Mmm… well, the results are slightly inconclusive but here goes.

The Google Trends blog post got 55 hits on the day it was published but it did not feature highly in Google results for either of the Hot Trends keywords (‘Mark Webber’ and ‘Michael Jackson’s autopsy picture’) we were trying to take advantage of. On the other hand, the good news is that, at the time of publishing, we’re on the second page of Google AU for ‘Google Trends’ and in pole position for ‘Google Trends SEO’. Woo hoo!

Why?

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by Suncoast Internet Team1 Comment »

Question: What have Australian F1 driver Mark Webber and Michael Jackson’s autopsy picture (yuk!) got in common?

 Answer: They are both current top search queries on Google.

How did we know? Simple, we used a couple of Google tools: Google Trends and Google Insights for Search. They are free, simple to use SEO tools on the internet to help you research the popularity of particular keywords on Google.

Google Trends measures how many searches have been done for specified search terms in relation to the total number of Google searches done over time. The results are then presented as a graph. The Hot Trends tool shows which search terms and keyword phrases are popular right now and is updated hourly. ‘Michael Jackson autopsy picture’ was the 4th most popular search term at the time of writing – a rather gruesome insight into what intrigues the US internet audience.

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by Suncoast Internet Team2 Comments »

If you’re a Twitterer that loves Tweeting (also called a Twit by Andrew, our CEO), one useful free SEO tool you can download is TweetDeck.

It’s easy to gain followers on Twitter if you post regular Tweets on topics that people are interested in. However, if you can engage in exchanges with other Twitterers it makes them take a closer interest in what you have to offer and is a more effective SEO tactic.

TweetDeck allows you to keep track of what is being Tweeted about. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the application and then uploaded your Twitter login details, you can view a panel of real time information on your followers. This allows you to respond right away to anything they may tweet about. You can use the panel to submit your own Tweets, make searches, upload a photo and even record 12 second videos to share with your followers. You can also synchronise the panel with your Facebook profile to keep track of your friends’ statuses and post updates to your own Facebook profile, although so far this doesn’t work with your Facebook business page .

One really useful tool on TweetDeck is the ability to shorten urls. If you’re Tweeting a link, you can often find that the limited Tweet space of 140 characters is even more restricted if the url link is quite long. TweetDeck will shorten those urls to make your Tweet more meaningful.

You can install TweetDeck on your PC or, if you’re really techo-savvy, your iPhone. Here at Suncoast Internet we’ve found that Twittering every now again as part of our SEO process led to Twitter being our 3rd highest referral site. So what are you waiting for? Start building your own Twitter network and get Tweeting today!
 

by Suncoast Internet Team1 Comment »

Have you started Bing-ing yet?

You may have noticed Microsoft’s new search engine which has replaced Live Search and is curiously named Bing. Available in Australia only in beta form at the moment, apparently, the choice of name is down to the desire to ‘verb up’ the word ‘bing’ much as we do already  with Google. The idea being that instead of searching for a website, we will Bing it!

Bing and Google have different algorithms for crawling websites which is why you can get different search results. But since Microsoft have confirmed that there have been no major changes to the MSNBot crawler, SEO professionals don’t have to go and work out what it likes. The bottom line for SEO is still all about quality content and good, relevant links.

The biggest difference between Google and Bing, is the presentation. Users will be impressed by the widlife photography currently on offer when they first view the site, plus some results are categorised in the full blown non-beta version. The categories facility is leading some SEO commentators to sugggest that maximising the appropriate categories on your site would be good SEO practice for Bing in order to show up in the relevant categories in search results.

The jury’s still out on how long it will take for Australia to get the full blown version of Bing but meanwhile, try it yourself and let us know what you think.

Read more about what makes good SEO.

by Suncoast Internet Team2 Comments »

Being found on page one of the major search engines is one of the number one marketing techniques you can use.

It’s all about bringing targeted traffic and visitors to your site for your niche. Not only that but it is often one of the least costly kinds of advertising even if you hire an expert to do it for you.

For example a Sunshine Coast search engine optimisation company may charge a few hundred dollars a month for their services. In comparison you would easily spend upwards of a thousand dollars trying to get similar results from paper ads. And optimising your site can give it much a broader exposure.

Before you even begin to optimize your site you need to think about which keywords you wish to rank for.
 

by Suncoast Internet Team1 Comment »

Building a website has never been easier. There are dozens of self-help programs that practically build the website for you. And if you don’t have the necessary skills to build one yourself, you can always download a suitable template from hundreds of free templates available on the Internet.

But when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to get your website listed high up the ladder on the search engines it’s a whole new ballgame! In fact, by comparison, building a website is as easy as apple pie.

Why have they made SEO so difficult? SEO requires keyword search terms, website descriptions, keywords in the body content, ALT tags on images, keywords in page titles, keywords in headers, keywords in page names, a keyword rich sitemap and even keywords in the website name. Then there’s Google webmaster tools, Google analytics, Google maps and a whole range of other useful (?) gimmicks like external links, adwords, sponsored and paid links, reciprocal links, directory submission, article submission, forum submission, blogs, facebook and twitter.

Phew!!! And that’s not all folks. We haven’t even submitted the website to the search engines yet. That’s a unique experience all on its own, especially if you want to promote your website to a number of search engines because they are all different and all require user names, passwords, your grannies name, or the first teacher you had in school. And if you do manage to climb these obstacles safely there’s no guarantee that it will work.

And if your website fails validation, or there are broken links, or it doesn’t work the same in different browsers, or you’re website is regarded as spamming, you could have serious problems.

So if you don’t want to make a complete shambles of your website’s SEO what do you do?

Answer: Get help from the professionals. Suncoast Internet provides a wide range of SEO packages to suit your budget and your intentions. A basic Starter Pack will set you back only $650 and your website will have most of the important optimisation requirements installed. You can then sit back and relax and watch your website climb the search engine mountain.

by Suncoast Internet Team3 Comments »