other links on the website linking to you matters, as well as the actual text used within the link to you.

Getting links

When you first start to think about building links to your website, focus on who you already know. For example, if you have friends and family, or other business contacts that can link to you, contact them and ask for a link. It's helpful to have incoming links in a related field of interest. For example, it may not be as helpful to have a link from a sports website to your accounting software site.

Web Directories

There are a number of web directories that you can add your site to. Many charge for a listing with prices ranging from no charge to several hundred dollars per year.  Many web directories are not worth listing your site on at all, while others such as the Yahoo directory can help a lot. 

Summary

There is a whole lot to search engine optimization that this post does not cover.  It is a large, extremely competitive, industry full of misinformation and secrets.

It's not that important for you to know all the latest trends and sneaky tricks. The best thing you can do as a small business owner is understand the basic concepts and implement proven techniques. By doing this you can simplify your life, increase your organic web traffic, improve your customer experience, and save time and money by investing in the right activities.

The more natural (aka organic or non-paid) traffic your web site receives from search engines, the less money you spend on site promotion and the more you will ultimately make.

If you are a small business owner looking for honest, informed, cost effect solutions to doing business on the web contact me.