Content Writer Micky’s Blog

Sometimes, website owners want their website (read: their homepage) to rank well for so many different SEO keyword phrases that there is no focus and in the end, the website doesn’t rank well for any of them.

My tips for focusing your SEO keywords so they’re more effective:

• Start out with a long list of all possible keyword phrases and combinations you think are relevant for your website.
• Do your keyword research so you can put them in order of the best ones to target and delete the ones that won’t be worth your trouble.
• Don’t forget to check out the competition. If your desired keyword is very generic and very popular, there will be millions of sites you’ll be competing with, so choose your keywords wisely – often keyword phrases of 2, 3 or even 4 words are most effective.
• Choose no more than about 3  keyword phrases per web page to really focus on – different ones for each page. If you target the exact same keyword phrase with different pages, you’ll dilute the strength of each of them. (OK, 3 is an average – sometimes it will be just 2 and sometimes there can be 4 short keyword phrases.)
• Reserve the most important keywords for your Homepage. These should cover your main or most popular products/services and if you’re a local business, your general location as well (using the location terms people tend to use for a local search in your area).
• Keep a list of all your targeted keyword phrases and the corresponding pages on your site you have optimised for those keywords.
• Optimise each of your pages for their different targeted keyword phrases.
• Get quality backlinks to your most important pages (not just your homepage), with the SEO keywords in the text link matching the targeted keywords of the page it links to.

One example of a website that I’ve recently helped by creating more focused website content for the homepage is a Phoenix real estate company in the US that lists lots of Arizona homes for sale. In a market that is incredibly competitive, it’s important to really focus your keywords. With Phoenix and Tucson real estate being the company’s major offerings, these are the phrases the homepage has been optimised for. Other keywords and real estate locations can be left to the site’s inside pages.

Bottom line: it’s important not to try to optimise one web page for too many different keywords. Because Title tags are so important and they can’t be long, it’s impossible to include too many exact keyword phrases anyway.

So focus on about 3 SEO keyword phases per page and then really optimise each page for their targeted terms (but don’t OVER-optimise it either - keyword spamming is an absolute no-no!)

I can help you if you’ve lost focus – or if you’re just not sure about the SEO keywords to target, or how to best optimise your website for your keywords. Find out more on my SEO content page of my website or contact me with your enquiry.

If your company or brand name is commonly misspelled, you may miss out on targeted visitors to your website.

Why don’t you try it out?

Go to Google, Bing or Yahoo and type the common misspelling of your name into the search box. What results do you get?

Don’t worry: If your site is still right there as the top result because there is simply nothing else out there that has that misspelled word in it and outranks you, then you don’t have to worry about it – for the moment.

Worry: But what if other websites come up instead of yours and your site is nowhere to be seen? We already know that most people are either impatient or lazy online, so those are visitors – yes: potential paying customers – that you have lost, perhaps forever. Especially if there are competing sites above yours in the results.

Remember, these people are searching for your brand or company name. That means they are already highly qualified visitors who know about you and want to find out more about you. You can be sure you’re losing money if these people cannot find you easily.

So what can you do?

You have to try to catch these people somehow. Depending on the quantity and quality of the websites that come up when you type in your misspelled name, you can do a number of things:

• Add the misspellings to your META Keywords tag.
  You can always do this anyway, just in case, but if there is even ANY competition for those words, it won’t do you much good if this is the only place where those words will appear because the META Keywords tag is mostly ignored when it comes to ranking websites in search results.
• Use the words in the content of one of your web pages.
  That is a good start because the search engines will be able to ‘read’ it but again, if there are other websites that come up in the results for the misspelling above your site, then this isn’t likely to help very much either.
• Optimise a page on your website for the misspelling.
  You can create a web page on your site and really optimise it for the misspelled word or words by using it in the page name (yourdomain.com.au/misspelled-brandname.html), at the start of the all-important Title tag and several times within the content of the page. Submit the page to search engines or link to it from somewhere to ensure it is indexed and give it some time to see if the optimised page ranks well so people will be able to find you via the misspelled name this way.
• Buy & redirect domain name with misspelling.
  If you know or think that people are typing your domain name directly into the address bar, you can purchase the domain names with your misspelled brand or company name in it and arrange an automatic redirect to your website. That way you’re also ensuring nobody else can take advantage of your commonly misspelled name. But it won’t help with ranking for those misspelled words. A redirected domain name with no website on it doesn’t show up in search results.
• Buy misspelled domain name and put a simple web page up with links to your site.
  If you think people are likely to type in your brand or company name wrongly and other sites come up in the search results that may be similar or competing to yours (which will either just confuse people or cause them to buy from someone else), it may be a good idea to buy the domain name with the common misspelling and put a page up that is optimised for that term. You now have a mini-site with the misspelled word or words as the actual domain name and prominently appearing in the Title tag and the content of the page as well. Submit it to search engines or link to it from somewhere, wait a while until it’s indexed and see if that now ranks first for your misspelled name. If not, you may also want to spend some time to get incoming links to the page with the misspelled terms in the link text.
  IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to link prominently from this domain to your actual site so you are getting those qualified visitors onto your own website, which is the whole point of the exercise!

