Mon, 14 May 2012 22:13:29 -0800WeeblyMon, 14 May 2012 21:51:16 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2012/05/use-twitter-search-to-find-local-tweeps-bloggers-and-webmasters.htmlThe more I get into social media, the more I realize just how important it is to anyone with a website or blog. That's why I'm using Twitter a lot now. (That said, I haven't really looked into Facebook. I know some people swear by it for drawing traffic. But I just can't get into it.)

Twitter is really focused and targeted. And you can use its search function to find members according to various criteria. Say you want to find people to connect with in your city. You can go to the advanced search form and specify a location along with other criteria.

Or you can just use the basic search function and type in one location keyword and another one or more keywords and you'll get some good results. One search that works well is a city name along with "recommend". You'll get a whole bunch of people who are obviously presently in a particular location and hoping for some good advice on which are the best local bars, cafes and restaurants, etc.

This gives you an opportunity to tweet about your location. And those particular tweets can get found by others seeking local tweeps to follow. Needless to say, those people who are asking for the advice will appreciate it, too. Do this regularly and you'll get some local click-throughs.

You can also use Twitter search with website search engine optimization in mind. If you do a location search along with keywords like "blog", "blogger", "webmaster", and "website" you'll find people with a strong online presence. You can interact with them and build up a bit of a rapport. Eventually this is sure to generate the odd link back to your website or blog. These links are doubly powerful because not only are they one way, they are also very geo-targeted.
]]>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:51:22 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2012/04/thoughts-on-googles-penguin-update-and-over-optimization.htmlThere has been a lot of talk about this latest Google update, dubbed "Penguin". Much of it had to do with over-optimization. Countless websites suffered a massive and swift drop in search engine traffic.

Clearly, many webmasters feel that they were unfairly punished. I can certainly sympathize with them, but I do see what Google was trying to achieve with this.

One of my niche websites was hit (or at least I think it was -- you never can be entirely sure with search engines!). I was angry and disappointed at first but on second thoughts I realized that I was definitely over-optimizing it.

Firstly, I had several pages that had a common two word keyword phrase in the titles. Even though the content on each page was unique and different, this was a big no-no! That was pretty dumb in retrospect but I chose to include those words because they did reflect the purpose of the pages, and I was in a bit of a rush to build the site.

Secondly, I'd done a lot of article marketing for that website. I must have submitted about 25-30 articles in the last several months. These were all unique, and not "spun". I did vary the anchor text, but in retrospect I didn't do this nearly enough. I didn't endlessly repeat exact keyword phrases but I did use some words over and over again, even if they were in different combinations.

Thirdly, I didn't pay enough attention to the pages themselves. While they certainly had some useful and relevant information on them they were pretty general in nature. I should have spruced them up more and made them punchier, more specific and informative. I was always intending to do this eventually, but basically became fixated on getting lots of article backlinks because they really did seem to work well and my traffic was rising steadily.

I wasn't trying to trick Google, but I was certainly being way too overzealous with certain techniques. Clearly, there was an imbalance between the amount of work I'd put into the on-site content, and my backlink building. Google picked this up and slapped me for it.

It's been a good lesson. Basically, the main thing to remember is to keep focusing on the content of your site. As the search giant keeps saying, build sites for people, not search engines.

So now I'm going to pretty much forget link-building -- particularly via article marketing -- for a long while. Instead I'll be putting almost all my effort into writing lots of quality content for my websites and blogs.
]]>Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:46:47 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2012/02/time-is-a-factor-in-search-engine-optimization.htmlI've built several blogs over the last few years. Having so many to update, I can go for several weeks, even a month or two, between posts. But what I've noticed with a few of these blogs is that even if I've been slack about updating them, the search engine traffic still increases gradually. I start to rank for keywords and phrases that I never used to before. This seems to apply particularly to those blogs that are more than a couple of years old. (It also applies to a couple of my websites.)

I've read a few article about how the age of your URL is a factor in how Google ranks it. The experience I've had definitely confirms this. It's not a huge factor, but it's not negligible either. So it's yet another reason to keep chipping away at your blog or site whenever you find time to do so. And don't worry if you're not keeping to a regular or frequent schedule. Keep at it long enough and you'll slowly draw more and more traffic, even if you do nothing else.
]]>Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:46:00 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2012/01/keyword-country-has-a-good-free-keyword-suggestion-tool.htmlThere are several good keyword tools out there that you can use to generate ideas for what to target as you build websites and blogs. The most well known is the Adwords keyword tool of course. That gives you lots of good information as well as listing many related keywords and phrases.

But there's one that I've found recently that seems to come up with a very different and often longer list of related keywords. It includes the level of competition for each. This is the Keyword Country free keyword suggestion tool. Those extra suggestions are great raw material to use as inspiration for pages and blog posts as well as articles that you use in your link building efforts.
]]>Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:49:41 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2011/12/triond-can-be-good-for-australian-webmasters.htmlOne place you can get a powerful backlink to your own website is the revenue sharing site Triond. It's like an article directory, but you don't put the links in an author bio-box. You can put them in the body of the article, and they are "dofollow" so they do pass on search engine juice.

Triond has various sub-sites that all have their own unique domains. One of these, Trifter, looks like a good place to submit something if you are seeking geo-specific traffic. It's the place for travel related articles, and there's a section for Australia.

