Small Business Search Engine Optimization

Small business search engine optimization is basically the same as any other SEO campaign or is it?

We look at the the extra little things you can do for your small business website to make sure that it ranks well in the search engines.

11 Small Business SEO Tips

Keyword Research

All online and some offline marketing campaigns need to start with keyword research and seo for small business is no different.

You can use the free version of  Market Samurai to help you find the best keywords in your market even before you buy a domain name. It is also very handy if you want to research what your competition are up to.

Things to remember when doing your keyword research are:
1) The most searches is not always the best
So many people just look at how much potential traffic they could get, while the smart small business SEO‘s are looking for the low competition keywords that might have a few very target searches per month.

As a general rule longer tail keywords are more targeted, easier to rank for and because they are so much more targeted people usually convert to sales easier.

2) Does it make sense?
Don’t just target a keyword because it has low competition and search volume think about the psycology of the searcher. If you have a remedial massage therapy business you might not want to target keywords like “Full body massage” because the searcher could be looking for something that don’t offer.

3) Use Exact or Phrase
Use exact match or phrase match when doing your research it will give you a much more accurate idea of amount of searches there are.

Keywords in Meta Tags

Once you have your keywords then get your friendly web guru to put your keywords in your title tag and description tags for each page.

Don’t keyword stuff and make sure make bother the title and description as compelling as possible for the searcher to click on, because what you make you title and description tag is what shows up in the search engines.

Don’t bother using the keyword meta tag, it is completely useless and if anyone tells you that they need to be in there then get another SEO guru because that technique lost effect years ago.

Domain Name

When you have done your keyword research you should come up with your main keyword and then try and get a domain name with the keyword in it. This will give you a head start with your small business seo, but remember to make it easy to remember for your clients.

If you make it “besthomepestcontrolservicelowernorthshoresydney.com no one is going to remember it if you put on a business card or side of a van and it looks plain stupid.

Main Pages

Most search engines check if you have your main pages on a site now to judge whether your site is real or spammy.

These include, About, Contact, Privacy, Disclaimer and Terms and Conditions. Make sure include these in your site to add a bit more trust.

XML Site Map

Don’t worry about the geeky name just get your web guy orsmall gal to make an xml site map for your website and submit it google in your webmaster tools.

This will help Google to crawl your website and index it faster

Great Content

Whether you are going to do your SEO yourself or get a professional small business seo service to help you, you need to make sure you have media rich good quality content on your site and update it on a regular basis.

This can include videos, pictures, podcasts, tools, competitions or anything else that engages the searcher in your site and gets them to stick around.

Claim Your Google Places Listing

For some this may seem obvious but claiming your business listing in google can be one of the fastest ways of ranking for your keywords.

Simply go to places.google.com/business and follow the prompts to submit your business. When filling out your listing it is beneficial if your business has your keyword in the name because the “company name” becomes the title tag for the places listing.

Make sure you fill in as many areas as possible and try use related keywords in your profile this will help Google determine what your listing is about.

Include images saved as your keywords but don’t over do it. Choose relevant categories and if there aren’t any related, use your keywords sparingly (careful not to over stuff).

Include video (if you don’t have video you can make neat one at Animoto.com). Upload your video to YouTube making sure you save the video as the keyword you want to rank for and the titling the video the keyword as well (this is your title tag on YouTube) then put a link in the description back to your website.

Then take the youtube URL and paste in the google places listing. Once everything is filled in hit submit and then confirm your account either by phone or post.

Make sure you get your happy customers to post feedback on your google places listing, this will help boost the rankings of your places listing. You could incentivise them to do so by having a prize draw each month for new people have left feedback on your places listing.

Yahoo Directory

Submit your site to the Yahoo directory, it does cost about $300 but being listed in there is one of the best ways to get your site ranked, because of the massive trust a link from the directory will give you.

make sure your site is of quality and not just a holding page before you submit it because if the listing is not approved then you will just burn your $300 and not be listed.

Have a good look through the terms and conditions before submitting to make sure your site complies and you will be fine.

DMOZ

Dmoz.org is another quality directory that you can submit your site to help boost your search engine rankings but this one doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, however they get so many listings that they can take 6 months or more to approve your listing.

It is in their terms of service that you must not submit more than once so if your site isn’t listed in the directory after a week don’t bother resubmitting or they may never list your site. Just submit it and like yahoo make sure that it is a quality site and not a half done one and then forget about it, if gets listed then good.

Local Business Directories

There are tones of local business directories out there and most of them being free. Though in saying that free doesn’t always mean good. Search engines want to see quality links pointing back to your business site and some of the best quality ones are paid (and worth it).

Start by searching in your prefered search engine for things like:
“business directory” your city/country
keyword “add url”
keyword “add site”
keyword “add website”

and you should find a good list of places that you can submit your website too.

Don’t bother with the sites that ask for a reciprocal link back to them it’s such an outdated technique and has very little value to your search engine rankings.

Backlinks

Last and definitely not least you have to get backlinks from a range of sources including web 2.0, bookmarks, RSS directories, social media, article directories, blog comments and any other place you can get a quality backlink from.

Backlinks are like votes and the more votes you have the more popular you are and the higher up the ranks a search engine may place you if you have all the other things in play.

If you want to know more about how I Got Link can help your small business rank in the search engines then use the chat pad and ask one of our friendly staff.