Small Business Websites

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a generic heading for a lot of different methods used to make your website more search engine friendly. One of the most important aspects of SEO are keywords or key phrases. These describe your business and are words prospective clients might enter into a search engine like Google. A website without any optimization will likely rank poorly in a search. This is the reason SEO is so important and constantly discussed in conjunction with websites. Most people won’t ever find your business without it.

Each search engine, like Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. has different rules as to what is most important to them and how they come up with their search results. As a quick example, for some search engines, page titles count for more than anything else. Unfortunately, a trick that works great on one search engine may get you into trouble on another. As a result, since Google is the most used search engine, webmasters usually optimize sites for Google. Since you can’t optimize for every search engine out there with all their conflicting rules, it makes sense to do so for the one with the lion’s share of the market.

Let’s say you sell wood furniture in Anchorage, Alaska and there are two other competitors with websites. Neither of these other two sites have had any optimization done, but your website has. When someone goes to search for wood furniture in Anchorage, your website will come up at the top of the search engine, while your competitors will be below you or on the following pages. In the world of searches, if your site isn’t listed on the first page, you’ll get very little business from a search. If people find what they need on page one, they won’t keep looking through other pages. Their needs have been met and they have no time or interest in doing more searching. This is where the battle for top search engine ranking comes in. Every company wants to be in the top five to get the client.

Meta tags are keywords and key phrases entered into the HTML code of your website. This is one of the first and most important steps in optimizing your site. Users can’t see this code, but search engines read it, understand what your site is about, then display your site when a search for these keywords is done. An example of meta tags in your website’s code is listed below. These are some of the keywords for CNN.

<meta name=”Keywords” content=”CNN, CNN news, CNN.com, news, news online, breaking news, U.S. news, world news, weather, business, sports”>

Having the proper meta tags and key phrases are extremely important in reaching your target audience and a lot of time can be invested in researching what keywords are being searched by users. If your website is about wood furniture, you’ll obviously want those words listed in the meta tags. However, you may find that there are 500 other companies selling the same thing and your chances of getting on the first page of someone’s search are extremely low. In a case like this, it’s good to find your niche. Some research may show you that people are searching for walnut dressers and you happen to sell several. You can optimize your site using those keywords and work on getting to the top of that search result. By promoting your walnut dressers, you get people in and sell those, while also showing them the large inventory of other furniture you have as well. Not everyone can be at the top, so it’s important to find your niche. What makes you special and can be promoted in a way to bring people in where there isn’t so much competition? Think about it.

In addition to having keywords and phrases as meta tags, keywords should also be listed throughout the text on your site. This helps reinforce your message and gives the search engine even more clues about your content. When describing your product, instead of saying “our dressers…”, you’ll want to say “our walnut dressers…”, because that’s what you’re promoting.

There are many, many aspects of search engine optimization, with page titles and meta tags being at the top of the list in importance. There are entire firms and specialists dedicated solely to optimizing sites for search engines. Rules change frequently and it’s a bit like playing a game. If you try something and don’t get the results you’d hoped for, do some tweaking or try something else. Nothing about the internet is written in stone and it can all easily be changed.

While basic SEO usually falls under the duties of a webmaster initially setting up your site, they likely won’t keep tracking its success unless you’ve specified you want it done. SEO can be expensive and many small business owners don’t want to pay for it. To cut down on costs, stay involved yourself. Understand the basics, have a goal, track your results and ask your webmaster to make changes as needed. This also gives you a good idea of what’s going on with your site and knowledge is power. Use it to find success!

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