SEO For Small Business - Part One
A client recently asked me to take a look at their current SEO company and help them to decide whether or not the service they were paying for was worth the money. So I decided to do a little research about SEO and what exactly some of these companies do. This is a pretty long post so I split it up into two parts. Part two is coming soon :)
First and foremost, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. What does that mean to small business owners? It means that when people search for certain keywords in Google or Yahoo! or Bing, hopefully your website is included in some of the top listings. It is actually quite an involved process that does not happen overnight, so don't get fooled by any companies that promise top 10 rankings immediately! It just isn't that easy. Here are the main steps to getting your website in the top listings.
- Site Structure and "Crawlability"
- Keyword Selection
- Fresh Content
- Links, Links, and more Links
- Social Media Activity
I am by no means an SEO expert, but I will try to explain how it works as best I can :) There are quite a few resources out there for learning about SEO and even more companies out there that will do it all for you. The point here is that for small business owners, paying for this service might not be an option, so I am posting here to explain the basics.
Here are some good resources that I've come across that might be helpful as well.
- Dave Davies 10 steps to a well optimized website
- Google's webmaster guidelines
- RagePank.com - An awesome SEO Blog
- TheFutureBuzz.com - Great article on SEO and Social Media
So here we go with a simplified explanation of the SEO process ...
Site Structure and "Crawlability"
Before any keywords are selected and content is written, we have to think about how our website is going to be designed and developed. We also have to think about how search engines "see" the content on the site. Unlike humans, search engines use software called spiders or crawlers to visit your site and read in the content. These spiders can easily get lost and/or confused if there is too much code on a site. Layers and layers of tables within the html make it difficult for the spider to find the content. By using clean and lean XHTML markup for content and moving all your layout and style related code to a CSS file, you will leave only what is of interest in the html, the content!!.
What else can we do within our site structure to increase the chances that the spider will find all our content? One thing we can do is ensure that the URLs within a site are search engine friendly. This means that instead of a URL like www.adsumdrive.com/content?ID=1024&Name=SEOForSmallBusiness we use something like www.adsumdrive.com/blog/seo-for-small-business. Search engines can understand these types of URLs much better and that's the whole point of SEO. If the search engine likes it, we like it. Another thing we can do is setup our internal linking structure to be search engine friendly. This means that instead of using purely javascript menus for navigation (those that insert HTML into pages as they are rendered), use a hybrid css/javascript menu (for example QuickMenu).
Keyword Selection
Perhaps the most important step in SEO is deciding on the keywords to focus on and optimize your site for. The first question that comes to mind is "what are keywords?" Keywords are words, or sets of words that users enter into a search engine. So for your business, your target keywords are the words that visitors will enter into a search engine to find businesses like yours. You want to find the keywords that will lead your users to your website.
So how do we figure out what keywords we want to optimize for? There are some good tools on the web to help you find the right keywords for your site. Many of them are paid services such as: Word Tracker. Here are some free tools that can help you narrow down the keywords that might work for your site.
These tools will show you how many times certain keywords are searched for. In general, the more times a set of keywords is searched for, the better. However, when choosing your keywords, take into account which keywords will actually lead to the user clicking on your site. For example, for a web development company based in Vancouver, the keywords "web development" may be searched for thousands of times, but because of the thousands of web development companies out there, you might have a tough time getting noticed.. It might be wiser to use the keywords "Vancouver web development" and go after the local hits. Another great way to figure out your search keywords is to study your competitors. More than likely, you have already visited Google and run a search to see where you rank, and more than likely you aren't high enough in the rankings, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. So, why not visit some of the sites that are on that elusive first page of search results. Take a look at their content and the keywords that they use. It's not cheating to learn from your competition!
Choosing the right keywords is vital and once you have chosen those keywords, make sure your content is full of those words. Search engine spiders look to the title of the page and the main heading and weigh those words higher when ranking a page. The main content area of your page should also have some of those keywords. SEO people talk about keyword density - which is the number of times those keywords appear on your page, so don't be afraid to use them multiple times. However, be weary of overstuffing your pages with these keywords - spiders are smart and will know when you are not using these words in the flow of the page.
Fresh Content
Content, as they say, is King. One of the most important things you can do to get good results in a search is have good content. So what is good content you ask? Well lets consider your home page - it is the first thing your site visitor will see when they get there. Consider the point of your site - are you selling a product? a service? Do you want them to sign up for something or maybe contact you. Whatever the end result is that you are trying to accomplish the home page is the visitor's first chance to see if your site will take them there. So write content that is appealing to your target demographic, content that will help them make a decision - which hopefully is to buy your service or product. After all, they came to your site because they are looking for something. They have a problem and your job is to show them that you have the solution.
One question you may want to ask at this point is "Do I/we have the resources to write our own good content?" If the answer is no, then perhaps looking for a professional writer to help you with the content on your site. If the answer is yes, that's great! You're well on your way. Here are some more things to consider about your content. Do you plan on updating the content regularly? Regular updates to content means people are more likely to come back to your site in the future. For example, posting news on your site about your company and/or about your industry may be interesting to your readers. Another great way to get repeat visitors is to start a blog section on your site. A blog is much more informal than a news section and is a great way to connect with your visitors. Those visitors may also wind up linking to your site which is great for your visibility and search ratings. Another added benefit of regularly updated content is that spiders tend to start visiting your site more. While this doesn't necessarily equal better search results, it doesn't hurt - and more frequent visits by the spider means your changes will take effect faster.
Stay tuned for Part Two of my SEO for Small Business series - coming soon :)
Posted on June 10, 2009 by Allan Mercado
Categories: SEO Small Business