SEO marketing – Why website SEO is not a one-off event

Like every good investment, SEO marketing requires ongoing maintenance to get the most out of your marketing dollars.

Hiring an SEO company is an important SEO marketing strategy. However, to get the most out of your marketing budget and value from your investment, it is vital that you not only implement the suggestions that your SEO expert has made but also focus on ongoing website SEO activities. Here are 5 simple steps you can take to maximise your online marketing investment.

Creating new content

With the launch of Google Caffeine, it is more important than ever to update your website with fresh, new and original content to keep abreast of your competitors. An expert SEO company should show you how to write keyword rich content for your website. Look for ongoing opportunities where you can add fresh content to your website and update your content. This may include adding the following to your website:

• media releases
• testimonials and case studies
• blog articles
• seasonal offers
• competitions and promotions

New content should not only be created for your website but you should also update any other related online marketing properties that you may have such as a Google Places page, video hosting pages and social media networking accounts.

Competitive keyword analysis

Keyword selection is an ongoing process and your list of keywords should be continually expanding and growing. A professional SEO expert will show you how to use keyword research tools and check whether the keywords you are targeting are still relevant for your website and whether there are any missed keyword opportunities that you can capitalise on. Keyword research includes analysing your website and also doing competitor analysis.

Link building strategies

A good SEO marketing company will tailor a link building strategy for your online business that will provide links back to your website from trustworthy and relevant websites. Link building is an important part of SEO and it is up to you to not only maintain and audit your existing link portfolio but to grow and increase your link profile. These strategies may include:

• writing quality blog posts
• blogging on related websites
• writing guest posts
• participating in forums
• social networking

Every three to six months depending on how large your website is, you should check for broken links and that you are not linking to bad neighbourhoods and that link submissions to directories are still current.

Analysing Web data

This is very important for the ongoing optimisation of your website. A specialised SEO company should work with your website developer to firstly install Google Analytics on your website and show you how to analyse your Web pages. This data can be used to evaluate the success of online marketing strategies and understand where to best allocate your online marketing budget. This will include analysing the following:

• traffic sources
• visitor analysis
• content analysis
• conversion tracking

Google Analytics provides great insights into where your site visitors come from, and what they are interested in – this provides major input in your SEO marketing strategy. You need to regularly review the data a minimum of once a week and adjust your internet marketing strategy accordingly.

On page optimisation

Ongoing page optimisation is important for the SEO marketing of your website. A professional SEO company should teach you how to a regular health check or SEO audit of their websites every three to six months. The duration would depend on how many pages your website has and if the website needs to be updated. Your SEO company will show you how to Web pages with an SEO-friendly infrastructure such as:

• correct filename structures
• optimised title tags and headings
• optimised meta description tags
• keyword rich anchor links
• alt tags on all images

As aforementioned, you also need to run regular checks to see whether there no broken links on the website and whether there are any more opportunities to add new content.

Getting the best SEO results requires an ongoing commitment. At SEO Works, our Business Analysts have years of experience and are taught to share their knowledge and expertise with our clients so you can be confident in maintaining the SEO of your website. Contact us to find out more about our SEO Growth Plans and SEO Maintenance Plans and how we can help you with your SEO marketing strategies and improve your return on investment.

Technorati Tags: analytics, audit, bing, google, optimization, rank, ranking, research tools, revenue, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, site speed, traffic, website, yahoo

Best SEO Company List – Australia – July 2010

Here are the Top 10 SEO companies in Australia* – as at July 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”…

adelaide search engine optimisation adelaide seo australia search engine optimisation australia seo best seo brisbane search engine optimisation brisbane seo expert seo google seo melbourne search engine optimisation melbourne seo organic seo perth search engine optimisation perth seo search engine optimisation search engine optimisation adelaide search engine optimisation australia search engine optimisation brisbane search engine optimisation company search engine optimisation melbourne search engine optimisation perth search engine optimisation services search engine optimisation specialists search engine optimisation sydney search engine optimization

search engine seo seo seo adelaide seo australia seo brisbane seo companies seo company seo consultant seo consultants seo expert seo firm seo marketing seo melbourne seo optimisation seo packages seo perth seo professional seo search engine optimization seo service seo services seo sydney sydney search engine optimisation sydney seo web seo website seo

…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 July2010. Search engine results can and do vary over time.

