Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Use Geotargeting to get a slice of the SEO pie
- Get your slice of the SEO Pie before its all gone
Back when I was 14. I was a high school student by day, and SEO lackey by night. My weapon of choice was the much hated ‘Doorway Pages‘
Back then, SEO was in its infancy. Even someone with little to no SEO experience could get a top ranking and start making some good money in a couple of weeks.
Simply creating a 1 page, static HTML site with a little bit of content, stuffed full of keywords, hosted on a free host like the now defunct Geocities, and making sure the all important ‘Click here to Enter’ text was big a bold, was enough to secure a top Google ranking in a matter of weeks, and create a nice little money spinner.
People were creating thousands of these pages, some even with automated software, and getting great results for themselves mainly, as the SEO game was still in its infancy.
Today, SEO has turned into a multi billion dollar professional industry. Everyone from Fortune 500 companies, to small cafe’s on a local street corner, have realised the unlimited potential of reaching their audience online in today’s competitive business environment, and are all fighting for a slice of the tasty SEO Pie.
With increased competitiveness comes the need to become more specific and targeted.
When the competition gets tougher, and those rubbish ‘Doorway pages‘ stop working, we simply get smarter. Geographic specific searches are becoming increasingly used by consumers to find relevent goods and services close by to them.
Geotargeting SEO can be done in the following ways:
Google Maps
Now getting big props in the Google search results, getting listed in Google maps is probably the most important aspect to successfully ‘Geo SEO’ your website. Make sure you are listed and you provide all the information a customer would ever need-and everything they don’t yet know they need.
Search Positions
Get good rankings for your geographic area and keyword. Things liks ‘Carlton Plumber’, ‘Perth Website Design’, is much better and realistic than targeting ‘Plumber’ or ‘Website Designer’ which would most likely draw leads from clients you could not service.
Geotargeting, or ‘Geo SEO‘, is the way to go to see targeted results and traffic. Choose your competition wisely-don’t complete for the thrill of battle.
Monday, November 30th, 2009
SEO for the Holidays: SEO you can do for the year ahead
So you used up all your vacation time early. All your projects are finished and you’ve got a little quiet time while your workmates are away on some beach drinking cocktails?
- Get more traffic to your website for christmas!
Do you business a favor and go over this holiday checklist, to ensure a well Search Engine Optimised website for the year ahead:
Google Maps: Is your business on Google maps? If not, head over the to Google business Center and submit your details so you wil be found on the newish Google feature which is now prominent most Google Results
Google Webmaster Tools: Ensure your site is active on Google Webmaster tools. Login here and check your sitemap is indexed and your site is free of error
Google Analytics: Do you monitor your statistics? Do you even have them installed? If you don’t install the Google Analytics code on your site, so for the year ahead, you can monitor your traffic and learn from your customers habits (Good and Bad)
Link Building: Go to Google.com, and do a link search ‘link:http://www.yourdomain.com’ in the Google search box, and see how many links Google recognises are pointing to the site. Regardless of the result, you can always do with more, so start hunting for directories and other sites which are relevent to your website, and get your links on there!
Twitter: First step is to setup a twitter account and start using it to engage with customers and like minded individuals. Second step is to setup monitoring to in the year ahead, you always know what going on. Use one of these services and direct to a group email address.
Sure, there are heaps of things you could do. These are just some that I think are very important, and not really that hard to do (You don’t want to be working too hard do you?)
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Bing catching Google with creativity and hussle
According to reports out of the US, Bing is now at 10% of the online Search Market. Becoming the fastest growing US Search Engine in the Top 10 according to the latest Neilsen Report.
The number of searches in the US was 1.1 billion for the month of August, which is a growth of 22% on the previous month.
Although Google, of course remained on the top spot, it is an amazing feat by the new player in online search.
Ok, I hear you, ‘We’re not Yanks, we do things differently over here in Australia’. Correct, and Bing has indeed found it a little bit harder to dent Google domination of the Australian Search Market.
To counter this, Bing has taken some great and creative steps in Australia to encourage growth, running advertising campaigns in PBL media properties including Channel 9, Go!, NineMSN websites and ACP Magazines.
In addition to this, last month Microsoft ran a competition to ‘find’ $10,000 hidden somewhere on the Internet. In a stroke of genius, the only way to win at this is by using the latest addition to the Internet Explorer family, IE8. This campaign was unique, incorporated two of Microsoft’s new products, and spread virally. Microsoft for the Win.
Bing Vs Google: The race to the top of search
Joe Pollard, CEO, ninemsn, last month commented: “Establishing Bing as an alternative search engine in the Australian marketplace is an exciting challenge for ninemsn. One of the best ways to meet this challenge is through building the Bing brand and encouraging trial through education of its outstanding product attributes.”
Will Bing get anyway in the Google Battle? Will Bing change the face of search? It’s going to take a while, that’s for sure, but its taking all the right steps.
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Secrets to a Perfect Meta Title
In any website development and SEO, the meta title still remains vitally important. Meta titles and meta tags work behind the website operations and are placed within the HTML code that are developed between the <head></head> tags. These meta titles provide the instructions that suggest the Title for the Google Search Listings.
Meta titles are one of the first things the search engines and visitors see. Make it count.
The title meta tag should be about 60 characters, including spaces. The meta title should have your primary keywords represented, while making adequate sense about the subject that is presented. The description meta tag should be around 150 characters, with the keywords that relate the main content of the page. These tags should have the keywords used in the meta title. When the meta title and meta tags are created, make sure they relate to the content of the web page, so that the search engines can see the page as completely relevant and adjust your ranking accordingly.
Meta Title is Not dead: Still Vitally important to high rankings
The meta title is normally constructed as <title>Creating a Meta Title | Great Meat Tags | Optimising.com.au</title>. It is not essential that the meta title should be grammatically correct. Since the meta title attracts the search engines and the visitors aggressively, they should be created with great care. The algorithms of search engines give the maximum weight to the meta title tag. A title tag that had been written perfectly will assist in improving the ranking of the website.
If your looking for the perfect Meta title for your site, get in touch, we would be glad to help Optimise for you