Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tips for Small Business
by Dr. Robert Berdan
February 23, 2011
The Internet took off in 1993 and e-commerce became a reality in 1996. In 2011, most businesses, small and large realized the importance of having a web site, though many businesses still don't fully utilize their web sites full potential. Today it's not enough to have a web site - it must also rank highly on the major search engines. Most people start off their search with Google by entering keywords and Google delivers a list of links. Google has 64% of the search engine market, Yahoo 21%, Microsoft (Bing) 8%, Ask 4%, and AOL 4%. Where your company shows up on the search engines is very important as most people usually only click on the first 10 links that appear on the first page. The perception is that companies at the top of the list are the ones most relevant and getting your web site on top has become a competitive search engine optimization (SEO) business.
Purchased links (PPC or pay per click) links may also appear on the page both on the top and to the right of the main list of links, but they are only clicked on by 20% or less of folks. However, if your web site link appears on page 4 of Google then a pay per click ad can be helpful in driving more traffic to your site. In this article I describe some tips that will help improve your search engine ranking. Some tips are simple and easy to implement, others may take considerable time. The search engines reward sites that have been around a long time, have lots of rich content, get updated frequently and have lots of links leading visitors to them. If you are just starting and have lots of business competitors it can be an uphill journey, the more you know about SEO the more attractive you can make your website to the search engines.
The top link is a paid advertisement, the links below are "earned" links. Note the one sentence descriptions below each link - these come from you description meta tag described below.
Here are some tips to help you improve your web sites search engine ranking. At the bottom I also include some reference books and hyperlinks if you would like to learn more.
1. TIPS to Improve Search Engine Ranking
Choose a Domain Name carefully
First choice of domain name should always be .com
Second choice might be .ca (in Canada) to indicate country code
Make the domain name as short as possible and unique
Avoid numbers and symbols in the domain name and keep the name all lowercase
If you want to protect similar domain names you can buy several and have them all point to one site e.g. site.com, site.ca, site.net
Determine if the domain name is available - conduct an online search below
Cheaper is not necessarily better some web hosting companies share domains with other web sites which can cause problems or your site may even be blocked by major search engines if one of the other sites is infected with a virus. Look for a company that offers good phone support without a lengthy wait to get a real person. Your web developer can help you make a choice, and the choice of hosting company may also depend on what additional technologies your web site needs. I prefer to work with web hosting companies that have been around for at least 5 years. I don't recommend certain large companies because their technical phone support is so poor (they just don't get it or don't care). It also helps to work with a web developer that knows something about SEO.
2. Web Site Layout
For small business web sites with 10 pages or less this usually isn't an issue, but in general you want your navigation links on each page to be consistent with no web page buried more then two links away from the home page - we call this a flat layout. The deeper a page is buried in your web site the lower it ranks on search engines and the harder it is to find by your visitors. If your site uses drop down menu like my site or as shown in the diagram for the site below, then a site map is very important (next section) as search engines may not be able to follow the links in drop down menus using javascript.
3. Site Map
A site map is a simple flat layout of inks to all the pages on your web site and it helps the search engines identify and find all your web pages. A site map may not be helpful for web sites with 10 pages or less but as your web site grows in size a site map becomes more important and can help visitors find what they are looking for. See my web site - site map.
4. Meta tags - description and keywords
Meta tags are HTML tags hidden inside the <head></head> tags of your web pages and are only visible if you choose view>source code in your browser. The tags should appear at the top of the code, but not every site includes them and they may only appear on a site's home page. The two most important tags are your description and keywords. Of these two, the description tag is the most important and it should be unique for each web page. The description is limited to about 14 words or 65 characters and it appears beneath your link on the search engine page and can help make a prospective visitor decide between your company and another (see picture at top of the page).
<meta name="description" content="Science & Art Multimedia provides web site development, training and photography services located in Calgary, Alberta - owned and operated by Robert Berdan">
The meta tag for keywords has become less important in recent years because web developers have filled them words that were not necessarily relevant to the page in an attempt to boost their customers search engine ranking. However, the keywords meta tag is still valuable to include in your home page. Suggestions include: limit the number of keywords to 255 or less and rank them from most important to least important - pay particular attention to the first 10 keywords. Furthermore do not repeat a keyword more then 5 times as this is called spamming the search engines and they don't like it. Some web developers would insert a keyword hundreds of time in an attempt to boost their site's ranking which is why most search engines pay less attention to them today and if you do this could get you removed from the search engines all together.
