The Basics Of On Page SEO – Part Two is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Make your site visitors feel at home.

In part one of this post we looked at the concept of on page SEO: what it is, how it differs from off page SEO and three of the first things you can be focusing on to get your website in good SEO shape.

In the first part we focused on “back end” optimization techniques; here we will focus more on what visitors and search engines “see” when they land on your website and how to go about optimising these pages with further techniques.

1. Your Web Page Copy – Keyword Focus

What you actually do with your keywords in the web copy of the relevant pages of your website is equally as important as your page titles and descriptions.

Each page should be focused on 1 or 2 keywords, no more. For instance you can have a main keyword phrase like “Melbourne SEO Services” and then a variation or two such as “SEO services” and “search engine optimisation services” which you can also include in your copy.

2. Keyword Frequency/Density/ Placement

Use the same keyword phrase at least 2 or 3 times on the page. Your web texts should be at least 300 words long and you might want to include your keyword phrase around 3 times in every 500 words – once in the first paragraph, once in the last paragraph and perhaps once in the middle section.

3. Added Extras

A few other places to focus on web page optimization are the H1 tags (headings) on your website, plus using bolded text, italics and also making sure your image tags include keywords. It’s even better if you get your keywords into the URLs of your pages ( eg. www.yourdomain/keyword.html)

4. Keep It Natural And Readable

What many website owners get wrong is focusing too much on pleasing the “bots” and not enough on pleasing their visitors. It’s humans who open their wallets and buy goods and services from you, so you need to keep all of your content interesting, informative and relevant; weave in your keywords, but keep it readable. The search engine rankings will follow if you are providing relevant and interesting content for your customers as you will normally be well rewarded for natural SEO.

5. Do All This Even If You Have Video

With the huge popularity of online video these days, it’s tempting to cut a few corners; please note that you should still create texts with your keywords, even if you have video as your main focal point. Search engine robots cannot read video, so always add a short text summary of what’s in your video on the page.

Most of the above on page SEO methods are not too time consuming; some may take a little practice to get right but, for a small investment of time, the benefits can be great: most small businesses don’t need to use 100% of the SEO techniques to get to Number 1 on Google because it’s not that competitive – completing 80% will get most businesses there and that’s why we’ve given you some of the main approaches in these two articles.

For further excellent tips and advice for your new online business, head on over for a free viewing of the Competition Crusher workshop here: www.crusherworkshop.com.

The Basics Of On Page SEO – Part One is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Learning the basics is vital in mastering SEO.

The beauty of on page SEO is that you can do it once and it can last for the life of your website. That makes it doubly important for you to get it right first time, so that you can forget about it, let it do its job and concentrate on your off page SEO, which is more time consuming.

Below we take you through what you need to know.

What Is On Page SEO?

On page SEO essentially tells the search engines what’s on your website pages. You are making it easy for the search engine web crawlers to find and index your pages and associate them with the right keywords, so that you have a good chance of being listed high in the search results for those keywords. That brings you traffic and, hopefully, sales.

That’s why it’s important. Now what is the right way to go about it?

Fundamentals

1. Know Your Market

It’s fundamental to the success of your business to know what you want to be ranked at the top of the search results for. Everything starts from there – get into the mind of your ideal customer, who will type in a search term; your on-page SEO efforts are geared towards making your page number 1 in the search results for that and similar terms he/she may enter.

For example we want to be top for “Melbourne SEO services”…type it into Google and you’ll see where we rank! Part of the reason why we’re there is because we’ve spent time getting our on page SEO right.

2. Create Unique Page Titles

Every page on your site should have a separate and well written title. If you go to Google search results for a popular search term you will see blue-coloured links listed, which are the titles of the web pages in question.

With page titles being featured so prominently in search results it’s important that you write them well, including a keyword you are targeting.

Our home title page is “#1 Melbourne SEO Services Company” which includes our company name and keyword.

3. Meta Descriptions And Keywords

These are the descriptive texts listed underneath the blue title page links in search engine results. They should be well-written, keyword rich and no more than 160 characters long.

The description for Melbourne SEO Services is:

“Want your website to be in position #1 on Google? Melbourne SEO Services will show you how with their transparent 4 stage search engine optimisation …”

Again, we have spent time to think about what people wanting SEO services want to read – being at Number 1 on Google is everybody’s SEO dream, so including this in the description increases the likelihood of them clicking on our link.

