OrangeSoda has a new partner. DoodleKit, is a free website builder that offers small businesses quality web sites that don’t require high tech skills like programming. The free sites are great for hobbies or people who just need a web site. If you want to be found in search engines, their business packages are optimized for online marketing.

Once a web site is built, the next question a business owner usually asks is how to market their web site so they’re found in search engines. I spoke with Heath Huffman, DoodleKit’s Co-founder, about search engine optimization. This is the number one request from their customers – where can they get help with SEO.

Here are some SEO features that DoodleKit offers their business customers to help optimize sites for search engines:

• Image alt tags – which are words that describe an image and therefore can be indexed by a search engine. It’s also valuable for search engine optimization when you can use keyword phrases to describe a graphic.
• Google Sitemap – DoodleKit has made it simpler to create a Google Sitemap according to Google’s specs.
• Search Engine Friendly URLS – rather than long or generic URLs, DoodleKit has made the URLs reflect the title of each page. Another chance to use keyword phrases you want to rank for.
• Built in analytics – so you can see what online marketing efforts are working and where your traffic is coming from.
• Meta tags – right now you can create unique meta data for your site. By next month you’ll be able to change the meta information for each page.

DoodleKit is just a few months old and will continue to integrate good SEO practices into their product.

Most of DoodleKit’s clients ask for additional expertise. That’s where OrangeSoda comes in. We can find the keywords that people are searching for and help your businesses rank higher for those words in search engines.

OrangeSoda also manages paid search campaigns priced for the small business. Google ads help you get immediate traffic to your web site (we also run ads on Yahoo and MSN). Here’s a helpful article on the difference between SEO and PPC.

Here’s the OrangeSoda press release.