One suggestion however when choosing a keyword is to look at the keywords of your competitors that come up on the first page of Google and determine if any of those keywords can be used for your site, however you can not include copyright or trade names. Also this is where you can do research online using various keyword tracking programs from Google and others to see how often certain keywords are used. Adsense is a feature offered by Google aimed at selling keywords for pay per click ads, but can be used to see how frequent certain words or word groups are searched. Google analytics also provides you with the keywords that visitors used to find your web site. If you want people to find your web site using certain keywords make sure you use the keywords in the text of your page.
6. Create Unique Page Titles for every web page
At the top of every web page is a page title that appears in the bar of your web browser - this title is often use to create a book mark or favorite so visitors can store this link and return to your site later. Search engines put a high value on the text in this page title. In the past most web developers including myself simply included the company name. It is now recommended to put unique text in the title (no more then 65 characters) that describes the content on the page followed by the company name at the end. If the title of each of your web pages is the same - this is something you can do fairly quickly to improve your search engine ranking.
5. Valuable Content and use basic HTML
After descriptive page titles, you web site must have content that can be indexed by the search engines. The content must have real value to your visitors. If you are trying to attract folks interested in Wedding photography services in Calgary - then the text should include these keywords in the text. Search engines look at how often they appear and how they are grouped.
Headers on your page are usually bolded text and larger in size then the main text. Usually the title within the page uses an <h1><h1> tag which makes the text big and bold. Search engines give more weight to words in headers so try to include targeted keywords in them. Bold some keywords also seems to elevate their importance.
Adding fresh content to your web site on a regular basis, whether it is a news page or articles to demonstrate your expertise are important. Web site that are updated more frequently move up in ranking as search engines want to include fresh and recent content. I also like to include a last updated date on the front of the web site so that visitors know how fresh the content is, whether or not the search engines look at this is uncertain, but they are able to determine whether content has been added or revised.
One last note - hyper links should be descriptive rather then read more here... or click here. In other words the link should include some of the keywords about the information, web site or page your are linking to.
Adding fresh content to your site on a regular basis is a time consuming task and if you have someone else doing it could be costly. Your options are to learn how to update you own pages or work with a content management system that allows you to update the pages yourself. This is one reason blogs are popular and easy to maintain. Blogs however require a serious commitment in time and you need to post new information at least once a week.
In general Flash and database driven web sites are more difficult for search engines to index, for small business owners a web site based on HTMl with embedded flash is better. Also web pages that use AJAX and other technologies to deliver content on demand are not search engine friendly.
7. Images on your web site should have alt tags with descriptions.
For photographers and artists it is vital that your web developer include a description of the image in the alt tag. E.g. <img src="adult_lion.jpg" alt="Adult Lion from the Serengeti by Robert Berdan" /> . Two things are important - the file name itself should be descriptive and you should include an alt tag description which describes the image and always include the artists name. Google indexes image which can be searched for and then links them back to the original source. I also read that Google can analyze the colours in the images and if there is a large number with flesh tones might consider it an "adult site".
8. Tracking your Web site with Google Analytics
Place your pointer over this graphic to see the pop up alt description
When web sites started to become popular everyone it seemed wanted hit counters on their front page, however these were often inaccurate and only counted the number of visitors coming in through the home page and it often underestimated the total number of visitors Since then Urchin, Google and other companies began offering sophisticated ways of tracking visitors, how long they stay, where they come from and even how they left your site. It's also possible to learn how they found your site, what keywords were use to find it, what browser they used, and whether or not they accessed your site by a mobile device. The amount of data available is staggering. The good news is to get started with Google Analytics all you need to do is sign up for a free account and have your web developer insert the code into each of your web pages. You can measure if a certain type of promotion has boosted traffic to your site and whether or not there are seasonal trends. To learn more about Google analytics see my article "Who is visiting this site" where I show some of the data on who is visiting my www.canadiannaturephotographer.com web site.
Visitors Stats show you how many visitors are coming to your site - A Dashboard is a single-page view that contains your most critical metrics all in one place.
9. Promote Sharing of your Web Site Through Social Media
Social media is getting lots of air time in the media right now and it has been a powerful tool for politicians and some famous people. In part some of this is due to the fact that many young people carry their Internet capable phones or devices with them where ever they go. For people that do not have a business web site, having an account on Facebook or Flikr allows them to share their images and invite others to comment and look at their postings. Twitter allows folks to post short statements that can be shared and is easy and quick to read on mobile devices. For some businesses that have many twitter followers it might be valuable to post something like "40% off our Fish and Chips for today only". Otherwise most twitter posts I have seen are a waste of time but that's just my opinion. Blogs are more detailed updates and news postings that invite comments and user can subscribe. For some businesses or for those that have the time a blog can be a powerful way to gather a following. However, I have never added one because I have a news page on my web sites and I don't have the time to post or follow discussions on a regular basis instead I post articles. According to Susan Sweeney 82% of all blogs that have been started were abandoned (page 209 S. Sweeney). I think a Blog is appropriate for some businesses but it requires a major commitment in time and it's suggested that new content be posted 2 or 3 times a week. If you like to write then this may be a good option for your business. Also you may want to consider a subscriber based newsletter - folks subscribe to your newsletter and you send them valuable information to keep them coming back - I am currently using constant contact.