Real-life example:

A client of mine is called Lintan Health. They do radio commercials and apparently there’s a good number of people who hear, and then search for, Linton Health. Unfortunately, the Lintan Health website doesn’t rank well in those search results because there are several companies that are called Linton and some of them are even active in the health sector.

To ensure that the company doesn’t lose out on potential customers, I bought lintonhealth.com.au and the cheapest hosting package available and put a one-page website up that is optimised for Linton Health. After some time, I think that this website should be able to rank #1 for Linton Health within Australia. On the page, there are several very prominent links to the real Lintan Health website. [Post-script: 3 days later the new Linton Health web page is indexed and ranks #1 in Google.com.au, so mission accomplished!]

The best thing is, this doesn’t need to cost more than $50 per year for the domain name and hosting plus an hour or so of someone’s time to set it all up. That small investment is likely to pay itself off quickly when people who couldn’t find the company before can now easily find it and go on to sign up as a customer.

If you have any questions about SEO for your website, I may be able to help you. Find out more about my services on my Content Writer website or contact me, Micky Stuivenberg, to discuss your needs.

I realised I haven’t blogged about a work project for quite some time – probably because I’ve been so busy trying to meet deadlines that I simply haven’t allowed myself the time for it.

One interesting project I recently finished was rewriting an Ebook for Kylie Hammond Executive Search & Coaching Group.

The Australian-based but internationally operating firm helps top executives find and secure suitable employment and places top talent with blue-chip and other reputable companies in Australia and overseas.

Kylie Hammond engaged my services to restructure and rewrite a complimentary Ebook the fim has been giving away on its site for free for a while: The Executive Candidate Survival Guide.

The brief was to combine the content from this Ebook with the content from another one (Interview Preparation for Executives), restructure the content into clearer and more logical sections, remove repetition, elaborate on parts that were too brief, add some new information to it and rewrite/edit the copy in order to use one consistent voice and writing style throughout the Ebook.

I also made the tone a bit more casual than the previous version of the Ebook, which was written in more of a corporate writing style.

I really enjoyed being able to improve the document and giving it a logical structure as well as adding meaningful headings and subheadings to the relevant sections.

Scannability (making sure the structure and layout of the document enables readers to quickly scan the pages to find out what they’re about and if they want, skip to the section that’s most relevant to them) is something that is equally important with web content as it is with the copy in Ebooks. That’s also why I added a Contents page with clickable section titles – to make things as quick and easy as possible for busy readers.

The new Ebook, which has expanded to about 40 pages, contains valuable tips and suggestions by top executive search consultant Kylie Hammond and résumé writing expert Tom Hannemann on résumé writing, job interviews and salary negotiations. The Ebook is targeted at executive-level job candidates but many of the tips are equally valuable to other job searchers in the professional job market.

Kylie Hammond offers a wide range of professional career management services and of course the Ebook also contains explanations about and links to some of those services, such as hiring a professional résumé writer or getting interview coaching, to help executive canditates get a competitive edge and secure the position they are applying for.

If you’re interested, you can get a copy of the Executive Candidate Survival Guide Ebook from Kylie Hammond’s website.

