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How To Incorporate SEO Into Your Small Business Marketing Strategy

As a small business owner, would you place your business in the basement of a warehouse in the middle of a desert with no easy roads that lead to your store? By not incorporating search engine optimization (SEO) into your small business plan, you are doing the same thing. SEO is becoming the most important internet marketing strategy you can use, because it can put your company on Main Street with glowing blinking arrows that point to what you have to offer. An aesthetically pleasing website that features a quality product is not going to cut it anymore, and some studies have shown that SEO is more important than paid search advertising, or pay per click (PPC). There are certain things that small business owners can do to boost their SEO that help their company get noticed.

Getting Started

Most websites can benefit from SEO, but for now let’s focus on non- ecommerce websites, meaning those websites that don’t directly sell product on their website. In many ways, small- business SEO is easier administer, because there is less competition and search queries are more specific. Let’s say you own a plumbing business in San Antonio, Texas. The first thing that you should do is sign up for Google’s Adwords tool so you can research keywords like San Antonio plumber, best plumbers in Texas and San Antonio toilet repairs. Search engines are all about solving problems. By getting in the mind of a potential customer you need to come up with keywords that will relate to how your company can solve their problems. The longer your list of keywords is, the better.

SEO-Friendly Web Content

Now that you have performed adequate keyword research, it’s important to place,(not stuff) those keywords throughout your website. The content of your website should be relevant, original and easy to understand. Search engines love original content, and creating unique blog posts will help boost your SEO. Building trust should be a priority so make sure the content you place on your website is reliable.

Utilize Tools

Besides Google Adwords, some other tools that will be helpful to understand your SEO campaign better are Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools. Also sign up to be on the local listings for Google, Yahoo and Bing so that these search engines can show a map of where your business is located, with your phone number, website and reviews.

Overlooked Tips

In an article titled “The Beginners Checklist for small Business SEO” from a search engine optimization tools company called SEOMoz.com, the author maps out some overlooked tips. Some of the tips include adding the company address and phone number on every single page of your website and creating a specific e-mail address for your website.  The article also emphasizes how important SEO research is so that you can understand robots.txt and link building. The article suggests that you add your website to local directories, it says: “to find the relevant directories, use the list of link sources you created earlier. Also, you can try searching for ‘(your client’s local city name) business directory’ and ‘(your client’s industry) directory.’”

As the internet becomes more convoluted, algorithms change to seek out the most relevant information. To make sure your company stays ahead of the competition you have to understand the science and art behind SEO. If SEO is too time consuming, you can hire a company that specialize in link building and on-page optimization. By budgeting SEO into your business plan you could see a return on investment for years to come.

Written By

Teresa Dahl is a stay at home mommy, who enjoys writing about technology.

26 Comments

26 Comments

  1. Christian Sarono

    January 31, 2012 at 2:56 am

    Amazing! I’m really pleased about reading this post where it gives me a lot of useful and helpful ideas I needed. Thanks a lot.

  2. Tony

    January 31, 2012 at 11:05 am

    Hi, Teresa! I totally agree, especially with the end of the article: SEO can raise you in SERP, but doing it the wrong way, you can get penalized, so the best thing you can do (when you don’t know much about SEO and SEM) is to ask for help at a specialized company.

    • Sandra Foyt

      April 6, 2012 at 4:54 pm

      Either this or just read on it. When you know about And yes, you should never do anything which might endanger your business. But honestly, it’s not that difficult that you would not understand the principles of SEO on your own just by reading some trustworthy blogs.

  3. cathrine

    January 31, 2012 at 11:41 am

    There are many tools found to optimize our site to get highlighted by search engines. Too much of optimization is risk. White hat SEO is the best practice to bring our website in top ranking, it takes time but gives long term result. Now marketing trends are improved tremendously. Social media networks play a vital role in it. Good, quality and updated content with fine optimization makes our website a better one.

  4. Lauren

    January 31, 2012 at 8:57 pm

    The most important thing for business marketing strategy is seo based competition analysis as it will show you what are the keywords that are getting more business, how many backlinks the competitor is getting and lot more. Even keyword research is equally important. Its better to be in top 20 list of google search results for a keyword that is having more traffic than to be on top of google search results for a keyword that promises very little traffic.

  5. Danny

    February 1, 2012 at 5:21 am

    This post is not really for me, as I believe I am already past the basics of SEO, but it’s always good to read about it, so you don’t forget.

    I did really like the analogy about Search engine rankings as putting your store in the basement of a warehouse in the middle of the desert. Haha that is spot on!

  6. Amanda

    February 1, 2012 at 8:32 am

    The main point is,of course, SEO-friendly content. If you’d like to have a successful blog or site, then you should think much about content

  7. Rose Wilson

    February 1, 2012 at 9:22 am

    Hiring SEO experts/agencies for SEO campaigns is advisable to have better and sustainable implementation and results.

