Small Business SEO - 5 Essential SEO Tips

To be able to succeed as a small business SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be an invaluable tool in achieving market authority and dominance, especially at a local level. There are many tools that are used by SEO consultancy companies that can also be used by small businesses. There are also a number of 'on page SEO' techniques that can be use also. We will examine some of the free SEO stragegy tools available and what their benefits are. First of all - why should you use SEO? Building a successful business is similar to building a house. A lot of time and effort has gone into both projects. However, what happens if you start to make repairs using low quality tools and materials, or even worse - just ignore the need for repairs immediately? You know the answer to that. Every small business should look for affordable seo packages to increase its ROI. Just like a house needs to be built using quality materials and on a solid foundation, so an online business should be using 'quality materials' and be built on a strong foundation. A strong foundation for a website is: 1. Keyword analysis 2. Competition analysis 3. Quality link building What other tools can benefit your website? Here are 5 great tools to use: 1. Social Media Exposure. This means creating a business "Google +" page, a Facebook page and using Twitter. All of these services can be registered and maintained free of charge. These services allow you to interact with customers, get customer feedback and increase your online presence. Google will also give preference to sites are connected to a Google+ page and Google will give better search results to those businesses who use their services. With Facebook you can reach a potential audience of millions. 2. Promotional Videos. Promotional videos are great ways of engaging your potential customers. No one should think that they are difficult to make - they're not. You can use an online resource like Google Documents to produce a slide presentation with background music. Use pictures of your product and services. These type of video also do much to increase online presence and drawing in more customers. They can be distributed to many sites like "YouTube" and other video hosting sites for free! 3. Social Profile Links. Build up online authority and content by having an external social profile on Web 2.0 sites. This is becoming increasingly more important in the new age of social media. There you can post articles that link back to your homepage. 4. Social Bookmarking. We usually use bookmarks on our personal computers to remind us of sites that we found useful. Now social bookmarking has become on of the hottest topics in SEO marketing methods. By putting bookmarks to sites like Diig, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Tumblr you will see your rankings and amount of visitors increase. 5. Local Optimization. It is very easy to register a local business on Google Places and this will increase the likelihood that you will be found by Google when someone searches for your services. For example, a small business based in Eidnburgh would use 'seo edinburgh' to optimise its website. Remember that these are free tools. The only drawback is that it is time consuming to create this new content - after all you have a business to run! Many small businesses will then look for the services of an SEO consultant who can put these tools to the best use and then in turn create a new customer base for your business. To do any job well and to have the work last you need to have the right tools. Here we have looked at 5 - social media exposure, promotional videos, a social profile, social bookmarking, and local SEO optimization. However having the right tools won't make you a master at your trade. So look for a professional SEO consultancy firm who can do the job of building your customer base for you. To find out more about how a professional SEO consultant can put small business SEO methods to use, then please visit http://TheSEOConsultantService.com. There you will be able to learn about how SEO consultancy actually save your business.