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Entrepreneur's Journal: Supercharge your website with search engine optimization (SEO)

Posted Oct 12th 2008 6:30PM by Tom TaulliTom Taulli RSS Feed
Filed under: Google (GOOG), Small business

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One of the most powerful ways to market your company is through search engine optimization (SEO). This refers to what happens when users enter certain queries into online search engines. The idea is to ensure that your website gets high placement in the results, ideally being on the first page of results.

So what are some strategies for effective SEO?

Well, let's use an example. Suppose you operate a retail store based in Newport Beach, California, which sells chocolate. But when you search for "chocolate" on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), you see that major companies rank high on that word. It will probably be impossible to get any traction on such a generic term.

"When selecting your main keywords," said Don Deveau, the SEO Team Lead at Register.com, "It's usually better to start with more specific ones. You will have much less competition."

As a result, you might want to look for keywords like "handmade chocolate." Or, you might be more specific by listing your store's location ("Newport Beach chocolate").

It actually takes quite a bit of brainstorming to come up with keywords. And yes, there are some online tools to help things out, including Wordtracker, which helps identify optimal keywords.

Next, you want to place the keywords into your website content. For example, it's a good idea to have each page focus on one or two keywords. Thus, if you have a page on handmade chocolate, then you should mention this a number of times in the descriptions. This helps search engines find and rank the pages.

Then, place these keywords into the page's meta-tag as well as the title. It's usually a waste of space if you mention your company name in the meta-tags; instead, focus on the keywords.

Another key is to get links back to your site. "You want highly ranked sites that point to yours," said Steve Rodman, who is the director of community support at PacketTrap Networks. "It also helps if the sites are relevant to your industry."

Using our example, it would be great to get a link from a site like Hershey (NYSE: HSY).

Something else to consider: a blog. Again, make sure you sprinkle your posts with relevant keywords. All in all, search engines tend to like blogs, perhaps because there is often original content which is updated frequently.

No doubt, SEO can be a lot of work. But the good news is that there are high-quality companies which provide premium services. Register.com, for example, has a variety of plans for small businesses that range from $50 to $300 per month.

There are also some good books on the topic, including Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He is also the founder of BizEquity, a valuation website

Tags: meta-tags, search engine optimization, SearchEngineOptimization, SEO, Wordtracker

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