Technorati Tags: best SEO company, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, SEO Australia

10 SEO Myths Debunked

SEO Works is here to dispel some of the common SEO myths and misconceptions to help you focus your Search Engine Optimisation efforts.

The Search Engine Optimisation industry has long suffered a public relations problem and is rife with SEO myths and misconceptions, not helped by companies who practice black hat SEO techniques to artificially boost your Search Engine ranking. However professional SEO is an important and necessary part of your marketing strategy so how do you tell a snake oil salesman from a bona fide SEO expert? We debunk 10 common SEO myths and misconceptions and help you separate fact from fiction.

SEO is a dirty word: One of the most widespread SEO myths is that it is shrouded in mystery and beyond the realm of marketing experts. Search Engine Optimisation is not rocket science but like any other good business decision, hiring an SEO company is about delegating SEO of your website to an SEO expert who has the time, knowledge and resources to pull off a successful SEO campaign and is solely focused on the optimisation of your website.

SEO can guarantee rankings: This is one of the biggest SEO myths perpetuated by unscrupulous SEO companies in the industry. SEO rankings cannot be guaranteed because your ranking is dependent on Search Engines algorithm changes, what your competitors are doing and countless other ranking factors. SEO is a profession like being a lawyer or accountant. They can’t guarantee their services to keep you out of jail or a humongous tax return so why would you expect it from an SEO company?

Keyword density is very important: Your primary keyword should be used in your on page elements such as your title tag, heading tags and body text. However, SEO has evolved and Search Engines have become more sophisticated. Using modifiers, synonyms and both the plural and singular versions of a keyword is a more natural way of copywriting and casting your net wider for related keywords.

Meta tags have no relevance: The keywords used in your title tag, description tag and keyword meta tags should reflect the content on the Web page and assist Search Engines in understand the content on the page and thus ranking it for relevant keyword searches. Google has openly said they do not use meta keyword tags in their ranking algorithms. However, Google is not the only Search Engine in existence and other Search Engines still use this tag.

Linking out to relevant sites helps with your SEO: This is one of the prevalent SEO myths. Your website linking to quality and authoritative web sites helps rankings. Not true. Your link profile will look unnatural if you are not linking to any sites at all but linking to other sites will not boost your Search Engine visibility. Websites linking back to your website is what you are aiming for and this will increase your ranking.

Web Designers are SEO experts: While your Web designer can certainly provide you with some guidance in regards to optimising your website, SEO is a specialised field and they may not have the knowledge and expertise to achieve top rankings for competitive phrases. However, it is important your Web designer work alongside an SEO expert to build a website with a Search Engine friendly infrastructure.

Flash is a no go for SEO: Search Engines have become a lot better at crawling and indexing websites that use Flash. However, most SEO companies still recommend having an HTML-style navigation and content template which will allow you to have the best of both worlds. With creating a website in one single flash movie, there is an absence of text and crawlable links which can create problems in Search Engine spiders reading the file.

Getting on the first page of Google will guarantee your success: Remember the end goal of SEO is conversion. There is no point ranking on page number of Google for an niche keyword that will just drive traffic to your website but will not result in increased enquiries and revenue. Keep your eye on the prize and target your pages for keywords that will drive better targeted, quality traffic to your website.

If you build it, they will come: Certainly having a great product, an engaging website and interesting copywriting is all very important but people have to find you on Search Engines first. Optimising your website is equally as important to ensure that your website ranks highly on Web searches for relevant keywords. Research shows that most Web surfers do not look beyond the first pages of Search Engine results.

SEO is a one time activity: One of the most common SEO myths or traps a company can fall for is that optimisation of your website is a one off activity. Search Engine Optimisation is not a ‘set it and forget it’ marketing activity. Whether you employ an SEO company or continue optimising your website in-house, it requires ongoing maintenance such as:

• keyword research
• page editing and optimisation
• link building strategies and
• website and competitive analysis

Find out more about our SEO Growth Plans and SEO Maintenance Plans to maintain your online growth and increase your online presence.

