Action-focussed plans

It's important when optimising any site to focus on the things that matter. That's because not all page ranking factors are created equal, and you have to weigh up the time versus the benefit when it comes to making changes to your website. Otherwise, you'll be wasting time making changes that won't improve your search engine rankings.

A monthly comparison report that provides insights into your search engine position compared to the top ten in your industry will give you practical things that you can do to change your rankings for the better.

Compare your site to page one competitors

Regardless of what websites you compare yourself against when it comes to developing your marketing strategy, when it comes to the tactics of getting to page one, the websites you need to compare yourself with are the ones who have already "made it". Your monthly reports will cover areas such as how your site compares to those in the top 10 on a number of factors. Like

• Traffic Sources
• Content - quantity of text and the way it's written
• Link Structure - Inbound from other sites and outbound to other sites
• Meta Content - Descriptions and Titles
• Visible Content - Titles, Bold Text, Body Content and Links
• Link Popularity - Where your competitors are sourcing important links and how they are doing against you in things like social networking.

Link performance

Search engines view links as a measure of popularity of your website. Just like real votes, the quality of those links matters. Understanding the ratio of external to internal links on your site, the words that are used to link to your site, your internal linking structure the places those links come from (e.g. are they all Facebook links or do you have directories, blogs and other sites recommending you as well?) is the first step to being able to build a long term, lasting and sustainable position in the marketplace.

On Page Factors

Besides your links from other sites, there's plenty you can do on your own site to improve performance. How many times have you used the search phrase that you're trying to build rankings for? Where have you used it in your pages? Have you over-used the phrase or under-used the phrase compared to your competitors?

FREE for Ozcart websites

Ozcart customers do not need to order this package - it's already included for free in the monthly package price just by having an Ozcart ecommerce shop.