SEO for small business: Top Tips for Using Keyword Strategy
TOP TIPS FOR USING KEYWORD STRATEGY
by Thomas R. Reich
SEO for Small Business? Blogs, Directory Listings, Social Media, Link building, the list goes on and on. How does any of this make your small business Blog and Web Site better? What does a Keyword and a Search Engine have to do with the creative substance of the article and the message your business wants to get across?
The answer is simple: nothing and everything! SEO for Small Business – Keyword Strategy or Search Engine Optimization and the use of Keywords, H1 tags and URLs have little or nothing to do with your creative content. However, they are all part of the process and when the article is published in a blog and as part of your website on the broader blogosphere and a potential customer is looking for that information through a search engine, that article, your blog and your web site will never be found without the proficient use of SEO for Business – Keyword Strategy (search Engine Optimization), H1 tags, URLs and the rest of the package so often over looked by small businesses.
To play in today’s Web Arena, you need to learn the tricks and follow the rules. On one hand, your business can now publish an article and haveitviewed by millions of people without ever being “Published” in the traditional sense. In the old days, you would need to make the kind of news that interested business journals or industry rags. To do this you would have to smooze the writers, perhaps hire a Public Relations Agent familiar with your target market, maybe place adds in the target publication and hope the article would be “spun” positively in the direction of the message you were trying to convey. Even if all went as planned, even if the article was a great big add for your key product, even if your company name appeared over and over, the readership or “Unique Impressions” may have only been 80,000 and of that, how many unique readers of that publication actually read your specific article? How many would even know that that article withjust the information the potential customer needed to know, was there?
Today the rules have changed, but the game is the essentially the same! An innovative company must get an article featuring a unique product or service read by as many “Unique Impressions”, who are actually looking for that product or service, as possible. However, today the Public Relations agent and the hard copy publication salesman is replaced with Search Engines and SEO for
Business – Keyword Strategy! If Keywords are used correctly and SEO for Business – Keyword Strategy, Search Engine Optimization, is maximized, that same article can be picked up by thousands of unique on line blogs and publications allowing it to be exposed to millions of “unique Impressions”. It takes work, expertise and investment to do this correctly, but like I said “the rules have changed, but the game is the same”. We are going to deal with Keywords in part one of this series on SEO. You, as a company must ask “Who is this company?”, “What what does the
company really do?” What unique service does this company provide?” SEO for Small Business – Keyword Strategy or Search Engine Optimization revolves around Keywords and Key phrases. Decide who you are as a business and what your target market is. Who is your target audience and what “Keywords” will “Find” that audience. In future articles we will deal with Keyword Placement, SEO for Business – Keyword Strategy and URL utilization to maximize search engine results. In the final segment we will reveal super secret tricks to take what you’ve learned and truly maximize your exposure!
Finding the ideal Keywords is a process, one your company must master! Let’s have some fun with a Keyword list. First open a Word Document and record every word or phrase that you think fully explains your business, the services or products you provide and that
special element that makes you “Unique”. Keyword = A word or phrase that pinpoints what you are uniquely about. Additional Keywords = a word or phrase that targets your industry or
market segment. Here comes one of those tricks I promised! Go to Google while visiting the Internet through Internet Explorer. Search for your key competitors within the industry you operate (Local, National and International). Go to the home page of one of the web sites of a respected and top rated competitor. On the right side or “Ribbon” of that Web Site Home Page, Right Click your mouse, a menu will appear, highlight and then Left Click on “VIEW SOURCE” about half way down on the pop up menu. You will bring up a new page, you are looking at the actual HTML code of you competitors Web Site, don’t worry it is OK!
Look for Part 2 to find out what you can do to Maximize your SEO for Small Business.
