Saturday, June 01, 2013

SEO goals and tools for small businesses


It is well-known that Search Engine Optimization takes time which at times increases the frustration and anxiety of small business owners who are assured by SEO analysts that while this is a time-consuming process, their SEO dollars are well-spent.

According to Why Does SEO Take So Long?, some of the factors to be explained are the following:
·         Analyzing Your Competition Takes More Time than You May Think
·         Build Links from Sites with Authority
·         Good SEO Takes Fine Tuning Along the Way

SEO Tools are a time saver for everyone. However, the majority of the tools are too costly for small businesses or digital startup.

Small businesses can start keyword research with Google's keyword tool, which can help in tracking rankings and links by exporting them from Webmaster Tools to a spreadsheet. But to get all analysis done in a reasonable time, it's advisable to look at paid tools. Paid tools offer advanced features like exploring the link profile of the web, auditing site, and finding data with any real depth etc.

This article on EConsultancy lists the following paid tools

The most impressive feature is the unique SEO correlation testing feature. It's built to help you test what tactics are actually improving your rankings, and which ones aren't.

It offers a well-rounded collection of tools that every SEO can benefit from:

Site Analysis. The website analysis tools essentially audit your domain for errors and areas for improvement.
The domain analyzer helps with navigation, redirects, and hierarchy, while the crawler warns you about unreachable pages, no-indexes, sitemaps, malware, and so on. A content analyzer also checks for issues like duplicate content.
Link Analysis. The link analyzer tracks your links, and the links of 3 competitors (up to 15 competitors in the Pro version). While this tool lacks PageRank or authority information, it helps you discover anchor text, and measures the spread of no-follow vs. do-follow links. You can see where your competitors' links are coming from, and find keyword opportunities.

A well-rounded tool with different pricing options, ranging from $7 to $40 per month. The $15 version, offers everything but competitor analysis feature. A $25 version includes competitor analysis, and it's only limitation is 100 keywords instead of 400.

This is really more of an educational resource than a tool.

Small businesses could start tracking their website for the following factors to uncover what they need to do to rank high on Google.

Factor
Significance
Number of Incoming Links
You want a lot of great incoming links.
Quality of Incoming Links

The number of incoming links is important, but the quality of those links is even more important. You want your incoming links from high-quality sites and websites that are related to your site.
Anchor Text

When you’re trying to rank for “exercise equipment” a link such as “check out our exercise equipment” is much more valuable than one like “for exercise equipment click here“. You want your keywords in the anchor text of your links.

Number of Indexed Pages

You want search engines to index as many pages of your site as possible.
Website Architecture Issues

If your website isn’t designed right, search engines won’t be able to spider it.
Keyword Cannibalization

If you have several pages on your site competing for the same keywords, it can hurt your rankings.
Duplicate Content

Internal duplicate content can kill your rankings. You need to detect it and eliminate it.


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