Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of internet marketing that promotes a website by increasing its visibility in search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) improves a website’s ranking on major search engines, the higher your website is in ranking the more likely new clients and customers are to see it in their search. In this day an age SEO has become a huge component of most company’s (big and small) marketing strategies. Being a marketing professional and SEM being a big part of my job, I feel that it is important to share some tips. SEO can be overwhelming and time-consuming but I came across this article in The Washington Post that will help you get started in the right direction. Here are a few things you might ask yourself first, “Is your website ranking in the first position?”, “Does the customer see errors or missing content”?  This article can help you find the answers to those very important questions!

How to perform an SEO health check on your small business website

By Scott Benson

If you’re a small business owner, you’ve probably thought a bit about how customers find your website through search engines and maybe even the reputation your business has online. These are questions that hit the core of search engine optimization. Here are a few quick-hitting tactics to allow small business owners to check the health of their websites as well as a few SEO tactics to perform after you begin to monitor that health.

First things first – perform a “clean” search on your company name.

To continue on you search engine optimization journey and read the entire article click here.

About the Author: Scott Benson is the SEO Manager for Beltsville,Md.-based Vocus, a provider of cloud marketing software.