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Google has just launched a revamped Site Links system on its Organic and in some cases Paid Search Results.

Google Organic Search Result changes

Please view the latest search results for DzineClub. Instead of just being links under the Main website title, there is now a url and a description of the pages in the links. We have seen upto 10 links on a page and with that the result seems to take almost half the page.

How does Google pick sitelinks? There is no definitive answer but runs an alogrithm which picks the specific links on the website.

Paid Traffic Search Result changes

For all paid traffic, Google has also started using site links. Please view example when searching for BMW in Adwords.

The old site links are now coming up in paid search. We are actually more stoked that we have 10 site links while BMW has 6 🙂

How does this affect your SEO

This is going to cut traffic for any company which is in 2nd spot and so on.

Paid Search is more Valuable

Also this makes Paid search more valuable for businesses because the paid listing are comparable to organic listings and will more likely make a customer click on it. This means that lower end companies are better off investing in Adwords than Full on SEO.

How can you improve your listings?

Look for your brand and make sure that you have site links coming in your list.
Meta descriptions are really important now so that your visitors can see the descriptions on your inside pages. If there is a link that you would rather not have in your listings, remove that using Google Webmaster Tools

The Version 2 of our dzineSEO Keyword Ranking Tool is now out with heaps of new features:

Keyword Ranking Tool Login Area

We now have a Platform Login Area where you enter your email address and password to access the Keyword Ranking Tool.

A new Interface

The new interface is built to help you get to your stats faster. Currently It has information about your current keyword rankings, keywords, past results, information about competitors and a link to SEO resources.

Current Keyword Ranking Stats

The Current Keyword stats now give you ranking against your keywords for upto 10 pages of Google so that you can optimise your Search Engine Efforts better. You can compare that with your last rankings on how you were ranked last time. Currently the stats only work with Google with it being the major player.

Also find out how many pages are being indexed by Google and what your Alexa Rankings is.

Target Keyword Research

In this area you can look at your keywords and research them. To not divulge what our clients can access, we won’t discuss this much because this area gives you an advantage against your competitors. However you can add all of your keywords and look at their stats and activity around the internet.

Past Results and Keyword Ranking Comparison

Compare your Keyword Rankings against Past Results. So if you have had an account for the last year, you can see how your keyword rankings have improved over time.

Competitor Keyword Research

Keep an eye out on your competitors. Find out what Keywords they are targeting and what keywords they are getting visibility on in Google.

We will be releasing plans and pricing for our Keyword Ranking Tool shortly so stay tuned. We are still putting the polish on a few areas but once that is complete, we will be releasing it around late Jan. For more information please email us at info@dzineclub.com

We just saw The United States of Autocomplete and got us thinking about what was the most popular search term in Google Autocomplete for Australian States and Territories. We also put in the capital city and the State abbreviation to see if that makes a difference for what people search and what shows up. Here are the results.

If the text is not clear, please click on the image to view the larger version:

The Results

Australian Capital Territory

• Australian Capital Territory legislation
• Canberra Times
• ACT health

New South Wales

• New South Wales Supreme Court
• Sydney Morning Herald
• NSW Tab

Northern Territory

• Northern Territory News
• Darwin Weather
• NT News

Queensland

• Queensland Transport
• Brisbane Lions
• QLD Transport

South Australia

• South Australia area code
• Adelaide Weather
• SA Water

Tasmania

• Tasmania tourism
• Hobart Airport
• TAS Freight

Victoria

• Victoria Police
• Melbourne Weather
• VIC Roads

Western Australia

• Western Australian Newspaper
• Perth Now
• WA Today

ReDirect Old Links

We are currently in process of updating a few websites for our clients. We are moving a lot of clients  from ASP to PHP.

This causes a lot of issues where all the old links are .asp and the new links are .php. This means that all the links that are already indexed by Google will be completely replaced with new ones. This also means that they possibly will lose a few links to that. So we are making sure to put redirects so that this doesn’t happen.

Improve Usability and Functionalty

A new website should always improve the functionality over the old one. It should be based around what works and improving those, removing what doesn’t work and testing new things. Do some A/B testing and come up with the best results.

Improved Web Analytics and Reporting

Always improve your reporting when you update your website. Reporting and Web Analytics are evolving all the time. Make sure that when you update your website you dig in deeper into your reports and try and set up custom reports that give you better understanding of your visitors.

We recently built a report for one of our customers who can now see for every keyword that they got traffic for what page that keyword was on.

Improve User Communication

Make it easier for your potential customers to send you enquiries and make it easier for you and your staff to communicate with those users.

Improve SEO

Make sure that firstly you dont lose your SEO ranking and also make sure that your new website is better positioned for Search Engines than your last.

How do you do this? Please check out our SEO platform which helps you track your SEO.

Start Data Capture

Find out how you can start capturing visitor information.

