Search engine Optimisation is ranking your website well in the free path of the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and NineMSN. In Australia, Google dominates the Australian search market and it has over 80% market share. Our tests also revealed that Google searches almost always convert into inquiries or sales much more often than searches by other major search engines. So in other words, Google generates more high quality search traffic. That’s a pretty good reason to focus your search engine strategy on Google.
Once you rank well on Google you normally find that you rank pretty well on the others anyway. I’ll talk you through a three step process for doing search engine optimisation. Obviously, it’s a fairly complex topic and companies spend thousands of dollars for getting this done for them. It all comes down to a pretty much core three-step strategy.
Step 1: Doing Keyword Research Establish what keywords and phrases are relevant to your service or product. Then, focus your search engine optimisation efforts to maximise those. For example, if your business is local, your keyword research is going to be pretty straightforward. In that case, your keyword phrases are going to be something along the lines of your business plus your location. For example, if you are a carpet installer in Melbourne, you’ll want to say something to the effect of, “Carpet installation Melbourne,” or something similar. You can also use keyword search tools, including a free tool such as inventory.overture.com. There are also more sophisticated pay tools like keyworddiscovery.com and WordTracker.com.
Step 2: On page Optimisation Optimise your website content. You’ve probably heard that achieving high search engine rankings is all about making sure the right keywords appear on your web pages. Although this is part of the story, it’s certainly an important part of the puzzle and we call this on page optimisation. Here are some of the most important on page optimisation tips.
1. Make Sure Your Title Includes Your Keyword(s). At the blue bar on the top of your web browser, your title label appears. It’s also the title of your webpage in the organic search results for Google. This title should be concise and short, and have keywords or keyword phrases in it. Put the most important keywords first, and any secondary keywords afterward. For example, if you have your carpet cleaning shop in Surry Hills in Sydney, you can say as your title: Carpet Cleaning Sydney - Carpet Cleaning Surry Hills Sydney.” There’s some repetition there, true, but it’s got a lot of keywords in it and it doesn’t sound strange.
2. Your Description Should Be Keyword Rich. The description is also called the “meta description tag.” This is part of your website code and describes the page’s content. Write descriptions in complete sentences and make them keyword rich. For the carpet installation service in Sydney, for example, it could read something to the effect of, “Surry Hills, Sidney Carpet Installation. Installing Carpet at a Reasonable Price.”
3. Pay Attention to Headings. Headings are very important for search engines because they seem to help them find page content is important, too. Make sure that your subheadings and headings are keyword rich for a good start, for example, using a heading such as “Carpet Installation Services in Sydney.”
4. Address Your Page Content. You should ensure that you have at last one keyword rich paragraph of text on each page. Keywords used in your headings may be repeated again in you content. Try to use a mix of related key phrases. For example, Digital Printing, On Demand Printing, 60 minute Print Service rather than the same phrase over and over again.
5. Links Are Important. Yes, links, too, are important for page content. Instead of using generic phrases like, “Click here to find out more,” use those that are keyword rich and indicate what your business is. “Take a look at our carpet installation services” is one good example.
Step-3: Optimise Off Page As Well Utilising off page optimisation or linking strategies is the third and final stage in making sure your website is search engine optimised. When people link to your website, these are known as “incoming links,” and Google considers these as votes for your website. Many businesses fail because they only focus on using keywords and webpages but don’t utilise a linking strategy. Here are a few things you can do to start making sure your site goes up the ranks with linking strategies:
1. Encourage Keywords inside Your Incoming Link. For example, if you arrange for a client or supplier to link to your website, you want to ask them to use keywords such as: “cheap digital printing services” in a link rather than your company name, or “Click here”.
2. Consider Using Authority Directories. When you list your site on website directories that are well regarded by search engines, this can improve your rankings. These are so-called “authority” directories and sometimes charge a fee to list there. This keeps out lower quality websites. Three of the most well-respected are botw.org, Yahoo.com.au, and business.com. It should be noted that this is different than using e-mail scams that offer to submit your site are uniformly directors for a fee. Rather, you’ll want to submit your website to directories that search engines regard highly.
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