When you’re running a small business, going online can really help you to inform people about what you’re doing and expand your customer base. However, in order to reach the maximum number of people, you’ll need to use small business SEO or search engine optimization. Think back to the last time you did a Google search. When the results came up, did you look past the first few. Have you ever gone past the first page and looked at the second page of results?

If you’re like most of us, you may only have done this a handful of times, when you just couldn’t find the information you were looking for. So it’s important to show up within the first few results and this can be accomplished through search engine optimization. Here are a few general rules to follow:

• Keywords. When the field of SEO first came up, search engines would just rank a website highly if it used a certain keyword many times. As a result, many people started doing what has now come to be called “keyword stuffing.. They would use a certain keyword so many times in an article that the rest of the writing barely made any sense. This got them hits for their websites but most of the viewers who read the articles probably turned away in disgust and didn’t bother to buy anything from that vendor. Nowadays, search engines have wised up and actually penalize websites for repeating keywords once too often. However, you can still use popular keywords a few times per article. Just don’t overdo it.
• Bullet Points, Lists, Subheadings Etc. Another important thing you have to remember to do when writing for the internet is to subdivide your text as much as possible. When people read on the internet, they don’t have the same degree of patience as they do for books, magazines etc. So it helps if you keep your content short and sweet. Also, if you subdivide your content using bullet points, lists and subheadings, people can just glance over the subdivisions first and decide which ones they really need to read. If they already know mos. of this information, they can move on.
• Updates and Content Variety. These are also important facets of SEO. When you’re trying to attract a certain clientele, you can’t be static. If you just set up your website and then forget about it, others are likely to do so as well. Instead, set up a blog and social media pages and keep updating them. Try to introduce as much content variety as you can, so that you can reach out to people searching for different keywords. Updates will also make sure that you stay on top of things in your field.

At Red Shark Digital, we will help you come up with content that reflects well on your company and attracts viewers. Learn more about how SEO and Inbound Marketing work together.