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: Perform Keyword Research Establish keywords and phrases that are relevant to your services or your product so that you can focus your search engine optimisation efforts on those particular keywords or phrases. For example, if your business operates within a local area, your keyword research is normally going to be pretty easy. It’s likely to be that your keywords and keyword phrases will simply include what you do and then your area. For example, if your business is as a carpet cleaner and you operate in Sydney, your keyword phrases likely to be something to the effect of “Carpet cleaning Sydney.” You can also use keyword and search tools like inventory.overture.com, which is free, or keyworddiscovery.com or wordtracker.com; the latter two are paid search tools, but they’re also somewhat more sophisticated than inventory.overture.com.

Step 2: On page Optimisation Optimise your website content. You’ve probably heard that achieving high search engine rankings is all about making sure the right keywords appear on your web pages. Although this is part of the story, it’s certainly an important part of the puzzle and we call this on page optimisation. Here are some of the most important on page optimisation tips.

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. Make Your Description Keyword Rich, Too. This is your “meta description tag.” It appears in your website code and describes your page’s content. This description should be rich in keywords and should include complete sentences. For example, with our carpet cleaner, your description could say: “Proper Cleaner in Surry Hills, Sydney. Best Carpet Cleaning Service at a Competitive Price.”

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. Make Sure You’re Page Content Is Suitable. At least one paragraph of each textual page on your website should be rich in keywords. You can also repeat the keywords you use in your headings in your content. Using a mix of related key phrases is also good. For example, saying, “Carpet Cleaning, Cleaning Carpets, Clean Your Carpets,” is more suitable than using the same phrases over and over again.

5. Links Are Important. Yes, links, too, are important for page content. Instead of using generic phrases like, “Click here to find out more,” use those that are keyword rich and indicate what your business is. “Take a look at our carpet installation services” is one good example.

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. Encourage Keywords inside Your Incoming Link. For example, if you arrange for a client or supplier to link to your website, you want to ask them to use keywords such as: “cheap digital printing services” in a link rather than your company name, or “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.