However one thing you can do to promote your web site is to have others share your web site through twitter, facebook, blogs etc is to include a set of buttons on your web site that promote sharing. Two web sites offer this feature for free, you set up an account and get your web developer to add it to your web site. These buttons can be clicked on and used by anyone to share the site or web page with others using various social media and you don't have to do anything or even have a social media account. Two web site that offer these sharing buttons are: sharethis.com and www.addthis.com.
The buttons allow users to click on them and share your web page with others.
One of the fastest growing technologies used on web sites is video. It is possible to embed high quality video into a web site to show products, offer a webinar (online seminar), and or put a face to those working in your business. If you have an entertaining video you can also post it on a video sharing site like Youtube where others can view it, share and embed it their web pages. An interesting video can bring a lot of traffic to your web site. See my links page for other web sites you can upload video to see sample movie below.
10. Try to Get More Web Sites Linking to your Web Site
Google and other search engines track how many web sites link to yours and they also track how popular or relevant those other sites are to your content and use this information in ranking web sites. The technique was actually taken from how they assess the impact of certain research publications, those papers that were cited more often by top ranking journals were considered to have more impact. In a similar way, Google ranks web site. Those sites having no links to them are considered less important then one that has many linking to them. The question is how to do you get other sites to link to you? One way is to beg - or ask them to link to you, and if you have affiliated businesses this is a good way to start. The other way is to have content on your site that would make other sites or blogs want to link to yours - this takes work. There are also business networking sites like LinkedIn that you can join where businesses share and link to each other. One of the first things I do for my customers is link from my site to theirs, my site is at the top of the search engines so this starts off the process, after that they need to do some work.
In summary these are just some of the ways we can track and promote a web site. There are many additional ways offline and online and I recommend those interested to pick up some of the books on Internet Marketing and SEO listed below.
Robert Berdan has been building web sites and teaching web design since 1996 - his web sites www.scienceandart.org and www.canadiannaturephotographer.com appear are at the top of Google for several years now, but this success required a lot of hard work and was achieved by offering a lot of valuable free content.
Links to additional Resources - also see my links page.
101 Ways to Promote your Web site (101) Ways series by S. Sweeney $19.77, 392 pages, Maximum Press; 8th Revised edition edition (September 15, 2010), ISBN-13: 978-1931644785 - this is the best of the books for anyone new to SEO. Well presented, doesn't go into too much depth, but covers the essentials. My first recommendation for anyone wanting to improve their website ranking.
The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice) $37.40 by E. Enge, S. Spencer, R. Fiskin, J. Stricchiola. 608 pages. O'Reilly Media; (2010)
ISBN-13: 978-0596518868 - This is comprehensive reference text, probably more information here then most folks would want unless you are web developer or intend to specialize in SEO.
Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web $13.57 by J.Wuebben, 270 pages, Encore Publishing (September 1, 2008) ISBN-13: 978-0979762901 - Has useful information about copy writing, unfortunately too much BS that is irrelevant to the topic of SEO.
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (New Rules Social Media Series), 256 pages, Publisher: Wiley (October 19, 2009) $15.09 ISBN-13: 978-0470499313 - Easy quick read you can do in a couple of hours - but the first book on the list is much better.
The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition $11.55 Publisher: Wiley; 2 edition (January 12, 2010) ISBN-13: 978-0470547816 - Tell me something I don't know he says - most of the book is just that, he doesn't reveal anything novel or unique - its an OK book, but nothing to rave about either.
Search Engine Marketing, Inc. Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site (2nd Edition) $33.56 Authors Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. 672 pages, IBM Press; 2 edition (September 29, 2008) ISBN-13: 978-0136068686- Comes with DVD and some video slide presentations that appear like amateur home movies - I put this book at the bottom of my list of SEO books.
See my links page for links to specific web sites and SEO resources available online.
My recommendation are these two books. Left - S. Sweeney's book is a good one to get you started thinking about SEO and other strategies to promote your web site and is only $29.95. You can also visit Susan's web site for more tips on SEO and see that she uses what she preaches. The book on the right -"The Art of SEO" is a comprehensive reference book on how the search engines work and provides details on how to promote your web site. It's not an easy read and has more information then the average business owner would want, but then it was written for those that want to be SEO experts. It has lots of valuable information, but reads like an encyclopedia - every web developer should have one.
