Small Business SEO Essentials
From the tons of articles on Small Business SEO articles,this is the very first article designed to help the business owner take action, massive action, and begin their quest for success using a relatively new and largely untapped marketing source, the Internet.
Search Engine Optimization is a fairly new discipline, considering that the actual media has been in full swing for less than ten (10) years. No more relying on Radio, Television (TV) or even on Yellow pages, just like the old days, in order to get traffic to your goods.. We now live in an exciting new era, the electronic era where for some, their storefront is now a website.
Business owners should welcome this new media with arms wide open and use it to their full advantage. Having your business website ranked top on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is no longer an option, its a necessity to stay competitive.
In the most basic sense, SEO is a broad discipline that involves “On Page” and “Off Page” methods, with the lone purpose of driving targeted traffic to a website. There is imbricate between search engine optimization and Search Engine Marketing (SEM), but these two disciplines are quite on the same tract gain traffic for you website and converts the traffic to paying customers. Whether using organic or Pay per Click (PPC), positioning your website so your customers can find you is the goal.
Below are some components of Small Business Search Engine Optimization:
- Keyword Research – choosing keywords that will apply for your business.
- Meta tags – Usually involves Title and Description Meta tags which are very important and quite easy yet mostly done wrong by business websites..
- Business address on all pages of your website – very important for Google and others to find and recognize the location of your business.
- Submit your business to local search directories – Google, Bing and Yahoo Local Business Centers.
- Citations and back linking to your website – important for authority.
- Content, content, content – essential for success.
- hCard – a very effective way to make it easier for search engines to locate your business along with providing a “trust” factor.
Above, are some very simple but essential elements of Small Business Search Engine Optimization. It will be the shrewd business owner that takes action and uses even these basic SEO methods to their advantage. After all, simply having a website is one great thing.. Its quite another to drive targeted traffic to that website that turn visitors into paying consumers.