SEO For Small Business - Part Two
In Part One of this post, I discussed the first three bullet points I wanted to cover about SEO - Site Structure, Keyword Selection, and Fresh Content. In this post, I'm going to talk about Links and how Social Media is evolving search as we know it.
Links, Links and more Links
The more links there are out there to your site, the better - pure and simple. So how do we get links to your site and are all links considered equal? The short answer is no - all links are not considered equal. Consider, for example, a site that has links to any and every site that asked to have a link on it. Well the search engine spiders are smart enough to not put much weight to these links. So then what kind of links do we want, you ask? That's a very good question.
First lets make sure that all the major search engines know about your site. While this isn't a huge step in getting your site indexed, we'll do it so that the major search engines have you in their sights so to speak. It's interesting to note, that almost all search engine traffic comes from 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. So for all intents and purposes, these are the three engines you should submit your site to.
How else can we build up links to our site? Well there is reciprocal link building. This is where you post a link of a site and in exchange that site posts a link to your site as well. This worked well in the past but recently search engines have caught on to this little trick and reciprocal links aren't weighted very well. So that's not the best path to go down.
Adding your site to a well known directory can be a good idea to build up some links and traffic to your site. Some of the more reputable ones are DMOZ and Yahoo!. Google also has a list of directories that you might want to try.
Probably the most effective way to build up links is in a non-reciprocal way. So how does that work? Posting links to articles or news items from you site on other sites is one way. Many sites out there aggregate this type of content as it is relevant to the subject they are interested in. If you can find sites that have a community that discusses your industry, that's a great way for you to submit an article or blog entry to the industry site. You can introduce your site to them, and if the content is interesting enough, you'll get visits and links to your site. You can also buy links to your site. This can be a good way to go but it is important to research the site on which you are buying a link. If that site is ranked highly and is relevant to your industry, then it may be worth the money. Link building is a very time consuming part of the process, but is very important to organically building up your ranking within the search engine's results.
Social Media and Search
Social Media is changing search as we know it. Everything I've written in these posts is probably going to be out of date in less than a year because of the way social media is quickly changing the rules of the game. But still, all of these tips are definitely still valid and useful - but using social media to your advantage can pay huge dividends to your SEO efforts.
First, using social media is a huge topic - so I'm not even going to pretend that we can cover it all here. I'm just going to try to explain why social media is so important these days and talk about a couple of ways to take advantage of it.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter have given small business owners a plethora of tools to attract and maintain an active user base if the business owner is willing to do some grunt work. Let's take a look at Facebook and Twitter as just a couple of examples of what can be done.
Creating a Facebook page for your business and frequently updating it with fresh, relevant content means that you have the potential of tapping into the millions and millions of Facebook users. It won't be easy, but the power of social networking can spread fast if your content is good content. Spread the word to your friends that are in the same industry - a recommendation from them means a hell of a lot more than a recommendation from someone that knows nothing about what you do.
Twitter is a buzz with people trying to promote their businesses. So how do you get ahead and get noticed? Again, it starts with writing good, compelling content. Twitter is a tool that can help you get noticed - and especially in a network like Twitter the best content will rise to the top. Twitter users are generally more savvy and understand the 'Net a bit more than Facebook users so being able to impress and build a positive reputation on Twitter is a great step towards winning over your target audience.
So how does all this help with SEO? Well the more people you get following you and anticipating great content from you - the more chances you have of those users spreading your link/content to their friends. The cycle can be a great thing for your business - and all those links lead back to your site... the search engines will take notice!
Using Facebook and Twitter are a great starting point for any Social Media strategy - but it takes a lot of time and effort so be prepared to get your hands dirty!
So as you can see, SEO is not merely a simple thing. I hope you can also see that SEO is not a guaranteed thing either. So, if you find an SEO company out there that is guaranteeing you top rankings for X amount of dollars, I'd think twice - or at least make sure you understand exactly it is they are offering you. There are many, many reputable SEO companies out there that do their job very well - but as with anything you get what you pay for. So for many small businesses, these companies are a bit out of budget. Hopefully this article has helped you to understand the basics of SEO and you are armed with a bit more information to tackle your task ahead.
Back to the original question - are SEO companies worth the money? Absolutely! If you can afford it.
Can you do this yourself? Absolutely!! If you have the time and energy. Again I must mention that this is only the beginning - SEO is a very large topic so I would definitely read more but I do believe that many small businesses can get good rankings on their own by providing great content on their sites. You could always hire a development company (hint hint) to help you get your site ready for optimizing for search, maybe even set up a blog for you. Then write some amazing content and you're golden! Some SEO companies even offer packages just to help you build your links, or to go over your content. It really is possible to get great rankings and not have to spend a wack of money - just pick and choose the services that you need and see where it takes you.
Posted on July 7, 2009 by Allan Mercado
Categories: SEO Small Business