Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is all about ensuring that you market your business to people searching the Internet for products or services just like yours. It is about marketing to inbound traffic, directing that traffic from search engines to your website. To do this your website needs to feature on top of the Search Engine Return Page or SERP.

At SEO Brisbane, we’ve been moving their clients’ web pages up the Google ranks for years. So, how does SEO affect the ranking and why should you care?

There are three major search engines. The biggest by far is Google, hosting around 75% of searches. When a user keys in their keyword search, the search engine deploys an algorithm to crawl through the web pages to find the best match.

The algorithms use a number of criteria to find the most suitable pages. These criteria are kept secret. The specialists at SEO Brisbane watch the trends and analyse the data. From this, we have developed a code of best practice.

We do know that one of the most important criteria has to do with relevance. That means that if your website contains the keywords or the phrase that the searcher has entered it is more likely to feature on the first page of the Search Engine Return Page or SERP.

Because Google and the other search engines want to deliver the most useful articles to the searcher, they look for information on websites that is most likely to deliver an engaging user experience. For this, they use authority as a criterion.

Authority is measured by backlinks from other websites. To gain backlinks you will need to publish content that others find interesting and authoritative. You need to be considered something of an expert in your field or industry.

Another important criterion is usability. Your website should be simple and well organised. If you have a social media presence this can get you shares and likes that will help to tell the search engines that your site is organised and liked by the community at large. The search engines will also rank your web pages higher up the pages if they are mobile friendly.

Research has shown the users pay more attention to the top five pages that turn up on the SERP, and this is why SEO is so important. Instead of marketing your product solely through advertising you can use organic searches to sell your product to people who are looking for something similar.

The SEO Brisbane office is there to help you to develop a cohesive online marketing strategy that will draw traffic, lead to conversions, and improve the bottom line. SEO is a cost-effective means of spreading the word since the initial outlay to set up your website will continue to reap returns with little additional cost.

SEO is a critical component of any business marketing and sales plan. The rapid and sustained rise of digital marketing has meant that a viable web presence has become essential even if you are still using traditional marketing methods.

Your business needs to develop and implement a winning SEO strategy for the following reasons.

• To rank high on search engine return pages
• To increase your company credibility and trust
• To improve your company brand, and better position your services, products, and business.
• To increase website traffic
• To identify the most effective keywords for your business
• Better web presence and visibility
• To make more sales

The project scope and goals for search engine optimization and website presence improvement vary from business to business. Nevertheless, the need to have your website ranked higher in searches will grow over time.  When all is said and done, if new and existing customers can’t find you on the internet, they will find your competitors.

This really depends on the type of website that you have. A small five-page website will take considerably less time to optimise than a large website with many pages in a highly competitive environment.

Smaller websites should take no more than a couple of weeks to complete. Larger sites could take several months.

You should start to see positive results on the search engines quite soon after going live. At SEO Brisbane we monitor the results and tweak the pages as necessary to improve your ranking. If your site is new, it could take up to seven days to see your business on the search engine rankings.

Web presence refers to a website’s complete digital footprint on the internet. The website often contains articles, videos, and graphics which forms the centrepiece of the business. There are other places where a business should have a presence. These places include but are not limited to:

• Backlinks to the website contents and pages from other sites
• Social media presence such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram.
• The business mentions in form of tweets, shares and likes, posts, + 1s and tweets
• Business listing directories in yelp, Yahoo, yellowpages.com, Bing, city search, white pages and many more
• Content writing and articles shared by the business on other websites
• Local business listing directories such as Google and local

A growing web presence is vital if you want to reach new potential customers while maintaining a relationship with the existing ones. Look around you, your toughest opponents are building their web presence, if you are not, you risk falling behind.

People search for many things on the web, from services to products and business in different ways. Many use the popular search engines Yahoo, Google and Bing. Some prefer the use of social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. While still others use business directories such as Foursquare, Citysearch and Yelp. There are so many methods for Internet users to find products, businesses, and services, and it is evolving at a rate of knots. Having your business in web locations means more potential customers will find you.

