Search engine optimization (SEO) for local small businesses is absolutely essential for getting more traffic, exposure, and new clients from the web. Even with the social media boom, it’s important not to forget about how important scaling the great wall of Google can be.

As you’re probably aware, the top listing on Google gets over 70% of ALL clicks for any given keyword or phrase. If your business website is not at #1, you’re not even in the game.

I have what I call the 1:1 rule which basically says that people are lazy and will not navigate past 1 click or 1 second to find their solution online. Here’s a great video and demonstration I did about it on an earlier blog post.

So, how do you grab the #1 slot on Google?

The answer may be simpler than you think. First, you must make sure your website is optimized in terms of on-page SEO.

After that, you need to start an aggressive campaign of anchor text link-building to your main web property. This falls in the realm of what’s termed off-page SEO.

Factors that influence on-page SEO are things like the website meta-title, meta keyword tags, meta-description, and relevant site content. It’s important to note that you, as a small business owner, should find a webmaster that can do this work for you. You should NOT spend your time, energy, and focus on technical stuff like this.

Find an expert to get things done fast. You’re savvy enough to know that time is money.

Once you have everything on-page optimized and containing the keywords you’re looking to rank at the top of Google for, you can now advance and work on off-page SEO. By far, this is THE most critical aspect that determines how well your company website ranks online.

To really maximize your off-page SEO to the fullest extent, you have to build incoming links from blogs, articles, forums, press releases, videos, and other valuable web real estate. These should be pointed back to your website address.

You don’t just want any old links, though. You need anchor text backlinks. These are simple keywords that are clickable, which link to your site.

Here’s an example —> chiropractic marketing

Lastly, it’s essential that you’re sharing your website and fresh content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg, etc. The more that you share your content, in conjunction with others sharing it on social media (ie… re-tweets and Facebook shares), the higher you will appear on Google.

This isn’t a theory either. Social sharing is now having a dramatic impact on rankings and SEO.

Here’s another key tip.

When you do get Twitter re-tweets, Diggs or Facebook shares / likes, ideally you want them from authority profiles and / or companies. Google favors this and weighs the individual influence of each entity. Most small businesses are unaware of this fact.

So, not all social media sharing is equal. Google understands certain brands and people carry more authority and it rewards those that are recommended by them.

As you know, the web is evolving very fast.

If you don’t keep-up with the changes you risk your website and content sinking in the vast sea of the internet like an anchor. If you’re looking to transform your weak presence online and create new possibilities in your business marketing, this will do it fast.

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