Tech Tuesday: Do it yourself Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation. It's the process you go through to be found on the web by suppliers, partners and customers. There are steps you can take today to improve your SEO and appear higher in the search results when people are looking for what you offer.

The secret to getting SEO right is comprised of three main elements; producing fresh content, which appears across the web, and being on top of links.

Fresh Content across the web

Produce fresh content for your website or blog as often as you can; ideally every day. This means the search spiders that crawl the web looking for quality content are more likely to find and display you as the result when people are searching.

Content can be blog posts, social media activity and/or video clips. Let's say you are in the business of delivering legal services for small business. If you are:

• blogging with top legal tips

• tweeting useful links to legal resources

• delivering online courses to small business on various legal topics via web tools such as GoToWebinar

• managing a legal LinkedIn group for small business

• developing an Instagram account with images related to law and small business

• quoted on other people's blog as a small business legal specialist

then you've a very good chance of appearing high in the results when people are searching for 'legal services for small business.'

Start by writing and producing this content yourself and, as the business grows, consider outsourcing to others who are experts in content creation. Find copywriters and social media experts on sites such as Elance, Peopleperhour, and the Enterprise Nation Marketplace.

Link In and Out

Inbound and outbound links to and from your site are also a route to attracting eyeballs and traffic.

If your business caters to local customers, list on directories such as Bing Places for Business to be found. The links that perform best are those from sites with high quality content and traffic such as the BBC. If you get covered in any national, local or trade news, ask the journalist if they will include a clickable link back to your site from the interview or feature.

Consider approaching the websites and blogs that your customers visit and offer to write guest posts for these sites; again kindly requesting a link back to your own site.

Spending just an hour a day on producing and publishing content will reap reward when it comes to people finding you more easily on the web. And the more easy it is to find you, the more easy it is to buy from you!

Hear how three entrepreneurs, James Eder, Emma Blake and Wendy Tan White attracted millions of visitors to their websites in our upcoming webinars.