If potential clients can't find your business on the Internet, your website is not really working for you

It’s all about SEO – search engine optimization for your website. And it’s not rocket science. It does however require knowledge about how SEO works, how to maximize keywords on webpages, metatagging of pages and so forth.

It also helps if small to medium businesses set up their websites so that they can manage their own SEO. That’s what Bold Type can do for small business owners whose websites are not ranking highly on Google; websites that don’t have good SEO. We can improve business!

27000 page views and rising

One Bold Type client has blitzed the competition with his new Bold Type built website. From about 3000 page views a month (with their old website that we replaced), in 12 months they have gone to 27000 page views for the month of August and they’re expecting September to be higher again.

What has increased web visitors and page views?

Bold Type built the new website for this small business using WordPress, a content management system that allows anyone to keep their website up to date. It went live in August 2010 and immediately there was an increase in traffic to the website. Great metatagging and navigation, increased number of pages all helped. Not only new traffic but very targetted traffic so that business immediately picked up.

New product? No problem. It’s so easy to use that, if you can use type on a keyboard and hit ‘Publish’, then you can use this system. So the company, a small business, can post their own new products, change information as required and make sure that their website is completely up to date. Oh yes, and we supplied a manual on how to metatag new webpages and how to improve SEO.

Because the business is generating so much more new business, and because the owner realises the value of keeping the SEO going strongly, he contracts Bold Type to look after his monthly SEO management. For a minimal cost of around $1000, his business generates up to $30000 more – each month (than it did with the old website). Not only is our SEO management working to increase visitors, we are making sure that the right visitors – potential clients that turn into clients – are targetted. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that that’s got to be good for the business.

If you want your business to be more visible on the Internet, i.e. generate more business from your website, contact Sue Stevens at Bold Type.

Read more about SEO on our website.

See some WordPress websites we have built in our website portfolio.

Before you start writing for the web

Searching keywords using the Google Keyword Tool

Go to Google Keyword Tool and search different keywords that relate to the information on the webpage you are writing. For this article, I searched:

• keyword content
• SEO relevant
• SEO web content

From this I found that SEO Tips ranks highly as does web content. Keep in mind that it is best to try to be as specific as possible so I finally settled on:

1. SEO Tips for Web Content Writers

This heading should rank more highly on Google and attract more readers – that’s the plan, anyhow.

Keyword Focused Content

Make sure to add variations to the keywords for this webpage in headings and body text

Each webpage should have its own list of keywords that you are targeting: don’t get distracted; keep to the point and keyword focused for that webpage.

Keywords in Headings

Make use of headings: H1 and H2 are the main ones to focus on even though many websites drill down to H5 or H6. Use keywords that you have identified as relevant in each of your headings. The title tag (see below) should have the primary keywords and H1 and H2s variations of the keywords.

Title Tag

The title tag is the main heading of the webpage that often goes unrecognised by web visitors but is vital for SEO ranking.

Use your best keywords for the Title Tag of your webpage

Use your best keywords here. Some websites also allow you to add a descriptive tag text. WordPress, for example, has an SEO All In One plugin for this which is brilliant.

What you write in the descriptive tag appears on the Google search

The Descriptive Text Tag is what appears on the search under the main heading so it’s important to include keywords from the webpage here in a natural flow (no more than 160 characters).

Bold Keywords

Make keywords bold using the B in WYSIWYG in the body of the text. Bold or ‘strong’ text in the body of the webpage content is a good idea. Best to use bold text at the top of the page to maximise SEO benefits.

Body Text with SEO Keywords

Use variations of your keywords in the body of your text but make sure that it reads naturally. Don’t overdo this. For example, SEO Tips can be used as tips for SEO, tips for search engine optimisation (English spelling) or search engine optimization (US spelling).

Variations of the keywords creates a more natural flow and is still beneficial as Google now recognises the relationships between different words.

Linking Keyword Text

When linking text on your webpage, try to link meaningful keywords. For example, it’s best to link Read More SEO Tips and link to another page on your website rather than ‘Click Here’ which means nothing to search engine robots.

For external links, again use the term such as Google Keywords Tool as a link rather than words such as ‘Click Here’.

Image ALT text

Adding ALT text on your images is very important for SEO

When using images on your webpage, make sure that you add ALT text which is the text that is ‘readable’ by blind people. Google wants us to develop websites that are inclusive of all people. ALT text is not only the right thing to do, Google sees it as the right thing to do.

