Web Worx

If you’re a small business owner, you want to make sure your business is a profitable enterprise. You want to know how much cash your business is generating and how far you can extend yourself in credit with your vendors and suppliers. You’d like to have a snapshot or overview of your business performance to aid in negotiating for more funds from bankers to expand your activities. Business reporting is therefore a critical facet of running a small business.

Profit and Loss Account

The primary business report that you need at the end of every month, depending on the volume of activity, is the monthly profit and loss account or statement. This is prepared for a one month period in the case of monthly accounts and a three month period in the case of quarterly accounts. The profit and loss account shows how your sales or revenue is converted to the net profit.

Revenue is the amount of sales that you’ve made to your customers. The revenue figure will be a net figure after accounting for sales discounts and any allowances that you have afforded your customers. Each sale will be supported by a customer invoice that details that type of product sold or services rendered and the corresponding value. A gross profit figure is arrived at after deducting the costs directly attributed to the sales. A gross profit margin is arrived at by dividing the gross profit with the sales figure – this will show the percentage of profit earned from sales to customers.

The expenses reflected in the profit and loss account are the expenditure that you have incurred in the course of your business operations and which are attributable to the business activities. These include general and administrative expenses such as insurance, utilities and salaries. Such expenditure is necessary to manage your business. There will also be selling expenses such as travelling, commissions and advertising that have been incurred to sell your products or services.

The net profit figure is the total profit that your business made after deducting all the relevant expenditure. This is the figure that actually determines the profitability or otherwise of your business. If your business made losses, you are able to determine from an analysis of your expenses in the profit and loss account which of your expenses was a major contributor to your loss. High net profits may predict strong future profits for your business. You can also assess whether or not your business will be able to generate sufficient cash flow in the future from a review of your profit and loss account.

Balance Sheet

A bookkeeper will prepare the balance sheet after completing the profit and loss account. The balance sheet is a snapshot of the financial position of your business at a specific point in time. In monthly accounts, the balance sheet date will be the last date of the month and shows the financial position of the business as at that date. At the financial year end, the balance sheet will reflect the financial condition of the business on last day of the financial year.

The balance sheet is a summary of the balances in your business. It gives the breakdown of assets and liabilities in your business as well as your equity, as the business owner. The net worth of your business is denoted by the equity figure. This is actually derived by subtracting all the liabilities from the assets. Showing the net worth of the company is the primary function of the balance sheet.

The balance sheet can be presented in a format that shows the assets on one column with the liabilities and equities on the corresponding column. Both the columns will then be equal in value, or balance. This gives rise to the balance sheet term. Contemporary balance sheets are presented in a single vertical section for many businesses with the assets recorded first followed by the liabilities and equity.

Cash Flow Statement

The periodic accounting statements that your bookkeeper prepares must include a cash flow statement. This crucial statement shows the movement of cash into, and outside of, your business. The cash into your business comes from your customers who have paid for products bought or services received. The cash outflow is primarily due to payment of trade and other creditors. A net inflow of cash indicates that your business is liquid.

Even if your business is profitable and shows a strong net profit figure in your profit and loss account, if you don’t have enough positive cash flow then you run the risk of business failure or bankruptcy. You won’t be able to service your debts as they fall due. Cash shortages are a red flag and demand immediate attention. If your business is haemorrhaging cash, your bookkeeper will be able to point this out to you from the cash flow statement. You can discuss ways of stemming the cash outflow perhaps through buying your equipment instead of leasing them.

With a cash flow analysis, you can determine if you need to speed up your customers in settling their debts. You would be able to negotiate longer credit periods with your suppliers to lag payments to trade creditors. In fact you can obtain an excellent understanding of the cash flow situation of your business and take steps to adequately manage cash to remain both liquid and profitable.

Business reporting encompasses the financial statements which are critical for the efficient running of your small business. Three very important financial statements are the profit and loss account, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement. Bookkeeping Central (http://www.bookkeepingcentral.com.au) provides comprehensive accounting services through the services of bookkeepers for small businesses. Your business will be far better managed with accurate bookkeeping services that are timely and cost effective. By using the professional expertise available at Bookkeeping Central (http://www.bookkeepingcentral.com.au), your business will benefit from accurate periodic financial statements that provide you with critical information about the profitability and liquidity of your enterprise. With a great bookkeeping partnership, your small business is assured of accounting and financial reporting.

