Search Engine Optimisation - TopRankings

This is a topic I am quite passionate about as many SEO firms in my opinions try and deceive the actual truth.

The rule is that each page regardless if it is the main page or subpage should cater for no more than 5 keywords, out of those 5 keywords it is likely that you will rank 3 of them quite highly assuming you apply the proper SEO techniques.

For your homepage you want to target the big keywords that will drive the most traffic to your site and for the subpages target the niche keywords relevant to those keywords.

When we take a new client on we always 1st start the SEO campaign with 5 keywords which are chosen from analytics, keyword research etc. The 1st few months of the SEO campaign we spend 80% of our time getting the homepage ranked high, until your homepage is ranked high their is little chance of getting your subpages to rank high.

Now once the homepage is ranking nicely we will then target all the keywords relevant to your subpages in the desire to rank your subpages nice and high as well.

So while many people may assume we only target 5 keywords this is incorrect, it is 5 keywords per page with the homepage gaining the most attention in the beginning few months of the commencment of the SEO campaign.

We at TopRankings get constantly asked what are the main attributes of a succesfull SEO campaign. In this brief blog entry I hope to point out some key steps that are necessary to start getting higher search engine rankings for your website.

1. Title Tag - by far the biggest tip I can give is to make the sure that your title tags on your page are keyword rich and are unique for each and every page
2. Onsite text - make sure that the words on your webpage include your chosen keywords, their is no point having a website for dog kennels if the phrase dog kennels is not contained within your text
3. Where possible make sure that you can navigate to any subpage within your website within 2-3 clicks, if users have a hard time finding your subpages you can almost guarantee the search engines will as well
4. Ensure that your text while being keyword rich is not `stuffed’ with keywords ie is the text easy to read. does it make sense?
5. Speed of websie, do you have your website hosted on a fast server? is your code neat and clean, is it optimised for speed? Make sure that it validates (http://validator.w3.org/)
6. Common sense, gaining higher search engine rankings is not rocket science however it is vitally important you design for the end user in mind and not for the search engines

I hope the above gives you a starting point for a succesfull SEO campaign

Companies globally have been impacted by recent decline in the economic climate.

Dare I suggest it however that some business owners simply use the excuse of the international economic climate as a kneejerk reaction to downgrade their marketing and advertising spend.

Advertising types under the ‘return on investment microscope’ include Radio, TV, Direct Mail, Magazines etc.  

Yes the above provide a return on investment, however many SME’s are unable to sustain regular investments in the above especially in the tougher economic climate. Every business must use its own discretion in allocating its investments that produce the most effective return.

So where should the funds be spent and what are the business trends?

A recent study confirms that search engines are by far, a more common first point of call for consumers over yellow pages and all other mediums when searching for a product or service.

I still hear many business owners validate their decisions through the old saying “when the US sneezes Australia catches the cold.”

Quite the statement but at what stage of the cold are US businesses where Internet Advertising is concerned? Let me challenge many Aussie business owners mindset with the following IAB report published 7^th of October 2007:

“Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues reached almost $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008, representing an 11 percent increase over the same period in 2007.”

I am astounded to learn that many businesses still spend money on White and Yellow Pages. Who has heard or seen the “Green Soft Puppet” lately?

I have an unusual grin when hearing the Telstra Green “Soft Puppet” pump 1234 down my ear and moreover ponder the strong marketing efforts of White Pages.com.au on TV lately in their attempts to convince consumers to use their website to find ‘local businesses’?

Thanks to David Silverman of PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PWC) I can now sleep at night having read the following from the same IAB report:  

“Interactive advertising continues to be the most measurable and cost-effective way to reach consumers, and we see more and more marketers seeking to harness its power.” David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP….

Lesson for business owners to consider:

Wise are the companies that invested in ‘search engine optimisation’ (SEO) well over 6 months ago and are now benefiting from 24/7/365 exposure to their clients in the natural search engine rankings of Google and the like.

 

Fortunately….it is never too late to compete, but regretfully the longer business owners take to act and convert their websites to a sales machine the longer their competitors capture a greater slice of their market share.

Noam Judah