Most small business owners do not want to become Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts, nor should they. You need to concentrate on your core business and keeping your customers happy. You do need to bring more customers in though and that’s what your website should be helping you with. There one problem. If your site does not get the SEO basics right it may not help you at all. So if you have to do it, what are the basics that your website needs to get right?

Step 1 Keyword Identification: Figure out what people who are looking for you or your services will search for. If your company provides lawn care, what will people looking for you or lawn care services type in to the Google search box? Is it lawn care, lawn service, lawn mowing Seattle WA or bush trimming or something else. You need to know what people may try to use to find you or your service. Try finding a company with your services in Google and write down the different terms you tried and which ones gave you results that were useful.

Step 2 Visit & Edit Your Site:

1. Review the Page Titles. Look at the very top of this browser window in the bar at the top. That’s where your page title is. Does it describe the page? Search engines use the page titles for your web pages to help determine what the pages on your website are about. It’s similar to books in a library, if there were no titles on the binder of the books, how would you know what those books are about? How would the librarians know what section to put the book in? It’s the same for search engines, if the title doesn’t tell the search engine what it’s about it won’t know what to do with it.
2. Check your site navigation:
   • Format — text or image? image map? javascript? drop-downs? Text is best for search engines to be able to follow them and find all of the pages on your website. If you are using flash, javascript rollovers or some other navigation to create a dynamic user experience, your site should include a sitemap page that has text based links to all of your pages so the search engines can find them all.
   • Are keywords used being used in text links or image alt tags? Remeber those words you were using to find sites with your services earlier? They need to be on your site.
3. Review page content: Ideally, if you can identify what each page on your site is about and map that to one of your keywords/phrases, then you can optimize that page for a specific keyword.
   • Adequate and appropriate amount of text? Ideally use at least 250-500 words of text.
   • Appropriate keyword usage? Use keywords throughout the copy. Write UNIQUE content. Don’t just reuse a manufacturer’s product description or you will create duplicate content issues on your site.
   • Use a H1 and H2 tag, for titles on the pages and make sure they include keywords.
   • Title and Description tags NEED to be different for every page.
4. View source code:When on the page  in your browser do a view source.
   • Check meta description (length, keyword usage, relevance).
   • Check meta keywords (relevance, stuffing).
   • Use keywords in image Alt tags. – You know that little box that shows up on images sometimes when you rollover them with your mouse? That’s called an alt tag for your image. It allows you to describe what the image is to people and the search engines.

Step 3 Register Your Site: Your website needs to be registered with the search engines in order to be found.

1. Search Engine Registration
   1. Google – http://www.google.com/addurl/
   2. Google Local Submission – http://www.google.com/local/add
   3. Yahoo – https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
   4. Yahoo Directory – http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/suggest/suggest-01.html
   5. Yahoo Local – http://listings.local.yahoo.com/account/
   6. Ask -  http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.sitename.com/sitemap.xml
   7. DMOZ – http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
   8. MSN Live Search – http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx
   9. MSN Live Local – http://webapp.localeze.com/bizreg/add.aspx
   10. Local.com – http://advertise.local.com/search_buslisting.aspx
   11. Truelocal.com – http://www.truelocal.com/BusinessSuggest.aspx
   12. Jayde B2B Search – http://submit2.jayde.com/
2. Yellowpages Registration
   1. Superpages.com – http://advertising.superpages.com/spweb/products/business-listing
   2. Yellowpages.com – http://www.yellowpages.com/advertising
   3. Yahoo Yellow Pages – http://dbupdate.infousa.com/dbupdate/yahoo1.jsp

These are just some of the minimums that need to be covered in order to get your website in the search engines and findable by your customers

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