Making Your Site Visitor‐Friendly

With all of this emphasis on doing what’s best in the eyes of the search engines, it’s easy to forget the primary purpose of your website: to be useful to your potential customers. When those who are in need of your products or services arrive at your site, it’s important that you make a good impression and make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for. 

Good design is critical in accomplishing these goals. You don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune on fancy graphics and world‐famous web designers. Just make sure that your branding is reflected in the look of your site, and that your site isn’t so heavy on graphics, video and other media that it’s slow or impossible to load for many of your visitors. 

Another important consideration is your site navigation. Your menus should be easy to find and understand. Make sure that the meanings of your link text or graphics are obvious, and they’re laid out in a way that is not confusing. It’s also best to make anything the visitor is looking for accessible in as few clicks as possible. One click is best, but if that’s not possible, try to keep it to three at the most (and then only for pages that contain technical or highly detailed information). 

It’s a good idea to have an impartial person critique your website. This allows you to learn how it looks through the eyes of someone who has no stake in its success. Using the feedback provided, you can make your potential customers’ experience a more pleasant and productive one.

Targeting the Right Keywords

The single most important thing in SEO is using the keywords that will bring the right kinds of visitors to your site. Your content could have the perfect keyword density, and your headings and tags could all include your keywords, but if they're not the right keywords, it's not going to do you any good. 

The best keywords are descriptive, but they are also created with your customers in mind. Not just people who might have a passing interest in your website, perhaps for research purposes, but people who are looking for what you have to offer with the intent of purchasing. These keywords are where the money is. 

So think for a minute about how someone who is interested in buying your products or services in your area would go about finding you. They would search for the specific product or service they are looking for, and they would also include some information about where they want to purchase. So instead of searching for "mortgages," they would search for "Atlanta mortgages." Or perhaps they would look for a more specific type of product in their area, such as "Atlanta reverse mortgages." The more detail your targeted keywords contain, the better the prospects of paying customers finding you will be. 

If you offer a variety of products or services, you would be hard pressed to get one page about all of them to rank well for terms related to any of them. So what do you do? Create a separate page for each one, and optimize it for the detailed keyword that best describes it. So you could have one page for "Atlanta reverse mortgages," one page for "Atlanta second mortgages," one page for "Atlanta home equity line of credit," and so on. 

It's also smart to do some research when selecting your keywords. The ones that offer the greatest potential have a high search volume and low competition. You can find information on search volume on your proposed keywords, as well as similar ones, by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). To get an idea of how much competition there is for a given keyword, simply do a Google search for it. The number of results will be displayed at the top of the page. 

Using the right keywords is crucial to any website's success, but it's especially important for local business sites. You need to find terms that not only bring traffic, but bring traffic from people who are ready to buy what you are selling in your local area. It's not the number of people who visit your site that counts, but the number of people who ultimately buy from you.

SEO for Organic Search Success

Listing your business with the local search engines is a great start when you're looking for online exposure. But it's also important to ensure that your website will rank well in regular search results. This will allow you to gain placement for more keywords, and it will make it possible for your site to appear in results from search engines that do not have a local component.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of tweaking your web pages so that they stand the best possible chance of ranking for the keywords that customers would use to find your business's website. Larger companies (and many small ones) pay SEO firms to do this for them. But it's entirely possible to do it yourself with some basic HTML knowledge. Following are the elements considered by the search engines.

Content 
 

Since the search engines are looking for the websites that are the most relevant for given search terms, it stands to reason that they would place a lot of weight on a page's content. Using the keywords for which you wish to rank well on each page should come fairly easily, but it's also important to pay attention to how often you're using them. 

A good rule of thumb is to write the page's content with the targeted keywords in mind, but to only use them as they come naturally. Once you're done, figure up the keyword density and see how you did. You can do this quickly online by entering the published page's URL at http://keyworddensity.com. Or if you want to know your keyword density so you can make adjustments before publishing, you can find a cut and paste keyword density checker at http://www.live‐keyword‐analysis.com/. 

There is some debate about the ideal keyword density on a given page. If it's too low, the page won't be deemed as relevant by the search engines. If it's too high, you could be penalized for keyword stuffing. SEO experts usually recommend a density of somewhere between 2 and 6 percent. 

Page Headings 

A heading's primary function on a web page is to separate the content into easy‐to‐read sections. There are six levels of headings available in HTML coding. <h1> is the highest, and should only be used once per page (at the beginning). <h2> is a subheading of <h1>, <h3> is a subheading of <h2>, and so on.

 

Using your keywords in page headings is also good for search engine placement. Include them as much as possible without making the content sound unnatural. 

Meta Tags 

Meta tags are found at the beginning of HTML documents, inside the head tags. These were once very important to the search engines. But because it was so easy to stuff them with keywords that had nothing to do with the page's content, they have been utilized in rankings much less in recent times. 

One exception to this rule is the title tag (which isn't technically a meta tag, but is often discussed with them because it directly precedes them). This tag controls what is shown in the title bar of the browser when a page is displayed. Because the content is visible to visitors, most webmasters are more interested in making it attractive and relevant than stuffing it full of keywords. But by including your keywords here in a natural manner, you can increase your chances of getting good search engine rankings. 

It can't hurt to include your keywords in the other meta tags, too. These are the keywords and description tags, and their names are self‐explanatory. The description is still used by some search engines as the page description in search results, so it should be descriptive. The keywords tag is generally ignored nowadays, but there's no reason you can't include your targeted keywords just in case. 

