Depending on what keywords you are targeting, search engine optimization can be a very daunting task. However, here are five small business SEO tips to get you on the right track.
Start a blog
Adding a blog to your small business website will not only pump your site full of fresh content, but it will also give people a reason to visit your site besides looking for your phone number (by this I’m referring to existing customers). You don’t need to update it with ten posts a day, five days a week, but you do need to be consistent. It could be one post a day or three posts a week. Regardless of your post frequency, make it a habit.
Also, be sure to write useful content that is relevant to your site. If you’re writing about what you had for breakfast, it’s not going to help you if you own a furniture store.
Contact relevant sites
Contacting other sites is always a great way to build inbound links. Just send the site editor an email saying something along the lines of “I thought this article I wrote might be of interest to you and/or your readers”. Obviously, you shouldn’t be so abrupt, but there’s no need for a five paragraph email either.
Also, make sure that you’re contacting sites that have content similar to yours. From an SEO stand point this will carry more weight than a random site, and from a sales standpoint you’ll be more likely to generate new customers with traffic coming from a site that holds a similar interest as yours.
So what would be an example of this? Take the furniture store I mentioned above. Their content would be relevant to an interior decorator, but it wouldn’t be relevant to a car dealership.
Use relevant URLs
Take a look at your site’s URLs. If you have a page that is meant to list the services you provide and the URL is structured with something totally irrelevant like yoursite.com/pagenumber2.html, it’s time to make a change. A more appropriate URL would be yoursite.com/services.html
This also applies to the the title of your blog posts as well, assuming that you are using custom permalinks.
Focus on local search
This tip is primarily for service businesses and retail stores, given that they have a certain geographic area that their business is limited to. However, that’s not to say to say that if you don’t fall into either of those categories that you should avoid local SEO.
The typical individual is wise enough to search using some form of a local keyword. For instance, rather than searching “house cleaning”, an individual is more likely to search using the phrase “house cleaning Brookline, MA” because they are looking for a cleaning company in their town and not in Arizona. So as a small business owner, your time and money is more wisely spent trying to climb the ranks for these local phrases, as opposed to the much broader keywords.
Also, don’t forget about your online local directories such as City Squares, Yelp, and CitySearch. In some cases, they might actually outrank you in the search engines for the keywords that you are targeting. So doesn’t it only make sense that you’re listed on their site as well?
Don’t make a mistake with Flash
There is nothing wrong with having Flash on your site. It’s very cool and can create a great user experience on your website. However, if your site is built entirely of Flash, the only people who are going to know where to find it are the ones that are already your customer.
So before you insist that the web designer you hire build your entire site as a Flash presentation, take a minute to think of what you’re paying for. A great looking site, that nobody can find.
Tags: tips
