If you are a realtor, attorney, insurance agent, or other small business owner then you probably already realize the importance of bringing your business online.

In fact, if you realize that you should be online and you are also working with a search engine marketing professional or search engine optimization (SEO) expert then you are probably ahead of the game when compared to many other small business owners.

While your SEO professional will do most of the heavy lifting for you to get your website where it needs to be here are some quick and easy tips that you can follow to give your website that extra boost.

Tip #1 Bring Offline Relationships Online

One thing that you have that your SEO professional may or may not have is offline relationships in your industry that you can use online to bolster your website’s rankings.

In a nutshell, you will help your website rank higher in Google and other search engines if you can get more quality links pointing to your site from other sites. A great way for you to get these kinds of links as a small business owner is to use the offline connections that you have built up over the years you have ran your business.

If you are a member of your local Chamber of Commerce then ask them to link to your website, if you have written an article for a trade journal then see if their website will link to your website, if you have business partners or suppliers that have websites then consider asking them for a link to your website maybe even in the form of a testimonial. There are many different avenues that you can consider when trying to make your offline business relationships profitable for you online as well as offline.  A great way to look at bringing some of those relationships online would be this Grand Rapids Photographer.

Tip #2 Choose the Right Domain Name

While choosing the right domain name is not necessarily something that you may think will build traffic to your website it is certainly part of a strong foundation for building traffic to your website. I run a website that offers domain name tools for people to find great domain names and it always very interesting for me to watch the kinds of domain names that people register for their businesses. Your domain name says a lot about your company, can potentially help or hurt your search engine rankings, and can become a very valuable business asset over time.

While there are many things to consider when choosing a business domain name I will just concentrate on some of the more important things to keep in mind (for a more in depth resource then read these 25 rules for how to choose a domain name). Choose a domain name that is easy to remember, conveys the right tone for your business (it is only natural that a domain name for a law firm should sound more professional than a domain name for a web design company), and if possible contains your company’s target keyword(s) in the domain name for maximum SEO benefit.

An advanced strategy for building traffic to your company site is to purchase generic keyword domain names that have type in traffic and then work with your SEO professional to redirect those domain names to your primary website. For example, if you were a realtor serving the Flint market and your main website is AdvantageRealty.com then it would be a great choice if you could get a hold of the domain names FlintRealtor.com, FlintRealty.com, etc. and then redirect those domain names to your main site so that when someone types the domain name flintrealtor.com directly into their browser’s URL bar they will be automatically forwarded to your main company website at AdvantageRealty.com.

Tip #3 Write Industry Specific Content

A good SEO professional is able to publish content to your site that will be useful to your visitors and laser targeted towards helping you rank higher for your targeted keywords. However, one major advantage that you may have over an SEO professional is that you know your industry much better than the SEO professional does. If you can write in-depth articles for your website that deal with specific industry topics then you will attract visitors. Concentrate on putting your command of industry jargon and knowledge of what potential customers are searching for to good use and really help your site to shine.

The best approach is to work with your SEO professional to develop a content development schedule where you will contribute industry knowledge as an insider that can offer great topics and input. For example, if you are a realtor then consider writing a new home buyer’s guide for certain neighborhoods in your target market. If you are a bankruptcy attorney in Detroit then publish articles with specific information for Detroit residents that need bankruptcy guidance.

The key here is that there are certain areas where you, the small business owner, have a deep well of information. The more that you can take that “insider” business knowledge and bring it to your website in the form of featured content then the more your website will attract new visitors.

Thanks to Joel @ Domain Superstar for this post!