        

So you’ve decided to take the plunge into the exciting world of business. Starting a new business is one of the most satisfying ventures to undertake as you’ll be working for yourself and watching your efforts bear fruit. You need to set up your business in the right way to ensure your enterprise runs smoothly without any hiccups.

Initial Setting Up of Your Business

The first thing that you have to do is decide on what sort of business structure you’re going to need for your particular service. Perhaps you’re a plumber and want to start a plumbing service business as a sole proprietor. That means that you’re starting your business as an individual who’s trading on their own. Now you’ve got to choose a name for your business. You may want to select a name like ‘Payne Plumbers’ to better identify the type of business you’re conducting.

Once you’ve decided on the name for your business, the next step is to apply for and register your business name with the relevant authorities. In Australia, you have to register your business name in the Australian state or territory in which you plan to operate. Before you can register your chosen business name, you must first check to see if the name is already registered as a business. If it hasn’t, then you can go ahead and register your business with the relevant State Consumer Affairs Department.

Next, you have to apply for an Australian Business Number or ABN. This is a unique 11 digit number which is exclusive to your business. You’ll use this number when transacting with other businesses or customers. It’s important to include your ABN on your sales invoice otherwise your debtors have the right to withhold 46.5% of any payment due to you. It’s necessary to have an ABN to facilitate communication and dealings with the Australian Taxation Office or ATO.

Another important reason why you’ll need the ABN is because it’s necessary to register your business for Goods and Services Tax or GST. You now have to register for GST to ensure that you can both charge and claim GST credits on your sales and purchase invoices. It’s vital that all your invoices to customers include a 10% charge for GST. You’ll also be charged GST on any supplies that you purchase. You must account for the difference between the GST paid by your customers and the GST you’ve suffered on your supplier invoices, to the ATO every quarter.

Sorting Out Your Business Accounts

This critical component of a new business start up cannot be stressed enough. Setting up your accounting system is vital if you are to get a good grip on the financial aspects of your business. You need to have a chart of accounts to classify the various accounts in your business in order to charge expenses and allocate payments. You must have monthly bank reconciliations performed to find out your true cash balances and what cheques have not cleared in the bank statement. You also need to reconcile your credit card accounts if you’re using your credit card for business purposes. You need to have proper debtor management systems in place so that you know the extent of your Accounts Receivable.

At the end of every month, you should be able to assess how well your business is doing from the monthly management accounts. You can determine how much income your business has made and how much you owe your suppliers. You’ll see your various accounts in a trial balance that ensures all the debits and credits are in balance.

All these functions are important for the smooth and efficient running of your business. You should use the services of an excellent <a href=”http://www.bookkeepingcentral.com.au”>bookkeeper</a> to ensure that your accounting records are maintained systematically, accurately and completely.

Connecting with an MYOB Partner

The most common business accounting software in use in Australia is MYOB or Mind Your Own Business. You should team up with an MYOB Approved Partner to ensure your business accounting requirements are efficiently handled. An <a href=”http://www.bookkeepingcentral.com.au”>MYOB Approved Partner</a> will utilise this cost effective, powerful and competent software to manage your entire accounting records from the Accounts Receivable and Payable to Invoicing and BAS.

The benefits to your business are multifarious as you’ll be assured that only state of the art and comprehensive accounting software is being used to record your transactions, update your accounts and invoice your customers. You can have access to timely support for MYOB services and be apprised of the latest software updates that further enhance performance.

Getting Your Business Off To A Good Start

As a new business owner, you’re most concerned about getting new clients and building your business. You’re focused on providing excellent services to your customers and retaining their custom. You’re driven and primed for quality output. You’re also often pressed for time with many activities and tasks demanding your attention at once.

Furthermore you need to have an online presence to add credibility to your business. Many people search for services on the internet and are often impressed if you have a website they can refer to for further information. You must have a registered domain name and have your website designed attractively to garner more traffic and optimised for better sales conversion. Your site has to be hosted on a reliable server to ensure you’re available on the Net 24/7 with no downtime or broken links. You must be able to communicate with your suppliers and clients via email, a fast and efficient mode of communication.

Bookkeeping Central (http://www.bookkeepingcentral.com.au) can provide you with all these primary services through their affordable and value for money new business starter packs. You’ll get the entire package from business name registration to having a website for an online presence. Your books will be carefully and meticulously looked after by this <a href=”http://www.bookkeepingcentral.com.au”>Australian accounting services</a> so that you can focus on growing your business. Get your new business off to a great start with Bookkeeping Central (http://www.bookkeepingcentral.com.au).

