Search engine optimization remains one of the few viable marketing tactics that the average small business owner can utilize and still compete with his much larger competitors. If you aren’t familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) for short, perhaps you should be. SEO is the practice of optimizing one’s website to rank higher in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing for terms and phrases of your choosing. Below are some tips on how a small business owner can leverage search engine optimization to generate traffic to his website and leads/ prospects for his business.
At its core SEO is all about generating good, relevant and unique content for the keywords and phrases you would like your website to receive traffic for. When choosing the keywords you want to target, you want to focus on keywords that generate good traffic, aren’t too competitive and that are relevant to your business. For instance on my SEO blog I target the phrase Los Angeles SEO. The primary phrase that delivers the most traffic and that I would like to target (SEO) is too competitive and would take too long to rank for so I target a more local version of it since it’s less competitive but still delivers a fair amount of traffic.
So one of the most important decisions you’ll be making (coincidentally it will also be one of the first) will be choosing the keywords and phrases you want to target on your first SEO campaign. It’s important to spend as much time as you need to make this decision because any good SEO campaign should be given at least 3-6 months and as you can see that is a sizable commitment both time-wise and financially. When choosing your keyword(s) (specifically for your homepage), I recommend choosing a high-competition keyword that has high traffic potential and choosing a more realistic keyword phrase that you can realistic obtain a top ranking for within a reasonable amount of time. If you need help doing that, you may need to consult with an SEO consultant.
After you’ve decided upon a few keywords, it’s time to start generating some content around the keywords and phrases you’ve targeted. When it comes to generating content, it should be your goal to create and publish the most interesting content related to your targeted keywords on the internet. If you’re not sure what the best content related to your keyword looks like, I suggest you do a Google search for your targeted keywords. The top ten to twenty results should give you a pretty good idea of what Google believe to be some of the best content related to your targeted queries. At the very least your content should be that good if not better. Essentially if you want a top ranking, your content should be worthy of that top positioning.
Once you start pumping out really high quality content, it’s time for you start networking and making connections with “influencers” in your niche or industry. Another essential component of good SEO and top rankings is having quality links pointing to your website. Links come in all shapes and sizes but a good rule of thumb that has always worked for me is the harder the link is to come by; the higher the quality of the link itself. The bottom line is when it comes to SEO, you want to acquire as many high-quality links as possible.
And finally some basic on-site search engine optimization tips… every page on your website has what’s called a title tag and you should insert your targeted keywords for that page in the title tag. Perhaps the most important title on your entire website is your homepage and as mentioned above, you should be very selective when choosing which keywords/phrases you want to target with your home page. Your home page is most likely the strongest and most authoritative page on your entire website in Google’s eyes and that’s why you use that page to target your primary keywords.
For more tips and advice on how to use search engine optimization to attract more leads and prospects to your business please check out my SEO blog over at http://dancruzinc.com.
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