SEO or search engine optimisation is a really important part of a small business website.

Let me explain why…

Anyone who uses Google, Yahoo! or Bing (formerly MSN) regularly, knows that they usually provide two types of results (see diagram above):

1. Sponsored links

Sponsored Links (highlighted in red above), are paid for by bidding on specific keywords. Anyone can buy them and they are a huge source of revenue for Google in particular. They are located at the very top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and down the right-hand side of the pages too. They also appear on various websites as advertisements.

2. Organic listings

Organic listings (highlighted in green above), are on the left-hand side of the SERPs below the top sponsored links. Doing well in these “natural” listings can only really be achieved by SEO.

Why the organic listings are better

Experienced internet users know that the web pages sponsored links point to are frequently of lower quality than the ones organic listings point to. Or to put it another way, clicking on organic listings is more likely to provide the searcher with what they are looking for. This is because for the organic listings only, the search engines return a list of web pages that provide (in their opinion) the best matches for the words you have typed into their search box.

This is especially true with Google because that’s what their whole business model is based upon – high quality results for users from unpaid, natural, organic listings.

By contrast, any website can appear in the sponsored links, just by paying enough money to be there – website content is not a factor for sponsored listings.

So in a nutshell organic listings save users both time and money. No prizes then for guessing why Google’s growth has been so dynamic, or why search engine optimisation has become so important.

So what is SEO?

SEO is a whole host of related tasks, which when carried out effectively, will maximise the position a web page has in the search engine results pages. In other words, better SEO = better search engine listings. This whole host of related SEO tasks falls into 2 distinct areas:

1. On-page SEO

On-page search engine optimisation is about the structure and content of a website and the individual pages it contains. Important on-page factors include domain name, page names, use of meta tags, site structure and navigation, the selection and use of specifically targeted keywords, placement of page elements, use of multimedia elements such as pictures and videos, and even the time it takes a page to load.

2. Off-page SEO

Off-page search engine optimisation is about inbound links to the pages within a website from other websites. Google in particular considers both the quality and quantity of these inbound links a very important factor when deciding which pages should be at the top of their organic search results. It also considers the anchor text (the text that actually appears as a hyperlink) to be very important too. As a general rule of thumb, Google considers off-page SEO to be more important than on-page SEO because they surmise that what others say about you is a better recommendation than what you say about yourself.

What can search engine optimisation do for your website?

Quite simply, the higher your website appears in organic listings, the greater both the quantity and quality of your website traffic will be. Usually, a website needs to appear on the first page to see any real gain and the higher up that page the more dramatic that gain will be. Also, generally speaking, the website listed at number one will get exponentially more traffic than the one listed at number ten. For more about this, read What is a Top Ten Listing on Google Worth to Your Business?

SEO and small business websites

Sadly in my experience, most small business owners still rate the visual presentation of their website above having it search engine optimised. This is perhaps partly because they have always been guided by web designers who have little or no knowledge of SEO, (or worse still, outdated or flawed perceptions of SEO), and partly because they themselves fail to grasp the fact that without effective SEO, their website will never really get more than a handful of new visitors.

Remember that with over 90% of the UK search engine market and millions of searches every day, Google is a potentially huge source of income for small businesses, so to maximise the effectiveness of your website and cash in on this vast market, you should always aim for a balance between looks and SEO.

• SEO For WordPress - How SEO Friendly Are Your WordPress Blogs?
• Search Engine Optimization Tips
• SEO Tips for Blog Traffic Generation
• Things You Should Keep In Mind About Web Design Seo. Hiring A Web Design Seo Agency
• Tactics For Putting Together A Diversified Inlink Profile

Everyone knows that the best place to be listed in the search engines is the number one spot on Google, but what is that number one spot actually worth to your business and how does that compare to the number two spot or the number three spot?

The list below explains the average percentage of search engine traffic (or clicks) distributed to each of the listings on Google.

• The number 1 ranked website on Google gets 42% of clicks
• The number 2 ranked website on Google gets 12% of clicks
• The number 3 ranked website on Google gets 8% of clicks
• The number 4 ranked website on Google gets 6% of clicks
• The number 5 ranked website on Google gets 5% of clicks
• The number 6 ranked website on Google gets 4% of clicks
• The number 7 ranked website on Google gets 3% of clicks
• The remaining clicks are shared between all the other sites listed on Google

Data Source: Market Samurai

Each and every keyword or key phrase will generate a specific amount of traffic and the above percentages are the percentages of that traffic each of those top ten listings can reasonably expect to attract.

