For example, say you run a bakery in Avonhead, Christchurch. A potential customer is more than likely to type in a search such as: “bakery in avonhead christchurch” when looking for a good old fashioned Kiwi pie. If you are on the first page or indeed at number one in Google for that search phrase, you enjoy laser targeted advertising, and best of all, it is 100% free.

How much extra business do you think you could expect if you were at the top of Google for your business equivalent of “bakery in avonhead christchurch?” Who IS at the top of Google for your business equivalent of “bakery in avonhead christchurch?” Is it *gasp* – the competition?

If it IS your competition, they have taken a series of steps to properly optimise their website for the search engines. This is known commonly known in the business as Search Engine Optimisation. Put simply, Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is where you use online tools (together with educated guesses) to discover the key phrases potential customers are using when seeking your services, and optimise your website for those phrases. This includes using those phrases in the domain name of your website, the title bar, the title tags, and the filenames.

As you probably know, most people don’t venture past the second page of search results. You want your business to appear amongst the first listings to potential customers online, right now, seeking your products and services. Customers that are currently being snapped up by the competition.

Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most cost effective forms of marketing available today.

In todays ‘Microwave’ society, why would you spend minutes flipping through the Yellow Pages, when you can simply Google the nearest Bakery, or Flower Shop, or Kmart, in a matter of seconds?

Can you see how powerful the internet can be for your business when your website is properly optimised for the best results?

Search engine optimisation is still quite new and relatively little known marketing method. Be the first amongst your competition to really cash in on search engine optimisation, and enjoy the benefits only laser targeted website visitors can bring.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is a series of processes, techniques and methods to rank your website highly in any given search engine. In simpler terms, SEO is the use of both on-page and off-page optimisation to get your website ranked higher in the search engine results.

The basics of SEO

SEO covers a lot of ground, but in general, there are two aspects of optimisation:

On-page Optimisation – This is the process of optimizing your website or web page by inserting keywords within the HTML code (the language used to write your website). HTML properties like the META, ALT and H1 tags help the search engines rank your website when they read the keywords you insert within these tags.

If you’re not adept with HTML coding, then you can also optimise your pages through the content you write. You should include the keywords you wish to rank for at least once or twice in the opening paragraph of every article, and again once or twice throughout the article body. You should also place them within the headings and the tags of your page.

Off-page Optimisation – Off-page optimisation has everything to do with link popularity. Google rates your importance by how many websites link back to you. Each time a website links back to you, this is counted as one ‘vote’ of your importance of the ‘linker’ to the ‘linkee.’ the more important the ‘linker,’ the more weight the ‘vote’ carries. The more important websites that link back to you, the more important Google considers you to be.

To increase link popularity, a slow and steady, natural looking link building campaign needs to be undertaken by your webmaster or a SEO expert. They will start building links from various important websites in order for your website to rank highly in a given search engine. By posting your website’s URL on important websites, this counts as a ‘backlink.’

There are many ways to get backlinks, some good, some bad, some downright ugly. The good are submitting articles to article directories, photos to free stock photo sites, and free ebooks to ebook directories. The bad include blog and forum spamming and software to build 10,000 backlinks overnight. The latter can have you banned from Google, permanently.

The Importance of SEO

Due to the fact as much as 81% of potential customers head to their favourite search engine to look for business information over the Yellow Pages, it becoming more and more likely you are going to be found through a search than any other available medium. This is why SEO and Internet marketing should play at least a small part of every business owners marketing campaign.

Ranking on the first page of Google takes a mixture of two things:

On-page Optimisation: Where you take a series of steps to optimise your page for the search engines.
Off-page Optimisation: Which has to do with link popularity, or how many sites link back to you, and the anchor text they use to do it.

First of all you need to create an optimised page for the search engines to index. That may require making a blog post based around your key phrase, or creating a page to add to your website. You will need to add your phrase to the title of your post, add it once or twice to the first paragraph and once to the last paragraph of your article. You will also want to add it to the title of the page, the description and the keyword Meta Tags. This is commonly known as on-page optimisation.

You then need to get a couple of websites to link back to you. Google ranks your importance by how many sites link back to you, or your link popularity. The more important the website that links back to you, the more important Google thinks you are. That’s why a link from a government (.govt) or an education site (.edu) can see your rankings climb very fast.

