Every company needs an SEO strategy to achieve the best results possible in a Google search return. The truth is however, that no company can guarantee a number 1 ranking on Google as this result is achieved by a number of variables. There are however certain practices Pixelfire employ to give your company the best chance of achieving a good Google ranking.

SEO consists of several key elements that work together to generate increases in a website's ranking, traffic and conversions. There's no secret in what we do and the techniques we use are listed to the right.

HTML Optimisation

One of the key places to start to achieving effective SEO is with HTML Optimisation. Your website should make good use of Title tags, Header tags, Images Alt tags, Meta-descriptions. This way the search engines can index your site because the code is descriptive and clean. Search engines want to know exactly what your page is about; they don't want to sort through extraneous code to figure it out. That's why you'll hear SEO types talk about the importance of having clean code and how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to make that happen. All of our websites are built using CSS.

In addition to building our sites using CSS we ensure our sites make full use of the:

Meta title: The title tag is what displays as the headline in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It's also what displays in the top blue band of Internet Explorer when your site is displayed.

Description Meta Tag: The description tag is the paragraph that people will see when your page comes up in the search results.

Keywords Meta Tag: These are keywords used to describe the products or services you offer through your website. The Keywords can change from article to article depending on the content.

Interlinking: Content links are found within the body copy of the web page. Beside search engines valuing descriptive content links, people also find them very useful too. For example if you talk about 'Red cars' within a paragraph, those words could be a link to an article called 'Red Cars'. As with any links on your website they should be descriptive and take the user to a page that has content relevant to the link name.

Note: Search engine spiders cannot follow image links. In addition to having image links or buttons on your web pages, you should have text links in the navigation, footer or elsewhere. The text that the user sees when looking at the link is called the link text. A link that displays a product does not carry as much weight to the search engines as a text link called 'Our Products'. Link text is very important, and is actually one of the most frequently overlooked aspects of web design.

Keyword Selection

The foundation of any SEO campaign is good keyword research. That's because targeting the right keywords is essential to getting your SEO on the right track. If your sell 'Website Design', then you're going to want to rank in the search engines for the phrase 'Website Design' and other similar phrases. If your keyword research is off and you target the wrong keywords, then you may not get visitors who want what your site has to offer. That's why you need to make sure that your site is properly optimised for the most-searched-for keywords related to your business.

Start by writing down general terms that describe your products, services or web content. Use keyword research services to investigate word and phrase variations. A great tool for finding relevant and related keywords for your website is Google own keyword tool found here:

Google Keyword Tool.

The goal is to find those niche phrases that your target market uses to find sites just like yours and optimise your site for them. If the phrases do not get enough use by searchers, your profíts from ranking for them will be low. At the same time, stay away from general terms that are tougher to rank for (ie. like "art", "computers", "business", etc.) as a great portion of the traffic will be irrelevant and you'll break the bank attaining such competitive phrases.

Search Engine-Friendly Content

Getting potential customers to your site is only half the battle; you've got to convince them to buy. That's where persuasive copywriting comes in. Be sure to tell people why they need your products or services and include conversion points throughout the site. The search engines like content, so you also need to optimize your copy to include your keywords. This includes things like descriptive product pages, built-out content like biographies, news sections, etc. One important point to remember is to keep your most critical content "above the fold" - that's the area that's visible to your users before they have to scroll down.

Unique web content is your most valuable asset, and ensuring search engines can read it is crucial. Text embedded in images or Flash cannot be read, so make sure you use important keywords, headings, and hyperlinks in plain text form. Instead of using images as navigation links, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) makes it easy to format those links to look more like 'buttons', thus creating powerful anchor text as well as making it visually appealing. Use heading tags properly and don't try to hide keywords or text by making it the same color as the page background or shrinking it so it can't be seen. Make sure the keywords you wish to rank high for are used frequently in the page copy but within reason.

Now that you've created good content, is it actually being crawled? Copy and paste a page's URL into a search engine to see if it has been indexed. If you've just created the page, it may take a few days to show up. Aside from age, many factors can lead to web pages not being indexed by search engines, such as duplicate content (ie. a printer-friendly version of a page might be indexed and the normal version not, or vice versa); links generated by JavaScript instead of HTML; poor site architecture (ie. using too many sub-directories); lengthy, dynamically generated URLs using special characters; and orphaned pages.

