9 SEO Tips for Computer Consulting Business Owners

The search engine optimization (SEO) industry has taken a big reputational hit in recent months. Even longtime SEO thought leader Rand Fishkin, of SEOmoz fame, distanced his Seattle-based software company from the SEO backlash a few months ago when it rebranded the company as Moz (minus the “SEO”). 

Now, it’s not so much that SEO is no longer important or effective for getting specific pages of your computer consulting business’ website ranked on page one of search engine results. It’s just that there’s been such a massive backlash against bad SEO practices, that the needle is clearly and rapidly moving more towards using content and Inbound marketing to organically attract the right website visitors. 

With that in mind, consider these nine on-page SEO tips for computer consulting business owners:

1. Conduct ideal buyer persona research prior to doing keyword research. Skipping this step almost certainly leads to content that no one wants to read or just as bad, attracting the wrong website visitors.

2. Focus on long-tail keyword phrases that your website has a realistic chance to rank for. Sure, every computer consultant would love to have page one rankings for keyword phrases with thousands of searches each month. However the short, high-volume phrases are often quite vague on intent, leading to high bounce rates. The short two-word keyword phrases can also be nearly impossible targets to attain unless your website already has hundreds or even thousands of authoritative inbound linking domains.

3. Place the targeted keyword phrase for each page in the Title tag – the earlier to the start of the Title tag, the better.

4. Use the targeted keyword phrase for each page naturally in the Meta description. While this doesn’t impact SEO, it does increase the perceived relevancy and click-through rate, which indirectly impacts SEO.

5. Include the targeted keyword phrase for each page in the Image ALT tag. This tells Google what your image is about, which is hugely important for getting into Google image search. This best practice also helps people that are visually impaired.

6. Weave the targeted keyword phrase naturally into the first paragraph or two. For Google and readers to perceive that your article is in fact about the declared keyword in the Title Tag, you need to naturally include the targeted keyword phrases early on within the article body.

7. Incorporate the targeted keyword phrase naturally into one or two other places in the article body. It’s widely believed the mentions within headings, subheadings, and bold text carry more weight.

8. Link internally and externally to related resources where you could naturally use the targeted keyword phrase in the anchor text. Again, this sends a signal to Google about what’s on the destination page and how it relates to the current page.

9. Write first for your readers (people). Search engine “spiders” should be a very secondary consideration. If your readers are sticking around for several minutes on your website, this sends a powerful relevancy signal to Google. If the opposite happens and readers are repulsed, your website’s high rankings will be short-lived.

What on-page search engine optimization best practices have you found most valuable for your computer consulting business? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments box below.

And to learn more about how SEO fits in with the rest of your marketing plans and challenges, download your free copy of the IT Channel Inbound Marketing Planning Guide. 

Creative Commons Image Source: flickr Means-of-Production