A rare guest post, by Connie Davis.

Ensuring that your website ranks high in search results is an important step towards developing a successful business. By using what is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO, you are not only proving your value to search engines that rank your site, but also to customers who take into account higher ranked results.

SEO doesn’t have to be a confusing or daunting challenge, and in fact if you’re marketing your website well, many of the things that you are already doing are part of the process. Search Engine Optimization, simply stated, directs traffic to your website.

Search engines like Google or Bing use a specific algorithm in order to return relevant search results to users. By scanning websites for a few basic components, search engines analyze and index each page on the web; things such as words on the page, the title, links, the words used in links, and reputation.

Also, by assessing websites that have a lot of inbound links (links from other sources that redirect to your site), and the words used within those links, the ranking of a site is given greater prominence over others.

Finally, the site’s reputation is taken into account. If there are many links to your site that seem random, or don’t match with the content you provide, or if they’re simply from other sites that aren’t reputable, your ranking will lower as a result of the association.

Whether you choose to do it yourself, or would just rather it be streamlined, there are many platforms that provide SEO services. Platforms and products like Rio SEO, BrightEdge, SEOmoz and Conductor can not only audit your website and analyze where improvements in SEO can be made, but also suggest keywords and content to add in order to gain more visibility in search results.

If you are not sure that you’d like to invest in SEO platforms right away, but want to make improvements, there are many small things you can do in order to gain a better page ranking:

Content is King!

Providing well written and engaging content is likely to get your website noticed. Since search engines can also analyze the context of your content; they can distinguish whether a site is just a random jumble of keywords made to look like something that a user might find relevant.

Descriptive titles

Creating a bold and catchy title is one of the first steps in defining what your website or webpage is all about. This will be the first thing that browsers see, and should immediately drive them towards your page.

Research other websites

Contact other websites that you think have a good ranking, and would benefit from talking about your website. Offer to write a guest post for them with backlinks to your site. Use the keywords that will be relevant to your site, making it more likely to be viewed as a trusted source by search engines.

And finally, let’s talk about a few SEO tips:

1.      Keyword Tag stuffing

Do not stuff Keyword Tags with meaningless keywords; in fact, don’t even spend too much time on this tag. These tags are not as relevant as they once were. Simply place your headline once within the keywords and description tags.

2.      Submission software – NO!

Don’t rely on submission software to submit to search engines; do it yourself and submit only once! Do not submit every two weeks and don’t submit more than a single page.   Your site will get indexed with a nice link trail.

3.      Don’t bother with a Subdomain  – Yea, really!

Put your content on your own domain! You will not get full credit if a high profile site links to your blog at blog.domain.com. Use a reverse proxy on domain.com/blog. 301 redirects don’t transfer all the link juice, so it’s better to service domain.com/blog directly.

4.      Use alt attributes on your images

Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes:

1. It places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text – the higher the search engine rankings.
2. It helps the visually impaired who use a screen reader. They may not be able to see the image but, they will be able to know what your image is.

Using assertive SEO tactics will result in your website gaining an audience. Since search engines are constantly improving in order to bring the most relevant sources for users, your website must adhere to a formula that users are looking for and be in the top ranking of search results.

Using the straightforward and simple methods above will drive more traffic to your website that will soon gain a reputation of a trustworthy and content-rich site.

This post was written by Connie Davis, a writer for the personal finance website NerdWallet, where you can find advice on a range of topics from SEO tips to saving money with discount coupons.

Many business owners, in our initial discussions, ask me…

“Hey Joe, what’s next in the world of business?”

Or this…

“Hey Joe, what big innovation can take my business to the next level?”

My answer usually sets them back a few notches…

“There isn’t one.”

I’m famous for telling my clients EVERYTHING they don’t want to hear.  But let me explain why…

This notion that there is a “What’s next?” for any business, small or large… is a complete myth.  It’s a waste of your time to pursue this idea, until you have the “What’s now?” mastered and delivered 100%.

The more surprising fact of the matter is… almost NO business has done that yet. Not even the biggest, most profitable companies have mastered all of the basics yet.  If a company provides great customer service, for example, and over-focus on it… they typically lose in the administrative or analytics part of the business.

This isn’t to say there aren’t a handful of businesses who seem to have all of the bases covered.  I’m leaving that as a general statement though, because I have yet to come across any business that does everything well (different from trying to please everyone).

