Posted by on Jul 14, 2009 in Web Design | 4 comments

The web creates challenges and opportunities for small business owners. Web sites are more affordable then ever to build, but your site has to do more than just sit there to be effective. It must attract visitors!

So now, once you build your site, you must also look for ways to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so people searching the web can find you.  But how do you improve SEO?  ProBlogger,  Darren Rose wrote a terrific post on the first 8 things you should do to improve your SEO.

In his post he recommends:

1. Content is King

The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog.

2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For

Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information.

3. Titles Titles Titles

Google pays particular attention to titles – so make sure you get them right:

4. Keywords in other parts of your post

Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also.

5. Link to Your Own Posts

Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog.

6. Links from Outside Your Blog

Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get.

7. Plugins

Check out 9 SEO plugins that every WordPress Blog Should have for some suggestions on this.

8. Readers Begat Readers

This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ’snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time – as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network.

I thought this was a terrific list for small business owners.  What would you add?

We can answer any questions you have at Roundpeg, an Indianapolis web design firm.

 

More on This Topic

  • http://www.prowebdirect.co.uk/ SEO Company

    I think you have very good grasp on search engines and seo.

  • http://tribeswell.com Colin Clark

    Great tips Lorraine! Good solid advice. I also enjoyed the resource you shared for plugins. I’ve always used XML sitemaps and the all-in-one seo pack to keep sites internally optimized, but there were so many other great resources that I wasn’t familiar with on that post.

  • http://www.deepripples.com Andrew Gouty

    Lots of good tips here, however I would offer some emendations. Re: #1 I agree that content is important to SEO, but not always for the reasons people think.

    Re: #6 The comments section of this blog directly indicate that another SEO company believes that linkbuilding is vastly important, otherwise Pro Web Direct would not have linked a personal comment as “SEO Company.” (What’s comical about this to other SEOs is that the link isn’t followed – aka a semi-wasted effort.)

    Re: #2 & #4 Perhaps most importantly, I’m awed at the lack of research done to PROVE a potential for ROI in marketing to specific keywords. It’s easy to do with tools like the Google Keywords site. Use it and KNOW (rather than anticipate or assume) which keywords to be promoting on.

  • http://www.roundpeg.biz Lorraine

    Andrew thanks for the additional input. I probably should have called you before I wrote the post, since you are always my go to guy on this topic..

    Looking forward to Aaron’s class on this subject for RainU next month – http://www.rainuniversity.com/