It’s not always possible to get links from these websites however, so a couple of quick ways to get backlinks to your website is to add them to business directories, blog comments and forum signatures, just to name a few. If you are able, use your key phrase in the anchor text.  These are the words used to link back to you, such as if we were linking back to our homepage we would use Free Website Design. This tells Google the site that is being linked to has information on Free Website Design. This is commonly known as off-page optimisation.

Rinse and repeat these steps and you will soon see your rankings climb in Google until you are on the first page.

Sarah had a site that she had created herself with a website builder. She had put it together in just a few minutes before she rushed out to a bridal show, as she desperately needed something to send potential clients to. Like most busy business owners, all her time was spent working in her own business, so she had no time to learn website marketing as well.

MyCelebrant Before

There were a few fundamental flaws with the website builder, the first being it created websites with no on-page optimisation whatsoever. The website was also created with frames, meaning the design remained static, while only the content changed. This meant there was the same titles and meta information in the code for every page, a disaster for search engine optimisation.

Due to the fact the search engines have great difficulty in reading content within frames, only the home page was indexed, meaning only http://www.MyCelebrant.co.nz was available to be viewed. When people typed in just MyCelebrant.co.nz (quite common) it returned a 500 error, something else Google hates. All other information about what Sarah did was hidden, so only people searching specifically for her site were able to find any information about what she did.

MyCelebrant After

Against insurmountable odds, with off-page SEO Sarah had conducted herself through directory listings, she had managed to get herself to page 3 for ‘Auckland Weddings Celebrant.’ Unfortunately 99% of searchers don’t go past page two of a search. It was no surprise she was nowhere to be found for ‘Auckland Namings Celebrant’ as even though the page existed, it was not indexed in Google.

In short, Sarah’s website was practically invisible in Google for the areas she loved and wished to specialise in.

After we had a look in the backend of the website builder, we found it to be a total optimisation nightmare, with no hope for it whatsoever. We decided the best course of action was a total redesign. This would not only have her appear far more professional to visitors, but would help dramatically with her search engine optimisation.

Once Sarah was happy with the design, we went on with the optimisation process.

Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city, with a population of over 1.25 million people. There are over 250 Celebrants listed just in the Yellow Pages. There are up to 10 pages of results for ‘Auckland Wedding Celebrant’ when you count all the directory sites, all fighting for the market share of the thousands of various ‘Auckland Celebrant’ searches.

We knew this was going to be a challenge, and getting her to page one for such a competitive phrase wasn’t going to be easy. We told Sarah we expected it may be a month before she saw results. We let Sarah know at first she may even see a greater drop in rankings, before her website settled in on the first page. This is commonly known in the SEO industry as the ‘Google Dance,’ where the website listing can flip back and forth in the results until Google decides where exactly it wants to rank it for a phrase.

Then we rolled up our sleeves and went to work.

To our surprise, just seven days later, MyCelebrant shot to number nine in the search results for ‘Auckland Wedding Celebrant.’ It then dropped back to page 5 in true Google fashion, before it settled in at number 7. Today it is sitting at number 6, and alternates between the two on different days.

The Results Were Almost Instantaneous

Sarah emailed in awe on the first day her website hit page one that she’d had two new enquiries. In the first two weeks, Sarah had a string of 11 enquiries from her website. Three resulted in bookings, and a couple of other enquiries are still in the first stages before they confirm. Before we started the optimisation process, Sarah said the website amounted to about 5% of her bookings, and these were through bridal shows where she has specifically given out the address.

Sarah said:

This is a brilliant website and more than I could have ever hoped for.  These results are amazing! Believe me I will keep in touch and let you know how it goes!

Then something even more amazing happened.

One of the ranking factors Google places highly for it’s Google Maps listings, is how well optimised your website is for any given phrase. The more highly optimised your website is, the higher it will place your Google Maps listing in the search results.

Because during the redesign we optimised Sarah’s on-page SEO for ‘Auckland Wedding Celebrant,’ ‘Auckland Marriage Celebrant’ and ‘Auckland Celebrant,’ it rocketed to number one in the Google Maps listings. In now sits within the prime real estate of the very top of Google for all three of these phrases*:

Auckland Celebrant:

Auckland Marriage Celebrants

Auckland Wedding Celebrant

*Results are not typical, but possible. We were hired to optimise MyCelebrant for one phrase, but it goes to show what can happen naturally with good on-page SEO.

