How long does SEO take?
One of the biggest challenges facing any business undertaking SEO is understanding how long it takes. SEO should be considered like any other traditional marketing item – it can take time for meaningful results to filter through. The number one thing to remember is that SEO is a marathon not a sprint. And if your website is new, then you’ll have to be even more patient.
A new website won’t just pop up into the search engine results overnight without some SEO basics applied to the site first. Following that, search engines then have to find and index your site. And even once they’ve indexed it, it’s often another 3-6 months before any meaningful results occur.
Unfortunately, in most cases, results are not going to happen overnight. There are a number of external variables that are out of your control that can play a part on how quickly and successfully your website climbs up the ranks.
Firstly, the search engine algorithms are constantly changing as Google, Yahoo! and Bing endeavour to continually serve the most relevant search results to its users. Therefore, it’s highly beneficial to outsource your SEO to a SEO company who would continually monitor these changes in the algorithm.
Secondly, the competitiveness of the industry and search terms that you are targeting can also influence your ability to move up the rankings with ease. Generally broad search terms, such as “events” or “cars” will be much more competitive and more difficult to rank for than specific, targeted keywords that are relevant to your business and your website, for example “corporate events Brisbane” or “cars for sale Brisbane”. Usually, it will be much easier and quicker to rank for specific keywords that are less competitive and more relevant to your business. Additionally, if you choose your keywords strategically, you’ll also be more likely to get much more traction and draw high quality traffic to your website.
Finally, there’s no way to control what SEO tactics your competitors are using. Therefore it’s vital that you employ a long term SEO strategy to ensure that your website is constantly optimising against your competitors. If you stop applying SEO to your website but your competitors continue with their SEO, it won’t take long before you drop out of the ranks as your competitors overtake you.
In most cases, SEO is not going to happen overnight. The reason for this is because of the number of variables that cannot be controlled. However, by putting the right strategies in place, and by keeping an ongoing long term view of SEO, you’ll start to see meaningful, worthwhile results and add value to your business.
Popularity: 55%
Read MoreSocial Media Hits Search
Google and Bing have both announced a partnership with social networking giant Twitter. Bing was the first to announce their partnership with Twitter and has already rolled out a Beta version of BingTweets.
This is great news for users as it means they will be shown real time content based on popular user tweets. As the competition in Search Engine Space becomes more intense, Google and Bing are trying everything to attract users. The big news, however, is this officially makes Twitter the most influential social networking site on the web.
Bing Tweets pulls in trends from Twitter and filters into categories such as “Popular Now”, “People”, “Places” and “Products”, supposedly providing easier navigation to changing trends. When you do a search, you’ll get tweets at the top of the page and shared links at the bottom. The result displayed removes duplicate tweets, and filters out any adult content for better usability. When you do a search, by default new tweets will flow automatically into the tweets section of results.
Google, on the other hand, displays the five most recent tweets for the query the user has searched, giving both real-time Twitter search results and Google results on the same page. So users can not only view the pages indexed by Google but also see relevant Twitter conversations happening for that particular search query.
This will result in companies marketing aggressively in the social media space. It also creates challenges for businesses to ensure that users are updated with latest offerings and ensure customers are satisfied with the products and services they provide, in order to maintain their brand image.
The inclusion of Twitter into the search results will change the internet marketing space, but only time will tell how users respond to those changes.
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Read MoreHow to do SEO: Keyword Research Considerations
One of the foundational elements of any Search Engine Optimisation campaign is the selection of keywords to optimise your webpages for. As such, it is of critical importance to understand a number of factors in order to lay the groundwork for success and to avoid optimising for the wrong keywords.
Keyword Phrases vs Generic Keywords
Search engine users type in keyword phrases in order to return results that will hopefully satisfy the intent of their query. It is important to differentiate between a keyword phrase and a generic keyword. Examples of generic keywords include singular words like “accountant”, “hotels” or “marketing”. A keyword phrase would be something along the lines of “accountant Brisbane”, “luxury hotels” or “marketing conference”. Generic keywords tend to have higher volumes of traffic associated with them but in most cases have a far lower conversion rate than more specific keyword phrases.
