In my last article I talked about claiming and optimizing your Google Places Page. Today I’m going to bring things a little closer to home.

Last time I told you that there are several things you can do to improve your search results in mobile search. The second step to getting your online house in order is to analyze your very own website. Now, don’t be frightened by that notion because I’m going to share with you a few tools that will make this step pretty simple.

Your Site in Different Browsers

First, look at your site in multiple browsers. The main ones are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and, for those on a Mac, Safari. Now, look at your site on your mobile phone. Ask friends with different types of mobile devices to look at it and see what it looks like on as many devices as possible. How does it look? Is everything showing up correctly? Are all the images and formatting in place?

Update Your About Us Page

Second, take a look at your “About Us” page. Read…Every…Word. Make sure that all the information is accurate and up-to-date. You will also want to include links on that page to your social media profiles. This helps to tie your entire online presence together and makes it easy for people to find you.

Check for Spelling and Grammar

Third, check all of the pages of your site for spelling and grammar. Your website is supposed to be a reflection of your businesses and you want your business to have a professional image, right? Well, poor grammar and typos throughout your site don’t convey a lot of trust to me. One or two, here and there might be ok, but when they are on every page, no way.

A good, free tool you can use to spell check your entire site is called CheckDog.com. They will scan up to 100 pages of your site, which should be plenty for most of our readers, and provide you a report of all the likely, possible and unlikely spelling errors on your site. You will need to provide a valid email address to get the full report.

Do Your Keyword Research

Fourth, do some keyword research using Google’s Free Keyword Research Tool. We’re getting a little more advanced here but this step is still easy enough to do on your own. Find the keywords that you feel most people searching for your product or service would use. Then look at how much search volume your keyword phrase has and how much competition.

You are looking for phrases that have relatively high search volume and low competition. I know, that sounds like your going to be searching for a needle in a haystack, but I am sure you will find some gems you can use.

Optimize Your Site

Fifth, go through your site and optimize it for the keywords you found in the previous step. You may need to write some new content if you don’t already have a page on your site directly relating to each phrase you found. Each page should focus on one keyword phrase. If they are closely related you may be able to work in two or three.

Now, from an SEO perspective you need to look at a lot more data. The best, free tool I have found to do that is WebsiteGrader.com. The tool will go through and grade your site and show you how it compares to your competitors and what you can do to improve your grade.

That’s it for today. Did I miss anything? Do you have a comment or thought you would like to share? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you need help with all of this check out our SEO Plans or give me a call and let’s talk.

To your success,
Ken Partain
512-651-2963

Related Posts:

• No Related Post

I’ve noticed a trend lately that is a little disturbing.  This trend is a slow and steady decay of rankings for static websites with very few, if any, regular updates.

The reason for this decline is a recent emphasis by the major search engines to not only serve up the most relevant search results, but the most recent as well.  And if  your site isn’t updated with current, relevant information then you’re losing the game to a site that is.

The sad part is that this is something that could be fixed with very little effort and very little expense.

There are a number of excellent, open-source (free!) content management systems available to the small business owner.  If you have some technical skills you can make the switch yourself.  Otherwise, you’ll need to hire someone to help migrate your site to a new platform and teach you how to add new content quickly and easily.

Costs for this can range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars depending on how many pages you currently have on your site, what functionality you want and whether or not you use a template or have a new design created for you.

Here are a few of the top open-source content management systems available today.

• WordPress (my favorite)
• Joomla
• Drupal
• Dot Net Nuke
• Expression Engine

I’m sure there are lots of others that are very good but these are the ones we have had experience with.

And if you need some help converting your site give me a call.  I’ll be glad to take a look at it and give you a quote.

Photo Credit: Dinosaur Jr. by desdeaquinet on Flikr

Related Posts:

• A Mobile Website for Your Small Business
• The Benefits of Integrating Your Blog and Web Site

Not all code is created equal!

This is the second in a series of five articles on Search Engine Optimization – Back to the Basics.

One of the strongest factors of a website that ranks well is the code itself.  This is something that most small business owners never even consider.  If a site looks good, as far as they are concerned, it’s a good site.

However, the coding plays a big part in how well your website ranks in the search engines.  If your site has a lot of unnecessary code to compensate for lack of technical ability on the part of your web designer, that can cause a problem.

I see this alot with small companies who sign up for cheap web sites because they can build it themselves.  The companies offering such sites have done so many things to make the sites dummy proof that there is an extremely high amount of unnecessary code.  This is true for scripts as well.  Scripts are small (sometimes not so small) pieces of code that make a site function a certain way.

Every bit of code and every script that is required to make your site function properly can potentially slow down the amount of time it takes for your site to load.  Site load time has always been a factor in rankings, but just recently Google made an announcement that page load times are going to be a bigger factor in rankings and have even provided some tools in Webmaster Tools so that site owners can measure their page load times and take steps to improve it.  Keep in mind that if your site is built on one of the do-it-yourself platforms mentioned above that you will have little to no control over these factors.

Our own site is built on the WordPress platform, which, in my opinion, is a very well coded system.  It is an open-source platform so there are literally thousands of programmers around the world working on it every day to make it better.  Every site we have built on the WordPress platform performs significantly better in search results, even than the sites we had previously optimized on other platforms.

It just takes a few seconds to look at a site and tell if there are issues with bloated code.  Give me a call or send me an email and I’ll be glad to take a quick look at your site.

If you would like to know all the other factors affecting your rankings, you may want to consider our Comprehensive Website Marketing Analysis.

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about your on-page content as a ranking factor.

To your success!
Ken Partain

Related Posts:

• Search Engine Optimization – On-page Content
• Get Your Online House in Order – Social Media
• Google Rolls Out Social Search
• Small Business SEO Just Got More Affordable
• Search Engine Optimization – URL Structure

Now through the end of December 2009, we are offering a special deal on our small business websites.  As I mentioned in our December Monthly Marketing Newsletter, if you sign up with us before the end of the year for a new website for your business we will allow you to pay it out over 7 months with absolutely no interest.

All of the sites we create are built on the WordPress blogging platform and are very search engine friendly right out of the box.  We will install a complete set of our recommended plugins and show you exactly how to use it to maximize your web presence. We’ll also set it up so that it integrates seamlessly with your social media profiles on Twitter and Facebook.

WordPress is so easy to use.  If you can send an email or write a letter on your computer you already know how to use it.

The price is going up on January 1st, so if you have been thinking about a new website, don’t waste another minute.

Related Posts:

• What Is The Value of a New Client?
• Small Business SEO Just Got More Affordable
• The Benefits of Integrating Your Blog and Web Site