Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (or “SEO” for short), is the process of making your web pages, articles, videos, online press releases, Facebook pages, and any other content you place online “attractive” to search engines like Google and Yahoo so that they will rank you highly when someone does a search for keywords relevant to your content. 

The first step in all SEO efforts must ALWAYS be keyword research – you have to know (not guess) what people are actually searching for so you can direct your SEO efforts towards ranking for those keywords (search terms).  For highly competetive keywords of a global interest, keyword research can get a bit complicated and time-consuming.  Fortunately, when it comes to keywords related to local small businesses, you can get away with some very basic keyword research that can be done quickly and for free using a tool provided by Google.  The video below shows you how to use this great tool.

Click here to go to the Google Keyword Tool.

After you figure out your keywords that you wish to optimize your webpages and other content for, there are two main aspects of SEO to be aware of:  on-site and off-site SEO.

We’ll begin with on-site (or “on-page” as it is sometimes called) SEO methods.  The video below discusses the most important aspects of doing on-site SEO for your website pages.  Similar, but slightly different approaches to on-site SEO are used for things like articles and videos on sharing sites and will be discussed individually under those topics. 

Next, we’ll discuss off-site SEO, which is actually the most powerful method of SEO.  It is much simpler in concept than on-site SEO, but is generally more time-consuming in the long run (especially if you only use free methods – paid methods can greatly speed up the process).  Off-site SEO basically comes down to getting links to your web pages and other content from other websites using your keywords in the “anchor text”.  Anchor text is merely the words used in a link.  For example, in this link:  Google, the word “Google” is the anchor text.  When you get links from other websites, you will want to have your top keywords in the link anchor text whenever possible.  The following video covers the main things to keep in mind when getting links, as well as provides recommendations for free and paid sources of links.

The following video provides additional information on a relatively high-end paid link building service.  Most small businesses will not need this advanced level of link-building, but it can be very beneficial to those businesses in highly competetive markets (such as restaurants, attorneys, chiropractors, cosmetic surgeons, car dealers, etc. – especially those in large metro areas).

Tags: search engine optimization for small business websites, small business seo