If you have a website for your home business, try this test. Go to a search engine like Google.com, Yahoo.com or MSN.com and type in what you think someone would be searching for if they were looking for your product or service.

Now look at the results.  Is your site listed?  Is it on the next page?  What about one of the following pages? 

The great thing about the Internet is that there are potential customers and clients that are actively searching for what you have to offer, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But if your site is not in the first one or two pages of search results, chances are your business is not reaching its targeted audience.  Studies show that people don’t look beyond the first few pages of search results to find what they are looking for. 

The good news is that you can attract and capture these qualified leads by making simple adjustments to your website that can make it easier for search engines to find your site and place it higher in the search engine rankings.  This process is called search engine optimization and there are several basic techniques you can do yourself.

Choose the appropriate keywords. Number one.  Most important.  You must choose the appropriate keywords– and they might not be what you think they are. (We’ll tell you what to do with those keywords in the next steps.)

Keywords are the words or phrases that people type in to query a search engine.  It makes no sense to target words that no one is searching for. How do you find your keywords?  Research!  There are software programs that actually compile this information and will tell you how many times a day someone is looking for a particular phrase.  But figuring out your keywords also takes some plain common sense.

Let’s say you have an at-home party planning business in New York City.  Each page of your site needs to focus on the keywords that are relevant to that particular page.  To choose “party planners” or “party planning” would be too general.  There are a lot party planners online and someone in Oregon will not be interested in your services.  Better keyphrases might be “New York City party  planners,”  “New York City event planners”, “Manhattan party planners”, “event planners in Manhattan”, etc.  You want to pick the specific word or phrase that a potential customer will actually be typing into a search.  This includes being cognizant of plural forms of the keywords as well – Manhattan event planner is not the same as Manhattan event planners. 

Tip:  People search for keyphrases more than a single keyword.  If you sell books on your website, don’t target the keyword “books”.  That is much too general and competitive.  Choose a keyword that is specifically relevant to what you sell – maybe it is “travel books” or “personalized children’s books.”

Utilize your Title Tag effectively .   Now that you know your targeted keywords, you will need to optimize your Title Tag.  This isn’t the file name of your page, but the words that appear at the top left of your web browser as well as, in most cases, the clickable link that will appear in the search engines.  Most search engines like Google give this tag a lot of weight.

Bad examples of actual titles that major companies and organizations still use:
Welcome to our web site
Bob’s Web site
Home
Insert title here
Untitled (this is definitely the worst)

In our party planner example, an effective Title Tag for the home page might be:
<title> Premiere New York City party planners– Jane R. Doe Events </title>

It uses the keyphrase “New York City party planners” in the Title Tag as well as introduces the name of the business.

Make sure to use your targeted keyword phrases in the page copy.   Search engines like Google want text and so do your customers.  Flash web sites and graphic intensive websites without text do not achieve high rankings in the search engines because they are not easily “crawlable” by the search engine spiders – the technical “robots” that read the code of your site. If you must use Flash or lots of graphics, be sure to also include some keyword-rich text on the page or have an html version.  This is what the search engines look for.  The search engines cannot read graphics.

Each page should focus on between one and three keywords.  Use them throughout the page in headlines, subheads and body copy in ways that, of course, read well and make sense.

Here is some sample copy using keywords in the text: 
Welcome to Jane R. Doe Events
Experienced and affordable New York City party planners
If you are looking for a party planner in Manhattan, Jane R. Doe Events is your perfect choice. 
Click here and fill out our contact form.  One of our highly-qualified New York City party planners will be in touch with you within 48 hours. 

Tip:  Say your site offers party planning for different functions, such as children’s parties, corporate events and weddings, you will want to separate each function onto its own page and assign relevant keywords to each page accordingly.  Not doing so will dilute the focus of your targeted words. For example:  “New York City children’s parties” for the children’s party page, “New York City wedding planner” for the wedding planning page, etc.

Create a site map.   A site map makes it easier for a search engine spider to find all your pages.  It is basically a categorized list of all the pages on your site like an index in a book.  The site map should be linked to from all your pages.

Don’t worry so much about Meta Tags, BUT, you should still include them. Your description tag will be used as the description of your website in some search engine results pages and should entice searches to click on your listing.  The keyword tag should include the words that you are targeting in your title and copy.

In our party planner example, this might be the Meta description:
meta name="description" content="The New York City party planners at Jane R. Doe Events are second to none.  Our experienced staff will flawlessly execute your special day from start to finish.  We plan weddings, corporate events, children’s parties and more. Contact Jane R. Doe events today!">

Submit your site to the major search engines and directors such as Yahoo!  (www.Yahoo.com) and the Open Directory Project (www.DMOZ.org). Find relevant sites and specialized directories that you can contact to request links to your site.   Search engines look for relevant inbound links as a vote of confidence. 

Search engine optimization levels the playing field so that all businesses, small and large have an opportunity to make an impression on the Internet.   No matter how small your business, if the search engines can find you, so will your customers!

Katherine Sanders is a copywriter for Prime Visibility, a New York based search engine optimization and Internet marketing company dedicated to improving the online presence of clients' websites.  For more information about Prime Visibility visit www.PrimeVisibility.com.  Katherine is also a mom of two and the editor and publisher of Narrations, a newsletter by and for children who are touched by adoption. Read more about Narrations and download the first issue for free at www.NarrationsNews.com.