5 Simple Tips for Small Business SEO

You are a small, local business who wants to promote their business in search engines. Here are some simple steps for success

Target the right keywords

Know what words your customers use to describe your business or services. This is crucial as sometimes these words could be very different from words used by the industry. Targeting popular industry words will only end up sending your competitors to your site instead of customers. So, avoid targetting industry jargon unless it matches what your customers use.

This along with various keyword tools like Google Adwords keyword tool are the best choice to get a keyword set to work with.

Design a quality website

Build a good quality website. The website should be

Fast loading so your visitors don’t have to wait.Avoid heavy flash, huge graphics or complicated JavaScript effects. Visitors have very little attention span online and even less patience and need just a click to leave.

Mobile friendly or rather multiple device friendly. More and more people are now using multiple devices and screen resolutions, size and usability of all these devices vary. Also more are now touch centric and this should be considered.

Visually appealing but should also work well functionally. Sliders, Forms, Buttons should all perform as expected. Use images intelligently along with adequate text.

Navigation should be logical and all sections should by easily findable and reachable. Key elements for this include sitemaps, custom 404 pages, well thought out menus and sub-menus as well as breadcrumbs.

Get out the best content you can

Fresh, quality content useful for your visitors is a critical ingredient for succeeding in search engines. Ensure you not only describe what you offer well, but also show your knowledge of the field and industry.

A knowledge section, blog, case studies, useful tips and guides, business and industry news, etc. are some ways you can achieve this by.

Ensure you are regularly adding content to the website as search engines value fresh content. As a bonus this is also a great opportunity for social sharing.

Take advantage of Local

All search engines have a local version. Even if you are a nationwide business ensure you have a properly filled local profile for your office locations. This builds trust as you are verifying your physical existence. Google offers Google+ Places, Bing has Bing Local and Yahoo! has Yahoo! Local.

Besides these there are independent local business sites which get referenced by the big 3 above. Yelp, CitySearch, various online Yellowpages sites and Foursquare are some important examples where you should list your business.

Ensure that in your business process, encouraging customers to add reviews on these sites is incorporated. Also, in case of sites like Foursquare encouraging checkins helps. So tie some special offers to this.

Include Social into your business

Social media and information generated there is gaining ground in search engines. Google also has its own Social site Google+. Besides this all major Social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Youtube and many more offer businesses an opportunity to be active, engage and promote their brand.

You should choose 2-3 sites which best suit your brand and stay focused on them. Be consistent and make it personalized and interesting. Respond to fan comments and help promote a positive brand image.

Following the various tips mentioned above in your promotional plan will go a long way in helping your business succeed in search engines. You will also end up with the additional bonus of various other sites sending you good volume of visitors as well.

Note: All images used are resourced from morgueFile