Five top SEO tips for small business bloggers

The following top SEO tips and tricks can help your content rank higher in Google search results - no SEO experience required.

I use these particular SEO techniques to get my small business blog posts to the front page of search results, for targeted SEO keywords and phrases, all the time. It's not hard at all.

Be aware that implementing these SEO tips alone won't skyrocket your content to the front page of Google. Any simple SEO tricks, such as these, have to be implemented within the context of an already Google Panda and Penguin friendly SEO'd site.

Top five SEO tips for ranking higher in search results

While a complete SEO upgrade of your blog or business website requires a comprehensive Panda & Penguin compliant website and SEO audit, there's nothing stopping you from getting closer to ranking first by implementing these simple SEO techniques.

1. Page title SEO

In SEO terms, your page header or page title is extremely important. A page heading indicates the subject of the content of the page, and as such Google expects it to be on topic and accurate.

More than that, Google looks for SEO keywords and keyphrases in the page header. You have to make sure to provide the primary SEO keyphrase at least once in the heading.

The primary SEO keyphrase is the phrase for which you want the content to rank most highly, and it works in conjunction with the SEO keyphrases in the URL and lead paragraph of the content.

Bonus SEO tip: Use the SEO keyphrases towards the start of page headings - especially if the heading is long.

2. Lead paragraph SEO

I don't beat around the bush. I open my articles with a sentence that reiterates the page heading and explains what the reader will get from the content.

This is great for SEO for two reasons:

• it creates a meaningful content teaser for humans viewing search results
• it allows you to use the primary SEO keyphrase again in a natural way

By making your opening paragraph as meaningful as possible, and as closely related to the page header as possible, you encourage Google to return that portion of the page in the search results.

Bonus SEO tip: I use the lead paragraph in the META description tag of my HTML too.

3. Image SEO

Images are integral to content. Meaningful or unusual images that attract attention also serve to associate your content in the reader's mind. Think of an image as an internal reference that helps readers remember a piece of content.

Image SEO is also crucial because Google recognizes the importance of images. I do the following:

• provide meaningful file names with SEO keyphrases
• provide Alt and Title tags with SEO keyphrases

This has helped me to drive traffic for hugely competitive SEO keywords via images instead of content alone.