Contact us to find out more about our SEO Packages and SEO Services and find out why we are one of the best SEO companies in Australia. There are a lot of SEO myths and misconceptions but at SEO Works, our business analysts are encouraged to have an open door policy and share their knowledge and expertise with you to help demystify the world of Search Engine Optimisation.

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Five WordPress Essentials – Hosting and Installing WordPress

If you are looking to use WordPress as an SEO friendly platform, here are the five WordPress essentials of hosting and setting up WordPress that you should consider first…

We’ve written before about how using the WordPress (WP) blog platform is a great SEO strategy but we’re going to dig deeper now and bring you what we think are five WordPress essentials in terms of hosting packages, themes and plugins. WordPress has a Search Engine-friendly infrastructure, great design templates and plugins available (to increase the functionality of your website) and an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS). Find out more …

Five WordPress essentials: Recommended web hosting packages

To maximise the SEO benefits of WordPress, we recommend that you host your WordPress blog on your own domain with a hosting package. Domain names often come free with the hosting package. WordPress works best when it’s in a rich hosting environment.

WordPress can be installed from within the control panel for many hosting services – the following are five that are the best at supporting WordPress enabling its full potential and are recommend by WP:

Bluehost: Auto-installation of WordPress, unlimited disk storage, monthly data transfer and host unlimited domains on 1 account, 1 free domain name, 2500 POP / WebMail addresses, 50 MySQL, 99% uptime guarantee and no hidden fees. Voted best support in 2004 – 2008;

DreamHost: WordPress auto-installation and upgrade, 1 TB disk storage, 10 TB bandwidth, free domain, unlimited databases, 3000 email accounts, unlimited domain forwarding and much more;

MediaTemple: WordPress one-click installer and enough high-speed storage and bandwidth to run a blogging empire.

GoDaddy: Hosting plans include to unlimited disk space, unlimited transfer, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited websites, and 1,000 email accounts and plans start at just US$4.25/month.

Laughing Squid: Hosting plans come in three packages; Mega Squid, Ultra Squid and Super Squid. The daddy of the plans, Super Squid offers 4 GB disk space, 200 GB bandwidth, 5 MySQL databases, 50 email accounts.

Find out more about these hosting companies recommended by WordPress.

These hosting packages are all based in the US. However, if you are trying to attract the local market, you may want to find a locally based service provider as geographical location of the hosting is an important factor.

Many WordPress hosting packages offer shared hosting however this can be a trap – these usually come with too few databases and restrict the number of domain names allowed. Developer support should be a key focus when choosing web hosting.

Five WordPress essentials: Best themes for WordPress blogs*

If you are setting up a blog or a personal website, you may only wish to install a free WordPress theme to get you started. Some themes can be customised by adding different widgets and WP plugins.

You can also edit the template files, image files, style sheets, custom pages as well as any necessary code files to change the look and feel of your website to reflect your company’s branding or your personal style. Some WP themes also have advertising built into the theme.

WordPress offers over 1000 free themes from children’s themes, business themes and fun fashionable themes. Five of the most popular WordPress themes include*:

Theme	Description
	Mystique: Feature-packed theme with a solid design, built-in widgets and a intuitive theme settings interface.
	Arjuna X: Translation ready, SEO focused, IE6-8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera compatibility, support for threaded comments, four widget bars, flexible sidebar, and more.
	intrepidity: Highly SEO optimised and marketing driven theme with a fully customisable design. Theme options include custom header, footer and background images, logo uploader, custom home page, social networking integration and more.
	eDegree°: Highly SEO optimized and fully customisable designs.. Theme options include custom header, footer and background images, logo uploader, custom home page content, social networking integration and more.
	Motion: Dark and colourful theme with sweet transparency characteristics. Drop-down categories menu, 2-column layout and widget-ready footer and sidebar.

Five WordPress essentials: Must-have WordPress plugins**

Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress and are designed by third party developers. When installing WordPress on a new site, there are five plugins you can’t do without. These include the following:

All in One SEO Pack: This generates Meta tags automatically, automatically optimises your titles for Search Engines, create canonical URLs and fine tunes navigational links.

Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress: This creates an XML-sitemap of the blog that is supported not only by Google but also by Ask.com, YAHOO and MSN Search. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator: This is another sitemap plugin that creates a user sitemap on your website.. This plugin is highly customisable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer: When you create a new post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that it has been updated. This encourages Search Engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly.

