Getting to the Top – Darwin Style

If you're like me, you get spammed by SEO companies in ten minute intervals on Thursday and Friday afternoons. (I don't know about you, but I couldn't care less about my search engine ranking on a Friday afternoon. I'm just trying to finish off some emails and get in the mind frame for destroying my colleagues in table tennis).

These companies are forever promising to get your website to the top of Google and appear in 'unlimited search results'. These emails might be damn annoying, but you know what?... their SEO (search engine optimisation) offerings may be very relevant for you if your business operated in a highly competitive market where your website needs constant tweaks and optimisation to remain competitive on Google (well, all search engines ....but let's just say Google). But my friends, we live in Darwin. SEO is easy.

Well, it's not really. It's actually a highly sophisticated process, a cross between fine art and science. Lucky for you and me, the tip of the SEO iceberg accounts for about 80% of its impact. What's even better is that this 80% can make all of the difference when operating in a relatively uncompetitive market like Darwin.

So today, I am going to give you a few easy tips to get to the top of Google as a Darwin business.

1. The build of your website is the foundation of success. Get your website built by a professional company. Make sure it's built in a CMS, has news feed functionality and has SEO modules/ plugins installed. Oh yeah, and make sure it's hooked up to Google analytics.
2. Do you some keyword research. A simple Google of the Google Keyword Tool will give you insight into what your audience is search for; therefore, the search terms you need to be appearing for. Also, cross reference this with the 'search traffic source' section of your Google analytics to make sure you're on the right track.
3. Choose a concise number of researched keywords that your target market is searching for and implement these across your website. Keywords should be implemented across title tags, meta description, headings, url extensions and throughout content. If you don't know what the heck I'm talking about right now, 'Google it' or chat to your web team.
4. Go the extra mile. This is how Google works; you and I are the customers and Google wants to please us by giving us the most appropriate results for our searches. Google does this through a complicated set of algorithms, but at the core of it, they reward websites that are most relevant to the search term, are highly visited, have great content and have regular updates. Simple.

Have fun getting to the top in Darwin!