Read more about this in the web glossary under ALT text and W3C guidelines.

Relevant, meaningful content

Write content that your prospective web visitors want to read.

'How to' webpages, news and blog articles are a great way to engage web savvy readers

It might be a ‘how to’ webpage or article that is relevant to your area. ‘How to use Google Keyword Tool’ would be an example of a web article that has relevance to my web visitors.

Newsworthy stories or webpages are excellent for going viral and getting links back to your webpage. With a Facebook Like icon on your webpage, you’ll have a better chance of achieving viral-ity!

Research information and write about it. If you are a sportswear supplier, information on the superior fabrics you use and how they will perform for your customers is valuable information that some people rely on before making a decision.

By giving factual information, you are also showing that you know your product.

Giving information in this way subscribes to what a good website does: help, help, sell. You need the help, help online to get to the sell.

Adding humour into your web writing

Have a bit of fun. Use some humour. It doesn’t work for all businesses but a little humour goes a long way to keeping the reader’s attention.

Edit and Proofread Your Writing

Before posting your writing to your website, make sure you edit and proofread your text

Before you post your web content page or article, edit your writing to make sure it has a natural flow and reads well. Too many keywords that you keep repeating is boring and will turn people off. Proofread your work or get someone else to proofread it for you. Editing and proofreading can make a world of difference.

Looking after the finer details gives you more credibility. There is nothing worse than spelling errors that disrupt a reader’s attention.

A pet hate – use the apostrophe properly

Even some of the biggest companies in the world use the apostrophe on FAQs so that it is FAQ’s – this apostrophe is wrong! Apostrophe is only used when something belongs to something else. Susie’s red dress but never for a noun such as FAQs which is simply the plural of FAQ. Read more about this unforgivable grammatical error on my Bold Type Blog.

Get into social media

Add Facebook and other social media codes to your webpages to make it easy for people to share your content with others.

Ranking well on Google can dish up the world for your business

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – that is getting your website showing on page one of Google for keywords that are specific to your industry – is not easy even when you really work at it and have all your webpages set up to improve SEO.

If you don’t have your website functioning to improve SEO, then your website just won’t make the grade.

So what are the mistakes in a website that stop a website performing at its SEO best?

Incorrect page tags

The biggest mistake is that the webpages do not have their own SEO title and description tags. Tags are the words that appear at the top of a webpage and they are what helps Google to rank the page. Having the name of your business on every page as the title tag is not going to work. Each page needs to have it’s own title tag (and descriptive tag) for the particular content on that page.

Worse still, some websites have no tags at all. No tags, no ranking.

No internal webpage links

Links are important for every website. Internal links from your own webpages to other webpages are excellent as Google follows the links and ranks your individual pages accordingly. PageRank (the Google value of a particular web page) is passed on through links.

It’s a big error not to link webpages on a website to each other. One of the biggest mistakes website owners make is not linking their web pages effectively between one another. In addition, the actual text you link is important. ‘Click here’ is a no no!

Better to link to ‘Contact [name of business]’ or ‘Contact us about [name of product or service]’ Failure to link correctly between your own webpages will result in a significant loss in SEO value.

No human sitemap

A human sitemap is one that lists all the webpages on the website and is readable by humans. It’s an easy thing to add to a website especially if you are building a new website for your business (or rebuilding an old one).

So easy to do and not having one will cost you in terms of SEO ranking.

Duplicated content

Duplicate content can occur a number of different ways. Firstly, you might have copied text from one page to another. It might be that two or more products have the same text for the product information. This might be wording provided by the manufacturer.

Best to make sure that every has something different: heading, introductory text, text for images and so forth.

Google does not like duplicated text because if Google robots can’t differentiate one page from another, the end result is that your pages will not rank well.

Using Flash on your website

Still today in 2011 I hear people saying that they love Flash and want to include it in their website. Wrong!

Yes, it’s true that Google robots are starting to read and index Flash content, however it’s also true that Flash websites do not rank well for important keyword phrases. Why use Flash if it is not going to assist your search engine ranking? Worse, it will inhibit your ranking.

The good news!

Google ranks pages, not websites.

For SEO, you need to focus on each and every page on your website. Each webpage needs to be developed with content that will improve it’s SEO. If you do this, you’ll find your website will be ranked highly and you’ll get the business over your competitors.

And lastly, size is important to Google. Big is good. The more pages you have with good content about your business and industry – pages that are tagged properly and have good keyword spread– the better for your website and ultimately, for your business.

