For those of you who don’t know what SEO means, SEO stands for search engine optimization, or in layman’s terms, the holy grail to get your site ranked higher within the search engine Goliaths of Google and Bing. Ensuring that your site is SEO friendly, can be the difference in blowing up your business like Puff Daddy in a rap video or tanking faster than Brittney Spears’ career.

What I have outlined for you here are 5 of the most common mistakes I see with Small and Medium-Size Businesses:

1. Poor CMS (Content Management System)

A number of CMS’s have very poor SEO capabilities. For example, they do not create title tags, headings, anchor text and/or search friendly URLs. At the same time, after the developer has turned the website over,  these CMS’s are very difficult for the “non-computer geek” to add new content in the future, thus leaving the business at the mercy of the web developer who has now disappeared.

We use and advise our clients to use a CMS called WordPress. We have found WordPress to be extremely easy to add future content for small and medium businesses, while having a great SEO architecture already built into the site.

2. Flash Sites

Although flash sites are aesthetically pleasing, they are horrible to a search engine. Essentially, flash sites to a Google or Bing search engine look like just an image and the content that is on the page is not read. If the search engine is just seeing an image, they are not going to give your site authority for it to be ranked higher within the search engine—translation, flash sites es no bueno.

3. Thin Content Pages

Your website is your #1 promotional tool for your business, shout it out and explain to the world what you do. Create pages with rich content and not just an image. Thin content pages are looked at as low-quality pages by the search engines, and thus, affect your search rankings.

4. Poor Use of Anchor Text

A number of clients I see use “read more” or “click here” links. Not a good idea. Linking within your content pages is called anchor texts and they help to tell the search engines what the page you are linking to is all about. If you are putting “read more”, then the search engine thinks that next page is about…Read More.

5. No Promotion After the Site is Up

This is probably the most important of all of the mistakes. Many businesses think the job is done once their website is launched. Clients think that now that they have a website, time to see the clients walk through my door. No chance! Now is the time to let people know who you are. Get on the social media channels and express yourself and promote your website. Advertise online through the endless platforms that are available. The more people that know about your website,   the better the chance they will link to you (increases your SEO rankings) and the better the chance they will be a customer–$$$.

If you have any questions or would like to talk with us in more detail, please feel free to

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