Promote Your Business

When you do search engine optimisation, you are increasing your website’s rank among search engines such as Yahoo, Google and MSN. In Australia, Google is the main search engine with over 80% of the search engine market share. Tests have also revealed that Google searches almost always become either sales or inquiries much more often than searches by other major search engines do. In other words, this means that Google gives you the most high-quality search traffic. This is why you should focus your efforts to optimise on Google.

With a high rank on Google, you’ll normally find that you rank pretty well on the other search engines, too. So, let’s go through a three step process to do search engine optimisation. It’s fairly complex, and many companies spend literally thousands of dollars to get this done for them. However, it’s pretty simple to explain it in this three-step strategy.

Step 1: Keyword Research You need to establish which keywords and phrases are relevant to your product or services so you can focus your SEO efforts accordingly. For many businesses that serve a local area, keyword research is normally straight forward. The most profitable keywords or phrases are likely to be in the form Your Industry Your Location. For example: “Plumbers Melbourne”, “IT Support Sydney”, “Accountants Perth”. There are also a range of keywords and search tools, including a free tool; inventory.overture.com and also more sophisticated pay tools such as wordtracker.com and keyworddiscovery.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. Make Your Description Keyword Rich, Too. This is your “meta description tag.” It appears in your website code and describes your page’s content. This description should be rich in keywords and should include complete sentences. For example, with our carpet cleaner, your description could say: “Proper Cleaner in Surry Hills, Sydney. Best Carpet Cleaning Service at a Competitive Price.”

3. Look at Your Headings. Search engines place great importance on headings because they seem to find important page content. Ensuring that your headings and subheadings are keyword rich is a good start. For example, Full Colour Digital Printing Services in Sydney

4. Page Content Matters, Too. Your page content needs at least one keyword rich textual paragraph per page. You can repeat keywords used in your headings in the content. Use a mix of related keyword phrases, such as, “Carpet Installation Sydney, One-Day Carpet Installation, Fast Carpet Installation,” and so on instead of repeating the same phrases over again.

5. Look At Links. Links are another important indicator of page content. You should avoid generic words and links such as, “Find out more” or “Click here”. Instead, use keyword rich link test such as, “View our complete range of digital printing services”, with “digital printing services” as a link.

Step-3: Off Page Optimisation Off-page optimisation, or linking strategies, is the third and final stage. Every incoming link to your website is considered by Google as a vote for your website content by other websites. The reason why many businesses SEO efforts fail is that they focus exclusively on using keywords on web pages but they lack a linking strategy. Here are a few tips to start pushing your site up the ranks through linking strategies:

2. Put Your Site on So-Called “Authority Directories.” These website directories, called “authority directories,” are highly respected by search engines and can help improve rankings. This can help you improve your own rankings, too. Many of these sites charge a few to list there, but this helps keep out lower quality websites. Three of the most important ones are: botw.org, Yahoo.com.au, and business.com. Be advised that this isn’t about those scams that say they’ll submit your site to countless directories for $49 or so. Only submit your website to these well regarded directories.

2. List Your Sites on Authority Directories. Listing your website on website directories which are well regarded by search engines can help to improve your rankings. Most of these so-called authority directories charge a fee for listing. A fact that serves to keep out lower quality websites. Three of the most important authority directories are: Yahoo.com.au, botw.org and business.com. Please note that I’m not talking about email scams that offer to submit your site to 34 million directories for $49. You should only bother submitting your website to directories that are well regarded by search engines.