Many website owners feel angst about where their sites appear in the search rankings.

Even more confusing for some is why the rankings fluctuate from time to time. In most cases its temporary, but we investigate why this happens and what you can do about it.

We have written several blog posts over the years about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) which are how to's about what to do to get to the top of the search results.

In laymen’s terms, it means when people search for what you do, your site appears in the first few results.

But we get a lot of people who want to know why their site isn't in that elusive top ten.

So here we go:

Backlinks - which is a link from another site back to yours - bring the life blood to your website: visitors.  Without backlinks you will have to rely on paid advertising and other sales techniques.   Google sees a backlink as an endoresment of your site, so without them you will struggle with your search rankings.

Before you dig in, think of backlinks as the result of or a reward for a good marketing strategy - not the start of one. 

If you'd prefer to get 'free' traffic to your site by virtual of healthy search rankings in Google, read on.

Google regularly makes changes the layout of the search results page.   Recently they announced a change to the way it displays Adwords ads which has an impact on all search results and continues the slow decline of organic search results visibility. 

It will have a big impact not just for Adwords advertisers but for your search engine optimisation strategy as well.

The original working title for this post was “Landing pages for long tail keywords and service pages – a little utilised SEO goldmine”.  I looked at it and thought to myself, what a bunch of jargon – no one will know what you are talking about!

So I changed it, but the gist is that a single concept you can apply to your website will improve your visibility in Google.  And as a result, you will get more visitors.

How can you tell if you are doing everything you can get make your website as visible and attractive to Google as possible - in other words so it is 'search optimised'?

Don't just ask your web designer/developer.  A lot of them say yes without understanding anything about SEO.  And don't ask someone who has an interest in selling you SEO services!

So, how can you tell?

The topic of FAQs came up in a business networking meeting recently with the comment that they are good for your visibility in Google (i.e. SEO).

They are, but you need to create them with SEO in mind to get the full benefit.

What you need to get to the top

To get to the top of Google, and we're talking top of the organic (non-paid) search results, you have to convince Google that your site is the best one for whatever it is that the searcher is looking for.

If you operate in a competitive market, just having a great website won't be enough. By competitive, we mean there are more than half a dozen local suppliers in the same industry as you are.  This means they are fighting for the interest of the same audience.

If this is the case you've got to persuade Google that you are better than all of them.

A lot of articles and How-To guides on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) include something called Bounce Rate.  It is said that it affects how high up in Google's search results you appear (i.e. your search ranking).

This is not completely correct.  Even though it is a statistic worth paying attention to, the Bounce Rate reported in Google Analytics is not used to calculate where you appear in Google's search results.

You know the saying - "If it looks to good to be true - it is". Or how about "You get what you pay for".

Yet hundreds of business owners are being duped by offers of cheap Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).