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Posts Tagged ‘keywords’
Friday, December 30th, 2011
We talk a lot about Search Engine Optimization or SEO. That is one of the most important things a small business website needs. Optimized search engine results. It’s all about content and keywords.
Not only do you need your content about your business on your website, you also need regular content updated often. This means maybe add a blog to your site. Then add articles, or blogs to that section of the site. And, don’t forget back links. Link to other content on your site so that you can keep readers on your site.
Whether you write them or you use content providers (contract writers) it’s important to have content added at least three times a week. Even better if you add content every day. It does need to be something relevant to your business and not something that will make people think you have lost your mind.
Keywords are just as important. Your keywords need to be words that people will use in a search. Use keywords that mean something to your business and your products if you have that for sale on your site. You don’t have to use a ton of keywords for each content article or blog you post, but you do need to mix them up and use about 4-6 for each post. That way you have a few, it doesn’t look like spam and you will get people coming by using different keywords.
It’s a very simple concept and one that anyone can do. It just takes a little time and effort and everyone knows that it takes time and effort to run a small business in the first place.
Tags: blogging, business, content, keywords, online marketing, SEO
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 5 Comments »
Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Some small businesses think there is too much competition on line for any effective marketing. That is completely wrong, however. Small businesses just need to use different tactics than, say, the bigger corporations. So, how do small businesses compete against the big guys?
For starters, small businesses need to use different SEO tactics. Search engine optimization uses keywords for internet users who are searching for something. An example would be herbal products. Most of the big guys will have herbal products listed as a keyword so their websites will pull into the search.
Because of this, it does make it harder for a small business to use the very same keyword as it will be difficult to get to the first page that way. A way around that is to make your keywords mean the same, but different. Instead of using herbal products, list the actual brand name or a key word, like supplement.
With a little practice you will be able to see which keywords are more effective for your products so that you can move through the pages and compete against the big guys.
In actuality, small business have an advantage over the big guys as they can use as many keywords and variations as they like in order to sneak in under their radar. It is an easy way to get where you want to go, which is the first two pages. It is a good estimate that most searchers will not go past the third page very often. If they can find what they are looking for in the first three, that’s where they will go.
Spice up your keywords and try your hand at different variations. See what helps and use those more often than the same ones everyone else is using.
Tags: business, internet marketing, keywords, search engines, SEO
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
When you think of doing business online, do you first think about those big businesses with million dollar budgets? You don’t have to. Small businesses are alive and well on the internet.
So, where do you fit in? What’s up with all that talk of keywords, SEO, social media, and such? There are three basic elements that will drive your business online. They are:
- On-Page Content – If possible, have mixed content on your site. Take advantage of articles, videos, etc. and provide your site visitors with a wide range of content to match their interests. Optimize your content to help it rank better in the search engines for your most profitable keywords.
- Off-Page Content – Content you create for marketing off of your website is good for building links back to your site and delivering new visitors to the site.
- Behind The Scenes Content – This is the code that makes your website visible to search engines and web browsers. You can have too much and you can have the wrong kind. Make sure your code is optimized for better results in the search engines.
Since the internet is growing by leaps and bounds, it is very important to have these elements successfully optimized on your website. It sounds complicated, but it really is not.
With the right guide and a good web marketing strategy you can build a great website with excellent on-page content, a wide variety of off-page content that drives traffic to your site, and great code that gets you well deserved rankings in the search engines.
Tags: advertising, google, keywords, link building, PPC, search engine optimization, SEO, small business
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Monday, December 5th, 2011
Everywhere you turn, you can hear someone talking about a blog. Whether they are writing a blog or they are reading a blog, one thing is for sure. Blogs are wildly popular. And one more thing is certain – social networking is the most popular thing on the Internet. You might as well jump on the bandwagon and market your business this way.
Blogs are like websites, but you have social interaction with your viewers. Many blog sites are free and easy to use, too. Each time you post a blog, it looks as if it is an individual web page. This can make for a more dramatic look when viewed by your visitors.
