Search Engine Optimisation

Our Search Engine Optimisation service offers:

Detailed background research on the keyword phrases that could help your site be listed higher in the search engines
Submission to the major search engines.
3 x monthly follow-up reportings and fine-tuning.
Advice and help in building your inbound linking strategies

The cost for this starts at $695.00 (for a 3 page/phrase optimisation strategy) and can be cost effectively expanded from there depending on your needs.

Like to have a go at doing this yourself? Here's some tips:

Getting visitors to your web site

(1) Search Engines

More and more the importance of ranking well in the search engines can have a huge importance on how well your web site meets your initial goals. Merely building a web site regardless of how well it is designed and how nice it looks will not in and of itself deliver visitors to you.

With this in mind ranking well in the Google search engine should be your highest priority. Yes, there are many others, some of them relevant and important, but this point in time on the Internet ranking well at Google is the most important.

Careful thought needs to be given to the kinds of keyword phrases people will likely use to find your site or the products you sell. Often we find out that what we think people will be searching on is not always the case - and YES we can find out how people are finding your site, once it is listed in the search engines. More on that in a moment.

So the first step in optimising some of your site for search engine traffic is to list the phrases you think people will be using. If you have an established web site, one that has been running for at least 4 months we can examine your log files (special files kept by the server your web site runs on that track various details about your web site) to see how people are arriving now. This can provide additional input into this keyword phrase building step.

Secondly, you need to consider how you will tie these keyword phrases into your site. For example: there is no point trying to attract people with the phrase "B&B accommodation" if you either don't offer it, or don't have a tie-in with a local B&B. Likewise, the pages that are optimised need to be relevant to the phrases themselves, and tie-into the theme of the site in general.

The attention span of many Internet searchers is typically very short. If they don't see something that looks relevant to what they are looking for with a few seconds of reaching your site/pages they will quickly return to the search engine to continue their hunt. We need to keep this in mind when building pages for search engine purposes.

One of the 'keys' to search engine position is known as "key word density". This refers to the number of references of our keyword phrases on the page as a percentage of the entire page. Higher percentages are better, but the search engines are now getting smart enough (artificial intelligence) to determine when someone is spamming them with nonsense, or deliberately trying to trick them.

Another of the recent changes in how search engines, especially the Google engine, determine relevancy is something called "Page Rank". In a nut shell this is how important your web site appears to be based on how many other web sites to point to it, and how important they themselves are! For example: a new web site will typically by rated at Page Rank (PR) 0, unless some other sites are already pointing to it by the time the search engines send their 'spiders/bots' (special programs that visit your site and collect the information for the search engines). In that case you may get a PR1 if you're lucky!

The higher your Page Rank climbs, the more important the search engine considers your site to be, and the higher you will rank in the listings compared to other sites with similar content. SO the lesson from this step is to cultivate quality links to your site - there is more to this, in terms of how they should link to you, and how you should link back. Details that we usually look after for you.

One last thing to mention about the search engines - they're in a constant state of evolution. What works well now may change, although the basic principles should always remain core to how they delivery search results. The tools and algorithms they use to determine relevancy and importance are always being tweaked so we stay up to date with those changes so that you can be advised, and if new break changes can help you - we'll let you know ASAP.

(2) Directories

Directories are another category of search engine like sites that allow people to find your web site. Typically they are edited by humans (as opposed to the spider program driven search engines) which in theory results in a more accurate grouping of like subject material.

Some directories such as Yahoo and LookSmart requirement payment to be listed with no guarantee that they will list you after they review your site, although most sites don't have a problem.

In the past a listing in Yahoo was considered important and advantageous (and costly at $US295). However, currently they use the results from the Google search engine (see note about how important it is now above) to augment their own listings. Rank well at Google, rank well at Yahoo - for now!

Generally speaking the same kinds of techniques to rank well at a search engine - relevancy and good quality information - will result in a good ranking/review at the directories.

(3) Pay-Per-Clicks (PPC)

Pay-per-click search engines, such as Overture, FindWhat and Google Adwords etc are search engines where you can get to the top of the search lists by simply paying more than someone else is willing to pay to be listed there!

Whilst at the low end of the scale this can be a good way to start driving traffic to a new site, unless you have the time to monitor the results closely, it can also cost you a lot for little return.

Unlike the search engines, there are usually some additional 'rules' for the PPC's. They won't let you advertise using competitors keywords/names in your search terms. So where for the search engines you might say "Teaches Typing Better than Mavis Beacon", you could not use that as the heading for PPC campaign. You still need to provide relevant content on your landing page (the page you direct people from the PPC to at your site - more information is available on why you don't send them to your home page), even more so now because you're paying to have them visit your site so you want to ensure you grab their attention!

Conclusion...

That concludes the brief overview of topic of getting visitors to your web site. There is a lot more 'nuts-n-bolts' in the building of the pages and the optimising for your keyword phrases than can be explained here but hopefully the above gives you a good outline of what needs to be done to work on driving more traffic to your web site.

If at any time you are unsure about anything, please don't hesitate to contact us!