Who doesn’t. When I hear “We want to be #1 on Google” my automatic response is “for what phrase or keywords” and then this is usually met with a puzzled stare. To clarify things, NEESH are not search engine optimisers although we go as far as ensuring that our clients sites get primarily optimised for web presence. This includes some inbound links, xml sitemap, Title, Description and Keyword Metatags and content possibly revised to thread in keywords and phrases amongst others.

Any company will have numerous combinations of keywords or phrases that they want to rank for but they will almost certainly get different priorities with the search engines. This is where it is important for the client to put themselves in the position of a potential site visitor and think about what the visitor would type in to find their website. There still seems to be a considerable consensus that a website is a static (almost print like) advertisement that is complete upon upload when in fact that is just the beginning of the battle.

Many company’s have large budgets for ongoing SEO (search engine optimisation) as the algorithms of the search engines are frequently changing which means your site may also need tweeking to ensure it maintains it’s ranking. On the other hand there are many ways the site owner can contribute to their sites popularity growth. Here are a few tried and true methods that will hopefully help someone.

1. Try and build up your inbound links. This could be by forming alliances with complimentary company’s wanting reciprocal links, forums, blogs, online directories. Basically wherever you can that isn’t spam. Being linked to from high traffic sites will rate more highly than less busy sites. Government sites are also supposed to be more heavily weighted due to the strict control over what is published on their sites.
2. Ensure all stationery, emails, correspondence, advertising etc has your website address prominently displayed.
3. Start your own blog and become an expert in your field so people will want to come to your site for up to date info.
4. Keep your site fresh with regularly updated content.
5. Subscribe to search engine optimisation newsletters to keep you abreast of what’s going on in the SEO world. A couple of my subscriptions are Jill Whalens High Rankings Advisor and Search Engine Watch.
6. Don’t underestimate what the social media groups can do for your exposure and join up. FREE (basic memberships) and they are huge! You know who they are….
7. Get a GOOGLE Account and monitor your sites statistics through webmaster tools. This tool has some fantastic feature including any crawl errors that are encountered.
8. Understand your own hosting providers statistics. Many hosts have the option to email them to you which I’ve found convenient.
9. Integrate some relevant video from You Tube into your site.
10. Regionalising your business can quickly reduce competition in search results. Obviously this only applies to business’s working in a local market and not interested in exposure to areas outside of this.
11. Content is king…well for GOOGLE anyway it seems and with about 80% of the market it is no wonder that SEO is heavily waited towards GOOGLE optimisation. So ensure you have plenty of punchy, keyword rich text. Remember that it has to read well though so don’t overdo it as that may reduce your optimisation efforts.
12. Longevity of your site also plays a part in the GOOGLE algorithm. This is out of your control but it makes sens that if a sites been around a few years then it will have some history to it. Sites come and go quickly so those ones get a lower level of importance.
13. Pay per click advertising can be tailored to suit your budget. Several options GOOGLE Adwords , YAHOO , MSN/BING .
14. Build up a database of subscribers to your newsletter to keep them up to date on your business activities. Here’s a summary of the Australian Anti-spam laws.
15. Avoid utilising pop-ups, pop-unders or other advertising techniques that interfere with the visitors control.

I won’t delve into black hat optimisation techniques as it is a specialised optimisation area that I haven’t considered researching.

That is a few of the standard optimisation areas that have sprung to mind. As you can see, most of them require ongoing attention to keep improving your traffic results.