SEO (search engine optimization for small business)

What is SEO and why is it important to a small business?
SEO stands for 'search engine optimization'. When you 'optimize' the pages on your website, you make them easier for Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines to find when people search for the products and/or services your company provides. Who wouldn't want to be on the first page of Google?

Example One: Your small business sells blue widgets around the Atlanta area. When someone types 'blue widgets atlanta' in Google, if your website appears on the first page, and people click through to your site to read about the blue widgets you sell around Atlanta (or that you can ship to them FROM Atlanta).

Example Two: You are a dentist in Marietta, Georgia. Someone moves into the area, and is looking for a dentist. They type, 'family dentist marietta georgia' into Google, and your site pops up on the first page. They click through to your beautiful website (built by Sisson Media of course) and read about you, your staff and office, download a new patient form and schedule an appointment. You have a new patient, all while you were out playing tennis!

 

Anatomy Of A Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Let's take a quick look at the graphic to the left.

This is what a typical search engine results page looks like AFTER you've typed something you are looking for into, say, Google.com. It's the same basic layout for other engines like Yahoo.com and Bing.com.

The GREEN BOX is the area you type your searchable phrase into.

The RED BOXES represent sponsored search results. The is the area where companies can pay to be listed for each and every search term under the sun. Search engines give these spots to the highest bidder, and then if (and only if) someone actually clicks on the ad written by the winning bidder for this area will they be charged by the search engine.

You pay when they click, so the area is called 'Pay-Per-Click' advertising. This area is the quickest way to get your new site listed on a search engine. Anyone can get here immediately with a monthly budget (see why Google has so much money now?), but the REAL gold in a search engine page is the BLUE BOX.

The BLUE BOX is the hot real estate spot and what SEO (search engine optimization) addresses. This is the area (called natural search or organic search results) that many searchers tend to focus on because it's the most relevant to what they are looking for. To get listed in the BLUE BOX for the search term 'chair cover rental', you have to convince Google that your company's website is one of the top ten websites most relevant to this search term, out of all of the company websites out there offering 'chair cover rental'!

Search Engines Reward Relevance And Popularity With High Rankings

Imagine you are a search engine for a moment. It's your job to show people (searchers) the top websites for ANY search phrase entered into one of your pages.

A client comes to you (anyone searching on search page) looking for 'stair parts georgia' because they want to find a local small business supplier for stair parts.

It's your job to return the top ten websites on you first page for a phrase like 'stair parts georgia'. Odds are, you'll want to return websites that do the following for the person making the search:

1. Find websites that are relevant:
   You are not going to return a site about pet goldfish! The site will need to talk about stair parts, have pages with stair parts in its titles, its graphics, its content, its links. (a site that is 'opimized' for this term in the right places so you know that the site is relevant).
   
   
2. Find websites that are relevant AND growing/improving over time:
   Would you return a 5 page website that hasn't changed or improved in a two years, or would you pay more attention to a site that was 5 pages a year ago, and is now 50 pages today? Sites that are growing by adding more and more relevant content are probably going to be attractive to your users, don't you think?
   
   
3. Find websites that are relevant, growing AND popular on the web:
   So you have an initial list of websites to rank for your clients, and they are all 'relevant', meaning they've been optimized. Now, which site are you going to rank higher (on the first page), the sites who are relevant but have NO other sites linking to them (not popular), OR, the sites who are both relevant AND have LOTS of other sites linking/pointing to them (very popular).
   
   
4. Find websites that are all of the above AND local to where the searcher is searching FROM:
   That's right, if you knew the person searching on your engine was searching from a computer in the North Georgia area, would you return popular, relevant stair parts sites ONLY in the California, or would you mix in some relevant, popular sites who's companies happen to be based in the North Georgia area?

Odds are, you would consider ALL of the above if you were a search engine tasks with returning the best company websites for your customer searches. Bingo.

So, from the perspecitve of the company website who provides stair parts around North Georgia AND wants to be on the first page of Google for the search phrase, "stair parts georgia", they will need to OPTIMIZE their website (and become more popular by building links) for search engines so that they are more popular than the competition for this phrase and others.

This process is called 'search engine optimization', and it's something that Sisson Media can do to help your small business online, so contact us today for a free consultation! We have plans that range from a few hours a month, to many hours a month, all in the name of driving YOUR site to the top of the search engines.