SEO 101: Basic – Just What is SEO and Why Do I Need it?

 SEO for small business, small business SEO, mlt innovations, indiana SEO, inbound marketing, website redesignWhen it comes to getting the attention of new prospects who are ready to buy what you’re selling, a search engine can be your best friend. The whole idea of search engine optimization, or SEO, is to take advantage of the power of modern search engines and the habits of today’s consumer to connect businesses with customers more efficiently. That makes SEO for small business one of the most powerful tools your company can use to get noticed.

Using SEO for small business means optimizing your website from back to front, to draw in search traffic from the people most likely to want your product. There are a lot of things you can do to make your website more appealing — here’s a free ebook that can help get you started — but in this article, we’ll go over the basics of SEO, what it is and what it can do.

Naturally, search engines will read through the text on your website for a match to the keywords that were typed into the search box. But when a search engine finds multiple sites with those keywords and decides which one to give a higher ranking, that’s where metadata comes in. Made up of elements like your website’s title, a description summarizing what it’s about and a list of keywords reflecting what the web page is about, metadata is mostly invisible to the casual viewer of your site, but  it helps get a search engine’s attention.

A few years ago, metadata was critical to SEO for small business. But while it is still important, search engines are developing new tools to analyze the website’s actual content. A header tag, for instance, is a way to signal which words really describe what your site is about. Header tags — H1, H2, H3 and so on — act as headlines, highlighting their text as important for the site. Make sure your site’s main keywords get included in them, but don’t overuse the tags: The H1 tag commands the most importance, so give it your most relevant keyword and make your next header an H2.

Of course, it’s still important to keep the rest of your site’s content optimized for SEO. Search engines value links, and an inline text link that sends readers to another part of your site using relevant keywords can help to boost your profile. It’s also valuable to include a good density of keywords within your site’s body text. You shouldn’t include too many keywords, since search engines can actually penalize sites for being overly dense. But since opinions vary sharply about the “optimal” density, and the search engines aren’t telling, you should go with what feels right: Keep your keywords in mind when you’re developing your website’s content and make sure your pages highlight them appropriately.

One other element to keep in mind is that search engines tend to promote websites that other sites link to. This isn’t an easy thing to control, but there is something you can do: Make sure your site has quality content that your visitors are likely to find valuable. Just as ever, happy visitors can mean good word of mouth, and bring more customers in.

The power of SEO for small business is that anyone with an Internet connection can find a product or service just by typing a few keywords into a search box. With more businesses committing to a beefed-up web presence, consumers can use the Internet as their first and only stop to find new business. And that means the businesses that don’t use SEO risk being left behind.

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