If you’re a small business owner and the words small business search engine marketing or SEO basically mean Chinese to you, then by the time you’re done reading this article you’ll have a greater understanding of these terms and have the edge to actually profit from them in your small business.First of all… Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has somewhat become a field where a lot of lingo is used to make themselves feel important (in my opinion anyway…) But it’s really not that hard once the whole concept of SEO is explained in plain simple English!In simple terms SEO means doing what the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo want. Because, when doing so, you make it easy for them to deliver the best experience for the end user.  The sad fact is spammers and operators using shady techniques (aka: black hat) have made optimizing websites a lot harder for the every day business owners. These people are always trying to game the search engines with useless spammy content, which gives users a poor experience.Google hates this, and is continually working on improving and changing their algorithms to make the user experience more perfect and enjoyable.In my opinion… no “black hat” methods are needed. When you get educated about Google and the other search engines, you simply do what they’re asking… build a site that’s relevant to what you are trying to optimize for so you gain trust with the search engines and become an authority in their eyes.So how do you make this happen?Well… here is a starting point, it is by no means the whole picture… but here’s 5 points which will get you out of the mud and give your website a good foundation to get onto page one of the search engines.

Your domain has a massive weigh factor in how Google ranks your website, age, past reputation, keyword density all play a matter in determining how valuable and relevant your website is to what you are trying to optimize for. (Hint: yes get a name with your keyword in it, and it will put you a long way ahead of the competition!)

The structure of your website. Google loves organized content. So you ought to organize your website content under categories which are relevant to your websites overall theme. Don’t post random articles all over your page without them being relevant to your sites theme or unorganized with no structure.

You need onsite SEO: this is really simple… don’t loose sleep over it. Basically have your keywords in your title tag (this is the name on top of the website) in your keyword tags and H1 tag, you can also have the keyword sprinkled throughout your content (don’t overdo it, if your keyword density is too high, Google will see your site as spammy.)

Link building. This is a major factor. When other sites link to your site Google sees your site as an authority and will give you a higher rank. The more links pointing at your site the more relevant Google sees your website and the more authority it gives to your site (there is a lot more to this concept, but this is a good starting point to just build some links pointing back at your website. eg. Make a comment on someone else blog or forum and include your website in the signature… it’s as easy as that)

You need activity! Google loves changing sites. Don’t keep your website static. Have a section where people can comment, regularly update your site… better yet, have an RSS feed attached to your site which automatically updates every time you add content. It will definitely encourage the Google spiders to come back and visit your site more often, and at the time of writing this article activity on your site has proven to be a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. As said this is a rough guide, and each section can be expanded on, at a much deeper level. But following these 5 steps will at least get your website out of the mud and towards the first page of Google and the other search engines.As said this is a rough guide, and each section can be expanded on, at a much deeper level. But following these 5 steps will at least get your website out of the mud and towards the first page of Google and the other search engines.