Small business SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization related to local businesses. Which is when everyone typically starts talking about Google. If you’re unfamiliar with SEO, it means that your customers type search keywords into their web browser and then Google decides which websites are most relevant and are relating to the search phrase. How exactly the search engines in general rank your website is a well hidden secret but you can assume that Google’s more than 100 variables make up a website’s search engine ranking.
Search engines like fresh and new content. It is advisable to have content relevant to your business and products/services on your site. Let’s say you are a hardware store in Atlanta and you wanted to utilize Search Engine Optimization, you would try to have keyword phrases such “hardware Atlanta”, “Atlanta tools”, a product name or the name of your profession, for example “Atlanta painter” on your website.
If you’d just use the word “hardware” as a keyword, Google thinks you might want to rank for this keyword nationally or even internationally. There will be much more competing sites so it’ll be harder to rank on the first page of Google. Even if you would be on the first page, how many visitors would buy from you. I doubt that someone from Colorado would physically buy a hammer in Atlanta.
So, focus on your regional area or town and you should be able to achieve a top ranking with small business SEO. The best way to do that is by getting links from other related websites. Think about links as votes. The more links/votes you get, the more important your website is. One condition though: the links have to come from related sites, i.e. let’s say you are in the plumbing business and your local car dealership links to you.
That link doesn’t count that much since it’s really not related to what you do. If you have another link from your regional plumber association on the other hand, the search engines are much more inclined to rank you for the keyword “plumbers” because, well, that is what you do and you get credit for that. This is some other advice relating to “customer first with internet marketing“.
You can get additional links by submitting your website to directory websites, business directories, forums, and bookmarking sites such as Digg or Delicious. Next, setup what people call a “Blitz Campaign”. Include videos about answers to questions customers ask you and submit them to lots of video sites such as YouTube, Vimeo or Kewego.
Then, write expert articles about what you do and post them on ezinearticles.com and other article directories. Follow up with bookmarking everything you did (including your newly created business blog) so search engines find this new information fast and rank you accordingly.
Small business SEO can be executed by most local business owners after a steep learning curve. However, considering the time constraints that we small business owners face, it might not be practical to do those time consuming SEO tasks on a daily basis. Most of us have customers to serve.
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