SEO Services - Think Lateral, Local And Logical

SEO services are best used and understood as a component within an overarching search engine marketing strategy. Their aim is to configure your site and it's content to be compatible with the requirements of popular search engines such as Yahoo, because achieving a high ranking on Google or its competitors is vital for every business.

Why Your Site May Be Poorly Ranked

Have you ever wondered why some sites are consistently ranked above others? The reason is because these businesses have developed their websites so it is optimized to be 'search engine friendly'.

When someone plugs "fast snake catcher Melbourne" into a search engine, it'll return pages of results ranked in order of relevance to the query. Some will be what the user is looking for, some won't. But the business-savvy snake catcher will have already used SEO services to help prepare their website for just such a search.

Thinking Laterally When It Comes To SEO

Companies that are researching and plugging in keywords aren't going to have as much success as companies thinking more laterally. Take the example of American online clothing giant Zappos. Do a Google search on Zappos and more than their website will come up on the first page of results. You will see links from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia entries and more - which are in effect building blocks giving customers an increased opportunity to come across their name, brand and different ways to interact with their company online.

One of the simplest techniques used by SEO services is to create compelling, current and constantly evolving website content. Fresh content is attractive to search engines and makes the crawlers come back time and time again. It tells their algorithmic little brains that your site is alive and has something to offer. This is also helpful to users visiting your site.

So think quality content. Google, the world's most popular search engine, can't stand spelling errors, so ensure your copy is well written and properly proofread. Also ensure the title of the page is all-inclusive of your relevant keywords. Google places a strong emphasis on headlines.

Matt Cutts from Google gives logical advice when it comes to search engine optimisation versus end user optimisation. And that advice is: try and align these two goals so you are doing both. SEO helps people find you but when they do; your site needs to be useful to them. Keeping these dual goals in mind is a good way to focus your SEO services, design and strategy.

Beyond more complicated coding techniques, another simple but effective tool used by SEO services to increase page rank is "link popularity". Build up back links to your site from other reputable sites. This works in much the same way as quotations and citations in the academic world. If the very best in the business are linking to and referencing your site, it builds both page rank with Google and enormous online credibility.

Your Google Local Listing

Google Local is crucial - especially if you are a business servicing a local area. The top 5 things to consider with your Google local listing are:

• Citations from other sites count towards page rank (they don't have to be links)
• Your business title, address and phone number must be consistent and include keywords such as your business type (eg: plumber)
• Make sure you set up and claim your Google local listing (as site history improves page rank)
• Collect good reviews and list these both on your site and other sites (eg: Trip Advisor for tourism and travel)
• Put up photos and videos both on your site and on YouTube and other shared media sites

Tip: A neat way to encourage people to post positive reviews about your site is to provide the opportunity on site. So if you are a restaurant, hair salon or B&B, why not ask customers for immediate reviews. You could even consider providing free internet or Wi-Fi access to customers and then make sure your review page comes up on their computer.

We encourage you to contact us we won't try to sell you anything- it's not our style. Our approach is to learn a little about you, your business, your clients to provide a free, professional no-obligation analysis of your current digital marketing needs and provide recommendations. You can execute the strategy yourself after participating in a workshop or two, or you can hire us to become a part of your team to increase online conversions, improve usability on your website, create and manage a PPC campaign, extend your brand through social media, produce original content, or put you in touch with a digital technology expert.