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If you’re a small business owner in the XXI century, you really need to keep an eye on-line. In this day and age, it’s not just about setting up a pretty website and hoping for the best. You need to develop a strategy to use the potential of Internet marketing to leverage your business… otherwise you’ll soon be left behind of your competition.

Over the past decade, a fledging industry has blossomed around SEO (search engine optimization). There are SEO professionals in high demand, whose specialty is getting websites to rank higher on the search engines. If you can afford it, you should consider hiring such a professional; but what if you’re just getting started looking into these options, or what if you’re running a small business with very limited resources?

In that case, there are simple but precious SEO insights that can get you ahead of the curve. Optimizing your website to rank for certain keywords is not as complicated as you may think, and it can get you many benefits over time. This article will run you through the basics:

1: The Importance of choosing the right domain name
Something as simple as choosing the right domain can get you a sizeable advantage in terms of search engine rankings, since that’s a key optimization strategy. If you can include your main keyword in the domain name without the domain getting too long or strange-looking, that’s more power to you!

2: Setting SEO-friendly URL structures
Many CMS packages usually rely on a cryptic number-coded URL structure by default (Something like http://yourwebsite.com/p=?123123). This is not a good SEO practice; it’s much better to use a keyword descriptive URL structure that generates URI in the ways of http://yourwebsite.com/proper-keyword-descriptive-title.htm. If your website’s pages look like the former example, you need to get it changed ASAP, since having keyword relevant page titles is another big ranking factor.

3: Social Media Integration
Social media is a great way to expand and interact with your customer base, and you should take this opportunity with both hands. Especially since it’s really fairly easy to get started with it; just set up some social share buttons in strategic locations of your website, and that should help your visitors help you spread word about your website.

4: Keyword research as article planning tool
If you make a point of adding new and interesting content to your website, you’re already on the right track. But you’ll get the most results from your effort if your learn to plan article topics with the help of a keyword research tool. Sometimes just a simple change in wording of a title can make a huge difference in terms of search engine rankings. Try to understand what your audience is looking for in the search engines, and do your best to deliver the information they want!

5: The science of keyword relevant headlines
Even though it’s a good practice to include relevant keywords in your article and post titles, it doesn’t mean you can make your titles sound like gibberish and get away with it. In fact, you should spend extra time thinking of catchy titles which are also optimized for the right keywords. As much as possible, try to think of titles that are keyword optimized *and* attractive to the human eye.

6: The art of writing appealing titles
Did you know that the overwhelming majority of Internet surfers decide whether to read an article or skip on it based on the title alone? Keep this in mind next time you’re composing a new article! Too many website owners pour their hearts out writing great content, and then fail to think of a title that draws people in.

That’s all it takes! Keep this advice in mind and the SEO puzzle will become clearer to you every day… and your website traffic will grow consistently, along with your business.

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