The keywords and key phrases that will generate the most traffic are very frequently not the ones you might expect, so be sure to do your keyword research BEFORE writing your web pages or blog posts. The best tool I have ever found for keyword research is currently offering a free trial to all new users and unlike some others, their free trial is the full working version of the software. So if you write web pages or blog posts it can make choosing the right keywords for your pages and posts an informed choice rather than guesswork. Even better, unlike most other keyword tools, this amazing software focuses on which keywords are likely to be most profitable for your business, not just those that generate the most traffic.

What is this software? Market Samurai.

Market Samurai comes with a full video training course and contains all sorts of invaluable information. So, if you’re serious about writing pages that generate high volumes of traffic from the search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing, I thoroughly recommend it.

Download your free trial of the full working version of Market Samurai today.

Remember that in the UK, Google currently has about 90 percent of all search engine traffic (and this figure is still growing), so combined, the top ten listings on Google mentioned above account for approximately 90 percent of all internet searches in the UK.

Now you can work out for yourself exactly what a top ten listing on Google is worth to your business.

• Ten Steps To Grow Website Traffic
• Google wins permission to keep website in China
• Site Indexing - Great Eight Tips
• Simple Tips That Will Help You Increase Your Website Traffic Rankings Right Away
• Article Marketing Build An Army Of Backlinks For Your Website

Many small businesses believe good Google listings are beyond them. This simply isn’t true. Find out how to be able to say “Google Loves You” and your website.

1. Domain Name

Choose a domain name that contains two or three keywords that are the most important keywords for your website or blog. For more details read Choosing a Domain Name.

2. Page Name/Post Name

Like your domain name, the name you choose for your page, post or article is very important. It has two components:

• The first is the page URL (e.g. for this page your are reading it is http://www.small-businessmarketing.co.uk/google-loves-you),  this tells Google and the other search engines what your page content is likely to be about, so it needs to contain the keywords main keywords for the page it relates to.
• The second is the page title. This is the title for the page that will be displayed to your visitors. This needs to tell your visitors what the page is about and is very likely to be similar to the page URL. (e.g. for this page you are reading it the page name is Google Loves You: 10 Top Tips for a Google-Friendly Website).

3. Text Content

After the domain name and post name above, the text on your page is the single most important factor in getting your page listed well by Google. Your page text should contain the keywords that you want it to be listed for.

There is a lot of discussion among web designers about keyword density, (i.e. the number of times a keyword appears per 100 words on a page). My view is that Google cares less about this than it does that the content is of value to the person reading it. In other words, I believe that so long as your chosen keywords are included within the text, you should write the page content to please the reader, not to please Google.

The detail of Google’s search engine algorithm is a closely guarded, but I’m convinced that Google Bot (the programme that crawls your web pages) is very adept at reading and can distinguish good, reader focused content from keyword density targeted nonsense.

In short, include main keywords in the text and write for your reader.

Always remember though that if you want your reader to actually do something once they have read your page then should consider skilled copywriting (i.e. it needs to be written with a specific end result in mind. That end result would usually be that the reader takes some specific action like phoning you, filling in a form, clicking the ‘Buy Now‘ button, etc. To find out more about our copywriting services Contact Us, or telephone us on 01263 722764.

4. Inbound Links and Social Bookmarking

Google places a lot of importance upon inbound links so inbound links are good, but not all inbound links. For more detail about inbound links this read Inbound Links: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Social Bookmarking and Social Networking in a Nutshell and Google Hates Links Pages. Ignore inbound links and Google will ignore your website. Why? Because Google figures that other people saying your website is good (by linking to it) is much better than you saying your own website is good.

5. Keywords Meta Tag

Google pretty much ignores the keywords meta tag. To find out more read Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search by Matt Cutts, (one of Google’s  own software engineers) and watch the video it contains. Other search engines do still use the keywords meta tag, so you should, but for most purposes Google will completely ignore it. The keywords meta tag should include the keywords from your text content at point 3 above and any common misspellings, or variations of them. Never use any word more than 5 times in the keywords meta tag on any given page (keyword stuffing) and above all, remember Google ignores the keywords meta tag anyway.

6. Description Meta Tag

In the Matt Cutts video as mentioned above, Matt clearly states that Google does use the description meta tag. The description meta tag should clearly and concisely describe your page content and in doing so, include your main keywords for the page. In total, including spaces the description meta tag should be no longer than 160 characters and it should be as informative as possible to a potential visitor – remember it may be the one thing that convinces them choose your page over your competitors’.

