30 Minute SEO Guide for the average business person

Good day to all you business warriors. While you're out there fighting for your survival, fending off potential threats and capitalizingg on new opportunities I'm sure you've made time to keep on all the latest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techiniques to drive leads to your web site. No? Well, fear not, I'll equip you with a few strategies you can use to increase your rankings and drive qualified and targeted traffic to your web site.

1. Find out what your customers are searching for when looking for your services. Don't assume you know what they are searching for. The way you think as an industry insider is most likely completely different than the way your customers would. You probably use industry jargon and acronyms that you assume are common knowledge without even realizing it. Ask your customers. Ask questions like:
   
   1. "Hey Jim when you set out to find what my company offers how did you go about searching?"
   2. "And what did you look for?"
   3. "What words did you associate with when searching for our services?"
   4. "How did the words you use change as you became closer to buying?" - This is important because you can start to figure out what keywords are associated with the different stages of the buying cycle.
   5. -- These questions will help you understand how people are searching for your products, once you have this information you are armed with the necessary information to target different keywords that will drive highly qualified traffic to your web site. Oh and why do I keep saying highly qualified??? Because they're searching for you. They already know they want your companies services... That is, if you have selected the correct keywords --
   6. Finally you can use Google's Free Keyword suggestion tool to find out how many people are searching for those terms (DO NOT use it to get keyword ideas, yet, anyways. Focus on how real people search for your services/products.
2. Local Search - Does your business operate inspecificgeogrpahic region? Do you have multiple locations servicing different areas? Local Search is Hyper-Geo-Targeted form of Search Engine Optimization. What that means is, instead of going after nationally scoped keywords like "Accountant" where you'll be competing against the largest accounting firms in the world and the traffic you'd get you probably wouldn't even be able to handle, because you only are licensed for Washington Tax Codes... Go for local terms like "Seattle Accountant."Here's a couple easy things you can do to help increase your local rankings:
   1. Set up a Google Local Business Center Account.
   2. Set up a local isting with Bing.
3. Analytics - Incorporate Google Analytics. It's free and will give you the tools you need to make educated decisions. Another thing I'd do is create a spreadsheet. Title the first column keywords and place the keywords gatehered in step 1 of this guide there. Name the next column rank. And periodically check the rank of your keywords.

As always if you're not happy with your rankings feel free to give your friendly Seattle SEO firm, Bonsai Media Group a call or email and we'd be more than happy to assist you in getting your site ranked at the top and increases the volume of highly qualified traffic to your site. 206.528.2515

Let me know if you found this helpful and if so I'll add more guides like this one.

Jason LaBaw, CEO
425.241.4743
Bonsai Media Group

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