If you’re a small business owner, you know that if you want something done, you have to either spend money to get someone to do it for you or you need to spend time to get it done yourself.

Search engine optimization isn’t any different.

The good news is that SEO isn’t brain surgery. The concept is simple.

The bad news is that SEO isn’t easy. It can, in fact, be time-consuming and annoying work for many people.

There is a small set of basic rules that any web page or web site has to follow to get a good chance at a high ranking in the search engines and the benefit of the traffic that follows those high rankings.

  1. Your website has to be crawlable by search engines.
  2. The content (page titles, keyword usage, on-page linking) on your web site has to be good.
  3. You need quality inbound links from other relevant websites.

And really, that’s it!

It’s not all that complicated. As long as your small business website follows those rules and focuses on doing the basics better than your competition, you’ll be off to a great start.

Remember, your website isn’t going to succeed on its own. You can’t just throw up a small business website and expect it to bring in new customers. You need to invest something into your website after it launches: you have to either spend your money or you’ll have to spend your time.

For those of you who can’t afford the fees for SEO or SEM consulting, I recommend researching the art for yourself. There are many good blogs and websites on the Internet that focus on search engine optimization, as well as many excellent guides and books that you can buy.

Three of the best books that I’ve read in the past year on the subject of SEO include:

The SEO Book by Aaron Wall – widely regarded by experts in the field as the SEO book you should buy if you only buy one.

The Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing by Jennifer Laycock – An excellent resource for small business owners who want to maintain a presence on the Internet

Search Engine Optimization: An Hour A Day by Jennifer Grappone is also an excellent resource for people who don’t want to spend days and days working on SEO.

I’ve read all three of those books within the last year, and learned something from each one. I really don’t think there’s a better value in terms of cost versus benefit than these books, and any small business on a tight SEO budget should probably begin by buying one or all three and going from there.

Reading through those books will at least give you an idea of what SEO is all about and what you’re looking at when it comes to spending money or time on SEO.

And, if the time comes when you want to hire someone to build incoming links to your website, or to develop content designed to bring in search engine traffic, give me a call. I’d be happy to help.