Creating Business Website Content to Get on the First Page of Search Results

The general attitude about SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and getting into the top results for a small business is that it’s becoming almost impossible.  The competition is fierce for the keywords and phrases that are the primary ways in which the search engines find your site.  There is still hope for the small local business, however.  If you sell products or services locally, you can have a few advantages.

Combining Local Area Name with Specific Products or Services

The core of this strategy is to get to the specific product or service level for what you sell rather than key phrases for your overall business.  Examples include:

• Instead of your city or area name and “home cleaning service,” consider your city or area and “hardwood floor care when cleaning.”  Or, try “areaname + healthy home cleaning,” or “areaname + environmentally friendly home cleaning services.”

• Replace your city or area name combined with “home repair services” with “locating your city or area home electrical problems before they become hazards.”  Or, “area + drain stoppage clearing.”  Another example could be “area + broken window pane replacement.”

• A local gift shop could write about “area + anniversary gifts to make your wife happy.”  Or, “the perfect area name + birthday gift for the wife.”

• The sporting goods store can write about “area fishing with new gear for this season.”  Or, “the area + little league equipment source.”

• If you own a restaurant or fast food business, try combining your business area name with phrases like “best loaded hot dog,” or “romantic dinner for that special evening.”  How about “areaname gourmet bbq?”

• For a hardware store, “areaname handyman tools,” or “town name lawnmowers and trimmers.”

The idea is to get to a more basic level with keywords and phrases, and you’ll find that people use combinations of these when they’re searching for something locally.  

Get the Search Engine to Map Your Business

When you see those small maps on searches, they’re above regular results.  Make sure you’ve identified your business address and the area you serve for the search engine.  This way, as your site begins to gain some positioning with the key phrase and area name strategy, it can at some point be one of those on that map.  That’s when you can see a surge in site visitors.

If You Use Self-Hosted WordPress, Blog and Repost (for GoDaddy and Hostgator Users)

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Hosting your WordPress site with any of the major hosts like Go Daddy, Yahoo, Hostgator, Bluehost, etc. gives you some real power to help with SEO.  You will be blogging, posting short articles/blog posts with the key phrase and area name strategy above.  

WordPress: Use Plugins to Revive Older Posts.

There are plugins available to revive older posts, and you’ll want to use one.  One of the benefits of blogging is frequent new content that keeps the search engine bots on your site.  However, once you’ve written that great post with a title like “Yourtown Healthy Home Cleaning Services,” why not revive it again later?

As Internet searchers become savvier at creating effective searches, they’re finding the choices for the age of the search result.  From a few hours to within the past year, there are choices for the age of the item.  Searchers have learned that there is a huge amount of very old content out there, so more of them are asking for content with publish dates closer in time.  Using a reposting plugin, you can set it up to pull posts of a certain age or older and repost them with a new published date.

None of the strategies here are difficult, and they don’t require spending any money for special SEO services.  Each is a small thing by itself, but the effect of many of these articles or posts combined with the market area name will increase traffic to your small business website.