Putting your business ideas into a blog will bring your business more potential customers and an audience who wants to see what you are discussing. Not only can you post your ideas in your own words, you can also have a shopping area where customers can view your products and make purchases.
One of the key things to remember is SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you focus your blog posts on the proper keywords and phrases, then you’ll increase your chances of obtaining high search engine rankings. For instance, if you sell gardening products and a prospect Googles “gardening,” if you have a lot of the right keywords (gardening, garden, etc.) in your blog posts, Google will favor your blog posts over those of your competition that are not well optimized.
If you aren’t sure where to start, contact Small Business Mavericks for a free consultation. We have a lot of experience and can get you off to a good start with your new business blog.
Tags: advertising, blog, blogging, content, google, internet marketing, keywords, online marketing, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 8 Comments »
Saturday, October 29th, 2011
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process that webmasters use to get their pages ranked in the search engines. It’s not the only online marketing strategy available, but it’s still effective.
Even in an age of semantic language indexing, web page optimization strategies that involve keyword management are still viable and still effective.
Consider that most of your competition don’t practice sound SEO strategies in their content marketing efforts. If you do, that will give you a distinct advantage over your competition. So what makes for sound SEO practices?
Believe me, it’s not difficult. But the work is tedious. You must be able to determine which keyword phrases are most profitable for your niche and that match your marketing goals. Then, you’ve got to be able to implement a good SEO strategy that creates results in the search engine results pages. That’s getting to be more and more difficult every day.
You should probably start by ignoring the advice you see on the average SEO blog. Instead, focus on speaking in the language of your audience. Don’t count keywords. Just write naturally – BUT, ensure that you sprinkle (and I do mean sprinkle) your primary keyword throughout your content starting with your page title. Add a link or two (but no more) using your primary keyword or a variant as anchor text on that page. Build inbound links.
SEO is still an effective way to market web pages in 2011. And I’m sure it will be in 2012. Just don’t overdo it on the keyword targeting.
Tags: keywords, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 21st, 2011
If you listen to some search engine optimization professionals, SEO is dead – if it was ever alive. But I don’t think so even if you consider that a lot of it is really natural language in disguise.
Let me explain.
The best thing you can do for your website content is write it in natural language mode. That is, don’t focus on keywords. Just write like you would normally write or talk. You will rank for key terms related to your niche if you do that.
However, keywords are important. They’re not so all-important that you should cram them into your content like stuffing a duffle bag for a camping trip. Yet, they are important enough that you should be aware you are using them.
In essence, I’d say good SEO is natural language with a cognizance of the importance of keyword selection.
In other words, if you are writing about children’s clothing because you make children’s clothes that are affordable and durable, then why wouldn’t you use the phrase “children’s clothing” in your content? You would because it’s natural. You don’t have to go overboard to cram your keyword into your content so you can make sure you rank for it. All you have to do is write naturally.
That said, you should also make a conscious effort to ensure you write a natural language headline using your keyword, you use alt tags that employ your keyword, and pay attention to a few other small SEO details along the way. Just don’t give up on natural language.
Tags: keywords, natural language, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Saturday, September 17th, 2011
You’d think that SEO is some kind of magic if you listen to some professionals in this field. Only an expert SEO can do this. Watch Ma, no hands!
The truth is, SEO is no voodoo science. There’s no magic bullet. No magic words you can say to make your pages rank well in the search results. It just takes good old-fashioned hard work.
Of course, there are different ways to get the job done.
Some SEOs swear by their keywords. Others swear by their links. But you need both. Keywords and links.
Usually, SEOs talk about on-page SEO factors and off-page SEO factors. The on-page factors include things like page titles, meta tags, internal links, alt tags, etc. Off-page SEO factors generally are a reference to links.
But even within those two categories, there are a variety of factors that can influence your search rankings. Quality, age of domain, age of link, anchor text, etc. Your job as SEO is to think about all of those factors.
