When I decided that I was going to invent Australia’s most innovative, corrective skin care range that I would be writing articles on SEO along the way……. I would have said SE…what??
If you don’t know what SEO stands for, then you better quickly decide if it’s something you need before you read on… time is precious and there’s no point filling your head with tips that you cannot use.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. In a nutshell, it is basically the beautiful art of ranking on page one of Google for the appropriate search term that suits your business.
Example
One of Homepeel’s core products is a skin peel system you do yourself at home. This saves my customers heaps of money by not having to go to the salon anymore. So what you do is think to yourself; what words would my potential customer search in Google for? In my case, the answer was skin peel.
Your aim should be to have your website land on the first page of the Google results. How often do you go to the second page of results? 90% of people never go past the first page.
Do an experiment. Go to www.google.com.au (when you have first finished reading this fascinating article) and do a search for the term skin peel. You will find our website www.homepeel.com.au will come up somewhere on that first page.
Achieving this is the art of SEO. You are probably thinking to yourself right now “Cool, show me how to do that” and I will, but there’s no step by step guide or exact formula. This is why I call it an ART. You need to learn this art.
First you need to understand Google and how it ranks. Google sends out little things called spiders (Googlebots).
When a person requests a search in Google, these spiders crawl over the World Wide Web looking for web sites (web pages) that suit your search request the most.
These spiders look for a number of different things and these things change all the time. Google is very clever at making sure that the results will be organic and not vulnerable to people trying to get page ranking by to dodgy activities.
This is a good thing because if they did not keep strict rules for this type of thing, then the results we get when we do searches would not be relevant to what we are looking for and Google would loose it’s credibility.
One way Google ensures users stay true to the organic Google search results is by introducing the Google Slap.
The Google Slap is the most feared punishment for business that relies on the internet for survival.
Basically, if Google see’s that you are doing activities to boost your Google ranking that are not seen as organic (meaning true, natural results) then they will place a Google Slap on your site. When this happens, the Google spiders will no longer see your web site. This means you will never show up as a result in a Google search. This will be the death of your site.
Due to the existence of the Google Slap, it’s imperative that the activities you choose to pursue when trying to improve the SEO performance of your site is meaningful and true.
This sounds easy, bit in actual fact it is not. As the art of SEO is still quite a new field. It is hard to know what sources of information are going to lead you down the right path.
Currently there is an infinite amount of services and internet tools that claim to get you ranking on page one of Google with in 24 hrs and so on. Well, the first thing I can suggest is never choose to do something that promises quick results. This is because Google ranking is not something that can be done overnight. It takes time.
One very good tip I offer is to make one of your SEO guru’s Ed Dale http://tubbynerd.com/ He is one of the most respected SEO guru’s in the world and he happens to be located in Melbourne, Australia.
Below is a general list of things Google spiders look for:
• How often and where the keyword (the search term) is located on your pages • Your domain name, does it include the search term • Links. Is your site linked to well respected sites? How many links do you have? • Do you a have a link to a .gov • How often your site is updated • How many hits a day it gets • Is your site registered with Yahoo • Is your site indexed by dmoz.org • Most importantly, has Google indexed your site • Is the search title in your Page Title
Lately, you may be thinking “Well, Google is not the only search engine! Why do we only focus on Google?” This is because 85% of people use Google.
The front page of Google is the most successful advertising space in the world. With a little, time, effort and dedication – you can find yourself there!! Feel free to forward any questions to me on jodiec@homepeel.com.au as I am very passionate about SEO and helping others achieve ranking like I have.
Jodie Culpin jodiec@homepeel.com.au www.homepeel.com.au 0409 648 208
By JODIE CULPIN
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