8 Small Business SEO Tips You Can Use on Your Small Business Website

How Can I Optimize My Small Business Website for Search Engines?

This is one of the most common questions we hear from people that call Radius Online for the first time. People want to know how to drive traffic to their websites. While a search engine optimization (SEO) expert can do all the work for you, there are a couple of things you can probably do on your own to optimize your site for search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com.

These simple tips can help you get your website listed on search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com.

First off, search engine optimization is really about how search engines see and organize the content on your small business website – along with every other website on the Internet. The suggestions below are simple things you can do to improve how search engines view your web pages – most likely helping to improve the traffic you drive to your small business website.

Use Relevant Content on Each Page

The most important thing in SEO is to provide relevant content for the terms you want to optimize around. If you’re trying to optimize a page for vanilla ice cream, the focus of your page should not be about how to make a banana split. The closer your content is to the terms people are searching for, the more likely search engines will display your pages prominently. Don’t just repeat a bunch of keywords on the page – this is considered spam. You’ll have much more luck if you genuinely try to provide relevant information on the subject you’re trying to optimize for. Provide valuable information and you will be rewarded.

Of course, you should be consistent in the words you use to describe your topic, since search engines do look at keyword density on each page (the number of times a term is mentioned). So rather than using “Vanilla Ice Cream” and “Ice Cream” across your site, you should just stick to the former if you’re trying to optimize around that one flavor.

Include Keywords in Your Title Tags

Title tags are at the top of your website code. They’re the words that appear on the top of your Web browser when you’re looking at the page. The title tag of your page includes the page title, description and keyword tags. Rather than calling your homepage “homepage”, use a descriptive title such as “Radius Online Local Search Engine Optimization”. If you’re optimizing your site for local search, consider using local terms – for example, “Radius Online Website Design Atlanta Georgia 30318″.

Use Keywords in Your Heading Tags

Search engines view headings as more important, since they typically set off sections of content. With this in mind, using keywords in your headings will get your keywords into content that search engines consider to be more important. As a side note, bold keywords within your body text can also have an affect on boosting the weight of your content – again, because search engines assume bold words are points of emphasis.

Use Keywords or Alt Tags on Your Photos and Images

Alt taps on your images describe what is in your image. This can be alternate text that shows when somebody can’t view the image, but also enables search engines to read the images on your website. Think of the image tag as a caption that describes the photo or image – with a healthy dose of your keywords.

Link Keywords in Your Text and Links

Rather than linking “click here” to another site, link relevant keywords to that site. For example, highlight “you can find our product catalog here” to the page with your product catalog. Most software enables you to describe the link as well – use keywords to describe the link, such as “2008 product catalog”.

Use Meta Tags in Your Page Headers

Meta tags are also located in the header of your webpage, but aren’t visible in the web browser. These behind the scenes “keywords” and “description” tags help search engines learn what your page is about. While most agree that meta tags don’t have the impact they used to in SEO, they are still an important element when optimizing your pages.

HTML and XML Sitemaps

Finally, you should have two sitemaps on your site – a HTML sitemap that makes it easy for visitors to navigate all the information on your site, and an XML sitemap that is built specificall for search engines. You can learn more about how to set these up by using Google’s Webmaster Tools (we highly suggest familiarizing yourself with these tools when you’re getting started).

Search for High-Quality Inbound Links

One of the most important factors determining the value of the content on your small business website is the number of other sites that link to your content. The logic here is that if your content is great, more people will link to it. Rather than asking people to link to you, or using link exchange programs, look to attract links from sites with a good reputation. The best way to do this is to write great content.

These are just a few small business SEO tips for you. Do you have questions about the tips we suggested? Do you need help with your SEO? Do you have other advice for successful SEO? Please email at blog @ radiusonline.com or comment on this post.