Inbound Links 

Links from other sites to your site are very important to the search engines. All of them use link popularity in their algorithms to determine the order in which to display results. Having plenty of inbound links will put you ahead of other sites that are targeting the same keywords as you but have fewer links coming in. 

While you do not have complete control over who links to your site, you can usually get links easily through link exchanges. All you have to do is find other sites that are related to yours (but not in direct competition) and contact their webmasters, asking if they would like to place your link on their sites in exchange for a link from your site to their sites. Many will be willing to do so, because this benefits them as well. 

When requesting a link, be sure to include suggested link text that contains your targeted keywords. This will help you rank higher in search results for those particular keywords, as well as boosting your general link popularity. 

You can also create your own inbound links. Social networking is an effective way to accomplish this. By setting up profiles on sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, and adding links to your site to those profiles, you can give yourself valuable inbound links from popular sites. Blogging and microblogging are also great vehicles for obtaining inbound links. 

Links from other sites to yours can be had for free, but they are invaluable from an SEO perspective. Don't overlook this important tool in getting visitors to your website.

Other Factors in SEO

There are several other factors in SEO that many webmasters do not fully utilize. The importance of these items varies among the search engines, but it's never a bad idea to keep all your bases covered. Here are some of the other places where you can use your keywords: 

• File names ‐ The file name of your page is found in its URL. You may have noticed when searching online that keywords inside the URL are highlighted in the search results, so this is a pretty good indication that the search engine finds them important. For best results, your domain name should include relevant keywords as well. 

• Alt tags ‐ These tags are used in conjunction with images. They contain the text that displays if the image fails to load. They are also used by browsers for the blind. These should first and foremost describe the image they are associated with, but if you can fit your keywords in, that's a bonus.

• Internal link text ‐ When linking to other pages on your site, don't forget to use link text that consists of that page's targeted keywords. Search engines take this into consideration just as they do links coming in from other sites.

Optimizing every page of your site for the search engines is critical if you want to get the most traffic possible from the search engines. Many small businesses neglect to do so because they cannot find room in the budget to hire an SEO firm. Don’t let that hold you back. You can learn to do it yourself.

Getting Listed in GPS and Mobile Local Search

Mobile search offerings that are provided by Internet search engines use the same sources as their providers to get results, so if you've followed the previous suggestions, you should be covered there. But getting listed with GPS and mobile directory assistance is a bit different.

GPS devices utilize software to provide information to users. How up to date their listings are depends on how new the device is and how often the user gets upgrades. While businesses have no control over that, they can make sure they are listed in the latest versions of GPS software. The two largest providers of information for GPS systems, Map Insight (http://mapinsight.teleatlas.com/mapfeedback/index.php) and Navteq (http://mapreporter.navteq.com/dur‐web‐external/), both accept online submissions.

If your business is listed in the phone book, it should be available through any type of directory assistance. Directory assistance providers receive updated information very frequently, so your number should become available shortly after it is added to your telephone company's database. If you find that your information is incorrect or missing, you'll need to take it up with your phone service provider.

Currently, you shouldn't need to register or pay to be included in local category searches. The results of these are obtained either from Yellow Pages listings for the area requested, or by providing listings in the vicinity of the caller's location through the use of GPS or other location‐based technology. The only items that are usually fee‐based are the advertisements played during free directory assistance calls.

Finding Geo‐Targeted Directories

In addition to the search engines that provide local results for different cities in an entire country (or in multiple countries), there are search engines and directories that serve smaller areas. Some are geared toward specific cities, others toward states, and still others toward regions such as New England or the southwest United States. These sites have smaller audiences, but the people who visit them are sure to be interested in finding businesses in the areas they serve.

So how do you go about finding these search engines? For starters, you could try doing a Google search. Just type in the targeted region name plus the words "search engine" or "directory," and chances are any popular sites that meet those criteria will be listed. You could also try Craigslist.org. There you can place free classified ads for your business, and you may also find links to popular search engines in your area. Try the community section.

Your local Chamber of Commerce may offer a business directory for its members. They should also be able to point you in the direction of other local search engines. And if all else fails, you could always ask around. If there are any directories or search engines in your area that are worth their salt, someone you know is probably using them.

Other Local Search Result Providers

There are several sites that may not offer search services of their own, but they provide local results to other search engines. Here are some of the most widely used information providers that offer free submission, along with their submission pages:

• InfoUSA ‐ http://dbupdate.infousa.com/dbupdate/startupdate?bas_request=A 

• Localeze ‐ http://www.localeze.com/manage‐business/index.asp 

Many of the larger information providers do not allow small businesses to submit their own listings. In order to get listed with them, you'll have to pay a third party provider that does submissions for small businesses. Here’s a couple to consider: 

• Dex Search Marketing ‐ http://www.dexsearchmarketing.com/  

• Universal Business Listing ‐ http://www.universalbusinesslisting.org/ 

• Your online marketing company may also be able to provide this service. If not, they should be able to recommend someone who can. 

These companies provide local business listings to many of the aforementioned search engines, so submitting to both may seem redundant. But it's actually not a bad idea if you're looking for maximum exposure. The larger providers may not offer all of the features that are available from the actual search engines, so it's good to make sure that you're taking full advantage of what each individual one has to offer. These larger companies will also provide your listing to smaller search engines that you may have never even heard of, reaching potential customers you might not have otherwise reached. If budget is a priority, however, getting your listing into the major local search engines is free and will certainly boost your business.