On page SEO, when done correctly, sells your website even before anyone visits; and then, once it’s up, it can continue to work for you until you change your website. So it’s well worth putting time and effort into. We’ll give you some more tips in Part 2 of this post.

In addition to these SEO tips, there’s a whole host of great information in the Competition Crusher workshop, if you are starting an online business. Simply click here to learn more about it.

5 Top Website Usability Tips is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Make it easy for people to use your website.

Unless your website is easy to navigate around and find information on, you may be left with confused visitors not interested in buying from you.

If you are in the process of designing or re-building your site, following these basic steps will greatly enhance your website usability.

One Page One Purpose

You’re not publishing a book so you don’t have to worry about using extra paper! It’s therefore better to create extra pages than to cram information on one page.

Keep every page unique to a sole purpose – this will help to create clarity for the reader and if all the pages are indexed on a well-designed menu then the relevant information will be easy to find; there’s nothing worse than having to scroll through irrelevant information to find what you need.

Also keep reader options on any given page to a minimum – too much choice will confuse visitors and confused people don’t take action.

Step By Step Process

Make sure you have worked out yourself how you would like the “ideal visitor” to use your website; think about how you will introduce them to your site, where they go from the landing page (this may be an opt-in offer or to the About Us or Testimonials page, for example) and the whole buying process they will go through.

This will help you design your site to lead the visitor through the steps you want them to take, in a controlled fashion. Be careful not to make it totally sales-heavy; people are usually after some education, not just marketing – take care to balance your sales copy with the right information.

No Ambiguities

Make the process clearly defined, with no ambiguities. An example of a misunderstanding that can happen would be a phrase like: “How did you find this website?” There are two possible responses, based upon enjoyment level or location!

This applies to all parts of your page and site, but especially with your call to action. Don’t leave your visitors in any doubt about what you mean or what they should be doing next!

Less is More

Everything you design on your site needs to be aimed at enhancing your sales message. Pink polka dots may look nice, but do they enhance or detract from your main message?

Some good guiding principles are: use only one or two fonts/colours, keep sentences and paragraphs short and readable, use sub-headings to break blocks of text up, use images or video to reduce text and keep things generally clean, clear and simple.

Test It Out

Once you have designed your site, test it out before launching. Get friends or colleagues to visit the site with some predefined objectives; most people won’t mind giving you 10 minutes of their time to test your site.

You can watch them and see whether the site works in practice; different people have different expectations and habits, so observing these will help you fine-tune your website to get the best chance of positive outcomes; you won’t please all users all the time, but you need to optimise for the average visitor.

There is also software available called Clicktale which allows you to monitor mouse movements of visitors – this can be invaluable in assessing whether your visitors are following the paths you expect them to on your site; it can also help to nip any problems in the bud.

You should find that following the above will help you achieve excellent site usability for your end creation. This is just one important area of your online business to pay attention to. The Competition Crusher workshop covers all aspects that any start up business needs to focus on. Watch your copy for FREE by clicking here.

7 Site Usability Tips For Your Small Business Website is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Optimising your website usability is just as important as optimising for the search engines, as a poorly-built site will drive your visitors away on the “bounce”!

A well-built site that is easily navigable and has easy-to-find information will keep your visitors on your page long enough to get your marketing message across – which is the aim of any website that sells.

You will probably find that most of the things which annoy you about other sites will annoy other people too, so bear this in mind when creating your site. Here are 7 site usability tips to start with.

1. Check Out The Competition

It’s always best to take a look at the industry leaders in your field; they are leaders for a reason and that’s normally because they have struck the right balance between design and content to make their site an informative and effective sales tool.

You want to differentiate yourself with your unique products, services and expertise but there’s no harm in “lifting” some of the design features of other sites to set your online business on the right road.

If you are setting up an online store, for example, it would be remiss not to be up-to-date with how the likes of Amazon or eBay are setting their sites up – look at the way they use reviews/up-sell tools etc and see if you can use these techniques on your site.

Many businesses don’t currently do this, so it can give you a real edge if you put some time to checking out the leaders.

2. Use A Sidebar Opt-In

If you incorporate an opt-in box on your home page for a free report or video, make sure it doesn’t just stay static at the top of the page, but follows the user down the page as they scroll down. That way it acts as a constant reminder that there is something of value for them – and gives you more chance of collecting their email address.

