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Best SEO Company List – Australia – March 2010
March 8, 2010 by seoworks
Filed under SEO News & Views
Here are the Top 10 SEO companies in Australia* – as at February 2010
How do you judge which is the best SEO company in Australia? By their very own SEO results of course…
Check out the table below…from the results it seems pretty clear that if you want at least twice as many keyword phrases on Page 1 and 2 or 3 times as many top 3 listings as your competitors, then SEO Works is the right SEO company for you…
Methodology
We started with the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool and picked the top keyword phrases searched for over the preceding 90 days related to either “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimisation.
We then added in some key geographic locations around Australia (generally used by searchers to refine their searches across most market segments) for the terms “SEO” and “Search Engine Optimisation”…
…also in reverse order giving a total of 50 keyword phrases targeted by SEO companies.
The next stage involved selecting every website that turned up in the first three pages of Google for these keyword phrases (there were 66 SEO-related websites that had at least one mention in the SERP’s). Then using independent SEO software – Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) by Caphyon – we recorded how many pages each SEO company had appearing in:
- first place
- the top three listings
- the top five listings
- on page one
- within the first two pages
- within the first three pages
AWR then calculates an SEO Visibility Score by first assigning a number of points to each of the first 30 positions, as follows:
- Position 1 = 30 points
- Position 2 = 29 points
- Position 30 = 1 point
- Positions below 30 have 0 points.
A Visibility Score is then determined by the sum of the points given to an URL by each search engine.
The Visibility Percentage is then determined by the sum of Visibility Scores from all the search engines divided by the maximum number of points that the search engines can provide.
* This data was last updated on 1 March 2010. Search engine results can and do vary over time.
Wordpress SEO – a great tactical SEO strategy
April 17, 2009 by seoworks
Filed under SEO Tips & Ideas
Have you ever considered using WordPress in your overall SEO strategy?
WordPress SEO should definitely take part in your overall Internet Marketing Strategy: as a great tool already designed for SEO, WordPress has many features and advantages you can take advantage of.
WordPress is a blog platform. A great blog platform, because it is well-architectured, well-built and flexible. It cumulates the advantages and power of traditional websites and blogs. That’s true: when designing your site with WordPress, you can make it look like a normal blog… or you can make it look like a website. The flexible template system makes it easy as ABC to change designs; and with the help of an advanced web designer, you can make your WordPress blog unique and appealing to your users.
Blogging has now become a key element of an effective SEO strategy and it couldn’t be done easier than with WordPress. WordPress indeed allows you not only to create posts but also to easily optimise them around your targeted keywords. Let’s see a few of the SEO Advantages with using WordPress…
Advantages of using WordPress for SEO purposes
WordPress is a powerful platform
It is extremely easy to create or edit posts, manage categories, media and comments in WordPress. With a simple yet intuitive interface, you’ll get started in minutes.
WordPress is widely used
Having been downloaded a few million times (!), WordPress is widely distributed and supported.
WordPress has fully customisable templates
Yes, you have access to the full source code of WordPress and the templates. Use them as they are or if you are a bit tech yourself, dive into the code and make it be the way you like! Or even better, ask a bunch of SEO specialists to help you get the most out of it…
WordPress can easily be crawled by Search Engine spiders
With WordPress built-in SEO optimised navigation system, you are free to decide how the links appear as well as their structure. And don’t worry: spiders will find and follow them…
WordPress posts are favoured by Search Engines for quick listing
WordPress SEO is easy: this blog platform is so well optimised by itself for the Search Engines, than you’ll get listed in the SERP within a few days, even without submitting your website anywhere! For your information, we usually see our own posts in Google after a couple of hours… Talk about a SEO advantage!
WordPress has tons of SEO related plugins
You want to create sitemaps and automatically ping servers? Can do. You want to filer spam? Can do. You want to display videos? Can do. You want to individually manage your META tags? Can do. There are tons of plugins available – easing WordPress SEO process.
WordPress favours content syndication
Content syndication is the distribution of your content to others, including blog followers or even Search Engines. WordPress allows you to automatically notify your feed subscribers and your listed servers when you post a new article. Now that’s content distribution!
