Strategies for Affordable Small Business SEO – The SEO DIY Checklist

When it comes to affordable as SEO, it doesn’t get any cheaper than if you’re willing to do it yourself, or for free. There is a definite benefit in hiring a professional, most people are experts in one field, they are very proficient in their professions and don’t have the time or are willing to learn a completely new business as complex as  on line advertising and search engine optimization. If you do have the time, and are willing to retain quite a bit of information and have the ability to use it to the best of your advantage that may be doing your own SEO is in your best interest.

Some characteristic traits that are congruent with being a successful optimizer is the willingness to change and roll with the punches, SEO is always changing and the trends change daily so being equally creative as well as being detail oriented is going to be a huge benefit for you. Math is another huge part of on line advertising and search engine optimization, due to the fact that a lot of on line advertising is completely measurable, and you’re able to drill down what each visitor is worth to you.

In this article we are going to cover some of the basics of search engine authorization, that way you can take advantage of both an affordable small business SEO strategy. A DIY SEO, so to speak, this article will provide you with the tool belt optimize any website, this is what marketers call on-site optimization, which is about 50% of the game, another article will focus on our site authorization, but this article is going to have a strong emphasis on how to make your site easy to crawl for the search engine spiders.

Site Layout Optimization

In general shouldn’t use tables, frames or also very hard on a search engine spider. Your website layout should be simple, not complicated, and the actual content should be enclosed in the

tag, that way the search engines know where to call the actual content of your website.

As a rule of some tables and frames should not be used, this confuses the search engine spiders and will hurt your overall search engine rankings. Tables are not very flexible they are also very hard to navigate around if you’re a search engine spider or Google bot.

Everything starts with the title the title should be descriptive, and for the most part should not contain over 40% of the key terms at your current target. There should be some filler there, did you geographically specific but some cities there that you want to target for the most part you don’t want more than 25-45 words on your title. The second most important tag on your website is the H1 tag this is one of the most important tags on your content this is basically a header, similar to the beginning of a chapter title, it is very important that you have your key term should be somewhere on the H1 as well, it is common knowledge that this is the third or fourth heaviest weighing factor in on-site optimization. They don’t want to be too spamming if you’re targeting one key term you want the H1 tag to be on every other,use common sense. Search engine optimization specialists know that SEO is a mix of art and science, any common sense really doesn’t hurt either.

Your content, first and foremost, should be useful, content should not be spam-my  content it’s important not to focus too much on your key terms but focus on what you think is going to get you natural links. Content is king, and with great content commerce traffic, so as they say if you build it they will come.

Meta Tags

As of late, there has been a lot of talk about the lack of importance of good meta-tag authorization. I know for a fact that meta-tags are still very important and a used part of search engine optimization, if you’re looking for truly affordable search engine optimization focus on your meta-tags. Meta-key terms, meta-descriptions and other meta data is very important for the most part a good rule of him is if you’re targeting a key term that is going to be very profitable and you know has high search volume make that the first word of your meta-keyword, and meta-description. Make sure that everything between the HTML tag and the body tag has adequate information to properly describe your business. You don’t know, the meta-description, is the text that shows up below the link on the search engine result page. So after the key term you want to focus on, maybe put your phone number on there as well, or describe your business, a short little blurb your elevator pitch for the search engines.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is very important in the future of your visibility on line. Let’s say you have a website, that is already ranking. You’ve noticed that on certain key terms some of your internal pages are ranking, and some of them are not. Some webmasters like to use the footer links, to spread the “link juice” around. That is a practice that is debatable, I’ve seen some websites that use footer links for internal linking and have not yielded good results, I think that if you’re going to link internally, tried to make it look naturally through the body of your text.

For example if your Realtor in Chicago and you have a page that ranks for Evanston real estate make sure that you add to your current rankings by linking Chicago real estate across your website to the Evanston real estate page that ranks. Sound confusing? Yeah, it kind of is, that’s why my position as a SEO consultant exists, internal linking is a complex and higher-level search engine optimization strategy. But if you’re a small business, and you’re looking for a workable search engine optimization, you should do a little diligence, a little research and find out how internal linking is going to help your rankings and your overall visibility on the web.

Site Map Creation

There has been a lot of emphasis on the XML site map submission to Google. This was important but its importance has been thrown water at as of late. Especially if your site is not completely ready to be submitted to Google you should submit the site, but it is a good general webmaster practice to have a site map available on your website. This is good for navigation, and it’s going to make it easier for your users to navigate through your website, your top-level menu only allows five or six links to your main pages, but there could be some internal pages that are accessible through your top-level menu unless you have a drop down box.

To create a site map is a very simple, to create a XML site map is even more simpler dual research you’ll find out that it’s not hard at all and it may be worth your time if you have fully developed website ready to be launched also possible that she submit your XML site map to Google. Google spider will thank you, and it’s going to make your website easier to find and could possibly get it ranked faster.

Free is the new affordable SEO

Anyone admits that there’s nothing better than free, free offers free massages, etc. etc. you can’t beat it so if you can get away with it, it is too hard for the your website breakthrough in your industry and market, then why not, DIY SEO may be the way to go. It gets a little too rough out there and you’re finding that your website isn’t ranking, give your local affordable small business SEO consultant a phone call as soon as possible.

Do your research on these SEO consultants a lot of them are snake oil salesmen don’t know what they’re doing, they’re going get the agreement from you and pass it off to some guy in India who could care less if your campaign is profitable or not, make sure you’re comfortable with your consult. For the most part there is more SEO consultants then there are experts so make sure you siphon out the bad guys and find the true talent.

Ben Joven is an affordable small business SEO consultant out of San Diego, CA. Give him a buzz w/ any questions @ 619 446 7883.