        

Our Australian Business website anlysis helps you to climb and sustain search engine rankings and maximise earnings from your website. Better methods of managing and marketing your website are identified and applied. You learn how to use your website expenditure efficiently, while keeping ahead of the competition. Time management is also taken into account, so you will be sure that your efforts will not go to waste. Most website owners fail because they do not classify their websites as business entities. Just as asset management is important in an offline business, your website is also a valuable asset. Website audits must be taken regularly to solve any problems that may be affecting your website.

Website business analysis starts with reporting. You must engage a web business analyst to discuss your business plans and the problems that you are encountering. You must present your business plan so that the services or products you provide can be examined. Many other factors such as the target market will also be examined. When an intensive analysis of your business is done, you will be told about things you must improve. Remember that every business plan has pros and cons.

You may be trying to send a specific message to the audience, but you are not doing it effectively. In order to improve the connection between your website and the audience, your website may need partial or complete overhaul. Web business analysts can provide solutions from many perspectives. The engagement rate of your website is very important, as well as the user interface. The behaviour of visitors to your website will be analyzed. Is your website user-friendly? Do visitors visit your website once and never come back? Does the design and colours on your website have any effect? These are some of the questions that will be asked in the website analysis.

Website marketing is the second department that is analyzed. Your internet marketing history is analyzed for specific patterns. This includes the promotion tactics and techniques that you have been using to attract visitors. What you have done and what you have not done is taken into account. The success and failure of each marketing method is reviewed. Such things as Search Engine Optimization, backlinking, and advertising are all part of your marketing efforts. You may need to optimize, or make changes that will increase traffic and increase conversions. Your website is a business enterprise, therefore your goal is make it financially viable.

You have to know that web business analysis is not just another website design enhancement program. There is a clear distinction between website designers and web business analysts. Most people are not aware of this. Website designers are only concerned with coding and improving the look or functions of your website. They do not care about your business plan because they do not specialize in that. Web business analysts are concerned with whether your business plan is being fulfilled by your website. As a result, web business analysis is characterised by detailed reports on Search engine optimization, business development, marketing applications as well as design recommendations for optimizing your website and leveraging your business plan.

Website business analysis reports can be bought or given in conjunction with other services. You may realize that website analysis is cheaper than the most common methods of marketing. Without website analysis, you will try many forms of marketing such as SEO, backlinking, affiliate marketing, banners, PPC, traffic exchange, and forum posting. What you do not realize is that all these methods can be optimized and streamlined when you start with website analysis. This saves you hundreds or even thousands of dollars that are wasted in scattered campaigns, which do not bring the required results.

When you build a website and finish it, you know how stressing it can be to find the right advertising method. You are flooded with hundreds of methods that claim to work. You browse through a lot of forums looking for the best method, and at the end of the day you do nothing, because there is a lot conflicting information out there. You try to follow the advice of gurus and experts, but mostly, the advice is a repeat of what you have read before, although the guru will claim to have new tricks and secrets.

Website business analysts also help you to manage your campaigns. The advantage of employing web analysis from the start is that you will learn to manage campaigns that have been tried, tested and optimized for your business.

Besides saving money, you will save time. There is a saying that says, “Not knowing is like being dead or being in the dark”. When you start using web analysis, you will realize all the time you wasted while trying to promote your online business. You may use the services of a marketing company or you may do it yourself. However, you must ask yourself this question, how many marketing companies have the resources to keep up with Google changes? When Google makes changes to SEO rules, marketing companies should also update their customers’ website SEO. Google makes about 250 to 500 updates every year. This means that SEO formulas may change very day. You cannot afford to manage such a rapid pace. Web analysts can take control of this situation. A plan of action is always available to deploy the necessary changes.

        

SEO one way back linking is a way of increasing traffic to your website. Getting high quality backlinks is the main goal. Most webmasters have heard of banklinks but they may not be sure how to get them. I am sure that you have browsed through a lot of forums, and you are always hearing the same old song about getting traffic. You have to ask yourself what works or what doesn’t work in the search engines. The basics that you learned in the beginning are the basics that you should apply. Remember what you learned about search engine optimization. It is the same trick and secret that will work for you today. Unfortunately or fortunately, most web masters are always looking for something new. New secrets may work wonders or they may be a flop. Why? Because once we are hooked on new strategies, we forget about the basics that have been proven to work. Instead of ignoring or under-estimating the basics, you must reinforce them in your new strategies. What are one way back links and how can you put them to good use?

