Search Engine Optimisation for Google

Everyone with a website yearns for the number one search position on Google. We could spend every waking hour studying Google and would still only understand 80% of how it works. The best Balance Internet  can do is give you some basic Tips based upon what we believe works.

Firstly, understand that there are two ways to get your website listed on Google - one is Cost Per Click (CPC) via Google Adwords and the other is to have an Organic (or natural) listing. Organic listings require Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO means constant changes to your website and patience while results build slowly, with no guarantee of what the results will be. CPC is more instant. You pay for ads on Google based upon keywords relevant to your products. Both are important - in our 12 years of experience we have discovered fast-moving and web-savvy users will often click on paid CPC listings (RHS of Google page) and people with more time to research products will lean towards Organic editorial listings.

Buyers fall into both groups. We recommend you maximise organic listings through SEO first, then augment and round off with strategic CPC placements.

Our four Google Tips are:

1. INCREASE YOUR PAGERANK ™ (Organic SEO)

Google PageRank™ relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyses the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank™, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search.

You can improve your page rank by listing advertising for your site or products with many other sites (paid and unpaid). Get as many important sites to link to your site as you can. Consider free links as well as paid links in directories or allied sites. Lets take online wine retail....even listing your products in other search engines or directories like www.winerobot.com.au or www.winediva.com.au will increase your ranking.

2. UPDATE YOUR CONTENT (Organic SEO)

Search engines love quality relevant content that is added and updated frequently. You will probably notice that the top ranking websites have many articles and other quality content, and are continuously adding new content to their sites. So update your site with new content such as tasting notes, reviews and newsletters. Consider doing a blog (“website daily or weekly log”) on your site to increase the freshness of your content.

3. OPTIMISE YOUR KEYWORD DENSITY (Organic SEO)
Keywords are also important and you should include keywords in Meta Tags, Alt Tags, Titles, Names of the images on the page, Heading Tags (h1, h2, h3...) and in the body text.
Your keyword density needs to look natural; if it looks unnatural, your rankings will suffer as a result. Use keyword plurals and stems, and try to ensure that you don’t go above the Google ideal of 2-5% keyword density per page for each of these variants. Try using http://www.keyworddensity.com to check your keyword density out.

4. MONITOR CPC IN REAL-TIME (CPC Paid Listings)

Pay-per-click or CPC can be implemented quickly via http://www.adwords.google.com.au , and should be turned on and off as promotions require. It provides tighter control over where listings appear and what they say, making it easy to test search terms, product offers and ad wording. Paid traffic is more reliable and though costly, it allows more rapid manoeuvrability than organic listings. Focus on conversion; track the cost per lead and cost per visitor, and factor in cost per customer acquisition. Use this information to change your CPC campaign on a day to day or week to week basis.

Online search is the most popular tool on the Internet and 70% of people undertaking a search, use Google. This makes Google the most important mechanism for our clients' online success. The Balance Internet team have over 20 years combined experience in using and engineering solutions within the Google environment. These include:

• Natural search positioning on Google, or search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Paid search strategy or search engine marketing (SEM)
• Google map integration, Google earth integration, Google calendar and gmail setup

Contact Balance Internet today