How much would you pay for a Number 1 Ranking on Google??

What would it be worth to your online business to be Number 1 on Google?

One of the most common questions that I get asked is 'How much will it cost to get my business to Number 1 on Google?'

My question to you is 'What is it costing you to not be Number 1 on Google?'

Here is an exercise that I do to determine the value of the Number 1 ranking on Google.


Lets say that I have an online business and one of my major search terms generates 2000 searches per month. You can use the Google Keyword Tool to see how many searches per month are generated for your search term.

On average the number 1 listing will generate 40-50% of the total search volume as traffic.

So my website is going to get 800-1000 hits per month.

I have a product that sells for $27. (You can plug in your own numbers)

My website converts at 10% so I am going to make 80 to 100 sales per month. This will generate between $2160 and $2700 per month in revenue from your number one ranking on Google.

You will also get some extra benefit because your optimisation efforts will have a flow on effect to other keywords and phrases and bring more traffic to your website.


So, again I ask you 'How much is it costing your business to not be Number 1 on Google?'

And, another question, 'How much would you be prepared to pay to generate a monthly income of $2160 on a regular basis?'

How much would you pay for a Number 1 Ranking on Google??

Get More Clicks to Your Website - 5 Tips for Effective Page Titles and Descriptions

Want more clicks to your website?

But don't want to pay for them?

Statistics say that the number 1 listed website on Google for any given search term gets up to 50% of the clicks for that search term. And as you go down the list each listing gets fewer clicks.

And, once you get to the bottom of Page 2 most websites get very few free clicks from Google.

It is possible however to increase the number of free clicks that you are getting by using your Page Title and Meta Description effectively to entice searchers to click on your listing as opposed to the other listings on the page.

As you probably know the Page Title and Meta Description are the parts of your website that appear in the search engine results. Your Page Title is what people will click on, and the meta description gives them some more information about your business to convince them to click on your website.

Here are some rules for creating Page Titles and Meta Descriptions that will get you more clicks.

1. Each webpage on your site must have a unique Title and Description.

2. Google will only show the first 70 characters in your Page Title and 160 characters of your meta description so put your most relevant information at the start of each.

3. The Page Title and Meta Description should contain the most relevant keyword phrases that relate to that page on your website.

4. Sell Benefits not Features. You have a small space to convince a searcher that they should click on your listing.

What can your product do for them?

What will it create for them?

What problem can you solve for them?

These are the questions that you should be trying to answer in your Page Title and Meta Description.

5. Include a Call To Action

Most of us are used to following instructions and when left to make our own decisions, sometimes the decision that people make is no decision at all. Help them to make a decision. The decision to click on your website.

A Call To Action might be a FREE Report or a Special Offer that they will receive when they visit your website. Including this in your meta description will increase your click through rates.


Go and have a look at your page titles and meta descriptions for your website. Grab a pen and paper (yes they still exist)!! Write down the URL for each page on your website. Next to each URL write down the main keyword phrase that you are targeting on the page of your website. Then write down the current Page Title and Meta Description for the page.

Then, answer these questions.

Are my titles and descriptions unique?

Do they include my keyword phrase?

What benefit am I trying to sell?

Is there a strong call to action?

It can take some time and practice to get used to writing effective page titles and meta descriptions in only a very short space.


PS If you want more information about keyword research for your website check out my post on Effective Keyword Research for Business Websites

Get More Clicks to Your Website - 5 Tips for Effective Page Titles and Descriptions

Win a Free Website Review

What is the number one issue or question you have about web design or SEO for your business?

Post a comment below for a chance to win a FREE business website review.

Tell me what is the number one question you would like answered about web design or SEO for your business.

Now is your chance to find out what you need to do to get your website on the front page of Google.

The prize will be drawn on the 15th May.

Win a Free Website Review

Top 5 OnPage SEO Factors for Optimising your Website

I believe in getting bang for my buck. I like to maximise the return on investment for my time and money so that I can get more done in less time and with less money.

In that regard I don't imagine that I am too much different to anyone else.

So, when you look at optimising the content of a webpage, what areas do you need to concentrate on.