Link Building

In theory there are countless ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. In practice, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a "vote" from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of ranking well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a relatives website or less reputable page. Do not be tempted to use links farms as Google can see these and will remove your page from the listings.

Listed here a few popular ways to get quality links back to your website:

• Issuing company press releases with a link back to your site
• Submitting to reputable business directories such as Google Add URL! and Aus Directory.
• Be active on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas
• If you have clients with web sites, ask if they would mind adding your link in a "partners" section
• Participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature
• Write and submit original articles to web publications in your field with a link in your article
• Get involved in social media and bookmarking.

Google Adwords Campaign

Adwords are a great way to effectively grow your business and reach your target audience. There's no minimum budget when creating an Adwords campaign; you can spend as much or as little as you like. Your adverts can be geographically targeted and product specific so you only reach those people looking for your service using a specific keyword or phrase. ie Website Designs in Mornington.

Google Adwords are flexible and can be stopped or restarted at anytime. You can choose to pay for your advert through Cost Per Click or Cost Per Thousand which will show your advert a 1000 times.

You can also analyse your adverts performance to see which keywords or phrases are working best to drive traffic to your site and link your Google Adwords campaign to your Google Analytics page to view results there.

Search Engine submission

When we create a website for you we submit your site to Google and others. Alternatively you can submit your site to Google yourself at Google Add URL.

Note: Search engines cannot process the following:

• Images without Alt Tags
• Multimedia such as Flash and streaming videos
• Pages that require a login
• PDF files
• XML files
• Java applets
• Frames.

Site Maps

Using a site map not only makes it easy for your users to see the entire structure of your website, but it also makes it easier for the search engines to spider your site. When the search engine spiders come to visit, they will follow all of the text links from your main index page. If one of those links is to a site map, then the spiders will go right to the sitemap, and consequently visit every page you have text linked to from that site map. On the site map page, try to have a sentence or two describing each page, and not just a page of links. When new pages are added to your website be sure to update the sitemap too.

Use this site http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ to create a XML sitemap and then upload it the route folder on your website.

Placement Advertising

Placement-targeted advertising allows an advertiser to select the specific ad placements on AdSense publisher websites that they feel are most appropriate to their campaign, and run their ads only on those ad placements. Through placement targeting, advertisers can display ads on pages where their ads might not appear with contextual targeting, in order to reach a highly relevant audience for their message.

If an advertiser bids to run placement-targeted ads on your pages, it's because they've determined a match between what your users are interested in and what they have to offer. Advertisers can create customised ads for the sites they select, allowing them to directly message your users in a highly targeted way.

Local Business Listing with Google Places

Googles local business listings can appear when a user searches for specific businesses or services in the user’s geographic area. This option gives advertisers a good way to reach local customers.

Local business ads are eligible to appear in two places:

• On Google Maps (maps.google.com).
• In the regular text-only format on Google.com and other sites in the Google search network.

Google Maps displays an interactive map next to both organic search results and paid AdWords ads. When a user enters a geographic search query, organic search results appear on the left-hand side of the map. Each of these listings is marked in the search results and on the map by a red balloon.

Here's a great article why you should have a Local Google Business listing.

Google Analytics

No SEO campaign is complete without analytics. After all, if you aren't measuring things like traffic, link popularity, and conversions, then how do you know if your SEO strategies are working? Programs like Google Analytics help make the number-crunching a little easier. When analyzing an SEO campaign, it's important to only make one change at a time so that you know which changes are effective.

If you want to have an effective SEO campaign, you need to include all of the elements listed here. Keep in mind the information here just scratches the surface but this is limit to the SEO services Pixelfire can offer. There are certainly other more advanced SEO strategies that can benefit your site as well and we're sure you'll probably be quoted quite a lot of money to put them in place.

The key to remember is that your websites SEO is a constant ongoing affair which will need to be reviewed and adjusted accordingly