Melbourne’s home of focused, results driven
Search Engine Optimisation.

No matter how many times Google updates its search algorithms one thing is always going to be true. The search giants main aim is to bring value to it’s users and provide the best possible answer to their question.

By understanding Google’s goals the keyword selection and implementation becomes significantly easier.

Whether you’re a do it yourself kind of SEO or have a team of digital ninjas on the job 24/7 the role of the SEO in keyword selection is simple. You need to understand:

• How your target market are searching
• How frequently they are searching
• The queries they are actually using
• The intent behind these queries

In order to select the right keywords that will drive more conversions on your website you need to fully understanding how your target audience ask the question, the volume of their searches and where the query is situated with regards to their buyers journey.

There are a couple of different ways that the value of a particular keyword in a particular position can be calculated.

By far the most common way to calculate the value of a keyword position is by calculating the value of the sales you could realistically derive from it. This method takes the form of the following equation:

Keyword value = (impressions per month/click through rate)*(conversion rate*average customer lifetime value)

Say you’re a dentist in Melbourne’s CBD.

SEMrush.com tells us that there are roughly 1,600 searches per month for “dentist melbourne cbd” and we know that statistically, about 35% of searchers will click on the 1st organic result. If our dentist client has a website that is properly optimised for conversion then a conversion rate of roughly 5% is pretty normal. Last but not least, the dentist knows that his average lifetime value for a client with a sore tooth is about $920.

Keyword value = (1600*(35/100))*((5/100)*920)

So for our dentist, first position in Google SERP for “dentist melbourne cbd” should bring in $25,760 of business per month!

As with any calculation the “rubbish in rubbish out” rule applies here and these keyword values can only be taken as correct if all of all inputs in to the equation are properly measured, checked and double checked.

At the end of the day it is your sites ability to convert your visitors in to leads and sales that will ultimately dictate the value of a particular keyword. In virtually every case we recommend that your search engine optimisation campaign be combined with the thorough conversion optimisation of your landing pages in order to maximise the return on your search marketing spend.

As a rule of thumb, each page on your website should have 1 target keyword. Naturally a well optimised page with a good volume of text should perform well for a range of keywords From our experience though, if you are in a highly competitive niche and are really trying to get every ounce of performance out of the page then focusing your efforts on one target keyword per page is the best way to go.

Got 8 high traffic, high competition keywords you are chasing? Then creating a dedicated page for each of them with it’s own unique content is definitely going to be the fastest road to ranking success.

At a site level we generally suggest a minimum of 5 target keywords.

The short answer: About 12 months.

The real answer: It depends.

The time taken to climb the search rankings and get your website on to page one depends on a range of variables including but not limited to:

• How unique is your product or brand?
• How much control do you have over your website and it’s content.
• How competitive is your niche?
• How much time, money and effort are your competitors putting in to their search marketing efforts?

In our experiance though:

Months 1-2 is building the foundations uppon which the SEO campaign can be built. On page optimisation including load speed, schema, page titles, URL structures, etc. This is the grind that makes sure your later SEO efforts are a success. You will be doing SEO but be prepaired to not se any real movements in the rankings.

Months 3-4 is content time (the SEO meat and pottatoes). New pages will be created, blogs written, FAQ’s answered and your site should start looking a whole lot better to prospective clients AND to Google! You will see yourself getting indexed for new keywords but will still probably be off the front pages.

Months 5-6 Your excellent content planning and creation in months 3-4 should be paying off but don’t stop now! You should be planning press releases and starting to seriously consider your backlink profile. More content on top of content. The pros amongst us will be looking to leverage their social media accounts to supercharge their content and draw more visitors to their site. By the end of month 6 you will start to see som serious gains in he search engine rankings. Whilst not on page one you will have established a nice rate of climb and will be well on your way.

Months 6-12 Now that your website is a well oiled ranking machine, it takes less effort to keep your momentum up. The latter months of a SEO campaign are a time of tweaking, finessing and CRUSHING YOUR COMPETITION! The content creation continues, the social outreach is turned up to 11 and your new found traffic volumes make it even easier for you to attain new ranking highs. Hopefully by now your management has seen suficient gains to justify your SEO spend and has green light you for even more domination. Month 6-12 is an ideal time to focus on your websites UX and conversion optimisation so you can turn even more of those juicy visitors in to paying customers!