SEO For Small Local Businesses

Posted by Norm on February 24, 2009

Everyone wants their web site to be at the top of Google’s first search results page.  Being on the first page gives you a great deal of visibility, and a lot of visitors.  Everyone can not be number one, but small businesses who target a geographically local client base can do very well in the search engines.

SEO (search engine optimization) actually is just one step in helping Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL find and rank your web site search results position.  Your web designer has to adhere to basic search engine friendly techniques as a starting point.  But getting closer to the top of the search pages can be a very time consuming effort. Starting with the basics is important.

There are many items that Google and the other search engines look at when determining how to rank a web site.  The actual formula they use is a well guarded secret, and to make matters difficult the formula is changed and tweaked often.

Many web surfers never take notice to the web site title.  The title I’m referring to is coded into the web site header and is not visible on the browser screen.  But it is visible on the upper left corner of the browser window.

The example above is for Red Eye’s Dock Bar and is a good example of a local business web site title. It includes the name of the business and the geographic location.  Red Eye’s is a local business.  It really doesn’t matter if someone in New Orleans finds the web site when searching for “dock bar”.  The target market is in the Maryland area.

Another area of consideration is the web site description.  This is another item that is coded into the site header and is non-visible.  Google claims the description has no bearing on page ranking. That may be so, but a user may consider it to determine whether they want to visit the website

In the example above you’ll notice that the title I discussed previously is used in Google’s listing.  The description under the title is the one coded into the web site header.

I have viewed many web sites that have no title or description.  Or worse, the title says “home”, designating it as the web site home page, and the description is stuffed with key words that are not assembled as a sentence.  Google doesn’t like this and may even punish the site by banning it from their database!

These two simple items are important, as well as another couple of dozen “search engine friendly” techniques that I’ll present in the future.