How to Get Top Search Engine Results for Your Business

Top search engine results come from a combination of many important elements.  In fact Google, the biggest of all search engines, has more than 200 items on its checklist, the checklist.  It uses to decide whether your web page is worth ranking top 10 in its search results.

Why do we need top search engine results?

Top search engine results are vital to bring people to your website.  Without people coming to your website, you can’t get more customers.  Therefore, you won’t be getting any new business from your website.

Step one: Keyword Research

The quest for top search engine results begins with effective keyword research.

Without effective keyword research you might work hard and optimise your web page for the wrong search terms and find out all your hard work leads to no new customers for your business.

In order for our keyword research to end up bringing you more customers, we run your industry through sophisticated software, and we’ve find out what search terms people are using that when a look for what you do.

For example, if people are looking for some new carpet at a fair price, they will use search terms like “discount carpet” or “cheap carpet fully laid” or perhaps “cheap carpet installed”.  Once we know what people are using to search for what you do, we then know what words to optimise your web pages for.

Step two: On page optimisation

Next we make sure your web page is built exactly the way Search Engines want it to be built. This includes getting all aspects of your page right.  It starts with the actual filename of your page on your website, and also includes making all the right things are in place up in what’s called the header section of your web page — the part you can’t see from your browser, but which Search Engines can see when they search.

Once that’s done we then work on the part of your web page that people in the real world can see when they click on your webpage.  Top search engine results mean that the content on your pages needs to be formatted and structured in exactly the way Search Engines want it to be.

This is because no matter what anyone thinks there is only one reason, Search Engines make a profit, and that is to provide you accurate results whenever you search the internet.

For example, Google knows your page contains valuable information because it has checklist of criteria by which it makes its judgement.  The more items you get ticked off on their list, the higher they will place you in their search engine results.

Step three: Off page optimisation

Once we are certain your web page conforms exactly to what Search Engines want, we then make sure other people find out about your website and we get them to link back to whichever of your web pages they like.

Broadly speaking, this is called off page optimisation, and it involves increasing the popularity of your website in the eyes of Search Engines.

When other websites link to one of your web pages, these are called back links, and they are one of the things Search Engines use to judge how helpful the information on your page will be, to someone who lands there.

Simply put, back links are a little bit like “votes” for how good your webpage is.  The more votes you get, the more Search Engines can see that people love you — and the higher your page will rank in the search engine results.

There are many more things that we do to help your webpage get top search engine results. You can find out more by contacting us, either using our handy contact form or by calling us direct 1800 990 832 or 0414955743. Remember more visitors to your webpage, mean more customers to your business.

How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?

Users often leave Web pages in 10–20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer because visit-durations follow a negative Weibull distribution. Here is world renowned Web Usage Specialist, Jakob Nielsen’s take on the subject (Jakob Nielsen is considered to be the NUMBER ONE specialist in the world, on how people look at a website).

How long will users stay on a Web page before leaving? It’s a perennial question, yet the answer has always been the same:

  • Not very long.

The average page visit lasts a little less than a minute.

As users rush through Web pages, they have time to read only a quarter of the text on the pages they actually visit (let alone all those they don’t). So, unless your writing is extraordinarily clear and focused, little of what you say on your website will get through to customers.

However, while users are always in a hurry on the Web, the time they spend on individual page visits varies widely: sometimes people bounce away immediately, other times they linger for far longer than a minute. Given this, the average is not the most fruitful way of analyzing user behaviors. Users are human beings — their behaviors are highly variable and are not captured fully by a single number.

Leaving Web Pages: The Weibull Hazard Function

New research by Chao Liu and colleagues from Microsoft Research collected data from 205,873 different Web pages for which they had captured upwards of 10,000 visits each. These guys crunched a lot of data.

The result: the time users spend on a Web page follows a Weibull distribution.