WordPress is free
Sounds too good to be true? WordPress is open-source software, created and supported by a huge community of technicians over the world. You may start using it today, without paying anyone a license fee. Ever.
A few tips for the road…
Download and install WordPress with a stand-alone hosting account. You can find specific WordPress hosting products on the web for a few dollars a month.
Buy a domain name and use it for your blog. Better than a subdomain of your actual domain name and easier if you ever decide to split your website and blog in the future.
Interested, but not knowing where to start? Ask a WordPress SEO specialist.
So, in summary?
As you can read above, WordPress comes ready to embrace SEO straight out of the box. Its features and functions will guide Search Engine spiders through your posts, pages and categories: your site will be better and faster crawled and spiders will easily gather information they need to include your site within their index. WordPress SEO: a great tactical SEO strategy.
SEO Works is a specialist SEO company offering SEO services across Australia and around the world. Explore our SEO Packages or ask an SEO expert to assist you with your SEO marketing, web SEO or Google SEO needs.
Keywords in URL’s?
April 14, 2009 by seoworks
Filed under SEO Tips & Ideas
Does having keywords in a URL or page name improve your search engine position?
Keywords, keywords, keywords…finding an optimum balance between targeting the keywords you need to appear on Page 1 for and not looking like you are trying too hard to site visitors is a constant challenge…too many repetitions just ends up looking weird and you risk turning off visitors, increasing your “bounce” rate and reducing conversions of visits into dollars.
So where can you get a little extra keyword lift?
Firstly, try to secure a domain name with at least one of your “mega” keywords…it’s no coincidence that our blog URL is www.seoworks.com and that our main website is www.searchengineoptimisationworks.com.au …as you can see, both contain high volume critical keywords “SEO” and “search engine optimisation”…and we rank pretty well for these terms.
If you are in the hobbies business, for instance, then www.acmehobbies.com may give you that extra edge that www.acme.com would not…and if you are a hotel, try www.mayfairlondonhotel.co.uk rather than just www.themayfair.co.uk as you will indeed get some extra keyword mileage for the terms “London” and “hotel”.
So, should I change my URL?
Unless you are starting off from scratch, we don’t recommend changing a URL just so you can have some extra keyword leverage…having your keyword in you domain name is not so all-powerful that you should dump all your accumulated history and authority that you have developed over time. However, if you are planning a wholesale change to your online presence, it is worth considering.
Another option is to use a few keywords in your file names. Rather than name a sub directory /directory1/ try naming it with the keywords you are targeting with the pages within the directory such as /hotel-rooms/ or /teddy-bears/…and note the use of hyphens – these act as word separators whereas teddybears or teddy_bears look like big, unintelligible words to the Search Engines.
Apply the same approach to actual page names…for example /superior-hotel-rooms.html or /brown-teddy-bears.html …two or three keywords (the ones you are targeting with these pages) is plenty…don’t go nuts. You need to keep a level of reasonableness, not only for the Search Engines, but also for visitors…remember, if a page looks like web spam, smells like web spam and feels like web spam…then it probably is web spam and simply won’t engage with visitors. A couple of keywords in your file naming looks reasonable…more than five is too many.
And here’s a hint…
Google’s Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team posted this video…
…where he mentions that keywords in the URL do indeed help.
Sensibly he goes on to say that web masters and SEO’s shouldn’t obsess over this, but should approach the subject of keywords in URL’s in context with the overall Google SEO elements required to improve your Search Engine results…technical structure, keyword rich relevant content and quality, focused links.
Yahoo submitted a patent claim by the name “Techniques for Tokenising URLs” that was been made available in March 2009. The patent submission contains information about how a Search Engine may examine keywords from the URLs of pages. Yahoo’s patent shows in detail how keywords can be extracted from URLs. That’s a strong indicator that Yahoo also considers the keywords that appear in URLs.
What does this mean for your website?
A Search Engine considers a wide range of on-page and off-page web elements to figure out what a page is about. The majority of keyword relevance is taken from the content of a web page but, in highly competitive segments, a Search Engine will also take into consideration the URL and file name of a web page to determine keyword relevance.
