Search Engine Optimisation

It's a fact with any business: you can have the best business in the world, or do what you do better than anyone else, but if nobody knows about it - you'll have no customers and your business will fail.

The same is true with a web-based business, actually, it's even more so. At least if you own a shoe shop or you've got a little newsagency - you get some passing traffic. People end up finding you whether you advertise or not.

This brings us to the point of web marketing, specifically: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). There are quite a few ways to advertise your website online, but most of the methods cost more money than they're worth. The alternative to paid advertising is to utilise the free search engines like Google and Yahoo that most people use to scan the web to find the information they're after.

The term "Search Engine Optimisation" basically states what this is all about. You want to optimise your site so that search engines can find it, pick it up and index it, and rank it highly when someone searches for a keyword included in your site somewhere.

When your potential customer performs an Internet search and enters a couple of keywords searching for a product or service that you offer - the majority of users will select a website that is listed on the first results page - probably in the first 4 to 5 listings on that page! If you're not listed there, your chances of being found are greatly reduced, losing potential customers.

There are quite a few simple, but important tricks that can be utilised when building your website, that can help your site rank highly in the major search engines. One of the most important things is to have many pages of quality content - content that includes the keywords that you want the search engines to pick up. Inbound and outbound links to other quality websites are important too.

There are other tricks and tips that you or your website developer should know about also, to ensure your site isn't avoided by search engines, which can happen if you break some rules. Make sure your developer is well informed about current search engine optimisation techniques. Ausnetech makes a point of staying up to date with search engine philosophies and algorithms, which can help your business keep your website at the top of the list when your prospects look for you.

Please see our series of articles on Search Engine Optimisation for more detailed information.

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