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Running a small- to medium-sized business with a small- to medium-sized marketing budget isn’t always easy with the big guys playing on the same playground.

With these simple steps, you can get more bang for your marketing buck… for not a single buck more.

1. Blog!

You’ve heard it a million times, but for good reason. One of many factors search engine algorithms use to determine how valuable a website is (and thus how high it should rank in search results) is how “fresh” your content is. If your site hasn’t been updated in a year, it’s probably not that relevant, is it?

How to blog and win: Blog about what your target market wants to read. Blog often and write something your customers care about – a blog for the sake of posting a blog does nothing for you or your customer. Identify your target market, figure out what they want, and figure out what info you can give away to them. Use your target keywords ONLY IF THEY MAKE SENSE. You’re writing for humans; don’t overdo it.

2. Simple SEO with your existing CMS

Many miss out on simple search engine optimization opportunities. Easy things you can do to help search engines find and sort your content properly include:

• Use concise, descriptive page and blog post titles.
• Make sure your URLS are related to your page content. The URL for a blog post titled “Small Business Online Marketing Tips” should have those words in the url. It should NOT look like this: www.your-site.com/=?392post_id74389… that doesn’t help anyone.
• Adding ‘alt’ tags to your images that describe the image. This helps robots read it!
• Upload correctly-sized images. Uploading a large image then resizing it causes slower load times for your site (and likely lower rankings).
• Make sure your page or blog post content is clear, on-topic, and concise. If you don’t need to say it, don’t! Save it for the next post.

3. Use calls to action… often!

Basic marketing works online, too, because people are still people. Suggestion is powerful – use it, but use it well.

Your website should have a visible call to action on every page, whether that’s a simple contact form in the sidebar, an email list signup box in the upper-right corner, a big green “SIGN UP NOW!” button, an offer for a free consultation with a phone number… whatever. Try suggesting action at the end of your next blog post like “Call us today for your free consultation at 123-456-7890!” or “Take action! Share the knowledge!” next to your social media sharing buttons.

Taking these simple steps every time will get you and your content on it’s way to Google glory. But before you go… help someone else out by sharing this article or giving it a “+” below!

**Old register image credit: Jo Jakeman

Cheers to a happy and prosperous 2013!

Tip: If you’re serious about your site’s SEO, start by taking advantage of our free SEO audit. Just click the image above to get started!