However SEO, although it can be time consuming, is a relatively simple process that can be understood by most small business site owners.

There are four main factors that effect your
web pages position in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Page):

• Your Choice of Keywords
• Your Web page/ site content and Structure
• The links to and from your web site
• Your Competitors

There are two, and only two, ways of optimizing/optimising your website for the search engines:

• On page Optimization- This involves:
  • Keyword Research – Finding and choosing the best Keywords to target
  • Web Page Optimisation- Optimising the web page copy and Meta Tags for the correct keywords.
  • Site structure – Creating an optimized site Navigation structure.
• Off Page Optimization- Establishing inbound links via various
  methods like  directories submission, article marketing,, blogging.

Which Pages Do You Optimize

Ideally all pages will be optimized, but the main one is the home page and for most  small business websites consisting of a few (<5 pages), then this will be the only one that needs optimising.

For any site, regardless of size, the home page will be the most
important page, and should always be optimized.

What to Optimize

A web page has two main parts- the hidden part which consists of the page meta tags that are used by the web browser and the search engines and the visible part, which is what the visitor actually sees which we call the page content.

Both the Meta Tags and the page content need to be optimized.

Keyword Research

This is the most important part of the optimization process as you need to optimize for a selection of chosen keywords/keyword phrases.

However for most small businesses the actual keywords are usually quite obvious and can be obtained by simple brainstorming and by asking family and friends what search terms they would use to located a business like yours.

Research tools like the Google Keyword tool are used for locating other keywords and for checking that the keywords you think are good are actually what people are using.

Site Structure

For most small business websites this isn’t really an issue as they will only have a few pages (<10).

For larger sites then the site navigation will need to be optimized.

Linking

Linking is crucial to getting your site into the search engines and also for giving your site credibility in the eyes of the search engines.

However for small business sites it isn’t complicated as it usually only involves getting a few links from local/niche directories.

There is no need to pay for a link building service/software that blasts your link to thousands of sites.

Video SEO Basics

For those who prefer video:

Summary

Basic SEO for small business websites if quite straight forward and most small business website owners should be able to do it themselves.

To assist I have put together a short free course that takes you through the process in detail. See The SEO Training Workshop for Small Business Website Owners

Watch on Youtube

Over the years the layout of this page has been changing, first with the addition paid advertising in 2003 and more recently with video,twitter and most importantly local search appearing on the Page.

Previously if you wanted to do a local search you would need to use a special search interface (e.g.Google Maps) and likewise for video.

The following video gives a quick overview of the page layout with emphasis on the organic,paid and local search results.

You can watch the video on youtube please don’t forget to leave a comment.

I forgot to mention in the video that to appear in the standard organic listings you need to have a website and that website has to have been indexed.

However you don’t need a website to appear in the local listings. If you have a website it can be linked to your local listing.

To get your site listed on any of the search engines you need to tell them about your site, it is not automatically done for you by your web designer,hosting provider or fairy godmother.

There are two ways of doing this:

• Use the search engine addurl form
• Getting your site listed on another site that is already in
  the search engines.

The Search Engine Addurl Form

The major search engines have a Website submitting page usually called addurl , where you can submit your Website for free.

However using the form isn’t the best or quickest way of getting listed and I don’t  recommend that you use it.

Getting Listed on Another Website that is Already Indexed

A much better way of getting your site listed in the Search engines is to get listed on another Website that is already indexed because search engines  like to find sites themselves.

The easiest way to do this is to submit your website to some directories, or if you already have an existing site that is indexed then link from that site.

Like search engines there are 1000s of directories and again you don’t need to submit your site to all of them. There are several types of directories and some are much better than others, but initially you are only looking for a link so that the search engines can find you and so any directory will do.

Is Your Site Ready?

Before you go and try to get your site indexed you need to make sure it is ready. Ready doesn’t mean finished!

By ready I mean that your site shouldn’t contain any under construction pages and broken links.

I like to get new sites indexed as quickly as possible so I just create a home page with a few opening paragraphs describing the site to the search engines and any visitors.

However this technique can only be used when linking from a site that you own or from a directory that accepts any submission.

If the directory reviews the submissions manually then you need to have a complete site, and not just a few paragraphs on the home page.

Finding Suitable Directories

You will need to find directories to add your site to.

The video looks at the different directory types and models. The best directories to add your particular site to, and how to find directories to add your site to.

Watch Building Links Using Web Directories on youtube, and please leave a comment.

Other Techniques

Adding your site to directories isn’t the only way you could try.

• Creating a video uploading to Youtube and linking it to your site
• Writing an article and submitting it to an article directory
• Adding your site url to your facebook /twitter profile
• Adding your site url to your signature file on forums.
• Using yahoo answers.

However these techniques tend to be used only by the more advanced Internet user.

In the next Post I will take a look at how you find out if your site is listed.

Resources:

• The Wisdom & Folly of Directory Link Building

After all what good is the website if no one visits it. However getting visitors is only one part of the story. You need to attract targeted visitors!

That is visitors who are interested in what you have to offer.

In contrast to TV, radio and Newspaper advertisements to attract clients, attracting clients using search engines is very targeted.
It is targeted because visitors find your site by searching for something specific.

They search by entering search words/phrases into the search engine and the search engine presents them with pages/sites that best match their search phrases.

Whether or not the searcher selects a free listing or paid listing from the Search results the page that it is directed to matches the search phrase.

Therefore the visitors to your site from the search engines are effectively already filtered and they are already interested in what you have to offer.

Paid Or Free

Everyone likes to get something for free. However in reality not even search engine traffic is really free.

If you get visitors from the so called natural/ free listings (main part of the SERPs page) it is because your page has been optimized for the search engines, and that takes time/effort and even money.

The Good news is that once you have done the optimization and you are getting results you need to do very little to maintain it.

On the other hand paid traffic is relatively easy and fast to get but you will always have to pay.

Using Paid and Free-Combining the Two

You could of course combine the two approaches; by paying initially for the visitors while you optimize the pages.

Once you start getting traffic through the natural listings you can then decide whether or not to stop the paid traffic.

Of course if you are converting your visitors to clients at a reasonable cost then why not continue to use both methods.