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Blogging for Business

Blogs can provide a valuable, cost efficient and effective way to market your products and services and to keep customers informed and coming back for more.

What exactly is a Blog?

Put basically, a blog is a website (or section on a website) where an individual or group of people record information, opinions, articles of interest, news items etc. on a semi-regular basis.

A blog could read like a journal of daily or weekly activities, such as a travel journal telling stories of someone's travel adventures or it could be a collection of articles and news items.

How can a Blog help your business?

  • Communication and customer service. Blogs provide a way to communicate with your customers, sharing information about your business, your products and services.
  • Keeps customers up to date and encourages traffic to your website and return of sales.
  • Builds a community following.Some blogs can enable commenting from visitors to the site to respond to blog articles, provide input and feedback.
  • Get found on more searches in Google. Keeping content on your website unique, fresh and full of relevant key terms plays an important role in improving the search engine ranking of your website.

What could you write about in your business blog?

  • When it comes to your business, no-one knows it better than you - writing articles of your knowledge and experience is often the easiest content to put together and provides a friendly personable approach for your readers.
  • Provide tips and tricks of your trade (without giving away too many secrets of course!) encourage your readers to contact your business for more information.
  • Write articles on your latest companies developments, products and services this will help to keep customers informed and encourage sales.
  • Write articles on local news or relevant industry news this will help to incorporate key terms to assist in the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of your website.
  • Blogs can also contain other media like videos or links to your presence on social media networking sites (such as facebook or twitter).

So why not start blogging today and see how it can help your business grow.

GemStar Interactive can implement a blog component into your new business website, enabling you to easily add new articles, images and content.

Contact GemStar Interactive today to discuss your website needs.

SEO tips to help your website get found

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the practice of improving a site’s ranking in web search engine results (such as Google, Yahoo and Bing) for specific search queries, or keywords.

It is often assumed that if a website is online - the world will visit your website, masses of people will start signing up for your services, purchase your products and you will receive a flood of enquiries all within minutes of the site being launched to the World Wide Web...

Unfortunately it doesn't quite work like this... if your website is not search engine friendly what is going to invite search engines such as Google to visit the site and understand what your website is all about?

This article is to provide your business with an overview on SEO best practices and tips to help your website get found online for the right reasons!

The difference between Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Whilst SEO - Search Engine Optimisation and SEM - Search Engine Marketing both relate specifically to search engine applications - their goals and techniques are quite different.

If you own or run a website you will most likely be approached by organisations or individuals offering SEM - Search Engine Marketing services.

More than often they will claim they can "Get Your Business on the First page of Google Search Results" - what they are often referring to is paid per click advertisements (such as Google Adwords) not organic search results.

Whilst search engine advertising can be quite effective for many businesses to gain traffic to their website, it can get expensive over time, especially if there is a lot of competition, and if it is not done properly with thorough keyword research and analysis the results may not be successful.

We will discuss SEM - Search Engine Marketing techniques further in depth in another blog article.

This article discusses best SEO practices to help improve the ranking of your website on relevant organic search terms - the ideal place to start for your business to succeed online.

Why is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) important?

There is no point on investing in a website unless it is going to be found!

It is all about connecting people with your business based on relevant searches.

There are four main elements to SEO - a quick overview of each is below:

1. Keyword Research

Click here to read an overview

This is the practice of researching and analysing actual search terms people enter into their search engines when conducting a search.

For example: If you were doing an online search for your local fruit store, you would most likely type the words 'fruit store' or 'fruit shop' and your location into your search engine to determine a relevant search result e.g. Fruit stores The Gap Brisbane.

By using keyword research tools you can find out what terms people are actually typing that are relevant to your business - by weaving these keywords into your website copy, page titles and meta data will help your website get found on relevant terms.

Keyword Research is one of the best steps to start with when establishing a new website as all the following elements can flow from the keyword analysis.

For optimal results continual commitment to keyword analysis and implementation should become part of your marketing agenda.

Here are some great Free SEO Tools to use if you want to do some of your own keyword research:

Google Keyword Tool - there are loads of third-party keyword tools you can purchase, but we find Google's free keyword tool to do the job well:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

SEO Book - offer a great range of useful freebie SEO tools and resources.:

http://www.seobook.com/

And of course GemStar Interactive can also conduct, analyse, report and implement relevant keyword research for your business to succeed online.

2. Content Development

Click here to read an overview

When it comes to SEO -Content is King!

Try not to stuff your copy with keywords just for the sake of having them there - Google algorithms for ranking websites are getting smarter all the time and honour relevancy of content to establish ranking, rather than just a bunch of words that have been mashed together.

One of our web developers told me an SEO joke the other day -

"An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, pub, cocktail lounge, grill, tavern, public house, Irish, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor...."

Just because you list that you offer a bunch of services, or service a city so you list all the suburbs individually doesn't really do a lot for you in terms of being found on these keywords.

Content needs to be unique, relevant and consistent - if you keep copying and pasting the same copy across each page it looses relevancy.

For maximum benefits page titles, meta data and meta keywords need to be relevant to the content on each page.

Create headings that are consistent with the body text and keep the context relevant for each page of your website - this will help search engines such as Google to understand what your website is about and to help your site get found on relevant search terms.

Keep your website content fresh and relevant this not only helps to keep people interested it also encourages search engine crawlers to keep visiting your site.

3. Web Design and Development

Click here to read an overview

We at GemStar Interactive build all of our websites with SEO in mind

The architecture of a website needs to be designed and developed so that search engine crawlers can go through the entire site and place relevancy on what is on each page.

Search engines cannot read images so it is best practice to ensure all images should have a relevant alternate description (alt tag) so that search engine crawlers and screen readers can tell what it is an image of.

Menu items need to be readable and have selectable text - If the menu is made up of rollover images and the menu text is embedded in the image - how is google meant to know what it says and what the page is for?

A good way to test how search engines such as google see your website is to turn off images and javascript in your web browser - does it still make sense? can you still see the menu items? is there enough copy on the page for someone to understand the relevancy of what the page is about?

4. Link Building

Click here to read an overview

Try to get your website linked on as many relevant high ranking websites as possible, this is highly regarded by search engines.

External links from other websites to yours increases traffic to your site and can assist in building the recognition on what your website is about.

If possible try to have the link to your site include other relevant keywords such as GemStar Interactive Web and Graphic Design  this will help google (and other search engines) place relevancy on what the site is about and the search terms you are trying to get ranking for - it will read the link then follow on to the website, see that the content is consistent and this will help to improve ranking on relevancy.

You might like to consider having a links page on your website so you can offer exchanging links with other businesses and organisations.

A few other tips to help your website get found:

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  • Promote your website on all marketing material for your business, include the web address in your company email signatures, stationary and any other printed marketing material.
  • Keep writing regular content, new articles, information on product releases and encourage people to visit your website to stay informed.

We at GemStar Interactive build all of our websites with SEO in mind and provide practical marketing advice to help your business succeed online.

Contact us today to talk through your web requirements.

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