This is a guest post by Michelle Strassburg, head of Sales and Marketing at Wood and Beyond.
The most important online marketing goal for any small business is to build its channel of organic web traffic. Organic web traffic relates to users finding your business when searching online through the natural search results. So why is it so important you ask? There are many reasons why higher search engine ranking matters, none more important than the fact that it’s free web traffic and users who found your site through the natural search results are more likely to buy a product or order a service. Before we dig deeper into the specifics of how to improve your organic ranking, know this: Unfortunately there are no shortcuts and the process of optimizing your site is a long process which along the way will work at times and won’t at other times.
Here are 5 search engine optimization tips For small businesses I’d recommend to start with:
- Getting Your Pages Indexed – Before you have the opportunity to increase your ranking, you’ll need to get your pages indexed. This means getting your pages to appear in the search engine indexed and for the moment their ranking isn’t that important. To achieve this, consider creating an HTML site map which includes all your pages and updates each time you add or remove a page. Another useful type of site map to consider as an XML site map which the search engine look out for and again it should update each time a page is added or removed. If you don’t have means to create either, make sure you link internally between related pages so if the search engine found one page it is likely to therefore find the link to page. To check how many of your site pages are indexed on Google (for example), search for [site:your-site-name.com] and look at the number on the right.
- Finding The Right Keywords – To help the engines understand what’s your business is all about, you’ll need to find and use certain keywords in certain areas of your site. Most likely in product and service descriptions. To find which keywords you’ll need to display on the site, I’d recommend using Google’s Keyword tool. Once you’ve narrowed down which keywords best describe your business you should also look at the number of estimated searches those words have each month and the number of other sites already ranking for that keyword. For example, you might find that it will be easier to rank higher for certain keyword which has less searches, but also fewer sites ranking for it.
- Optimizing On-Site Metadata – Each page on your site should have unique page title and page description which best describes the content on the page. These are the two blocks of lines you see when searching online. Now that you have the keywords which you’d like to rank for, optimize each of your pages around one key term by placing it once in the metadata page title and in the page description. Don’t stuff those fields with many keywords as it won’t be effective and will look very spammy. To optimize the page title for Google, limited the page title to 70 characters and the page description to 140 characters.
- Create Great Content – The search engines place huge weight on the level, freshness and quality of your on-site content when determining the overall ranking matrix. While on the surface it seems that bloggers or businesses offering services might find it easier to generate quality content, e-commerce sites can do the same in the shape of allowing product reviews, offering how-to guides or even sharing their knowledge on other sites. If you are unsure what to write about or what web users are likely to search for, consider using the the free Google trends tool for valuable insights.
- Building Links – The number and quality of links pointing to your site is an important ranking factor. From the search engines point of view you can understand why. If you are offering quality services, great content and attractive price other sites will link to yours thereby indicating to the search engines that your website is worthy. To increase the number of links pointing to your site, consider writing articles, submitting your site to quality niche directories, asking your suppliers or even your family members for a link. While some services offer other less ethical means to increase the number of links, my suggestion is to build your links naturally so to avoid disappointment down the way.
I hope my optimization tips will point you in the right direction.
Michelle Strassburg is Head of Sales and Marketing at online wooden worktops vendor Wood and Beyond. Michelle has over 10 years experience managing online marketing.
(photo by LiveFromAmsterdam @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: pay-per-click advertising, internet advertising, internet marketing, search engine marketing, business, SEM, SEO, PPC, marketing
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