Site Review: sydneytanning.com.au

Overall the design and layout of website is good. Keyphrases in title tags, meta description and the copy is sufficient. Although keep and eye on your rankings to see where improvements can be made.

According to Yahoo Site Explorer you currently have 679 links which is very good. However, the majority of these links are from one source. I would recommend obtaining additional links to help improve your link profile.

Continue with the blog posts focusing on information related to your business and location.

To view this website visit – Spray Tan Sydney

Site Review: goldenireland.ie

Title Tag

Your title tags include your keywords, however they could be more specific to your target audience. A good start would be to refine your keywords and phrases using Google’s Keyword Tool. Your home page title tag is more in line with information included in the meta keywords rather than the title tag. Also, your title tag on your home page could benefit from being shorter, 65-70 characters including spaces.

Improvements can also be made to the title tags on other pages, making sure the keywords used reflect the information outlined in the body of the page.

Header Tags

Your H1 and H2 header tags on your home page could be improved to target your keywords more specifically. They are currently:

H1 – Travel, News, Information and Discount Offers for Over 55s in Ireland
H2 – Welcome to Golden Ireland

Call to Action

When people reach your website what action do you want them to take? Currently it’s not very clear. To help your visitors you must lead them by the hand, directing them to the areas of the website you want them to visit. Otherwise you will fail to catch their attention and they will leave. I have noticed you have a member sign up page, however the link to the sign up page is very small and more than likely missed by most visitors.

If your call to action is to increase the number of members so you can contact them in the future I would suggest making the sign up process as easy as possible with a highly visible sign up form on all pages, especially your home page.

External Links

Currently you have 852 external links to Golden Ireland, however many of these links are coming from just several sites. I recommend working on building a link profile which includes links from a wider range of external websites.

Internal Links

Or links between pages on your own website can help with navigation. Also, keep in mind you can use your keywords in your anchor text for links. This will help play a role in improving your rankings in search engines.

Website Review: goldcompany.com.au

Firstly, you have a very clean website and the GoldPack form is a very strong call to action so people know exactly what to do when they reach your website. Also, you’re postioned well for your keywords in your Google Adwords campaign.

A couple of points you may want to consider which will help with driving traffic from the internet:

Improve your title tags – one of the most important factors in SEO. At the moment your title on every page is “The GoldCompany, Australia – 1300 506 707 | Sell Gold | Cash for Gold | Gold Exchange”. Your title tag should be your keywords such as “Sell Gold”, “Cash for Gold” and “Gold Exchange”, however you should use specific keywords for each page on your website which describe the information on that page.

Also, I would recommend moving your most important keywords to the start of your title rather than using “The GoldCompany, Australia – 1300 506 707″. This provides very little benefit from an SEO viewpoint as you already rank No1 for GoldCompany — it’s the name of your business and URL.

Lastly, your title tags should be a maximum of 65-70 characters.

Meta Description – Is empty on each of your pages. A description should be included as a summary for each page which includes your keywords for that page.

Links – Currently you have 4 external links from other websites pointing to the GoldCompay website. A link building campaign is recommended to help your natural rankings.

Website Review: bromleyhouseclearance.com

Title Tag

Title tags are the most important piece of text appearing on each page for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Every page should have its own unique title tag, which is currently not the case.

The title tag for every page is: Bromley House Clearance.

Each page should have a title tag and meta description which is relevant to the page in question.

Depending on who you speak to you will get differing answers on how to write a title tag. In my opinion the ideal title tag is between 65-70 characters, including spaces and your strongest keywords should appear at the start of the title.

Before setting out to adjust your title tags for each page you should consider using Google’s keyword tool and analyse which keywords and phrases your competitors are using.

Home Page

The home page tends to have the most authority and importance on a website. This is due to the majority of backlinks from both external sites and internal links pointing to this page. For this reason you want to make sure your home page is optimised correctly.

Heading: The heading on your homepage says “Welcome” and is a H2 tag. This should be adjusted to a H1 tag and should include keywords which provide an outline of your business. The same applies to other pages on your website.

On-page Content: The copy on your home page and internal pages should have a greater focus on the services you offer — using your keywords and phrases to help improve the positioning and ranking of your website in search engines. Also, your text currently uses words such as “we”, “our” and “us”. Your website shouldn’t be about you, it should be about your customers! Try re-writing your copy so it focuses on your customers by using the word “you” and highlight the benefits a customer will get from using your services.

Also, the third paragraph on your homepage is unfinished. A customer may see this and be turned off as it may be seen as a reflection on your business.

Contact Info: Easy to find, however the white envelope looks like a white rectangle rather than an envelope so many people may not realise by clicking on this they will be able to send you an email. I didn’t. I would recommend removing the white envelope and putting your email address below with the contact details.

If you intend on keeping the envelope make sure it stands out so people know how to email you. Plus, all images on your website should include alternate text. Alt text is used as a replacement for an image, whenever the images can’t be seen and the text used can help with SEO.

Links

External Links: According to Yahoo Site Explorer your site has a total of 66 external links, mainly from directories. Links play a significant role in improving the authority and ranking of your website. Your aim should be to increase the number of links considerably.

Internal Links: As your site contains only a small number of pages the internal link structure is sufficient – you have the top menu and Main Services links at the bottom which help people navigate your site. However, you could look to include additional internal links in your website copy which include your keywords.

Sitemap

Currently you don’t have an XML sitemap for your website. You should create one to help improve the visibility of your website to search engines.

Disclaimer: This is a basic SEO review. There are many aspects on Search Engine Optimisation we haven’t touched on. For a more in depth review and assistance with website marketing make sure you contact us.