So should you be wondering whether I can help you write your Ebook, the answer is yes, I most definitely can. I have worked on a few Ebooks for clients in the past year or so and would be happy to help you with yours. Just contact me, Micky Stuivenberg of Triple W Communications, via my Content Writer website and we’ll take it from there.

Are you frustrated with your website and how it performs? You’re not alone. Many website owners (often people running a small business) are disappointed that their website isn’t very successful.

Even if your website was created by a professional web designer, there are still countless things that can be wrong with it. But perhaps they’re easily fixed – as long as you know what is actually causing the problems.

Let’s do some troubleshooting!

Here are some typical website problems with possible reasons & solutions:

Problem 1: Nobody can find the site and you get no visitors

What could be wrong? 

• SEO: Maybe your site isn’t optimised for search engines.
  You should be using the exact terms on your website (in your title tag, headings and content) that people who are looking for your types of products or services would type into search engines. If your title tag says “Homepage of ABCD Ltd” and your heading says “Welcome to our website”, it’s really time to apply some SEO.
• Accessibility: Search engines may have trouble accessing your site or seeing the content.
  Check if your web pages are indexed by the major search engines. If not, you’ll need to dig deeper to find the reason for this. Also make sure that your content is presented as plain HTML text and not as part of graphics or animations, which search engines can’t ‘read’.

Problem 2: People leave your website immediately after arriving

 What could be wrong? 

• Coding/Design: This could be a technical or design issue.
  Is your site compatible with all operating systems and browsers and does it look OK using different screen resolutions? Older sites in particular may be incompatible with modern browsers. Your website may look weird and completely distorted on different systems. Or you may have gone overboard with colours and animations, sending people running for cover. Time for a health check, makeover or new website maybe?
• Content/Writing: Perhaps it’s the copy on your site that’s driving people away.
  The problem may be that your content is vague, boring or incomprehensible and doesn’t address your visitors’ needs. Everyone is in a hurry nowadays. You have a few seconds to make people decide to stay on your website. If they can’t see what they need right away, they may leave and try another site from the search results instead.
• Usability: Is the layout and structure of your site logical and the navigation easy to use?
  Most people are lazy when it comes to websites. They expect certain things in certain places and if your website uses a very unconventional structure, presentation or navigation, people may be confused and give up, opting for an easier alternative somewhere else.
• SEO: This could also be a search engine optimisation issue again.
  If you’re not targeting the right keywords with your web pages, you may be attracting people to your site who are actually looking for something else. Use descriptive and meaningful words in your page title tags and content that matches people’s search queries, so you get qualified traffic rather than random clicks and a high ‘bounce rate’ (people leaving your site immediately).

Problem 3: Nobody contacts you or buys your products

What could be wrong? 

• Call to Action: Are you  making it easy enough for people to take the action you want them to take?
  Is there a big “buy now” or “request a quote” button right beside or below the content? Every web page needs a strong call to action. Don’t just explain what you do and leave it at that, hoping people will click on the button to your contact page in the navigation menu. Guide your visitors to the page you want them to end up on.
• Dead Links/Payment Service: Have you checked your links lately? Do they all still work correctly? How about your payment service, is that reliable? Go through the steps yourself and critically look at whether the process is smooth and error-free. There may be a stumbling block somewhere that you’re unaware of.
• Marketing: Could the problem lie in your marketing and promotion or your business model?
  Have you actually done any market research? Do you know whether there is even a market for what you’re offering? If only 50 people per year are in the market for what you offer, you can’t expect hundreds to be checking out your website every month. And how about your USPs (unique selling propositions)? Are you highlighting the reasons people should use your services or buy from you? You should know what makes you unique and emphasise that.

Of course, there could be many other things wrong with your website, but these are some of the common issues that I wanted to highlight. The good thing is, they can be easily remedied and your website CAN be turned around to become a success.

If you still have trouble knowing why your website isn’t performing, I can help. For a fixed low price, I will carry out a professional website analysis for you and send you an evaluation report that shows you problem areas and suggestions for solutions.

I can also help you out with quality web content by rewriting or editing your existing copy or writing new copy for your site. I specialise in SEO web content and am happy to help you with your search engine optimisation needs.

Please contact me, Micky Stuivenberg of Content Writer (part of Triple W Communications Pty Ltd), if you have any questions or want to discuss your website.

