SEO Tips Australia

As you crawl up the rankings for different keywords you notice how various spelling versions rank differently. For example, for this main site, I rank pretty highly for "SEO tips". That's because that acronym is in the actual URL, and because I've got a reasonable number of backlinks out there with it in the anchor text.

In recent months I started getting some Google traffic from the phrase "search engine optimisation tips" even though I hadn't targeted that at all. Presumably this was because the search engine is pretty smart and knows what the acronym stands for. But remember there are two ways to spell the word "optimisation" -- one with an "s" and one with a "z". And at that point I hadn't had any visitors arrive via searches for the latter version.

So I've done a bit of backlink building over recent weeks, alternating between the two versions in the anchor text. I'm now on page one for both of them, and getting a couple more hits a day on average. Sure, that's not much, but every little bit helps. And it will build as I keep chipping away.

So, there's definitely something to remember there. If you're targeting a keyword phrase, see if there's an acronym for it. And also look for different ways to spell it. Then build links using all those different versions. You could end up drawing in quite a bit of extra search engine traffic as a result.

There are many keywords and phrases that have had huge competition for a long while, so you've got Buckley's chance of ranking highly for them and there's no point in trying. However, if you just add the name of a country after them, as so many people do when Googling, ranking highly becomes a whole lot easier.

Here's an example. Some months back I started building a basic "make money from home" site around a domain I'd bought ages ago -- originally to promote a particular real estate affiliate program. It's "oz-income.net". It's not a great domain name for the subject, but it's not the worst, either.

I did next to no keyword research, and just wrote some pages that I thought were appropriate and relevant to the subject of making a supplementary income from home in this country. I've been pretty busy so they're all quite basic, and I haven't even written meta-descriptions for them yet. I have been building links, though, mostly with articles and lots of blog comments.

Anyway the traffic is trickling in and gradually increasing. And the main domain is already on the bottom of page one (and sometimes the top of page two) for searches for "make money from home Australia".

So, that's definitely something to think about if you have a website or blog in a very competitive niche. Just tailor it more towards Aussies, include the country name in your page titles and it should help quite a bit.

Anyone who's used Google will be familiar with the drop down suggested searches box. It's basically the search engine using its own data to do a bit of thinking for you and suggest the keyword searches that many other people have used.

So, as you type in each word, others magically appear below in the menu. The more words you type yourself, the more chance that you're using a completely one off, original search, and so the suggestions trail off to nothing.

This tool is extremely useful for webmasters and bloggers because they can be sure that if a keyword search appears, a reasonable number of people type that in every month. So, if you include such keyword combinations in your page and blog post titles and write lots of good unique content that's relevant to them you've got a good chance of ranking fairly highly for such searches, and ones like them. Targeted traffic will then follow.

That said, it's not always that simple, because some keyword searches have massive volumes and therefore huge competition. And that information is not included next to the words. Still, if you apply a bit of intuition it's not hard to find some keyword combinations with strong potential.

You can get pretty creative and find your own way of using this drop down suggestion tool. It's great for helping you get geo-targeted Aussie traffic too. One thing that people often do is type a country, state or city name, then their main keyword (or vice versa). Depending on how popular those keywords are, Google will then suggest many related, oft-used searches.

For example, if you run an employment themed website you can type in "Australia+jobs" and you'll get many suggestions. You can sift through them for ideas. And even some of the resultant three word searches listed will throw up still more that you can target.

Of course it's doesn't always follow that those typing in local location names are from Australia. However you can be confident that many of them are. Keep going with this technique - even if you don't do further research into exactly how many people type those particular searches and how many websites and blogs are competing for them - and you're sure to have some success before too long. Remember that a few such traffic trickles can add up to a flood over a year or so.

Not so long ago I wrote a post on my rant blog about the Australian federal election. Being mindful of keyword selection, I included the names of the main party leaders in the post title. Just as I'd hoped, a reasonable number of people were including those two keywords in their searches and I managed to sneak onto the first page of Google for it. That particular post has well and truly slipped down the list but it did manage to bring in scores, if not hundreds, of visitors.

Something similar happened today. I read about a point blank execution in Dianella, which was the suburb I grew up in. Compelled to comment on the changing nature of Perth, I wrote a blog post on the chilling event. I thought about what people would most likely include in their searches and titled the post "Shooting in Dianella". Again, more than a few people were typing in those exact words, or something similar. And I've had dozens of hits as a result.

I know it's a pretty opportunistic, even ghoulish way to bring in some traffic. Still, there's no point in writing a blog unless you get people to read it, right?

And the lesson from this (particularly for bloggers who write about current events) is that you should always try and think what people will most likely type into a search engine when seeking information and opinions. If at all possible, you should include those keywords in the post title. If the post is about topical information there's almost certain to be very little competition for popular searches related to it. And if your hunches are correct (which they're pretty much bound to be from time to time) you can end up getting some really nice spurts of traffic as a result.

There are various ways of finding out how much competition a particular keyword or keyword phrase has. But they can be quite involved. Of course there's software that can do it accurately and quickly, but you have to pay for that.

So here's an immediate and simple technique that can give you a very vague idea of the same thing. (And I do stress it's very vague!) It just involves looking at the search engine results page for a particular search. And it works best for keyword phrases with 2 or more keywords.

Basically, if all the keywords appear repeatedly in all the titles of the results down the first page and the next and so on, then webmasters are clearly targeting it. It stands to reason that you'll probably find it very hard to get one page one. Take a search like "make money blogging". You'll see all those three keywords appear in almost all the listings for several pages.

But if you try a search like "make cash blogging" then those three words don't appear in the titles as consistently. Sure, they appear a lot, but not next to each other so often. They're more broken up. So people haven't targeted this search so much. (And it makes perfect sense that they wouldn't, since the search volume is much lower than the one above.)

Of course this is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, because similar keyword phrases have different search volumes. And I doubt it would hold true all the time, since there are so many factors in SEO. Still, it does tell you something of value pretty much straightaway. That is, it can give you an idea of which keyword phrases you should probably avoid if you want to rank for them quickly and easily.