Growing your web presence will also help you to develop authority and gain trust from potential and existing customers. The bigger your online presence, the greater the brand recognition and awareness. Over time increased web presence should lead to a higher ranking.

Search engine rankings can change very rapidly. This can be very annoying for business owners who have crept to the top of the ranks only to find that they have dropped down again. There can be a number of reasons why your webpage has dropped down the ranks

• New pages are added every day. If your competitors have added new pages or have updated the content on their pages, they may have moved up the ranks and knocked you down.
• The search engine algorithms change daily and these changes may change how well your website scores in the search engine rankings

You may also have moved up the ranks if websites have been removed or their owners have failed to keep them relevant and up to date. To keep your website at the top of the ranks it is essential that you monitor your performance and that of your competitors.

Your content must remain relevant and current, and you should have a social media presence to engage with your customers and share your content.

A local search is the use of a city or state to geographically tag a site. It is an efficient means of delivering web pages for businesses within a limited geographic area. A local search is particularly useful for brick and mortar businesses to limit the search to the customer catchment area.

All of the main search engines have local directories where businesses can keep their most up to date information. These directories have a link to the website of the business and an interactive map which shows their location.

Domain authority is a tool that measures the authority of your website. It analyses all of your backlinks including irrelevant, toxic and spam links. It then gives you a score of between 0 and 100, 100 being the optimum score. There are a number of things that you can do to increase the domain authority of your site

• Build links – It is more important to achieve a link from a quality site than to get a large number from sites that themselves have little authority. When it comes to links quality pips quantity to the post
• Improve the user experience by working on your website making it simple to navigate
• Improve interlinks between pages to improve your page authority
• Increase your web presence through social media engagement.

Competitor research is all about viewing and analysing the websites of your competitors to see what they are doing and how they are ranked. Competitor research happens in all industries as companies seek to improve their rankings and the traffic to their site. The end objective is, of course, to increase sales and boost the bottom line. Competitor research typically covers the following areas

• Search for good content
• Understanding the target audience of your competitors
• Analysing backlinks
• Estimating traffic to their sites

This information is then used to help you to build web content that will draw more traffic to your own site.

The main objective of SEO is finding out what people are looking for and then to deliver it better than any of the competitors. Good SEO is not a single discrete exercise. It is ongoing and requires several iterations to ensure that the site is optimised and is moving up the ranks.

It starts with a technically sound webpage, which should contain well designed and thought out pages. It should be simple and easy to navigate and the titles and subtitles should contain relevant keywords.

Content marketing is key to good SEO. Good content marketing aims to inform and entertain customers thereby retaining them. It shouldn’t punt the product too hard. It should be subtler than that. The aim really is brand awareness and recognition.

The content will determine which keywords your website will show up for. Sharable assets such as videos and graphics could help you get links to your pages. To rank up the search engines you also need a social media presence. People liking and sharing your pages is good for your ranking. Social media is a great way to promote your content.

Good SEO channels the technical requirements of the search engines into the customer-centric content offering of the web pages. SEO and content marketing are two sides of the same coin.

There are three main categories of SEO

• White hat SEO – This is the type of SEO that Google would like all websites to use. It focuses on the users. It makes use of tools such as content writing, keywords and mobile friendly sites.
• Blackhat SEO ­– Refers to tactics that violate the search engine terms of use. If the Google algorithms pick up this type of SEO, you will be penalised and your ranking will go down substantially. This type of SEO includes excessive keyword usage, purchasing of links etc. it focuses only on the search engine requirements, excluding the human element
• Grey hat SEO – Grey hat SEO revolves around using tactics which are not clearly defined in the search engine terms of use. Use of these tactics could improve your ranking or it you could end up being penalised. It is not best practice and it can get you into trouble.

Unethical SEO practices are best avoided. They can have undesirable results.