If you want to get the best possible rankings for your website, particularly for highly competitive keyword phrases, it can indeed help to include your targeted keywords in the URLs of your website.
But remember, as with everything in the SEO world, it is important not to overdo this so that Search Engines don’t get the impression that you are web spamming.
So, in summary?
Keywords in the URLs and file names of your web pages can indeed improve the ranking of your web pages in Google’s search results.
SEO Works is a specialist SEO company offering SEO services across Australia and around the world. Explore our SEO Packages or ask an SEO expert to assist you with your SEO marketing, web SEO or Google SEO needs.
How to Avoid Bad SEO
January 20, 2009 by seoworks
Filed under SEO News & Views
Please read this article to get a real grasp of the SEO industry and how you can avoid the embarrassment of having bad SEO.
If you are operating on the Web in any type of market, optimising your website for the search engines is a fundamental requirement for success. If you’re not ranking well in the search engine result pages (known as SERPs), then nobody is going to find you.
You see before hitting up Ebay, most of your customers will do a search on the product or service they are looking for and clicking at least one of the top ten search positions. If one of those is your website, then you’re more likely to make a sale. The everyday person can comprehend this, but the everyday person isn’t an SEO expert and has no idea how to actually get ranked. The nature of the Internet means everybody is out to make a quick buck, and there are hoards of spammers and scammers posing as SEO experts, preying on new businesses looking to get in to the search engines. This usually results in:
- Reputable businesses getting overcharged for shoddy work
- Search engine results moving barely any places, often ending up lower down in the long run due to spam methods
- Quality SEO companies losing money as businesses get fooled by scammers that promise the world, and
- Businesses ending up with a negative view on all SEO companies, and search engines end up with a negative view on the businesses that appear to be trying to spam the search engines.
It’s a big circle of scamming and mistrust, which can be avoided if those looking for SEO go to the right places.
So What Do I Look Out For?
There are some signs to look out for when looking for an SEO company that should sound alarm bells. Firstly if they claim that they’ll get you the top slot on Google for your keyword, run a mile. The harsh truth is that this can never be guaranteed because there are hundreds of factors outside of an SEO experts hands that go into determining the top spot. Furthermore, rankings are by nature, dynamic. A #1 ranking today can be a #5 ranking tomorrow and a #2 ranking the next day.
Proper SEO is designed to improve rankings on a range of carefully researched keywords, build targeted traffic, increase conversions and grow revenues. Imagine if a #1 ranking was that easy… everybody would be number one!
You should also look out for overuse of jargon or the term “secret method;” (there are no secret methods, and if there is, they are employed by spammers and will get caught eventually). If they can’t give you useful reports, open information about how they get you up the rankings, or references of past sites they’ve worked for, then they are likely to be dishonest companies.
Some Bad Methods
It is debatable what the most effective methods of SEO are, but there are definite cases of “Bad Methods” of SEO, that will more likely harm your website than help it. If a company advertises an automated link building system between other clients then you are likely to get burned. Search Engines can tell if lots of different sites are all interlinking in order to boost their rankings, and will penalise such sites as link farms. Linking is extremely important, but it should be done between related sites (in the same niche) and only if it benefits the readers.
For example a DVD selling website might link or be linked to by a DVD review website; however getting a link from an online drug pharmacy to a DVD review website looks like you are just trying to boost your rankings. You should also read up and become familiar with terms like cloaking and Blackhat SEO, because these can only do harm to your site in the long run.
It’s Getting Bigger
As everyone moves at least some part of their business online, SEO is becoming bigger, but also more risky. Even small business help sites are claiming to help with SEO, when in reality they just submit your site to search engines (which is an obsolete method of getting ranked), and list you in some local directories, that are not read by anyone. This is not SEO and the word is becoming diluted, not only by small time scammers, but fat cats looking for a piece of the pie.
Conclusion
SEO is not an afterthought. It should be the primary goal of your online business. So instead of getting charmed by scammers or taken for a ride by companies using the SEO term incorrectly, do some thorough research and find a proper firm that is willing to answer all of your questions, show you results first hand, and actually explain to you what SEO is.
