Internet Marketing for Small Business

Realities of Search Engine Optimization for Small Business

 

 

In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Cyndia Zwahlen writes;

The small business was funded in part by venture capitalist Peter Rogers and his Dry Creek Ventures, which targets clean energy, water and food businesses.

Such small local food outfits, especially those that are gentle on the environment, are key to the long-term health of the economy but need formal access to local investors to succeed, says social venture-capitalist and entrepreneur Woody Tasch.

Shifting capital to organic farmers, independent food entrepreneurs, farmers markets and restaurateurs will pay off in stronger local economies, a healthier environment and improved supplies of affordable, healthful food, Tasch said.

He founded Slow Money Alliance last year to spearhead the creation of regional networks of local investors that want to put their money into local enterprises.

"We've had the life sucked out of our society and economy by financial markets run amok and globalism run to extremes," Tasch said. Slow Money is "part of a network emerging of people who want to repair the damage."

 

Everything is now going local.  Venture capital is going local, banks are looking local and businesses are going local.  By default, that means that your online marketing strategy also needs to be focused on the local markets.  Search engines are definitely on track to localize their indexing.

 

So, in order to maximize your Internet Marketing to your local market, here are some simple recommendations to help you make sure that you've covered the basic blocking and tackling of search engine optimization. 

 

The process of search engine optimization involves tweaking various aspects of your website and deals only with the organic search results. It has nothing to do with paid search also known as inorganic search or PPC. In order to improve your positioning in the organic search results, these guidelines will point out the tactics on how you can improve the visibility of your website.

 

Page Title:

 

Page title also referred to as the ‘title tag’ needs to be unique for each page of your website. This tag tells search engines and also the visitors what that particular webpage is all about. The title tag of each page should contain the business/website name followed with important information that relates to the webpage. One must avoid the following:

• Recording a title tag that is not relevant to the information present on the webpage.
• Recording the same title tag across all the pages of the website.
• Recording long title tags.

Meta Description:

 

The Meta description tag gives both the search engines and also the visitors who perform a search on the search engine an idea on what the web page is all about. That’s why it’s important to precisely summarize the content of your webpage. It’s always safe to keep the meta description tag within 160 characters (including spaces), as the rest of it gets truncated. One must avoid the following:

• Writing a meta description that is not relevant to the information presented on the webpage.
• Recording the same meta description across all the web pages of the website.
• Recording the meta description with only keywords.

URL Structure:

 

It’s important to create a URL structure that is friendly to the search engines as this will help in better indexing of your website. For this reason, it is essential to create appropriate filenames and expressive categories on your website. For example, an unfriendly URL structure is http://www.seotrafficspider.com/seo_articles/15042009.html. Such a URL is not only unfriendly but also confusing. One must avoid the following:

• Recording long URLs
• Recording the same URL across all the web pages.
• Recording deep nested subdirectories
• Recording irrelevant directory names.

Website Navigation:

A website that is easy to navigate can help the visitors to find the information they are looking for. It also helps the search engines in indexing the pages appropriately. It is important to ensure that all the web pages of your website are interlinked properly and also show the correct page when clicked on. The use of sitemaps both HTML and XML help the spiders to crawl the website easily and also index it. One must avoid the following:

• Creating complex websites that are difficult to navigate.
• Creating drop-down menus.
• Developing a HTML sitemap in which the pages are not organized.
• Indexing the 404 page in the search engine.

Unique Content:

The content that is hosted on your webpage needs to be informative, such that it can elicit action. Ensure that the content is not copied and is 100% your own creativity. Keep the content focused around your primary keywords and ensure that the keyword density is around 2.75% to 3.21%. It is also good to keep changing the content on your website so that the visitors can see that the site is not static but dynamic with its content. One must avoid the following:

• Using images that serve as textual content.
• Using long sentences.
• Incorrect grammar and spelling mistakes.
• Duplicate content on the web pages of your website.
• Stuffing keywords unnecessarily.  

Anchor Text:

Anchor texts are links that direct visitors to the internal pages of the website or to an external page/website. Anchor text helps the users to easily navigate between pages and also helps the spiders to understand what the page is all about, that it is linked to. One must avoid the following:

• Using general anchor texts.
• Using anchor text that is not related to the content of the webpage or is off topic.
• Using long sentences.
• Creating unnecessary links.  

Heading Tags:
Heading tags are used to represent the heading of the content of the webpage. Heading tags range in 6 sizes – h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6. These tags should only be used at the appropriate places. One must avoid the following:

• Using one heading tag for the entire content of the webpage.
• Using too many heading tags throughout the content of the webpage.

Alt Tag Optimization:
Images can’t be read by a spider when they crawl on the website. Therefore, it is important to use alt tags for the images. It is best suggested to use the primary keyword as the alt tag following the contents that describe the page. One must avoid the following:

• Using long filenames.
• Stuffing excess of keywords in the alt tags.

Robots.txt File:

A robots.txt file is used to prohibit the robots to crawl a particular page based on the nature and content of information that is available. This file must be placed in the root directory of your site and also named as robots.txt. One must avoid the following:

• Search result pages to be crawled.

Website Promotion:
You can promote your website using offline promotion, online promotion, social media sites, AdWords optimization, Google’s Local Business Center, forming groups, forums etc.

 

Once you have implemented or taken note of all these tactics, do use the Google Webmaster Tools that will help you in solving many of the issues that are related to your website. You can also monitor the performance of your website by using Google Analytics.