“If you’re so great, why don’t you rank for SEO Perth?”

I used to run into questions like that quite a bit when I worked at a dedicated SEO services company. I recall whispering “serenity now!” under my breath, taking a deep breath, and enlightening dear prospect.

The truth of the matter, in my experience, is typically twofold;

1. SEO Companies Infamously Neglect Their Own Sites

Often because we’re too busy focusing on paying client work. I think we’ve justified it in the past to some extent because SEO is the type of service where the best leads come via referral. Having someone vouch for your services provides instant credibility. That is no excuse of course, and I firmly believe all SEO companies should drink the Kool-Aid.

2. The Dark Side

SEO keyword rankings for phrases such as; ‘SEO (location)’, ‘SEO services (location)’ and ‘SEO company (location)’ are some of the most obsessed-over and spammy online. The bragging rights of being able to demonstrate to potential clients that you practice what you preach is too much for the common SEO to resist, leading to a dark, downward spiral of reckless abandon!

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.”
-Yoda

Want an example? Read More

It seems to be quite commonly believed that search engines are anti-SEO and hold those that call them selves SEO’s in comtempt. While I would agree that search engines hate spammy, low quality websites and attempts to manipulate search engine rankings using nefarious methods – I would argue that search engines actually value websites that are optimised for the right reasons, in accordance with their guide lines.

Why? Because it makes it easier for them to categorise and value websites.

It’s quite easy to see this is true, and just as easy to learn how to stay on their good side when Google has gone to the lengths of producing an official SEO guide, as well as many videos and blog posts over the years.

There are hundreds of ranking factors, but very broadly, here are some major factors that I believe Google, and other search engines love and hate. Read More

Recently I’ve had two acquaintances contact me to give them some feedback on their websites. After looking into the first website, I quickly came to the conclusion that the online website builder and host they were using was detrimental to securing decent search engine rankings.

The service ignored the most basic fundamentals of search engine optimisation. When the second person came to me, I noticed they were using the same service and realised that it must be somewhat popular. The service I’m referring to is call Wix and they claim to currently host over 6 million websites!

What? They are actually advertising that they are search engine friendly? Is this not paramount to false advertisement? Not only would I describe wix.com’s website creator and hosting service as not search engine friendly, I would suggest it is actually quite search engine unfriendly.

I can see the appeal of the service, it actually makes creating a website from scratch easy enough for most people to be able to produce something presentable, in little time. But the trouble comes when they expect search engine traffic.

Fist let me clarify, I’m describing Wix’s premium paid service in this post. I can’t imagine anyone half serious about their business or website using the free service, as you cannot use your own domain name and the free version plasters your site in wix ads.

So, what exactly makes Wix websites so search engine unfriendly? Read More

I’m now the proud owner of an iPhone 4. Being my first iPhone I was curious to see if there were any apps available for SEO (apparently there’s an app for everything, right?), it turns out there are more than I expected. These apps make it possible to do just about anything on your phone that you would usually do on your computer. So, here are 7 great iPhone apps for SEO on the go. Read More

Welcome to the final installment of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. This episode will focus on measuring your progress, how to gain insight from your stats, and acting on those insights.

By now you should know that search engine optimisation is an iterative process, part of that process includes reviewing the success of your past action to plan future action. To see exactly what impact search engine optimisation has on your site, you need to measure certain data on a regular basis. There are three main areas to measure month after month to keep you on the right track. They are:

Web Analytics: who visited your site, where did they come from and what did they do?
Search Engine Rankings: are you gaining or losing ground for important keywords in the search engine results pages?
Links: is your link profile growing? Where are your links coming from? Are your link building efforts successful?

Contents
Web Analytics
Search Engine Referrals
Keywords
Top Landing Pages
Map Overlay
Tracking Search Engine Rankings
Links
Read More

Welcome to Part 3 of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. In this guide we’ll use the keyword research conducted previously to optimise the pages of your website.

In the final stages of the keyword research exercise you mapped keywords to the relevant pages of your site. Now we’ll go over where and how to optimise the pages of your site for it’s keywords.

Contents
On-Page Factors
Page Titles
Description Meta Tag
Keywords Meta Tag
Headings
Content
Image Alt Tags
An Illustrated Example
Site-Wide Factors
Menu & Navigation Links
Consistent Linking
Sitemaps

You’ll need to be able to edit the code of your web pages. If your website is built with a content management system you will need to login to your CMS, hopefully there will be an option to edit the source code – or at the least edit the title tags, copy and image properties.
Read More

All Keywords Are Not Created Equal

Welcome to Part 2 of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. We’ll discover the keywords that you’ll want to rank well for in the search engines and we’ll be using these keywords to optimise your web site in Part 3: Website Optimisation.

Contents
Keyword Discovery
Keyword Research Tools
Culling the List
Keyword Relevance
Assessing Competition
Grouping and Mapping Keywords

The value of keyword research must not be underestimated. If you optimise your site for just the keywords that are obvious to you, without research, you are setting yourself up for failure. Ranking well for multiple, commonly used keywords in your market can bring your site a huge amount of targeted traffic. For every product or service there are potentially thousands of distinct keyword combinations that a user may enter in a search engine. The more variations of common keywords your pages rank for on the first page of search results, the more traffic you will receive.
Read More

Website Appraisal – Is your foundation SEO Friendly?

Welcome to Part 1 of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. We’ll start by taking a look over your site and flagging some issues that may have a negative affect on your efforts. We’ll be looking for common issues that can potentially adversely affect search engine rankings. Some of these are technical issues, some are web design issues and others are things you may have done based on bad advice.

Contents
Splash Pages
Frames
Flash
URL Structure
Content
Search Engine Terms
Black Hat SEO and Spam
Benchmark: Pages Indexed
Read More

Every website can benefit from search engine optimisation. Want targeted traffic from the search engines? Of course you do, if you’re not getting that search engine traffic, your competitors are. However, not every business can afford to hire an SEO firm to do the work them.

To this end I am writing a free do-it-yourself SEO guide, specifically for small business and individuals. I’ll walk you through how to conduct in depth keyword research, discovering the best keywords for your product/service/offer. How to optimise your site to rank for those keywords – to get free, targeted traffic from Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing. And I’ll show you how to build powerful, relevant incoming links to your website to outrank your competitors.

I’ll keep it simple and straight forward, while including everything you need to succeed. Best of all, I’ll show you how to do it without spending a cent, using free tools and expert knowledge.

DIY SEO Guide
Part 1: Website Appraisal
Part 2: Keyword Research
Part 3: Website Optimisation
Part 4: Link Building
Part 5: Measuring Progress

Lately it has become more common for people I meet, especially business people, to have at least a broad understanding of what SEO is – even compared to just a year or two ago. I find I no longer have to explain exactly what it is I do, but I usually have to expand their understanding.

So what is Search Engine Optimisation and how has it evolved?

Traditionally SEO included optimising your websites code, content, architecture and building links to it. That was about it. But things change.

The reality is that today, professionals employed as SEO consultants do a lot more than this. In fact most aspects of traditional marketing, applied online, should be considered part and parcel of any search engine optimisation (read web marketing) plan.
Read More