Search engine optimisation (SEO) tips for small business

Many small businesses have neither the time nor the resources to focus on perfecting their websites. But for an increasing number of firms, searches via sites such as Google or Yahoo are now one of the most important ways that they can market their products and services, and raise the profile of their brand.

And because being a webmaster no longer has to be a technical role, many non tech-savvy business owners are learning that search engine optimisation (SEO) offers an opportunity to reach new customers and compete with even the best-resourced competitors.

There's a lot of advice out there - so we've distilled the seven essential areas for a small business to consider.

1. The customer's search is always right

If someone was Googling the service or product that you provide, what words would they type? Working out how to answer that question is keyword research.
It's an art that can be taken to dizzying levels of sophistication, but most of the tools needed to do it are available free online, and they're easy to use.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is free, and lets you see the volume of traffic for different search queries - and the likelihood that other sites are optimising for them.

And if you have a search facility on your site, make use of the valuable data people leave when they use it - have they been able to find what they were looking for? If not, optimise accordingly.

2. Right words in the right places

Once you know what key terms you want your site to be found for, the challenge is to put them in the correct places.

Make sure that your terms are contained in the metadata, in your page titles (what you see in the blue bar at the top of a page) and the meta descriptions (the descriptive field displayed by search engines when they list your site). Keep them relevant, and remember that people as well as robots will be reading them when they appear in the search results pages.

In the main visible portion of the page, include key terms in your page headings and high up in the body copy. If you can include some variations on your key terms, so much the better.

However, loading the body copy with search terms at the expense of readability is rapidly going out of fashion - if in doubt, write for your human readers first and the search engines second.

3. Get spidered

Search engines find out about the content of your pages by finding and 'reading' them, with automatic programs known as 'spiders'. To make sure your website is spidered, search engines such as Google need to know it's there.

There's no single way to achieve this, but submitting your sites to directories is a good start - try the Open Directory first. Make sure your site has a clear site map, to help search engines find their way to all your important pages. If your website (or part of it) is a blog, register it with blog search engine Technorati. And if you have friends, family or business partners who have an established website, ask them to link to yours with suitable text - see points 4 and 5.

4. Link with the right words

The days of seeing 'click here' all over a website are numbered. As people have become more familiar with browsing the internet and following hyperlinks, the instruction to click has become less useful. And crucially, the anchor text used for a link plays an important part in the way that search engines assess the content of the page it leads to.

Such is the importance of anchor text that many SEO companies have link analysts on their books, whose job is primarily to ensure that other websites link to their clients' sites with anchor text that helps them rank for their desired search term.

For example, if your website has a page selling cheap American sweets, the ideal text for links pointing to it is probably something like 'cheap American sweets', rather than 'click here to buy'
or anything similarly vague.

It helps if the links within your own site accurately describe the destination wherever possible - helpful both to your site's visitors and to your chances of ranking for your preferred terms.

5. Build your network

Links from anywhere with 'authority' are useful from an SEO point of view - Google gives weight to a link according to the authority it perceives the linking site to have. Install the Google Toolbar in your browser and use it to help you identify other sites with high PageRank - a link from a high-PR site is more valuable to you.

Try to earn any incoming links. Buying a link on a third-party website has been an effective SEO tactic in the past - but links perceived as spammy by the search engines could harm your rankings, or even see you hit with a penalty.

As search becomes more sophisticated, the context of the link and the network in which it exists is likely to become more and more important. And of course, if your site is referenced in places where your customers spend time, you are increasing the chance that the traffic you receive through that link will be relevant and interested in what you offer.

So: identify where your customers spend time, and consider how you might develop a legitimate presence there.

6. Provide useful content

In the early days of the internet, what you said you did, not necessarily what you actually did, could get you to the top of the search engine results pages. Your page titles and meta descriptions (see point 2) counted for more - so it was easier to put the right search terms in and get great results.

But the internet is growing up, and Google is getting better at finding what people want. In fact, people are getting better at finding what they want. So what you've actually got matters more.

Even the smallest businesses have content - assets, collateral, call it what you want - that they can get online. Think about what guides, documents, photos or artwork you could put on your site, and make sure that they're on pages containing the relevant search terms. If you're blogging, add tags to make it as findable as possible.

And if you can offer a regular stream of content of any kind - blog posts, news, special offers - make sure it's accessible via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). As more people use RSS to keep up to date with the things they're interested in, it's even more important that your own content is portable and shareable. Make it easy for people to keep in touch.

7. What Google says...

Not every search is made through Google – but most are. And the furious pace of Google's innovation, and its advertising reach, makes it the first and best place to check for good web practice.

In November 2008, it published an SEO Starter Guide, which provides a highly accessible introduction. We recommend you use it!

Useful links

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Open Directory
Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
Google's SEO Starter Guide