Search engines can be the number one source of traffic to your website. But it’s not that simple. Your website content has to be indexed properly by the search engines, then ranked high enough in the results so people will see your site. Thus the need for search engine optimization, or SEO.
In this episode of Power to the Small Business, you get the meat and potatoes of search engine optimization. Practical tips on how to tune up your website so that you will get more website traffic through better rankings in organic search engine results.
Guests: Sri Nagubandi, SEO Director at Rosetta, an interactive agency in New York.
Length: 25 minutes
SEO Primer
Before listening to this episode, there are some basic terms you need to know:
Anchor Text – The actual text you see on a page that contains a link to another site. It is often underlined or highlighted in another color (most often, but not always, blue).
Keywords – The the words people might search to find your business on a search engine.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization, optimizing your website to increase your rankings in search engine results.
Titles – The titles you see in the top title bar of a web browser.
URL – A website address. For example: http://www.yoursite.com/contact-page
WordPress – A free, open-source, website content management system. (Tutorial: Build a Website with WordPress)
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Basic Search Engine Optimization Show Notes
Sri Nagubandi
Selected quotes from the show:
“SEO is successful when you do a little thing, or some activity on a weekly or monthly basis.”
“If you are doing an initial website with WordPress, if you are spending more than $500 t0 $1000, you’re getting ripped off.”
“If you are serious about your website as a vehicle for your business, you should be, at a minimum, writing something (content) once per week.”
The Fundamentals of SEO:
- Solid technical foundation for your website
– Make it easy for spiders to crawl, index, and understand your content and intent of your site
– A clean source code for your website that is easy to read.
– Stick to a free platform like WordPress or Drupal that have built-in SEO functions. - Good on-site optimization
– Friendly URL’s
– Friendly titles
– Content written for both people and spiders - Ongoing effort to get good-quality links to your site
– Links include keywords that will be searched to find your business
Most important on-site elements for SEO
- Keywords in the page title and the URL
- Well-written content – Write content that incorporates keywords within the content, but write in a way that is understandable and flows well for the reader.
- Your pictures and video elements of your site should have proper tags and file names. [Alt tags]
Website analytics is a key source of information for content writing. Use analytics on your website to determine what people are typing in to search engines to come your website.
Getting started with SEO for your website:
- Plan out your calendar. Don’t be discouraged when you first start. Start out by tackling little things first and do SEO one step at a time.
- Then tackle the on-site SEO: URL’s, pages, content copy.
- Ask for links to your site, using the right anchor text.
Local Search
- Have your address and phone number on your home page if you are a local business.
- Claim your listing on the major search engines.
- Your content on the site must contain local clues: trade area, local address, local phone number.
The most important search engines are: (1) Google (2) Yahoo/Bing (3) Ask
Show Links:
Sri Nagubandi’s site: www.SriNagubandi.com
Sri Nagubandi on Twitter
Sri’s company: Rosetta
Check out your status on local search engines: www.GetListed.org
Website Content Management: www.WordPress.org
Claim your local search engine listings on Google, Yahoo, Bing.