Top 5 SEO Content Mistakes for Small Businesses

posted by ADMIN // December 04, 2009 // Market Your Website

As a small business owner, your website isn’t just a revenue stream or an advertisement for your brick and mortar store; it’s an invaluable communication tool that represents you and your business to the millions of people who go online everyday.

Many business owners without any knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization) often engage in activities that not only fail to help their websites gain any traction in organic search engine results (the non-sponsored results), but actually hurt their reputation with search engines. If you want to end up page one of search engine results for your keywords, instead of in search engine purgatory, here are the top 5 SEO content mistakes that you should avoid.

1. Not Enough Content – Search engines look for content. The content on your website is what search engines scan to determine how relevant your Web page is and where to place it in their search engine results. When your website only consists of 10 pages, for example, you are severely limiting your visitor’s user experience, and sending a message to search engines that you are not providing what they are looking for. No matter how specialized your company is, you need to create new content on a daily or weekly basis to keep the search engines (and your returning customers) happy.

2. Not Researching Keywords – Keywords are the terms people type into a search engine when they are looking for something. If you want those keywords to lead people to your website, you need to integrate them into your Web content. Before deciding on what keywords to focus on, you’ll need to do some research to discover what people are searching for and how those terms relate to your business. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is great for this task because it returns timely data about advertiser competition and search volume. Best of all, it's free! Creating content around the keywords you think people are searching on, instead of the terms they are actually searching on, can mean the difference between new traffic and no traffic.

3. Misusing Keywords – Once you find your keywords, be sure to use them in your Web page titles, article or blog headings, and content, but don’t overdo it. If a search engine thinks you are “keyword stuffing” (adding lots of keywords to trick them into ranking you highly), they’ll ban you until you fix the problem and resubmit your website. A decent keyword density is between 2-6 percent in relation to the other words on the page; so try to use your keyword 2-3 times per every 100 words of content. Use less and the search engines won’t pick up on it.

Also try to focus on phrases rather than singular terms; you’ll have a better chance at making headway with a “long tail” keyword phrase like “Boston car accident lawyer” over single terms like “cars” or “lawyer.”

4. Not writing for the Internet – Writing Web content is different than writing newspaper articles or greeting cards or academic papers. In order to successfully write engaging Web content your visitors will actually read, you need to understand how to edit that content for the Internet.

Reading a website strains the eyes differently than reading a piece of printed paper. Paragraphs should be short (2-3 sentences), important phrases and facts should appear in bold to jump out from the page, fonts should always be easily readable (Arial, Times New Roman, etc.) and at least in 10 pt font or larger. Using loud colors, changing between different fonts, and other design and format elements that make your content difficult to read will have visitors leaving your website in droves.

5. Not Writing for Your Audience – Every business owner should at least have some understanding of who their primary customers are. The same goes for content. You want your Web content to speak clearly and directly to your target audience, but you can’t do that if you don’t know who they are. So, step one is identifying your main potential customers and then creating content that speaks to them in a style and language they will respond to. Writing for teenage girls is very different than writing for 40-year-old men and so on. You need to discover what information about your products/services your audience is searching for, and provide that information on your website in a fresh and engaging voice. Boring content or content that doesn’t click with your audience will not result in purchases.

Your website should reflect the passion you have for your business, your products, and your customers. Creating relevant SEO Web content isn’t just about getting higher search engine rankings (although of course that helps!), it’s about creating information that adds value to your brand. By providing the content your target audience is searching for online, you can use SEO and SEM (search engine marketing) techniques to drive traffic to your website and give your visitors a satisfying experience after they’ve arrived.

We Do Web Content is a copywriting and search engine marketing firm based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. They help small and large companies achieve higher search engine rankings and drive traffic to their websites through 100% original SEO Web content and affordable Internet marketing.

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