As mobile phones are becoming increasingly popular for accessing the Internet, webmasters are finding it almost mandatory to make sure their mobile site has been indexed by search engines like Google. In fact, most of the mobile sites are designed keeping in mind users’ interests, they hardly ever think of being search engine friendly, thus, losing out on the mobile search audience.

If your website doesn’t show in Google mobile search results or even when you use the “site:” operator then it could mean either or both of two things:

1. Googlebot is unable to find your site – Googlebot is Google’s crawler that should first crawl your site before it can be indexed by Google. It takes some time to crawl a newly created site. So, first create a Mobile Sitemap and submit it using Google Webmaster tools, just like a regular Sitemap.
2. Google is unable to access your website – Some mobile sites become unsearchable by search engines like Google as they only allow access to mobile phones, not search engines. Webmasters who want their mobile site to be accessed by Google should allow all User-agents including “Googlebot-Mobile” to access their site. The User-agent string should contain the “Googlebot-Mobile” string (this may, however, change later on). DNS lookups can also be used to verify Googlebot.

How to ensure Google recognises you mobile URLs

After the Googlebot-Mobile has crawled your mobile site’s URL, Google checks whether it is viewable on a mobile device or not. Google will not include it in its mobile site index if can’t be viewed on a mobile phone. However, the site will be included in its web index.

Another factor that determines whether your mobile site will be indexed in Google’s mobile index is the “DTD (Doc Type Definition)” declaration of your mobile friendly URL. Compact HTML and XHTML Mobile are the appropriate mobile formats for this declaration.

According to the latest search engine market share results, Bing is gathering momentum with a 7% increase in search traffic.

The data from Experian Hitwise is collected from all US searches conducted during the month of October 2009. It is the fourth month in a row Bing has increased its market share, and it shows the people at Microsoft are chipping away at gaining a bigger share of the lucrative search and sponsored advertising market.

Google and Yahoo both experienced a 1% drop, while Ask boosted their search engine market share by 2%.

In Australia Bing has been running ad campaigns for the past several months to increase awareness, build the Bing brand and position itself as an alternative to Google — not a Google killer which some originally thought.

Overall my experience of using Bing is positive. I haven’t come across any significant problems, however when conducting a number of searches I found Google’s results to be better. Saying that, the huge gap that previously existed between Google and Live Search has pretty much disappeared.

Let’s see if Bing can reach their 20% market share goal!

Twitter and LinkedIn have recently announced a partnership to share Tweets and status updates between the two sites.

If you’re wondering how to link your Twitter page with LinkedIn, and vice versa, it is explained in LinkedIn Answers.

During the set up process you have the choice to share all Tweets with your LinkedIn status or you can choose to share specific tweets by using #in or #li hashtag.

An interview by Australian Sky News reporter, David Speers, has shed even more light on Rupert Murdoch’s plans to move away from free content to a pay-for-content model. He now intends to possibly stick it to Google by preventing them from indexing Newscorp content.

To date the pay for content strategy has been met with mixed reviews. Mark Scott of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was one of the first heavyweights in Australia to hit out at his plans.

Now we have further revelations from Mr Murdoch suggesting they may block Google completely.

As an example, the Wall Street Journal currently appears in Google SERPs and Google News, however when you click on a WSJ link you are taken to the page which offers a short snippet or summary of the article. If you want to continue reading you must be a paying subscriber.

If Rupert Murdoch continues with his current plans and Newscorp does block Google, by raising the “barrier to the ceiling”, stories from the WSJ or any other Newscorp publication will be blocked. . . depending on what your thoughts are of their journalism you may see it as a good thing.

So how will this play out? For two opposing view points head over to the Blog Maverick who believe Rupert Murdoch is right. On the other hand you have Andrew Shortland suggesting Rupert Murdoch will be the equivalent of “Howard Stern Without The Lesbians”.

My take, it is a very calculated move by Rupert Murdoch. . . and if it works we will see a flood of media powerhouses and businesses moving towards paid content and pay-per-use strategies. If it doesn’t he always has TV?

One final thought. It does seem Newscorp has been beaten at its own game, for the time being?

Seth Godin recently suggested how media companies, such as newspapers, built audiences and then businesses and brands rented their audiences.

In today’s online world the playing field has shifted. Google has built the platform and they are renting their audience back to the newspapers. Newscorp no longer owns the platform, they’re renting eyeballs as Seth would say. Now it seems a time has come as Mr Murdoch wants to stop renting and move back to a position of owning the platform — and build a loyal customer base in the process.

Only time will tell if Rupert Murdoch’s strategy is correct.

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google, has announced a new partnership with Twitter.

Bing was the first out of the blocks to announce a deal. Now we see Google embracing the shift towards real-time search.

Every day there are millions of tweets on every conceivable topic, and its popularity is rapidly growing!

Paul Yiu of Bing says: “Twitter give us access to public opinion and thoughts in a way that has not before been possible. From important social and political issues to keeping friends up to date on the minute-by-minute of our daily lives, the web is getting more and more real time.”

Bing is currently displaying Twitter results in a cloud above its existing search results, with the more popular topics and hot trends appearing bigger and bolder than other real-time topics.

Twitter trends are only available to Bing users located in the United States, however this will be expanded over time.

Soon we will see how Google intends to display Twitter trends. . . no doubt it will be neatly wrapped in to Google Wave at some time?

A friend handed me a small blue booklet today with the title – Make your website work. After a little digging around it seems the guide was launched on the 22nd September.

The guide I received focuses on UK websites and how they can be improved to convert visitors in to buyers. Although, the tips could be applied to any website.

The booklet points out some common areas a business could look at to improve the results and performance of their website.

If you haven’t receive a book it doesn’t matter, you can view it online at Make your website work.