Search Engine Optimisation
Redweb - Cape Town's Search Engine Optimisation Experts
Getting a web site developed is not just about having a nice design and fast loading pages - just as important is how easily your customers will find your web site on the internet.
If you want to your web site to be found when customers use search engines such as Google to search for your products or services then you need to ensure your web site is well search engine optimised. Redweb can work with you to optimise your existing web site or develop a new search engine optimised web site.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
For those of you who are completely new to the topic, search engine rankings are how high up your business web site appears when someone types in relevant key words into Google. For example, if you were in the hotel business and someone typed in ‘Hotel in Cape Town’ your search engine ranking for this phrase would refer to how high your business sits in the non-sponsored (paid) listings and the Local Business results.
There are now three types of result shown when you do a search on Google –
Natural search results (also referred to as organic results), Google Local
Business Directory listings and paid results.
The following screenshot shows a breakdown of how the three different types of results are displayed:
Your Key Words (Key Phrases)
One of the most important decisions you need to make, as a starting point for optimising your web site, is which key words to focus on. You need to get this part right as it has a critical impact on the rest of the optimisation process. The keywords are the phrases your potential customers will type in to Google when they are looking for your type of business.
It’s important to focus your attention on the most important key words to avoid diluting your optimisation process by trying to cover too many phrases. As a general rule of thumb, and depending on your business, you should keep your set of key words to a list of 5 to 10 phrases – you can always expand on this at a later date – and put them in order of importance as best you can.
As an example, if you run a hotel in central Cape Town, some of your key words might be:
- Cape Town Hotel
- Central city hotel Cape Town
- Cape Town city hotel
- Budget hotel Cape Town
- Book a hotel in Cape Town
Something that many businesses fail to consider is that they are often too close to their own business to make an informed decision about which key words to use. When coming up a list of key words it is useful to step back from your business and find out what your customers are using to search for your type of services online. In some instances, where the search terms are no particularly obvious from an external perspective it would be advisable to do a survey of your customers to find out what they would type in to Google to find your particular product or service.
Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry.
Again using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word "hotel" would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Cape Town hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.
Google Keyword Tool
Once you have established some key words, you can then use the extremely valuable Google Keyword Tool to help you refine your list. The tool enables you to type in a search phrase and find out the number of local and global searches performed by internet uses for associated phrases – the idea is to find out what people are searching on that is relevant to your business and then including the top phrases in your keyword list.
You use the Keyword Tool by typing in the best key phrase you can think of (or that you have discovered by surveying customers) and then performing a search on this. When using this tool, don’t be afraid to try a wide range of search terms – the tool is free to use and you might discover some hidden gems in the results.
Using an example of someone running a golf shop in Cape Town, we could type in ‘Golf shop cape town’ into the Google Keyword Tool. As a result of performing this action, you will get a list of both global monthly searches and local monthly searches. You can resort the results by either column depending on what is relevant for you.
Scroll down the list of results and make a note of relevant phrases that have a high number of monthly searches – these are the key words you want to focus on as it is what people are actually typing into Google. For example, here are a few results from the list when I type in ‘golf shop cape town’ (sorted by local monthly results):
The actual list is much longer and you need to scroll through it to pick out the best performing keywords. You will need to try a number of original searches to do this properly.
Google Local Business Directory
One directory that you should definitely be listed in if your store has physical premises is the Google Local Business Directory. As illustrated in the diagram earlier, being listed in this directory can often result in your business being listed before others in the search results.
Redweb SEO Team
If you really want to get your web site optimised for Google, leave it up to the experienced team at Redweb Cape Town. Contact us now about how we can help.
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