All posts in Advanced Small Business Marketing

This blog post was written by Bobby Gaglini, who works on the external marketing team at Vistaprint, and specializes in search marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keywords. They can drive any website owner crazy. But, with some research and solid writing skills, conquering your keywords will be easy instead of exhausting.

Let’s say you’re revamping your home page with new content, and there are certain keywords you’d like to rank for. Just follow these 6 steps:

Step 1:  Think About What You Want To Say

Great website content doesn’t start with SEO, it starts with great ideas and strong writing. What do you want your visitors to see right away? What can you say to your customers that will help them engage in your company? A few blurbs on what your customers should know will help them understand how and why they should use your product.

Step 2: Think About What People Want To Hear

The site is for your customers, first and foremost. When developing your home page content, step into their shoes and think about what they want to hear. Maybe that blurb about your business history is better suited on the About Us page. Or perhaps that local award you won last month should be on the home page to give your visitors a sense of comfort.

Step 3: Do Keyword Research

Now that you’ve developed your content, it’s time to choose your keywords. Along with your business name, what keywords do you want to show up in search engine results? Think of what your core business is, and go from there. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool can help find how many searches per month your keyword has.

Step 4: Choose Attainable Keywords

Choose phrases that you, as a small business can attain. Say you own a landscaping company in San Antonio, Texas. There will be thousands of other companies competing for bigger terms like “Texas landscapers” or “San Antonio landscaping”. But, keywords like “West San Antonio landscaping” or “gardeners in San Antonio” are more attainable, and will bring more qualified traffic to your site.

Step 5: Continue Tweaking Your Content

Now it’s time to tweak your content and add your keywords. The trick here is not to stuff in your keywords, but instead to add them only where it makes sense. For example, if you decided on “West San Antonio landscaping”, you should only use that keyword where it makes sense in context. You can even use different iterations of the keyword to get your point across. In this instance, you could use it on your home page as a heading: “Voted Best Landscaping Company in West San Antonio.”

Step 6: Repeat The Process

Good SEO requires home page content updates every few months or so. It’s even better to have a blog on your site that you constantly update. However, to keep your users, and search engines happy, it’s a best practice to add or change up your content every so often.