One way backlinks are simply links from a relevant website that can be put on your website for promoting the relevant website (your website will also benefit). This means that, if you find something that you like about a certain website, whether it be a service, product or high page ranking, you can ask for a link from the website to put on your website. Most websites that provide one way back links, provide html code for you to copy and paste on your website. Knowledgeable webmasters will prefer getting links from high traffic websites with a high page ranking. If you check any popular website on Alexa, Google or Yahoo Page Ranking, you will find that the most popular sites, those with many page views per month, have many banklinks, usually exceeding a thousand. Backlinks may improve your page rank if you link to high quality websites. Obviously, if your website has something interesting or attractive, you will naturally get backlinks by the hundreds every week. You must work hard to get people to like your website.

One way of attracting high quality back links is to produce targeted content. This means that your content must be relevant, constantly updated and informative. Users must find the content interesting or relevant to their needs. Mediocre content, hype or irrelevant content will drive away users. There are many ways of getting fresh content for your website and keeping users. Forum based websites have lots of back links, and many returning users. The topics discussed in a forum are often relevant to the users. Users also get advice from other users.

Ways of getting backlinks include directory listing and posting in forums. These are clean ways of getting backlinks. There are other ways of getting backlinks, but you must decide if they are helpful to you. These include buying links and traffic exchange. When choosing websites for backlinking, you must avoid spam-filled websites. Spam websites may tarnish your website and decrease your monthly page views. Visitors are afraid of using websites linked to spam because they know what it means once they register on your website.

Directory listing is essential for those who want to make an impact on the net. Reputable directories like Yahoo and DMOZ should not be ignored. Linking to reputable directories is more likely to enhance the quality of your traffic. You get free backlinks as well as high visibility in the search engines. Lots of visitors will start visiting your website as you get more backlinks. Backlinking through directory listing does not produce instant results. You have to be patient. The process works on the principle of “delayed gratification”. You must do your work now, and wait for long-term results. Getting listed on search engines takes many months and you can expect to see results after that period. You must choose your categories carefully.

Search engine indexing and forum posting are the basic methods of getting backlinks that we have been talking about in the beginning. They are tried and tested. Do not frown when you come across the same advice on other forums. They may seem to be old and outdated, but they work. Only the evolution of search engines and advances in internet technology will tell if they are irrelevant. For now, they are here to stay.

Not every forum or blog will bring an effective backlink. You have to consider the standing or reputation of the forum or blog. Backlinking to a mediocre blog or forum may decrease the quality of your traffic. Choose noteworthy forums. They are a rich source of quality traffic. With the spread of spamming, most forums have enabled features that delete irrelevant links. Forum monitors use a wide range of methods to prevent spam or to weed out low quality links.

In some forums, only members who have submitted high quality posts for a specified period are allowed to post links. Members are graded according to their membership duration. New members are prevented from posting links for a specific period. In other forums, only upgraded members can post links. Forum posting should not be a hard task. You only need the time to create quality posts and post them. You can make use of forum posting or article posting software. Software can post thousands of posts at one time. However, you must make sure that you create relevant content to feed your software.

        

SEO duplicate content problems affect many a website. You have probably realized that you may submit your website to the search engines, but one or more pages may not show up in the results. If you have experienced this problem, there are many reasons for that. The first thing that you must understand is that search engines do not like similar content or content that is almost similar. More than two websites may produce similar content by coincident or purpose. As the search engine crawls the pages, it may encounter similar content at one location or the other.

When duplicate content from many websites is parsed, the search engine will screen pages that are going to be shown in the results, and pages that will be ignored. Many pages may be available at the time of producing results, so only the ones that are selected will show up in the results. That is why it’s important to write unique content. Unique content will not encounter duplicate issues.

Another reason for duplicate content problems is lack of indexing by the search engines. Duplicate content is more likely to be rejected for indexing. The whole site or some pages of the site may be rejected. If your website or collection of websites has many duplicate pages, the search engines will filter some of the pages. This means that even if you have more than one website under different domain names, you must avoid duplicating content from one of your websites. Each of your websites must have unique content.

