Newspaper: 60 SEO Tips For Business Owners

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60 SEO Tips For Business Owners

SEO results aren?t instant. The results of SEO work done today might not become apparent, and might not be credited by search engines, for weeks, or even months.
You don?t need to submit your website to search engines. They have evolved beyond the point of needing to be directly notified when a new website, or page on a website, is created.
Set-up a Google+ page for your business. Doing so builds trust with Google and improves rankings for localised keywords.
Diversify your traffic sources. Google is a great source of traffic but being 100% reliant on them for visitors puts you in a vulnerable position.
Low quality equals high risk. Low quality backlinks and/or low quality on-site content can easily result in your site being penalised by search engines.
Create content primarily for people, not search engines. There?s no point creating content that ranks well if it doesn?t help people, interest them, or persuade them to buy from you.
Remove duplicate content. You can be penalised for having the same, or very similar, content on multiple pages of your site.
Remove, merge or add to pages with little content on them. Having lots of content-light pages, with short page view times, can result in search engines downgrading all of your site?s keyword rankings.
Claim authorship of your content. Linking your Google+ account to your content improves both rankings and click-through-rate.
Ensure your content is good enough to be on the 1st page. If your content isn?t better than the content already on the 1st page for a keyword then your site doesn?t deserve to rank there.
Make your content engaging for visitors. The more engaging it is, the longer people will stay on your site, and high viewing times signal to search engines that your site deserves good rankings.
Create content to post on other websites and blogs. People are much more likely to link to you if you provide them with content to use on their site.
Balance creating content with marketing content. If you create content without marketing it then people will struggle to find it, and if they can?t find it they can?t link to it or share it.
Write a unique, descriptive title for every page. Within 65 characters you need to make the topic of a page clear to both humans and search engines.
Write a unique, descriptive meta description for every page. Within 160 characters you need to describe the topic of a page in a way that persuades people to click on your site instead of the other sites listed in the search results.
Research keywords before optimising for them. If you choose the wrong keywords, regardless of what you do for on-site and off-site SEO, you?ll get very few visitors and/or visitors who don?t convert into sales.
Use Google?s Keyword Tool. It provides a good list of words and phrases related to the keyword ideas that you enter into it.
Get keyword ideas from other people. They (customers, suppliers, partners, friends, etc.) see your business differently to you and may associate different words and phrases with it.
Long-tail keywords are a great source of traffic. It?s quicker and cheaper to rank for longer, specific keyword phrases, and more than 40% of searches are comprised of four or more words.
Dedicate 1 page of your website to each keyword that you?re targeting. Doing so makes it simpler for search engines to categorise and rank your pages.
Add keywords in the right places. They?re less important than they used to be, but you should still include them in urls, page titles, meta descriptions, header tags and image alt tags.
Avoid keyword stuffing. You?re much more likely to be penalised than credited if you use a keyword phrase repeatedly on a page.
Backlinks affect rankings more than anything else. The number and quality of links pointing to your site will largely determine in what position your site ranks.
Don?t set backlink targets. Link building should be a steady, consistent, on-going process, that doesn?t stop when you reach a certain number.
Get backlinks from relevant sources. Search engines want to display relevant results for each keyword, and links from relevant pages/sites, are a strong signal to them that your site is relevant.
Be prepared to work for backlinks. Generally, the more easily you can acquire a link, the less value it will likely have.
Don?t pay people to link to your website. Not only is it risky, but it?s unnecessary too, as if you have good content and build good relationships then people will link to you for free.
Diversify your backlink profile. Get different types of links from a wide range of IP addresses.
Build backlinks to every page of your website that you want to rank. Get people to link to the inner-pages of your site ? the ones you want to rank for specific keywords ? as well as to the homepage.
Existing relationships are an instant source of backlinks. Most of your suppliers, partners and customers will link to your site if you ask them to do so.
Get the good backlinks that your competition already has. If someone has already linked to one your competitors then there?s a reasonable chance that they?ll link to you also if you give them a good reason to.
Get some backlinks with your target keywords as the link text. This type of link is important, but should make up less than 25% of your backlink profile.
A good percentage of your backlinks should be branded. A backlink profile without lots of branded links (like ?Company Name? and ?www.companyname.co.uk') signals to search engines that you?ve been using manipulative link building tactics.
Sign up for Ahrefs, Majestic SEO or Open Site Explorer. Doing so gives you access to extensive backlink data for your site and also your competitors? sites.
Every page of your website should be linked to from at least one other page. Search engines don?t include pages in their results that aren?t linked to either internally (from another page of the same site) or externally (from another site).
Have direct links from your homepage to your most important pages. Doing so passes authority from the homepage to your important pages and improves the rankings of those pages.
Add in-content links to other relevant pages on your website. Whilst not as valuable as external links, internal links do still pass authority and signal to search engines what pages to rank for which keywords.
Link out to relevant websites and blogs. People generally notice if you link to them, and if you link to them, there?s a reasonable chance that they?ll link back to you if you have good site.
Interact with bloggers in your industry. The better people with relevant blogs know you (through social sites, forums, email, etc.) the more likely they?ll be to link to your site and to share your content.
Contact businesses with relevant websites. A good relationship, in which you help promote each others? sites, makes SEO simpler and cheaper for you and for them.
Write press releases to share news and opinions. This is a good way to get content on, and links from, sites outside of your industry and circle of connections.
Phone people to develop online relationships. Emails can easily be ignored or forgotten, but phone calls not so much.
Use your website to build trust and relationships. The more relationships you have, and the more people trust you, the more people will talk about you, link to you, and, ultimately, buy from you.
Add your address and phone number to every page of your website. This builds trust and improves rankings if you?re targeting keyword phrases that contain your town/city name.
Get listed in industry and local directories. Most directories are worthless, however, there should be at least 10 that are relevant to your area or industry.
Ask customers to leave reviews on Google+ and local directories. Positive reviews improve your rankings in Google?s local listings and can be accessed directly from the search results.
Add social sharing buttons to your website. The easier you make it for people to share your content, the more likely they will be to do so.
Social media isn?t a replacement for SEO. Your social strategy should be part of, or should run alongside, your SEO strategy.
Search engines ranks webpages, not websites. Whether or not a page ranks for a particular keyword depends largely on the quality of that individual page, and not the quality of your site as a whole.
Know where you?re ranking. Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to ?Traffic? and then ?Search Queries? to check where your site is ranking for keywords.
Aim to be in the top 3, not just the top 10. If your site isn?t ranked in the top 3 positions for a keyword then you?ll only get a small percentage (less than 10%) of the traffic from searches for that keyword.
Rankings can be misleading. The number of 1st page rankings you have is irrelevant if those rankings don?t convert to visitor numbers and, ultimately, sales.
Don?t worry about PageRank. Sites with a low PR can, and often do, outrank sites with a high PR.
Choose between using www or not using www. Ensure that your site is set to load at either www.domainname.co.uk or domainname.co.uk ? not both.
Adopt a flat website architecture. Any page of your site should be accessible within 3 clicks from your homepage.
Use a simple, clear URL structure. People should be able to guess the topic of a page by looking only at its URL.
Use header tags. Include variations of your target keyword phrases in a page?s H1 and H2 tags.
Optimise your images. Include a page?s target keyword phrase, or variations of it, in the file names and img alt tags of the images on that page.
Optimise your website for mobile users. Your site needs to be clear and simple to use for people accessing it using smartphones and tablets.
Maximise your website?s loading speed. Use Google?s site speed tool and implement the recommendations that they give you.

