Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

So now that you have considered your keywords, the other part of the SEO puzzle is inbound links and fresh content.

Put simply, inbound links are those that point to your site from elsewhere on the web. It may be from a directory, it may be from a link that someone has added to a social bookmarking site, or someone may consider your site of enough value to link from theirs. Wherever they come from, inbound links are vital to the success of your site.  Read more...

I thought I would cover off the elements of SEO in a little more depth after the primer earlier this week. As I mentioned in the Basics of SEO, the first element of your site that is considered by search engines is Keywords. Keywords are the search terms that people punch into Google (or another search engine) in order to find what they are looking for.

What you need to consider, particularly as a  startup, is that people don’t search for the name of your site because in the beginning, you have no profile or awareness. What they search for is a term that they consider to be the right one for what they are looking for, which doesn’t always match with what you believe they would search for to find your site. What this means is that you will need to conduct some keyword research in order to determine what is best for your market.  Read more...

When a company name becomes a verb, you know it has a pretty significant impact. Anyone who has ever searched for anything online has no doubt used Google at one time or another. The online behemoth, whose homepage is arguably the most valuable piece of online real estate,  has the lions share of  the global search market, making it one of the most important areas of online business for anyone – after all, if they can’t find you, how do they buy from you? Did you know that 55% of purchases here in Australia come from the search engines?

Assuming that you have used it yourself to find something, how many times do you go past the first few pages of results (apparently 93% of people don’t), or click on the sponsored listings on the right hand side and top of the page (called Ad Words, which we will cover in another post)? The sites that appear at the top, and indeed on the first page, are not there by chance. They have employed what is known as SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation.  Read more...