Search Engine Optimisation – The Most Powerful Marketing Tool For a Small Business

Search Engine Optimisation – The Most Powerful Marketing Tool For a Small Business

SEO is an effective and proven method to market a small business. A small business has budgetary constraints in marketing hence search engine optimisation is particularly beneficial. It has lower costs than traditional advertising mediums and as such can be used effectively by small businesses. It offers a cost effective method for small businesses to make their website known to a vast audience. Search engine optimisation commonly known as SEO has become crucial in the success of small businesses today. Many marketing studies have shown that online marketing is replacing traditional mediums as the primary source for customers to obtain information on a company’s products and services.  Recent changes in consumer behaviour have made E-Commerce more important than traditional high street retail in many industries.

Search engine marketing has a special significance for small businesses as it allows a business to reduce its marketing and operating costs.  The cost benefits and return on investment is significant compared to traditional methods of marketing such as TV, radio or print mediums.  Search engine marketing also has a wider reach and can be equally effective whether you wish to market to a local or international customer base.

Search engines provide small businesses with an opportunity to compete with established businesses and they are not limited by a smaller bricks and mortar presence. Small businesses with an effective online marketing strategy have continued to grow and gain competitive advantage over others in their industry. This would not be possible using traditional marketing mediums which have much higher costs associated with it.

The ultimate goal of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is to drive targeted traffic form search engines to the company’s website. Websites that receive a high rank on search engines are able to grow and expand due to increased sales and leads achieved as a direct result of increased visibility on search results. A majority of the internet users use search engines to find products and services. Websites that rank high on search engines are able to receive highly targeted traffic from potential customers.

There is tough competition to rank high on search engines as only 10 websites can appear on the first page for a given search phrase.  Research shows that if a Web site does not rank on the first page of a search result, chances of generating any traffic to the website is reduced manifold. Therefore it is important for a business to have an ongoing strategy that can help it achieve a first page rank on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Here are some search engine optimisation tips that a small business or company can use to improve its rank on search engines

A search engine friendly Web site. A website that has been designed with search engines in mind tends to rank higher on search engines. A search engine friendly website can get indexed by search engines with ease and as such it promotes better ranking of its pages. A professional web designer will always ensure that the website is designed with search engine guidelines. A number of techniques can ensure this. Any professional web designer should take these factors into account.

Well Organised structure of the website. The information on the website should be organised properly. Information should be categorised meaningfully and content should be appropriately categorised into different sub pages of the website. If users fail to find what they want immediately, they are likely to go to another site.

Positioning of keywords.  One of the first steps of an effective SEO campaign is to identify the right keywords.  Once this is done the keywords should be positioned strategically within the content of the website. The main keywords should be in the title, description and within the body, ideally once in the first sentence.

Strategic distribution of keywords on the website. This is a basic SEO technique. Position keywords or key phrases at the start and the end of the document as the beginning and end of a page are given more weight by search engines while searching.

Keyword relevancy and density within the web page content. It is important that the website relevancy to keywords is good. The overall website should be related to the main keywords the site is targeting. Keyword density refers to the number of times the keyword appears in the content of a particular web page. E.g. a density of around 2-5% is considered appropriate.

Keywords in anchor text of links.  Including your main keywords in anchor text of links is a very effective search engine optimisation technique.  Keywords should form a part of the link text where possible. Link text is the clickable word that is used to get to a page. Instead of using “Click here for more info” as your link text, use the main keywords instead. This improves the chances of the destination page ranking high for the keyword.

The Website design and marketing ebook discusses additional techniques that a website owner can use to market their website on the internet.