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Better Website Rankings For Small Businesses
So, just how do you improve your search engine rankings? To understand this, we need to look under the bonnet of how search engines work, then tailor our Internet marketing tactics to fit in with what the search engines deem as important. There are currently three major search engines (The Big Three, as they are called in the industry). They are; Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search. Although they are each very unique in their own ways, they all use similar underlying algorithms to determine which websites rank highly and which do not. The most important factors in getting these search engines to 'like' your website are: 1. Useful and unique content on your website 2. Quality backlinks to your website In this first part of the article, I will discuss your website content and how to create quality webpages that attract and influence search engine spiders. In part two I will discuss what quality backlinks are and how to get them. Useful & Unique ContentThe first thing to do when creating content for your website is to do a little research on the words and phrases that people that may be interested in your business are searching for. These are known as keywords. You can do this by using tools such as WordTracker or KeywordDiscovery. Simply type in something related to your business to get an idea of the top search phrases. Now forget the ones on the top of the list. As a small business, you won't have the time or resources to compete with the big boys in your industry for these terms. Big corporations have large teams of people that target these keywords and are constantly churning out content to get them to the top of the search results pages. Take a look further down the list and find some keywords that get less searches and are less competitive. For example, if you are a small law firm, you wouldn't want to compete on the keyword "solicitors" but "solicitors nuneaton", "solicitors fees" or "soliciters" (a common spelling mistake) would be viable alternatives. Try to pick just two or three keywords to begin with. Armed with your keywords, you now need to create useful and unique website content that contains these keywords. The content must be unique because search engines now have the ability to pick out articles that are duplicated elsewhere on the web and don't rate them particularly highly. It also needs to be useful to your visitors - simply stuffing your keywords into a badly written article will reflect badly on your business and search engines are getting better and better at sorting the wheat from the chaff. Always remember that you are writing primarily for real people and not the search engines and you won't go far wrong. Choosing a title for your first article may seem a little overwhelming at first but a few simple techniques can make it a whole lot easier. How To's are very popular with both people and search engines, as are Top Ten Lists. Making a profound statement is also a good way of catching people's eye. Using the solicitor example above, you could use the titles "How To Choose A Solicitor in Nuneaton", "Ten Ways to Reduce Your Solictors Fees", "It's Spelt Solicitor, Not Soliciter!". A little imagination goes a long way :) When writing the text of your article, try to include your keywords whenever it is relevant to do so (not whenever you can) and I'll repeat myself by saying remember you're writing for a human being, not a search engine! Sometimes the keywords you've researched really don't sit nicely together in normal text (for example can you think of a sentence that includes "solicitors nuneaton"). Don't be afraid to put small words in between your keywords because search engines often miss these out anyway. You could use "solicitors in Nuneaton" or "solicitors from Nuneaton" instead. Another technique is to use punctuation (which search engines also omit). For example, the sentence "It can be difficult choosing a solicitor. Nuneaton has over twelve firms to choose from." includes the keyword "solicitor nuneaton" (separated by a full stop). That pretty much covers the basics. Now, go away and write five to ten articles in the manner outlined and publish them on your website. In the second part of this series on small business search engine optimisation, we'll cover the second important factor in increasing your search engine rankings - getting backlinks to your website. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Shore Dutton Internet Consultancy provide website design and Internet marketing services from Nuneaton, Warwickshire (UK). |
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