Want to learn more about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Writing for the Web (Content Writing)?

Here are some SEO and Web Copywriting courses I recommend. These courses can be taken online, in your own time and at your own pace, making it very convenient.

I have taken courses myself in the past with both Search Engine College and Sydney Writers’ Centre, and I personally vouch for the standards of these course providers, while SEO Book is a known leader in the SEO industry.

All organisations are run professionally by experts and you’ll get true value for your money.

Course Provider: Search Engine College
Who are they? International online SEO/SEM course provider (one of the very first), run by Kalena Jordan, an Australian SEO expert now based in New Zealand, with students in nearly 50 countries.
Courses: Basic & Advanced SEO, Basic & Advanced PPC, Website Copywriting, Website Usability, Link Building, Article Marketing & Distribution and more
Study Method: Tutor-supervised online self-study or certification courses

Download a free sample SEO lesson or see all courses and/or sign up with Search Engine College now.

Course Provider: Sydney Writers’ Centre
Who are they? Australia’s leading centre for writing training, run by journalist, editor and author Valerie Khoo, where you learn directly from the best in the business.
Courses: Writing for the Web, Professional Business Writing, Blogging for Business, Magazine Writing, Creative Writing and more
Study Method: Some are online courses, others are courses and seminars held in Sydney.

See details of all writing courses and sign up online at Sydney Writers’ Centre now.

Course Provider: SEO Book
Who are they? International provider of online SEO/SEM tools and training headed by Aaron Wall, a leader in the SEO industry, based in the US.
Courses: Over 100 training modules and access to lots of SEO tools and resources
Study Method: Self-study

See details of this SEO Training Package or join SEO Book online now.

I know there must be countless of other online SEO courses and web copywriting courses available if you search the web but I just wanted to give some personal recommendations.

I have really enjoyed taking courses at both Search Engine College and Sydney Writers’ Centre. Because I live in a regional area of Australia, I found it very convenient that I could simply sign up online and take the courses online, while still being just an email or forum post away from the expert tutors in each course for guidance when needed.

The courses have definitely helped me become a successful SEO Content Writer. I have since gone on to become an Assistant Tutor for the SEO courses at Search Engine College.

If you take any of these courses, I’m sure you too will become an SEO or Web Content Writing expert yourself in no time at all. Good luck!

Keyword research can be vital to the success of your website.

If you operate in a market with no or few competitors, it doesn’t really matter. People should be able to find your site if you just use common sense and let your website describe what you do.

However, in more competitive markets, it can be incredibly difficult to rank well for the keywords you think describe your products or services best – particularly if your website is still new. 

You could be competing against hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites that are targeting the exact same keyword phrases as you. And it will be hard to outrank your competitors, because they may have many advantages over yours, such as:

• those websites may have been up for years and have ‘proven’ their worth;
• they may have many more pages of content than you do;
• they probably have a lot more incoming links to their site than you do.

Google and other search engines are bound to rank those websites higher than yours, which is only new, doesn’t have a lot of content yet and no or few incoming links – no matter how good your content is or how well you have optimised your site for those keywords. 

If you start a new website, you have to be realistic with your expectations of SEO.

• The more general and popular a search term, the harder it will be to be able to rank for that phrase.
• Single keywords are way harder to rank for than keyword combinations of 2, 3 or 4 words.

What can you do to still get your website found?

1. Find out what people type into search engines. Do keyword research (or have someone do the research for you) using a keyword research tool, so it’s not a guessing game but you actually KNOW what people are searching for. You can also ask people you know what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for your kinds of products or services.
2. Check out the competition. Type some of the relevant search phrases you have found into Google (within Australia, Google accounts for about 95% of all online searches) and see how many results you get. Decide whether it’s worth it or even possible to compete on those phrases.
3. Think of alternative keyword phrases. Many keyword research tools give suggestions for related words. You may hit upon a slightly different description that people use as well, but not many other websites are targeting. That’s your opportunity to optimise your site for that phrase and rank well for it.
4. Target so-called ’long tail keywords’. These are longer and quite specific keyword phrases that maybe only a handful of people search for each month but have very little competition because nobody else has thought of targeting them. Blogs are great for targeting long tail keywords because you can keep adding new pages that each target a different long tail keyword phrase. The good thing is that because the keyword phrases are more specific, they often attract very targeted traffic so your conversion rate will be higher.
5. Start small: Go local. Rather than immediately trying to capture the market in the entire country or world, consider starting small. Focus on your town, city, region or state. You’d be surprised how many people type in their location after a search phrase because they are looking for a business in their area. Targeting “web designer Newcastle”, for example, may get you more traffic than trying to rank well for just “web designer”, which has way too much competition. Remember to claim your Google Local Business Centre listing and submit your site to local and regional directories. Once you are successful locally, it’s a natural progression to target a wider audience. Of course, this option may depend on the type of products or services you offer, but it’s often a good way to start.