You can avoid duplicate content by writing different articles altogether, or you can re-write your content in a different way while maintaining the same meaning. When the search engines parse your pages, it will recognize them as different. Duplicating content is a waste of time after all. What is the use of running a website with missing pages? A missing page is a sure factor that turns away visitors, and thus reducing traffic to your website. Duplicate content is like spam. So try to avoid it, even if you are using the content on your websites.

Search engines do not like duplicate content for the following reasons: If there are multiple pages with the same content, then the search engine results will lack variety. As a result, the same pages will not be shown on the search results. Imagine entering a keyword in the search engine and coming up with ten pages on the results page with the same content. If search engines could allow that, then they would be as good as useless. More like the Wild West.

Search engines also do not like duplicate content because there are costs involved in displaying similar content. Indexing pages several pages with similar content is a waste of resources. Why index ten pages with similar content when only one can do?

In order to avoid duplicate content, you must know the situations where duplicate content exists. Search engines identify certain patterns and pointers that may suggest duplicate content. As a result, the indexing software will decide whether to select or reject certain pages. The software will jump certain pages and if your website contains duplicate content, it will be affected. The following are five reasons for the cause of duplicate content issues:

Search engines will detect duplicate content when there is a reproduction of content from another site. Content reproduction is often seen on affiliates, agents and distributor’s websites. These websites often sell products and services from producers. The producer’s website may distribute content to the promoters. Content in the form of data feeds, catalogues, articles and other marketing material is usually distributed to affiliates. The number of distributors may range from ten to over a thousand. Imagine the amount of content that will be distributed in the process, all over the net. Over a thousand affiliates may be selling the same product from one producer. Most producers want have specific requirements for promotion material, therefore they may prescribe product descriptions to be used by all affiliates. This means that affiliates are not allowed to re-write or change the descriptions.

The second cause of duplicate content issues is printer formatting. Print formatting allows websites to produce similar content on alternative pages. To avoid duplicate content indexing issues, meta tags (nonindex) must be used on the web pages. Tags prevent web pages from being indexed as duplicate pages.

The use of RSS feeds is another cause of duplicate content issues. Websites that use RSS feeds on their pages in the form of html code are likely to be indexed for duplicate content. The best way of avoiding duplicate content problems with RSS feeds, is to use java script. Java script cannot be recognized by search engines, therefore RSS content in the form of JavaScript is much safer.

Urls, which are displayed in many ways, are likely to be indexed for duplicate content issues. Some websites display the same page under different urls. This is called “Canonicalization”. Search engines may not show some of the pages.

There are many webmasters who write and give articles for free, as long as the users agree to link back to the webmaster’s site. Such articles may be given to many people, and they will use the same article on their websites. When this happens, your article will be filtered for duplicate content, and only the original article is going to be shown.

        

It’s not enough to get many website visitors.  If your website visitors don’t buy something on your website, then your website promotion efforts will be in vain.  It is ironic that most website owners spend all their time and efforts increasing traffic to their website and do little to increase conversion rates.   In a moment we will discuss four simple factors to help improve your conversion rate.  Many clients are amazed at how little things can make such a big impact.

We regularly speak to website owners who desperately want to increase traffic to their websites.  In one particular case, after an initial consultation we found that the site was actually getting 10,000 hits per month but hardly any conversions.  He had become so obsessed with increasing his rankings he had ignored such a fundamental issue.  The website owner thought he needed more traffic but after a few simple alterations to the website his conversion rate soon began to increase.  The inclusion of an opt in box also meant he was able to generate massive mailing lists to boost future sales.  Many website owners fall into this trap – increase rankings to increase traffic and this will increase sales.  It is not always the case.

At SEO Web Worx, we provide our clients with much more than a traditional SEO service.  There is more to Online Marketing than having the correct meta-tags and sound linking campaign.  We will look at the essence of your business and objectives to create a tailored online marketing strategy.

How do your clients find you? 

What works for your competitors? 

Which key phrases are working? 

Who is abandoning your site? 

How to increase conversion rate? 

What search engines rank you?

For free access to 37 SEO tools for your website research, optimisation and analysis http://www.seowebworx.co.uk/seo-tools

        

Okay,  so you think you know it all. You’ve just got your online business up and running, successfully to top it all. Proper research was conducted on all facets of the project, endless hours were put in and sleepless nights spent on check and re-checking silky smooth system operation. You called in the assistance of only the best web design team in town. You site content is up-to-date, fun, offers great products, and you even outsourced SEO to real pro’s in the game. Your website is ranked number one Google for it perfect keyword usage. Business is better than ever, and finally all your hard work is paying off. Mmm, how about taking a well deserved break from the hustle and bustle of business? Everything is going according to plan, honestly- What on earth can go wrong?

