The two main strategies that you need to apply to your website to ensure that it is working for your local small business are: search engine optimisation (SEO) and link building.
Search Engine Optimisation for Local Websites
SEO is all about providing fresh, relevant content that your readers and search engines like, focused on the keywords and keyword phrases that you have determined, with the right html in the background to ensure that it is visible to the search engines as well as your visitors.
Landing Pages
You can do this in a number of ways: by creating a landing page on your website for each of your keyword phrases E.g. if you are a plumber and one of your keyword phrases is ‘how to fix a leaking tap’, make sure you have a page that answers that question including explaining when the job will require your services and what you offer to ensure that it is fixed properly etc; that way if someone looking to fix a leaking tap ‘lands’ on that page of your website they will get the information that they need (and the search engines will be happy as you are providing rich content).
Blogging, Articles, Online Press Releases
You can also do this by adding a blog to your website, writing articles and online press releases both for your own site and to put on other sites either specifically created for this purpose, like www.ezinearticles.com or to go on other businesses’ websites either in a related field or in your local area.
Building Links
The second really key strategy to use to promote your website online is one of link building. I would guess that many people assume this is all about asking other businesses to add you to their website links list. That is one way of getting links, which can be especially useful if they are a local business with a well indexed site and a Google Pagerank (i.e. Google recognises that the site has some value, some of which is passed along with a link from it, known as ‘link love’!) but link building is so much more than that. Incoming links (and as a result, in many cases actual visitors, – it’s not just about search engines!) can come to your site from so many places and for so many reasons.
Here are some of the ways to get useful links back to your site:
- From online directories like Yell; local business directories like www.thebestof.co.uk; trade organisation directories; general business directories like www.bizwiki.co.uk. Some of these directories are free, and some are paid for; when deciding which to get listed with do some searches for your keywords and see who comes up.
- From Google Maps – it’s free; if you’re not on Google Maps then get it sorted! Our picture framer is on there with no website and has had at least two customers in the last few months who found him on there.
- From Social Media sites such as Facebook; LinkedIn; Twitter; YouTube; Flickr; Digg – they all give you an opportunity to have links to your site. Not all pass on Pagerank (most of these listed don’t) but they do provide other very useful promotion opportunities. For example, you can put links to your website in your status updates on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, which means you can promote a new article or blog post that you have written; you can automatically link your blog to your profiles; YouTube acts as a search engine, which is not as big as Google but isn’t that far behind in relative terms – a few videos on there about your business with the right keywords in the description and with links back to your site can be really useful.
Originally published in Kent on Saturday on Saturday 22 August
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