Example of SEO keyword research

A client of mine offers home staging services in the Newcastle/Central Coast/Sydney area. I recently optimised some of the pages of their website.

Keyword research revealed that ‘home staging’ is a popular search term but there are more than 6,000 other web pages competing for that keyword phrase when you search on google.com.au (6,000 Australian pages and even 1.6 million results worldwide!). That would make it very difficult to rank well for that phrase. However, I found out that roughly the same number of people search for house makeover, but the search results show only about 400 other Australian web pages for that term. That makes it a good alternative keyword phrase to target and I have optimised their homepage for that term.

Also, by more obviously targeting some of the locations of the company’s service area, the website will be found better for location-specific search phrases such as home staging Newcastle and house staging Sydney for instance.

So don’t despair if you can’t seem to outrank your competitors in the search results. Think of alternative ways to attract traffic. Add more pages (a blog is useful in that regard) and target more specific keyword combinations with each of them.

Need help optimising your website? I can do keyword research for you and help you target the most effective SEO keyword combinations. I can then optimise your pages for you. You should also consider these SEO ranking factors in addition to optimising your page content.

Visit my SEO Content Writer website for further information about my services and feel free to contact me to discuss your web content & SEO needs.

Is your website not as successful as you would like it to be? Do you think your website can be improved, but you’re not sure how? I can do a complete review, evaluation and analysis of your website and send you a report that identifies problems and includes possible solutions.

Problems with your website could include:

• Low number of visitors (people can’t find your site)
• High bounce rate (people leave your site early)
• Low conversation rate (nobody buys, signs up or contacts you)

I will personally visit your website, perform a manual review of your website and write a report for you.

My report will cover the following issues:

• Design, Structure, Layout
• Content, Presentation, Language/Tone
• Usability, Accessibility
• Seach Engine Optimisation

I will evaluate the homepage and up to 3 other pages of your website for a fixed, low fee. With my report, you will be able to make the changes your website needs to be more successful.

Find out more about what’s included in my website evaluation report and how much I charge for this professional service on the Website Evaluation page of my Content Writer website. 

Sometimes people mix up SEO and SEM.  They are actually two entirely different things. so I will clarify both terms below. We are basically talking about organic search engine optimisation versus paid search engine marketing.

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation (Optimization in US spelling)

When you do SEO for your website, you optimise it for the search terms (SEO keywords) you want to rank for in the search engines, so that people will be able to find your site better in the ‘normal’ (organic) search results.

If you know how to optimise your website and do it yourself, SEO doesn’t need to cost any money, only time and knowledge are needed. Hundreds of factors are at play in SEO, but to name just a few – it’s very important to have:

• a well-structured website with descriptive internal links and page names
• good, interesting and optimised content on your pages that includes the right SEO keywords
• optimised Page Titles
• optimised META descriptions
• a number of quality back links from reputable websites to your website with important keywords in the link text.

SEM = Search Engine Marketing

Technically, Search Engine Marketing encompasses paid search methods as well as organic SEO. But most people use the term SEM when they are referring to the use of programs such as Google Adwords to be included in the paid results / sponsored listings in search engines.

The most common paid SEM methods are pay-per-click (PPC) arrangements whereby you place little ads that will appear at the top or on the right-hand side of the normal/organic search results. Every time someone searches for the term you have specified, your sponsored listing will appear. And each time someone clicks on your listing to go to your site, you pay the search engine (Google, Bing or Yahoo) a certain amount of money. You can set a limit so that you ad stops appearing when your budget has been spent.