Weibull is a reliability-engineering concept that’s used to analyze the time-to-failure for components. The model’s hazard function indicates the probability that a component will fail at time t, given that it has worked fine up until time t

.

So, after replacing a spare part in a piece of equipment, Weibull analysis predicts when you’ll have to replace it again. It also lets you conduct risk analysis beyond simplistic mean-time to failure. And, if you own a lot of equipment, you can use aggregate analysis to, say, manage your spare parts inventory.

Of course, when analyzing Web visits, we simply replace “component failure” with “user leaving the page.” In their research paper, Liu and colleagues provide intensive statistical analysis to show that the Weibull model closely matches users’ empirically observed behavior.

According to earlier research, there are 2 different kinds of Weibull distributions:

  • Positive aging: The longer the component has been in service, the more likely it is to fail. In other words, the hazard function increases for larger values of t. This makes intuitive sense, because the longer stuff is used, the more it wears down. Thus, something that has been in use for a long time will be approaching its breaking point.
  • Negative aging: The longer the component has been in service, the less likely it is to fail. Here, the hazard function decreases for larger values of t. This makes sense when individual components vary in quality: poorly made components usually fail early, so anything that has been in service for a long time is likely to be particularly robust and will usually survive even longer.

Negative Aging: Leave Quick or Stay Long

The researchers discovered that 99% of Web pages have a negative aging effect. In human–computer interaction (HCI) research, it’s extremely rare to get this strong a finding, and Liu and colleagues should be credited with discovering a major new insight.

Why negative aging? Because Web pages are indeed of highly variable quality. Users know this and spend their initial time on a page in ruthless triage to discard the dross. It’s rare for people to linger on Web pages, but when users do decide that a page is valuable, they may stay for a bit.

The following chart shows the hazard function — that is, the likelihood of leaving — for the median Weibull parameters fitted across the scientists’ humongous dataset:

Weibull hazard function showing the probability that users will leave a Web page at time t if they have already stayed for t seconds.

It’s clear from the chart that the first 10 seconds of the page visit are critical for users’ decision to stay or leave. The probability of leaving is very high during these first few seconds because users are extremely skeptical, having suffered countless poorly designed Web pages in the past. People know that most Web pages are useless, and they behave accordingly to avoid wasting more time than absolutely necessary on bad pages.

If the Web page survives this first — extremely harsh — 10-second judgment, users will look around a bit. However, they’re still highly likely to leave during the subsequent 20 seconds of their visit. Only after people have stayed on a page for about 30 seconds does the curve become relatively flat. People continue to leave every second, but at a much slower rate than during the first 30 seconds.

So, if you can convince users to stay on your page for half a minute, there’s a fair chance that they’ll say much longer — often 2 minutes or more, which is an eternity on the Web.

So, roughly speaking, there are 2 cases here:

  • bad pages, which get the chop in a few seconds; and
  • good pages, which might be allocated a few minutes.

Note: “good” vs. “bad” is a decision that each individual user makeswithin those first few seconds of arriving. The design implications are clear:

  • To gain several minutes of user attention, you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds.

Easy On-Site SEO Tips: Linking

Let’s take a look at how we can use several on-site techniques for the optimization process, so you get the best results with your site. We are going to analyse different possibilities such as writing unique content with keywords placed the right way, internal linking and how to use external links.

Creating Unique Content for your Keywords

The content of a site is the most important part taken into account in any SEO campaign, and it is quite a normal thing when you consider that the content has to convey a message attractive for the readers, and in the same time it has to be conceived in such manner that it is attractive for search engines as well. So in order to be in the top lists, your website must have information interesting for the reader, where the targeted key words should be carefully included so the search engines find them. For best results your keywords should be found among the first 200 words of your article. From the readers’ point of view it is important that the keywords insertion don’t spoil the natural flow of your text, while for the search engines having an optimum density of keywords is an important factor for indexing.