Before you do anything you must know what keywords you are looking to target. If you want more information about how to do your keyword research check out my post on keyword research for your business.

so, once you know what keyword or phrase you are looking to target on your page there are 5 main areas of onpage content that have a major bearing on how the search engines will treat your website.

1. URL

Other than the home page of your website (which is probably index.html), you should look to include some keywords in the URL of the pages on your site.

eg. if you are a web designer, the url for the main page on your website that relates to your web design services could be something like 'www._______.com/websitedesign.html'.

2. Page Title

This is a crucial piece of information to tell the search engines what your page is about.

If you are calling your home page 'Home Page' then you need to take a long hard look at your website.

I just did a Google search for 'home page' and guess what sites come up on the front page. Websites like BBC, Wikipedia, NASA, Microsoft, CNN, iGoogle, Adobe, Mozilla, Opera and Apple.

That is some pretty tough competition!! And even if you did get on the front page is it likely that your potential customers are typing the search term 'home page' into their browsers in an attempt to find your website.

Make your page title relevant to what your business does and include a call to action to get people to click on your link.

eg. 'Professional Freelance Website Design - Free Website Reviews available to make your website perform better'.

3. Meta Description

This is the part of your page that describes to the search engines what this page of your website is all about.

It also appears in the search results underneath the page title.

Do not overdo the keywords and use some words and phrases related to the main phrase that you have used in your URL and title.

Sell benefits of your product or service because this will come up in the search engine results. Give people a reason to click on your link.

4. The Main Heading

Because people tend to scan web pages rather than read them comprehensively you need to be using headings within your content to break up the text and give the readers a clue as to what the content is about.

These headings are coded into your webpage using the 'tags' H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6. If you don't know any HTML don't worry. Just look at the main heading on your page. This should be the H1 heading.

First question is, 'Is there a main heading?'

Are there any headings at all?

If there is a main heading does it contain your keyword or keyphrase or something very close to it?

If not, this is another area you can make significant improvements to the SEO of your website. Look at the content of your page and for each paragraph write an appropriate heading that utilises one of your keyphrases.

At the top of the page, write a heading that relates to the content of the whole page, and also uses your keyphrase or a related phrase.

Your main heading may even be the same as your page title.

Search engine robots also scan the code on your page looking for the heading tags to find out what your page is about. Use specific terms, rather than no terms at all or a generic term.

One of the most common generic terms I see on websites is the term 'products'. Do a Google search for the term products and see who you are competing against.

5. OnPage Links

These are the links on your website that point to other pages on your website. They might be in your navigation menu, or in the content of the page. this is another great place to use your keywords.

(Come real close just for 1 minute. Closer. Closer. I don't want anyone esle to hear this)

DO NOT USE 'CLICK HERE' to link to another page on your website. Sorry for shouting at you.

When Google spiders follow links over the internet one of the ways they know where they are going to is the text associated with the link they are following. It would be a bit like driving down the highway and seeing a roadsign that said 'There". OK, so you would know you were going 'There', but would you really know if you wanted to go 'There' or not. You would much rather know you were driving to LA or Sydney, as opposed to 'There'.

Just for one last exercise, do a Google search for 'Click Here' to see what websites you are competing against if you use this term to identify your links.

And, are your customers really going to be typing 'Click Here' into Google to try and find your business?

Top 5 OnPage SEO Factors for Optimising your Website

Keyword Research for your Small Business Website

Keyword Research could be the death of your Website!!

What keywords are you targeting with your website?

What are people searching for in your industry?

Week 2 of your 8 week challenge is all about keywords. This is an area that I find alot of small business owners struggle with, and alot of website designers overlook.

"It is no good having a pretty website if nobody can find it."

Here is an outline of the process that I use for researching keywords for a website. Feel free to copy it or improve on it as you can.


Step 1 - Create a list of keywords.

Have you ever been in one of those network marketing organisations? The first thing they say to you is come up with a list of prospects (people you know), and all of a sudden it seems like you don't know anyone. And then you contact the people on your list and none of them are interested.

Well, it can be a bit like that with keywords. Coming up with a list of a few hundred keywords that people might be searching the internet for that relate to your business can be a bit daunting for those that are new to it.

