No matter how you approach a search engine optimization or (SEO) project, the ultimate goal is to increase your brand’s online visibility in the search engines. This visibility will help increase traffic, conversions and sales.
Leveraging the possibilities of internet marketing can be overwhelming for small business owners who are already wearing many hats within their company. Over the past few years I’ve seen SEO evolve into many shapes and forms. On-site content optimization, link building, local search optimization, mobile search optimization, social media optimization are some of the forms it takes today. If hiring a professional SEO agency doesn’t fit into your company’s current budget, there are still some things you can do on your own to jumpstart your website’s online presence.
On-site optimization — the foundation of all things SEO
The foundation of any SEO effort should be your website’s content. On-site SEO is the process of analyzing a combination of elements that affect your site’s search engine visibility, usability, navigation and content. In its simplest form, this means focusing on the primary content types of your site such as:
- URL filenames
- Page title tags
- Meta description and keyword tags
- Header tags
- Internal linking
- Image alt and title tags
- Videos and other rich media content types
Before you can get started with SEO you need to understand what words people are using in search engine to find your website content. We call them keywords. It’s best to identify 3-5 keywords that will be used through your site to attract your best target customer.
Conduct keyword research
Keyword research is one of the most crucial tasks in any on-site optimization project. Not only does it help build the foundation of on-site optimization, it helps you better understand the behavior of your customers and clients. You need to identify your target audience and determine how they search for your site. Finding the right keywords is a balance between search volume, competition and most importantly relevancy to your business. Most of the time, you’ll be surprised by what you find when conducting proper keyword research. Usually, the keywords that you thought would be key traffic drivers to your site are not what prospective customers and clients are actually searching.
The most well-known keyword research tool is Google’s very own AdWords Keyword Tool. Google AdWords Keyword Tool gives the information you need to choose the right keywords for your website
Use this tool to gather valuable information needed in order to choose the best keywords for your site. You can start off by simply typing in a few words that relate to your business’s services and see what keywords Google serves up. Remember, you’re looking for keywords with high search volume (small businesses should focus on Local as opposed to Global) and low competition, but you really want to focus on the ones that make the most sense for your business.
Use your keywords to optimize your content
After spending several hours hunting down the right keywords for your SEO efforts, you will need to figure out which ones to use on each page of your site. Avoid excessive “keyword stuffing” and focus on no more than 3-4 keywords per page. You’ll want to designate a “primary” keyword, which should be used as the main focus of each page during your optimization efforts.
Now for the fun part! Use the 3-5 keywords you’ve assigned to each page to re-write each pages’ tags and content. Here are some quick tips to get you started:
- URL filenames — When rewriting URLs to include your keywords, it’s a best practice to separate each word with a dash (or hyphen) to help the search engines clearly depict the separation. An example of a properly written URL for a page showing “red tennis shoes” products would be http://www.example.com/shoes/red-tennis-shoes.
- Page title tags — Page titles should always include the primary keyword as close to the beginning as possible. You’ll also want to avoid writing page titles any longer than 65 characters, as any page titles longer than that will most likely get truncated in the SERPs (search engine page results).
- Meta description tags — Although it’s crucial to plug your keywords into your Meta descriptions, make sure your descriptions read naturally and that there is a strong call-to-action that will draw searchers to visit your site. Similar to page titles, be aware of the length of your descriptions and try to keep them under 165 characters.
- Header tags — Use headers to better organize your site’s content. Not only does this help give site visitors a better understanding of the content, but by plugging keywords into your header tags (H1, H2, H3) you give the search engines another element to analyze when determining what your site is all about. It’s important to also point out that your header tags should follow a hierarchy similar to when writing an outline for an essay. For example, the H1 tag should be used first, then the H2 tags, then the H3 tags under each H2 tag, and so on.
- Internal linking — One of the biggest signals that search engines use when ranking webpages in their search results is the amount of links pointing to that page and the relevance of those links. To help increase the relevancy of your site’s pages, be sure to include your keywords in the clickable text (called “anchor text”) of links pointing to any pages on your site.
- Image alt and title tags — Search engines have a tough time crawling and identifying the content of an image. Alt tags and title tags take care of this issue. When writing the alt and title tags for an image include your keywords, keep it short and use the same text for both the alt tag and title tag of a given image.
Although keywords are an important piece of the puzzle, it’s not just about plugging them into your tags (page title, description, headers, etc.) and hoping for the best. It’s about creating content that’s interesting and useful for your visitors. It’s essential that your site’s copy content is optimized to include your keywords in a natural and understandable manner.
Ongoing SEO efforts
SEO is not a “set it and forget it” type of project. As search engines constantly change their algorithm’s ranking factors (Google makes 500-600 changes a year) it’s important to keep your site up to par with best practices and any new ranking factors that may affect your site’s web presence. It’s also essential to continue to grow your online reach by constantly expanding your keyword universe and adding resourceful content. The more good content your site has, the better.
Measurement of your SEO efforts
Measuring your SEO efforts’ successes and failures is critical in building more efficient ongoing optimization strategies and processes. Review and analyze key statistics such as:
- Recognizing which URLs get the most traffic
- Identifying which keywords are bringing in unqualified leads with high bounce rates
- Keyword search result ranking increases and decreases
These are all valuable assets in identifying any missed opportunities and where further SEO work may be required.
Do you have any SEO tips?
Joe Douress is the SEO Manager for Teknicks, a well known SEO agency in New Jersey. He brings 5 years of search marketing and technology experience to provide valued service and 
consultation to both the client and agency side. With his expertise in on-site and off-site search engine optimization, local search, usability and analytics, Joe is involved with all aspects of search marketing, providing quality advisement and appreciated support.
This has been the best read for SEO! I will be able to complete these steps to increase the traffic flow to my site.
Thank You!
It is amazing how many websites miss the basics when it comes to SEO. Whether it is an empty title tag, or one that simply says ‘home’, or a URL that gives me a headache when looking at it, there is a lot of stuff wrong with simple SEO on many sites.
Hey, I get it. SEO may seem like rocket science to someone that hasn’t done it before. But if you are going to have a website, make sure you understand the basics, or find someone who does that can help you.
Thanks for some valuable tips. Slowly the light is dawning! Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but when I’m talking to someone about it, I’m amazed how much of it has actually stuck in there somewhere.
The caution would be over SEO – as google will then rank you low in your keywords because their algorithm may treat it as spam site.
Hi Melinda,
This is a great post Joe put together for the Succeed As Your Own Boss community. His comment about SEO requiring refinement is so true, and is a commonly overlook. I do think part of the problem is getting to the value of a particular SEO action that will lead to more traffic – usually it is a series of actions which do not add up equally. Small business owners struggle with valuing a website, so there’s even more trouble in determining the value of a search optimization program.
Thanks, Melinda and Joe, for offering these insights.
Pierre–
Thank you for your valuable insight. You are correct that is it never one thing that is the Silver bullet, an integrated strategy with multiple actions and discipline is what it takes to make progress with SEO.
Best–
Melinda F. Emerson