Contact us for a free SEO analysis of your website.

Read more about making your website SEO friendly.

Five top tips for getting more web users to find your business on Google

1. Build and post web content regularly

Build content on your website and webpages that provides information to your target market. A site that continues to post more relevant information each month will continue to rank highly.

2. Make sure your content is well written and specific

Post well-written, specific content on each of your webpages. This will ensure that all your webpages have good content that help search engines to index your pages. It is likely that at least half of your NEW web visitors will come from search engines so ranking highly will help drive new business.

3. Link sub-level pages to higher-level web pages

Have links on your sub-level webpages back to the top level pages on your website. This means web users who find you because your sub-level pages have ranked highly will be able to navigate back to higher level pages. Good navigation will keep web visitors on your website longer. This is seen as very favourable by Google and other search engines.

4. Make sure the file name is correct when you create your content

Make sure you have an appropriate file name when you produce the page and avoid changing file names (URL for a webpage). If you change a file name for a webpage and links are coming in to the previously named page, web users will the 404 error page rather than the page on your website. Remember that many social networking sites, web directories and search engines will contain links to the original file name (not just homepage). You want web visitors to find your page easily.

5. Metatag your webpages correctly

Metatag your webpages to match the content and text you have on each page. Metatagging needs to reflect that webpage content. If you do this properly, the more likely web users are to find your website over your competitors.

Want to improve your website’s ranking on Google? Bold Type has a track record of increasing clients’ Google ranking so contact us about improving your ranking on Google today.

Websites that are in continuous motion stay alive – the same is true of sharks

A website is a bit like a shark, it has to keep moving to stay alive!

Businesses that are serious about their website working for them to increase business realize that they need their website to be dynamic rather than static.

By dynamic, we mean that you have to keep working on your website, posting new information and news about your product or service.

Getting a website built and letting it ‘sit’ hoping to get potential customers doesn’t cut it. Such websites will surely die. Smart business operators keep their websites alive by posting the right type of information that registers with search engines and helps potential customers find their websites and not the competition.

An example of a website in continuous motion

Captivations, a custom sports uniform and accessory business in Australia, is a company that wants their website to work for them 24/7 and to deliver results.

Since Bold Type built their website in 2010, Captivations has more than quadrupled the visits to their website which has reflected in a dramatic increase in business.

During and directly after the build, the owner, Ben Beard, decided he wanted to know how search engine optimization works and, with the help of the Bold Type team, we now work together to get the best SEO results for the Captivations website.

And because Ben wants to work on his business, he has commissioned Bold Type to write online content: news for the website, enewsletters and content for social media networks and key online directories.

How does SEO translate to increased business?

Captivations comes up no 1 position on page one of Google for the world. Click to enlarge image.

Recently on a trip to Canada, key words ‘netball uniforms and bodysuits’ was searched on Google worldwide – yes, that’s worldwide competition!

Captivations came up sixth on page one of Google for the world. For ‘netball bodysuits’ they came up no. 1 position on page one of Google – yes, no. 1, page one Google.

Not only is their SEO strong in Australia, Captivations is ranking highly around the world. That’s good news for the expansion of their business and for overseas customers who can now access a new source of netball uniforms.

Page one of Google is the goal

Being on page one of Google (and other search engines) means that your website gets visited and not your competitors who may not even make the first ten pages of search results.

To get great SEO, you need to think of the shark – in continuous movement, being dynamic and staying alive.

A website needs to keep evolving to stay on top of the competition

If we use Captivations again as an example, they think about and implement improvements to their website – all the time! The company regularly updates the homepage, revises content, and adds new pages. Recently they added ‘example design’ pages for custom netball uniforms to enable visitors to see what they can expect when ordering. The plan is to roll the ‘design example’ feature out across their range of custom sportswear for other sporting codes.

Not only do their visitors benefit from seeing what they get when ordering, but search engines can see that this business is one that means business – and the website continually ranks highly when people search for their products.

Make your website like a shark

You need to devote time to your website every week. A website needs to interact with clients so you need to create a dialogue and keep it going. News pages about your products, the industry and related fields helps keep your customers informed. Customers also need to speak to you so having well positioned contact forms, contact telephone numbers and feedback loops is important.

Making sure that your website continues to grow and deliver information is a significant part of having a very successful website. Design, easy navigation around the website, simple coding behind the scenes are other issues that we will address in the future.

