Small Business SEO – Part 2, On page SEO

If you’ve gone through Part 1 you’ll have an idea how to use the free Google keyword tool to understand how people search for your products and services vital if you’re a small business trying to get visibility online, you’ll also have set up your Google Places listing (and don’t forget to use the valuable data you got from the keyword tool).

You’ll also want to use the keywords you’ve selected in other parts of your web page.

This is what we’ll run through in this post.

If you can login to the back office of your CMS (Content management System) you should be able to make these changes fairly easily. If you’re working with a web designer they can certainly make these changes for you – but there may be a cost!

Anyway, here are the main places you’ll want to include your keywords/phrases as shown in the overview below.

• Meta page Title
• Meta Page Description
• Page Headings
• Content
• Image Alt Tags
• Anywhere else appropriate e.g. Video Titles

Meta page Title

This is the blue bar that appears at the top of the browser if you use Internet Explorer or in the tab when you hover your curser if you use Chrome or Firefox.

In here you have about 65-70 characters and it’s important that you tell Google what that page is about. In many ways, this is still the most important place to make sure you’re telling and Google and searcher what you do. This forms the first line of your search snippet so means that it is very prominent so vital that it’s writing in a compelling way. This is what will attract people’s eyes! On this pint, I’m a big fan of putting numbers in there, whether it’s your telephone number, years’ experience for example, it really makes you Description stand out!

Meta Page Description

The Page description is not something you’ll see on the page itself but sits behind the page effectively. It does however, for the last 2 lines of your search snippet so again is very important that it’s written in a compelling way. You’ll have noticed that any keywords that a searcher types that appear in either your Page Title or Page Description are made bold by Google so that they stand out  a bit more, again making your search snippet more compelling.

Page Headings

Headings are the natural headings within your page content. Your CMS will grade them H1 to H6 where H1 is most important. Rather than just saying welcome to the website or reflecting the name of the page I like to write something that contains keywords that I know people search for as long as you remember this Golden Rule – Don’t write anything that sounds spammy, searchers don’t like it and neither does Google!

Content

If you can, write this yourself and make it unique. Do not be tempted to pinch anyone else’s content. Think about what you would find interesting, what information would you find valuable and what would make you want to visit a site again. This is where you have the chance compete against the big boys in the market place. If you love what you do, if you have lots of passion, then there is literally no end to the content you can put together! In the new world of Google – Content is king!

Image Alt Tags

More and more people these days use Google to find images. You can do this easily by clicking on Images in the Navigation menu of Google and giving your images the right, descriptive type of Alt Tags will help your images appear here.

A big word of advice I’d give here is don’t be tempted to snap away with your iPhone of digital camera, upload the picture straight to your PC and then into your CMS.

1. The image will be at maximum resolution and size of something like 2MB and make your website very slow to load, in fact your CMS probably won’t accept an attachment of that size!
2. Your device whether phone or camera will give it along name that won’t make any sense so you’ll want to rename it and give it some nice and descriptive as well as a good Alt Tag.

Anywhere else appropriate e.g. Video Titles

Review anything else you may put on the page, YouTube videos for example. A video title is effectively a page title so use the same thinking when you name a video that you know is going on a web page.

For more help or advice please contact us. For Part one of the Small Business SEO guide, click on the link.