Obviously, submitting something there would be most appropriate if you have a specifically location-oriented website such as an entertainment guide for a city or town. But other kinds of websites would still benefit.

You've just got to find a local angle. So, say you have a website for a surf shop. You could write an article about all the best surf beaches in that city.

The trick is to include information that is good, unique and relevant, and not just make your article a shameless puff piece. That way you're offering the reader something worthwhile, and the backlink you include is appropriate even if it isn't demonstrably useful.
]]>Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:28:26 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2011/12/keep-in-mind-acronyms-and-different-ways-to-spell-words.htmlAs 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.
]]>Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:05:10 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2011/12/the-top-3-positions-in-google-are-highly-prized-for-a-reason.htmlIt's certainly a great feeling to get onto the first page of Google's search engine results for your chosen keyword or phrase. As long as it has decent search volume, you're sure to get a constant flow of trageted traffic as a result. (And even if you get hardly any, it still proves that you're doing something right!)

But your ultimate goal should always be to rise to the very top of the page -- preferably in the top three positions -- since this is when you really notice the benefits. A study carried out earlier this year showed that when combined these three slots get well over half of all the clicks from people viewing the results. Not surprisingly, there was significant variation between these three places also:

Websites ranked number one received an average click-through rate (CTR) of 36.4 percent; number two had a CTR of 12.5 percent; and number three had a CTR of 9.5 percent. Being number one in Google, according to Optify, is the equivalent of all the traffic going to the sites appearing in the second through fifth positions.

I have noticed this very effect in action just recently. I was sitting in third place for a nice two word phrase that was bringing several hits a day to the main domain of this site. Recently, I moved into second place for it. It's quite remarkable what a boost that change has given me. If I do get into the top spot, well, that will be fantastic!
]]>Sun, 30 Oct 2011 23:34:11 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2011/10/a-good-australian-website-building-and-promotion-guide.htmlThis site is specifically about SEO. And it's not highly structured. I just keep blogging, building and promoting websites, checking the results of my experiments, then describing the results here occasionally. So it's designed to help people who have a bit of time to browse through the posts and pages, then pick out and perhaps apply what looks suitable to them.

However, many people -- particularly those in business -- are too maxed out for this leisurely approach. They are looking for good, clear informaiton about building a website from scratch, and doing it in the quickest way possible with the best tools available.

These people might be interested in You Make The Website. It's been created by Dean Wormald, who has extensive experience in website production, SEO and other related fields.

For a small fee you get a comprehensive guide about how to start a website from scratch using Wordpress. It's all very clearly laid out. Subjects include how to set up various required accounts, choosing domain names, drawing traffic, and using Google Analytics. Membership includes access to various useful resources.

As any blogger knows, Wordpress is the best blogging platform available. But it's also a great content management system in its own right and has been designed with SEO in mind. It can be used to make a slick and professional website, and so is great for businesses.

The downside is that using Wordpress does require some comparatively involved technical steps. (Actually that's one of the reasons I haven't used it yet. I find it all a bit daunting! I've found that Blogger, Yola and Weebly meet my needs for now.) But the step by step approach in the guide will help dispel any trepidation that people have about using this platform.

In my opinion this is a good option for someone keen to build and promote his or her own professional looking, SEO friendly website quickly and efficiently.

You Make The Website
]]>Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:33:09 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2011/07/competitive-keywords-become-viable-when-made-geo-specific.htmlThere 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.
]]>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:12:18 -0800http://www.seotipsaustralia.com/1/post/2011/06/offline-advertising-of-urls-and-googles-drop-down-suggestion-box.htmlI posted recently about Google's drop down suggestion box. That lists keywords to the searcher based on what others have been typing in. In the same way, the search engine will also suggest actual domain names. (To try it just type in "www." then a letter and you'll see how it works.)

There are obvious benefits if your site is listed there. Searchers will inevitably choose it from time to time and you'll get more hits.

I assume that the criteria for listing is that your actual domain name has been searched for a reasonable number of times. Now, I know that the main domain for this site is not yet included, even though it does okay in Google. (For example I'm in the third position for Aussie searches for "seo tips" and I sometimes get 15 hits a day from that one query alone.)

Yet I have two URLs that do appear in this domain suggestion box. Significantly, those two are the ones that I have done quite a bit of offline promotion for (using flyers mostly). I have done next to none for this site. I suspect it's this offline promotion that was the crucial factor.

Why this conclusion? Because lately, after having done flyer campaigns for these sites, as well as seeing direct "type in" clicks, I've seen quite a few clicks coming from searches for these domains.

Clearly people are getting savvier in their use of the internet. Upon receiving a flyer they often check to see if the advertised site is listed in Google (which will give them a sense of its quality). Google helpfully shows them a preview as well. If they feel the site is worth clicking on then they will do so. Consequently that hit is recorded as resulting from a search for that domain.

It seems that if you rack up enough of these "URL-search" hits, Google will include your domain in the drop down suggestion box. Given that Google is becoming more and more localized in its presentation of results, I suspect that it will give URL suggestions related to the location of the searcher. So, this seems to be another way in which offline advertising can help with local SEO and bring more visitors to your site.
]]>