Organic Search Engine Marketing for Small Business

Small business owners have to take advantage of every low cost (but effective) marketing opportunity they can get their hands on. Now they have an even better chance to increase search engine rankings for their business with Google Caffeine.

This significant change in the dominant search engine's methods for delivering organic search results, also known as SERP's, favors specialization. Long tail keywords go hand-in-hand with that specialization.

An obvious example of this sort of keyword is "organic search marketing for small business." This phrase is made up of five separate words but is, nevertheless, referred to in the singular as a keyword. Because it does consist of more than one or two words it can be called a long tail keyword Chris Anderson popularized the "long tail" concept is in his book by the same name. (See Wikipedia article.)

A few years ago it would have been enough to focus on "marketing" or "small business" but as searchers become more and more sophisticated they are learning to add additional modifiers. These extra modifiers make it easier for Google to offer more relevant search results thus making searchers much happier.

What this means is that a small business who is willing to make the extra effort can compete with much larger businesses by being more strategic with their copy writing. Smart use of these long tail keywords in the content on their website, blogs, and other social media sites will greatly increase the liklihood of a steady stream of visitors. Of course, do the research to insure that you aren't using completely irrelevant keywords to begin with. Doesn't do much good to rank #1 for something no one is searching.

Marketing Malpractice in Web Design

Is your web design company guilty of negligence? It's terrible to see beautiful sites that people obviously paid well to have built but that miss some of the most basic elements of on-page SEO, including good keyword strategy.

Countless newly minted web sites don't even have keywords in the page title. There are multiple versions of the home URL all competing for back links. Images go without good alt text. Code is bloated and sourced out poorly. The list goes on.

What good is a gorgeous site with amazing usability, if no one finds it. (Was that a tree crashing?)

Web design companies, as well as traditional marketing firms that outsource, owe it to their clients to provide good, basic SEO. Don't be guilty of marketing malpractice.

SEO Audit For Websites

On page SEO factors are only a small percentage of the factors that influence where a web page ranks in a search engine. Bottom line is that lots of diverse links have the most effect. However, there are critical technical issues that are virtually deal breakers. Get these things right the first time or get them fixed so that the link garden bears much (and better) fruit.

Here's a great article on SEO Technical audits.