Keyword Search Volume
How often is the keyword being searched? There are various free and paid tools available for approximating keyword volume, such as Wordtracker, Wordze and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It is important to emphasise that the numbers these tools report are approximate and by no means a concrete measure of how many times a keyword will be searched. Additionally, most of these tools report only on US search volumes and may be a poor representation of the Australian market. A further point to note is the seasonality and/or spikiness (unusual spike in volume due to the term becoming a hot topic) of a given keyword which will skew the reported number of searches.
Keyword Competitiveness
A keyword phrase with a higher level of competition will be more difficult to rank for. How many other webpages are competing for the keyword phrase you want to optimise for? An easy way to get an overview of this is to search for your keyword phrase on Google. You will notice above the results something along the lines of “Results 1 – 10 of about 343,000 for [KEYWORD PHRASE]. (0.33 seconds)”. This means there are approximately 343,000 pages in Google’s index that are somehow relevant to [KEYWORD PHRASE]. Keep in mind that not all of these pages will be explicitly optimised for [KEYWORD PHRASE]. More often than not the keyword will merely appear on the page or within the anchor text of a link pointing to the page.
You can narrow down the number of real competitors in a number of ways:
- Include the phrase in quotes i.e. “keyword phrase”;
- Use the “intitle:” or “allintitle:” operator – see which pages have the phrase in their title tag;
- Use the “inanchor:” or “allinanchor:” operator – see which pages have links pointing to their site with those keywords as anchor text.
Commercial Intent of Keywords
Consumers will use different language depending on where they are in the buying cycle. Information seekers tend to use broader terms before narrowing their search to more specific keywords as they move closer to making a purchase.
Also, two searchers with different needs may use the same keyword phrase to find what they’re after. Generally, the shorter the keyword phrase, the broader the intent and the greater the potential for ambiguity. Traffic from longer, more specific keyword phrases (commonly referred to as “long tail keywords”) tend to convert better than generic keywords because the visitor has qualified themselves.
Furthermore, some words take on a different meaning through common usage or branding. Take for example the word “caterpillar”, with at least two very distinct meanings, i.e. the larval stage of butterflies and moths, or “the world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, and industrial gas turbines.”
Relevance of Keywords
Just because a keyword has a relatively high volume, low competitiveness and high commercial intent doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the goods and services you sell. Additionally, it may be completely relevant to your business but the content of your website might fail to adequately communicate this.
Striking a Balance
Keyword research, like many aspects of SEO, is a balancing act which requires the researcher to go beyond merely looking at the metrics. In tandem with cold hard numerical analysis, sucessful keyword selection requires an understanding of pyschology, marketing, language patterns and general knowledge in order to discover the right keywords for your business.
Popularity: 21%
Read MoreThe Law of Attraction: How to Attract Your Markets Online
Global messages are being relayed faster than ever and if you can talk the language of the web, users and search engines will respond. It’s vital to put attention and energy into your digital marketing strategy if you wish to attract attention back.
More and more users are being drawn to alluring information that has something to offer and conversing about topics in online groups rather than being influenced through traditional mass-marketing mediums that can haphazardly pump out information.
Just like traditional marketing, it is important to target your markets online. For example, if you’re engaging in SEO, there is no point in targeting high-volume, generic keywords that have little to do with your site’s actual content or what you offer online in a bid to get high traffic to your site. Once users land on your page, they bounce straight off again because it’s not what they’re looking for. It’s simple; don’t try to attract the wrong crowds!
Even after you attract the right crowd, it’s vital to engage your market and encourage them to connect and interact with other users. It is this two-way dialogue and significant content that will keep people actively involved with your site.
Put newsworthy and valuable information that is pertinent to your target market, coupled with the right digital marketing tools that harmonises with an alive and kicking website, and you will find that the right market will gravitate to you. Put your feelers out there because like will attract like.
To create a gravitational presence online, ensure you have:
- Researched your target market – Know exactly who your market is, where they are, how they search for information, what they are looking for etc
- A visible website – Implement search engine optimisation techniques or a Google AdWords campaign to make sure that you can be found and are noticed
- Killer content – Provide relevant, unique and updated content that will draw in users and is search-engine friendly
- Fulfill your users’ needs – Why are they on your site? Needs are varied and can include informational, transactional, social and for entertainment value
- Tools to talk – give your customers and users a platform to interact with each other, the community and you. Let them ask questions, give advice and provide invaluable feedback
- Help your content travel – implement multi channel marketing techniques such as social bookmarking, RSS feeds and other social networking tools that help people to connect. This will give your information and message a path to travel.
Popularity: 19%
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