Off-Page Optimisation A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO If you have followed the last few chapters of this guide you should now have a better idea of how to develop and format content for your website. This formatting of your content is known as on-page optimisation. However, for web pages to rank well on Google and other engines, you need to build trust and popularity. To do this you need to employ a variety of off-page optimisation techniques (so called because the optimisation work does not involve directly editing the HTML or content of your web pages). Off-page optimisation aims to...
Read MoreMETA Titles & Descriptions A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO Research carried out by SEOmoz indicates that the majority of SEO professionals still consider the use of key-phrases in META title tags to be the most important on-page element for optimising your content. Following on from Chapter Sixteen: Content Generation & Formatting, this chapter of my small business SEO guide looks at best practice techniques for optimising your META titles and descriptions. To go back to the start of this guide you can read my introduction. META Title Optimisation In the last chapter I discussed the importance of using your key-phrase...
Read MoreContent Generation & Formatting A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO As mentioned in previous chapters of this guide, content development is one of the key cornerstones to successful search engine optimisation. However, filling your brand new website with endless pages of poorly written content or, worse still, content copied directly from other websites, will not help you to secure link popularity with web users or trust with the search engines. Following on from Part Fifteen: On-page Optimisation Overview, this chapter of my step-by-step guide to small business SEO looks specifically at the on-page topic of generating & formatting content for your...
Read MoreOn-Page Optimisation Overview A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO In the last chapter to this guide I referenced the importance of ensuring that unique META title tags are written for each individual web page on your site before it launches. Adding META titles is one element of what’s commonly referred to as “on-page optimisation”. On-page optimisation is essentially the process of tweaking HTML mark-up and page content in order to increase the potential for higher search rankings. This is in contrast to “off-page” optimisation techniques such as link-bait promotion. On-page optimisation should be given considerable focus by small business website owners...
Read MoreLaunching New Websites A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO So far my SEO guide has covered all of the steps that small businesses need to take before a website goes live. The fact this is now the fourteenth chapter gives some indication of the importance and precedence that should be given to SEO planning and preparation. I hope that, so far, I have shown how small business SEO strategies can be reasonably cost-effective to implement; dependant, of course, on how much of the process you choose to develop in-house and how much you outsource to an agency or consultant. Launching new...
Read MoreSitemaps A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO Small business websites and internet start-ups need to consider content development as part of their SEO strategy. Crucially, you need to ensure that your site content can be crawled and indexed efficiently. One method to assist with this is to make use of a sitemap. This section of my guide looks at sitemaps for SEO; considering the reasons why you should implement one before your website launches. This article follows on from Part Twelve: Web Analytics. To go back to the start of my guide click here. Generating Sitemaps You can generate a sitemap using a...
Read MoreWeb Analytics and SEO A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO One of the final tasks that small business owners need to complete before launching a new company website or e-commerce business is to ensure that an adequate web analytics solution is set-up. So, in this stage of my guide, I will look at the analytics options available, the tasks to set when monitoring website activity and ways to use web analytics data to improve your performance in the search engines. This article follows on from Part Eleven: Competitor Benchmarking. To go back to the start of my guide click here. Web Analytics...
Read MoreCompetitor Benchmarking A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO So far all of the stages in this guide have covered the various processes that need to be given consideration before a new internet start-up business launches. One of the final most important things you need to do before you brief a web designer or begin the process of building your website is competitor benchmarking (carrying out analysis on your major competitors). This is another important process that will help you to define your key-phrase integration strategy as discussed in Part Five: Web Design and SEO and in Part Nine: Key-phrase Research. This...
Read MoreTargeting Local Search A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO Increasing numbers of people are using local search terms to find products, information or services online. Targeting local search is therefore an ideal starting strategy for many small to medium size businesses that are looking to increase their website visibility. So, for part ten of my guide to small business SEO, I will offer some advice on how to target local search more effectively. This article follows on from Part Nine: Key-phrase Research. To go back to the start of my guide click here. Setting up for Local Search In Part Nine of this...
Read MoreKey-phrase Research A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO So far this guide has covered many of the planning stages that ought to be considered before a new website business is launched. The advice offered up to this point is most relevant to internet start-ups or small businesses looking to venture onto the web for the first time. One of the most crucial SEO planning stages is key-phrase research. Key-phrase research should be conducted before you brief a web design agency and, as mentioned in Part Six: Site Architecture, it should be integrated into the brief for the technical set-up of your...
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