When you do search engine optimisation, you are increasing your website's rank among search engines such as Yahoo, Google and MSN. In Australia, Google is the main search engine with over 80% of the search engine market share. Tests have also revealed that Google searches almost always become either sales or inquiries much more often than searches by other major search engines do. In other words, this means that Google gives you the most high-quality search traffic. This is why you should focus your efforts to optimise on Google.



With a high rank on Google, you'll normally find that you rank pretty well on the other search engines, too. So, let's go through a three step process to do search engine optimisation. It's fairly complex, and many companies spend literally thousands of dollars to get this done for them. However, it's pretty simple to explain it in this three-step strategy.

Step 1: Doing Keyword Research Establish what keywords and phrases are relevant to your service or product. Then, focus your search engine optimisation efforts to maximise those. For example, if your business is local, your keyword research is going to be pretty straightforward. In that case, your keyword phrases are going to be something along the lines of your business plus your location. For example, if you are a carpet installer in Melbourne, you'll want to say something to the effect of, "Carpet installation Melbourne," or something similar. You can also use keyword search tools, including a free tool such as inventory.overture.com. There are also more sophisticated pay tools like keyworddiscovery.com and WordTracker.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. Look at Your Headings. Search engines place great importance on headings because they seem to find important page content. Ensuring that your headings and subheadings are keyword rich is a good start. For example, Full Colour Digital Printing 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. Look At Links. Links are another important indicator of page content. You should avoid generic words and links such as, "Find out more" or "Click here". Instead, use keyword rich link test such as, "View our complete range of digital printing services", with "digital printing services" as a link.

Step-3: Optimise Off Page, Too Optimising off page, or using linking strategies, is the third and final stage of what you want to do. When you have incoming links, these are considered by Google to be a vote for your website content by other websites. Many business SEO efforts fail because they'll use keywords on webpages but don't have a linking strategy. Here are some ways you can use linking strategies to make your site go up in search engine listings: 1. Try to Have People Use Keywords inside Your Incoming Link. If you have someone supply a link to your website and you know the going to do it, such as a supplier or client, ask them to use keywords that are going to fit with your site, such as, "Affordable carpet cleaning services," instead of your company name or a directive such as "click here."

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."