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8Oct/090

Starfire’s SEO Strategies To Raise Your Small Business Website’s Search Ranking

At Starfire Creative, one of the services that we have added recently is search engine optimization, or SEO, for our website design clients. SEO is the task of improving the way your site is viewed compared to other sites on similar topics.

The way a search engine ranks your site, and the methods it uses to compare one site to another is a closely held secret in the industry. Experts have been trying to decipher this mysterious algorithm for years and even though certain aspects of it are constantly updated and adjusted, some basic criteria are core to the way a site is ranked. Knowing what the basic ranking criteria are is essential to improving your ranking, the number of people who visit your site and ultimately the extra revenue that is generated for your small business.

We have decided to share with you the basics of our own SEO strategies. We'll even do our best to give you enough information that you can do it yourself if so inclined. Of course, we'll be happy to do it for you as well, just give us a call or contact us through this website.

One of the main considerations most search engines have for a particular site is the concept of keywords. How many times a keyword is used on a site, and where on the site it appears is important to the search engine in it's ranking of the site. Very little you can do to improve the ranking on the site will have as big an impact as this simple fact.

When you are setting up the site initially, think carefully about the name you choose and be sure to include the keyword in the site address (domain name). Use the keyword you have designated for that page in the title tag (the H1 tag, in fact) and if you can in an outgoing link somewhere on the page.

For those of you who are building your own site, you should know that Google doesn't pay any attention to the HTML meta-keywords tag anymore, they will sift through your text and decide the best keywords on their own. However, building your site around good keywords still makes sense, just don't think the meta-keywords tag is a silver bullet.

You must be sure to have your site indexed or "crawled" by search engines you care about on a regular basis. This can happen naturally, or you can make it happen by submitting your site to the search engines directly. This will cause them to index your site faster.

Because the search engines care about sites that update their content regularly, and will rank them higher, be sure not to force this indexing too often. If you do update your content, it is a good idea to re-submit after the update and your should see an improvement in your ranking. Also, if you update regularly, the search engine will notice this and will normally index your site more frequently as well. This index frequency is another key factor in your search ranking, so is a great idea to keep your site fresh.

Another major factor in search engine rankings is the number and quality of links that exist to your site. Having a lot of these links, especially from other sites that are ranked high is very important. The more good-quality links you can establish the better. A good quality link means it should be from a site that has a decent page rank (5 or above) and should be on a page that is somehow related to what you do. Ideally the text of the link will include one or more of the keywords you picked for your site.

There are a lot of techniques for getting these links established for your site and some work better than others. One easy way is to submit your site to website directories. Another great place to get these links started is by visiting and posting comments on a group of blogs that write about the keyword you are trying to target. Usually if you post on these blogs, you can add a link back to your site and have it counted in your favour. You could easily post on several blogs a day and establish an impressive collection of links as a result.

A word of warning - no spam blog comments! If you don't have a comment that is directly related to the conversation and is helpful, you are not doing your site any good and your online reputation suffers. Don't do this yourself and don't let anyone else spam comments on your behalf.

You could start a blog yourself on the keyword of interest and pepper this with links back to your site as well. This would help with your ranking, but could be a little less effective since all of the links originate from a single site. It is better to have these links back to your site start from a lot of different sites.

You can submit on-topic articles you have written yourself to other blogs or article directories. Usually the Auther's Resource Box will allow you to add a link to your website on each copy of the article that is published as well, so that's publicity + another good link.

All of these techniques are fairly easy to implement and will have a very positive impact on your search rankings quickly. Some of these are more effective than others and take a little time to work. But as any small business person worth their salt knows, success worth having doesn't come overnight.