So here’s a Handy Tip for your on-line business, one of the most time consuming SEO tactics but also one of the most valuable is inbound links and Referring links that point towards your website.

It takes a volume of time and effort to get contacts through a network of marketing to obtain inbound links and swap with what we call ‘Reciprocal Linking‘. So you work out a deal with another company that isn’t in a conflict of interest with yours and place a link on your website pointing to theirs and vice – versa. BUT you must check everything before and after the deal.

Certain problems can happen if you don’t. You have to make sure that all of the link information that you provide is correct not just in what it says or the spelling but also the code.

It is of great importance that the link text (or called the Anchor text) that you use from the other side is keyword rich and is placed correctly with the code when getting a referral from a website.

for instance if you have an inbound reciprocal from a website to yours and your main business is ‘paragliding’ then the Link Text should be ‘Paragliding Trips Queenstown’.

Now the next thing is to make sure that the link text and the URL do not contain any problems with invalid characters in the URL. A problem that can happen is that a ‘Space’ is used after entering the URL and then entering the code for the Link Text.

Example: <a href=”http://www.paragliding.wuz   ”>paragliding trips queenstown</a>

Here’s the thing the space is actually a problem, even though most browsers will pick up such a simple mistake and correct it so as the link works at pointing at your website, the problem comes from the Search Engine Bots who don’t take kindly to mistakes at all and this can effect the power of the Link itself especially when you get marked up inside the rankings if your inbound link is keyword rich and comes from a good source and is correct in the coding. So instead of getting an ‘A’ on the report card you get a ‘C’ so to speak.

So run some checks and analyse the links not just on their sites pointing to you but on your site pointing to them and get it fixed asap.

It really is the key to performance in the engines to get your business up and in the running of your share of that market.

Oh Yes it is

After extensive research we have read a lot on a ‘MayDay’ alert affecting Google rankings and Websites that use long tail search terms.. so whats a long tail?

It is when you get a search engine return for your website when a person has added in 3 or more terms. e.g. “best restuarant queenstown” or ” book the great activity in queenstown”. It does seem from the papers sent out from “http://www.axandra.com/” that monitors the Google and a range of others Search Engines.

Google does every now and again shift the world’s businesses around when ever they make changes to their Algorithm, so its alwasy a teething problem. “Axandra” reports that some webistes have lost as much as 70% of their traffic which would kill most online businesses, so everyone is scratching at getting SEO done on their back end so that they can stabilise again.

So what can you do?? First check to see if there has been an effect from the change in the Google Algorithm, then run search strings for both short and long keyword search terms.

(you should always be doing this anyways, in some cases at least once every 2-3 days)

Then we would suggest strengthening 1 or 2 of your long tails, choosing the best one’s that you believe are the most important for the searches that will bring you high quality traffic. Then optimise your main pages to carry out the effect you want.

And then wait till Google scans your website and then check those rankings!!

Search Engine Optimisations

Can you afford not to think about Search Engine Optimisation. Sure as long as you don’t have any competition and if you do, that your competition doesn’t have a website and if it does have a website then prey that they don’t understand Search Engine Optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation. Important.? Yes simply put, Lets jump back a bit down the evolutionary scale..remember when you first got into business you (or someone you paid) mapped out a S.W.A.T. Analysis. For those who can’t remember this old term:  Strength. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats.

This mapping ‘Tool’ hasn’t really changed that much even through the evolution of the Internet and the expansion of New Zealand Businesses onto the world stage.

But Along with the Opportunities – the Opportunity for Small to large New Zealand businesses to expand their core business function and expand into such areas of business growth such as horizontal and vertical diversification , networking and amalgamations and the obvious spread of advertising to markets Globally at a push of a button, and with any and all of these growths and expansions and opportunities comes the luminous ‘Threats’.

For every Opportunity that one wishes to exploit with their business comes the need to understand the nature of the business ‘Threat’.

Which put as simply as one can. Your ‘Threat’ is the element of the Competitor. If you in your business want to start to advertise your product or service on the wider scale to markets in other countries, you immediately have to take into account that the range of competition significantly increases.  So how can you minimise your threats when it comes to opportunities with taking your business to other shores. It comes down to our our First S.W.A.T. tool. Strength’s.

by Strength’s or making it so that your business is, before taking on a larger amount of competitors, should first build itself to a maximum before ‘Launching’ into an offshore market, For the word competitor comes from the word ‘Competition‘ and you wouldn’t want to enter a  competition or bet on your team or player whom wasn’t at their Optimal Peak performance? would you? of course not, You’d be a Bloody Idiot!!

Firstly it would mean a step by step process of Optimising your business and since your business is online this would inevitably mean Optimising your Website.

There are a number of things that one can do to one’s website to start to make it stronger, better, faster, but to make it Optimised in reference to Competitor Advantage, this would directly relate to enhancing its ability and this term is called ‘Search Engine Optimisation‘.

So what I shall be doing in taking New Zealand Businesses overseas and widening their markets substantially and all of these other opportunities that are knocking at the New Zealand Business door.
Is giving a guide in tactics and factors of Optimising a website, so as, when it comes time to launch into a chosen country or countries, then it shall be at the peak of its technical health, and stand a fighting chance of not just taking grip in a market but absorbing into its new market place and growing in returns of traffic, market spread and ultimately performance in the Worlds Search Engines.

A New Proverb:

“Think about the fact that, every creative person out there has a million ideas.. and out of those million, 10 will make them a million. So how do you drop the 999,990 crap one’s and spend time, effort and money on the 10 good ones.

Firstly. If you haven’t even written one of the ten good one’s down on a piece of paper.. then its still just an idea or what I call a Dream and nothing more. So you will fail. So don’t just be a dreamer.. if you write  it down, its the start of a Plan.

And that’s something I can use.”

(Noah – notes from ‘Ways of surviving the Flood)

We are now offering an SEO start up pack to those interested in bringing there site up the rankings in Google and the other search engines.

This service involves performing an initial Health Check on the website that can give us an idea of how a site has been put together. Quite often what you see on the surface is not what Google sees when it crawls the web, so having our expert team look over things can make a big difference.

More often than not sites that are over 6 months old need ongoing work in terms of SEO as trends change and competitors enter the market. We have found that this start up pack can help boost a site that might not have received attention for a while.

This is something we are offering as a one-off service but it can flow into an ongoing management of your SEO requirements if you prefer.

Get in touch with us if you require any information related to this service.

We are working with Stealth Films at the moment on a campaign to sell DVD’s to the Texans. Starting Monday we will be using Google Adwords to geo-target the marketplace in Texas, USA.

Trophy hunting may not be such a common pastime here but for your average Texan it is a dream come true and not better place to do that than in deep Fiorland, New Zealand. Steve Couper of Stealth Films realises that tapping into the US market could be a lucrative move and there is no better way to test that than using Google to test a market share.

We have are currently running a campaign for Bayley’s Auctions here in Queenstown.

Through the power of Google Adwords we are able to reach out to a select audience on a global scale. The interesting aspect of the campaign is monitoring the results that come back to us via Google Analytics. This is the power of using the online sphere. There is no guess work involved. We can see trends and the way people navigate the data making the investment measurable for our client.

Adwords is a great way of capturing data and ultimately it works as a market research tool. For very little input you can gain up-to-date information that can guide you in your ongoing marketing plan.