Many small businesses try to use shortcuts or unusual Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics. The best way to design your Search Engine Optimization strategy is by using integrity as your number one key. Your first marketing strategy should be giving your web visitors the best and most valuable experience possible.

Integrity: Small Business SEO for a New Decade

Optimizing your small business website to achieve the kind of page rankings that will bring a substantial amount of traffic to your website is not as complicated as you might think.

Although certain aspects of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithm undergo changes and improvements from time to time, it is all in an effort to give the searcher the best results and the ideal user experience.

In order to learn proper small business SEO, remember the number one key: Integrity.

According to Webster’s Dictionary, optimize is defined as making something as effective or as perfect as possible. SEO takes the same definition and applies it to your website.

It’s a simple concept, but the mark is often missed due to a lack of integrity. Through the years, there have been tactics such as keyword stuffing and scraping content from other sites, which gives SEO a bad name. If you want to experience true and lasting page ranking, all you really need to remember is “integrity is your key to success”.

SEO 101: A List of Basics

Your first step to proper SEO is to develop a list of site-wide targeted keywords that you will use consistently in every post.

Instead of creating your site with the intent of reaching every type of customer in a chosen industry, it’s best to design your website to reach a niche market. By doing so, your content will remain consistent and your keywords will have a better chance of ranking well with Google.

If you offer “Small Business SEO”, you can certainly use this keyword phrase throughout your site, but you’ll have a much better chance of ranking well if you target Michigan SEO or Detroit SEO. Reaching a smaller, more targeted audience will give you a much greater chance of reaching serious customers.

Once you’ve developed your targeted keyword phrases, use them naturally in each post. Either hire a ghostwriter to develop SEO content for your website or blog, or write original posts yourself. Do not copy and paste content from other websites and use it as your own. Even if you give credit to the original writer, Google sees this as duplicate content. This will cause your rankings to suffer. The original poster will get the search engine rankings. Again, integrity is the key.

Learn to link. Some websites certainly abuse linking strategies. You’ll notice the ones who do so. They usually have a long list of websites down the side of their home page. No one reads this and it won’t help with rankings. There are two solid ways to use linking strategies for SEO.

• First, link to credible websites that back up your information but are non-competitive. If you offer an article with statistics, linking to the source of your information will always help build trust with your readers.
• Linking within your site. Using links from one article or post to other valuable post on your website will cause your visitors to go deeper into your site and spend more time there. Linking to other relevant articles can bring a potential client through a natural progression, eventually leading to conversion.

Learning to link with integrity is another solid SEO tactic that will bring value to your reader’s experience.

What is the bottom line for SEO in 2010? Create your posts and every part of your website with integrity and value to your visitors in mind. By doing so, you’ll be following the SEO best practices and naturally creating a useful website that will rank well with search engines.

Optimal Leads Inc. is a Michigan full-service Internet Marketing and SEO company. Located in Metro Detroit, we specialize in Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Management, and Public Relation Management.

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