SEO for small business
What is SEO? How to do SEO? These are questions asked by many small business owners who are new to competing in the internet marketplace
SEO (search engine optimisation) is about helping your website to be found in the competitive internet marketplace. It is based upon having some understanding of the criteria that Google use when evaluating a website, and how to make your website more appealing in the eyes of search engines.
Research has confirmed that the vast majority of people do not look beyond the first page of search list findings – so you have to appear on that front page. SEO might sometimesresult in just small changes made to your website structure, and yet these minor adjustments can make a big difference to your Google ranking. These changes for example, could be to the metatags of your site title or the site description of your website, or even a change to your keywords and how you are using them in the content of your website pages..
An internet marketing strategy for your small business should include SEO, however if you are going to engage an SEO service provider, I would suggest to make sure they agree that their payment will be results-based. In other words, their fee is contingent upon delivering a first page Google organic listing for your business.
Be careful of SEO providers who seek to sell “backlinks” to you, because although the number of backlinks to your site are recognised as something that Google places some importance upon – the quality of these links is at least as important as their quantity. Backlinks (ie. websites that have a link to your website) are one of the measures used by Google to assess the credibility or authority of your site.
But the number of these backlinks need to be grown slowly and steadily over time, rather than a hundred appearing suddenly overnight. Otherwise, alarm bells can ring for Google and there is the possibility of being penalised in your Google ranking if they believe these are not “naturally” acquired links.
Here is a video clip in which the speaker explains in simple terms “What is SEO ” and “How to do SEO” ………
If you are still wanting to better understand “What is SEO and what can it do for my small business?” then you might have a chat with David Simmons, founder of Internet-Marketing-Keys.com who is a local SEO provider and won’t engage in any “hard selling” to you.
- Google Tutorial for Webmasters
If you have control over your small business website and are able to make adjustments and changes to your website structure, you are deemed a “webmaster” by Google. If you are wanting to perform SEO yourself on your small business website, then you need to learn more about how Google evaluate a website – and who better to learn from than Google themselves!
The following short video tutorial is produced by Google and offers some tips to help you understand the Google page ranking process
Also related to how to use SEO in promoting your small business, you might like to have a look at our page “How to increase traffic to your website“
And many more ideas at one of our blog posts SEO Tips for Small Business
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