Should you use SEO or SEM/PPC, or both?

The good thing about SEO is that, once your website has been optimised, you will continue to benefit from it without having to spend any money.

It is crucial for anyone with a website that it ranks well in the normal (organic/unpaid) search engine results for the keywords used by their target market to find their type of products or services. It can be the difference between having a successful and an unsuccessful website.

There are a few common reasons why people decide to use SEM/PPC methods such as Adwords for their site (although often in combination with SEO). These include:

• When you have just launched a new website that doesn’t rank well yet in the normal/organic search results
• When you have added a new product or service page/category that doesn’t perform well yet in search engines
• When you have a temporary/seasonal product or service offering you want to promote heavily for a short period
• When you are in a very competitive field and find it impossible to rank on the first page for certain highly competitive search terms 

The downside of SEM/PPC is that you have to keep spending money in order to continue to appear on the search engine results page with your sponsored listing.

If you do use a PPC SEM program, it’s important to set it up correctly, target the best keyword phrases and to continually monitor the effectiveness of your campaign. If you pay $50 every day, or every week, for people to click on your listing and come to your website, you would want to make sure a good proportion of those people buy or sign up for something, or at least contact you with an enquiry. This is called ROI (return on investment). You’re obviously doing something wrong  and throwing away money if you just get clicks but no new customers or leads.

The Importance of Keywords

For both SEO and SEM/PPC, keywords are very important. How do you know which terms and phrases to use to effectively target your potential customers? You’ll have to do some keyword research, or pay an SEO or SEM expert to do the research for you.

Here are 3 of the Biggest Mistakes people make when using SEM (e.g. Adwords):

1. Wrong: Targeting keywords you already rank well for in organic search results. If you are #1 or #2 on Google.com.au for “Italian restaurant Sydney” for example, you would be crazy to target that phrase with your ads. That is obviously a waste of your money.
   Right: Go for the keywords that are important to your business but that you don’t rank highly for (yet). Once your website performs better in the organic results for a certain phrase, you can drop that keyword phrase from your PPC campaign.    

2. Wrong: Targeting very broad and extremely competitive keywords. These are very expensive and you may still end up on the second page of the search results. They also may not give you the best ROI as people may be looking for something different.
   Right: Find a larger variety of more niche and very specific keyword combinations. They are less expensive and may give you very targeted, qualified traffic by people who are looking for the exact thing you are offering – resulting in a high ROI.    

3. Wrong: Setting your campaign and letting it run without monitoring it. What if every click you paid for resulted in a bounce (people leaving your website again right away) and you didn’t know about it? Or what if competition became so fierce your ad hardly ever appears anywhere? You can’t ever forget about your PPC campaign.
   Right: Use the available program features such as goals and alerts to monitor the effectiveness of your PPC campaign and make changes when needed for the best ROI.

Conclusion

If you were confused about the difference between SEO and SEM, or wasn’t sure which to use when, I hope this post has helped clear that up a bit.

My Content Writer business focuses on quality content and SEO, ensuring my clients’ websites have professional, informative, persuasive and search engine optimised content to perform well in the organic search results.

It really pays to invest in having a well-optimised website, because if you don’t, you may need to keep throwing money at SEM/PPC to appear on search engine results pages and get anyone to visit your website.

I have optimised my own website to perform well in organic search results. Because of that, I get a good amount of targeted visitors (people looking for my kinds of services) and I am always getting new clients through my website. I have NEVER had to spend any money on PPC or any other type of online or offline advertising. SEO is all I do and it works great for me!

If you need help optimising your website, contact me, SEO Content Writer Micky Stuivenberg, to discuss what I can do for you.

In this post, I’ll try to take away some of the mystery that surrounds Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and give you some tips on what you can do to further optimise your website and get better rankings in Google and other search engines.

As an SEO web content writer, I specialise in creating clear, professional, persuasive and search engine friendly content for websites.

What I usually provide for my clients is:

• Optimised Page Title
• Optimised META Description
• Optimised Page Content – including headings, subheadings and links to other pages

I will make sure to include the important SEO keywords for that particular page in the page title, META description, heading, subheadings, internal links and several times throughout the body copy, particularly in the first few paragraphs. These are important factors for SEO success.