Since then Sarah has asked to optimise for two more phrases in addition to ‘Auckland Weddings Celebrant’ so we are now in the process of optimising for ‘Auckland Marriage Celebrant’ and ‘Auckland Celebrant.’ As of the time of writing this, they are both above the fold on page two and steadily climbing.

The chances are, we can achieve this very same same success with your website as well, and you have nothing to lose by giving it a try. We take all the risk, you don’t have to pay a cent until we get you to page one and you are there for a fortnight. There is every chance our services will be paid for before the two weeks is up.

So go ahead and contact us, before your competitors do the same thing.

This one’s not for the faint hearted. If you wish to wipe out your competition and make them wonder what on earth you did right, then the Google Dominator Package is for you.

Getting Your Website to Page One of Google is Going to Explode Your Business, Period.

Why?

Because only 5% of searchers look past the 1st page of any search results, the second page if you’re lucky. So if you’re not anywhere near the first page, you’re invisible.

But it doesn’t have to be that way for you.

There a lot of things that can be done that will cause Google and other search engines to re-evaluate your website and improve your ranking.

There are two avenues you can go down.

You can spend hours and hours learning the specialist skills required to get you to page one of Google. But who has time to take on weeks of training, when they have a business to run? The once the training is complete, search engine optimisation is an extremely time consuming process to do properly.

Even then without years of experience and trial and error, you couldn’t possible keep up with the new information we do. That is unless you put in the hard hours most business owners just don’t have, because you’re too busy doing what business owners do, running your business.

The Benefits of Having Me Get You to Page One:

• I know exactly what needs to be done to get your website on the first page of Google for any keyword or search phrase.
• You have the upper hand because I don’t want to be paid unless we prove it to you.
• I do the work first to get you to the top of Google.
• Only then I ask for payment.

If you want to appear at the top of google for your top 5 money phrases, have a highly optimised Google Maps listing created for you, then this package is for you.

We guarantee these rankings to last a period of 12 months; meaning we will do what it takes to make sure you stay on top of your competitors. At any given time during the 365 day guarantee period that your website falls off the first page, the clock stops on your 365 days while we do what it takes to get you back on top.

I’m confident with what we are offering because it’s a rare occasion that one of our clients fall off the first page. I’ll continue your website’s campaign for 1 year by continually building links and putting more distance between you and your competitors.

Imagine ranking for up to 5 keywords with thousands of searches a month.

Imagine what that could do for your business.

Contact us now to make it a reality.

The things is, most web designers are just that, web designers, and most advertising agencies just design your graphics. Most web designers will charge you thousands to create a website that sits there looking beautiful. But what good is a website that no-one visits, because it is nowhere to be found online?

This package is designed to kick start a website into life in the fastest time frame possible.

1. Free no-obligation consultation and current SEO report (Worth $197).
2. Full competitive analysis.
3. Keyword selection and generation.
4. Analysis and improvement of existing on-page optimisation.
5. Optimisation of internal linking and filenames.
6. Optimisation of descriptions and keywords in meta tags.
7. Optimisation of title tags.
8. Full documentation delivered in a printed format.

Please contact us for a quote.

Off page SEO is is based on how many websites link to you. Each link is counted as one ‘vote’ for your website. The more pages that link to you, the more important Google thinks you are.

If you get a link from an important site, a .govt or .edu site for example, Google regards those ‘votes’ very highly, and figures you must be a very important site as well. The more important Google thinks you are, the higher you will be ranked in a search.

Link building is meant to be a natural process, with votes being cast from one webmaster to another, by linking to sites that have worthwhile information. As most webmasters won’t link to a website that’s rubbish, it’s a good way to ascertain whether or not a site is trustworthy.

Fortunately, there are many ways you can get backlinks to your website to boost your rankings in Google. You can write articles and use article marketing, you can create videos and use video marketing, or you can simply join a forum in your industry and put a link to your website in your signature. This is a great way to go, because the more active you are on the forum, the more links there are to your website.

You can also create one page blogs that point back your website, or simply post useful comments on other people’s blogs. You can even join Yahoo Answers. Setting some time aside to create backlinks on a regular basis is a good idea, just make it look as natural as possible and you can’t go wrong.

Always keep in mind however that Google meant this to be a natural process, so slow, natural looking link building is required to boost your rankings with off-page SEO.

As previously mentioned, when Google decides where in the search engines your website is to be listed, it takes into account a variety of factors.