Some SEOs develop a formula. Do they work? Probably, to some extent. But there is no SEO-by-the-numbers routine that works for every web page. You have to understand the principles at work and play up to those. If you do it well, you can make any web page rank respectably.
Tags: keywords, links, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 16th, 2011
A very prominent SEO and veteran Internet marketer recently said that keywords are no longer necessary. Just write content, he says. The search engines will rank you.
Is there wisdom in that or is it a bit misguided?
I certainly believe that social media has changed the stakes of the game. You can feasibly build a business model completely around social media marketing, in which case keywords are not necessary. You could promote your content through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Klout, Foursquare, YouTube, and every other social media giant out there and do just fine. No keywords necessary.
But I subscribe to a holistic view of Internet marketing. What I mean by that is, you want to give yourself every bit of an edge that you possibly can – in social media and in the search engines. To succeed at building yourself an edge, keywords are certainly helpful.
Many SEOs proclaim that keywords in titles are helpful to your on-page SEO. I’ll have to agree. That’s been my experience.
The prominent SEO mentioned above says keywords in titles aren’t necessary because it is your inbound links that are pushing you up in the rankings. But I’ve seen pages rank prominently without the links. So, no, I’ll have to say that’s bad advice.
I’m not saying links aren’t necessary. I’m not saying they aren’t helpful. I’m saying links alone are not going to give you the edge. Nor will on-page keyword stuffing. You have to focus on the big picture and that means honing your on-page content with SEO in mind.
Tags: keywords, links, SEO, Social Media
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 6 Comments »
Friday, May 13th, 2011
When you consider that roughly 90% of searchers click on results on the first page, and that more than 80% click on results in the top three positions on the first page, it makes sense to try and improve your rankings for important keywords. Moving a keyword ranking from the bottom of the first page to one of the first three positions can boost your website’s traffic by thousands – of course, the hard numbers depend on your niche and the number of people searching for information on a particular keyword phrase.
Considering these facts, it makes sense to boost those rankings. So how do you do it? Here are the steps to boost your keyword rankings for any keyword you want to improve upon:
- Check your organic search traffic under Traffic Sources in Google Analytics
- Export the data in CSV
- Using a website ranking tool, check the rankings for each keyword on your list
- Find the keywords that are sending you traffic despite their lower rankings (you’ll get better results if you focus on those keywords where your rankings are at the bottom of the first page or on the second or third page; these are easier to push up to higher visible rankings quickly.)
- Once you’ve got your list, start a link building campaign for those keywords (write articles, guest blog posts, and use social media to promote them)
Your link building campaign should focus on achieving high value anchor text links for the specific keywords that you are targeting. If you do this right, you’ll push your rankings up a few notches within a month or two. That will increase your traffic, and if your web pages are converting that traffic, then you’ll see an increase in ROI.
Tags: keywords, link building, search engine rankings, website traffic
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 5 Comments »
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
If you add a blog to your company website, there are 3 very distinct SEO benefits that you gain from doing this. Of course, you only get these benefits if your blog and if you blog in the right manner.
Here are those 3 benefits:
- Fresh Content – Every time you write a blog post, you add fresh content to your website. This invites the search engine spiders back to your site to crawl it. Each time your website is crawled is another chance to rise in the rankings for your keywords.
- Increased Search Engine Rankings – Not only do you have more opportunities to rank with each blog post, but each blog post can rank according to its own merits. Every blog post is considered a separate web page by the search engines. As such, each blog post can rank for a separate keyword phrase.
- Linkbuilding – Because you can link to your website pages from your blog, you can drive up those pages in search engine rankings using powerful link anchor text.
There are other benefits to blogging, but these are three of the biggest SEO benefits. Needless to say, the more often you blog, the more likely you are to realize these benefits. And if you create blog posts around your important keywords, you’re also more likely to realize these benefits.
Do you have a company blog? If not, why not?
Tags: blogging, keywords, linkbuilding, search engine rankings, SEO
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 3 Comments »
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