Should you make a whitepaper available?
Should you create an email newsletter?
Should you let users subscribe to your blog via email?

Integrate Social Media

Link it to your facebook, twitter, linkedin feeds. Allow your visitors to share your content to their network and become fans of your facebook page.

Here is a compiled list of all of our SEO articles since last year in the blog

Google Instant – bad for most businesses

An article on why Google Instant might be bad for most businesses who are not on the front page of Google.

Social Media Optimisation – Facebook Optimisation

A post on why Social Media Optimisation is just as important as Search Engine Optimisation for your business.

How many keywords to target – SEO

How many keywords should a company target for a good Search Engine Results

DzineSEO – SEO Platform Update and Offer

Our own SEO platform built so that you can track how well your Search Engine Optimisation Efforts are Working for you.

Get to front page of Google – List your business to Google Maps for free

If you can’t get to the front page of Google, how you can use Google Places to get to the front page of Google.

How do I improve my Google listing

What can you do today to improve your listings in Search Engines.

Free Australian Business Directories – more leads, improve SEO

A list of Free and Paid Australian Directories that can help you generate more leads and improve your back links for better Search Engine Placement

Quick tips – 15 minute SEO –  Search Engine Optimisation

15 Minute Crash Course on SEO and how you can improve it yourself

Thinking of starting a blog? Advantages of a Blog!

How a blog can help you skyrocket your way into Search Engines

Google now including facebook pages in search – importance of social media

The DzineClub team is very excited about searching on Google Instant but as we study our behavior on how we use Google Instant, we are fairly disappointed with what it means for most Small to Medium Businesses. We see Google Instant as great for searchers and overall search experience but not great from a SEO perspective.

As we were testing Google Instant, we realised that we are very keen to see what is in our screen and not scroll. If we want better results, we were more interested in changing / appending search terms on the search bar. Essentially we did not even scroll down to see the bottom of the page but were very focused on what was on the first few results.

Google Instant for Small/Medium Businesses – Good and Bad
 

Bad – Searchers might click on what’s in front of them than go through pages or scroll

Essentially Google Instant will get users used to getting the info straight away and clicking on it. Which means that the top 10 links will get more clicks. So if you are on the front page, you will get more traffic while the rest of the pages will get less traffic. This is not great news for companies which are fighting to get to the first page but have been getting trickled traffic on the other pages. When you use Google Instant, you are more inclined to stay on the search box and tweak your search terms there than to even scroll down to the 7-10th positions.

Good – Searchers will add words to make search more specific

We doubt most users will even scroll down to the bottom, but will be more used to changing the search term on the instant bar to get relevant results.

This is a good thing as you can now tweak your SEO to not target those broad keywords to get on the front page but more specific keywords to get users who tweak their keywords to get those relevant results.

Overall

Overall we see this as a win for the users, but not necessarily for the companies unless you are already on the front page. Searchers will be using more broad terms and only going specific if they can’t find results.  We think that the bottom dwellers even on the front page will lose a bit of traffic and subsequent pages will lose even more.

Lately we’ve been talking to a lot of small business owners who have the same questions about improving their online business. One of the bigger ones is

How do I improve my listings?

Here is what you can do today to improve your listings:

1. Break down your website pages into smaller pages and optimise the titles on them

The more pages you have, the bigger you look and have more options of changing titles on those pages to target Search Engines. If you have a page, that is longer than 2 pages, break it down.

2. Add your website to to Business Directories

Add yourself to Free Australian Business Directories. We don’t see a lot of advantage in adding yourself to a paid one unless you are trying to be a featured business.  We recently put up a list of Australian Business Directories here:
List of Australian Business Directories

3. Add your website to vertical specific Business Directories

Do a search on Google for your vertical specific Business Directories and list your website on them. Also Vertical specific online magazines, portals allow you to add yourself as a service/product provider

4. Share links with complimenting Businesses

Find out any local businesses that compliment your business and link to their website and ask them to link back to you. What’s even better is that if they put a little blurb around your business so that visitors to their site already have an idea about what you do. This will also look good from a Search Engine like Google perspective. Make sure you do not over do this or you might actually lose your listing.

5. Start a Blog

Think of a niche topic around your business and start a blog. Start putting down your thoughts and your product/service information on the blog. Make it more informative that product-based for best results.

6. Start Search Engine Marketing

Start putting a bit of money on Search Engine Marketing. Start a Google Adwords account and start out with $100 budget for a month and see how you go.

Please note that your site needs to look good compared to other sites for you to get any leads. Do a search on Google and view the pages to see how other competitors are working.

7. Put a reporting System to track and analyse

Because doing all these things take time and in some cases money, you need to make sure that you are tracking all your efforts to make sure that you are getting results back. We recommend using Google Analytics to track to see if you are getting more visitors to the site because of these efforts.

Next time we’ll tackle the second most popular question “How do I get more customers?”

