Today I will be talking about how to increase traffic to your website through Search

Engine Optimisation, also referred to as SEO.

We’ll be looking at what SEO is, how it works and what it can achieve for your business.

And we’ll uncover the 3 simple secrets you need for successful SEO.

1

Your business is already online which is great. Only around 50% of Kiwi businesses have

a website, so you’re already ahead of the game. But are people finding your site when

they’re searching? Are you getting new customer leads through internet search engines,

or is it mainly repeat customers who search for you by name that are finding your site?

Maybe they’re bookmarking your site or even just certain pages of your site?

When we talk about your website getting found, Google is at the heart of your strategy –

whether it’s through organic or paid traffic. 70% of Kiwis use Google when searching for

products and services online.

While many people may go to your website directly through your URL - that is - typing in

the actual website address, you will find the majority of customers will probably come

through Google.

2

So, how can you increase your share of this traffic? Driving people to your website from

Google can be done in a couple of ways:

1. Buying traffic with Cost Per Click campaigns, for leads that start straight away. There

are a variety of terms for what is essentially the same thing. You’ve probably heard

people talk about “Google AdWords” “Search Engine Marketing” or “Search

Marketing”. Essentially all of these terms relate to the same thing. You may also

sometimes hear this referred to as ‘paid’ online advertising. Google Display and

Facebook Ads are also included in this category.

2. The second way to drive people to your website is through what we call “building

traffic” through Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, for developing a sustainable leads

source. SEO is essentially the process of increasing the natural or organic ranking of your

website on a search result page by making improvements to your website and content.

This is often referred to as ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ traffic.

3

Toda our focus is how to get your business visible in the highlighted area here – which is

the non-paid or organic search results. The art of doing this is by Search Engine

Optimisation or SEO for short.

At its basic level, SEO is the process of increasing the natural or organic ranking of your

website on a search result page by making improvements to your website and content

and about creating a digital profile. It’s all about getting your website to appear high in

the non-paid sections of a Google search results page which appear in the section we’ve

circled.

The top section and right hand sections are all paid ads – these are search marketing or

Google AdWords.

4

SEO comes in two forms, which some of you may have heard of. On-Page and Off-Page.

On Page are hygiene factors that are reasonably easy to influence, like:

- how your website is designed and built

- How fresh and engaging your website content is

- How relevant your keywords are to the content of your site

5

The second facet of SEO is off page elements and this refers to activity that takes place

away from your website.

Off page SEO success is about creating quality referral links from relevant sites to help

your site appear more credible. You want people to be talking about you – on blogs,

social media like Twitter and Facebook.

What happens off your page is more important than what happens on it. And the key to

this is engaging and relevant content that people want to link to and read about and

share. Google loves websites that other people link to. But link content has to be

relevant to the content on your website.

In other words:

What people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

6

I am going to unveil three simple secrets that will get your website ranking higher on Google in organic searches.

7

8

In this graph you can see the relationship between Google position & traffic generation for SEO & SEM. - Organic SEO receives almost 5 times the traffic for a first position in AdWords – 32%

v 7.11%

- And even 10th position organic has a higher CTR than 3rd position in AdWords 2.4% v 2.19%

It is well known that many businesses get a fantastic return on investment with AdWords at position 3, so SEO is likely to provide excellent value as long as we can rank your business somewhere on the first page.

So in essence, SEO is better over a longer period of time and is a long term play, while Search Engine Marketing/Google AdWords is effective for faster and more immediate leads.

9

10

So, the first of our 3 simple secrets is search phrase selection.

The exact words that you target, and the exact words that you have on your

pages are vitally important.

Our client Transworld is all about international removals, and we have managed

to rank them at the top for that particular term – international removals.

11

But with the addition of one simple word, they disappear from the top of the list.

This is because they don’t have the words “cheap” or “cheapest” in the content of their page.

The reason for this is they don’t want to be known as the cheapest, so they don’t want to rank for that particular phrase. But that’s not the point of this example.

The point is that you need to think about your website. Think about the words you have used on your page. Merely missing out ONE word, can make all the difference between ranking top and making sales.

What words are you targeting? Do you have those words on your website? Merely adding the words properly can get you ranking, and result in quality leads.

12

The trick to search phrase selection is finding out what people are searching for

that will convert into leads & get the most relevant traffic to your website

Remember to always think about what your customers may be searching for. You

can do this by selecting multiple word phrase(s), and single words using the

Google keyword planner.

The Google Keyword planner is an SEO Analyst’s best friend, as it gives us the

number of people per month that are searching for exact phrases in Google.

13

14

The <title> tag is the most important tag for page ranking, so it is important for us to understand what it is.

- Essentially, it is the heading that shows for each web-page in the search results

- And the tab name showing on your browser

- And the title showing in the source code of each page – generally near the top of the code

But, you have to have everything right for the title to work. For example – you don’t want to be top for a phrase that has no traffic. Also, if you have the words in your title, but not in your content then you are unlikely to rank well (regardless of the competition).

15

The next part of the head section is the meta description

• You see it in the search results as the “snippet”

• And you see it in the source code of the page

1. The meta description is not part of the ranking algorithm – It will not directly effect your rankings.

2. So what is the meta description? It is the sales pitch & your unique selling point.. You want the most clickable entry that grabs people’s attention

Best practice

1. Use proper English & keywords from title – don’t have big lists of comma delimited phrases. What’s a comma delimited phrase? It’s basically just a whole list of phrases separated by a comma…

2. Aim for a max of 150 characters as Google only shows 145-165 characters

3. It needs to be Unique on every page. If you have no meta description, make sure you have 150 characters of wording in your opening paragraph that is a good sales pitch

16

And now onto secret number 3. Page Content optimisation is fairly simple in theory and that is to include the keywords in the content of your page in order to improve rankings.

The trick though is to include the keywords in a way that is attractive to your customers.

It’s so important that the content reads naturally & that the keywords don’t seem forced.

17

We start off with the <h1> heading

1. This is the bold bigger text that the eye is drawn to on the page, and should have content immediately following it

2. It should be “above the fold” – before you have to scroll down

3. I call the <h1> a user friendly version of the meta title

4. Use <h1> to emphasise top search phrase – i.e ‘international moving’

5. Google looks for a signal that content is starting – The <h1> tag is designed to do this

6. Best to have a unique <h1> tag with paragraph text immediately following

Next, we move onto the page content

18

• You need to include as many exact match keywords as possible into the content

• Keep it readable, important to keep the paragraph sounding conversational & not forced.

• Make sure content is unique• the opening paragraph of each page needs to be unique to that page. Don’t

duplicate content on any other websites.

19

Here is an example of a page that hasn’t had it’s page content optimized correctly.

The only mention of vitamin supplements on the page was in the menu – Meaning that it is on every page, and not specific to this page

There is no H1 tag unique to this page, and no opening paragraph! Very few ecommerce websites seem to have an opening paragraph, let alone one that has target search phrases in it.

What could we do to improve this page?

• We could ad a Vitamin Supplement title tag

• And add ‘Vitamin Supplement’ plural and singular terms in the content of a new opening paragraph

• We could also throw in a unique selling point to encourage a purchase.

20

21

22