Redirection: This is an essential WordPress plugin that manages 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.

You can find other useful plugins at the WordPress Plugin Directory. You may also want to read our article on WordPress SEO – Ten Useful Plugins.

Five WordPress Essentials: WordPress copywriting tips to optimise your website

Search Engines have a preference for websites that are updated regularly with fresh content. Ways to do this are to create a company blog, add media releases, case studies and testimonials to the website and update the website with competitions and special offers.

The easy-to-use WordPress CMS makes it easy for you to add and edit copy on your website. Here are five SEO copywriting tips to take advantage of the SEO features included with the WordPress platform.

Permalinks: Create an SEO friendly permalink. Make the link your title minus the stop words (and, the, if, etc) with dashes (not underscores) between each word.

Title tags: Use your keyword in the post title. Important keywords should be used towards the start of the title tag as it has greater SEO value. 5 – 8 words are best.

Meta description tag: A meta description tag is a guide for Search Engines to use as summary text (beneath the title) when a site is listed in the Search Engines. Word counts should be aimed at 25-27 words and less than 165 characters in total.

Page headings: Make sure that your primary keyword or keyword phrase is included ideally at the start of the H1 heading. Use H2-H5 headings to optimise for secondary terms – make sure these are used as sub-headings.

Body copy: Insert keywords naturally and seamlessly into the text. Use your primary keyword as well as synonyms throughout the copy.

Contact us and find out more about how we can develop a beautiful WP website or blog that not only fulfils your design brief but will also delivers on the SEO goals for your website, drives quality traffic to your website and improves your conversion rates. WordPress was designed with SEO specifically in mind but with these WordPress essentials, you will be able to further customise your WordPress website or blog, enhance the functionality and improve the SEO.

*As of 25 May 2010

*Disclaimer: Please note that we have not tested all these WordPress themes and plugins. Before you install a plugin, make sure you read all the documentation, make notes of any changes to WordPress files or templates and remember to backup your database and files.

Technorati Tags: adelaide, agency, australia, best, Brisbane, companies, company, consultant, consultants, engine, essentials, expert, firm, firms, google, marketing, Melbourne, optimisation, optimization, Perth, plugins, professional, search, SEO, service, services, Sydney, web, website, WordPress

SEO Friendly CMS – Ten Things to Look For

A SEO friendly CMS is seen by some SEO experts as the be all and end all and crucial to the optimisation of your website.

If you are looking to update your website content more than once a month then it is likely that you will require a content management system and choosing an SEO friendly CMS isn’t always an easy task if you don’t know what to look for.

Let us walk you through the essentials to help you select a CMS that is going to give you all the editorial functions you need while optimising your website and enhancing your Search Engine visibility in the process.

Here are 10 things to consider when selecting your SEO friendly Content Management System(CMS):

Keyword rich URLs: An SEO friendly CMS should include custom URL creation. An automatically generated and dynamic URL may look like this http://www.mysite.com.au/blog-articles/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date but an SEO friendly CMS will allow you to create a keyword rich, static URL such as http://www.mysite.com.au/blog-articles/seo-friendly-cms. Static URLs are easier for both Search Engine spiders and the end-user to understand what the page is about.

Title tag customisation: Each title tag must be able to be edited or customised on a page by page basis. It can be helpful to also create rules so that all pages end in “mysite.com.au” or “mysiteblog.com.au” depending on the page.

Meta Tag customisation: Meta description and robots tags must be editable via the CMS for it to be considered SEO friendly. The meta description is a guide for Search Engines to use as an accurate summary of a page’s content which (beneath the title) when a website is listed in the Search Engines results.

Custom HTML tags enabling: A Search Engine-friendly CMS should offer the function of putting <hx> tags or “nofollow” tags on links. These features can be built into the menu or allowed through manual editing of the HTML in a text editor window.

Anchor text editing: Optimisation of the internal linking anchor text is critical for your SEO. An SEO friendly CMS will allow you to customise the anchor text of all internal links.

Sensible site structure: Poor category or site structure can be a killer for your sites performance in the Search Engines. When designing your sites architecture, there shouldn’t be any limits on your structure based on your CMS’s inflexibility. A good content management system will offer customisable navigation.

