Source: The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic

The graph below is based on the average worldwide traffic for the search term ‘Christmas Presents’. No prizes for guessing that there is going to be a huge spike at Christmas time, but it is interesting to see that around October is when people start searching for gift ideas.

As you can imagine people are searching for all different types of Christmas presents. The table below shows us that people are using Google to look for gifts for different people. One interesting thing to note is that ‘Christmas presents for boyfriend’ is searched 3 times more than ‘Christmas present for girlfriend’. Does this prove that girls need more help with boys presents?

Maybe it just shows us that girls are more organised? I’ll leave you to be the judge on that one.

Lets have a look at the search results for ‘Christmas presents for boyfriends’ and see what the competition is like?

PR - Page Rank
IC - Index Count, The number of pages within this domain that are indexed by Google
BLP - The total number of links pointing to this specific page
BLD - The total number of links pointing to any page within the domain
Title - Is the keyword included in the Title Tags
URL - Is the keyword included in the URL
Desc - Is the keyword included in the Description
Head - Is the keyword included in the Heading

You would expect to find the ‘big players’ appearing on the first page but strangely enough the competition isn’t that fierce!

• The top 10 sites have an average Page Rank of only 2.4
• A site with only 35 indexed pages is on the first page
• 4 Pages that rank on the first page of Google have less than 100 incoming links
• Only 3 sites use the keyword in any of the Title, URL, Description or Headings

Conclusion? If you are a business that sells products that could be bought as Christmas presents, then you are probably missing a big opportunity. Whilst you have have missed the boat this year why don’t you ask your SEO company if there is a way that your business could take advantage of Christmas in 2012?

What Does The Google Keyword Tool Actually Do?
In short, it tells you exactly what people are actually typing into Google and how often they are doing it.

How Can The Google Keyword Tool Help My Business?
Most website owners know the benefits of ranking number one on Google but very few know exactly what words they want to rank for.  The Google keyword tool allows you to find out the exact phrases that your potential customers are typing into Google.  After all, whats the point in ranking number one on Google for a search phrase that no one is actually typing in.

How Much Does the Google Keyword Tool Cost?
Its 100% free – simply click on the link below the video and you can give it a go yourself.

How to Use the Google Keyword Tool & Find Out Exactly What Your Customers Are Searching For

Please note this is only an introduction to the Google Keyword Tool – stay tuned for our advance Google Keyword Tool tips

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

New Life Nutrition is a small team of dedicated dietitians and nutritionists who specialise in weight loss, chronic disease management, irritable bowel syndrome and food intolerance’s.

Brief:

• Design a website that looks vibrant, fresh and healthy.
• Incorporate some moving banners, Twitter feed and Newsletter sign up & Blog.
• Rank in Google for all search terms that are Nutrition/Diet & location related

Solution:

Australian Web Marketers used the existing Orange NLN logo and expanded the design from there. Add to that rotating ‘Hero Banners’ with strong and healthy images, a twitter feed and some ‘special event’ boxes at the bottom of the home page. We then incorporated email collection and a blog to give the site regular and fresh content. When it came to SEO the fact that it was a big site with lots of information allowed us to target lots of great keywords.

Results:

A great looking website that is packed full of useful information. 6 weeks after launch the site had achieved the number 1 ranking in Google for 4 of its targeted phrases and was on the first page of Google for 10 other search phrases.

Andrew May is a performance coach who has spent the past 15 years working with business, leadership and sport teams.

Brief:

To increase the traffic to the website by achieving first page Google Rankings for search terms specific to the business.

Solution:

Good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is made up Onsite & Offsite SEO. Stage One was to optimise the website from the code to the copy to make sure that Google knew what type of search phrases are relevant to the business (Onsite SEO). Stage Two was to increase the amount of relevant links coming into the website (Offsite SEO)

Results:

2 weeks after the Onsite SEO was completed the site was ranking on the first page of Google for 4 of its targeted keywords. After 1 month it was ranking on the first page for 6 targeted keywords. We will keep you updated with the rankings over the coming months!

