What Small Businesses Ought to Know About SEO

Every small business can gain easy recognition for their cause by eliciting the help of search engines – but search engines are strange entities of mystery so you have to know what they want and give it to them before they will show you their love. If you make your site more attractive to search engines you will be rewarded with higher rankings – so let’s cover some must-dos and get some attention!

To get more visitors to your website a small business must:

Match search terms with your content
This is the biggest downfall and faux pas of many a website: great text and graphics, a beautiful site, but no one is actually searching on the internet for anything in it! You can optimize your site till the cows come home but if no one is searching for your keywords then no one will come. There are lots of great free tools [Wordtracker, SEO Book, Google's Search Based Keyword Tool are a few] that you can put your keywords into and see if anyone searches for them, and if so how often. If a low or zero number per month searches for your keywords come up with some new ones – fast.

Write for humans
Although search bots can’t read they are pretty smart. If you stuff your text with keywords they know it. This used to work several years ago but now is definitely not looked kindly upon. Write your content in a way humans will enjoy but also leave some flags up for the search engines by strategically placing your keywords. Which leads on to…

Put keywords in the right places
The right places for your keywords are in your domain, the folders [categories if using Wordpress] and then in the title, or name, of the page. A good example of the use of keyword phrase ‘auto shop’ would be: http://charlotteautoshop.com/auto-repairs/auto-shop-FAQ.html

Laser focus your keywords
You will have great success if you concentrate on 5-20 or so keywords/phrases for your site. It’s better to have some content density around some keywords and rank better for fewer than rank low for many. Again, use the free keyword tools to find terms that have good search numbers and focus on them most.

Change it up
Each page on your website needs to have its own unique title that’s about 65 characters in length tops. Short and sweet titles are better, and longer ones are going to get cut off in your search engine listing anyway. Your keywords must be in the title and the closer to the beginning it best.

The same rules apply for your meta description [what is shown under the page title in the search engine listing,] except you should use no more than 160 characters, including spaces. Think of the description as a very short sales pitch for your web page. You have to ‘sell’ your page to make it stand out from all the other listings. Include a call to action like: Help the Charlotte Car Club – we need volunteers. If you love cars and can volunteer call 704.555.5555 today.

Get stylish
There are HTML tags you can use to make your headings stand out for your visitors and make the search engines pay extra notice. Bolding works but use the H1 and H2 tags at your disposal to add some oomph to your content and make sure your keywords are in your headings.

Now you know these six simple tips to get your small business found on the search engines, apply them, sit back and wait for some major attention from the search engines!

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SEO: 5 Tips For Maximizing Your Website’s Reach

In a world where there are so many sources for information how can a website stand out from the crowd and get a lot of exposure for their cause with a minimum amount of effort? By using something you’ve probably heard about – search engine optimization [SEO]. Don’t worry, SEO is not rocket science, it’s pretty much common sense, and it can be easily implemented on a website. If you have a site already then you can use these tips to make some alterations that can significantly change how your pages are assessed by the search engines, so that your key pages [the ones that will bring in the sales/donations/fans etc.] show up high on their listings. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Okay, here we go:

1. Theme your website. This might sound obvious but step back and think big picture: By breaking down your main theme into smaller themes, or categories, you not only make it easy for visitors to find information but search engines can easily work out what your site is about, which is always a good thing. So, for example, if you own a dog rescue, the categories could be the process of a rescue, the dogs available for rescue, donations and education. Now break down each category into at least five chunks, with each chunk being a page on your site. The theme is strengthened by creating links between each of the pages in a category because links are really important to search engines. Tip number two explains why.

2. Use links the smart way. Search engines see links as votes for pages. The more votes a page has the higher it ranks in search listings. To see the power of linking simply type “click here” into Google. Go on, do it. What was the number one listing? Interestingly enough it is Adobe Reader. Why? Because the default text used for Adobe Reader is often “click here to download…” with “click here” being the link, not “Adobe Reader.” Are you beginning to see the power of your links here? I hope so. Not only should the links coming to your site be relevant to the content of the page they link to, but the links within your site should be relevant too. If your page is about spay and neuter then a link to it should read “spay and neuter” not “…for more information on spay and neuter…”

3. Titles rule. This is a biggie. Make sure that your title is short and succinct, catchy and has your keyword in it. This post is about SEO, so guess what word appears in the title? The closer you get it to the beginning the better, but the main thing you need to take away from content creation is make it sound right – if your keyword doesn’t work as the first word don’t worry. This is also true for the main copy on a page. Write great content for people and you will win every time. Write that great content in a way that search engines like, without compromising your visitors’ experience, and your win is even greater!

4. Repeat your keywords. If your page is about ’spay and neuter’ it is a good idea to repeat that word a few times in the page copy. Add it to the first paragraph and even bold it, if that looks okay. And remember the importance of tip #2 with regard to your keywords.

5. Use Wordpress. The reason i-contact focuses on Wordpress web design and wants your small business to use Wordpress is simple: Wordpress rocks when it comes to SEO. Search engines love it because the code is sound and with a bazillion plugins the platform can be customized to hum like a finely tuned engine.

Now that you’ve learned the five tips to maximize your website you have plenty of information to take your web presence to the next level. Start with number five, over a static HTML site because there are specific SEO plugins that will take a standard Wordpress site and turn it into a search engine magnet. Don’t you think it’s time your website was one of those?

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SEO and the Basics of Onpage SEO

Search engines do not rank whole web sites, but individual pages within the site. When doing some Page Rank research you may see that pages within a web site can have very different rankings. Therefore, with single web pages in mind, start small to build up your rankings within as many pages of your site as possible. You need to use what is known as onpage SEO to give your web page the best advantage, and if you have many highly optimized pages they will help you more than just a homepage with a good ranking.

The most basic level onpage SEO techniques that you need to encompass within your web pages are as follows: (more…)

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Keywords – Are You Choosing the Right Ones?

To get enough potential customers to your website you need to harness the power of search engines. Targeted customers are potential customers because they come to your site looking for something specific through the keywords that you have used, either in your web content or your pay per click campaign.

As you plan your keyword strategy remember that using the right keywords, ones that people actually use, is the name of the game. Your potential customers are those visitors who are interested in what you have to say as long as it is relevant to their search.

Back and the old days before people got really search engine savvy, a one word search term was common: insurance, mortgage, diet – you get the idea. Try getting the first place position in the Google with a one word phrase like those now – it’s a much steeper hill to climb, and an expensive one at that.

With most people these days using a three or four word search terms when using a search engine we can really see how specific and targeted searches are. So, for example, if you have a diet website you know there is a lot of competition out there – I just googled diet and there are 187,000,000 results – that’s a lot of competition. (more…)

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Working Out Where Your Website Sucks

Just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they will come. The honest truth is that the majority of web sites out there suck. That doesn’t mean the designs are necessarily bad, it just means that the websites’ owners don’t have a good grasp on why and where their website isn’t performing as they had hoped.

Think about it: How do you know how successful your web site really is unless you have data that is measurable? You don’t. You may have a vague idea, but you don’t have enough of the big picture. Web analytics, or should I say good web analytics will give you the big picture.

1. Know if Your Visitors Are Going to Your Key Pages
Pages that you want your visitors to go to and make a sale, give a donation, sign up for something e.t.c. are your key pages. With a good stats application you can tell at a glance what your top performing pages are, as well as your worst performing pages. (more…)

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