When your site is produced by Loqium it is optimised for the search terms (keywords) that formed part of your website brief. But search engine optimisation doesn't end with the production of your website; search engine optimisation is an ongoing process. This is a guide to how Loqium operates to keep you ranking well on the search terms that will bring you quality traffic.

 

Our SEO motto is: 'Be smart, be vigilant, and be patient.'

 

Search Engine Optimisation that's included

We provide the following search engine optimisation included in the cost of your website.

• a robots.txt file on your host server that tells the search engines how to search your site
• the correct use of page titles - the page description on your browser's tabs
• the correct use of different levels of heading tags
• well-written text that includes your keywords but doesn't compromise style or clarity
• a well-written meta-description tag (this is not visible on the page)
• and considered keywords including synonyms and misspellings in your meta-keyword tag (also not visible on the page)

On site completion we submit your site to the major Search Engines and follow up after four weeks to ensure your site has been indexed by each of them.

We then monitor your search rankings on a representative keyword search (or three) every month with Google, Bing and Yahoo. This is sent to you six-monthly and includes comments and suggestions.

 

SEO isn't about bringing traffic to your site, it's about bringing the RIGHT traffic to your site.

 

Search Engine Optimisation that's extra

A well-produced site is like driving the Queen Mary, it has a momentum of its own but needs regular assessment to ensure you're on course and that you haven't becalmed. Now and then you need some tugs on the steering wheel to keep you on track and some extra fuel in the pistons to keep you steaming ahead. Here's a few things we can do to help your business rank well for organic search:

Monthly Reporting: If you want your search rankings emailed to you each month with comments and suggestions we provide that service for $264 per annum.

SEO Strategy: This is where we develop a SEO Strategy for your business by meeting and talking over:

• the right search terms to bring quality traffic to your website
• how we can build quality links to improve your rankings
• how we can tweak your website text for your chosen niche keywords
• what synonyms, misspellings and cultural terms we can use that relate to your chosen niche keywords
• the benefits of using Google Local Business Directory and pay-for-placement directories such as TrueLocal
• the benefits of using an embedded YouTube video
• and Google Adwords

We then write an action plan to achieve the agreed strategy. The frequency of these meetings is dependent on your business plan, but most customers would choose to do this six-monthly or yearly. Used in conjunction with the monthly reporting we'll tell you when we feel we need to convene a strategy meeting to keep your SEO on track. The cost of our meetings is $132 for the first hour and $88 per hour after that.

Actioning your SEO: Whether you ask us to go ahead with our suggestions on your monthly reports, or we are performing the agreed action plan from our SEO Strategy meeting, we will action your SEO at $66 per hour. In the case of an action plan arising from a Strategy meeting you will get an estimate of this during the meeting.

 

SEO, when done well and charged at reasonable rates, can be one of the very best marketing investments you can make.

 

Get your Search Engine Optimisation done right

I have customers who get emails offering to achieve higher rankings if they fork out $199 per month. As you'll find when we do your SEO, the majority of your SEO is done on your site. The people who send these emails cannot access your website - they don't have the passwords - so their only way of increasing your rankings is linking to you from 'link farms'. This can be temporarily advantageous but there's the substantial risk that they, and you, will be blacklisted by the Search Engines who regard this activity in a similar way to drug cheating at the Olympics. Most link farms I've seen have a Google Page Rank of 0 anyway. Link quantity is nice but the links that assist your site ranking the most are quality links. Please don't fall for these scams.

I have also spoken to a small business owner who was paying $3,000 per month for search engine optimisation. While this (or more) may be an appropriate price tag for SEO for a large online business it does not present value for small business. It certainly didn't present value for this business owner. The traffic to her site was huge, but no-one was hiring her - there was no return on investment. The site was poorly designed visually, it was cluttered and looked formulaic, and because the text had a forced high density of keywords it was largely unreadable. Thousands of people were visiting her domain - but they were clicking away in fright.

Your site is there to market your business. Your site should be designed to convert visitors to customers; and your SEO should be designed not just to bring traffic to your site, but to bring the right kind of traffic to your site. Having 40,000 site visitors a month with no conversions is useless, and getting your site blacklisted is a horror. Get your SEO done right.

 

If you have any questions on these subjects please call us on (02) 9810-5206.