Search engine optimisation (SEO) isn’t a dark art. In fact, with the exception of the copywriting, it’s more of a science than an art. And like any science, it comes down to research, planning, tedious work, persistence and patience. Oh, and the occasional secret formula.

We can’t divulge all our search engine optimisation (SEO) secrets (our competitors would just love that!). But we can give you a broad overview of some of the ingredients in our 40+ step process for putting you at the top of the search results. We’ve proven these search engine optimisation methods effective, time and time again, even for the most competitive search terms in fields like Accommodation, Travel, IT, Real Estate and Finance. All without a lock-in contract in sight.

 

Submission to Search Engines

There’s no need to submit your site to the search engines. They’ll find it without any prompting from you (or us). That’s their purpose, after all. Indeed, we recommend that you beware of companies that offer to repeatedly submit your site to the major search engines, or to submit your site to hundreds of different search engines. That’s not search engine optimisation (SEO). In fact, it’s utterly pointless. At best, those search engines will ignore you. At worst, they’ll penalise you. Either way, you’re wasting your time and money. Serious search engine optimisation is a lot more complicated than that.

 

Keyword Analysis

Before advertising on TV, you’d find out what your target audience actually watches. For print, what they read. For outdoor, when, where and how they travel. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is no different. We have to learn what words your prospects are searching for. This tells us what words to optimise your site for.

When we do your keyword analysis, we consider a range of factors, including single keyword v keyword phrase, singular v plurals, split v merged v hyphenated words, related terms, synonyms, and a host of other details.

 

Competitor Analysis

For the most part, ranking highly in the search engines is simply a matter of doing a better job of your search engine optimisation (SEO) than your competitors. So the first thing we figure out is exactly what they’re doing. How well do they rank? And for what words? How long have they been there? What search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy have they employed to achieve that ranking? Only when we have the answers to these questions, and many more, can we set about outdoing them.

 

Website Search Engine-Friendliness

Search engines aren’t as intelligent as humans. (No, not even Google!!!) In fact, compared with human intelligence, they’re incredibly primitive. They can only ‘see’ and ‘read’ your site if it’s developed in a very specific way. If it’s not, you’ll be lucky if they even acknowledge your existence, much less figure out what you do. And you can forget ranking highly.

When you engage TopRankings to take care of your search engine optimisation (SEO), we make sure your site is search engine-friendly (including coding, URLs, meta-tags, site architecture, internal links and web copy). In other words, we make sure the search engines can access all your pages, and that they can read and understand all your content. (This is the first part of onsite search engine optimisation (SEO).)

 

SEO Copywriting, Keyword Density & Meta-Tags

The words on your site tell the search engines what your site is about. What you do. This, in turn, tells them what searches it should appear in. Your keywords need to appear frequently in your HTML meta-tags and website copy. But they can’t appear too frequently. That’s known as keyword stuffing – an illegal technique that can get you banned from the search engines altogether. Oh, and then there’s the ‘minor’ issue of human visitors to consider. They hate keyword stuffing. It makes your copy really hard to read and undermines your credibility.

TopRankings will optimise your existing copy, with equal consideration given to search engines and human visitors. Importantly, we’ll actually make the changes to your site ourselves, so that you’re free to focus on your business. And if you need your SEO copy written from scratch, we engage a specialist SEO copywriter, and manage the copywriting project on your behalf. (This is the second part of onsite search engine optimisation (SEO).)

 

Link Building

Although the search engines are starting to consider visitor factors (e.g. how many pages your visitors look at, how long they stay and how often they come back), they’re still most interested in the number of links to your site, and where those links come from. They assume that if your site’s important enough for lots of other relevant sites to link to, it’s worthy of a high ranking. Simplistically put, the more links you have to your site from other relevant sites, the better your ranking. Especially if your keywords appear in the link text.

So we spend a great deal of time each month generating links to your site. We organise links from related industry sites, social bookmarking sites and directories. We write and distribute free reprint articles (‘article PR’). We submit client-supplied press releases to relevant newswire sites. We look at who’s linking to your competitors, and pursue similar links for you where appropriate. We continuously optimise your internal links. And of course, we ensure that your content attracts links naturally (‘link baiting’).

Link building is also known as ‘offsite’ search engine optimisation (SEO).

 

Reporting Improvements to Your Ranking

At the end of each month, we provide a comprehensive search engine optimisation report that details your site’s presence in the top 50 results of each of 9 search engines: Google.com, Google.com.au (pages from Australia), Google.com.au (the web), Live.com, NineMSN.com.au, NineMSN.com.au (Only from Australia), Yahoo.com, Yahoo.com.au (All of Yahoo) and Yahoo.com.au (AU only). More importantly, we show you how much your ranking has improved in the last month, so there’s no need for you to manually track the results of your search engine optimisation. (Note: We supply your first report at the end of the third month. Subsequent search engine optimisation reports are monthly.)

 

Continual Improvement

Importantly, we don’t just do this stuff once. We revisit it on a monthly basis, ensuring that your site adapts to changes in search engine algorithms and competitor search engine optimisation strategies. It’s a process of continual improvement that gets you to the top and keeps you there. (And because we don’t lock you into a contract, this continual improvement is as much in our interests as yours.)

Likewise, we’re continually refining our own SEO skills and knowledge. Search engine optimisation is a rapidly changing landscape. To stay abreast of the latest, we immerse ourselves in SEO research, we engage with others in the SEO community (online and off), and we regularly attend peak SEO industry events (we were one of only two Australian SEO companies that attended the 2007 PubCon Las Vegas Google Conference).

 

We Don’t Work for Your Competitors

While we’re working for you, we guarantee we’ll never work for your direct competitors. It’s not just an outright conflict of interest, it’s also counterproductive. We’d only be digging a hole for ourselves. We’d invest a whole lot of time and effort getting them to the top of the rankings, only to find we’d pushed you down in the process. Then we’d have to work even harder to push you back up. Then they’d be pushed down, and so on. And besides all of that, we simply don’t need to do it. A sub-set of companies from each vertical is enough to keep us very busy, all year-round.

 

We Don’t Outsource Offshore

Many search engine optimisation (SEO) companies can afford to quote what seems to be a cheaper monthly investment. These companies outsource the more tedious, labour-intensive parts of your search engine optimisation project to countries like India, where labour’s cheap. Unfortunately, this often results in security compromises. And when you think about it too, search engine optimisation is all about the words your customers are searching for. English words, more often than not. So it simply doesn’t make sense to outsource search engine optimisation to a country where English is – at best – a second or third language…

At TopRankings, we do all of our own search engine optimisation work. The only exception we make is when you require specialist copywriting or web design. For that, we engage – yes, you guessed it – a specialist SEO copywriter or web designer! (With professional web design and SEO copywriting, you convert more of the traffic that your search engine optimisation delivers to your site. You inspire trust, establish credibility and convey authority. You feel like someone they can safely – and profitably – buy from.)