Being up to date on marketing your business online is essential to your success. There are different methods to use such as social media, pay per click, linkedin and many others. This post is about the basics of SEO and how it can help business owners
Whenever I do workshops on marketing one of the top questions I get asked is “how do I get to the top page of Google!”. This can be very complicated task since it takes time and effort to accomplish. If you have a marketing budget you can hire a SEO specialist to do this for you. The good thing about online marketing is are many strategies that can be done for free if you have the time. Here are three key tips that will help you understand SEO better.
1. Keywords
You need to make sure you know the main keywords associated with searching for your type of business. I would suggests choosing 3-5 keywords that can relate well with your business. Here are examples of keywords that a restaurant owner in Austin could use.
Some of your keywords can include
-
“Austin steakhouse”
-
“Austin dinner restaurant”
-
“Dining in Austin”
Once these keywords are chosen you can then start using them more often when you are writing about your business in a blog or product descriptions. This technique will help Google determine the purpose of your site.
Below is a tool to help you choose the top searched keywords
2. Title Tags
Title Tags are one of the top things the Google looks at when they want to rank your site. As you can see in the image below the highlighted words are called the “Title Tag”. It is very important that you put keywords here so you can rank. One key is to
put the most important keywords first. As you can see ” Houston Wine Bar” is the first keyword followed by Gastropub and the others. This can also be called Page Titles. Contact your web master to implement this if you do not know how yourself.
3. Description Tags
Description tags are another place to place your keywords you choose. The description tag is where potential visitors can find out what your site is about before they visit. Below is an example of using keyword phrases within descriptions. This photographer was sure to list more than one phrase in her description.
3. Links
Linking your website is also important. This means that you should to post your website url link on other notable websites. This lets Google know that your site is being shared with others. It also helps more visitors come to your website. For example putting your link on sites like yellowpages or Superpages will help you site tremendously. Most of the time it is free to post your link on these directory sites which yield good traffic.
-Chris N. West