However, it doesn’t stop there. You can do more to optimise your website!

Here are 5 further SEO tips:

• Domain name: If possible, register a domain name that includes some of your important keywords (e.g. my domain name is www.contentwriter.com.au and that helps with my SEO).
• Page names: Give your pages descriptive names by including the important words for that page (e.g. my page about web design is not called /page6.html or anything but http://www.contentwriter.com.au/web-design.html)
• Hosting: Use a web host in the country where you mainly provide your services. If you mostly target Australians, use a web host in Australia. Search engines tend to mostly show sites that are hosted in the country where the searcher is located.
• Images: You can optimise your page further through the photos and graphics on your page: Include keywords in the file names (e.g. metal-roof-repairs.jpg rather than picture4.jpg) and the ALT tag.
• Back links: It’s good to have some incoming links to your site from other websites. However, NEVER use automatic link submission services and NEVER submit your site in bulk to random websites, portals and link farms. This is almost guaranteed to actually HURT your website rankings. Instead, spend some time to find reliable websites with a related theme and try to get a link from there, ask your customers or suppliers to link to you or get listings from authoritative business directories. It’s crucial that the link to your website includes important SEO keywords in the anchor text. Having a link to your site that looks like this - Please visit www.contentwriter.com.au – won’t do you any good (well, you may get some visitors from it but it does nothing for your SEO). Much better would be: Please visit the SEO Web Content Writer website.

This is not a conclusive list of SEO factors but they are some of the major points to take in to account.

Good luck getting better rankings for your important keyword combinations! If you need help with the search engine optimisation of your website or with your web content, please contact me – Content Writer Micky Stuivenberg for a quote or to discuss what I can do for you.

NB – Also don’t forget the potential power of Social Media. Set up a Twitter account and a Facebook page. You can use good keyword combinations in your Twitter account if your company or brand name is not that well known. For instance, I have just set up  http://twitter.com/weightlossnsw for a client.

I have recently completed a new website for Sawtell Framing & Beachscapes Gallery, using WordPress as the Content Management System (CMS). I have created the design, installed the CMS, created all the pages, optimised the site for search engines and edited the content as supplied by the client for usability and SEO purposes.

With the CMS, the client can now easily make any changes to the content he wants and add or delete images to the photo gallery or other pages.

WordPress (WP) is best known as a blogging software, but because it allows you to add both “posts” and “pages”, and you can set the homepage to be a static page rather than the usual summary of latest blog posts, it’s easy to use WP as the CMS for a website.

Sawtell Framing had a website before but it was on a very buggy, inflexible and difficult to use system. Pages didn’t display properly, some images weren’t showing, the website just wasn’t all that attractive either and received little traffic – and the company hardly ever got enquiries through the site.

So I designed a fresh looking site – showcasing some of Ryan Webber’s great photos of Sawtell & Coffs Harbour beaches on the homepage and photo gallery page. Other pages show the professional Coffs Harbour picture framing workshop in Toormina and examples of what Sawtell Framing can frame for you (virtually anything).

The company has a gallery on site in Toormina and a photo gallery on the website to show some of the spectacular Coffs Coast beach and coastal scenes. All photos are for sale in various sizes – as a framed print or a canvas print. The Coffs Coast canvas prints make great gifts and look fantastic on the walls of homes and offices.

For this website, I have created a custom WP theme (design) and have used two WP plugins: All-in-One SEO Pack and Google Analyticator. Two possible future extensions to the current basic websites are a blog and an online shop, both of which are not difficult to add, with a number of WordPress plugins to choose from for the e-commerce facility.

Visit the Sawtell Framing & Beachscapes Gallery website to check it out. 

If you would like to talk to me about getting an attractive and effective website for your business with optimised and interesting content, contact me, Micky Stuivenberg of Triple W Communications, via my Content Writer website.

I specialise in persuasive and search engine optimised content (writing/editing) and SEO web design. My rates are very reasonable and with my marketing, PR, copywriting, journalism and SEO background & experience, I am able to really think along with you to come up with the best and most effective solution for your business.

August 8 2009 marks exactly one year since I officially started working full time for myself as an SEO Web Copywriter (on the auspicious date of 08/08/08). Yes, it’s my ‘business birthday’!