How important Google thinks you are is commonly known as your Google page rank. Google Page Rank is Google’s measure of importance of your site. To find out the Page Rank of yours or your competitors website (important for anyone marketing their business online), you must have the Google Toolbar installed. A quick search for ‘Google Toolbar’ will bring up the link and you can quickly and easily install.

One of the more than 100 ranking factors Google uses to judge the importance of your website, is by how many other websites link back to you. Google can be very secretive as to what exactly it uses to rank websites (to avoid webmasters gaming the search engine) but this is arguably one of the more important factors Google uses.

One of the easiest ways to get other websites to link back to you as to focus on good quality original content. If you have a gardening business for example, you could write articles about when is the best time to plant your roses, or whether you should sow pumpkins. Post these to your website in the form of articles. This will encourage other webmasters to post a link from their website to your article.

This is the kind of natural link building that Google is interested in.

However this is not always possible. There are some businesses that no matter how hard you try, other websites just don’t seem to want to link back to your content. It’s always best to try posting original, interesting material, but if this is not possible, there are ways of getting backlinks to your website manually.

Here are a couple of examples to give you the idea:

1). Posting your business in local directories.

Although not as effective as it used to be, it is possible to post your link in online directories to get backlinks to your business website. A search of “your city” + “business directory” will usually return you quite a list of business directories in your city. Some will require you to link back to them, but try first to list in directories that don’t require a reciprocal link. Google places much less importance on sites that link to one another, rather than one way links to your website.

2). Posting your signature in online forums.

Another way to get backlinks and also targeted traffic is to make helpful, informative posts in online forums in your niche. This not only solidifies you as a trusted source of information, you are able to post your link back to your website in the form of your signature.

Click for a more indepth article on Forum Marketing.

3). Writing informative articles and submitting them to article directories.

This is one of the most common and popular ways to get the word out about your business, all the while building powerful backlinks to your website. You are able to pack your title with your keywords, and also sprinkle them within your article to make sure it is found in the search engines. This also solidifies you as a trusted source of information in your niche.

If you do just a little bit of research about backlinks, you will come up against various myths which many people still believe.

A few of the more common ones are:

1). The backlinks you get must be from related sites.

It’s a common misconception that Google puts more emphasis on backlinks that come from sites in the your niche. What Google is actually looking for is natural backlinks. Natural backlinks occur from all different types of websites, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to penalise you for having backlinks from sites that don’t relate to your business.

2). The page, rather than the domain that links to you must be high PR (Page Rank) to be of any worth.

It is a common belief that the page that links to you must have a high of PR of its own to have any standing in Google. But what many Internet marketers will now tell you they have had just as much success gaining links from pages with low to no PR, and still found themselves ranking higher in Google through links from these pages.

3). Building backlinks to your website quickly will have you penalised by Google.

If this were true then every time there was a breaking story reported by CNN that had hundreds, sometimes thousands of links back to it within a matter of hours, would see them penalised and knocked out of Google.

Steady backlink building is the key, and you can watch your website climb in the Google rankings and your bank balance along with it.

Marketing in forums is one of the simplest ways to make contacts and drive people to your business website. The vast majority of forums have no fees to join. They offer a goldmine of prospective buyers who are interested in specific niche topics.

When you get the process right you’ll find that marketing in forums can be a very lucrative, and a fun way to sell your business. Here’s a step-by-step plan for forum marketing success.

Step 1: Finding Forums that Fit Your Niche

The first step to marketing in forums is finding the right one to become a part of for your online income strategy. The Internet is a vast connection of social networks and no matter what niche you’re involved in, there’s bound to be a group of people talking about it.

The biggest thing to look for in a forum is activity. Does the forum have a lot of members, or just a hardcore few? You want to find a forum that has a wide variety of regular posters, so you’ll have lots of people to market to. Still, don’t rule out a smaller forum if you want to test the waters because sometimes a highly targeted group can mean a higher conversion in click-throughs to your links, and ultimately – sales.

Also, make sure the forum allows you to use a signature or ‘sig’ file when you post. Your sig file will be home to your product links, so it’s vital that you’re allowed to use one.

Step 2: Lurk to Get a Clear View of the Demographic

Once you’ve found a worthy forum (with a good number of posters that allows sig files), go ahead and register for the forum. Normally, you’ll only need to provide your email address and your desired username.

Before you post anything, however, take some time to observe what’s going on in the forum on a regular basis. Nothing ruffles forum members’ feathers more than someone coming in and posting 100s of product recommendations in their first day.

