Having a great website is the first step in a successful online business, but it doesn’t do any good if no one can find it. While search engine optimization has been proven to be one of the most effective methods of driving traffic to a website, but not everyone has the time or the resources. However, it is also possible to take elements of SEO that are less time consuming and yet highly effective.  Here are three quick and easy techniques any business can benefit from:

 

Geo-targeting – becoming more important, one iPhone at a time.

 

How does your business show up in Google Maps results? How about Yahoo! Local? Yelp? When internet users are searching for your particular service in your area, they should come across your business. A campaign that enhances your business’s visibility in local searches is called geo-targeting. It has become ever more important with the advent of Google displaying local results on a map within the main search result pages. The importance of geo-targeting will continue to grow as smart phones track the location of the user and provide near-by information relevant to their search. This also happens to be when customers are close to taking action, increasing the chances of a conversion. 

 

Twitter – even our President is on it.

If your business or employees are not already on Twitter, then you should be. It is one of the best ways to monitor what people online are saying about your company and your competition, while also creating relationships with users who may benefit from your products or services. Zappos.com has seamlessly integrated their employees Twitter accounts with their website to open up communication between employees and customers, which has coincidentally helped market their website at the same time with user-generated content.

 

Yahoo! Answers – become an expert and inform users.

Effective use of Yahoo! Answers can bring many targeted visitors over a long period of time. The most effective way to use Yahoo! Answers is to create a resources section on your target website, answer the question extensively there, then give a shortened answer on the Anwers website, with a link to the resources section you created for users to find more information on your website. The Yahoo! subdomain ranks very well for a variety of keywords. If your answers to a given question is chosen as the best by the asker, then you will show up as the first response to the query and additionally, you will be rewarded points for good answers, which boosts your credibility on future posts.