Search Engine Optimisation is the “art” of developing your website so that it appears high in the organic google listings when someone searches for information on your industry or business type. By organic listings I mean the ones on the LHS of the results - the highlighted spots at the top and to the right are paid listings - more about that in a later post.

Although you need to have an off-line marketing strategy to bring visitors to your site - promote your web address on all of your promotional materials, business cards, advertising, business directory listings etc etc being easily found on Google, Yahoo, NIne MSN and other engines can certainly have a big impact on your business success.

Potential customers have changed the way they search for and select the suppliers of their goods and services. I’m sure I’m not the only person who mainly uses my Yellow Pages as a footrest these days….. There are 14 million internet users in Australia along and more than one billion worldwide and they use the web to research what they need - once someone picks up the phone or walks into a store, they have often already made their decision.

SEO (for short) is an inexact art - no one knows precisely what will score you a high listing, and the search engines aren’t going to share all of their secrets with us. Search engines use software, often called “spiders” which continuously crawl the internet, ustlisiing links between sites, checking the text in sites and then indexing the content and adding the results to their databases. Then, when someone sits down and types in a search term such as “women’s business network in Sydney”, the search engine uses its algorithm (the big secret formula we’d all like to know!) to determine the most relevant websites to return in the search requests. It then depends on how far the searcher wants to go, but it is generally accepted that one or two pages of results are typical. So, that’s where we’d all like to appear…..

You need to accept that SEO is a ongoing process, not a one off event with a quick return. Google will not zoom a new site to the top of its rankings - their formulas reward websites that have a history, strong content and regular changes and additions. So take a long term approach - make SEO one of the key marketing strategies for the growth and development of your small business

If you have the budget you can always invest in the assistance of a SEO specialist company to help you in your quest (google them, the best ones should walk the talk and come up at the top of the list!) But as a small business owner, that’s fairly unlikely, so it’s good to know that there are certainly some specific things that you can implement that will assist you in your journey to appear on page one or two for your selected keyword searches….

So, what is the DIY approach to search engine optimisation? The key components include:

• Keywords and keyword phrases - deciding on the ones you think your potential customers are most likely to search for and then ensuring they are included in your headings and text as often as is logical. Optimise each page of your site - use different keywords and phrases for different pages and aim to own a niche eg: small business marketing consultant, north shore rather than marketing consultant
• Meta tags, title tages and page descriptions - make sure you use your keywords and phrases in these as they are valued and utilised by the indexing engines
• Incoming Links - seek quality inbound links to your site - it’s better to be linked to from websites relevant to your industry than a whole host of general directories
• Blog! - Search engines are mad for lots of text, regularly updated!

If you are yet to develop a website for your small business or if you’d like to you’d like a review of your existing site you might like to take a visit to the small business online marketing area of my business website, Ideas Into Action.