Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is the science of enhancing a websites rank within search results delivered by search engines like Google, Yahoo or Live (Nine MSN). The goal is to improve website content relevance, among other factors, and thus rank higher when a target customer has typed in a search term that identifies them as a qualified prospect.

The process of optimising a website for search engines involves:

• Consultation with the business to identify measures of success for their online presence.
• Technical review of the website and hosting environment to determine if any factors exist that can have a negative affect on search engine result ranking.
• Research of the marketplace, competitors and initial benchmarking.
• Keyword and key phrase research to identify the words and terms that best qualify a search engine visitor as a potential client.
• Website Information Architecture (IA) recommendations, with relation to search engine optimisation.
• Development of web page copy that is tailored to the keywords or phrases a potential customer would use to find your products or services while performing a search.
• Recommendations regarding additional landing pages or changes to the website which will improve the conversion of visitors brought to the website.
• Development of search engine protocol sitemaps for inclusion in webmaster tools sections of search engines.
• Creation and implementation of a link building strategy.
• Training for content authors and other subject matter experts (SME), with regard to the influencing factors of search engine optimisation.
• If an internal search engine is present, onsite search engine optimisation recommendations can be an additional benefit to site conversion.

Why is optimising a website for natural search results so important? Research shows that websites that rank higher in the natural search results, also known as organic search results, are visited more often than sites lower down in the results. The relevance of a particular web page with relation to the search term is determined by 100s of factors. Some of the determining factors of where your web page will rank in search engine results include:

• web page title
• URL naming convention
• link text
• content headings
• accessibility of a web page
• image ALT text
• domain age
• incoming link quantity
• incoming link quality
• outgoing link quantity
• outgoing link quality
• text used in links from external sites
• contextual relevance of the content on sites that link to a web page
• duplication of content
• consistent home page link
• content quantity
• content contextual relevance within a page
• keyword or phrase prominence
• keyword or phrase density
• incoming links from government websites
• incoming links from educational websites
• incoming links from major directories
• incoming links from vertical industry directories
• age of the content
• frequency of updates to the web page and website

This is by far only a partial list but it is a list of some of the factors that have the most weighting with respect to relevancy to keyword searches.

Can a website be optimised once and left alone? The answer is no. SEO is not a set-and-forget proposition. Business focus, direction and competitor influences are constantly changing and require regular monitoring and updates to counter changes. Another factor of the constantly changing landscape is that search engine algorithms change constantly to improve results for their users. 

SEO pricing:

• Initial consultation, review, benchmarking, recommendations, page copy, link strategy, sitemap creation and training ranges from $4400 to $13,200
• Monthly review, updates and reporting ranges from $440 to $1100.