Improving the ranking of your website in search engines is difficult yet a necessary challenge for any business to take on. After all, an attractive website without targeted traffic and site visitors is of little or no use to growing your business. We engage in a full discussion of all aspects of SEO and Internet Marketing for small businesses in a full blog series which I recommend you check out.

Creating a purposeful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy should be the primary aim of all companies striving to increase Internet visibility. The main motive behind traditional SEO has been to simply generate more web traffic, a properly designed SEO plan (sometimes referred to as a “search engine marketing campaign”) will lead to higher quality traffic that spends more time on your site and converts into sales.

Here is a list of 8 basic search engine marketing tips we recommend for increasing organic search rankings.

1. Make it easy for search engines to discover and understand your site by making proper use of keyword-rich title tags, meta tags, site content, search engine friendly URLs.  Including strong keywords in the first paragraph of each page and writing page content based on keywords that line up appropriately with the nature of your business is what we recommend.ex/ Brand Name specific phrase “Toro mowers in Nolensville, TN.”
   Category specific phrase “New York style pizza in Nashville, TN.”While these long tail keywords may not be necessary in the meta section itself, be sure to include similar style phrasing in the beginning two paragraphs on each page. You want the beginning of each page to be the most keyword rich.
 
2. Work on researching the most appropriated keywords to target through your search engine optimization strategy. There are many tools available online to search for the best performing keywords. Once you choose the keywords to target, make sure they are also present in the content of your site. Good keyword rich content is always respected and rewarded by the search engines.
 
3. The number and quality of hyperlinks play a part in achieving great SEO result. Hyperlinks are clickable links on a website which lead to additional information, either internally or externally through other websites. External web links (links from another site to your site) push search engine ranking up the most, while internal links pointing to various pages within your site do this to a lesser degree.
 
4. Optimize the images on your website by using keyword rich “alt” tags and image names. Optimized images have a great potential to increase your rankings in search engines. Google Image search sends a good number of visitors to web pages that contain well-optimized images.
 
5. Create your presence on social networks like Facebook and Twitter and start engaging your target audience. Don’t limit your marketing efforts to Facebook and Twitter though. Participate actively on other social sites (Yelp, Flickr, City Search, other industry specific sites, etc.) to help drive active targeted traffic. Social Media Marketing packs a powerful one-two punch by driving more visitors to your site which means more potential customers plus increased SEO by through the increase in website traffic.
 
6. Work on your link building: use social networking, discussion boards, forums, directories, article submissions for creating beneficial backlinks. Going for “dofollow” links is your best option but creating nofollow links on industry specific sites (blogs, forums, etc.) related to your business can bring quality visitors to your site. Pay attention to the quality of the backlinks you create. For example, if you’re in the fertilizer business there’s little or no value to placing a comment on a “dofollow” blog related to college basketball. This same logic holds true for forums and content specific article directories. Over time, and increasing number of unrelated backlinks can actually hurt instead of help your search ranking as the search engines become confused about the theme or subject matter of your site.
 
7. Create & Optimize your Google Map Listing. This is likely the easiest and most powerful technique any small business can apply to improve its SEO. Read our Maps Optimization post or contact us today to see how we can help optimize your optimization .
 
8. Speaking of maps, you should always include your full business address, including zip code on each page of your site. I recommend the the page footer. Tons of web searchers used cities, major streets, and zip codes as search modifiers when seeking out local businesses.
 

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Please check out our other posts for important details on various tactics. I would start by taking a closer look at your page design  and also our post on keywords, the foundation of optimizing your SEO and internet marketability.

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Tags: internet marketing basics

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing 101. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.