Search engine optimisatiion for smaller businesses

For a small company, SEO can prove to be a cost effective way to make its website and business known to a vast audience in a relatively short time. Search engine optimisation commonly known as SEO has become crucial in the success and growth of small businesses. Many research and marketing studies conclude that online marketing is replacing traditional mediums as the primary source for customers to obtain information on a company’s products and services. Recent changes in consumer behaviour have made E-Commerce more important than traditional high street retail in many industries.

Search engine marketing has special importance for a small company as it allows the company to reduce its marketing and operating costs. The cost benefits are tremendous compared to traditional methods of marketing such as print. Search engine marketing offers a higher return on investment and has a wider reach.

Search engines provide small companies with a common platform to compete with established corporations. A powerful Search Engine Optimisation campaign can enable small businesses to compete with established companies. This would not be possible using traditional marketing mediums which have much higher costs associated with it.
The ultimate goal of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is to achieve a high rank for the company’s website on major search engines like Google and Yahoo and drive targeted visits to your website form search engines. A majority of the internet users use search engines to find products and services and if your website achieves a high rank then it could potentially be a source of leads for your products or services.
There is stiff competition to rank high on search engines as only 10 websites can appear on the first page of a major search engine like Google. Studies have shown that if a Web site does not rank on the first page of a search result, chances of generating any traffic to the website is reduced manifold.

Here are some search engine optimisation tips that a small business or company can use to improve its rank on search engines

• Create a search engine friendly Web site. A Company’s website is often its first point of contact with customers so it is important for your website to be professionally designed. The web design should ensure that the website is easy to index by search engines. A number of techniques can ensure this and any professional web designer should take them into account.

• Organise content meaningfully. The information on the website should be organised properly. Information should be categorised meaningfully and content should be appropriately categorised into different sub pages of the website. If users fail to find what they want immediately, they are likely to go to another site.

• Position your keywords correctly. One of the first steps of an effective SEO campaign is to identify the right keywords. Once this is done the keywords should be positioned strategically within the content of the website. The main keywords should be in the title, description and within the body, ideally once in the first sentence.

• Distribute your keywords strategically. This is a basic SEO technique. Position keywords or key phrases at the start and the end of the document as the beginning and end of a page is given more weight by search engines while searching.
Keyword density is also important. Keyword density refers to the number of times the keyword appears in the content of a particular web page. E.g. a density of around 2-5% is considered good. This is 12 repetitions in 400 words.

• Your keywords in anchor text of links. This is a very important SEO technique. Keywords should always be included in link text. Link text is the actual word that is clicked by a user to get to a page. Instead of using “Click here for more info” as your link text, use the main keywords instead.” This has a positive impact on SEO.

Vists the search engine marketing blog for more info.