SEO can be overwhelming for a Small Business Owner

If you own and run a small business, then you know how time consuming handling every aspect of your business can be.

I'm sure you've heard business gurus tell you that a website is very important to your company. Unfortunately it's up to you to figure out how to make the website bring you business. That's where Search Engine Optimization is imporant.

You want your website to get found by potential customers. Here are few tips on how you can get your website found online.

1. Keyword Research. Small business owners tend to think only about their business from their point of view. Get out of yourself. Pretend you are the potential customer sitting down at the computer to research something. What would that person type into Google in order to find you? Type those words in to Google and see who comes up. Ahhh... so they found your competitors. Hummmm.... now what?

2. Page Title and H1 Header. Go to your website and see what appears in the very top left of the screen. This is your page title. If it says the name of your business, you need to change it. The page title and H1 Header is what Google uses to rank websites. These should be keyword specific. On to getting found....

3. Directories. When you typed in your keywords to Google, did any websites come up that listed all your competitors together? These are directories. Start investigating the ones appearing on page 1 to see how you can get your business listed on them. Yellowpages.com and Introlinks.com are examples of directories.

4. Linking. On-page and Off-page link building shows Google that your site has "authority" when it comes to the type of business you are in. On-page SEO is the page title and headers but the links within the content also are weighted with Google as long as they have your keywords. Off-page linking would be writing blog articles with a link back to your site using a keyword. It's also getting listed in directories. Do you have any vendors that you can get an inbound link from?

Remember, your website is a billboard in the middle of nowhere.

Getting found is step 1. Converting them to a lead is step 2.