Did you know more than 8 out of 10 of us look on search engines to find the information and the products or services we want to buy?

Opace Technology Solutions has very successfully managed to get all of our customers onto the first page on Google, Yahoo and Bing for keywords which we have carefully researched and agreed with them.

Feel free to take a look – here are a few examples:

• “drafting company” – www.nova-design.co.uk
• “live music for special occasions” – www.tailormadelivemusic.co.uk
• “apartments birmingham city centre” – www.city-nites.com
• “self defence club birmingham” – www.beeches-martialarts.co.uk
• “south birmingham driving lessons” – www.abldriving.co.uk
• “solihull handyman” – www.leeshandymanservices.co.uk

The effect is that business has gone through the roof for many of our customers and they have subsequently had to take steps to address the new levels of demand. ABL Driving for example has tripled in size in just over six months. Does this sound like a good position to be in? Well… SEO isn’t a black art like some SEO consultants would like you to believe and with the right kind of work you can get first page listings on search engine like Google within anything from two to six months. The following points provide hints and tips for how to run an effective Search Engine Marketing campaign. Over the coming months we will be releasing blogs to address each of these subjects, providing simple step-by-step instructions to help your business to succeed. Here are a few hints and tips:

1. Plan your keywords carefully and then refine these keywords – This step is crucial and comes before any design work. Use the free keyword tool provided by Google which shows the relative number of searches for a phrase and the advertiser competition for that phrase. Your goal is to come up with phrases that have low advertiser competition but good search volumes. Read more on keyword planning and analysis…
2. Build the keywords into your website – Each page on your site should be optimised for a different set of keywords. This is required to get your business maximum exposure online. Simple ways in which you can do this include building your keywords into your domain name, page file names, META tags such as Title, Description and Keywords tags, Headings (H1 – H5) and ALT tags for images.
3. Create links to your website – Search engines actively look for links to your website from other websites. For this reason, increasing the number of inbound links will have a positive effect on the positioning of your website in the search engines. There are lots of places to get free links e.g. online directories such as DMOZ, blogs, forums and article submission sites. Relevant and high-quality links (with a PageRank of 4 and above) will carry the most weight. Try to avoid “nofollow” or JavaScript links as these generally will not help with SEO and could waste your time.
4. Create a sitemap – When your website has been built, create a sitemap. Creating an XML sitemap is helpful to ensure that search engines can easily discover all the pages on your site.
5. Submit your site to the search engines – Request that your website gets included in the search engine index faster than if it were to be found naturally. Google, Yahoo and Bing all allow for you to submit your website free of charge.
6. Use the web master tools -You should set up Webmaster accounts with at least the three major players: Google, Yahoo and Bing. This will allow you to track and manage how your website is being handled by the search engines. You should also register your XML sitemap with your accounts.
7. Create a video for your business – Video doesn’t have to be long or TV production quality, but by adding a video into your website and publishing it to video network sites such as YouTube, Yahoo Video and Google Video will get far more exposure online – search engines love video!
8. Use Google Maps – Create a free company listing on Google Local Business Center. Make sure you embed your keywords into the company title and description so that you can be found on Google. This is a quick win if you get the keywords right.

You can make a substantial impact on your website’s performance by following the key steps above. The only downside is that the process is unfortunately slow and time consuming. Come back for more excellent SEO advice. Good luck! [email protected]