301-redirects: An SEO Friendly CMS should allow the proper re-direction of content where necessary. 301’s are a valuable asset when new page versions are created, content expires or you are moving to a whole new website.

RSS / XML: The ability to add an RSS feed to your website can boost site optimisation efforts whether it’s feeding off your website content or refreshing content on your website from another source. Just like HTML web pages, with a SEO friendly CMS, RSS feeds can be optimised to perform better in Search Engine listings.

Image handling and ALT tags: Search Engines cannot read images so all images should be optimised and alt tags are a must have from a SEO perspective. The alt tags serve as the anchor text and allow you to add keyword-rich text. Google Images is starting to be a large referrer of traffic to websites so image SEO should not be neglected.

Ability to access all areas: A Search Engine friendly CMS will allow you to edit all parts of the website including the footer and sidebars and allow you add cross-link paragraphs. Be wary of content management systems that say they automatically do that for you.

Contact us to find out about what CMS we recommend and how we can help you implement the system on your new or redesigned website. Choosing the right CMS allows you to easily add, edit and delete content on your website, add extra plugins to enhance the design and functionality and allow basic optimisation of your website without having to be an SEO expert. Choosing a SEO friendly CMS is one of the most important decisions of your design process and can make or break the Search Engine Optimisation of your website.

Technorati Tags: adelaide, agency, australia, best, Brisbane, CMS, companies, company, consultant, consultants, content, engine, expert, firm, firms, friendly, google, management, marketing, Melbourne, optimisation, optimization, Perth, professional, search, SEO, service, services, Sydney, system, web, website

Google Places – the New Face of Google Local Business Centre Listings

Google provides even more ways to optimise your Google Places page (formerly called Google Local Business Centre Listings)

Google Local Business Centre Listings has been renamed by Google as Google Places which Google says will simplify the connection with Place Pages. Place Pages were launched by Google in September last year for more than 50 million places around the world.

Four million businesses have already claimed their Place Page on Google through the Google Local Business Centre. Claiming your Place Page will increase your visibility in local searches and is important for local businesses to stay relevant in the local market.

Place pages provide Web searchers with valuable and relevant information such as opening hours and companies can personalise their page with photos, reviews, special offers and real-time updates. Businesses can also provide extra incentives for customers by adding coupons, including ones specially formatted for mobile phones.

Read our article on the Optimise Your Google Local Business Centre Listing to find out how you can optimise your Google Places Page.

Google assures us that Google Places will have all the same features as GLBC but in conjunction with the name change Google has announced the additional features for Google Places.

Service areas: If you travel to serve customers, you can now show which geographic areas you service. This is a great feature that will allow business to not only reach the area they are based in but the areas their business services. In addition, if you run a business without a storefront or office location such as an online fashion store, you can now make your address private.

A new, simple way to advertise: Google has rolled out a new Tags feature for just US$25 per month for selected cities in the US only. Tags are yellow markers on Google Maps that highlight important aspects of their business such as coupons, price lists or updated menus.

Business photo shoots: In addition to uploading your photos to your Places Page, businesses in select cities in US, Japan, and Australia only can apply to be part of a Google business photo shoot where Google photographers come to your business and take photos of your company to supplement your Google Places listing.

Customised QR codes: Again only available to the US market for now, businesses can download a QR code that’s unique to their business, directly from their dashboard page. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business.

Favourite Places: Google is doing a second round of their Favorite Places program, and are mailing window decals to 50,000 businesses around the US. These decals also include a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly view the mobile Place Page for the business to learn more about their great offerings.

Businesses can also track their Google Places data through the personalised dashboard. Similar to Google Analytics, business can analyse data and find out how people found your business on Google, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people travelled from to visit your business. This information can be used to make educated decisions about your Google Places page and improve your internet marketing strategy.

You can find out more about Google Places by checking the Lat Long blog or post any questions or feedback.

Contact us to find out more about Google Places formerly known as Google Local Business Centre Listings and how we can help you optimise your listing, increase your Search Engine visibility and help you compete on the local market. With one of five searches on Google related to location, Google Places is a great place to start for local Search Engine Optimisation and a sure-fire way for businesses to reach the local market.