3. Make Your Contact Details Highly Visible

Don’t make the visitor go to your Contact Us page to get in touch with you. Keep your phone number (landline number preferably) clearly visible in the top right hand corner of your home page. This way the customer will know you are a legitimate business and can contact you if anything goes wrong with their purchase.

4. Use Clear Headlines

Break your text up on your page and use clear headlines to let the visitor know the information they are getting – this applies to text, tables/images or video alike; tell the visitor exactly what they will be learning in each section.

5. Lay Out The Options

At each juncture let the visitor know what their options are – whether they are to learn more about a subject, opt in, place an order, contact you by phone/email or other option. Spell it out and make it clear.

6. Give Them The Information You Would Want to Know

Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes and give them all the information you would want as a customer. If you were buying a series of videos, for example, you would want to know exactly what’s in them, how much they are, what they look like, what the order and delivery processes are etc.

Laying this out clearly and systematically will help your customers feel comfortable in buying from you.

7. Use Video

Using video for attention-grabbing and maintaining interest and has become far more widespread and it is much easier now to make cost-effective and high-impact videos that market your business and convert leads. It also cuts down on the amount of text needed and gives your site a more user-friendly feel to it.

Melbourne SEO Services’ Competition Crusher workshop is specifically designed to help your online businesses sell more and getting your website right from the start even with site usability; if you’re looking for more great tips like these head on over to www.CrusherWorkshop.com where you can watch the DVD for free!

Site usability tip: check out the competition to know what works.

7 Essential Pages For Any Small Business Website is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Create a testimonials page from credible clients.

While you will see plenty of variations in website design there are some indispensible pages to include for any small business website; we get straight into detailing those below:

1. Opt In Home Page

On your home page why not have an opt-in area?

This will allow you to start building a database of contacts, which can be the cornerstone of future marketing campaigns. It will mean that your visitors don’t just come and go anonymously.

Offer them a free report or video that will be useful for them and in exchange for that they leave their email address.

Actually building a database is probably the most important and most neglected part of any online business. Start building it immediately – it can take time to build relationships with your database, so combining sales-focused marketing with developing trust and credibility with your database is crucial.

Eventually you should be able to get your higher value products and services in front of them.

2. Services Page

Building a business web site needs to include a services page that lists all your products and services; make sure you get your main keywords in there.

3. Testimonials Page

What great things are your clients saying about you? Let the world know and preferably do it by video. Get your clients to talk on camera with you about the results they have achieved from using your products and services – this provides instant credibility.

4. About Page

On your “About” page it’s time to tell your story.

You want to differentiate your business from all the others out there in the same field, so do that by telling your unique story and how you got to where you are – the problems you faced in getting there, your “Eureka” moments and what drove you on.

This is how you get your customer engaged emotionally and it is very effective in creating authenticity and credibility online – two priceless characteristics for your business.

5. FAQ Page

FAQ pages are important on several levels. They are great for handling customer objections upfront; create credibility for your business; help to position you as an expert; allow you to use video in short sharp bursts; and they also help with SEO.

A good idea is to think of 10 questions that your customers ask frequently, plus 10 that they ought to ask – then make a one minute video answering each question.

When future customers ask a question you have covered you can simply send them the YouTube link; this will save time and look very impressive to your customer.

6. Contact Us Page

Include your contact details at the top of the page. Be sure to list a landline phone number and a physical address rather than a PO Box number– you want to show the world that you are a real, legitimate business and the customer can find you if something goes wrong with their purchase.

7. Blog

Including a blog on your site will help with SEO; target certain keyword phrases important to your business in regular blog posts, to help to drive traffic to your site.

As you build your website, think in terms of doing everything you can to increase your credibility and set yourself apart from the rest – use any proof you can that you are a leader in your niche and can be trusted.

These small business website tips are just a few of many pieces of great advice in The Competition Crusher workshop; it is specifically designed to help start-up online businesses to sell and be successful, so if you’re looking for a place to start, you can watch for free by visiting www.CrusherWorkshop.com.

What WordPress Theme Do We Use? Our Thesis Review. is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Looking to buy (or already own) Thesis? Click here to grab these free bonuses.

We use Thesis and why should you care?

Thesis is an advanced WordPress theme developed by DIYThemes and is one of the more popular and well-received themes used by internet marketers. The major features of Thesis are that is highly customizable from a design standpoint, it has SEO functionality built into the theme and is backed by great documentation and support.

