For small businesses who are interested in getting their name out in the world, one thing that might hinder purchasing a 30 second spot at the Super Bowl is the cost. Well what can you do to still have the same impact? Try using some form of search engine marketing – it’s probably more effective and definitely cheaper to execute.

One form that is perhaps the more cost-effective is Search Engine Optimization. Instead of buying advertisement placements on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, you focus on the actual content of a website. Also known as SEO, this form of marketing places more emphasis on the search engines analysis on content than more than simply forcing your way to your attention with ads. A better definition can be found from Wikipedia:

SEO is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

So what are some tips as it relates to creating a great SEO strategy?

• Common sense is always the best guide. One of the key elements of SEO programs is to seed your keyword into the copy in an appropriate manner. That means making the content relevant to the reader and making sure that it matches what your users want to see. This means that if you think that salespeople are looking at your site, then you should probably make your content sale-like. However, if getting your main keyword included an appropriate amount of time leads to a page that is difficult to read, then don’t do it.
• Don’t forget about the meta tags. In your HTML document that forms your website, you’re going to need to include information in the code that will help search engines find your site. According to eHow, you should use the keyword meta tag and the description meta tag as a minimum. The robots meta tag should only be used to indicate that the page is not to be indexed. For search engines, they’re not going to read all of the page, but one of the common areas scoured is the beginning parts of the HTML document – this would be the meta tags that are hidden from public view. Don’t leave that part out.
• Make sure that your site has a page title. In your HTML code, you should make sure that it has a page title at the beginning of the page. Search engines will look at this as a major component to determine whether the page is relevant to that search. So if you are looking for the keywords “domain names”, then you would see Network Solutions appear because they have in the page title “domain names”.
• Understand the formatting – specifically the H1 header tag. Include an H1 page title in the body section of your HTML document that has your main page keyword within it. Include secondary keywords when possible and try to push the benefits that the page promotes.
• Provide good solid content first and foremost.
• Structure your page so that your main page keyword appears twice in the first paragraph, once in the second paragraph and is scattered throughout the rest of the text to achieve the required density.
• Cross linking between pages of the same website. One additional way to get the search engines to notice your website is to engage in cross-linking. Now this isn’t to mean that you should link to every page that’s out there. Rather, it should be a bit more quid pro quo. You link to more relevant websites and if they do the same, that will increase your search prominence in search queries.
• Make sure your URLs are readable both by search engines & by humans. When you are making websites, don’t have your URLs be filled with strange characters or symbols. The more that it represents actual words filled with keywords, the better your chances are at getting picked up by search engines. Just looking at this post, you should see the URL include the words “search engine optimization” and “small business”.

To learn more about search engine optimization, you can look at a variety of sources. Don’t forget that Network Solutions can also provide you with sources on doing SEO campaigns. To help assess your needs, be sure to check out our online marketing calculator – this scale will determine what’s your right search strategy.

Source: eHow