Figure out who’s who in the forum. There are always different roles that you can identify. You might see certain members who see themselves as ‘experts’ in the topic. Others always seem to have problems that they want the forum members to fix. (Could you be the person who positions themself as a go-to authority figure?)

Also, pay close attention to the mood of the forum. Do they use a lot of graphics in their posts? Are the signature files bright and flashy, or more subdued? Do they encourage off topic posts, or are threads kept to the niche topic only?

All of these factors will help you fit in better when you start posting on the forum. Spend at least a week ‘lurking’ (watching the board but not participating) in order to get a feel for how things run. After that you’ll be in prime position to become a valuable member of the forum.

Step 3: Positioning Yourself in the Community with Good Will

Next, you’ll want to get involved in the forum by using your past observations as your guide. You can either set up your signature file right away, or wait until you’ve made a few posts in the group.

Plan your posts wisely. There’s nothing that breaks down your credibility faster than misspellings and bad grammar. Proofread before you hit ‘enter’ and make sure your post says what you intend it to say.

When you first get started, you’ll want to post a brief introduction. Share a little about yourself and your experience with the niche topic. You don’t have to go into too much detail.

Don’t start off your posting history at the forum by giving out a lot of advice. Remember, you’re still a ‘newbie’ no matter how much experience you have with the topic.

You have to earn the trust and respect of forum members.

Before starting your own threads, participate in existing threads to begin with. Try some ‘me too’ posts. In a ‘me too’ post, you basically respond to an existing message with agreement.

They can be used to increase your clout on the forum, but too many can make you look like a spammer – or like you have nothing of value to add to the group. Balance your ‘me too’ posts with valuable information.

The most important thing to keep in mind is to not try to sell anything in these initial stages. You’ve got to earn the respect of your fellow forum members before you can begin to offer advice and recommend your product.

Once you do feel you’ve established yourself enough in the community, feel free to offer advice to your fellow members. Keep your posts short and sweet. There’s nothing worse than trying to wade through paragraphs of information to get to the important posts. A targeted, short post will be much more valuable than a rambling response to someone’s question.

It’s also important to note that every forum, from time to time, has its share of drama. Try your best not to get involved. Some people just wake up on the wrong side of the keyboard and attack others.

If you find yourself in a position where you’re being ‘flamed’ (attacked by posts in a forum), try to respond in a professional manner. Don’t get angry and post nasty messages back and forth.

If you can, ignore the flaming all together. Don’t be bullied into leaving a forum.

In most cases, forum drama is normally limited to a few people and is squelched by moderators within a few hours. Do your best to stay out of the fray, and you’ll keep your image untarnished.

Step 4: Turning Your Posts into Profits

Most forums discourage direct promoting of products within your posts. However, that’s where the signature file comes in handy. With a sig file, your product recommendation is included as part of your post each and every time you converse on the board.

Your signature file is a little portion of text that appears below each one of your posts. The more you participate in a forum, the more your signature file appears. When you set up your signature file to show your business link, forum members can click on that link.

Making a signature file varies just a bit from forum to forum. However, most of the process is the same. You can normally edit your signature file by editing your profile. There will be a box that you can type your URL or product link into.

Before you add your product links in your signature file, make sure that you can use links in your sig. The forum rules should state whether or not this is allowed. Sometimes they only allow you to post links to your own sites, while other times you can promote your business publicly.

You’ll want to make your signature link a ‘hyperlink.’ This means that the forum members can click on the link, and it will take them directly to the product page. Every forum is different. Some require you to use HTML, and others use a BBC code. But the basic set up for the code is the same.

Applying these tags mean your words will show up as a link:

HTML: <a href=http://www.myaffiliatelink.com>My Site</a>
BBC code: [url=http://www.myaffiliatelink.com]My Site[/a]

Of course, you’ll want to use something catchier than ‘My Site’ to describe your link. Use a phrase or sentence that will entice the other forum members to click on your link.

For example:

‘Tired of paying too much for health insurance?’
‘Find out the top 5 secrets to making money on TradeMe’
‘Looking for more tips for bonsai gardening?’

You can make your signature stand out in the forum by adding special code to make it appear bold.

For HTML: <b><a href=http://www.myaffiliatelink.com>My Site</a></b>
For BBC code: [b] [url=http://www.myaffiliatelink.com]My Site[/a][/b]

Remember, you don’t have to point people to your link within your posts. Simply post and contribute to the forum in a positive way, and your link will be there for others to click.