SEO Search Engine Optimization is Essential for Online Marketing

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to methods of increasing your website's position within search results (i.e. Google, Yahoo, MSN) when people type in keywords related to your site.

Rarely do customers go beyond sorting through the first or second page of search results. Even small business owners, with diligent SEO practices, can achieve a first page position on major search engines when potential customers worldwide enter relevant keywords. 

What You Need to Know about SEO:

To accomplish this marketing strategy, there are some things you'll need to know.

1. Avoid the most common or generic keywords. It is going to be extremely difficult to optimize for them, as larger corporations are probably already ranked #1 and have more resources to stay there. 

For example, if you are operating an online e-book store, instead of choosing keywords like "e-book," choose specific keywords like "e-books for moms" or "teen e-books" or "self-help e-books" or "cheapest e-books." For locally-based businesses, use your city or state when writing your page content to make your keywords local (i.e. "hardware store in Deerfield").

2. Research relevant keywords before you write your page content. Know which ones are being searched for the most (Google's AdWords tool works great) and go from there. 

3.  Make your website page contact good. Even when you achieve #1 ranking on Google, you still need solid content to represent your products and services, or visitors will leave as rapidly as they clicked through to your site.

4. Incorporate your keywords seamlessly throughout the text. If your keyword phrase is "discount baby cribs," don't just let that phrase float out of context. Try to incorporate the words within sentences, such as "We offer the largest selection of discount baby cribs online, with free shipping!" Repeat primary keywords approximately once per paragraph, and include secondary keywords 1-2 times per typical page length.

5. Don't copy and paste text from other sites, or duplicate your pages. Google's search engine ranking will actually lower your score for copied content. Having good, relevant content is the most important aspect of SEO.

6. Get a domain that has keywords in it. While company names can be cute and cuddly, if you run an Internet-only business, you'll improve your SEO tremendously with a keyword rich domain. For example, if you sell area rugs, www.shelleysarearugs.com will be much more effective than www.shellysstore.com. www.ShellysWholesaleAreaRugs.com could be even better.

7. Update your website often.

8. Tag photos or provide alternate text. Today, more and more customers are doing image searches, and Google organizes images based on their alternate text or words surrounding the photo.

9. Get others to link to your website, and ensure that there is supporting text surrounding a banner ad or text link with relevant keywords. This is one of the most effective strategies a small business owner can implement for SEO purposes.

10. Your content needs to be suitably useful for the people who you'd want to find your site. You need the content to make sense to the reader and it needs to appeal to your target market so that they return or make a purchase. Remember that search engines aren't your customers; people are.

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What's Next

Next In This Guide
Part 35:
Getting Links to Your Website - Links are the life source to any website; without links your visibility online is limited to people who know your website address. For successful online promotions, links are essential.

Previous In This guide
Part 33:
Get Customer Feedback - Since small businesses are often more connected to their customers, the feedback provided by patrons should be a shaping force in you marketing strategy.

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Street Smart Guide to Small Business Marketing

 

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