Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is big business. Many Internet companies proclaim that they can increased your web traffic and page ranking. Of course, they charge big bucks to help you improve your web site traffic. What you are really paying for is their so-called expertise or what some call intellectual capital. This leads to a simple question: If you could reallocate some of your limited marketing dollars through your own efforts and achieve your small business Internet marketing goals, how would that affect your business? During these last few months, this is precisely the action that I took.

First Lesson Learned: SEO is more about simplicity than complexity. The challenge is to understand the simplicity within the complexity of search engines, robots and key words.

To understand the simplicity of SEO begins by returning to why web sites exist. Originally, web sites were considered to be cyber space storefronts. As the Internet evolved, web sites evolved with incredible graphics and even more information including the ability to sell products and services through a “Shopping Cart.”

Today, web sites are still evolving and objectives ever expanding. Some are used to demonstrate subject matter expertise while others are to share collective information within a company’s internal and external customers. Each micro second trillions of bytes of data travel through this “Super Highway.”

Returning to the highways of yesteryear, what do we remember? Possibly, the Burma Shave slogans on the numerous road signs come to mind? If you can recollect the Burma Shave signs, the product Burma Shave was always on the last sign. (You can visit http://www.fiftiesweb.com/burmal.htm for verification.)

Second Lesson Learned: SEO is about what you do, not who you are.

Advertising agencies understood the value of benefits and that people bought based upon benefits. For example, women did not want rough cheeks and men enjoyed driving cars “wide open.” So what does this have to do with your web site you might ask?

Third Lesson Learned: I needed my own “Burma Signs.”
Each web site has a page title or what I respectfully ask you to now consider them as your own “Burma Signs” on the Internet Super Highway. Your page title is one long uninterrupted road sign instead of several small ones. By using http://inventory.overture.com , you can determine what key words that you wish to place on your “Burma Signs.”

When I began revising my website, I had a page title that began with ADVANCED SYSTEMS. In checking key word searches, I learned that ADVANCED SYSTEMS was searched less than 700 times during the previous month. However, when I keyed in the word “training,” I received over 165,000 searches. Title selection just became quite simple. (Note: See second lesson learned.)

So if you wish to hit your target of increased web traffic, then simply begin with your page title. Use key words that describe what you do and not who you are. Remember to try to keep the title to 77 characters and include your location because this is the Internet highway and sometimes travelers do get lost.

Word Count 511

Copyright 2005(c) Leanne Hoagland-Smith, http://www.processspecialist.com

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