Bold Type is proud to work with the Captivations team to get such great results for their business. We can do the same for your business. Contact us today.

Keep moving and stay alive!

Bold Type wishes all our clients a successful and prosperous 2011

It’s nearly 2011. Forget all the new year’s resolutions that you’ll make and break – it’s time to make the decision to do whatever it takes to make your website work at its maximum potential and earn you more money. To do that you need to aim for page one for Google searches for the goods and/or services you provide.

However, getting to and staying on page one of Google is an ongoing process. Savvy website owners know this and continually add content and update information on their websites and on related Internet directories and social media sites.

There is no doubt that the Internet has had a great impact on people’s lives. It’s how people find things – and with mobile devices such as the iPhone 4 providing super fast access, it’s easier than ever.

Because of this shift from analogue (phone books) to digital searches on the Internet, the Internet has the potential to significantly improve the bottom line for small business owners. In fact, the Internet allows small businesses to compete with larger companies for a bigger slice of the Internet customer pie.

Your business needs to have a strong Internet presence

Business owners who are continually improving their websites are getting a huge advantage over their competitors with this new growth market: the Internet shopper.

But just as every successful business has always had to keep up with advertising and marketing trends, Internet savvy business owners are modifying their websites regularly so that their website is accessed by Internet shoppers over their competitors.

‘We quadrupled the number of targeted visitors to our website with Bold Type’s support. And our enquiry rate has gone up substantially as have orders that have come from our website enquiries.’
Ben Beard, Captivations

Make your website improvement your no. 1 new year’s eve resolution

Smart business owners update, reskin or rebuild their websites at least every five years – at the very least. And with CMS-built websites built using programs such as WordPress, it’s easy to continually update websites to ensure a high Google ranking.

An outdated website (or worse, no website at all) is not going to be effective in today’s Google-centric Internet world. A business’s website needs to be the centerpiece of their online presence which incorporates effective Internet marketing strategies including free (and paid) search engine optimization (SEO).

Bold Type build websites for small and medium businesses using WordPress – voted no. 1 open-source website content management system in 2009. We also consult on search engine optimization, write content and news items for your website, can improve your overall Internet performance and help manage your email marketing – all of which help make your business more profitable.

Related website development articles

Websites need to capture the essence of your business

Read some articles on the importance of search engine optimization

Contact Bold Type today to find out how we can help you make more money from your website.

Statistics on the advantages of having a links program

Web links work to improve traffic to your website

Statistics show that the more links you have on your website – both links within your website directing web visitors to other pages on your website and external reciprocal links (with other websites) – the better your chances of improving you page ranking (PR) on search engines . Link exchange with other websites is a powerful marketing tool to get search engines to recognize and rank your website highly.

Why reciprocal links help your website

Links to your website from other websites bring more traffic. Listing your business – with your web address linked to your website – on appropriate web directories is one way to capture more traffic.

Some suggestions for creating reciprocal links on your website

Social media websites can also increase your traffic. Links on your website to your own social media pages, for example, Facebook and Twitter, and links from these websites to yours is one way to build reciprocal links.

Making your website search engine friendly

With the help of a comprehensive link exchange program, you not only increase search engine friendliness of your website, but you also increase your page ranking on search engines such as Google. You can set up embedded links throughout your website to divert traffic directly to particular pages and you can also have a dedicated links page.

Check how your links program is going

If you have an analytics program on your website such as Google Analytics or StatCounter, you can see how your reciprocal links program is working to drive more traffic to your website. More web visitors means more customers and more sales.

You want your website to bring in traffic and income: the more links you have, the better your chances of improving your return on investment (ROI).

Develop a strong links program

Building a strong links program for your website is an important part of becoming more visible on the Internet. People need to find you and being on page 1 of Google and other search engines for industry keyword searches, will help you achieve more visitors and more sales.

Having a website that is built to make the most of organic search optimisation is also important.

It’s all part of a comprehensive SEO strategy

If your website and web marketing is not geared to search engine optimization (SEO), it's underperforming

Having a well-thought-out plan for search engine optimization (SEO) will make sure that you are ahead of your competitors for attracting new business from your website.

Having well-written metatagging for each webpage should also be an important part of your overall SEO strategy. This is often now the first communication with a new client. No longer the receptionist taking the call, your first contact will prospective clients will be judged on how well you write your meta titles and descriptions.

Find out more about meta titles.

