Search Engine Optimisation

Imagine that you sell a service like household plumbing, we would ask you a series of questions to get very clear about what this business offered and what areas you were interested in expanding.  Working together we'd identify keywords associated with these products or services and then Forte Web Design would perform some analysis to see how well these keywords rank, how popular they are, whether we could use them organically (free) or whether we'd need to buy advertising to rank with them.  

We'd go a step further by examining the keywords that attract customers to competitor websites.  If there isn't a strong connection here we might suggest further keywords to use on your site to start ranking higher than your competitors in the search engine results.

Because search engines like Google are finely tuned to detect an over saturation of keywords we'd spread these out carefully in meaningful text so that it all makes sense to human visitors.  We'd also use synonyms, words that are similar in meaning to your keywords, and long tail keywords to further strengthen your site's authority on the topic.

All of this takes time.  It often takes several goes to write original and meaningful content.  The new content needs to be submitted to the search engines so they pick it up quicker and we need to keep coming back via the search engine to see if the changes are resulting in improvements.

When you start a new website your ranking with any search engine will be very low.   They don't know anything about you so why should they advocate you to their customers?  But they will keep revisiting your website from time to time and noting changes and improvements.  As they get to know you, your authority score will grow.  The higher your authority score the better you will fare in search engine ranking.   Apart from the use of keywords one of the next best ways to improve your ranking results is to write articles for your site.  You may not think you have anything to write about but give us five minutes and we'll reel of 5 - 10 article titles that would go a long way to helping attract new visitors to your site.  If there is one thing that is true in the internet age its this.  Proprietary information is not the way to grow.  Instead we recommend that you write articles about things which you are expert at.   Following on from our plumber example, it may seem counter intuitive if you were to write an article on changing tap washers but the truth is you were never going to pick up those people who head to Bunnings hardware and buy their own tap washers.  Along the way however, anyone who is unsure about the process will quickly see that you know what you are talking about.  This type of shared experience or expertise creates trust and people close by will contact you for your services.

It can be true on nearly anything that you consider you've worked long and hard for.  Give the information away freely and it improves your authority.  Not just with search engines but with your community.

Did you know that one of the ways that Google determine your site's legitimacy is by how many and what types of sites link back to your site.  As an example, government websites have a very high authority with Google.  This is because they adhere to very strict standards around what they publish and promote in the interest of the general public.  A link back to your site from a government website would raise the trust level of your site and improves its ranking.

Now its unlikely we are going to get a link from a government website but its likely you will have distributors, suppliers and other type of businesses that you can approach and request they add links back to your site.  You can even offer to reciprocate by linking to their sites.   Having links on your site's pages both to other internal pages and externally is also a good thing.

Another very good way to improve ranking results is to encourage your customers to fill out a Google review of your business.  Also add your business to Google and make sure you mark where your business is on the google map.  This will require some authentication of ownership but its well worthwhile going to the effort.

Take a look at some of our work.