I’m very happy to report that it’s been a huge success! I’ve been consistently busy with a steady stream of new projects and clients, particularly since January this year.

Some of my achievements over the past year

Between 08/08/08 and 08/08/09 I have:

• worked on hundreds of projects for 56 different clients in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada (see some examples of my content writing, copywriting, SEO and web design projects in my portfolio);
• secured repeat business from 19 of these clients;
• been (and still am) the ongoing freelance webmaster for up to 10 different websites, updating the content whenever required;
• written and rewritten many hundreds of pages of professional and search engine optimised website content that made my clients very happy (see testimonials);
• created 5 complete websites (web design, SEO and content writing) – with 3 more under development at the moment (see portfolio);
• carried out website evaluations and written reports regarding design, usability, accessibility, content and SEO;
• written marketing copy for about a dozen brochures and flyers;
• written an entire 8-page newspaper supplement with 16 stories as a freelance journalist (see PDF of this Airport Supplement);
• written stories for a number of local and regional magazines (including Coffs Harbour Airport Magazine, RedInflight Magazine);
• become a part-time online tutor for Search Engine College;
• joined Twitter – after resisting for some time - and staying up to date with industry news and connecting with interesting SEOs, writers and web designers (but I’m still trying not to spend too much time on it!);
• turned down at least around 20 potential clients because the project was too vague, would have demanded too much of my time or didn’t really fit in with my focus (e.g. I don’t do book editing or design complex websites with huge product databases);
• ignored or sent very brief replies to what feels like hundreds of emails from budding content writers and SEO specialists from around the world (well, yes… mostly India) who wanted me to outsource work to them (I don’t do this. Ever. Not even to those who are good);
• increased my rates by 20% in May (but they’re still very reasonable compared to big-city/big-company copywriters, SEO specialists and web designers);
• NOT spent ANY money on marketing or advertising of any kind – clients have always found me via search engines (yes, my SEO for my own website is good!) or word of mouth;
• and given many of my clients free advice regarding their website, content, design, layout, usability, SEO or marketing strategy, which they all seemed to appreciate very much.

OK, there you have it. I’m sure I’ve done more but that’s really the gist of it. And that was in the middle of an economic downturn (or even more dramatically, the Global Financial Crisis) – so I can’t wait to see what the 2nd year will turn out to be like!

The good thing – I’m doing something that I really like and I’m good at. The only downside – all the free time that I had hoped to have once I started working for myself, from home… yeah, that hasn’t happened. Maybe in the first couple of months but not anymore. Oh well. I suppose that’s a good thing!

Check out my Content Writer website if you want to read more about me and what I do.

I recently created a new website for Roofing Matters, a reroofing and roof repair company based in Coffs Harbour and doing roof replacements throughout the NSW North and Mid North Coast.

Roofing Matters did have a very basic website but there was no real design in place nor any content explaining what the company does. Hardly anyone could find the previous site and if they did, there wasn’t much information there for them.

I designed the website and wrote all the content for the site based on various conversations I had with the client. It’s a small but clean, lean and effective website.

I also did the SEO for the site so it is optimised for a number of keywords and combinations of related keywords, such as re-roofing Coffs Harbour, Coffs Harbour roof repairs, Coffs Harbour roof replacement and other similar keyword phrases.

Check out the site by clicking on the screenshot image on the right.

Do you need a business website?

A new website doesn’t need to cost you several thousands of dollars. If you’re a small business owner or operator and don’t have a website yet or one that isn’t performing as well as it should, just get in touch with me, Content Writer Micky Stuivenberg of Triple W Communications Pty Ltd.

We can discuss the possibilities for your site and I will give you a quote that will compare favourably with the competition. Most other web design companies do just that – design – and give you an empty shell of a site, leaving it up to you to do the rest (think about, create, write and upload content, not to mention search engine optimisation).

As a content and SEO specialist, I can work with you on that aspect as well and make sure your website will be attractive, easy to find and a pleasure to use, giving visitors the information they are looking for and increasing not just your traffic but also your conversion rate (turning visitors into customers).

Read more about my web design, SEO and content services on my Content Writer website. I can offer a full service package (web design, domain name, hosting, content writing, SEO) or just the elements that you need.