Read more about making money from your website on our sister site, Balmain Website Designs.

Make sure your website is on page one of Google for highly-ranked keywords

The benefits to your business for improving SEO – search engine optimisation – are all about getting more web visitors and making your business more profitable.

Helping people to find you on the Internet means more visitors, more potential clients, more conversions and increased profits.

One of our clients who has had his new website up and running for less than two months writes about the sensational results that we have delivered.

Our enquiries from our website is at an all time high. The big increase according to our web stats since the new website went live is the page loads. More people are going to more of our pages and staying longer on our site too. I’m sure this is because the site is so much easier to navigate.

October is a record month for first time visitors and unique visitors and we still have three days to go. The keywords has made all the difference.

Key stat comparison between Oct 09 and Oct 2010: Oct 09 had 2500 page loads, 908 unique visitors, 779 first time visitors and 129 returning visitors.

Oct 10 had 8855 (up 250%) page loads, 2414 (up 165%) unique visitors, 2047 (up 165%) first time visitors and 367 (up 178%) returning visitors.

If you want to get some impressive results from your website, have your website working 24/7 for you and generate strong leads and new customers, contact Bold Type for a free consultation about your website and SEO.

Captivations homepage

Revamping the Captivations website was a big job because the company has many strings to their bow and a seemingly endless array of products.

Captivations is one of Australia’s leading suppliers of customised sportswear to sports clubs of every description: Netball, Aussie Rules, Rugby, Cycling clubs, Basketball, Cricket – you play it, they will supply custom designed uniforms and accessories for your team.

But that’s just a part of their business. Custom designing promotional products and team wear for special corporate events, fundraisers and conferences are also a big part of their business.

Our brief from Captivations was to redo their website to improve navigation so that web visitors could easily find what they want, to improve search engine optimisation (SEO) so that more customers could find them on the Internet and, at the same time, retain their corporate branding.

We did this by maintaining the logo and colour scheme and key Captivations idetnfiers used in their print marketing material, developing a logical, consistent hierarchy that would allow web visitors to easily navigate around the website, and rewriting content and adding meta tagging to improve SEO.  We also added a call to action on every page to encourage visitors to take the next step and contact the Captivations team. We hear they are being kept very busy these days!

Visit the Captivations website.

Read about strategies to turn your website into a money-making machine.

Contact Bold Type to discuss how we can revamp your website or quote on a new website that will work for you 24/7.

Meta Tagging is important for improving search engine optimization SEO

Which meta tags are the most important?

Every web page should have a meta title and a meta description tag. Some websites have the same meta title for every page – the name of the business is an example. This does not help search engines to know what is on each individual web page in your website.

Think of the meta title like the title of a book and the meta description as the blurb on the back cover of a book that explains what the book is about. Each webpage represents one book so each page needs its own title and blurb.

Add a meta title to a webpage

The meta title appears in the grey area at the very top of a webpage

If the title of the page is ‘How to name a meta title’ then the meta title should match this title or be very similar, for example, abbreviated to ‘Name Meta Title’.

Add a meta description to a webpage

Meta description is used to say what a webpage is all about. Search engines show about 155 characters of the meta description in their search results so it is important to make sure that meta titles and meta descriptions make sense – this helps make your website search engine friendly.

Search engine friendly – what does this mean? Search engines will index your page as one that is a good website for the information on the page. Then, when someone looks for this information, your page has a better chance of being found! This is what is called ‘search engine optimization’ or SEO.

Meta Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords for this webpage

The two purposes of the important meta description for a webpage

1. SEO, to make sure that the webpage is ranked highly on SERP (search engine results page)
2. To let web visitors who what your webpage is about by providing a clear, brief overview of what the page is about.

Remember: the meta description may be your first contact with potential clients so it is important to get it right and only add words that are on the viewable webpage.

What about meta keywords?

No one is really sure, but meta keywords are mostly ignored by search engines these days. However, if you add meta keywords in a field for this, and those keywords are in the text on the viewable webpage, the meta keywords you have entered (with a comma and space between each word or term), then it may help improve your ranking with some search engines such as Google.

Websites built by Bold Type primarily use the no. 1 website system in the world in 2009, WordPress. The website content management system has an SEO package for each page. We encourage our clients to complete this section. The meta title is displayed on the top of a page and is important, as is the description which search engines display. Keyword tags can also be added.

Find out more about meta tagging

Contact Bold Type for a free analysis of your current website or a quote for building a new website.