Tweet

Practical Search Engine Optimization or SEO For The Small Business Owner

Guest post by: Teresa Bohannon

Article Overview: A website is the best and most cost effective advertisement that your business can possibly have; however even the world's greatest website will not do any good at all if no one visits it. That is why you need traffic. Traffic is acquired through free and paid advertising, offline and online promotion and search engine optimization. So take a minute to learn the down to earth basics of Search Engine Optimization for your small business website. It is not difficult to do and it can easily make the difference between success and failure.

Practical Search Engine Optimization or SEO For The Small Business Owner

When you are promoting your business online, you want to do the best possible job of strategically placing relevant content on your site. That is the basic, common sense foundation behind using Search Engine Optimization(SEO). Basic SEO is really pretty easy to do, and for a newly fledged entrepreneur on a budget, taking the time to at least do basic SEO is absolutely vital to your online success.

1. Purchase a .Com domain name if at all possible. You may “also” want to purchase .Net or .Info etc., but always start out with a .Com address.

Important Note: I never recommend that you purchase your domain name and your hosting from the same provider. It is much easier, down the road in case of dissatisfaction or disaster, to salvage or move your website--permanently or even temporarily--if your domain name is purchased through a completely separate registrar.

2. If your website is dedicated to a single specialty business try to make sure your keyword appears in your domain name, even if this means that you need to purchase two different domain names--one for your local business cards and one for the Internet.

For example: If your business is named and locally known as "William's Home Design" you can purchase two domain names and put "similar" articles on each.

For Example:
HTTP://www.WilliamsHomeDesign.com and HTTP://www.WilliamsKitchenCabinets.com

NOTE: If you purchase two domain names do "not" use the exact same content on both.
NOTE: Be sure to see my article on Community Websites Your Key To Success for a good dual-domain strategy.

Remember, your domain name is one place that search engines really can not avoid looking. If you keyword does not appear in your domain name, make sure that it appears in each individual webpage or webfolder title...or both.

For example: www.WilliamsHomeDesign.com/cabinets/diy_kitchen_makeovers.html
Domain Name Folder Individual Webpage Name

3. If you have a business website, forget the flash and dazzle.
Do not use flash images on your homepage. It will not impress a serious shopper or business customer, or anyone with a slow Internet connection. Leave the flash and dazzle to the personal and entertainment sites.

*Do not use frames. They are difficult for search engines to follow.
*Do not use javascript navigation unless you also include basic links as well.
*Make sure that your entire site is interlinked and that you do not have any orphan pages.
*Make sure that your 404 File Not Found page is customized, and actually gives some information about your website and returns people to either your home page or your sitemap/index page.
*Always do a sitemap and submit it to the major search engines.

4. Remember to optimize your image files. Always, always, always use relevant keywords in your image file names,in your image "alt" tags, and in any descriptive text. Make them accurately descriptive of the image itself, but make absolutely sure you "naturally" include your keywords in all three places.

5. Make sure that your keywords are included in any on page Titles or Subheadings, and make sure those titles appear between "H1" Title "H2" Heading "H3" Subheading tags.

6. Submit your website to all of the major directories and use different variations on your anchor text instead of just submitting the same text to every site.

7. When you trade links with other relevant sites, do not submit a link to your home page, instead submit a link to a page on your site that is the most topically relevant to that site's viewers. Also do not link to everyone who asks, only link to relevant sites.

8. If you make a donation to a large or small charity or non-profit organization ask for a sponsor's link from their website. A link from a .edu or .org site is almost worth its weight in gold.

9. Add articles or unique content to your site steadily but gradually, over a period of days or weeks so your site will grow naturally in the “eyes” of the search engines.

10. Revise the pages that you already have up on a regular basis so the pages will not appear stale to the search engines.

For more information and down to the basics guidance please see my articles on Practical LSI For The Small Business Owner and What is LSI SEO and How Do I Do It To My Website?.

Related Articles
  Internet Home Based Business - The Power Of Search Engine Optimization
  Search Engine Optimization - If You Don't SEO, You'll Get Left In The Dust!
  Seo Basics
  Do You Keep Using The Same Ineffective Search Engine Optimization Strategies?
  Search Engine Optimization

Article Tags: business cards, business online, cabinets, common sense foundation, community websites, disaster, dissatisfaction, domain name, domain names, domain strategy, entrepreneur, kitchen makeovers, optimization seo, promoting your business, relevant content, salvage, search engine optimization, search engines, taking the time, webfolder



Related Forum Posts
What Do You Want To Be Taught? - Hi, My name is Jeff Foster, I will be moderating this new section. I want to get your opinion on topics you would like to discuss & be taught on. I see a great need for small business owners to learn how to perform basic Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which would include the basics about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What do you want to be taught on? Jeff
Re: Search Engine Optimization - If you are interested to get more information about Search Engine Optimization you can visit Search Engine Watch site gives you a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the search engine world. This site provides a ton of information about a very wide range of subjects related not only to search engine optimization, but also the flip side of the coin; subjects related to searching online.
Re: Can someone explain Search engine optimization to me? - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) could be compared to a big popularity contest: A High School Computer Geek and a High School Football Captain who are trying to promote a party. The computer geek tells everyone in school & even hands out 100's of flyers about his party Friday night...what happens? his friends end up showing up and a few new people...even the new people leave right away because it is not what they are looking for. The High School Football Captain ends up just telling a few good buddies, and within hours the entire school not only knows about it, but everyone wants to come, and everyone does come & stay. One defenition of "optimize is "To make as perfect or effective as possibe." How effective are your article marketing campaigns? Could you be distributing content (that is what search engines index) more effectively? In a perfect world, who would you want promoting your website, web pages, and web content? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is determining this perfect & effective way to do this. Jeff
Re: How do I engage seo works to be done for my site? - I read "Search Engine Optimization" for dummies. Gave me a real good foundation on which to build my sites. Really helped a lot.
Re: How to Promote Your Business Online - Apart from using Search Engine Optimization or SEO for promoting websites, I also find Pay per Clicks (PPC) to be a very good way to do. Why? For me it doesn't open only one oppurtunity for you, in fact it opens 2! You can generate your awaited traffic even w/o saying stop, ready and go and gain a maximized profit too.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Tips for the Novice Traveler

Make Small Commitments. Get Big Changes.

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.