Best Practices Keyword Research

There are a few simple actions that you should make your standard practices as you research your Small Business Website.

Don't feed your competitors.

Google records every click. And every positive result improves the Google rank. Don't click on your competitors links from Google. Instead, copy the address and paste it into the address bar of a blank window. Additionally, if you are a google toolbar (or gmail) user- don't paste those results into the same browser program. When researching keyword results, I use the Firefox browser to search- but I copy the addresses of competitors into an Internet Explorer window. And I don't use the google toolbar for Internet Explorer so they is no tracking.

Don't get banned.

The search engines' business purpose is to supply useful listings. They understand better than anyone how much junk is on the internet. They have procedures for removing junk sites from their results- and it is surprisingly easy to turn your website into junk. If you are using a consulting firm to help you with search placement, make sure that the following practices are NOT what you have purchased.

Link Farming. Link farming refers to services that let you buy links back to your site. This is a junk technique and the Google algorithms don't take long to figure it out. Junk links to your site will result in removal from the results pages.

Duplicate Content. Repetitive Pages or repetitive paragraphs are understood by the search engines to be junk. If your text is too repetitive- you'll be ignored.

Keyword Density. It's possible to write many copies of your keywords into the invisible parts of your Website. If the ratio of actual written content compared to these word lists is too low- you'll be ignored.

Play Fair, but COMPETE!

The Best Practices for achieving quality search rankings need to be durable. It's not like you won't be in business next year. The best practice turns out to be honesty and a willingness to take good advice. This means the advice from the search engines. Well written and useful information is the clearest and most certain path to working with the search engines. Keep your focus on the things that your customers get- and this is usually the things that your small business does well. I've said on other pages here that one of the benefits for a business in developing their content is focus. You, your employees, your neighbors and your customers will understand your business best by you stating clearly what is true about your business.

Marketing, then Advertising, then Sales. Frequently, a small business begins with the intention of supplying to every possible kind of customer shopping for products in their general category. Smart advertising usually ignores the 'catch-all' methods and focuses instead on communicating things that you do well- that you do profitably- those things that keep customers coming back.

My name is Kevin Combs, a writer and consultant who helps VERY small business compete against larger competitors. I am a true believer in the small business person as the creator of the "American Dream." Please look for my writings on how to create small business advertising