There is no secret that ranking on page one in the search engines can have amazing impact on your business. So to achieve this a business or website owner needs to either do some SEO work or engage an SEO Consultant.
There are some simple changes a business owner can do to save some cost, provided they have some spare time.
Step 1: Keyword Research
What kind of keyword do you think your potential customer would use to find your product or service? Keyword can be a one word like: “SEO” or multiple and more targeted keywords that combine two or more words like: “SEO Optimisation Perth”.
Longer keywords are usually better and more targeted. For example someone searching for “SEO” could be looking for general information, while a person searching “Perth SEO”, “SEO Consultant Perth” is or may be looking for a service such as ours.
So we want to make it as targeted as possible.
First brainstorm and come up with 5 to 10 keywords that you think your customers may be searching for. Then use the keywords and type them into the Google Keyword Tool. Do some research, dig deep and see what you can come up with.
Dont forget about the geographical locations. If you are conducting business in Perth, then try and use this in some of your keywords. Eg. SEO Consultant Perth.
Once you have done your research decide on about 10 keywords you would like to optimise for. If you have problems with this it is advisable to contact a SEO Consultant and ask for some help. As optimising for the wrong keywords can cost you allot of time and money.
Another good place to find keywords is from your competitors websites. Visit the top 5 and see what they are optimising for. Don’t rely on this only, as potentially they could have made some serious mistakes themselves.
Once you have selected your main keywords it is time to go and make some changes to your content.
Step 2: Web Copy
Web copy really refers to all the wording on your website. SEO’s say that content is the king. I do agree and disagree.
Yes content is very important and in my opinion it is Queen and links are the King. However king can’t live without the Queen so we have to get this right.
Our goal is to strategically place our keywords on the website to make the big boss Google happy. Please remember, even though this is very important, we have to think about the readers first. We have to make sure our copy reads well and makes sense to our visitors.
Here are few points to improve you On-Page SEO:
- 1. Place you keyword in the title of the page
- 2. Place your keywords in the headings and subheadings
- 3. Include keyword in the beginning of the first paragraph
- 4. Include keyword at the end of last paragraph
- 5. Bold, italicise and underline keywords where possible
- 6. Internal linking with your keywords and not just “Read More Here”
You will need to have your keywords in the HTML <tile tag>. If you are using Word Press it is an easy fix. Just download SEO Ultimate and use it to edit these.
If your website is using a content management system that you don’t understand, you can ask your website designer t edit these for you.
Once you have edited and optimised your Home page, it is important to start adding more content in form of articles. Write a article per keyword and add it to your website. For easy management it is advisable to use Word Press as your content management system.
A SEO Consultant usually organises SEO optimised articles for your website.
Step 3: Linking
Yes Links are the KING..!
Each link that points to your website is seen as a popularity vote and will help in improving your rankings.
It is said that quality links are more important than quantity. Yes, but I would say that we need both. Quality and quantity…
Some ideas where you can get links from:
- 1. Article marketing
- 2. Blog Commenting
- 3. Forum Profile Creation
- 4. Guest Posting
- 5. Press Releases
There are many more ways to build links. It is not easy to get good and high quality links just as it is not easy to get a large quantity of acceptable links.
SEO is not rocket science, however most business owners don’t have the time to learn or perform daily SEO tasks. That is why most hire an SEO Consultant to perform these SEO tasks.
If you have time to try and do the SEO tasks mentioned above then go ahead and try them out. If however you would like to concentrate on the money making part of your business, then hiring an SEO Consultant is the way to go.