Your local business website can be a powerful tool to attract new customers. But are they finding your website when they are searching? Research shows that up to 81% of local customers are using search engines to find local products and services.
If your website is not properly optimized to appear in the search engine results, then you could be losing out on a lot of business! Fortunately, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is not a “secret science” that one cannot figure out.
The five steps we outline here are simple tweaks that you can make to your website TODAY that can DRAMATICALLY improve your website’s popularity with Google and other search engines.

Disclaimer (you knew this was coming!)

While these steps are simple and practical, they are just the beginning of a larger process. Search Engine Optimization can be tedious and complicated, and it must be an ongoing process. This overview is intended to give you, the local business owner, the few first steps to take and is by no means exhaustive.

We’re also assuming that you have a website and some sort of access and ability to make modifications to it. (If not, call us!)

Put Your Keywords To Work

The first thing you must do is choose the top 4 or 5 keywords, and place them in your Page Title.  This is the phrase you see at the very top left of the browser whenever you visit a web page.

If you do just this one step, and nothing else in your SEO makeover, then you’ve done more than about 90% of local businesses in your area. Why? Because most business owners simply are not aware of what an impact having keywords in your Page Title can be. It is the first thing that search engines look for when they scour the web. (We’ll illustrate this in step# 4).
As I have surfed the web looking at local San Gabriel Valley websites, I have been AMAZED at how many businesses have websites with a Page Title like “Bob’s Plumbing” or “ABC Landscaping”. This tells a search engine nothing about your website.

Instead, the Page Title should be something like: “Plumbers San Gabriel Valley, Plumbers Monrovia, Plumbers Glendora, Plumbing Services Covina” , or whatever area you are targeting.  This is how your customers are searching online. They choose a combination of the type of service, and then the area in which they live.

Warning!

Be careful not to overdo this. Some companies have tried inserting up to 50 + words and phrases in their Page Titles thinking that would make them more competitive. Search engines got wise to this some time ago, and now they will just ignore your Page Title, or only read the first few words if they see this. Try to limit the Page Title to 10-15 words or phrases.

How To Do It Yourself

If you used Dreamweaver to build your site, open up your page and switch to “code view”.  At the top of the page you’ll see something like this: <title>Untitled Document</title>. Insert your Page Title here, with no more than 7-10  top keywords that describe your business. Be sure to include the local area(s) that you are targeting, and don’t use more than 72 characters total – or you will dilute the effectiveness of your most important keywords.