When you utilise search engine optimisation, you do so to rank well in search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. In Australia, Google dominates the search market, with over 80% of the market share. Tests have also shown that Google searches almost always turn into either sales or inquiries much more often than searches done on other major search engines. In other words, this means that Google generates much more high quality search traffic. That’s a pretty good reason to focus mostly on Google for your search engine strategy.

With Google, you’ll find that you rank quite well as compared to the others. For this, there’s a three-step process by which you can perform search engine optimisation. This topic is fairly complex and companies spend a lot of money getting this done for them. However, you can do this with three relatively simple steps.

Step 1: Keyword Research You need to establish which keywords and phrases are relevant to your product or services so you can focus your SEO efforts accordingly. For many businesses that serve a local area, keyword research is normally straight forward. The most profitable keywords or phrases are likely to be in the form Your Industry Your Location. For example: “Plumbers Melbourne”, “IT Support Sydney”, “Accountants Perth”. There are also a range of keywords and search tools, including a free tool; inventory.overture.com and also more sophisticated pay tools such as wordtracker.com and keyworddiscovery.com.

Step 2: Optimising on Page Optimise your webpage content. For the best search engine optimisation and rankings, you have to make sure that the right keywords appear on your webpages. This is part of the story, true, but it’s just part of what you have to do to optimise your webpages. Here are some other things you should do to make sure you optimise effectively.

1. Make Sure Your Title Includes Your Keyword(s). At the blue bar on the top of your web browser, your title label appears. It’s also the title of your webpage in the organic search results for Google. This title should be concise and short, and have keywords or keyword phrases in it. Put the most important keywords first, and any secondary keywords afterward. For example, if you have your carpet cleaning shop in Surry Hills in Sydney, you can say as your title: Carpet Cleaning Sydney - Carpet Cleaning Surry Hills Sydney.” There’s some repetition there, true, but it’s got a lot of keywords in it and it doesn’t sound strange.

2. Have a Keyword Rich Description. This is properly called the Meta Description Tag. It is the part of your website code that describes the content on the page. Your descriptions should be keyword rich and written in complete sentences. For our digital printer, the description could read: Digital Printer in Surry Hills, Sydney. Providing Competitive Colour Digital Printing and Binding Services. Print Business Cards, Flyers, Brochures and Menus, Postcards, and More

3. Pay Attention to Headings. Headings are very important for search engines because they seem to help them find page content is important, too. Make sure that your subheadings and headings are keyword rich for a good start, for example, using a heading such as “Carpet Installation Services in Sydney.”

4. Address Your Page Content. You should ensure that you have at last one keyword rich paragraph of text on each page. Keywords used in your headings may be repeated again in you content. Try to use a mix of related key phrases. For example, Digital Printing, On Demand Printing, 60 minute Print Service rather than the same phrase over and over again.

5. Links Matter, Too. Links, too, indicate page content to search engines, importantly. Avoid using generic links such as, “Click here,” or “find out more.” Instead, make your links keyword rich by using such phrases as, “Check out our carpet cleaning services here,” with “carpet cleaning services” as the hyperlink.

Step-3: Optimise Off Page As Well Utilising off page optimisation or linking strategies is the third and final stage in making sure your website is search engine optimised. When people link to your website, these are known as “incoming links,” and Google considers these as votes for your website. Many businesses fail because they only focus on using keywords and webpages but don’t utilise a linking strategy. Here are a few things you can do to start making sure your site goes up the ranks with linking strategies:

1. If You Can, Have People Who Link to Your Site Use Keywords. Let’s say a client of yours is going to link to your website. If you can, ask them to use keywords like “inexpensive carpet installation” instead of your company name or a directive like “click here.”

2. Consider Using Authority Directories. When you list your site on website directories that are well regarded by search engines, this can improve your rankings. These are so-called “authority” directories and sometimes charge a fee to list there. This keeps out lower quality websites. Three of the most well-respected are botw.org, Yahoo.com.au, and business.com. It should be noted that this is different than using e-mail scams that offer to submit your site are uniformly directors for a fee. Rather, you’ll want to submit your website to directories that search engines regard highly.