Search Engine Optimization for Small Businesses - The Basics

Designing and implementing a stand-out website is an achievement in itself - but getting it noticed is another thing altogether. Before you get too involved with your retail management software, take another look at your site and make sure it has the right elements for success. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to increase the chances that someone will find your small business when they are searching online.

How do search engines work?

Popular crawler-based search engines such as Google use what are called "spiders" to visit pages on the World Wide Web and gather data on text, links and URLs. They then make a copy of the information they have found to be stored in the search engine's index. On a regular basis, the spiders return to the same websites and take note of any changes, updates and dead links.

Finally, the search engine software sorts through the hundreds of millions of pages in the index and uses a complex algorithm to rank them in order of what it thinks is the most relevant for searchers.

Choose good keywords for optimization

One of the most important steps for search engine marketing is carrying out research to determine the very best keywords and keyword phrases for your business. Most experts recommend choosing one or two core keywords or phrases per page to target for SEO purposes.

Choosing keywords can be a lengthy process and many companies devote a lot of thought and resources to this decision. You can start by brainstorming the most likely search terms you would type into Google if you were looking for your firm's product or service. But don't rely solely on your own judgment. Also be sure to survey colleagues and friends - or even existing customers - to add their suggestions into the mix.

There are also various free and paid keyword services on the internet that allow you to test the popularity of different options, as well as find alternative but similar phrases.

Keyword relevance. A key factor for selecting keywords is relevance. Do your chosen words relate well to your business, so that searchers will stay on your page once they have found it? Remember that the ultimate goal is not just to increase traffic to your site (known as the "click-through rate"), but to boost the number of people who return and purchase something (known as the "conversion rate"). You will appreciate the extra sales captured by your retail management software!

You can also compare the relative value of search terms by comparing the amount of revenue they are likely to generate per customer. Less expensive products may be more commonly searched and vice versa.

Keyword specificity. Often it is better to choose a more specific phrase than a general term, as there are already millions of pages that will be competing for common terms. For example, if your firm sells antique silent film posters, do you think that optimizing the keyword "posters" will place you anywhere near the top of the rankings? If you choose "silent film posters" instead, you increase your chances of reaching an audience - and one that is already looking for your specific product.

At the same time, you do not want to make the mistake of optimizing a phrase that is too specific (such as "German silent film posters from 1927"), because chances are that not many people are going to be typing this phrase into a search engine. The term for the estimated number of people who will be searching for a particular keyword each month is "predicted traffic."

Get links to your page

In addition to keywords, to determine a web page's importance, top search engines use a complex algorithm that measures the number of inbound links from other sites in combination with their' own search engine ranking. In other words, if a popular and well-respected site links to yours, that's good news for your website and the sales reflected by your retail management software!

The two most important types of sites to target when soliciting inbound links are major search directories - such as Yahoo and The Open Directory - and high-profile websites within your subject area. Note that inbound links from unrelated websites will not work as well - and receiving a large volume of these may even set off warning bells with search engines such as Google, which are striving to deliver the most relevant content to searchers.

Meta tags

Meta tags are HTML instructions that are invisible to viewers of your web page but important to search engines.

You should ensure that your page's title tag includes your most important keywords, rather than just the name of your firm. For example, instead of "The Silent Years," why not "The Silent Years - silent film posters, collectables, film stills and lobby cards from the 1920s and 30s"?

Make sure you also include your core terms when completing information for the meta tags relating to keywords and description of your site.