The good thing is there are tools that can help you. Personally I tend to use the Google keyword tool first and foremost. You can do this by typing in a term related to your business and it will generate a list of terms related to this term. Or you can type in a website, maybe your competitors and it will generate a list from the content on the website.

Step 2 - Select your keywords

Once you have your list for starters you then need to select the keywords that you want to focus on. I take into account 2 factors when looking at keywords. I want the words with plenty of traffic, and I want the keywords with less competition.

I can guarantee that everyone in your industry will be targeting the top 10 main keywords. So, if you are just getting started in can be a real boost to target some of the secondary keywords. These keywords will still have good traffic volume, but there will be less competition.

Google Keyword Tool will give you a good indication of both traffic and competition.

Step 3 - Group your keywords

Once I have a list of a few hundred keywords with good traffic I then group them together. You can do this simply in an Excel spreadsheet. At the top of each column I put a main keyword, and I then group similar keywords under this column. You will probably finish up with 5 or 6 groups of keywords after you have finished this process.

I then look at each of these groups of keywords and from within each group I select the main keyword that has the most traffic and the least competition.

Step 4 - On Page Keyword Optimisation

After the grouping process you should have 5-6 main keywords and groupings of secondary keywords that relate to each of these main keywords.

These main keywords will then form the basis of your site URL's, Page Titles, meta descriptions for each page, navigation menu and page content.

When you do this it is vital that you do it in such a way that you do not detract from the user experience of your website. All of these factors should consider usability first and search engines second, but it is entirely possible to enhance your search engine rankings quickly and easily by doing this without affecting the usability of your site. In fact it will often enhance the usability of your site as well.

For example, if you are a florist one of your navigation menu headings might be 'products'. After this process you will find that 'products' will not be one of your main keywords. You may find that 'roses', 'flowers', and 'gift baskets' will be among your main keywords that you can then use in your navigation menu. This enhances both usability and search engine performance.


This process of identifying your keywords will take some time to begin with, but in my experience it will help you to focus on what your site is really about, and it will enhance your search engine rankings from day 1.

More traffic, more sales, happy days.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... C: wait... SD: wait...

Keyword Research for your Small Business Website

The 8 Week Challenge - 8 Key On Page Factors for Having a Google Friendly Website

Web Page structure is a vital element of SEO. If your website is languishing on Page 553 of Google then there is a good chance that you are missing one or more of these factors.

If you want to draw tons of traffic from Google then it makes sense that you should make your website easy for Google to understand.

First let me say though that your website should be easy for your customer to understand. Here are 2 scenarios that both generate the same results -

Scenario 1 - Traffic NIL Conversion Rate 10% Revenue $NIL

Scenario 2 - Traffic LOTS Conversion NIL Revenue $NIL

So, effective website design should take into account both the search engines and your customers to bring you traffic, sell your product and make you money.

Here are 8 Key Factors for On Page SEO. Overt the next couple of weeks I will be dealing with each of these in more detail.

1. URL's - what is the structure of your URL for each page. Do they look like alphabet soup or are they search engine friendly?

2. Keywords - is your page optimised for your keywords? What keywords? How many? How often?

3. Title Tag - what is the title of your page and what does it tell Google about your page?

4. Meta-Description - what does this tell Google about your page? Are you using keywords effectively?

5. Users - don't forget the users. They are the ones that buy your products. Last I checked Google robots do not spend much money on the internet. They do however have a big bearing on where the money gets spent on the internet.

6. Content - what information is on your page. How are you using Headings? How are you using keywords? How good is your navigation? Do you have a sitemap?

7. Links - navigation links, in page text links, footer links. Are you using these effectively?

8. Test, Test and Retest - if you ever think that the work is done on your website you are heading for a fall. Times change, people change, search terms change. And each market is subtlely different. Constant and Never Ending Improvement is the key to great website design.

So, over the next 8 weeks, my challenge to you is to pick each 1 of these elements and get better at it. In 8 weeks time your website may be very different. Then repeat again for another 8 weeks.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... C: wait... SD: wait...

The 8 Week Challenge - 8 Key On Page Factors for Having a Google Friendly Website

Use Facebook to Promote your Internet Business

It is often thought that Facebook is just a social networking site where you can catch up with some people that you haven't seen for a long time.

