Yesterday, while describing the important features of SEO for small business to one of my clients, I realized that this is one of the more considerable topics to be shared with readers. So, here we go.

When it comes to small business SEO, the main focus goes to local listings like Google Places. If the web crawlers found your keywords for localized market then the search engines will flash their local listings at the top of the page, else give your local listing under your website listing. Hence, it becomes essential for you to optimize the local listings. Though the algorithms for local ranking are quite different from regular SEO but it follows the same concepts. Following are the main steps for the same:

1. Claim and fill: This is considered to be the first step for local listing. Claim your local listing and fill out the Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local.

2. NAP: Second step is to collect quotes for your NAP, i.e. Name, Address and Phone number. Also, try to keep the data of NAP clean and clear and make sure that your business has been listed in at least 100 local listing directories.

3. Reviews: Third step is to prepare a productive strategy to attain reviews from all the various local listings. This step will definitely help you to increase your small business.

4. Contact details: Try to fill your Contact Us page with the exact address supported by a Google map integration.

5. Geo-meta tags: Try to stuff geo-meta tags into the web pages to exhibit the particular local region related to the website.

Hey friends, once again I am here to discuss another important feature of SEO. You must be aware about Index and Cache, two most vital parts of a SEO strategy. In simple words, these two procedures help you to check the results in respect of your hard work. Hence, I decided to share brief notes about the two procedures to give the art of SEO a clearer look.

Indexing of a Webpage: Index is a process of listing the webpage in the data base of search engines. Renowned search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN etc. focus on the full-text indexing of online, natural language documents. As well as media types like videos, audios and graphics are also searchable via this indexing procedure. For more clarity on Indexing, type Site:www.westersoftwares.com in the search bar of Google or any other search engine.

Cache of a Webpage: Cache is the process when web crawlers come to the web page and take a snapshot/copy of it. This copy is stored in the Cache and is referred as a cached version of the web page. So that, any visitor can check the cached version whenever he/she click on the “cache” button underneath a Google result. Also, in cases when the website is in offline mode. The Cached version also contains the date and time, when web crawlers last visited it. In order to check a cached version, type cache:www.westernsoftwares.com in the search bar of the search engines.

Hey friends, I am here again with a new refreshing topic. This time, I would like to share the secrets of an attractive website that can easily hold the visitors as well as web spiders. So, let’s leave the introduction behind and start discussing about the three main features that are must for a website.

The very first one is Readable text. You entered a keyword in the search bar of a search engine and clicked on the first result that appeared on the result page. But what you see was just confusing and unreadable due to the dark hues and nasty background design with small font size text. Reading this mere example must give you frown lines. Hence, it’s advisable, not to use amok backgrounds with complicated texts as it will make keep your readers confused and will also offer an amateur look to the site. Use generic font size, font style and readable font color.

Another important feature is Navigation of the website. According to reports, clear and consistent navigation of a website is one of the vital reasons to hold the visitors. A cluttered navigation cannot hold the visitor for more than one minute. So, try to make the hierarchy of your site logical and uniform. Also, include the site map or index page for a site that have more than 10 pages.

The third and the most important feature is the usage of Codes or the programming languages. You must be aware about the fact that codes are the lifeline of a website. Excellent coding gives a compelling and eye-catchy website. But have you ever wondered that whether the developed codes are search engine friendly or not? Of course, Not!!!

Most of the developers don’t even bother to change the codes according to the search engines, once the coding has been done. However, codes should be Search Engine friendly. There are various mistakes done by a web developer but the most common is the usage of unique titles and description of the pages in the included files. Hence, it’s an advice to avoid the same. Also, use a forward back slash ‘/’ at the end of every URL.

Being in Internet Marketing for the last 5 years, I have come across with some main features that are nonetheless essentials for a website to get high rankings from various web crawlers. Hence, I decided to share the same with you, especially those who are seeking information on SEO.

Let’s start with Domain Name. Actually, domain name is something that if selected wisely can avail higher preferences from search engine crawlers while providing results for particular keywords. For instance, if you are planning to start a shopping portal naming “ABC stores” then try to get the same domain name, so that whenever a user enter ABC stores in search bar of any search engine then your website gets higher ranking due to the domain name.

After the Domain Name, it comes to Domain Age. Alike humans, the age of the domain also matters a lot. In SEO, if two competitors are having the same domain name where one has started the business 10 years back and the other have launched it recently then the web crawlers will give more preferences to the prior one whose domain is 10 years old in age.

Meta tags and Page title grabs the 3^rd place in the list. If your web page title has the article name in it then it will definitely please the web crawlers. Similarly, try to stuff the elements of the web page in to the Meta tags and descriptions to attract more attention of the web spiders.

At the fourth place, it is advisable to avoid the usage of frames as scrolling bar is not craw able. Instead it creates confusion for the web crawlers to judge which element of the page to look at.

URL PageName comes on the fifth position. Try to keep a URL PageName that has relevant extensions and more information about your web page in place of the one that consist programming codes in it. This thing assists web crawlers to understand your web page in a better and easier manner.

Last but not the least; try to establish Strong Internal linking on your website just like Wikipedia Concept. Interlinking your site’s content, once again allows the web spiders to give more preferences to your site.