The first day on your well deserved holiday is awesome – lounging, snorkeling, eating, and nightclubbing with celebs and moguls. Suddenly your hotel bedside phone rings at 1:00 AM, you think it must be a minor detail. While in actual fact it’s your top notch web designer, who signed in to make a few small site updates and found what he describes as the biggest disaster to hit the internet. In a mere day, your online business has gone from being the cat’s whiskers to nothing. Both old and new clients are fading away, you’ve dropped from number one, page one on Google to number 5 on page ten, and your once substantial income stream has totally dried up.

Unbelievable? Believe it! This type of disaster is as common as flu and frequently takes anything from months to years to fix the problems, if ever. A lot of things can go wrong, but an unattended business website can completely result in permanent business failure, in the wink of an eye. In the ever changing world of SEO, it’s of utmost importance to have the right team back-up. After all, you don’t want to sit and watch everything 24/7/365 all by your lonesome. This is the reason why you need to be fully aware of how to avoid the most common SEO pitfalls, is so essential.

Image-overloaded site content- Are you the owner of a website that’s packed to the rafters with high resolution pictures of every single item you have on offer? Yes, yes it may look great, but there’s no ALT text in other words that text which is displayed in case of a missing image, most major search engines including Google, Yahoo will not understand the images. An image of a written line and an image of a cat will look exactly the same for the search engines. It’s thus recommended that you have very specific ALT text for all your images.

Javascript loaded site content- You should keep in mind that javascript interpretation by Search engines is still in its teething-stages. Should you decide to opt for text and link concealment behind javascript, chances are very good that it will make it totally invisible to the engines.

Flash sites- Flash sites are simply interactive movies, which search engines also find very difficult to recognize. Web designers love using Flash as a tool to express their artistic generous. Unfortunately, it results in unreadable content, not for human beings but rather search engines.

Unethical SEO practices- The inclusion of 100`s of key words and phrases on your site to increase your search engine rankings, is so last season not to mention so unethical. If links were considered votes, can’t you just buy them just as you would during elections? Yes, you can, if you’re tendering for search index banning. If you’re doing your own SEO, keep in mind that your SEO should appear as natural as practically possible.

There’s absolutely no doubt in the fact that we are all proud and love our websites and try our best to see them through to success. Unfortunately, we do often overlook their faults, thinking that it will just go away. Surprise! It won’t! Or perhaps you forked out an arm and a leg for a professional website designer to create something exquisite. It should already be SEO-optimized, right? Wrong!

Other SEO pitfalls include:

Server downtime or unreliability. If a search engine finds it impossible to index your site when called for, you are going to be dead in the water. Check and re-check that your server and hosting services provider is totally reliable and make sure that some shape or form of alert is set when your site encounters problems or is offline.

Site hacking. Hackers love to add links to all kinds of trashy sites selling pornography, drugs, and casinos when they get a toe in or rather hack into your money-maker. Chances are that it will be too late to prevent a substantial loss in site traffic by the time you get a malicious site alert from one of the major search engines such as Google. Most of these popular search engines will proactively eliminate any site considered malicious from their search results. It’s thus essential to check that your site is 100% secure and have a monitor in place for any shape or form of defacement.

Testing your server live – Okay you’ve made necessary alterations and changes to your server, but did you block the test server with a decently configured robots.txt file? If not, you brace yourself for some serious copy content problems.

No robots.txt file – This may appear to be a very small problem but it’s frequently overlooked consideration. I’ve seen loads of sites removed from major search engine indexes due to robots.txt file inaccessibility as a result of non-existence. A 500 error on the robots.txt file will render the rest of the site down. The resolution, throw up a 3 line robots.txt file et voila.

So we want to know how you have done with your website. Complete our ongoing 8 question SEO Survey and we will send you a case file from one of our live clients websites. We will show you exactly what we have done, what worked, what did not, ‘warts an all’. This will get updated along with our Survey results on a monthly basis. As we have offices in the UK, USA and Australia we are making this a global event.

Complete the SEO Survey for your area

UK and Europe: http://www.seosurvey.co.uk

Australia: http://www.seosurvey.au.com

USA: http://www.seosurvey.info

        

SEO is a tool to properly utilizing your internet marketing dollars. In order to have effective SEO marketing you need to be seen by the potential customer who is searching the internet for your product or services. If you are not being found by the search engines then your potential customers are not finding you either. SEO in Melbourne, Australia can help your Melbourne business have effective SEO marketing results.

