Small Business owners can implement a few SEO content best practices to help improve their website’s visibility. Selecting relevant keywords and leveraging them in your content can mean the difference between ranking on page one of Google or buried in results past page three. Multiple studies have shown that searchers rarely navigate past page one and two.
How do you know which keywords to use? Where do you find them? How do you use them?
First begin by asking yourself who needs the services you offer. Next begin keyword research, leveraging Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google Insights for Search. In order to know which keywords to target, it’s essential to not only understand the demand for a given term or phrase, but the work required to achieve those rankings.
Once you identify terms to target, implement the following SEO best practices for content optimization.
1) URL – This is the address of a web page. Search engines view keyword phrases in the URL as one of the first indicators of a page’s content.
2) Title Tag – This tag appears in the window and tab title of most browsers, as well as the title of search engine listings. Search engines view keyword phrases in title tags as key indicators of a page’s content.
3) Meta Description Tag – This tag usually appears as a listing description within search engine results. Although it doesn’t impact SEO, users can be influenced to click by a well written description.
4) H1 Tag – This tag serves as the page title and another key indicator of content to search engine spiders. This tag also enlarges and bolds text on a webpage.
5) Body Copy – Search engines review body content for relevant information about a page. All pages within the site should have sufficient content to reinforce the keyword themes presented in other on-page elements (URL, title tag, meta description tag, h1 tag, alt attributes, and internal links).
6) Links – A strong internal linking structure helps search engines to properly crawl your site. In addition, it ensures that all pages will be found. Optimized anchor text can increase the keyword relevancy of a page as well as its PageRank. Search engine algorithms weigh the quantity and quality of links heavily in their algorithm.
7) Image Alt Attributes – This tag (also known as alt tags or alt text) provides information about an image to search engines.
Implementing the SEO content best practices listed above will help your small business improve its online visibility. With increased visibility, traffic to your site will improve, as will your overall site revenue. Don’t forget to regularly refresh and optimize your content so it appears fresh and relevant in the eyes of search engine spiders.
