For many small business owners, marketing is somewhat intimidating. Whether you run an ice cream shop, a salon, or even a pet store, you’re quickly realizing that the business environment has changed dramatically from 20 years ago. One form of marketing you’ve probably heard about is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is directly tied to search engines, like Google and Yahoo!. When you use these sites, you most likely enter in a series of descriptive words that help to bring up “results” of what you are looking for. When you pull up the results, the entries are in a specific order based on popularity. The higher a listing ranks, the more you will likely visit that site. Therefore, the key is to try and get your company listed as high as possible in these search engines.
When you do things to optimize your site, you help to make your site rank higher in the search results. This is accomplished all in the type of language you use in your Web site content, as well as the type of keywords and tags you set for your entries. Additionally, it is important to create a network of “links” attached to your site so that other popular Web sites can be linked together with your site.
Do lots of keyword research ahead of time to make sure you understand the best words to use. You can even utilize keyword research tools to help make this happen. If you are setting up a Web site through a program like Wordpress, it includes a lot of built-in tools and resources (called plug-ins) that help to call attention to these important keywords for optimization.
SEO can be very complicated. But once you are able to decode the language and get a grasp for the basic fundamentals involved, the steps you take to optimize your site will become religion to you. More importantly, you will be one step closer to understanding marketing.
