As a local business leader, small business search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for the future success of your company. Many businesses nowadays rely on their website traffic for business leads. According to cloud accounting company Fresh Books, small business search engine optimization “can be your biggest referrer for traffic.” The basic idea is to use SEO to boost your search engine ranking, but if done incorrectly, it can actually harm your site. Here’s some handy advice to help you reach your online marketing goals, so you can get back to running your business.

First of all, you can do some on site work with the code, streamlining it for search engines, but it’s not sufficient enough for good small business search engine optimization. According to Adam Stetzer, President of online marketing solution company Hubshout, way too many business get stuck at this starting line. It’s best to hire local Internet marketing specialists and search engine optimizers to do some tune ups, and then move on.

As you research small business search engine optimization, you’re going to run into the phrase, “content is king.” What this refers to is that content marketing, an SEO strategy, is the best way to boost a website’s ranking. What it basically entails is the creation of online content–press releases, news articles, blogs, infographics, videos–for publication on your site and on social media. This content is keyword dense, and before you can hire Internet advertising firms to create this content (which you can do, by the way), you’re going to want to do some research. One of the easiest ways to do some keyword research is to use programs like Wordtracker to help brainstorm what users might input to find your website. Then, search those terms, and see what other keywords some competitors are using. You can also analyze these competitors for what they’re doing right, and how you can implement these small business search engine optimization strategies as well.

The next best way, after content marketing, to help with small business search engine optimization, is to build quality, relevant links. If websites are destinations on the web, think about links as the roads connecting them. The more roads to a destination, the more accessible it is. Google’s webmaster tools writes, “Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.” There are easy ways to build links, which you can build by working with business partners, doing guest blogs on other sites, and submitting your site to quality directories.

Once you’ve accomplished these small tasks, you’ll be well on your way to achieving the small business search engine optimization you need. If you have any questions about small business search engine optimization, feel free to ask in the comments! More.