So, you’ve beefed up your website with a few SEO tricks. Maybe you’ve taken a look at some SEO basics, or you had a tech guru go through the site a couple years back. Either way, it’s time for a new look, to see what else you can do.

In the same way SEO for small business is changing the way people shop and businesses advertise, the search engines are changing too. The tricks that worked a few years ago don’t go as far now, and adding a few metadata tags just isn’t enough. In this article, we’ll walk you through some slick new tools you can use to help your site reach the top of the rankings — and make sure you stay there.

First, let’s take a look at your keywords. With the number of web pages out there on the Internet, you are practically guaranteed to turn up thousands of sites that contain pretty much any word you haven’t made up. That’s why long tail keywords are practically a must if you want your site to stand out: String two, three, or even five words together and create phrases people are likely to associate with your business. The more words you use, the more unique your phrase will be and the more likely you are to dominate the results.

And just as metadata can work behind the scenes to build SEO for small business, you can add a few hidden tags into the body of your site for an extra SEO boost. Alt tags, which you can attach to the images you display on your site, can provide a simple description of the image and make your site more accessible to visually impaired visitors. Plus, if you work your keywords into the tags, you’re adding a new flag for search engines to catch.

Likewise, the tags you can use to build headings and subheadings into your page don’t just help to organize your text. Search engines can recognize an H1 tag and gives extra weight to the text inside it. Unlike alt tags, though, heading tags come in plenty of different flavors, with H1, H2, H3 and so on. The H1 tag is the largest by default, and it’s much more effective than the others; but you shouldn’t stuff your page full of H1 tags. Work your most important keywords into the H1 text and try to find good long tail keywords for the others.

Finally, let’s look at your site’s content itself. Search engines have always prized sites that have fresh material, but overhauling your entire site too often can drive away visitors. Blogs, on the other hand, give you a perfect venue to post new content, boosting your SEO for small business while giving visitors a reason to keep coming back to your site. And blog entries give you a perfect opportunity to work in the long tail keywords and tags that we’ve just talked about.

And remember, one of the best things you can do is keep things fresh. Redesigning a website is tricky work, and there’s a lot of things to consider. If you’re looking for some more tips and techniques, this free ebook can help you out. But make sure you keep this in mind: The rules of SEO for small business are changing and search companies usually don’t announce them, but one thing that’s stayed the same is that search engines like sites with strong content that people like to visit. These SEO tools aren’t a substitute for building a great site; they’re ways to help your great site get found.

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