A small introduction and the horror-story

On my first job I encountered an interesting situation. The local company had its own SEO who was modifying and adding content to the website almost daily. But despite all this, we had no traffic. No one was interested in our website, not the least bit. It went on for months without any improvement, until we were told to start an e-mail campaign. And there it was. Traffic on our site blew up! Everyone was celebrating, we were up 200%!
And then we got the news from our SEO guy: the huge traffic was due to hundreds of unsubscribes. Removing that from the equation, we were doing as poorly as ever.

But what does SEO mean?

The first time I ever came in contact with the term I didn’t really know what to make of it. My then-boyfriend tried to explain it to me, but I was clueless. After hours of trying to make me understand, his final statement was: “it’s like when you invite someone over, you put a plate full of cookies on the table in front of them and you turn your back on them, because you know they are going to taste those cookies anyway. And if the cookies are good, they are going to tell everyone about your cookies and everyone will want some”.

And it’s like that with websites too. You make them “sweet” and inviting, so people will take a minute longer looking through them. That’s one part of the job. The important and actually hard part is making your website appear on the first page and, if possible, in the first position on a search engine. This is the SEO – search engine optimization – part.

Turning the horror-show into a success

Remember the SEO I was talking about? Poor guy was replaced; the new SEO got creative and completely redesigned our website. Now it’s catchy, colorful, has an interesting layout and content. Traffic really picked up, and we’re doing really good and proud!

So success is really possible! But how to achieve it?

First of all, the market you aim to establish yourself in is very important. In a highly competitive market the battle will be almost impossible to win unless you have unlimited funds and a hot-shot Washington, DC SEO. For a Small Business SEO it is crucial to follow a few rules in order to make the first page in the search engine.
All it requires is one or more creative people and some time. First and most important thing is to perfectly know what the website that you’re advertising is all about, because search engines run with key words. They employ “spiders” to find all the websites that contain keywords matching the words someone types into the search bar. If the match is perfect, it will be displayed first on the page. And it is very important that a Local Business SEO’s website’s keywords match the requirements to the last letter, because a potential customer is more inclined to open a page that contains the exact words he just typed than opening a page that only partially matches his search. For example: you are a professional photographer and you do all kinds of events: weddings, banquets, baptisms, engagements, parties, private sessions in- and outdoors, landscapes, animals, etc. For more publicity and easier access to samples of your work and contact info, you make a website. But if you only mention the word “photographer” as your keyword, you will not appear on the first page in a search engine for someone that searches for a party photographer. Also, another important thing is to constantly update your webpage, so you make sure that those spiders don’t overlook your page when searching for something.

So just keep these instructions in mind, make sure you or your SEO team are creative and really focus on what people might want and expect from your company and remember not to only focus on small keywords, but also long tail keywords such as seo washington dc or virginia seo company. Those guys succeeded from failure – check out this little inspirational video on succeeding as a small business owner.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CE8QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSearch_engine_optimization&ei=6aTWU7yMCJLnsASs5YLwBA&usg=AFQjCNHfIpCo_Ap336oSDlmNqh1STSriIg&sig2=ZGoqjfS12NhbHR6cOCwauA&bvm=bv.71778758,d.cWc

Having a small business is always a challenge and to enhance its reputation, the most useful and effective method you can do is to place its brand in search engine results. It is easy and really simple to reign and control your search results with content and coverage you have affected. According to my experience, there are countless tips that can help boosting the visibility of search results.

Optimise properly the information

First of all, it is recommended to correctly optimise information on your business website, because it is the most preferable and valuable online fortune that makes it possible for search results to be highlighted among the bunch of items. It is also indispensable to set up a domain name that refers to the type of business and its location. Using keywords and sub-keywords in the titles is preferable to identify your business. It can be also useful to include your business’ name, address and other necessary information on each individual page of your website. Adding details of your local area can improve the visibility of search results as well.

Update your business listings on your website

Secondly, it is advisable to update your business listings on your website that can ensure to boost your local search results. Involving a third-party source is always beneficial. If you give sufficient information of your business that should be precise, accurate and complete, then there is no risk of reducing your business’ location in search results. For example, if your business has numerous placements, set up isolated listings for each location on your website to enhance the visibility of both your brand and each of your stores.

Cover a proper link strategy

It is important that links from your website play a key role in SEO visibility, because they support to set up the authenticity and trustworthiness of your business. Unrelated links will impair visibility. It is good if you share links regularly to your website via your Facebook or other social media channels. Thus, you can pay others attention to transfer the information as well. Sponsoring local events, giving discounts and encouraging charity organisations to link to your website can also help. A great example of this is a small site about vegetarian recipes called “munspage”, supporting a good cause and also spreading the message.

Urge and reply to online visitor reviews

Visitor reviews can also help to set up your business’ visibility in search results and giving a reply to them, whether it is negative or positive can evoke the success of your small business. We highly encourage to engage in conversations on Yelp and Google Reviews, as well as Angie’s List. For more information on how to engage with your customer’s online contact our favorite Washington DC SEO consultant.

A few words on the work of a Small Business SEO

Being a SEO can be a wonderful and satisfying job when the company you work for has a great website with over-the-top traffic. Of course, this – like in any other job – requires hard work and a certain set of skills. One might even say that a SEO could be called a people-pleaser. It is their job to make the website attractive, with proper content and layout. For this you have to know exactly what the company – or individuals, for that matter – has to offer and exactly the groups of people targeted. You have to know for example that if your website appears in the Google search engine, the targeted group of people will be teenagers and adults in their twenties to mid-thirties. Yahoo! on the other hand targets another group of people: people in their forties and the elderly. Considering this – and a good SEO would – you have to modify the keywords so that they will match what each age-group might type in the search bar.

But how does a search engine work? They use so-called spiders that “crawl” the web and browseall the websites in order to identify the actual copy of what someone typed into a search engine.

How to be a good SEO

Creativity and people skills are probably the most important things that a good SEO must possess. Why creativity? Well first of all you have to come up with something new for the website. No one wants to see the same website over and over again for every photographer, jewelry maker, constructor, etc. If you want your website to attract people and stay on top, it has to be catchy, with proper content, a great layout and most of all offer everything a potential customer might be interested in. You would also need people skills. Because in order for the website to actually appear at least on the first page in the search engine, you have to come up with keywords for everything that the company or the individual has to offer, but in the manner in which certain groups of people might search for. I would give a few examples from experience: say you work for 2-3 guys that are in the construction business, but they cover everything, including buying all the materials needed, transporting them, and then in the end even taking all the debris away. If you only include “construction worker” as the keyword, the website won’t show in someone’s search enginewho maybe only needs transporting materials or the debris away. It’s true, this part doesn’t include actual construction, but it would still bring money.

In the end, the most important rules to follow are: keep the website neat, but catchy. Try to figure out how different types of people think and what they might search for (language type, order of words). Constantly update the website, because that determines the rate at which those little spiders crawl your website. You just need to update a picture from time to time, maybe add a new page with new content.

Remember these steps when you work on bringing a website to the first page and whoever you work for will be most pleased!