Rank Well in Search Engines and Improve Lead Generation
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When you utilise search engine optimisation, you do so to rank well in search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. In Australia, Google dominates the search market, with over 80% of the market share. Tests have also shown that Google searches almost always turn into either sales or inquiries much more often than searches done on other major search engines. In other words, this means that Google generates much more high quality search traffic. That’s a pretty good reason to focus mostly on Google for your search engine strategy.
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: 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. Your Page Title Should Be Keyword-Rich. The title that appears in your browser in the blue bar at the very top should have keywords in it; this is because it’s also the title in Google’s search results. Make your title concise, short, and rich in keywords. It should have the most important keywords at the front of the title. As an example, if your carpet installation business is located in Sydney, you can say, “Carpet Installation Sydney - Install Carpet Surry Hills Sydney.” And put the most important keywords at the front of the sentence. You can see that it’s a bit of repetition, but it’s pretty keyword rich and it doesn’t sound too strange, which should get you more exposure.
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. 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. Make Sure You’re Page Content Is Suitable. At least one paragraph of each textual page on your website should be rich in keywords. You can also repeat the keywords you use in your headings in your content. Using a mix of related key phrases is also good. For example, saying, “Carpet Cleaning, Cleaning Carpets, Clean Your Carpets,” is more suitable than using the same phrases over and 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:
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”.
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