Miami Search Engine Marketing Firm Offers Tips for Online Businesses

Here's a common scenario that many small business owners face with their website:

"I have a small business and a new website for it" (any business, really) - and I've heard that I need to make the website 'search engine friendly.' What does that mean and how do I do that?"

Content. No really. That's the key to making your website search engine friendly. Okay yes, there are a few other factors that will help, and we'll go over those as well - but just remember: search engines love good, original content.

There are a number of things that you need to consider to make your website search engine friendly. But if you're aware of these few, main factors - then the search engines will find, index, and love your site.

- Content

- Keywords and Phrases

- Site Navigation

- Images

- Tags

Content

Search engine spiders crawl websites looking for content in the form of text. Having keyword rich content - a good rule of thumb is between 200 and 250 words of original content and text on each page of a website - will give the spiders something good to index. This in turn will allow visitors that are using search engines to find your site as the search engines will have plenty of material to index from your site.

Your content should give the consumer something they are looking for, it should fulfill a need for the user. Whether this is in the form of merchandise description, describing services you offer, or offering information in the form of an article, it should communicate it clearly.

Remember - the search engines are looking for information and developing ways to return that information in a relevant manner to users performing searches. So, original, keyword rich content is going to be easily indexed and in a sense - at the fingertips of the searcher.

Keywords and Phrases

In another article - How To Select and Target Keywords for Your Small Business's Website - I talk about selecting keywords and phrases for your business's website.

Effective use of these keywords on your website and content is just as important as picking the right keywords. If you have a website for your Seattle based garden store - it's going to be important to use keywords that pertain to your particular gardening products, the local Seattle gardening scene, etc. Keep the keywords and phrases relevant to your site. Just because Britney Spears might be getting a lot of searches, it's not going to do you any good to try to include her as a keyword on your site. Plus, any visitors that come to your site because of her being used as a keyword - are not going to turn into customers. This is a simple idea: quality over quantity.

Also - don't overuse the keywords. Use them in the content as it's relevant, but don't try to use a keyword 45 times in a 300 word article. It's not going to help and anybody reading the article is most likely going to get annoyed anyways and click away from your site.

Site Navigation

If people have trouble navigating your site, the spiders crawling the site are going to have trouble as well. Are the pages clearly marked? Do all of the links work? Is it obvious where to find important information - contact, about, location, products?

If the spiders can't crawl the site in a straightforward simple manner, than it's going to be hard for them to index the site in the search engines which means that potential customers will have trouble finding the site when searching in the search engines.

Images

Images are great. They make pages look great and provide useful information as well. But remember, spiders are text based programs - meaning they look for content in the form of text. So don't rely solely on images to convey information. Supplement the pictures with accurate and useful descriptions. This will give the user a visual, as well as provide the spider with content to index.

Tags

When we're talking about tags in relation to search engine optimization, we'll be talking about Title Tags and Meta Description Tags and Meta Keyword Tags.

Title Tags

Title tags are the page headings - the title of the page in the top bar of the browser. It's important to make sure that each page be titled with appropriate tags, preferably using keywords that you are targeting on that particular page.

So if you have a page that is selling 'Garden Rakes,' an appropriate page title tag might be: Garden Rakes - Name of your garden store.

Meta Description and Meta Keyword Tags

These tags can be found in the code of your website. They are important - but you shouldn't spend hours and hours worrying about your Meta tags.

Make your Meta Description is concise and descriptive, using some of your targeted keywords and phrases. It should be a one sentence description of what your website is about.

Your Meta Keyword Tags should include the keywords and phrases that you are targeting. That's it. Simple enough - don't try to spam your meta tags as the search engines will actually penalize you if it appears that that's what you are doing. Simply include each relevant keyword once.

When designing your site, if you follow these few guidelines - you'll end up with a small business website that is easily indexed by the search engines which will allow potential customers to find your business and services before your competitors.

Santiago Caicedo is the founder and President of Sell With SEO, a SEO Miami agency. To learn more about Internet marketing in Florida as well as visit our website.

Florida SEO
Florida SEO firm