Last week I wrote an article called 10 Ways to Please Google (Part 1).  The article sprung from a presentation I made for the City of Hugo small business association on February 15.  For more background, have a look at that article.

Today I’m presenting the second article on the topic containing the final five “ways.”  As nice as it would have been to cram all 10 points into a single article, it would have been exhaustingly long.  If you’ve already read the first five “ways,” then great!  If not, I encourage you to jump back and breeze through them.  They are worth while.

So without further ado, here are my final five ways a small business owner can initially please the great Googlebot.

6. Diversify your social media accounts and build your brand presence on search results page 1.

It’s impossible to effectively use every social media tool under the sun, and even Facebook is of limited use to many small business owners (it’s true!).  However, building your brand presence on the first page of search results is one of the best reasons to register and begin using those social media tools and services that will best compliment your business.  Ask yourself what you would rather have someone clicking on if not your businesses home page: a drab business directory listing, or a compelling and vibrant social media site or community built around your brand?

Creating social media real-state can also provide other Google related benefits.  In most cases social media sites offer outgoing links to build page rank and authority as well as provide many inroads for referral traffic.

7. Submit your business to Google Businesses Online.

A surefire way to make certain your small business appears both in Google Maps and Google Places (Google’s business listing) is to submit (or claim) your business at http://places.google.com/business.  The submission or claiming of a listing is free, but you will need to confirm your ownership of your business by either connecting by phone with Google or by returning a post card to Google in the mail.  In addition to a basic listings, Google also offers ways to promote your business or brand through the use of Google Tags and the Google Boost service.  These latter services are available after your listing is established and for a monthly fee.

8. Include keywords in your web copy that are specific to your industry.

Many times keywords appear in web copy organically.  If we were to visit a bakery website, we’d probably find plenty of words such as “baker” and “bread” and “dough” and perhaps even “sugar.”  These are just some of the keywords of that industry.

However, sometimes pages are created on a website that, for whatever reason, do not contain keywords in the copy that are relevant to the industry in which the business is situated.  Without good keywords a search engine will rarely refer targeted traffic to your website.  Make a point to include good keywords in your web copy that are relevant to your industry or services.  This way, when someone enters that word or combination of words into Google search, your business will have an increased likelihood of appearing for that search query.

Many marketers conduct keyword research for client websites.  Here is a short article on how you, as a small business owner, might get down to the business of keyword research on your own.

Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research

9. Include your address and phone number on each web page.

For the last two or three years search engines have been increasingly perfecting and improving upon their ability to deliver relevant local search results.  Sometime in the near future a person will be able to enter “pizza” into a search query and have a list dealt to them of local businesses in their area that deliver pizza.  There is a catch though – the search engine must of course know that the business is local!

One way to solve this is to register your business with directories like Google business.  A less time consuming way is to simply add your business information to each of your web pages.  Some businesses place their address and mailing info in the footer of their site while others place it in the header or sidebar.  All of these places are fine but be certain that wherever you place your business info on your web pages that it is:

1. Not placed within a flash player or some similar object that is not detectable by search engines.
2. That its placement does not detract from the aesthetic or user experience of your website.

10. Make certain your website is loading rapidly, and if not, consider installing a caching plugin, enabling compression on some files, and/or rechecking the size of image and other files.

In 2010 Google announced that it was beginning to incorporate page load time data into its algorithm for dealing search results.  Users online find slow loading websites annoying.  Google likes to direct web users to websites they like, so it makes sense that slow loading websites could be penalized.

Just how strongly page load time factors into Google’s algorithm is still a matter of some speculation, but as a best practice, it is good to have rapidly loading web pages.  To check the approximate time it takes for Google to download your web pages, use Google Webmaster Tools.  If your web pages are loading slowly here are some things you can try to improve page load time.  Note: this list is not even close to exhaustive.

• Double check all image files and use a program such as Adobe Photoshop to shrink them down to a more web ready size
• Use compression on your web page files so they might be downloaded more rapidly
• Use external css and javascript files as opposed to using these bits of code within your source page
• Use a caching plugin or similar software program to manage how your files are dealt to repeating and new visitors