If you find it difficult to deal with some keywords try to make some research on the topic and make sure you understand the relevant facts. Knowing the topic will surely help you use the keywords the right way. The headings should include the most important keywords and, when using long term content keep in mind that older pages get higher ranks in Google.

Google indexing algorithms rely less on keywords than other search engines do, so the recommended density is between 2% and 6%, while other popular search engines allow between 4% and 9% (Yahoo) or between 6% and 9% (MSN).

Use of Internal Links

Having the right internal link structure is on the same level of importance as having good backlinks when it comes to getting high rankings. The backlinks are relevant when it comes to getting regular traffic from other websites, while the internal links are important for a smooth navigation inside your website. Of course you would like to get the visitors on the pages where you want them most, and this can be achieved by providing a proper internal link structure. Keep in mind that the content of your pages should always match the description in your links. And since the most visited page is always the home page, this is the place where you should show the call-for-action content and the most relevant information of your website.

Although it might be tempting, try not to have too many links to your targeted page. Once you know what pages attract most visitors to your site you can use that information to draw their attention on the other sections as well. It is also helpful to keep your unimportant links not indexed by Google, by using the “nofollow” attribute, so you can get a better indexing of the other pages.

Use External Links for Making Relevant Associations with Your Content

The use of external links is highly useful when it comes to getting better indexing from the search engines. The association of your content with highly ranked external links provide the search engines the information that your content is also top quality.

What you have to do is find popular links associated with your content. Then create an anchor text where you place your own keyword. All the major search engine indexing will give better results for keywords indexed with anchor texts. Be careful though not to use too many external links not to be considered a spammer, and think carefully about what kind of content you are linking to.

 

Get Ranked In Google Places

If you’re a small business who is looking to gain a dominant online presence in your local market – you’ve come to the right place.  Our company prides itself both in its free information on this site – as well as the services we perform for clients – to help you be at the top of the search engines for the terms your customers are searching for.

One way to get immediate customers is to get on Google places for local search terms.

First, what is Google Places? It’s a free service specifically designed to help local businesses be found in the search engines when users perform a local search.

You can submit your Google Places business listening by going here – http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?pli=1

Now here are some tips that can help you optimize your Google Places listings.

First, fill out every single detail you can. This will help you show up more often on the search engines and get more clicks. Simply put – Google favors local listings with MORE content. If this means making a simple slide show picture video so you can submit a video on your Google Places listing, so be it. If this means offering a 1 cent coupon just so you have a coupon listed on Google Places, so be it!

You want to also put at least 10 photos – and you want to know those photos appropriately in ways that would get your more traffic – i.e. keyword rich photo titles will increase your chances of getting more traffic in the search engines.

Let’s talk about keyword optimization a bit more. You have to optimize your keywords in your Google Places listing so more people can find you when they do local searches. So how do you know what keywords to go after? Simple. Find your competitors websites. Then right click -> view source once you’re on their website.

Next, look at the source code at the very top for something called “meta keywords”. Most sites have their meta keywords set. If you can’t find meta keywords, move on to the next site. If you do, simply write down all the meta keywords your competition is using on that one site, then move on.

Do this for all your competitor websites and you’ll have a whole bunch of keywords to use when you create your Google Places listings. For more information on Google Places, fill free to contact us!

How To Make Your Website Immediately Profitable!

One of the best ways to make your local business website more profitable immediately is to take a proactive position… instead of a reactive one.

Sadly, most local businesses leave it up to the customer to return back to the website, or take the next action and contact you to provide your services and products to them.

That’s not the smartest approach if you want to make more money in your business in the next 90 days as you did the previous 9 months.

How do be proactive? The first way is to develop an “online e-newsletter” that people can gain access to if they put their email address into a form on your site. If you do it right, most will sign up because you explain the benefits your newsletter provides.

Then, those who sign up are put into an “email database” that you can contact any time you wish, whenever you want to send out an email.

You could provide special offers, discounts, coupons, notifications of sales and all kinds of other stuff that will help your business bring in more profits.