Technorati Tags: google local business listings, google places, marketing, rankings, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO

SEO Works Client Profile – Executive Oasis Narrabri

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – Executive Oasis Narrabri

Luxury serviced apartments in rural NSW…

Executive Oasis offers luxury serviced apartments in Narrabri NSW. While travelling for business or pleasure your accommodation should be luxurious and comfortable. Executive Oasis Narrabri offer five serviced apartments, catering to corporate and family accommodation seekers.

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If you are in the luxury serviced apartments and rural accommodation industry, then you too can benefit from turning up on page 1 of Google for your targeted keyword phrases like this page did for your search…and just like Executive Oasis Narrabri does for their keywords. Discover how SEO Works can help you to drive more leads, conversions & revenues online.

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About Executive Oasis Narrabri – Luxury Serviced Apartments

Executive Oasis Narrabri, luxury serviced apartments offer rural NSW accommodation to discerning travellers. Whether you are a corporate traveller or on holidays, these luxury serviced apartments offer excellent accommodation in Narrabri.

Each Narrabri Apartment offers a work station and internet connection, two bedrooms, a BBQ area and a lock up garage. These serviced apartments are like a home away from home, creating your own little oasis while travelling.

Targeted keywords:

• Narrabri Accommodation
• Narrabri Serviced Apartments

SEO Works is proud to deliver SEO Services to Executive Oasis Narrabri, assisting them to raise their online profile and contributing to their growth and development.

Technorati Tags: narrabri accommodation, search engine optimistation, SEO, serviced apartments

Best SEO Toolbar Reviews

There are many different SEO toolbars available to download for your browser, our two favourites are covered in this best SEO toolbar reviews…

Here is a rundown and quick best SEO toolbar reviews of two of our favourite toolbars; the SEO Toolbar from SEOMoz and SEO Toolbar from SEO Book. An SEO toolbar gives you important SEO resources at your fingertips to optimise your website and analyse your competitor’s websites. Features of popular SEO toolbars include easy access to keyword research tools, on page analysis tools, popular SEO forums and tools to check dofollow links and page rank.

SEO Toolbar from SEOmoz (previously known as the Mozbar)

The SEOmoz toolbar for Firefox was chosen as part of our best SEO toolbar reviews article because it is a free download and provides easy access to some of the most powerful SEO tools and data while you surf the Web. Features include:

SEOmoz tools and resources: easy access to SEOmoz tools such as Trifecta, Keyword Difficulty, Linkscape, and even Open Site Explorer.

Page Elements tab: on page SEO analysis including title tag, meta description and header tags.

Page Attributes tab: shows everything from meta robots and rel=”canonical” usage, to page load time, on–page link information and http status codes.

Link Data tab: provides quick access to Linkscape metrics and the latest version includes new metrics such as Page Authority & Domain Authority, SERP overlay with detailed link metrics.

SERP Overlay: this feature lets you evaluate the link profiles of all of the pages in a Search Engine result page.

No follow links: simple highlighting of no-followed links.

View a simple tutorial for the SEOmoz tool bar or read more about the toolbar on SEOmoz’ website.

SEO Toolbar from SEO Book

The SEO Toolbar from SEO Book was chosen as part of our best SEO toolbar reviews article because it gives you easy access to SEO resources and market research tools to analyse your competitor’s websites. It is a free download and is seamlessly integrated with your Firefox browser. Features include:

Link information: This gives you valuable information about how many external links are pointing to a particular domain. With this feature, you can also search directory listings (Yahoo, Dmoz and BOTW), page rank and site age.

Advanced information button: With this feature you can access background information and export data like:

• site links;
• page links;
• directory listings;
• traffic estimates;
• social media information from popular social bookmarking and social news sites.

With the Compare websites feature, you can do a competitive analysis of up to five websites. You can also quickly check nofollow links, the IP address of the website and see who runs the website. There are also links to competitive research tools amongst other things.

Rank checker: The popular SEO Book Firefox plugin has been built into the SEO toolbar for added convenience. This does exactly what it says and allows you to check your rankings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing search results.