Let’s dig in a bit further here…

When you keep hunting for “What’s next?”… you lose sight of the basics, and your business begins to enter an endless cycle of hunting for magic bullets from which to profit.  You can only do that for so long, that is NOT sustainable.

Here are the basics…

• Listen to your customers.  You don’t have to do “everything” they say, but if a good portion of your customer base is saying the same thing… examine it deeper.  NOTE:  By the way, listening to your customers will lead you to “What’s next?” automatically.
• Business is about people.  That includes your customers, but also your employees, vendors, and other people connected to your business.  If you don’t treat all of them exceptionally well, your business will be doomed with small margins as you compete on price.
• Know your numbers.  You might be good at whatever you do or offer in your business (e.g. you’re a good mechanic), but you MUST understand your business.  You have to know what is selling and what isn’t, and above all, use this information to optimize your business to take care of the people who support it (  <— BIG point).
• Don’t be lazy.  Most business owners are lazy.  There are NO shortcuts, no magic pills, a Facebook page WILL NOT skyrocket your business profits overnight, you can’t just use direct mail once, fail, and assume it doesn’t work anymore etc…
• Nobody cares about your business… at first.  I don’t care if you have the greatest mousetrap in the world, you will NOT be able to sell it unless you get over the fact that nobody cares about your business.  That being said, if you have a remarkable product or service, a certain group of people in your customer base WILL care, so long as you take care of them like royalty ( <— ANOTHER big point).

One big final point…

Don’t EVER sacrifice the people that support your business in the name of profits.  Don’t hire until you need to, don’t sacrifice customer service EVER, and holy shit don’t cut the marketing or training budget.

Here’s where the die-hard, “we’re in business for the money” entrepreneurs will challenge me I’m sure, but I have one point that even you cannot challenge:

If you truly, wholeheartedly have EVERYTHING in place and optimized, you’ll also have a culture people care about (customers and employees alike).  Your profits are a measuring stick of how well you’re doing that.  Google started out very optimized, and now, it’s VERY profitable and has an employee culture worth talking about.

Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t a perfect example of any business… because almost none have mastered the basics.  Almost no business has “What’s now?” down, 100% of the time.  Google is a good example of that too.

Big businesses seem to get so big, they rely heavily on automation, at the expense of their customers.

But heed my warning… automated systems will only get any business so far.

Once the shiny, glossy nature of the digital world has lost its luster in about 5 – 20 years, entrepreneurs will begin again to come up with the next age of culture-oriented companies focused on solving real-world problems.  Actually some already are (note: these are NOT investing recommendations).

A few of the next age of real, problem-solving innovations will challenge Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Target, Wal-Mart, etc… etc… for BIG pieces of their market share.

That is, unless they focus more on “What’s now?”

Notice too, that I did NOT focus on “growth” in this article.  Sometimes, smaller, more focused companies are in better position to stay with the basics.  They don’t grow too big for their shorts (usually at the expense of customers and employees).  They are also more profitable when they do it right.  You won’t see them on the NASDAQ though.

We have to change the way we’re thinking about business people.  The “profits before people” mentality needs to change.  But you don’t have to sacrifice profits (in the long-term) to accomplish that.

I recently read a post on Publisher’s Weekly debating whether or not Amazon, the virtual giant, was “good” or “bad” for publishing.

Truth is… it doesn’t matter.

Amazon is good for the customer, and that’s all that matters… it’s here to stay… so publishing had better wake up and adapt.

In this same post, the debate for the “bad” side consisted of the same whining I usually read… “Wah!  Amazon is too much competition!  Do we want no more bookstores or other booksellers?  Do we want them to all go away?”

To which I say, quit whining… yes, Amazon is huge, but for a reason.  Wal Mart is also huge, but for a similar reason.

So don’t compete with them, play a different game.  Do something that Amazon doesn’t do right now (same day delivery anyone?)… and IF Amazon chooses to compete there too, do something else.

But listen up “traditional publishing industry”… quit being fucking lazy and throwing your hands up in the air like a 3 year old.  Adapt… or close up shop… either way, this is business.

And yes, the customer DOES want Amazon, that is… until another book business, or similar business steps up and offers us something we want that Amazon doesn’t deliver.  “Publishing” seems to forget this is all about the customer, not whether or not Amazon is good for publishing.

Can you deliver something Amazon can’t?