How to use the internet to help grow your business.

Part 2 - Search Engine Friendly

This article serves to illustrate some effective ways for small business owners to put the web to work for them.

Getting Search Engine Friendly

There are a few things to keep in mind when working on getting your site listed successfully. First you must make sure your site has good content, well written text describing your services and location.

The title of your home page (the HTML <title> tag) should be your business name, and a short description of what you do, its also a good idea to put your location. Here are some good titles:

"Veterinary Medical Center - Emergency Pet Care, Norcross, GA"
"Paws and Claws, Dog and Cat Grooming, Atlanta, GA"

Most search engines only read the first 256 characters of your title, and only display around 64, so keep that in mind!

"Veterinary Medical Center, Norcross, GA - 770-555-1212, Open Mon-Sat 8AM - 8PM"
"Paws and Claws, Dog Grooming. St. Louis, MO - 314-555-1212, Open 7 days"

After you enter the first bit of information, you can add more description about your products and services, like so:

"Paws and Claws, Dog Grooming. St. Louis, MO - 314-555-1212, Open 7 days.
We offer bathing, nail trimming, shaving, shampoo, spa treatments, same day service."

The second meta tag, the meta-keyword tag is very important, and it will never be seen in the search engine or on your site, however, the search engine uses these words to help index your site. Your keywords should include all the words in your description, and any other term you think someone may type in to search for a business like yours. I recommend you include any local neighborhoods, and neighboring cities! Use both the abbreviation and spelled out name for your state and city.

If you build it, they will come.

Maybe in Field of Dreams, but not necessarily true of the internet! Even if you have the greatest search-engine friendly, decked-out, full featured web site, if you do not get it listed in the search engines, it wont matter one bit! Back in the internet heyday of the late 90's there were quite a few competitors in the search engine arena, while there are still quite a few search engines, there are a few key ones that will get you the best results. A company that offeres Search Engine Optimization can help get you listed. There are also several free resources on the web to help you learn how to submit your site.

Google is the top dog in the search engine kennel, not only is google.com one of the most popular search sites, but Google also shares some resultswith Yahoo and Netscape, so if your listed in Google, your listed in those sites too! It takes anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks to be included in Google. To submit your site go to http://www.google.com/addurl.html

There are also pay-per-click programs in Google, and with Overture.com where you create the listing and bid on a per-click amount that you will pay. this is a good way to get traffic, but can get very expensive.

Ok that does it for now, this should be good to get you started. Good luck with your web site.