In fact, if you realize that you should be online and you are also working with a search engine marketing professional or search engine optimization (SEO) expert then you are probably ahead of the game when compared to many other small business owners.

While your SEO professional will do most of the heavy lifting for you to get your website where it needs to be here are some quick and easy tips that you can follow to give your website that extra boost.

Tip #1 Bring Offline Relationships Online

One thing that you have that your SEO professional may or may not have is offline relationships in your industry that you can use online to bolster your website’s rankings.

In a nutshell, you will help your website rank higher in Google and other search engines if you can get more quality links pointing to your site from other sites. A great way for you to get these kinds of links as a small business owner is to use the offline connections that you have built up over the years you have ran your business.

If you are a member of your local Chamber of Commerce then ask them to link to your website, if you have written an article for a trade journal then see if their website will link to your website, if you have business partners or suppliers that have websites then consider asking them for a link to your website maybe even in the form of a testimonial. There are many different avenues that you can consider when trying to make your offline business relationships profitable for you online as well as offline.

Tip #2 Choose the Right Domain Name

While choosing the right domain name is not necessarily something that you may think will build traffic to your website it is certainly part of a strong foundation for building traffic to your website. I run a website that offers domain name tools for people to find great domain names and it always very interesting for me to watch the kinds of domain names that people register for their businesses. Your domain name says a lot about your company, can potentially help or hurt your search engine rankings, and can become a very valuable business asset over time.

While there are many things to consider when choosing a business domain name I will just concentrate on some of the more important things to keep in mind (for a more in depth resource then read these 25 rules for how to choose a domain name). Choose a domain name that is easy to remember, conveys the right tone for your business (it is only natural that a domain name for a law firm should sound more professional than a domain name for a web design company), and if possible contains your company’s target keyword(s) in the domain name for maximum SEO benefit.

An advanced strategy for building traffic to your company site is to purchase generic keyword domain names that have type in traffic and then work with your SEO professional to redirect those domain names to your primary website. For example, if you were a realtor serving the Flint market and your main website is AdvantageRealty.com then it would be a great choice if you could get a hold of the domain names FlintRealtor.com, FlintRealty.com, etc. and then redirect those domain names to your main site so that when someone types the domain name flintrealtor.com directly into their browser’s URL bar they will be automatically forwarded to your main company website at AdvantageRealty.com.

Tip #3 Write Industry Specific Content

A good SEO professional is able to publish content to your site that will be useful to your visitors and laser targeted towards helping you rank higher for your targeted keywords. However, one major advantage that you may have over an SEO professional is that you know your industry much better than the SEO professional does. If you can write in-depth articles for your website that deal with specific industry topics then you will attract visitors. Concentrate on putting your command of industry jargon and knowledge of what potential customers are searching for to good use and really help your site to shine.

The best approach is to work with your SEO professional to develop a content development schedule where you will contribute industry knowledge as an insider that can offer great topics and input. For example, if you are a realtor then consider writing a new home buyer’s guide for certain neighborhoods in your target market. If you are a bankruptcy attorney in Detroit then publish articles with specific information for Detroit residents that need bankruptcy guidance.

The key here is that there are certain areas where you, the small business owner, have a deep well of information. The more that you can take that “insider” business knowledge and bring it to your website in the form of featured content then the more your website will attract new visitors.

Thanks to Joel @ Domain Superstar for this post!

Edit: 2/13/09 - Due to a large client project in the works, the production of the web design tool has been delayed.  We will let you know when it is back in production.

Do Sitemaps Affect Crawlers?

GR Web Designs can help track the amount of time spent clients spend on your website.  Feel free to contact us for a quote on a new website design or a redesign of your current website.

The next big step was to gain backlinks for their site.  Backlinks are links on other websites that point to your website.  A good way to gain good backlinks are to join discussions in forums about your industry.  Another great way is to have your clients put a link on their website for you.  Also take a look at business directories that offer a chance for your business to add a link.

Content is most important in SEO but a close second is the amount and quality of backlinks point at your site.  Take advantage of clients offering free links pointing to your site!

A properly constructed Website allows your prospective customers to gather the information they need, from the privacy of their own home or office.  In a recent poll, it found that more than 73% of American adults now use the internet to find local businesses, research product information and compare prices; not the Yellow Pages or print advertising.

In another study it showed that a print advertisement that listed a Website address increased the response to the advertisement by 79% over the same advertisement without a Website address.

Websites are also very cost effective and can start in the area of $500 dollars for a professional build site.  If you are looking into building a website for your company please GR Web Designs for a quote.

• Communicating clearly. Users will make a decision about your website within 30 seconds of visiting your first page.

• Provide information users want. Don’t fill your website with pages and pages of information that no one will read or use.

• Offer simple, consistent, and clear navigation and page design. Put things where users expect to find them and don’t veer to far from the website norm.

Keeping with those three design priorities will help your site flourish in the web world!

Two weeks later, he couldn’t believe the reports he was seeing.  The website was getting less than 10 visits a day, most of them from search engines and not from the Yellow Pages website.  He was also tracking the number of phone calls and asking where they got information about the business.  Most stated they found his website using a search engine and clicking on his website.

I showed him there are nearly 2.4 billion searches on Google every month and the Yellow Pages site couldn’t compare to that.  For a fraction of the price, his business could be on the first page on Google search and get more traffic then the Yellow Pages website could ever provide.  We sat down and came up with some keywords that he felt customers would type into Google to find his business.  Within months he was ranking on the first page for many of those words and was getting almost triple the amount of traffic per day for a fraction of the price.

To those small business owners that are looking for a less expensive way to expose your business to a large customer base, remember that most people are using search engines to find information.  A small number of people are looking in places like the Yellow Page, so why pay a large amount for a small amount of exposure.

For example someone from Hudsonville, Michigan is searching for website design and they go to Google and type in “Hudsonville Website Design” they will get the listing in the image below.  These local business results appear before the regular search engine results and could result in more visits to your website.

Google Local

Below are a few links to the major local listings you should submit your business to.

Google Local

Yahoo Local

Live Local