SEO marketing involves determining what keywords potential customers will use when looking for your products and services. The higher your website appears on the results page of a search engine directly affects your ability to be exposed to potential customers. It does you no good to have a website if no one ever sees it. By anticipating what keywords your potential customers will be using an effective SEO marketing company can provide you with result driven marketing.

Spending large sums of money on SEO marketing to only find out that no one is seeing your web site is obviously not an efficient way of spending your marketing funds. It is simply throwing money out the Window if you do not receive positive results from your SEO marketing funds. None of us can afford to waste our marketing money and certainly we do not desire for our web sites to be overlooked by a search engine.

It is vital to your internet business success that your website is located by search engines. For this reason it is important that you hire a service that can help you utilize SEO marketing practices effectively. A professional Melbourne SEO service can evaluate your business and the patterns of recent related businesses and determine what keywords will be the most effective. They can they generate a SEO marketing plan that will utilize these keywords.

Getting a SEO marketing program assembled by a professional SEO services is only the beginning. The results need to be reviewed regularly to make sure that you are using the most effective SEO practices possible. A reputable SEO service will evaluate your hit rate and monitor your websites activity to assure you that you’re SEO funds are being used in the most effective manner possible.

Effective SEO marketing does not have to cost you a fortune. There are companies in your area that can sit down with you and evaluate your website and your current SEO measures and determine what will be the most effective changes without costing you a fortune.

It is important that you hire a service that is reputable and has proven results with their previous customers. Your SEO marketing funds directly affect your bottom line consequently they need to provide you with results that are proven to get your website in front of potential customers that are searching for your products and services.

Reputable Melbourne SEO marketing services will provide you with additional services that can affect your marketing efficiency. Some of these services include blogging, article writing and web hosting. All of these services combine to provide you with the best possible results for your SEO marketing funds

        

 If users / clients see different SERP`s based on their search patterns, how can we measure and maintain consistent ranking results? As far as client reporting is concerned the manual or automatic software generated ranking reports will have little meaning, although this is probably a blessing in disguise for most SEO companies.

How will we be able to reach a target market if the search results are already ‘geared’ to show their competitor’s brand?  From our research and that of others the chances of a brand new website, targeting a competitive search query, will be very minimal of appearing in SERPs customised by personalisation, even with the best efforts of an SEO company. If your client’s website does not rank well now for their target search queries, they will slip even further and further as the users search is refined by their search activity and the using of websites already placed in those higher positions.

For those who have clients that do not ‘opt-out’ of personalisation and then visit their own websites may have a false impression that their website is ranking well and therefore not continue engage the services of an SEO company. To add to this if they then  visit their competitor’s websites this may unwittingly gain them(their competitors) a higher ranking although the result of this is more likely just to create a false impression that their websites  are not ranking well in the and one again blame their SEO company.

Companies / brands with greater search traffic will bet better placed to gain new business because searchers will see more impressions of snippets to their sites. This does however create branding opportunities via snippets. This in turn will lead to the possibility of ranking for the more generic search terms more profoundly difficult (as larger brands will tend to dominate based on market search share). This will mean that SEO strategies using long tail search terms will become more the norm. The top search engine competitors will fall down the ratings if their snippets and offerings are not competitive enough, allowing lower ranked sites to take over. Complacency will see major changes in some of the most competitive niches.

On-site optimisation and link building can no longer have as much influence on their websites rank for competitive search queries. Titles, META descriptions and text snippet optimisation will become SEO priorities once again with more emphasis than ever on locating less competitive search terms with high traffic.

It should also see you removing exceedingly ‘spammy’ web pages as their lack of popularity will increase the desire for these pages not to be chosen during a search.  These should be replaced by highly relevant and informative pages that are refreshed as often as possible to increase the users desire to re-visit the website and thus increase its search results potential.

Real-time content generated by Twitter, Facebook etc. are also going to need fresh relative content and in greater volume. With the advent of live search how much space will be left on page 1 for an abundance of organic results anyway. Static websites are going to fall to oblivion.

Audience demographic targeting and snippet relevancy will become more important when optimising web page content.  This will also impact PPC ads as they will have to work harder and be more effective to compete with the increased brand-biased SERPs.  Google will of course be the biggest beneficiaries from its changes as PPC will become more and more popular as people find organic SEO too unpredictable and abandon it.