SEO X-ray: One of the most useful tools is the SEO X-ray which puts a pop-over of all the meta data. This allows you to look at things like on page headings, internal links, external links, and gives you access to the keyword density analysis tool.

Keyword Research Tools: This tool allows you to create tabs with your favourite keyword research tools such as Google search based keyword tool, Adwords Keyword Tool, Wordtracker Free Keywords and so forth.

Built in Feed Reader: SEO is a dynamic industry so it’s important to keep abreast of changes in the industry. This feature is populated with a list of great SEO blogs and allows you to bookmark your favourite blogs.

View a simple tutorial for the SEO Toolbar (emailed to get embed code for video on their website) or read more about the toolbar on SEO Book’s website.

Contact us if you are thinking about taking your SEO activities a step further and we can discuss our competitive SEO Packages and SEO Services with you in more detail. Give yourself a marketing advantage and install an SEO toolbar so you can keep a close eye on your competitors as well as the optimisation of your own website. There are a lot of SEO toolbars available but we have found the SEO Toolbar from SEOMoz and SEO Toolbar from SEO Book to be the most user-friendly and useful in our best SEO toolbar reviews.

Technorati Tags: adelaide, agency, australia, best, Best SEO toolbar reviews, Brisbane, companies, company, consultant, consultants, engine, expert, firm, firms, google, marketing, Melbourne, optimisation, optimization, Perth, professional, search, SEO, service, services, Sydney, web, website

Filenames – Tips on Naming Your Web Pages

Name your web pages with care as filenames play an important role in the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and navigation structure of your website.

Filenames are an important part of building an SEO-friendly technical infrastructure. A good filename also makes it easier for your visitors to navigate your website, share links with other websites and for developers to organise the file structure of your website. Here are seven tips on how to choose good filenames for your web pages.

Use a descriptive title: A filename like www.mysite.com.au/blog-articles/search-engine-optimisation-tips is a good example of a filename whereas www.mysite.com.au/blog-articles/0343300888 may not work as well. Search Engine spiders and visitors alike will be able to get a sense of what your page is about simply by the name.

Keywords: Use keywords in your filenames which reflect the on page elements. Remember that keywords used in your page title, headings, description and copy must all have SEO consistency so the Search Engines understand what your page is about and determine relevance in their search results.

Use short filenames: While filenames should be descriptive, shorter filenames are better for link building strategies and are more memorable. Social media websites like Twitter or forums automatically shorten long URLs. To shorten the URL, omit stop words such “a”, “an”, “the”, “to”, “on”, “from” etc when creating a web page.

Dashes: Hyphens should be used in your filenames to separate words as hyphens are read by the Search Engines as spaces. Do not use underscores as a word separator as Search Engines see an underscore as another letter of the alphabet. This should be standard practice when naming files whether you are saving images, PDF or word documents that will appear on your website.

Avoid the use of special characters: Try and limit the characters in your filename to lowercase letters a to z, numbers and underscores. Try and avoid the use of special characters such as exclamation marks, ampersand, asterisks and percentage marks when naming web pages.

Avoid spaces: While this may seem obvious, this is a common mistake made by beginners. Some Content Management Systems (CMS) may replace a space with with the encoded “%20″ form so you may not be aware that you had a space in your filename. Just double check your filenames are correct before pressing the save button.

Use lowercase: It is good practice to always put web names in lower case. Your operating system may see upper and lower case file name as the same but your web server operating system or unix-based systems like Linux and FreeBSD may consider them to be two different files.

Good filenames are easy to remember, make sense within the entire hierarchy of the site and contribute to the Search Engine Optimisation of your website. Contact us to find out we can help you develop a website with a Search Engine friendly technical infrastructure. We can give you advice on how to create web pages, recommendations on navigation and on page elements right through to the website design and copywriting to not only drive traffic to your website but maximise your online revenue.

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WordPress SEO – a great tactical SEO strategy

A WordPress SEO strategy can deliver a wide range of benefits to your overall internet marketing activities…

So you want to create a website or a blog and you’re confused about what platform to choose? WordPress (WP) is a fully customisable blog platform designed specifically with SEO in mind. As well as being SEO friendly, WP has great design templates and plugins available (to increase the functionality of your website) and an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS). Here are the SEO advantages of WordPress.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, WordPress

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