The moment you install and activate Thesis, your site will improve in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), there will be faster page load times, there will be maximum readability to engage and hold your reader’s attention and you will have point-and-click design and font controls. Expert support staff and members’ only forums will also give you all the help you need.

Within the Thesis control panel.

Thesis is very flexible. It is right out of the box with no coding or custom design. It’s all powered by two point and click option panels. The Thesis Option panel lets you tweak all sorts of elements of your theme without digging into the code. It’s simply point and click. For example, decide how you want title tags to show, fill in a meta description, choose how author, date and comments display and drop in your stats code and more.

With the Thesis Design Options panel you can control font types and sizes in every area of the theme. You can add features and teasers with thumbnails to give your site a magazine look and feel, all from this control panel. You can easily adjust the header appearance, using a custom image or designing your own header, adjust the colour for each component such as posts, comments, navigation menus and sidebars and you can change the default post image settings, which saves you from having to tinker with each individually.

The biggest benefit of Thesis beyond SEO and design flexibility is the support. The Thesis members’ only community is built with over five thousand of your fellow webmasters plus the Thesis support and development team. You immediately get all the answers you want whenever you need help. Thesis is the most innovative and user friendly SEO optimized WordPress framework available and you get all future updates free.

With normal WordPress blogs, there are a lot of options and links for the visitor to click, often making it very confusing for them, and so your conversions suffer. Now with Thesis, you can apply custom code to your sales page or squeeze page to give it a minimalist look. You can eliminate unnecessary sidebars, navigation menus and headers and footers, which will dramatically improve your conversions.

Thesis is one of the top two themes we use here at Melbourne SEO Services for our WordPress blogs. We are able to customize it so our sites look professional and are maximized for conversions. The price is fair, so why not click the button below and try Thesis out for yourself and see what an improvement it is able to make to your websites?

Will Your Flash Websites Fail To Rank? is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Will Flash bring you down?

I’ve been asked this question numerous times and it may have been because people have misinterpreted something I’ve said in the past – “Flash based websites are a bad idea.” What I was getting at here was, having “exclusive” Flash websites is not a great idea – and here’s why…

When the Google spider is crawling around the web, you want to make it as easy as possible for it to navigate your website. This is done through your linking structure and/or your nav bar. Google needs to be able to follow your links to find your pages, so it can index them.

If you’re using exclusively Flash based menus and your website is Flash heavy, Google can’t read this. There’s nothing for it to grab hold of. You need content on your page. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to discard Flash completely.

Flash can help engage users and when used well it can look great. That is equally important because it can make your website more sticky (help retain visitors longer) and hopefully convert visitors to buyers. So Flash isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It’s important to follow the standard rules of thumb for on page optimization: make sure you choose the appropriate keyword, put it in the title tag, and meta description. Put some content on the page and the text in it; you also want to have crawlable links so the spiders can follow them around.

With all that that said and done, like all things SEO, you can still rank pure Flash websites simply by using enough back links. The fact is, if you’ve got enough back links, you can rank just about anything!

A good rule of thumb though, is to make sure you have that good on page optimization, have the crawlable links and some content on your site.

For these and other great tips, follow us on Twitter, or Like us on Facebook.

Landing Page Optimization Vs. SEO – Which One Is Better? is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Will customers start paying when they reach your money site or will they need some convincing?

Is landing page optimization better than doing more SEO for a website? And what’s going to get you the best ROI?

I know what I’m about to say might sound a bit funny coming from an SEO guy but we’re more than just an SEO company. The fact is, landing page optimization, depending on where you’re at, might in fact give you a better return on investment than SEO.

So what is landing page optimization? First, what is a landing page? A landing page is any page a user lands on. Whether they’re clicking on a pay per click ad or clicking on your results in the organic search, the page on which they land is your landing page.

So how do you know when you should be focusing on landing page optimization? As a general rule of thumb, focus on it once you start to drive a good amount of traffic. What’s a good amount of traffic? Maybe two hundred or more unique visitors to a page every week or two.

So where do you get started? First go to your Google Analytics account and identify which pages are getting the most traffic, and start there.

By optimizing, you’re looking to increasing your conversion rate. That means getting someone to pick up the phone or place their order. Check out some of our YouTube clips to find loads of ways to do this.