However you can also use Facebook to promote your business. Create a separate business page to promote your business on Facebook. If you have a personal page on Facebook you can use this to promote your business page.

Use your Facebook business page to promote your business website and drive traffic from your business page to your business website.

This is one of many ways that you can drive extra traffic to your business website. If you would like to talk to me about other ways to increase traffic to your website check out my professional website design services.

Use Facebook to Promote your Internet Business

Squidoo

Have been away for a few days cause my internet died. It is very hard to run an online business with no internet connection but I am back online now.

I have just made a squiddo lens for my internet business. Squidoo is another good social media forum. You can showcase anything you like. You can use it to link to content on your site, and you can generate some extra income by featuring Amazon products and other things on your site.

My lens is Professional Website Design for Small Business and you can check it out using the link at the top of the page.

Social media is a great way to promote your business and also to create links to the content on your site. A win win situation for your website. Squidoo is one way of doing this. I am in the process of putting together a list of my top social media sites. Which ones do you like to use? Got any recommendations that you think should be on the list?

Squidoo

Find Out Where Your Customers Hang Out

Hi All

Been a busy week. Website number 2 is up and running and the client is very happy. Now I'm looking at a revamp of my web design site to give it a fresh look.

In the meantime I have been looking for more cool web tools to help you and me get better results online. So I came across this one

http://trends.google.com/websites

Obviously the best place to interact with your customers is to hang out where they hang out. Be one of them. Find out what they are looking for and give it to them. So if you look at the Google Trends website as above and put in a web address it will give you the Top 10 other websites that people also visited and it will also give you the Top 10 things they searched for.

So if you have your own website put it in Google Trends and see what other sites your customers are visiting. Get a link from these sites if you can.

Find out what other terms they are searching for. This will give you an idea of other terms you might want to look at optimising your site for.

Good luck making money online.

Find Out Where Your Customers Hang Out

Website Design

I have been talking about it for the last week or so, but I uploaded the new website for my first paying client last week. Tested ity in IE and FF and made a few small changes because the layout was not quite right in IE. Fixed up all the metatags last night and created and uploaded the sitemap. All good and done now.

FIRST PAYING JOB!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Been looking at linking strategies for one of my wife's websites - Success Event Photography.

Did you know that you can look at your competitors linking strategy. I use the Firefox Site Information tool and then look at the Yahoo inbound links. That way you can look at the top ranking sites, see how many links they have and where they come from, and then figure out your linking strategy in order to rank better than them.

You can also use the Site Information tool to see what metatags they have, and what keywords they are aiming at.

This is a really useful free tool that I use for my sites and also for my clients' sites. It gives a good estimation of how much work you will have to do to rank in the search engines ahead of your competitors.

Website Design

Web Site Design Tools

Checked out a couple of different tools tonight to ramp up my internet businesses. Had a look at Internet Business Promoter and trialled the free version. It looks to be quite an effective bit of software. Their guarantee says top Google rankings or your money back. Will have more of a look at it over the next few days. Anyone out there have any experience - good or bad - with Internet Business Promoter?

Worked on getting some more links as well. This morning I submitted to some more directories and tonight I submitted an article that I wrote on website design to some different article directories. You can check out some of the website design articles that I have written. Always happy to get some feedback - good or bad. I have started using a tool called article submitter to submit my articles to different directories in a more timely fashion.

Web Site Design Tools

SEO - Is it scary or not??

Perhaps I forgot to mention, but one of the other criteria that I am using for my quest is to do this on as smaller budget as I possibly can. This is mainly out of necessity, but that is another story.

At the moment I am working on SEO - search engine optimisation. Building links, refining my content, that is what SEO is about.

Don't we all want free traffic?? Have you got a story to share about SEO? Can you help someone else with their SEO? Do you have a site that is ranked highly on the search engines? Share your story about how you did it.

I already have a number of sites that are up and running, but I am not paying for traffic so my traffic is purely organic. The main way I have been generating traffic up until now is article writing, but I am now looking at other ways. Consequently up until now traffic has been small and income is zero.

SEO - Is it scary or not??