SEO Tips For Small Business Websites
Hello, I’m Malcolm Oakley and I have been a small business owner since 2003. I have run a successful online retail store and a professional photography business.
I currently own a UK tourism website with top 1 – 3 Google positions for highly competitive search terms. With over 1/3 million unique web visitors per month from organic search terms. (Jan 2013 Analytics verified).
More recently in late 2011, I was contracted to provide Social Media services for a top Irish food supplement product.
Free Advice for Small / Medium Enterprises (SME)
Search Engine Optimisation can be a task that many small business owners delay, out of lack of knowledge, lack of time or lack of funds! I can work with you to increase your small business website traffic in a timeframe and budget that suits your needs.
Many factors can impact negatively on a small business website and with competition online almost overwhelming you need to make sure your SME website is optimized for the search engines today!
Good Seo advice involves making sure you, the client fully understand the changes that need to be made. I am not here to confuse you or promise unobtainable ranking results, I am here to help you maximize the potential of your small business website.
Through a combination of analysis and extensive knowledge of the industry, I have collated the best SEO methods that will produce an increase in organic web traffic for you small business.
SEO Tips on Increasing Business Web Traffic
My small business website saw an 18X increase in web traffic, from a reasonable 20K unique web visitors per month, to a very healthy 375K unique visitors per month (Jan 2013 Google Analytics) by using easy to understand search engine optimisation methods.
As a result my SME web traffic now only fluctuates due to seasonal changes in search queries. My free tips and advice will help you learn how to optimise your own small business website and achieve high rankings in the search result pages.
I want to share my experience of running a small business website with you, so I have published free SEO articles covering the essential points, which if implemented will help increase your web site traffic and SERP ranking.
Every business owner within the SME community wants their website to stand out above the rest.
My experience of providing affordable, white-hat web site optimization advice can help you achieve increased web traffic too.
With higher keyword position ranking on the major search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo.
Good SEO Advice for Small Business Owners
With Google continuing its assault on low quality and questionable websites, the need for good honest SEO techniques is greater than ever. White Hat SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimising a site for search engine ranking using methods that are acceptable and approved by the likes of Google, Bing, and others. While Black and Gray Hat methods might serve to advance your site in the SERPs quickly, the gain will no doubt be short-lived. White Hat SEO will not only assist you in moving up in the search rankings, it will help to keep you there.
Almost everyone in the arena of internet business and marketing is aware that the number one aspect of White Hat SEO revolves around content – fresh, high quality relevant content. “High quality” refers to content that is informative, accurate, relevant and up to date. This type of content offers value to the end-user – the searcher. Your potential future customers.
However, there is more to the quality content equation than just those four factors. The concept also includes good grammatical structure and proper spelling. Articles should also be unique. Avoid duplicate content for your site at all costs.
Once you move beyond the issue of content, there are varieties of other techniques that can be employed to help your site to rank. Again, most of these are frequently discussed and very well documented. Below are a few pointers that are a bit more obscure but that can serve to make a difference when incorporated into your SEO plan.
Keeping Your Business Website Content Fresh
Many SEO experts use the term “fresh content” to refer to the idea of adding new content to your site on a regular basis. In some cases, however, that is not feasible. For example, if your SME site is about “hanging baskets” (an extreme case, I know), there is only so much one can write about the topic. How To Write Good Unique SEO Content.
Nevertheless, there are still ways to keep your content fresh. Often it is possible to re-word some of your articles periodically and perhaps move paragraphs around to create a new structure for an article. Additionally, change the photos you are using on a particular page. If you do not have photos included in your posts, add some. You can also change the wording of the captions for the photos as well as the “title” and “alt” tags.
In addition, move the photos around and reposition them on the page. Try this with other elements you might have as well (charts, graphs, etc). These are very small and minor changes but they serve the purpose of updating and changing your site or page from time to time.
Choosing Keywords for Good Search Ranking
The issue of keyword density is always a highly debatable one. Is it really necessary for your keyword to show up 3.4% of the time in order for Google to know what your business article is about? The Google algorithm has been designed to be smarter than that, especially with the semantic indexing that is built into it.
Now, you certainly do want your keyword appearing in your article but it needs to do so in a natural way. When you attempt to achieve a certain percentage of density for the sake of density itself, the end result is usually that the keyword is forced into sentences in ways that are awkward and unnatural. This results in sentences that do not read well. This is particularly unwieldy for keyword phrases and can harm your SEO efforts.
Stick with the notion of writing about your product or topic for the purpose of benefitting or informing your reader and the keywords will naturally come into play a sufficient number of times.
An alternative approach to calling Google’s attention to your keyword is through the use of text formatting. Use the bold tag (<b> & </b>) with your keyword a couple of times within the document. The recommended areas are at the beginning and end of the article or page. The first and last paragraphs are considered optimal. Some SEO experts opt for italicising or underlining instead of bolding, though underlining can be confusing as hyperlinks are often underlined.
As with keyword density, there is no need to overdo it. Two instances of formatting the keyword should be sufficient and use only one formatting at a time. In other words, do not have a keyword that is bold, italicized, and underlined.
One additional factor to be mindful of is the semantic indexing mentioned earlier. Try to incorporate commonly used synonyms and variations of your keyword in your content as well. That will be helpful to Google in determining what your page is about. In addition, you might get a pleasant surprise and find your page ranking for one of those terms, also.
Creating Site Deep Links
When building links to your business web pages, plan to go deep into your site. Google does not rank sites. Google ranks web pages! It is critical to keep that in mind when developing links.
You should not send all of the links you cultivate and develop to your home page URL. Create link diversity by sending links to the other pages within your site, as well. This will help with getting all of your pages indexed and will provide opportunity to rank more often. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, make sure that each page in your site is linked to at least once within the site.
Add a Title Attribute to Website Links
The title attribute is a powerful SEO tool. So many articles and white papers on SEO methods mention using the title attribute for photos that appear in a post or on a page. However, did you know that you could add the title attribute to your links also? Well, you can and you should.
Using the title attribute helps Google to determine the nature and relevance of the linked content. It also provides you with an additional keyword opportunity in a natural way. Here again, do not abuse the technique. Do not stuff your keyword or keyword phrase into the title just to get it seen. However, if it fits there naturally, take advantage of it.
Use of Meta Tags in Optimization
Meta tags are not as important as they once were, although some of them should still be used for every page of content on any website. It’s a common misconception and a hangover from past times that the meta keywords tag is still useful. The meta keywords tag used to be a useful place to write down any relevant keywords for your page of content, but due to this feature being abused over and over, most search engines completely ignore the meta keywords tag when they crawl your site. You should still, however, always fill in the title and description tags as they not only help for SEO; they also provide useful information in the search engine listings. You can safely ignore the keywords tag.
My Final Thoughts on SEO for Small Business
These optimization techniques, though appearing minor and obscure, will add value to your SEO campaign. When used along with good meta descriptions, pertinent article titles and other major SEO components as covered in this website, they will help to bring out the best in your SERPs. However, remember good, White Hat SEO begins and ends with quality, fresh website content.
Author; By Malcolm Oakley