Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) Tips for Starting Online Business

You’re almost finished! You have your site, it’s built and getting traffic but now you want to stop paying for every visitor to your site. How do you do that? Well, that is where search engine optimization comes into the picture. The first tips are to edit your meta tags on your small business website. Meta tags are what the search engine reads to get an overview of your site. Here you will define the keywords your site focuses on as well as what title and description you want to appear in search results. The meta tags are included in the tag of each web page. Before we get into the specifics of how to edit these tags for each site type, let’s talk about what should be included in your meta tags. Your site title should include the major keywords you are targeting. For example, if your site sells widgets you need to include “widgets” in your site title as well as other descriptive words people would use when searching for “widgets.” Your site title should only contain 5-10 words. Avoid using words that are not given any weight in search engines such as “and, or, but, to” and other filler words. Stick with the descriptive terms people use when searching. A site title that is too long will be shortened by the search engine. Therefore, you need to keep it to about 50 characters. Your next meta tag is the description tag. This is where you will enter a short description about your site. Remember, this is what people read when your site is displayed in search results. You want to capture the attention of the reader to encourage them to click through to your site. Once you have the attention of the reader, your site should be able to “sell” them on your product of service. Try not to include prices in your meta description. The final meta tag you need to edit is the keyword tag. This tag is not as important to search engines as it has been in the past. Search engines now review all of the content on your page to determine how relevant your site is for specific keywords. We have read several books and articles on search engine optimization and there is no real agreement on how many keywords is enough and how many is too many. The best tips here are to use the major keywords you are targeting with the most general term first. Also, one keyword should not be repeated more than twice in the meta keywords. Let’s revisit the widgets example. If you are selling red widgets, blue widgets, and green widgets, do not keep repeating the word “widgets” in your meta keywords. This is another area where we cannot tell you an exact formula. You will need to use some free tools to evaluate not only your small business website but your major competition’s site as well. Since you have already built your site and added your content, you can use our free keyword density analyzer to see what keywords you should use as the primary focus in your meta keywords. Here is a screen shot of a playhouses website:

You can see the words that need additional placement in the site content to optimize the page for that specific keyword. This tool even tells you exactly how many times you need to add the word to your content. The words that already appear in green should be the targeted keywords for your site. To access the keyword density tool just click the “SEO Keyword Density Tool” button under SEO Tools on WebPalPro. Another tip you can use to help you optimize your site is the “WebCEO” button on WebPalPro. This tool can be used to analyze your entire site and will recommend changes as well as to check your current rankings in search engine results. Keyword density and meta tags are not the only factors in determining your rankings in the search results. Although none of the major search engines reveal their exact method for determining a site’s placement in the search results, site popularity and inlinks play a significant role. Inlinks, or one-way links as they are sometimes called, are links for other sites that point to your site. This is why we recommend using pay-per-click advertising, especially the content match feature. Every site that displays your ad will count as an inlink for your site. Have you ever noticed that even the “big” companies still use pay-per-click advertising when they are ranked number one in the search engine results? Well, there is a good reason for that! It provides them additional inlinks for their site without all the work. Your site popularity is based on both inlinks and the amount of traffic your site receives. The more people you have visiting your site each day, the more likely you are to move up in the search engine rankings. Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process. As the content on your site changes or expands, you will need to modify some of your optimization methods. Once you have optimized your site as much as possible, you need to submit it to all the major search engines. *TIP* We do not recommend or encourage anyone to use site submission services. You can submit your site to the most relevant engines and it will automatically get “picked-up” by the other search engines. Simply submit to the “big 3” search engines which are Yahoo, MSN, and Google. Of course, you can also submit to any other search engine you desire but this will be sufficient and your time is better spent listing your site in places that will not automatically add it such as directories that are specific to your site’s purpose. To submit your site, you can follow the three links on WebPalPro; “Google Site Submit,” “Yahoo Site Submit,” and “MSN Site Submit.” SEO Techniques would require another book entirely. This is merely the basics to get you on the right path. There are plenty of free resources to help you start learning more about SEO and you should search out a few blogs or articles that offer frequent updates regarding this topic. Considering how quickly this information changes, we cannot provide any good suggestions on sites offering this information. We will post important updates on WebPalPro as we learn of any major changes in SEO procedures. Now let’s cover the “how” part! Each website will use a different method to edit the meta tags. You will also need to define the meta tags for each page of your site. It is not enough to only define the metas on your index page. The following is the step-by-step guide on how to edit the meta tags of each small business website type.

Zen-Cart
This is a two step process. To define the starting overall site metas you will need to log in to cPanel and open File Manager.

1. Follow file path includes/languages/English/meta_tags.php
2. Click the code editor icon
3. At the top of the page you need to edit the “Title”, “Site_Tagline”, and “Custom Keywords.”
4. Save your changes

The second part allows you to edit the meta tags on specific pages within your site. You do not have to define the meta tags for individual products but you should define metas on all of your categories and subcategories. To do this log in to Zen-Cart’s Admin Control Panel.

1. Mouse over Catalog
2. Select Categories / Products
3. Next to each category there is a icon.
4. Click this icon to define the category meta tags
5. Save your changes
6. Repeat the process for every category and subcategory

osCommerce SEO Tips
You do not need to manually define the meta tags when using osCommerce. The newest version of the software automatically defines the meta tags for each page.

Wordpress SEO Tips
The default installation of Wordpress does not include meta tags. You can manually add them but it is not necessary. The search engines will use the title of your post as the site title on each post’s page. The first few words of the post will be used as the meta description. If you want to define the meta tags manually, you can visit the Wordpress support forum. Again, we want to reiterate this is not necessary.

osDate SEO Tips
Defining meta tags with osDate is easy. Log in to your admin control panel and click on SEO Settings under the tools tab. You can edit the site title, keywords, and description from this page.

Web Building Software SEO Tips
Each web building software is different. You will need to refer to the “Help” section of the software. Try a basic search for meta tags. You should be able to find some good step-by-step instructions within the help section.