Basic Search Engine Optimization for Home Business

When you put your home business up on the Web, the only thing that will do you any good is traffic. So do I have a deal for you! $10 gets you 100,000 "targeted" vis... wait a minute, that's not right. There has to be a better way.

A much more effective way to get traffic to your website is to be found in the search engines. And the way to get found in the search engines is search engine optimization.

Now, depending on the kind of business you are in, this may be an easy or difficult process. Either way, it is an ongoing process, not one that you do once and walk away from. Algorhythms change, competitors come and go, and you have no direct control over it. So you need to do what you can.

The first thing you need to do is decide what you are going to optimize for. Search engine optimization relies not only on on-page factors, but on what happens off your website as well.

On page factors are the easiest for you to control. Go to WordTracker and type in what you think people will use to find your website on the search engines. Go through the free trial to get ideas. If you get serious, then is the time to pay for the full version, which is available for a day, week, month or year and is very reasonable.

Find the keywords that have both a good number of searches and relatively little competition. These will probably be good keyword phrases for you. For the most part, they will be phrases, as few serious shoppers type in only one word.

You want to find a way to use these phrases naturally throughout your text. Whenever reasonable, use them as the text of links, in Header tags, bold font, but keep it natural. Remember, not only do you want the search engines to love you, you want customers to buy. If they don't like how your page looks or reads, they won't buy from you.

Current theories indicate you are best off using your best keyword phrase in your page title (this should vary by page!), in a H1 tag, in links around your website, and a couple of times in your page copy. Take a VERY short time to write your meta tags. Yahoo currently uses them, but Google does not, and the general consensus is that they cannot be weighted very heavily.

In the most general sense, that takes care of on page optimization. Yes, it must be done for every single page.

But most agree that off page optimization matters too. This refers to getting links from other websites. There are theories (all search engine optimization is theory) that non-reciprocal links are weighted more heavily than reciprocated links, but this is very hard to prove.

Natural links are the best, if only because they tend to happen when you least expect it. Someone sees your website, likes the content, and links to it. You don't have any control over what the anchor text (words used in the link itself) is, but it could be very relevant.

Writing articles is a great way of getting non-reciprocated links. Write about something relevant to your customers and have your link in your resource box at the end.

Link exchanges are a good, quick way of getting links. Try websites such as Link Partners for link exchanges to get a quick start, or search for your keyword plus "link to us" or similar text. You will have to place their link on your website in exchange. Have prewritten text available for them to use, to ensure that your preferred keywords are used as anchor text.

The number of links and how difficult it is to rise to the top of the results pages varies tremendously. It make take a dozen links; it may take 10,000 or more. Be prepared for a wait of several months or more to see results, as this is not an instantaneous process.

Basic Search Engine Optimization for Home Business

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