Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

How to tell the difference between Good, Bad, and downright Dangerous.

We sometimes have clients contacting us in desperation when it comes to SEO – either because they have no idea who to trust, or worse, because they’ve been ripped off by what’s know as ‘black hat’ SEO fly-by-nighters. Black hat means they are the ‘dodgy brothers’ of the SEO game and best avoided.

But how do you know who’s honest Joe? And who’s going not only rip you off, but may also get your site black banned on Google, or worse, destroy your good name and leave your online reputation in tatters? Read the rest of this entry »

A client of ours recently employed the services of an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company. They sent her a “report” of the work that they had done to date which she sent to us and, as a result, prompted us to do a bit of digging, as the info in the report just wasn’t quite right… Read the rest of this entry »

A quick summary of what’s up with the White Dog… Read the rest of this entry »

Have you been to Google in the past few days? Of course you have. But! Have you noticed anything different about Google?

Google has just substantially changed the way they index websites. Here’s the official announcement from Google:

Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve probably heard so much about Social Media lately that your eyes are glazing over every time you hear about it. You may also be thinking, yes, it’s probably something I need to do for my business, but who has the time? Indeed, who has the time to sit on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn all day connecting with people? … Read the rest of this entry »

You might actually be asking yourself, “WHY would I want to register my business on Google Places?”

Well, for starters, it makes it easier for your customers to find you! You also have better control over the information ensuring that the most accurate info is being displayed in Google Search and Google Maps. And, the best reason yet, it’s FREE and takes about 5-10 minutes to register!

When users type in a localized search for a topic, Google will display the matches for businesses and groups listed in Google Places for those search terms at the top of the page. By the way, Google Places used to be known as Google “Local Business Center” until about 2 weeks ago.

For example, as an exercise, type the keywords “web hosting collingwood” into Google… What do you see?

Convinced? Here’s a quick synopsis of how set it up.
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If you aren’t on the web, which competitors are your clients calling?

How many people are ‘stopped’ about getting a website because it’s too expensive … too hard … don’t have the time to think about it … not that important?? Consider how many opportunities you have lost in the past week by not having a web presence.

While it can be a little daunting it’s actually a very straight forward process. – A web address or domain name ( $20 – $50); some space on a reliable server with solid backend systems admin so it’s available to your customers all the time (from $130/yr); and coherent and engaging content on the site (priceless!).

So how to come up with that! – We always ask our customers which sites they like to visit and why. Try asking yours what questions they like to have answered before they call or come in.

Perhaps the most important aspect of your website is simplicity and beauty! Like a great work of art, the imagery must reach the ‘good-feeling-place’ of the visitor. People base their buying decisions on their feelings and especially a sense that your product or service will have them feel better than they currently do.

It’s also important to realise that your website is also like your shop front. Just as you’d never want your customers to visit a tatty old shop front with rubbish all over the pavement outside, a website that has a clean fresh feel about it is more likely to have your customers take a step or two further to investigate. A bad vibe will have them out of there in a click!  We all know about selling the benefits of our services; a good trick here is to use the common questions your customers ask as the guide to what to put on your site.

If you want people to buy your product/service, Read the rest of this entry »

Google is the top ranking search engine by miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers!). According to Hitwise, last month (August 2008), they accounted for 71% of all web searches in the US. Next up is Yahoo! in a very distant second place with 18%, and bringing in the bronze is MSN with 5%. As such, everyone and I do mean EVERYONE, wants to know how they can appear on Google. First things first. Getting recognized on Google takes time and a fair amount of effort (just getting a domain name i.e. whitedoggreenfrog.com and a hosting package is not enough). We get a LOT of phone calls saying “I typed my name in the search but I don’t show up.” There is not one specific thing that can be done to improve your ranking. SEO (Search Engine Optimization – the industry term) is a synergistic effort of a lot of different factors that when accomplished methodically, can make a huge impact on your site’s ranking, here are just a few:

1.  Google has what are called “robots” that periodically navigate and index sites. These robots will track your site at least once a month but often times a couple of times per month.

2.  The more unique your product is, the better chance you have of standing out from the rest of the competition

3.  Google is king? Well so are links! You must, I repeat, you MUST get links to your site to have a fighting chance for a decent ranking on Google. A 3rd party vouching for you and stating that you are who you say you are is huge. It’s one thing to claim that whitedoggreenfrog.com is a web hosting company but when others are also putting links to their site stating that White Dog Green Frog is a web hosting company, Google takes notice.

4.  Google assigns a measure called “Page ranking” which is also an important factor to consider when looking for links. It is preferable to acquire links from sites with higher page rank (eg: Microsoft has a page rank of 9, White Dog has a page rank of 5 – we used to be 3 and over the span of 2 years with minimal effort, we’ve reached 5). Some sites don’t have a page rank, you’re better off expending your energy on sites with higher ranks than those wit none at all.

5.  Google Australia takes into account those that are hosted locally (in Australia – eg: with our AU hosting packages) and those sites with .com.au domains and will generally rank these sites higher.

It is important to note that SEO is a major endeavor and certainly does not happen overnight (Google takes a while to trust changes to avoid spammers). Big companies that are serious about SEO pay $600 per month for a year as it takes a valiant effort to not only achieve a respectable Google ranking, but also to stay there! A vast injection of SEO services is a good start but there is a bit of systematic work that you will need to perform to stay there. If you’re interested in SEO services for your site, give us a call. For some businesses, SEO can make a real difference. There’s a lot more to it than we can cover here. We provide varying SEO services ranging from a status evaluation, call us for more info.