Do Your Keyword Research before You Create a Website
The first step in ensuring that any business website is correctly search engine optimized is doing your keyword research to determine which terms people are using to find your website and how much competition these terms are facing. The best terms are those with the highest search volumes as opposed to the lowest competition. In order to do this keyword research you can use tools such as the Google Adwords keyword research tool.
Where to Include Keywords
Once you have done your research it is time to create a free website and include the keyword terms you have chosen in strategic places – in the title of your page, in bold somewhere near the top of the page, in anchor text for links and image tags, as well as scattered throughout your content.
Check Your Website for Broken Links
Before you start promoting your website make sure that all the links you have placed on your website actually lead somewhere. Broken links can cause a problem with search engine optimization.
Create a Sitemap and Submit to Search Engines
Once all the pages on your website are live then you will want to create a sitemap which lets search engines know where all your pages are and then submit these to search engines such as Google to assist them in indexing your site.
Building Links to Your Website
Keyword optimization and technical optimization (checking for broken links, submitting a sitemap, etc.) are two different elements of search engine optimization and the third is link building or off-site search engine optimization. This means getting as many links to your website from other sites as possible in order to improve your website’s visibility, get it more attention from the search engines and so improve its ranking. You can use a variety of different methods to get these links including social media marketing, taking part in free forums, purchasing advertising space on other sites, forming joint ventures, article marketing, etc. The more links you can get to your website, the better.
Take Search Engine Optimization beyond Your Website
All the tips above focus on optimizing your website for the search engines but if you want the best results then you should also work on optimizing your articles and social content for the search engines by ensuring that they are correctly keyword optimized and perhaps by promoting them and sending more traffic to them. If you improve the search engine rankings on your articles on article directories, etc. and then link back to your website this helps to improve your website’s search results as well.
By creating a free website that is correctly keyword optimized using keywords you have chosen carefully through thorough research, checking for broken links, submitting a sitemap and then working on getting as many links to your website as possible from external sources you will help to get the best search engine optimization results for your small business website.