7. Un-Crawlable Content

Google loves text and there is no substitute for text. Search engine crawlers or spiders will read your web pages in order to decide how they should be listed in their search results. Crawlers can read text, but cannot read any of the following:

• Images

  If you use images be sure to use the alt tags properly to give a concise, textual description of what those images contain.

• Videos and Audio Files

  Include text on your page to describe the content of the files, or better still, a full transcript of the video or audio.

• Flash files

  Unless you know how to optimise flash files properly for search engines, simply don’t use them. If you must use them include a fully descriptive text transcript of their content in the page and never use them as stand-alone page content (i.e. graphically attractive, animated home pages with little or no text).

• JavaScript

  Most crawlers cannot read JavaScript so keep it to a minimum on your pages. Better still don’t use it at all.

8. Page Load Speed

Google has recently changed its search algorithm. Google’s new search algorithm ‘Google Caffeine’ includes among other things a test for page load speed. Google believes that pages which load faster give the user a better search experience and therefore Google now says page load speed is an important factor. Find out more by reading Introducing Page Speed at Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

9. Blogs

Google loves blogs because blogs contain lots of fresh, new and unique content. Adding a blog to your website and then writing new posts regularly will keep Google Bot coming back. Make sure the posts are relevant to the content of your website. Then, if you have followed all of the steps above, Google will list your blog posts well and before too long you’ll be getting lots of new visitors from Google who are interested in what you have to say and what you have to sell.

10. Cloaked Links

Many bloggers in particular like to cloak their affiliate links from readers. They do this to turn what is very obviously an affiliate link into one that doesn’t look like an affiliate link at all. They do this for various reasons, but mainly to increase click-through rates and therefore boost their own affiliate income. Google takes a dim view of this practice. Make your links look like what they are regardless of their purpose.

To finish up, it’s worth mentioning that changing a whole website to encompass all the above points might take you some time. Don’t be daunted by this. Set out a careful plan of things to do, prioritise it and then make lots of small, gradual improvements over time. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in day! This approach will allow you to get on with what you do best while improving your website too.

• Internet Search And SEO
• Ten Essential Tips Ofr Delivering Successful SEO
• Importance Of Web Design Seo
• The Values Of A Link For Search Engine Optimization
• How do Backlinks Help Your Corporate Blog?

Many small business websites have a links page. Links pages are simply a web page full of links to other websites. These became popular a few years ago as a way of creating reciprocal links with friends and other businesses in an attempt to boost website visitor numbers (traffic) from those sites.

Not satisfied with the amount of extra traffic these links provided, people then began joining link exchange schemes where they had access to many more reciprocal links. Often these exchange schemes created reciprocal links between two websites that had no relevance to each other at all. For example, a reciprocal link between a beauty therapist and a building company.

Some years ago, directly because of this behaviour, Google decided that link schemes were a bad idea. (Remember that Google’s whole business model is built on the concept of relevance).

Google’s policy on link schemes is very clear – don’t do it.

So what you should ask yourself before linking to other sites is this: “If search engines didn’t exist and the amount of website traffic I got was irrelevant to me, would I still create this link?”

If the answer is yes, then the link probably adds value to your website, so go ahead and create the link.

If the answer is no, then don’t create the link.

Also bear in mind that the website you are linking to needs to add value to your website. So if your link is to a website that creates spam, downloads malware or engages in illegal practices like phishing, Google will take a very dim view of your website indeed and list it accordingly.

Above all, remember that in general, links pages are in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines, so if you have a links page on your website, go and review it today.

• Intriguing Ways Of Finding Qualified Web Design Agencies
• How To Generate Visitors Utilizing Only Free Methods
• Top 7 Fundamentals For Google Optimization! Google SEO Tips And Techniques By Expert!
• The Truth About Search Engine Optimization
• SEO Suggestions - We Explain The Best Line Of Attack To Optimising Your New Website.

If you run a small business in the UK, there are literally thousands of places online where you can advertise free of charge.

All you have to do is fill in a few details. Many of them will even include a free link to your website or blog too.

Here are a few of my favourites:

Search Engines

• Google
• Google Local Business Centre
• Yahoo!
• Bing

Online Directories

• Yell.com
• Thomson Local
• Touch Local
• DMOZ
• BT Tradespace

• A Review Of The Keyword Elite 2 Software 101
• Creating Value in Your Marketing
• Online Marketing Questions answered !
• Learn How To Make Money Online With The Best Free Online Marketing Resources
• Online Marketing And Its Key Aspects