Getting the results you want
To get the most relevant results from search engines, you need to be quite specific about the ‘keyword search phrase’ you type into the search box. In this example, you have decided to use NZS.com to help you find out where you can buy piano music at a reasonable price. You are based in Christchurch (the city in New Zealand, not the town in England). The words you might choose to include in your search term would then be: “second hand piano music christchurch”.

• The Devil Wears Prada hd

By being so specific about your search, the search engine can pull up what it considers to the best and most relevant result to answer your query.

Searching for New Zealand Web sites
If you’re interested in searching for a New Zealand service or company, NZS.com itself is a great place to start, but Google is still the world’s favourite search engine and comes in hundreds of different varieties. Google NZ offers the option to search New Zealand Web pages only, so you can start narrowing your search field that way.

Read more about keyword phrases and using them in your search engine marketing campaigns. More on this in another post! Adios!

Getting other website owners to ‘vote’ for your Web site is all about getting them to publish a hypertext link on their website, which points to one of your Web pages. The more links pointing to your website not only means ‘more votes’ but provides more ways for people and search engines to reach your Web site.

Presidential link bait
The best way to get links from other websites pointing to your website is to publish content (link bait) that is so mind-blowingly brilliant that another Web site owner just WANTS to link to it.

Linking leg work
You can also ask website owners to publish a link to your site. Start with friends and associates, then move onto specialist, national and international directories. Spread your wings further by seeking out websites (preferably relevant to your business) that also publish links or ‘resources’.

The online back-scratch
Some website owners will only publish a link to your website if you publish a link to theirs in exchange. This mutual back-scratching is called, unsurprisingly enough, link exchange. NZS.com offer a FREE bold listing for link exchanges – it’s well worth checking out their link exchange offer.

You can read more about some of the best practises for link building and link exchange, in Link Building Made Easy.

That’s all from me for now folks. Cheerio!

You may have heard of ‘little-known’ engines like Google, Yahoo! and Live Search (formerly MSN)? Well, as you may have guessed, Google is the big enchilada of search engines with over 80% of New Zealand searchers using it to find Web sites and images. It’s important then, that Google likes your Web site so you can get in front of people online. Your next question is probably something along the lines of, ‘how does my Web site get loved up by Google?’

Bad Moon download What search engines like Google go for
There are lots of factors to consider, but here are a few of the things about Web sites that search engines like Google tend to prefer:

• Sites that make their content accessible to spiders or robots (programs that index the Internet)
• Sites publishing lots of unique, relevant and interesting content
• Sites that offer a lot of textual content and aren’t heavily graphic or Flash laden
• Sites with lots of votes from other 3rd party Web sites (incoming links)

View more info about Web site design that’s search engine friendly. Good luck!

It’s great to have the opportunity to contribute to NZS.com’s shiny, new blog. As an optimiser, Web writer and Web marketer, I’m looking forward to sharing info, tips, news and views about each of these disciplines with you.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) – a brief intro
Search engine optimisation or SEO is all about visibility. Visibility on search engines in fact, just as its name suggests. It’s the process of enhancing Web sites with specific content, with the aim of encouraging search engines to feature these Web sites in their results pages. Web sites can then be found and seen by people using search engines (I’ll talk more about search engines in another post.)

Optimisers, like me, spend time analysing the words people use on search engines. We then optimise (or edit) the content of Web sites with these words in mind and promote sites to target specific searchers (and searches).

Getting to the top of the ranking…
If people use the Google search engine to find a Web design company in New Zealand, their search words may be, “new zealand web design”. At the top of the searches, at position #1, is Avatar’s Web site. Now this didn’t just happen… It’s partly the result of a successful optimisation strategy. (Phew! You might just think I know what I’m talking about now!) Tune into NZS.com’s blog for more insight into the wonderful world of optimisation and how it can help you improve your Web site visibility.