Marketing Your Small Business Website // Dream Seed Multimedia, Lancaster, PA

How to improve your search engine ranking and attract more people to your website

As someone with a mission or vision to fulfill, someone trying to grow your organization or business, you probably have spent considerable time and resources to get the word out about what you do. Your website should be designed in order to reach as many people in your target market as possible, and there are proven ways to drive more traffic to your website. One very important method is often called search engine optimization, or SEO.

One of the best resources that we highly recommend to website owners when they are trying to improve their website’s visibility in search engine rankings is Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day (second edition) by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin. It offers easy and manageable tasks that any website owner of any size business or nonprofit can complete without coding or programming skills. (And because we are a small business, we like to support other small businesses, so you’ll see that this link takes you to independent booksellers.)

When talking to web designers, ask how they can help you make your website have the best possible chance at succeeding in the already crowded search engine results. They should be addressing these steps below.

Six free and simple steps to improve your search engine ranking (SEO)…and convert website visitors into customers

1. Know your target audience. Understand their needs and desires. Examine every page on your website, and ask yourself, “Does this meet my audience’s needs or desires? Would this turn a visitor into a customer?” Change content that needs to be changed, and delete unnecessary clutter.
2. Consider carefully what your target audience is searching for when they are looking for websites. What keywords or phrases would they use in a search engine? (And remember, it’s what words and phrases they would use, not what you would use.) Create a list of those keywords and phrases, and embed them in the text of your website. Think about creating separate pages for specific keywords and phrases. Give the search engines more to grab when they index your site.
3. Keep your content fresh. Update and revise your content on a regular basis. Add new text and ideas; remove stale and expired ones. The more updated your site is, the higher it will be ranked in search engines, and the better it will look to the public. No one likes an outdated website!
4. Get linked in other sites and directories. Part of the success some sites have in their search engine rankings comes from how many quality sites link to their own sites. Contact reputable associates and directories, and ask them to link to your site. If you need to, link back to theirs in return. Everyone benefits!
5. Separate style from content. Use (X)HTML for content and CSS for presentation. Don’t worry if you don’t completely understand what this means. Simply put, just make sure that the coding behind your website is clean, correct, and validated. (Any reputable web designer will do this for you.) The search engines that visit websites collect and index information will like your site much better! Dream Seed Multimedia websites are validated to use correct (X)HTML and CSS.
6. Make sure the code on your website is semantic. In other words, ask your web designer that the (X)HTML is structured to make sense, meaning that headings are coded as headings, paragraphs are coded and paragraphs, and so on. (Believe us—even though it sounds obvious, you wouldn’t believe how many websites we’ve seen that mess this up!) Dream Seed Multimedia ensures that your (X)HTML will have semantic meaning for the search engines.

Six free warnings to keep in mind when dealing with SEO

1. Be wary of anyone who guarantees your ranking in any search engine. Because it’s ultimately up to the search engines to decide the ranking, there can be no guarantees of this nature. And if someone can get you a top ranking fast (within a week or so), there is a strong possibility that questionable (“black hat”) methods have been used. This simply means that while you get a high ranking fast, the methods to do so may be unethical, or at least against search engine rules, and that can result in your site being removed from the search engines once they find out. If an SEO company tells you that they use special software to boost your rank quickly, it’s highly possible that it’s “black hat.”
2. Avoid paying for search engine submission. The main search engines will find your site on their own. And don’t get swayed by claims to submit to hundreds of search engines. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing have the highest market share, and many other search engines use the results from these three.
3. Beware of paying for showing up on the first page of search engine results. This may only be advertising on search engines (which itself is not bad if you have the money for it and it’s part of your marketing plan), but it’s not the same as getting a high rank.
4. Avoid loading your site or meta tags with keywords not associated with the content of your website. This kind of “keyword stuffing” was popular a few years back with words such as “Viagra,” “poker,” and the like. Search engines do eventually catch on and can penalize your site for it.
5. Remember, real search engine optimization takes time. It can take months of diligence for a website to move on up in the rankings. Be patient, and don’t rush it. As with anything worthwhile in life, take the time to do it right, and you can be sure that your site will stay in the search engine results.
6. Finally, don’t forget that it should always be about your customers. Don’t get so obsessed with top ranks on search engines that your website fails to turn visitors into customers. It’s better to have a top-notch website that ranks number 10 in search results and is responsible for a good portion of your business than it is to have the top ranking website that does nothing for your business.

And there’s more…

Looking for more advice? Check out our articles on website marketing and optimization for some great tips!

Ready to get your website out there? Talk to us; we’re ready to help!