Tuesday, January 8, 2013

A Good Place to Start your SEO

By Cristine Sphan


It is not surprising that a great deal of small business operators are hesitant to enter the online space. But those who take the time to find the right services and the right experts can see a dramatic increase in how much traffic their site gets and how many real leads and sales they start to receive.

In an inbound marketing strategy, your website is the hub for all of your inbound marketing tactics and search engine optimization is the most cost effective strategy to make this happen. Search engine optimization is the systematic process of increasing the quality and volume of traffic to your website by improving the visibility of your site through various search engines. In a nutshell, the objective is to apply a variety of proven SEO techniques that will allow your webpage to achieve a higher ranking when certain keywords or phrases are entered in the search field of major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Knowing Competitor Tactics Will Help you Prepare

Make sure you do some competitive analysis to see who is at the top of the search engine results pages for the words and phrases you want your website to rank for. The real numbers don't lie. Get the data, then begin. Assume that if they are ranking well, your competitors are doing something right. Don't make the mistake of underestimating their efforts or strategy. This little research effort can really pay dividends for your own SEO plans. It might not take too much to outrank your competitors if they are not active in their search engine optimization. Don't forget though, keywords are the lifeblood of your inbound marketing strategy. The best keywords are relevant, have lower competition, have high traffic and result in potential buyers.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that a few keyword phrases in your industry probably account for a significant percentage of traffic for that industry. If you can take the necessary steps to rank for these phrases, it could make a really positive difference to your online marketing success. Keyword optimization is not just about getting ranked; it's about driving business and sales.

Don't forget to plan around the sales cycle of your clients. Some keywords are associated with different stages of the buying cycle. Make sure you keep this in mind when you are planning your efforts. Extensive keyword research will make a big difference. Often, the keywords you assume your potential customers will use to search for your products or services are not actually what they use. Or maybe they do use those keywords, but at different stages of the buying cycle. In other words, you may need to augment your content accordingly.

No matter how small your business is, you're not too small for SEO. Online competition may be fierce but search engine optimization can help you compete with businesses much larger than yours. Remember, high rankings usually mean a high level of trust.




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