WHO KNOWS YOU? GETTING PEOPLE TO FIND YOU ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB

In a increasingly time poor society, finding the things we need for everyday life is becoming the job of the internet, and the primary way to find something on the internet is with a search engine. The most popular being Google and getting an ever increasing slice of the pie is Yahoo and the local search providers like Sensis and True Local. Search Engine Marketing or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a technique where your website is optimised to give you the best possible chance of appearing at the top of the list for certain keywords that are relevant to your product or service. The following is a brief outline of how we go about it.

Maintaining a high ranking in search engines is a highly effective way of marketing your

business. By maintaining consistently high ranking you create a greater awareness and a higher perceived brand value. By utilising an ongoing managed SEO campaign you will create awareness of your business and generate sales through increased traffic to the website.

Benefits of SEO

• First point of research for potential customers


• Engages active customers


• Increases website traffic dramatically


• Cost effective


• Massive reach


• Targeted approach


• Results easily reported


• High listings add to brand value

Optimising your website

There are certain areas of your website that can be optimised for higher search engine rankings. These include: design, layout, navigation, colors, background, fonts, images, link density, meta tags, web copy, html validation, browser and resolution compatibility.

Some sites won’t perform well if they are slow loading. Search Engines don’t like sites which take a lot of time to load. They sometimes ignore these sites and place them lower than fast loading sites in their index. Reasons for slow load times include html errors and bad image

optimisation. Sometimes sites are coded badly which can be a big block for visiting search engine crawlers.

The creation of a site map page would enable search engine spiders better crawling of your site. It also helps visitors to quickly scan your whole site for relevant information.

People view sites in different browsers and at different resolutions. We make sure your site can be viewed in all the major browsers and in the most common resolutions. Adjustments will be made to the site’s code where necessary.

All of the factors listed above have some influence in attracting search engine spiders and visitors to your site.

Areas for optimisation

• Meta tag title and keyword refinement


• Website HTML content


• Keyword density


• Site mapping


• Design and layout


• HTML validation


• Browser compatibility


• Navigation


• Hyperlink density

Keyword research

One of the basic steps in search engine optimisation is keyword research. By developing accurately a list of the most commonly used terms in order to search for your site you will maximise the impact of search engine optimisation.

When your site ranks well, more relevant customers come to the site leading to an

increase in conversions. The accurate identification and careful selection of these

important keywords and key phrases can literally make or break any web site or

online business.

Ways to identify keywords

• Look at website stats to see what people are using


• Look at what other sites in your industry are using


• Ask site visitors what words they might use


• Try different searches to see the results


• Market research


• Look at combinations of keywords eg. term and location


• Results with multiple search terms

Refining of Meta information

Meta information is used to provide additional information about HTML documents so that the search engine crawlers are able to index the information more accurately. We recommend a thorough analysis and refining of Meta information for any website. There are 3 important types of Meta tags as far as search engine optimisation is concerned:

Title tag

The Title tag is not a Meta tag. However title tags play a vital role in your site’s rankings. It is these words or phrase that appear in the title of your page in the hyperlink listings on the search engine results. It should include the most relevant and specific keywords or key phrases in the title tag that best describe the contents of the page.

Meta description tag

This gives a short and concise summary of the content of your web page. The description appears in the search results just below the title tag. The meta description tag is brief but includes some of your top keywords. The words used must inspire the visitor to check your site out further. Each page must be customized so all your web pages will not have the same meta tag descriptions.

Meta keywords tag

Although not as relevant as the other tags mentioned above, the Meta keywords tag is still recognised by search engines. Include should be a number of meta keywords for you that are relevant to the content of your web pages.

Competitive analysis

This is for better search engine ranking performance. We will perform study of the sites of all your competitors who have high search engine rankings and find out the keywords for which they are ranked. We then analyse your current meta tags and recreate them based on the keywords that have been researched. We also analyse your recent web site stats. We can then see how many visitors you are getting, where they are coming from and what

keywords they are using.

What we look at when analysing a competitors site

• Meta information


• Content


• Information structure


• Titles


• Ranking


• Inbound linking


• HTML code

SEO optimised copywriting

SEO copywriting is rewriting the text on your site in such a way that it becomes search engine friendly while remaining appealing to the surfer. Density of keywords within the HTML text of your site increase the ranking of your site.

Our copywriting services include modifying your site headings, HTML text and image tags.

Some pages may only require a small amount of editing or none at all, whereas others may need a more extensive rewrite.

An example of optimised HTML copy

<Possible search terms>

Original

Our website is great because we sell <computers> that are great value and really modern. They come with a six month warranty and a free introductory course valued at $500.

Optimised

<Computers Now> is an <online computer store> that sells <great value computers>. They come with a six month warranty and a <free computer course> valued at $500.

Building link density

Link Density refers to the number of links pointing to your site, from other sites on the web. The Search Engines consider your site important and rank it higher if other sites link to your site.

There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One type is Link Exchange or Reciprocal Links, where you give a link from the links Page on your site to the partner sites and vice versa. The second more influential method is to establish only ‘incoming links’ also called ‘one-way links’ or ‘non-reciprocal links’. With non-reciprocal links, you do not need to link back to them.

Reciprocal links are generated by sending requests to relevant non-competitive sites and asking for links. In the link exchange process, you trade links with prospective partner sites by offering a link to their site from your own site.

There are several ways of developing Inbound links. Some of the techniques we follow in one way link building are:

• Submitting to Free Directories


• Writing articles and submitting to various sites for publishing to increase the link popularity of your site.


• Press releases

As part of our service we provide continual research and recommendations for reciprocal linking and directory registrations.

Potential linking partners

• Industry organisations


• Business directories


• Relevant sites to specific activities


• Friends and colleagues business and personal sites

Pay per click search advertising

A fast, targeted and effective way to maintain high search engine rankings is through

pay-per-click online advertising campaigns. By paying the main advertising services a small fee per click through to your site, you stand a better chance to get higher rankings in sponsor site listings.

The way it works is that a company bids for certain keywords and the higher the bid the more chance of a higher listing. Using this type of campaign is effective because it is instant in that you don’t have to wait for the web crawlers to list your site which can take as long as 12 weeks. It is also effective as your site gets listed in other affiliate search engines at the same time.

The two services that cover the major search engines are:

• Adwords (Google, About.com, Ask Jeeves)


• Overture (Yahoo, NineMSN, Altavista)

We would maintain the bids and results on keywords as set by your monthly budget.

Reporting and analytics

At the end of each month we would supply a printed report of all the online activities. The report is essential in understanding which keywords are working and how much business is being generated by the campaign.

We can track the number of visitors to your site through website traffic analysis and we can see through a website enquiry form how many people are enquiring online.

We can also see the pay-per-click results through statistics generated by those providers.

Our reports include

• Current ranking on all major search engines


• Number of unique site visitors


• Visits by search engine


• Visits by search keyword


• Latest Meta information and keywords used

posted by Ben Crothers at 10/03/2006 04:15:00 PM