Do it yourself and learn on the job. Squeeze in the time when the rest of the world hasn’t woken up yet or they’ve already gone to sleep. If you know what you’re doing this can be effective. The danger here is that “you don’t know what you don’t know”.
OR
Find another small business specialist who will do it for you at a reasonable price. This is a nice middle route to take. If that business is local to you and knows your market it will save you tons of time and get done properly. The cost/benefit factor varies but should be affordable if you have set reasonable, measurable goals and your marketing specialist shows a good understanding of your business and is able to demonstrate to you how your goals will be achieved and what you can expect in terms of results.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing , there is a free, safe first step that you can take. Doing some on-page optimization of your web site’s most important pages can bring modest results without getting you into trouble (option 1 above) or costing you anything. Once you’ve seen that Search Engine Optimization works for you I would recommend contacting a Search Engine Optimization company,specializing in Local Search Engine Optimization , to finish the job.

The basic free things that you can do are as follows:

1. Check your page titles – are they relevant to your customers and what they are looking for online (this is marketing remember?). Will “Bobs wholesale services” or “Bobs plumbing Wholesale London Ontario” be more relevant to a contractor who needs thirty new toilets today?
2. Description tags – Put a short description of each page in the description meta tag. Make it relevant and not spammy.
3. Keyword tags – put in a max of 25 keywords that describe your product/service, company name and perhaps a mis-spelling or two.
4. Heading tags (H1,H2,H3) – Put the heading of key page sections into the H tags. These are ranked in order of importance.
5. Images – rename your images to make sense and give them alt tags. An image named image.png does you no good because search engines can’t see that it’s an air conditioner. An image called airconditioner.png with an alt tag of “air conditioner” ensures your page makes more sense.
6. Link to your other pages – if your plumbing section leads into your water damage section (who doesn’t like plumbing humor) then add a link to the next page with anchor text that looks something like “Water damage” or whatever the page is called.
7. Put your full contact details, in text form, on your contact page. Even better, put it on every page.

A word of caution though -if you didn’t understand any of the above – Don’t Do It! This is primarily aimed at those small business owners or employees who put up a small site themselves without any thought to Search Engine Optimization or search engine visibility.

If you do the basics above, your site will be more effective and you should fare better in local search results.

If you’ve done this and you’re now aware of the results a professional Local Search Engine Optimization campaign could bring to your business, contact Ontario SEO. We’ll give your site a free audit and send you a written report with an assessment of your site’s current level of optimization as well as recommendations on how you can rank better and be found more often when potential customers are looking for your services. Don’t let them find your competitors first.

If you’re a small business owner in London or Southwestern Ontario, talk to us about internet marketing, website promotion and Search Engine Optimization. We can ensure that you will be found when local customers are searching the web for products or services that you can supply.