If in fact clicking on listings will be affecting search results and this begins to impact what users see, surely this  will leave the door wide open for ‘black hat’ to reign supreme as software is developed to falsely click on those website wishing to be promoted.

Maybe the only alternative will be to start looking at using other search engines such as Bing as a viable source of traffic.

Have we convinced you that that SEO is now dead?

Well let us just back up a little and try and get some true perspective to the situation.

Why Personalisation WILL NOT affect SEO:

Personalisation has been in place for some time already – since 2005 in fact. The only difference now is that rather than choosing to have it turned on it is automatically on and you choose to turn it off.

The first big change will be to see how the new ‘caffeine’ will affect our clients search results and the basis upon which we decide to SEO websites for this. There is little chance of us being able to make the search engine user choose our clients website or be able to predict what will appeal regularly but it needs to be the best it can be. We know as always we will be looking to second guess Google and ascertain some of the parameters that will be affected by caffeine and this area needs to be looked at first.

Most non-personalised search engine results are not identical these days anyway. We have even noted differences for the same search query on same PC in the same location a few minutes apart. Different data centres and Everflux between them mean constantly shifting search engine results.

The one most critical factor that SEO companies of all sizes will have to concentrate on, and more importantly educate their clients on, is that SEO is not just about gaining search engine ranking; it is about the usability of the website, its conversion potential, its branding, and its social media reputation. In a word TRAFFIC.

And for the cynics and conspiracy theorists maybe Google is talking about  all these new changes like ‘personalised search’, ‘load speed times’ and ‘live search’ just to throw us of the scent and stop us looking at what the actual cause may be and that is the uncertainty of the caffeine roll out and its effect on search engine placement.

        

Enhance Your Wordpress Experience With Plugins

One of the brilliant things about using Wordpress for your blog is the sheer number of plugins you can add to it.

A plugin is essentially a small piece of software or code you can install onto your blog in order to perform a function, such as to automatically update your blog with posts you make on your Twitter account.

There are thousands of plugins available, most of which are free to download and if you can think of something you would like to do on your blog, the chances are there is a plugin for it!

Akismet

This comes bundled with Wordpress and is the best anti-spam comment plugin available. Akismet checks your comments against it’s database to see if it looks like spam or not. If it looks dodgy, they are automatically moved to your Comments admin screen where you can either review them manually, or leave them to be deleted after seven days. Please note, to use Akismet you will need to obtain a free Wordpress.com API key.

All in One SEO Pack

This plugin enables you to further optimise each post and page on your blog for the search engines. You can create Title, Description and Keyword META tags for each post and page and avoid the duplicate content typically found on Wordpress blogs.

Flickr Tag

If you have a Flickr account, you can display any photos, sets or collections on a blog post or page of your choice without downloading the images to your server or setting up a separate gallery which doesn’t fit into your blog design.

Google XML Sitemaps

Help your blog posts get indexed and crawled with this plugin. Every time you create or edit a post, your sitemap is updated and all the major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo are notified.

Secure Contact Form

This plugin allows you to create a professional contact form with zero coding knowledge and minimal configuration required. Using this form is much more secure than displaying your email address on a contact page.

Seesmic Wordpress Plugin

Add a further dimension to your blog’s comments section and allow your readers to leave you a video comment with this plugin.

Sociable

You can automatically place links to your favourite social bookmarking websites on each post and page of your blog with this plugin, making it easier for your readers to share your content and increase the chances of it going viral!

TweetMeme Button

Twitter is hot property right now and this plugin adds a button to each blog post you create and enables it to be re-tweeted easily. The button also provides a count of how many times your post has been re-tweeted throughout Twitter.

Twitter for Wordpress

This plugin displays your latest tweets on your blog, further integrating your Twitter account and Wordpress.

What Would Seth Godin Do

Seth Godin advocates using cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your blog. By using this plugin, you can display a message to first time visitors asking if they would like to subscribe to your RSS feed or something else if you would prefer.

Wordpress Related Posts

As the content on your blog increases, this plugin is very useful to encourage your visitors to stick around longer. It generates a list of similar posts based on tags at the bottom of each blog post.

Wordpress Video Plugin

This plugin enables you to embed videos with ease from a number of supported websites such as Youtube, Daily Motion, Google Video, Myspace TV, Metacafe, etc.

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