Easy ways to get your business noticed … FOR FREE!

1. List your business on Google Maps/Places
Google Maps/Places has become the new Yellow Pages and the place to get your business listed. At the moment it’s still free and the fastest, easiest way for customers to find you.

They simply type in a business category – perhaps electrician plumber or florist – together with a postcode or a location to find the service they need.

While the listing is still free to grab, competition is strong. Google currently uses large amounts of information from Place Pages in its search results. So without a listing, your business could drop down the rankings.

Don’t have a listing – sign up NOW! Got one already? Make sure it’s as complete as possible, with strong customer reviews, pictures and videos about your business.

2. Review your website meta titles and descriptions
Tight on time and money? Your website Meta Tags are the single most important piece of search engine marketing you can do for your business.

Look at the title and description for each page of your website. Is the information up to date and appropriate?

Meta title tags appear in the first line of search engine results, followed by the meta description. You should have one title and one description for each page you want listed on search engines. Each title tag should contain the keyword or phrase you want the page to rank for. Keep titles to 60 characters or less.

Meta descriptions should be 150 characters or less. Write interesting and catchy descriptions to grab searchers’ attention and encourage them to click through to your page.

3. Create new links to your business and see your ranking rise!
Has your website got a link strategy? Strong inbound links are one of the most important ingredients in getting a good search engine listing.

Think about getting a link with authoritative trade organisations or industry bodies. Lots of business directories will give you a free listing.

You could also write a short article about your business, industry, product or service and submit it to sites which take articles for free and link to your website. To find them, type "submit articles" into Google search.

4. Analyse your website traffic
Knowing who’s visiting your site and what they’re doing there is essential. Google Analytics remains a great free tool giving you access to scores of different reports on your website data and activity.

Armed with all this information, you can make the most of your online advertising budget or track which keywords and referrals are converting into real business.

Find out where your website traffic is coming from; examine e-commerce transactions and dissect AdWords campaigns and keywords.

Go to Google Analytics