3 small business SEO strategies for building web traffic

Want to be found at the top of Google search results? Who doesn’t? There are two ways to accomplish this. The first is to spend anywhere from $1 to $1,000 or more by buying AdWords, depending on your desired category. Google makes about 85 percent of its revenue from AdWords (we’re talking about billions of dollars here).

Of course, for the small business owner, AdWords can get expensive. Fortunately, you’re in luck—sort of. There’s another, more organic way to reach the top of Google’s vaunted search results. This process, called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), allows a small business to increase its website visibility.

In this post, I’ll explain a few ways to increase your SEO and, hopefully, be found more easily and often in search results.

Blog Often.
One of the biggest mistakes that newbie bloggers make is to cram far too much information into a single post. Don’t. Spread your post over a series for a number of reasons. For one thing, few people are going to read a 2,000-word-post on a particular topic. So, why not break that information into four posts of 500 words each? You’re likely to attract more readers that way.

Beyond the attention of your audience, Google rewards frequent bloggers. Quantity matters. Four pages on a single topic will serve you better than one mega-post.

All URLs Aren’t Created Equal: Understanding Permalinks
Let’s say that each of the following URLs takes you to the same place:

1. http://www.philsimonsystems.com/p=10190
2. http://www.philsimonsystems.com/blog/technology/internet/teens-facebook-...

So which is better?

From Google’s perspective, the second one is far superior because it uses intelligent permalinks, defined here as:

“The permanent URLs to your individual blog posts, as well as categories and other lists of blog postings. A permalink is what another blogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change — hence the name: permalink.

The text in the first URL contains very little information about the content of the post. The second contains much more relevant tags about the post—i.e., that it’s about Facebook, teenagers, privacy and platforms.

Use headings.
Finally, most first-time bloggers just use plain text. Again, don’t. Headings really matter. When Google software indexes the web, it looks specifically for headers in determining the content of the post. As such, relevant headings tip Google off and make it much easier for others to find your posts.

Simon Says ...
Follow the advice in this post and watch your SEO and website traffic grow over time. Remember, though, that there’s no secret sauce. Be patient.

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