SEO Tools and Tactics for Small Businesses

November 7, 2011

Gaining visibility through ranking high on the first page of search results has been an essential characteristic of successful businesses ever since the beginning of e-commerce. However, many startups and small businesses decide to decline from allocating resources for search engine optimization (SEO) due to the high cost of hiring outside help.

What many small business owners may not know is that after learning a few simple techniques and mixing these techniques with the right set of tools, any small business owner can be performing their own SEO. Tactics and tools for your SEO efforts include:

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a great tool to have that provides statistics for your website including the number of visits, page views, bounce rate, average time on site, just to mention a few. Analytics also allows you to compare your progress to previous dates.

Analytics is a must-have for any company wanting to do in-house SEO. Analytics breaks down where your traffic is coming from and gives you an idea of just how well your SEO efforts are going. Analytics also has advanced tools that allow you to break down your social media progress, long tail keyword progress, and can even cross-domain track to other sites that use Google Analytics.

Google Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools gives you an amazing tool set for offsite optimization. Webmaster Tools shows top search queries, number of impressions for those queries, crawl errors, links to your site, and keywords.

Small business owners should use this tool when determining what keywords you would like to rank for and what anchor text should be used when acquiring links. Webmaster tools breaks down how many browsers are coming to your site from specific keywords and where those terms rank on average.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Many tools come from Google, mainly because they are the ranking search engine, so here’s another great tool from Google called theAdWords Keyword tool. This tool has been designed to help marketers find the best keywords for their pay per click (PPC) campaigns; however, the Keyword tool also shows competition levels, global monthly search volume, and even local monthly search volume.

SEO’s can use this information to find trends and search volume for the terms they would like to rank for.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth

Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a tool I can’t get enough of. It may seem ugly at first, but has a simple user interface and is amazing for site audits. Link Sleuth downloads directly to your desktop and analyzes the site you input for broken links, lost mail servers, and shows the types of code being written on each page of the site.

MozBar from SEOmoz

TheMozBar from SEOmoz is possibly my favorite free off-site tool. The MozBar shows you the site rankings, page authority, and domain authority for any indexed page. After installing the MozBar, you will even be shown an immediate link profile for your searches on Google.

Since a major search factor is finding linking opportunities from authority sites, the MozBar gives a great amount of help for determining how well other sites stack up against yours.

WordPressBlog

WordPress blogs are the most underrated SEO tools out there. WordPress gives you the ability to establish linking opportunities as well as set you up to become an expert in your field. Any blog works; however, the reason I specifically like WordPress is due to the many plugins available and the consistent performance.

Ranking high in the search engines can be a difficult task without having the right tools and tactics. Keeping up to date on the latest trends by reading blogs like Best SEO Software Reviews can enhance your general knowledge and give you a better understanding of how these tools work. Good luck in all your SEO endeavors!

Matt Polsky is the Director ofSearch Marketing and Reputation Manager for VA Mortgage Center,managing VAMC’s reviews and providing insights learned from the nation’s leading provider of VA home loans. Connect with Matt on Twitter @mattpolsky.

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