Search Engine Optimization Tips

What Is SEO and Why Is It Important for Small Business Success?

Does your website have a comprehensive SEO strategy? If not, it’s time develop one. I’m going to share some strategies and search engine optimization tips with you here.

Without proper optimization, your site will not be indexed by Google and will not receive the traffic it needs. For Google to understand what your site’s about and send the right searchers there, it needs to be optimized.

No matter what your business goals, you need website traffic to get there. This is why SEO is so important.

Many small business owners, solopreneurs, coaches, consultants, and freelancers recognize the importance of SEO, but mistakenly believe that SEO is a game best played by big corporations, internationally recognized brands, or SEO experts. Nothing could be further from the truth.

SEO is valuable and necessary for businesses of all sizes and anybody can learn how to do it.

The Purpose of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is all about making your website more attractive to search engines. If done correctly, a perfect match will be made: searchers will find what they’re looking for (valuable information) and you’ll get what you’re looking for (an increased number of high-quality visitors to your site).

Before even considering purchase, customers research a specific problem that they have (‘I need a place to stay’, ‘I want to look 10 years younger’, ‘I need to manage my time more effectively’), searching for more information and, hopefully, finding a solution. Sometimes that solution arrives in the form of a product or service.

These same customers usually limit their search to the first page, so if you’re not there, they won’t find you. That’s why these search engine optimization tips are so important.

SEO improves your visibility and a good search ranking builds trust and credibility.

Forget about everything you’ve learned about SEO in the past. Creating an SEO strategy no longer involves choosing multiple disjointed 2 or 3-word phrases that describe your business and splashing them all over your website.

For example, if you are a career coach in X city, it will be almost impossible to get on the first page of Google results for ‘career coach [your city]’. Job

The professional search sites and review sites will dominate. They have tens of thousands of pages related to those keywords. At tops, you have 10. You will have to get creative. That’s what I want you to focus on initially. By the time you learn some simple concepts and strategies, you will go from a total novice to competent SEO marketer.

SEO Tips: How Do Search Engines Work?

It’s not necessary to know the ins and outs of search engines. And even if you had the time to learn it all, there is a lot that the search engines don’t share publicly and the algorithms are always changing. But it is good to have a basic working knowledge of SEO.

Search engines crawl the web using bots, called spiders. They follow links, searching for new content to add to the search index, a digital collection of information about web pages.

Google’s ranking systems (and those of other search engines) sort through this information and rank based on relevance, producing results almost instantly. Search algorithms analyze the words the searcher has entered, relevance of pages, quality of sources, location, and more.

SEO Marketing

There are a number of search engines out there, including Bing and DuckDuckGo. But Google has 92% of market share, so that’s the one we’re focusing on here. To begin with, I want you to think about these areas:

• Developing an SEO strategy for your website that incorporates SMART goals to increase your website’s reach in Google
• Choosing key metrics to track that will gauge the effectiveness of your SEO strategy so that you can improve and adapt as necessary
• Defining your Ideal Customer Profile to determine who you want to attract to your website and what keywords you should target
• Learning how to use keywords effectively and determine keyword intent so that you can increase traffic and attract qualified leads

Now it’s your turn to begin thinking about these search engine optimization tips I’m sharing with you here. Leave your name and the URL link to your website in the comments, and I will personally take a look and give you some ideas to improve what you have done so far.

I’m bestselling USA Today and Wall Street Journal author, publisher, and entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and my goal is to connect with you if you have more than just a passing interest in getting started with an online business. I most recently released Really Simple SEO Tips and Keywords for Beginners and this is an excellent place to begin. Please take a look while it’s still at its introductory pricing.