Last edited by Mark Walters; Today at 11:34.

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or low quality on-site content can easily result in your site being penalised by search engines.

Only with minimal content sites, that are putting 10 pages up to game the engines.

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People are much more likely to link to you if you provide them with content to use on their site.

Common method claimed by the desperate I'm afraid. Its a wonder many bother with it, as you're better off creating content for your own site.

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Generally, the more easily you can acquire a link, the less value it will likely have

Applies to those who can't be bothered to check out sites in-depth. But usually, translates into the link chaser/seeker doesn't own a site worthy to warrant any link trades.

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Don?t pay people to link to your website. Not only is it risky

Every site is a lead-generation model that either takes commissions or sells direct advertising. So it can't be that risky if the world is doing exactly that.

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there?s a reasonable chance that they?ll link to you

I dont think you can count on that these days, with many scrapping their link pages. Its only the resources that get away with link exchanges now, and even now I'd suggest its a v-limited activity, mainly as so many opt for direct advertising.

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Most directories are worthless, however, there should be at least 10 that are relevant to your area or industry.

How do you know their stats and traffic again?

The total amount of portals sites on the web runs in the thousands, BUT, they all want money ???? Forget pipe dreams about free links on those boys - I'd imagine they'd like to see any beggers and spammers eat dirt, and are happy to aid in that process by increasing their fees. Still, I guess it keeps the forums busy with all the talk.