Here are the top completely free Business Directories in Google in Australia. We recommend adding your listings to these directories to get more traffic into your sites. At the bottom you have some paid listings too.

Free Business Directories

Business.gov.au
Australian Directory of Government and Business Associations
http://www.business.gov.au

Hot Frog
Australian Business Directory
http://www.hotfrog.com.au

Local Business Guide 
Free Business Directory
http://www.localbusinessguide.com.au

Start Local 
Australian Business Directory and Search Engine
http://www.startlocal.com.au

Yellow Pages®
Yellow Pages® Local Business Directory
http://www.yellowpages.com.au

Paid Business Directory

AusDirectory
Free Business Directory Listings
http://www.ausdirectory.org

AussieNow
Australian Local Business Directory
http://www.aussienow.com.au

Nationwide
Business Directory of Australia
http://www.nationwide.com.au

You should be able to make this change yourself or ask your web designer/developer.

1. Identify Main Keywords

Identify the main keywords that you want to appear in search engines for. Find out how competitive those keywords are and use tools to pick the right ones. Try Using the Google Keyword Tool

2. Insert these keywords on Page Titles where applicable

Change the titles of your page to match the keywords you want to appear on Google. Make sure you use the main keywords on your home page title.

3. Change Meta Description for Pages

Change meta description on the pages to target keywords as well as a quick description of the pages

4. Insert these keywords on the front page

Insert text on the front page which describes what you do but making sure that you are inserting these keywords on the front page.

5. Manage Webmaster Areas

Go to Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster and add your site and your sitemaps

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If you are unable to make these changes yourself and would like to make these SEO changes on your site, contact DzineClub  at info@dzineclub.com for info on how we are enabling other Small and Medium Businesses to take control of their SEO.

What is a blog?

Blog stands for "web log". It is a type of website, maintained by an individual, group or a company. Entries are posted in the blog regularly about services, events, commentary, video, images etc. A blog provides an overall picture on a particular person or a subject or a company.   Companies like Dell, Microsoft, Google use blogs to communicate with their users.

Advantages of using a blog for yourself or your company

1. Low Cost Setup

A blog can be setup at a relatively low cost than a website. Usually there is a lot of things you have to consider before starting and implementing a website. A website can serve multiple purposes based on your business and your offering. A blog however is fairly straightforward to set up as it serves a clear purpose.

Also because of the popularity of blogs, there are also a lot of existing frameworks for blogs that can be utilized which makes it faster and cheaper for the end user.

2. Quick to setup and start

Because all the blogs we set up, we use existing frameworks, they are quicker to setup. You can start putting up posts on your blog within a few hours. The customizing the blog to your look and feel might take a bit longer but access to the blog and setup can be well within a day.

3. Search Engine Friendly

Blogs are Search Engine Friendly because they are more informative and resourceful than websites. Search Engines love Blogs, because they help provide more information to users who are searching on the engines. Search Engines would rather send the visitor to a page full of information rather than a page with a product/sales offering. Usually once you start blogging regularly, you will start seeing them getting updates in Google within minutes.

4. Brand Awareness

Because of the Search Engine Friendliness and a more personal communication (than a website), Blogs help you build your brand awareness. Your visitors will feel more connected to you and engaged because of more regular and personal offerings on the blog. Your visitors will also see the human side to the business that you are running which makes it easier for them to pick you for your products/services when they need it.

5. Integrations with other Marketing Channels

Most Blogging platforms integrate with other Channels and help you push out information about the blog to your other channels. For example, you could write a blog entry and publish it and it automatically updates your twitter with that entry. So you are not just covering your website visitors, but also your twitter followers. Plus now twitter is indexed by search engines, so you can get more visitors via that channel.

6. Human Touch

A blog brings a human touch to your business or yourself. Because the information getting there is not sales focused and edited by a flurry of legal teams from your company, it brings out the human side of your business. It also helps your prospects and your customers connect with you and really get to know the people behind the business. In markets like Australia, this could  be the driving force behind buying a product or a service from a company.

Is a blog right for you and your business?

More than half the time, it usually is.  If you are creating content, selling products, offering services etc and wish to push out information to your customers/visitors then a blog is perfect medium for you.  The only times we would recommend against using a blog is

1. If you are unable to generate content regularly. If you only have a new offering once a year or nothing to communicate to your customers/visitors for months, a blog is not the best idea.
2. If you are unwilling or unable to spend a bit of time regularly in marketing your offering online then a blog will not help. A blog with little or no updates can look bad on a company or an individual
3. If your targetmarket is not tech savvy users, then a blog is not the best idea. If your target market doesn’t have access to the internet or are not the type who will spend a bit of time on the internet a blog would be a waste of resources and time for yourself.

Free Blog Setup

For a limited time, we are offering a free blog setup for any business/individual in Australia. Please click on the link below and submit your details to enquire.
http://www.dzineclub.com/services-blog.php