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Often people are blind to the opportunities that lay dormant with long tail keywords. Instead they focus on the golden keyword that has 100 a day in traffic. Before I explain more on this topic let me quickly explain what they both mean.

A long tail keyword is a keyword that has very little traffic but very low competition. Often ranking for these keywords only requires an article written on the topic and keyword optimisation.

A golden keyword or a high traffic keyword often has a number of competitors that are competing for that keyword. Often it can take months if not longer to rank for such a keyword. It also requires months of back linking as well as a number of SEO tricks, even still it might be a challenge to get on the top page depending on how much competition there is.

These days Google loves authority sites that reach a range of small long tail topics. Often a website that has 50 articles around the subject tennis, will often out rank a website with a fewer pages and a lot of link building for a more competitive keyword of “tennis” by itself. Google wants websites that give value ranking at the top, the company prides itself on giving the most usable searches and it is this reason why the company is so successful.

Let’s face it – when it comes to creating a site that has high traffic numbers, looks good and meets the needs of its target market, it can become an expensive exercise. That’s why loving your site is half the battle. Why go on the cheap when, with a little investment, you can create a digital asset that can produce much needed income month after month? Why risk your company’s reputation by using a second rate digital agency? After all, your website is your digital presence and can be the backbone of your business.

Today even with the best graphic designer, without traffic to your site, it’s going to be hard to convert any prospects into potential customers. Simply looking at the traffic numbers for your site is far from “loving your site”. To have a full appreciation for your site, you need a holistic approach of both good design, good SEO and a clear online strategy.  These components together will entice your customers to keep on coming back, or at the very least become aware of your products and services.

You can simply not make money online without putting money into a website.  As they say – you’ve got to spend money to make money.  Today the internet is way too competitive, with thousands of websites competing for nearly every niche out there. It is far too well established for an entrepreneur to just come in like they could back in early 2000’s and purchase pay per clicks for a few cents per click. Instead expect to pay a dollar a click or more. Or even better find a traffic specialist that knows how to get free targeted traffic. At itsimple we love giving your site the attention it deserves, so find out today how you can love your site and  take it to the next level of success.

These days there are so many strategies going around forums on the internet that no one really knows who to listen to. There are gurus out there that made their money back in 2000 when it was still one two cents a click on AdWords. Those days are long gone, but these people are still selling their advice today without updating their strategies.

So how do you keep up to date with the latest SEO strategy? Well the answer is simple – get a professional. A professional lives and breathes SEO 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Just imagine all the time you will need to spend to even try to catch up with someone with this experience.

Even after a couple of years of training in internet marketing, you still need to have a good understanding of how to build a website. And let’s face it – if you choose to make your own site with WordPress, then you are restricted by the features of the plugins. When you go to a digital agency, they normally have all these great people in a team together ready to hear your proposal and to put together the best solution for your business.  They have the experience and knowledge to know what is going to get the best results for you, and can offer a range of solutions.  If you choose an experienced agency, in a matter of a few weeks you could have your site up and ready to interact with your next customer. With so many options out there for consumers, when it comes to your online presence, it’s best to do it the right the first time.

So make a new year’s resolution come true and put your business online. But don’t forget to make sure people can find it as well.  If you are going to invest in your online presence, make sure you include SEO.  Because you don’t want your competitors to be found online first!

Thinking of starting off the new year with a new website? When it comes to the success of a new site, it’s all about good content that helps improve the user experience, according to Matt Cutts from Google. Good content has more of a chance of getting linked to, which means that your rankings will improve. After all, in Google’s eyes, every link equals a vote towards your site.

Even an aged site can really get favourable results with new content. Google likes to update users with the latest articles on each topic, so if you refresh a high page rank page with new content, it’s going to be enough to push it to higher rankings.

When it comes to having a good site, content is one of the easiest and quickest updates you can do to improve your rankings. This is because Google bots read content on sites, but currently they cannot read images effectively.  So if you really want to communicate with Google to improve your rankings, then you need to do so via up to date, quality content.

People will often put most of their attention into the ‘look and feel’ of a site.  And while this is an important aspect, contributing to user experience and how your brand is perceived, it is only one part of a successful site.  Too often people have the content as an afterthought, leading to confusing messaging, lack of keywords and therefore low site rankings.

It is vital to the success of your site that you understand how important content is.  Bill Gates didn’t say “content is king” for nothing back in 1995, when the internet was in its early years. These famous words support the importance of having quality content on your site.  And you can guarantee that when Matt Cutts from Google says something about content, there is going to be a lot of supporting data backing it up.

With the growing emphasis on SEO, clean HTML coding has become more important than ever. From an SEO perspective, this is to allow the bots to go through all the content without being stopped by unnecessary coding that could be better placed in external files.

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, it is important that websites can be rescaled to work in different formats.  Using old HTML tables puts restrictions on what mobile devices can view the content. These HTML tables can also reduce the ability for bots to get through web content, decreasing on-page factors that are reliant on Google page ranking.

These days it is vital to have a good mobile site that is SEO friendly and lends itself to the latest in CSS design. This includes drop shadows and rounded corners. So when you’re looking at getting an updated website develop, ensure you are working with a team that understands what development coding is best to tap into all web and mobile markets.

Once upon a time Google showed the same results at the top of their search page all over the world. These days you will notice that in each country or city you are in, the results will depend on what locality optimisation methods websites haves used.

One issue with optimising for major cities is that there are already a number of competitors optimised for the same keywords. This is where keyword research comes into play – you can see if there are keywords relating to your business plus major suburbs within your vicinity that have decent traffic. For example if you’re a hairdresser and are in Melbourne, “Hairdresser Melbourne” could be a good place to start your research. However if your salon is located in South Melbourne, using “Hairdresser South Melbourne” might give you less competition, meaning it will be easier for you to get to the top of Google. It will also help get more targeted traffic to your website.

Once you get that traffic to your site, it is important to keep them there with good site design. However Google does not look at the design of your site, so there needs to be a balance between good design and the amount of content and keywords used. 300-400 words per page is an excellent amount of content.

Even once you have found good keywords to optimise your site for, the work is not over. It needs to be supported by backlinks and content. In my experience, it seems that Google views each backlink as a vote for your site. The more votes you have, the higher your ranking.

If you would like to find out more about SEO, get in contact.  We can help you with strategies to rank higher on Google, achieve backlinks, optimise content and recommend keywords to use.