by David B. Ascot
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 Google, you’ll find that you rank quite well as compared to the others. For this, there’s a three-step process by which you can perform search engine optimisation. This topic is fairly complex and companies spend a lot of money getting this done for them. However, you can do this with three relatively simple steps.
Step 1: Perform Keyword Research Establish keywords and phrases that are relevant to your services or your product so that you can focus your search engine optimisation efforts on those particular keywords or phrases. For example, if your business operates within a local area, your keyword research is normally going to be pretty easy. It’s likely to be that your keywords and keyword phrases will simply include what you do and then your area. For example, if your business is as a carpet cleaner and you operate in Sydney, your keyword phrases likely to be something to the effect of “Carpet cleaning Sydney.” You can also use keyword and search tools like inventory.overture.com, which is free, or keyworddiscovery.com or wordtracker.com; the latter two are paid search tools, but they’re also somewhat more sophisticated than inventory.overture.com.
Step two: Optimising on page You need to optimise your website content, too. For high search engine rankings, make sure the right keywords show up on your webpages. This is part of the story, too, but it’s also an important part of the puzzle we call “optimisation.” Here are some important tips on optimising webpages.
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. Links Matter, Too. Links, too, indicate page content to search engines, importantly. Avoid using generic links such as, “Click here,” or “find out more.” Instead, make your links keyword rich by using such phrases as, “Check out our carpet cleaning services here,” with “carpet cleaning services” as the hyperlink.
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:
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. 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.