At networking events you hear other professionals talking about SEO. Your competitors are redesigning their business websites because of it. Maybe you haven’t given it much thought. But what if I told you that without a solid SEO plan you could be throwing money away? It would pay to listen.
So what is SEO? The acronym stands for Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, how the search engines find your website and how high in a search engine results they rank your pages. Everyone wants traffic and everyone wants more business but only one site can be number one at any time.
A well-optimized site ranks highly for multiple terms related to the business. For example, a cosmetic dentist would hope to rank on page one for “teeth whitening,” “tooth reshaping” and of course, “cosmetic dentistry.” For small businesses attracting customers to a store location, I recommend SEO on the local level where you would include your city in the keyword phrase. In a competitive market like NYC, consider adding your neighborhood: “cosmetic dentistry, west village.”
“Some 70% of consumers checked an online source before visiting a local business or restaurant, according to a survey from local content and advertising network CityGrid Media conducted by Harris Interactive.” Wouldn’t it be great if some of those customers are walking through your door?
You also need a keyword strategy. While adding location can help, another tactic I found works quickly is called the “long-tail keyword.” A great long-tail keyword would be “tooth reshaping for crooked teeth, west village NY.” The key with long tail keywords is specificity!
Ready to oust the dentist next door? SEO is a game of numbers: the number of pages linking to your site. “For search engines that crawl the web, links are the streets between pages. Using sophisticated link analysis, the engines can discover how pages are related to each other and in what ways.” –SEOMoz
Links to your site, or “inbound links,” are important to searches in two ways. First, they act as a vote to the value of your content. Inbound links are like pointing and saying: “This is important!” Links are often used as a substantiating reference, so this argument holds true for news sites which often top results pages. Secondly, you want inbound links from respected sources. When another site links to yours it is sharing some SEO credit with you. But wait, how did he get so much credit? By the number of inbound links he has. While we can’t see it, the internet really is like a “web.”
How does this impact your business? Did you know 53% percent of all participants say SEO makes the biggest impact on lead generation? More than PPC or social media? (Seohorizon)
Still wondering “Why would anyone link to my site?” Dying to know how many links your competitors have? Don’t waste time counting links, you’ve got a business to run! Leave it to the Marketing Samurai- we have the tools to get inside knowledge quicker than you can say: SEO Sensei! Sign up for a free SEO analysis and let me help you decide which search engine optimization strategy is best for your business!
