Search Engine Optimization-SEO Best Practices

Let’s find out the benefits of linking from the searcher’s and Webmaster’s perspective.

You are searching for some information, say you wish to gift someone a bottle of wine and you wish to get information on brands, and popular wines. You go on to a search engine and type in the keyword. You scroll down the list of sites that comes up when you search with that keyword. You click on the most relevant site, perhaps you like the title, or the description describes exactly what you want…

When you arrive at the site, you find that the web site basically has a few lines of information on wines and there are a whole lot of links from each of the pages. Would you like to explore further?

I would much rather go to a Wikipedia for my informational requirements or, to a really good portal on wines. Links are good, link farms are not. Think about it; if you need information, would you not rather go to a web site that is well established or authoritative? As a searcher who needs quality information, I would rather get it from a web site that gives me the information minus the other distractions. Having said that, if I find that there is a suggestion of another site on the relevant topic I may be inclined to click on it. But when too many links and ads pop up from everywhere, I would click my way out.

For webmasters, if you need to link, link to good quality, and relevant sites that will really-really be of benefit to your visitors. This is where you will provide benefit to your visitors and not when you have 100s of links from your site which are not even relevant. The game is changing and search engines are getting smarter. You will find that sites like the one I described above are fast disappearing from the search engines. I won’t say that they are completely gone, but the search engines are getting good at weeding out the low quality sites that only exist because of link farming. You need links; but not just any link will do. Obtaining links that are relevant to your site’s visitors are important. Keep adding unique content and promote your website.

The fact remains that the web site’s exit to, by, and for visitors.

You may find my earlier article “linking for users” useful.

The SEO basics for small businesses are just the same for any global business, barring a few focused changes. The below-mentioned SEO best practices can help small business owners attract visitors to their websites: -

1. SEO for Web page title optimization; you can check out this post that I wrote specifically for SEO title optimization. When optimizing a business that has a local presence, it might be a good idea to mention the name of the place that the business caters to.

2. SEO for Description Meta tag title; you can check out this post that I wrote specifically for the SEO description meta tag optimization. Since description allows 2-3 lines of descriptive text, make sure you define your business, the market it caters to etc. Any unique items etc, your USP should get clearly defined here.

3. You can check out my post on SEO tips for an overall optimization effort.

4. You can consider submitting your website to directories, especially local directories. Here is another post that I wrote on search directory submission that might help.

5. Submitting your website details like postal address phone number, URL to Google and Yahoo local will certainly ensure that your site will show up on searching.

6. Get linked: You can check out my earlier post on “Linking for users”. This will help you get an idea of who to link with.

7. Find out who your competitors link to and who links to them. This will help you zero in on a list of potential websites who might want to link to your website.

8. Search for websites that are very popular local destinations; it might be a good idea to write to them requesting them to add your business to their website; it might be of value to their target audience.

9. Register with Google Web analytics, it will give you a lot of valuable data. You can optimize your web site even more once you have an idea about the visitors.

10. You could try out Google AdWords for a short time, just experiment, if it does not work out, you can turn it off. Just keep your budget moderate so that you do not end up spending a whole lot of dollars without any returns. AdWords helps if you want to reach your audience instantly and you have offers that have special discounts, seasonal discounts etc.

This is not an exhaustive list, but this will certainly get you started. This list of SEO optimization is affordable for Small business owners. One suggetion would be to keep looking for ways by which they can have coverage through all the local directories, blogs, portals etc. Practicing local business SEO is key, and will most definitely help your SEO efforts.

 Having useful links on your website helps making it user friendly

How often have you wondered if the link strategy that you are using is actually working for your site?

You develop your site so that visitors come to your site and find what they are looking for. Your aim in creating the site is to provide the visitors what they really want so that they end up doing what you want i.e. buy our products, subscribe to newsletters, fill a form etc.
But are you truly catering to their needs?

For instance if you are giving your visitors details about your products/services and explaining to them the advantages of using the products and services that you offer, it would be really a bonus if you could refer them to a few sites that would help them get more information.

While selecting these links, be careful not to link to sites that are your competitors. links should be of related or allied products/services. They should work as a reference.

Here are a few pointers for selecting links -

1) Search for products/services that are related to your site. For example, if you are a manufacturer of furnitures made out of teak wood, you could perhaps link to sites providing information on teak wood.

2) In continuation with the above example, search for sites that offer services like carrying or transporting furniture (you could even get area specific if you are catering to a specific area). You could search for paint companies specializing in paints for wooden furniture.

3) Get some of your satisfied customers to mention a few lines about your products and services in their sites in exchange of a link from your site.

These are a few examples. If you can follow this in your link building strategy, it would really help your visitors and help you in return.

Keep adding links and make the site so useful that the visitors have no choice but to bookmark it!