SEO for Beginners and New Businesses
By Dick Bendtzen
Many Small Business Owners venturing into Internet Marketing for the first time are overwhelmed by technical terms they don”t understand, and the sheer volume of information available (information overload). To compound the problem, they are bombarded with offers from so called “experts” with systems “that will place their new website at the top of the search engine charts in a matter days”.
Are you one of these people? If so, let me start this discussion with a question:
If you are a new business trying to establish a presence on the internet, do you think SEO (search engine optimization) is more important to get you to the top page of the organic search listings? - or, because SEO is a good mirror of the way people search for things on line, and how they expect your website to look and function?
If - as a new business - your goal is to use SEO to drive your website to the top of the organic search listings overnight - Think Again. The algorithms used by search engines to rank your site are so complicated and involve so many factors that it is highly unlikely that you could achieve top rankings until your business has interacted on the internet for quite some time. We will discuss some of the main considerations later in this article
Yes, I know you get offers every day to purchase some SEO guru’’s system to “Defeat Google and Drive Hoards of Hungry Visitors to Your Site” (or some such). I get these offers too, and I”ve even bought one or two before I knew what I was doing. Trust me - except for the educational value of learning a little more, they are for the most part a waste of money. Let’’s use Google as an example because they are the largest and most widely used. Google has rooms full of very smart programmers designing the spiders that crawl your site looking for the patterns that have been used to boost scores, and as soon as they see these patterns developing, unless it’’s what they want, they change the formula.
Is there a way to achieve top ranking overnight? Yes, but not in the organic listings. You can get top rankings in the PAID listings (across the very top of the page and in the right side bar) by using Google AdWords. Join the program - pick keywords you want to use and bid on them - submit the highest (winning) bid - and Google will list your site as high as you”ve paid for. Two problems; most new businesses don”t have anywhere enough advertising budget to play this game - and, many searchers who are looking for information ignore the paid listings where they know they are going to get a sales pitch and look first in the top organic listings (I know I usually do, because if I know the product mfg. or author I”ll punch that in and go direct to the source).
So, back to the original question. The answer to why SEO is important to new businesses is that many of the things that search engines look for are much the same as your potential customer looks for. What are some of those things:
The exact same words (keywords) they searched for in the site and page titles of your website and in the content on the pages of your website. Think about the words users type in for their search and make sure your site actually has those words in titles and content.
A well organized site with a sitemap (or link) between all pages of your site.
Information (and keyword) rich content. You may have heard “content is king”? It is. Make sure your site is not just one big sales pitch. Viewers are looking for information as well as your offer. Each page should have between 300 and 700 words of descriptive content. While good for viewers, images are not good for SEO (the Google crawler doesn”t recognize text contained in images). Having said that, I”d always decide in favor of the viewer.
Links from and to other sites. Caution, the link must be to a relevant site (related to your business). A lot of links to non-related sites are a red flag to Google, and usually spell “Sales Pitch” to viewers.
There are many other considerations for search engine optimization. It would be wise to go to the source - “Google Webmaster/Site Owner Help” - go to “Google Basics”, then to “Search Engine Optimization”. A second step would be to talk to your Webmaster who will explain how they have optimized your site (if they have), or domain host help, if you have a do-it-yourself site.
Last thought - optimize your site for Google and, more important, FOR YOUR VIEWERS.
About The Author
Dick Bendtzen, author of “Yes You Can Start And Run A Small Business”, has had three small businesses of his own, and served as a volunteer Small Business Counselor for SCORE. Dick provides a newsletter, forum and other resources for small business owners at http://www.smallbusinessyesyoucan.com
