10 top SEO tactics to cut through the web clutter

Even though some of Australia’s largest retailers have yet, even now, to properly get to grips with its rise, the surge in online shopping appears to be slowing.

 

Research out this week by NAB shows that Australians spent a whopping $11.3 billion in online goods and services in the 12 months to May 2012.

 

While this figure is up 14% year-on-year, the rate of growth is slipping. Year-on-year growth was 19% and 15% in March and April 2012 respectively.

 

While this increase is nothing to be sniffed at – traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ retail grew by just 0.2% in the same period, it’s clear that the online marketplace is becoming tougher for new entrants.

 

We may not be at saturation point just yet but start-ups looking to sell online will have to work ever harder to stand out from an increasingly crowded field.

 

With this in mind, Wai Hong Fong, SEO guru and co-founder of OzHut, has outlined 10 key tips on how to cut through the online traffic and reach your target audience.

 

To read each of Wai Hong’s SEO gems, click on the tabs below:

 

 

1. Sort out your title tags

 

 

Search engines determine a website’s relevance to a search query according to on-page (internal factors) and off-site (external factors) signals.

 

Tags are arguably one of the most important on-page factors to work on. They can potentially affect rankings with immediate effect.

 

When writing title tags, you must ensure that all relevant keywords to the page that you are describing are contained in the title tag. You can find relevant keywords to the subject matter of the page by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

 

It’s optimum practice to use no more than two or three keywords or one or two key phrases (two or three words per phrase) in a title tag. For more competitive keywords, it’s also better to put them closer to the front (left-hand side).

 

In writing your title tags, you need to bear the user in mind. As titles will show up in the search results, the number of people clicking through to your website will be determined by how relevant and human-readable these titles are.

 

Poor title tags which are less appealing to the user’s search intent may lose clicks to listings that are lower in rankings.

 

When possible, title tags should be formed with a good flow and connection between the keywords, like in a sentence.

 

If this is not possible, such as in cases where keywords/key phrases are very long, you just need to ensure that the title tag appears in a meaningful and aesthetically appealing way in the search results.

 

Title tags in search results will also be truncated after they exceed 70 characters, so it is best practice to ensure all important bits or the entire title tag is within 70 characters.

 

It is also good practice to include your company/website name at the front or at the back of the title tag on all pages as a branding exercise and to help the user associate the page to the brand.

 

Example of a keyword stuffed title tag: “telescopes – binoculars – OzScopes Australian shop”

 

A better, human readable, search engine friendly, title tag for the above would be: “Telescopes & Binoculars by the Australian Telescope Experts | OZScopes”