The quick start guide to SEO for small business.

SEO (search engine optimization) is a technique or method used to make a website more friendly to the search engine, so as to enable a website to rank high on the search engine result pages (SERPs), when keywords applying to the website are put in as search criterion. Getting to the top lists of the search engines will increase the traffic of the visitors to your website, which could eventually mean increased business for the website owner.

Thus SEO has come into being as one of the most sought after and effective tool to get more traffic to a website, in comparison to the other older techniques of internet marketing. It is a common scenario to come accross extremely well made websites by small businesses are non productive, simply because they are not able to make their presence felt. If such is the case with your small business website, you can derive benefits by following the SEO techniques. Most small businesses cannot afford to hire outside firms to carry out SEO for them, keeping this in mind, we have a few suggestion and techniques for you which you can do on your own to get the SEO working for your website. 1. Create a worthwhile website, which offers good and valid content, with special emphasis on the type of content which is sought for by users in that segment. And the content must be relevant enough or you may get traffic but no conversions to actual business from the visitors. 2. Use keywords in your content, which are the principal words, which the users tend to use when looking for the type of content you offer on your site. While common words will get you a lot of traffic including specific words which are relevant business will guarantee you genuine visitors and eventually good business too. Like the keyword wood could be a wide word, while mahogany wood could be specific, so if the keyword used by a user is mahogany your site may not be in the list. Try using phrases as well like antique mahogany furniture, so you would increase your chances of being in the top as users with specific need put in phrases to look for content.

3. Use your keywords extensively through out the page, especially in the beginning and end of the page. Some search engines consider keyword density, which is calculated by dividing the number of repetitions of the keyword on a page by the total number of other words used on the page, while ranking the website for that keyword. Ideally keyword density should be around 1 to 5 percent. But do not over use the keywords as, beyond a 5 percent, the excessive usage of the keyword may be considered as spam by the search engines thus you may never feature in the search list. 4. When designing your web site use the keywords specific to the content of the page in the title tag of each web page. Also include key words in Meta tags and description tags; this can get you a better ranking with some search engines that index sites using Meta tags and description tags. 5. Another criterion which can decide your rank in the search results is called link popularity, which can simply be understood as; how many different sites recommend your site for the content. It will be even better if these links come from high ranking sites. You can do this by going in for link exchange with some sites, as also by letting your visitors post your link to their circles. 6. Make sure there is no hidden text in your webpage, which is normally written on the page I the background color, which was an old strategy to increase the keyword usage on the page, but now it is considered as spam. Remove all such hidden text whatever it may be. 7. Use of alt tags, containing information about the image, for all images used on the page is advisable as this will help you further in increasing the density of keywords on your page. 8. Have the website structure organized and well planned, keeping track of the links, whether they are taking you to the right destination or not. The paths for the visitor to follow must be clear and valid. If most of the links on the page originate from graphics try putting in a text based menu at the top or the bottom of the page. 9. Check the content thoroughly before it is launched onto the server, check for mistakes and rectify them. All this done you are ready to upload the site. 10. You can also use some of the free tools available on the web to check if the pages created by you are well optimized, these tools will also provide you with recommendations on what improvements can be made. 11. With every thing in place you can either wait for the search engine spiders to come and inspect your site and add it to their database, which could take anything between 4 to 8 weeks or even more, or you can do a manual submission. A manual submission is more advised as this will make the process of getting indexed faster. To do a manual submission, you will have to go to the search engine’s website and follow the method as explained there to carry out the submission. You would generally find the submission link with a bit of effort as it is generally placed in some safe corner. Some of the search engines you could submit your website to are Google, yahoo search, lycos, altavista, overture, look smart, ask jeeves and wise nut. Having done all this, just wait for a bit of time till you start reaping the rewards of the SEO effort you have made. With these small and easy techniques a small business can inculcate SEO into their website to increase the traffic on their site, without having to hire a costly firm, or spending on any other software.

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