Still not convinced? Why is optimizing your landing pages sometimes better than trying to improve your SEO?

Here’s an example, let’s say you’ve got a page that’s getting some good traffic and it’s converting at 1%. Imagine, if you can increase that to 2% by making some of the changes we teach at Melbourne SEO Services… that could effectively double your bottom line! You’re now getting twice the number of people to buy. These minor tweaks significantly improve your profitability.

Compare that with SEO. Imagine how much extra traffic you’d have to drive to double the number of sales.

It’s simple when you remember you’re trying to make as much money as possible from your website. To find out how we can help you make more money contact Melbourne SEO Services today.

Duplicate Content Penalty – Are You In Trouble With Google? is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

You won't be sent to the penalty box for duplicate content.

There are really two parts to this question. We need to think about duplicate content on your site and off your site.

When we think about content on your site, a common mistake is having duplicate title tags and meta descriptions and having these site wide. It’s definitely a good idea to make sure that every page has its own unique titles and descriptions. This is very quick and easy to fix and will almost immediately improve your rankings.

Now, I don’t believe Google “penalizes” those who are doing something wrong nearly as much as people might think. Instead, Google works more like a “filter”. If you have duplicated content, Google may filter out those pages, but they’re not going to get removed from the index or anything.

Often e-commerce sites get it wrong because their descriptions are duplicated throughout the site. They may even copy their vendor’s products and descriptions directly.

This leads into part 2 of this question. Is it going to be an issue if other people have the same content? Again, I’m quite sure that you’re not going to get a duplicate content penalty from Google.

Repeated content is part and parcel of the way the internet works. For example, when you’re doing a press release, it’s distributed to hundreds and thousands of outlets and it’s all the same press release.

We’ve run some tests where we’ve distributed a release through PRWeb.com and we’ve seen hundreds and thousands of creations of that one article all linking back to our website with the same content! Surely you couldn’t argue that this is going to hurt our rankings.

In short, I do believe that this whole idea of duplicate content is overplayed. And like most things in SEO, with enough link building, even if it is the same content, you can still get those pages to rank extremely well.

For more tips, follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook.

Break Into Business With Niche Marketing is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

One of the most effective ways of making sure that your advertising money is spent correctly is by getting into niche marketing. Niche marketing is taking focused marketing and giving it more…well, focus, for lack of a better term.

It basically is breaking down markets into smaller sections, or niches, and this can help ensure that you’re marketing to the correct target audience. You don’t want to spend thousands of dollars marketing your new line of running shoes to 83-year old ladies. You want to get your product out to the marathon runners and daily joggers.

Niche marketing can also help cut down on competition, therefore giving you an edge when it comes to sales. If you’ve created a sunscreen lotion that is very effective for people with tattoos, you’ve got a built-in target market. Sure, they can use any sunscreen out there, but yours is formulated especially to make sure that their tattoos don’t fade after several trips to the beach. Why wouldn’t they buy your product? It’s important to meet your niches unique needs, and this is just one example of how this can be done.

It’s also a good idea to know the ‘lingo’ of the group you’re marketing to. This can help solidify your position as one of them and won’t make you seem like an outsider or some sleazy marketer who’s just out to make money off of them.

Let’s say you’re selling pickups for electric guitars; instead of knowing product numbers and names, it’ll help to know which pickups will suit both the type of guitar and the style of music your customer plays. This will both include you in the group (and can help make you into an expert or guru of sorts), and can also effectively create loyal customers by showing that you know and care about what they’re talking about.

Test marketing can be helpful when selecting your niche market. You may find that there’s no competition, and that can be a good thing – you’ve found a hole that you can fill. But you’ll want to make sure that if other people have tried to fill that hole and failed that it’s not a hole that can’t be filled. These cases are rare, but it does happen occasionally. When marketing to a specific group of people, it won’t hurt to know the background of the market.

Niche marketing can also help with your SEO process by making your keywords and phrases more clear; when you get to your second and third tier keywords and phrases, these can be very obvious if you’re marketing to a certain niche. Let’s stick with the electric guitar pickups for a moment. You might break your different tiers down as far as “Gibson PAF Humbuckers” or “Split Rail Pickups”.

In short, niche marketing can be the best way to break into your new online business. Find a hole and fill it in. And here at Melbourne SEO Services we can help you with that and all other aspects of your online business. Check out some of the other services we offer at the services tab above.