As a new decade dawns, it is crucial for small business owners to consider how their sites are performing in search engine rankings. Lisa Barone has a useful article on Small Business Trends about important search engine optimization trends for small businesses in 2010.
Barone touches on some major developments that are affecting search engine rankings, including advances in real-time search, local listings, and mobile web usage. Real-time search is certainly going to affect the way a small business can be found online, as we pointed out in a previous post on marketing ideas for local search.
Consumers are doing an increasing amount of their product and service research online, and businesses need to recognize this shift in activity. Instead of relying on traditional media such as print advertising and radio spots, business owners can focus their resources on improving their search rank through blogging and social media outreach.
Blogging and activity on Facebook and Twitter impact search results by raising a small business' online profile. The logic is simple. By generating more pages of content through blogging and social media, a business presents more opportunities for its target customers to find its services. If a site only has 30 pages, doubling the entry points into the site with blog posts would only take six weeks of daily posting.
Monitoring search engine performance is not an optional activity any more. With competition expanding due to the global reach of the Internet, small businesses can be sure a competitor is focusing on improving their search engine ranking.
To get started, a business should think about the terms its customers would enter into Google, and see where they rank in results. If it is not on the first page of results, chances are it is not being found by its customers for that particular search term.
How is your small business addressing its search engine ranking performance?
Barone touches on some major developments that are affecting search engine rankings, including advances in real-time search, local listings, and mobile web usage. Real-time search is certainly going to affect the way a small business can be found online, as we pointed out in a previous post on marketing ideas for local search.
Consumers are doing an increasing amount of their product and service research online, and businesses need to recognize this shift in activity. Instead of relying on traditional media such as print advertising and radio spots, business owners can focus their resources on improving their search rank through blogging and social media outreach.
Blogging and activity on Facebook and Twitter impact search results by raising a small business' online profile. The logic is simple. By generating more pages of content through blogging and social media, a business presents more opportunities for its target customers to find its services. If a site only has 30 pages, doubling the entry points into the site with blog posts would only take six weeks of daily posting.
Monitoring search engine performance is not an optional activity any more. With competition expanding due to the global reach of the Internet, small businesses can be sure a competitor is focusing on improving their search engine ranking.
To get started, a business should think about the terms its customers would enter into Google, and see where they rank in results. If it is not on the first page of results, chances are it is not being found by its customers for that particular search term.
How is your small business addressing its search engine ranking performance?