  8. Jon Stokes

    February 1, 2012 at 4:30 pm

    Now that Google+ is available for company pages, I think establishing a profile there is worth adding to any SEO strategy – as the changes to search results with Search Plus Your World mean that anyone sharing your content or given your pages a +1 will show up in searches.

    If you can become active on Google+ with people in your local area and also your niche (who can be from anywhere else) – it should improve your rankings. The trouble is that this, like any SEO activity, takes time and won’t bring results overnight.

    • TCA

      February 4, 2012 at 11:25 pm

      Great tips and advice! Thanks for sharing!

  9. Teresa Dahl

    February 1, 2012 at 11:29 pm

    Jon, I agree that companies should claim their Google+ profiles quickly. I notice a lot of people these days have Gmail, and when they’re signed in a search for something, having Google+ posts integrated with organic search results means these businesses can show up to.

    Really levels the playing field!

  10. Nishadha

    February 3, 2012 at 4:13 pm

    really cool set of tips, getting a local listing can do wonders if you are a location based business like a hotel or a restaurant. Also you need to focus on the reviews in listing because they can make a huge difference to the click through.

  11. Julia

    February 7, 2012 at 9:12 am

    SEO give us advantage over our competitors. We can never ignore the importance of SEO. But at the same time we also remember that good SEO is not an easy task. Search engine optimization has become highly technical. It requires a lot of research and technical abilities. Competitor analysis is also very important in SEO. The main problem is that It is really becomes hard to find a reliable agency for good SEO.

  12. Leonard Evenson

    March 1, 2012 at 3:03 pm

    I thought I’d add another good advice for aspiring online business owners wanting to do SEO. I’m sure for many, all this talk of technical abilities, research and analysis might sound daunting, but there is a way to go around it. When I was in this same situation, someone informed me that there are people in the world, online, who have already done this and know how to do it and would probably do it as a freelance job. But I should advise everyone who wants to do it this way to use a free employee monitoring software to keep an eye on the newly hired employee. It is important to be safe and weary when dealing with strangers we can only meet via the internet, especially when we have no money to lose.

  13. Hannah

    March 16, 2012 at 3:57 am

    In my opinion, every business, whether it’s a small brick & mortar type store or completely online, should be doing everything they can in SEO to become number 1 for their search term – otherwise they are totally missing out on free business!!

  14. Sian

    March 19, 2012 at 6:31 pm

    Really like your analogy of a warehouse in a desert! Being found is a crucial pillar to online success.

  15. John

    March 31, 2012 at 10:53 am

    SEO is really consider as one of the best marketing strategy that really good in promoting website and also a business and SEO is also consider as a good form of online advertising.

  16. Alan64

    April 9, 2012 at 3:59 pm

    Decent advises for beginners here. I would add another one: do not forget about social networks. Create a Facebook/Google+ page for your business. You will reach much wider audience, then with just creating a website.

  17. leebel

    April 11, 2012 at 7:05 pm

    Hi very good read thanks.
    The first thing I am going to do once I have added this comment is go back and check the content on my site. To make sure it’s of high quality and hopefully seo user friendly. Still not 100% on that one yet but will get there.

    So thanks again very helpful

  18. LC

    April 24, 2012 at 4:49 pm

    Search engine optimization gets more tricky each year. I think it is now harder for new businesses and individuals to compete as there is a major learning curb. We are quickly approaching a time when specialists will be needed just to drive traffic to a small personal blog.

  19. Stonie

    May 2, 2012 at 5:40 pm

    Hi Teresa

    Just another tip. Use tools like Seomoz open siteexplorer or Majestic Seo siteexplorer. They can give you a great overview of your competitors links and if someone links to you competitor they might wanna link to you 🙂

  20. Roy Fernandez

    May 9, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    It is always nice to read about SEO!

  21. Sarah Massif

    July 20, 2012 at 3:09 pm

    You have provided such a useful and helping information here that can be used every website owner for SEO his website and improve its ranking and all. I also own a small business website and doing seo for it and always keen to read as much information as I can about seo and by my fate I got very good stuff here.

  22. Lee

    September 11, 2012 at 12:15 pm

    Hi I am getting confused with seo with all googles updates and all the scare mongering going on. So I think I will take your advice do it the right way how google wants you to do it. And don’t get hung up on it.

    Great info thanks lee

  23. Sergio Colesar

    June 24, 2013 at 11:41 pm

    Thanks for the great tips and suggestions. SEO is changing way too fast lately, and difficult to keep up with all the changes.

    • Joseph Admin2

      June 25, 2013 at 12:41 pm

      I know. Wish Google would pipe down a wee bit 😉

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