Most people turn to a search engine (such as Yahoo or Google) when it comes to finding businesses online. The majority of the time a customer will also use a generic keyword / term (i.e "holidays") as opposed to a business name to find what they are looking for. Therefore it is obviously important that when someone types in a keyword that is relevant to what you do that your site appears in the first page (usually the top 20) of search results. The higher your "rank" is the better, as most people won't scroll or go to a second page of results.
So how do we go about getting a better page rank? Once your site has been visited by a search engine (commonly referred as being "crawled"), your site will receive a rank based on:
- Content
- Title
- Meta Tags
- Number of links (and the relevance/quality of these links) to your website.
Trent's top 5 tips to boost your page rank:
- Ensure that the content on your home page contains the relevant keywords. It also pays to ensure that content on your website is kept up to date (read some ideas here) – as some search engines will rank sites that change their content regularly higher than those that don't.
- Make sure that pages on your site are titled appropriately and that you have setup invisible "meta tags".
- Create a sitemap – this helps search engines catalogue your website more effectively.
- Do not have a splash / entry page.
- Get as many relevant links to your website as appropriate (read how to build links to your website here). Also make sure that the text surrounding your link contains relevant information.
What is a sponsored search or Google AdWords about?
A sponsored search allows you to bid on specific keywords that are relevant for your company. Compared to get ranked "naturally" as above – with a sponsored search you can ensure that your product / service is always found on the first page of search results within a short time (within 24 hours).
How much does it cost?
You only pay when someone actually clicks on your listing. This means that if no one clicks on your link – you don't actually pay anything.
You can also set a daily spend limit which allows you to control your monthly budget.
Like any advertising medium you should seek professional advice to make sure your campaign will return the maximum result for minimal cost. Trent Moffatt Designs can create, monitor, adjust and report on your campaign to ensure your campaign is working effectively. We have also extended our offer of 50% off our setup fee (a $200 saving!) until 4th August. Find out more here.
