You have a small business. You have a website. You don’t have as many sales as you need, however. What’s the problem? The answer, most often, when it comes to website conversions and online sales, is that your customers aren’t able to find you.

If you are interested in increasing conversions, being more present in search engine results pages (SERPs), and generally creating more brand awareness for yourself or your company, read on. This post is all about Search Engine Optimization for small business.Basically, SEO is the art of getting your website as high on the SERPs as possible, through tactics such as keyword density, relevance, and more. I hope to outline a few of these ways briefly, but I’m sure this post will be rather long…

First, keywords are important to your site’s overall ability to perform in SERPs. Aim for a density of about 2-3%:

• Choose some broader, more heavily targeted keywords for your overall site, but don’t get too bold. “pets” is going to be near impossible to rank for, while “train your pet” is much more achievable.
• Choose “long tail” keywords (“how to train your pet chinchilla”) for each post/page. Likewise, each post/page should relate to only 1 or 2 long tail keywords at a time. If possible, try working in your broader keywords as well.
• Completely forget about keywords. If you keep the advice from the first two points in the back of your mind while you write and edit posts, you’ll be able to maintain a more “human” voice that Google will reward.

Here’s a great quote from Patrick from kalzumeus.com:

“For the amount of effort it would take you to rank #12 for the head term of your choice, which will result in marginal traffic even if the head is huge, you could rank in the top three for a huge basket of tail terms.  Additionally, one of the things you’ll notice is that conversion rates for head terms are terrible.  People searching for the terms on the head are either just beginning their research into a topic or are less sophisticated.  Generally, those are not the searchers you want.  Longer, specific queries are more common among people who have done the research and are nearing a purchasing decision.”

Read the full post: Strategic SEO for Startups: MicroISV on a Shoestring.

Relevance is the craft of making something resonate with a target audience. If you are viewed as a relevant, credible expert on your topic, you’ll be much better prepared to sell to this audience. Here are a few tips to build relevance and reputation:

• Write with authority, but don’t lose your voice. Be sure that while you sound like you know what you’re talking about (you do, right?), you don’t sound dry and boring. Spice up your in-depth posts with anecdotes, quips, and slightly annoying remarks (preferably aimed at Bing, if discussing items specific to the search engine industry)
• Cross-reference your posts. Link to other posts you’ve read or written as much as possible. The “web” wasn’t built to be static pieces of information that don’t share.
• Remember your keywords. If at any time you feel you’ve strayed too far from the path of topical choice, keep writing. Just be sure to write two posts that ARE on topic…

At the end of the day, you want to focus first on creating content. You’ll get better at writing and understanding your audience the more you do it, but there really is no exception to actually churning out loads of crappy content to find that rare gem of wisdom. Nevertheless, post it all anyway. If it’s really horrible, you’ll open yourself up to comments and trackbacks defiling your work—all of which slowly help build your SEO framework.

Finally, here’s another great quote from Patrick:

“Thus, my generic SEO strategy for a startup is a) be the best on the Internet for b) as many topics as you possibly can be that c) matter to your paying customers.”

Think of your paying customers as your readers. If they’re not paying you now, give them what they want (for free) so that they will pay you eventually.

Thoughts? I’d love to hear them: post a comment below! Also, subscribe to my RSS feed or newsletter–please?

Related posts:

1. SEO for Business: A Quick Tip
2. The Social Media Paradigm
3. SEO Basics: Geo-Targeting for Your Website or Blog
4. 12 Great SEO-Ready WordPress Themes
5. The “Big 3″ of Small Business Marketing: Business Cards, Postcards, & Brochures

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