Luckman Associates are a modern firm offering their clients an efficient, pro-active and professional Body Corporate Management service. Their extensive portfolio of property under management includes residential units, low rise, medium & large high rise buildings and commercial properties.

Brief:

• Design a visually stunning site that incorporates the landmarks that make Melbourne such a beautiful city.
• Incorporate existing logo into design
• Rank number one in Google for Business Name

Solution:

Australian Web Marketers (AWM) centered our design efforts around creating a ‘hero banner’ that would combine the existing Luckman Associates Brand with the great city that is Melbourne.  The Header includes a number of iconic Melbourne landmarks (Flinders st Station, Luna Park, Trams, Federation Square and the MCG to name a few) and sets the tone and feel for the rest of the websites design.  AWM also created an ‘animated intro’ to give the site the dynamic and professional design that the client was looking for.

Results:

A work of art, a very happy client and some great unbiased reviews – OnlyMelbourne Review
Website was ranking number one in Google within 1 week of launch.

Client Testimonial:

“Thank you for your wonderful services. . . . . you met all deadlines impeccably . . . . you kept us informed of the progress . . . . . the thought and the details that you put in your artwork, layout and design was brilliant!”

Yoga Sydney is directory site that lists all of the Yoga classes & schools in Sydney.

Brief:

To build an easy to use Yoga directory site that is contextual to where you are.

Solution:

An advanced web app built in PHP JSP and MYSQL

Results:

A website that give the user a great and easy way to find a Yoga class in Sydney. If you live in Sydney and want to find somewhere to do some Yoga, why not have a look yourself and find a class that’s close to you.

Autumn Mooney is an architectural and hotel photographer.

Brief:

Create a simple and clean website that showcases the clients work & ranks in the search engines.

Solution:

A wordpress site, elegantly themed that focuses on Autumns #1 priority… Her photos.

Results:

Visually the site is very simple and easy to navigate. Users are instantly shown examples of Autumns photography. In regards to Search Engine Optimisation we have targeted a number of different search phrases that are specifically related to the type of photography Autumn specialises in.

In Google’s own words it is a way of saying that “this is pretty cool”. its pretty much the same concept as ‘Digging’ something on http://digg.com or liking something on http://www.facebook.com. The difference is that Google are incorporating the ‘+ 1′s’ into their search results. For example if you do a search for ‘Fish & Chips in Melbourne’ and one of your friends has clicked ‘plus one’ on their favorite Melbourne Fish & Chip shop then Google might include their website in your results. Assuming this website doesn’t normally appear in the natural listings then you can see it can be quite powerful.

Google are forever trying to increase the quality of their search results and they see this as a way to get direct feedback from their customers. Depending on the success of ‘+ 1′ they may even include some of the data into their algorithm.

Will it work?

For ‘plus one’ to really succeed they will need their users to want to press the button. Facebook users love pressing the ‘like’ button but I’m not sure if Google users will have the same incentive to ‘plus one’. The Facebook community is all about sharing and swapping info with your friends, time will tell if Google can entice their users to use the like button. Whilst I’m not sure that it will truly ‘take off’ I’m sure that if it does it can only be a good thing for search results.

How to get the Button?

Head over to http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html or ask your webmaster. If you haven’t seen the button before have a look below!

Search Engine Traffic

Getting traffic from the main search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.) is an incredible way to drive traffic to your business. When a potential client types something into a search engine, they will be presented with a list of sites that are deemed to be ‘most relevant’ to that search term. The trick is to get your business to appear in these results for search terms that are directly relevant to your product/service.

Most people think the only way to do this is via your website, whereas there are actually a number of other ways you can take advantage of search engine traffic.

Blog: You can use a blog to get great results – search engines love original and regularly updated content, which is exactly what a blog is.

Google Map Results: This is only relevant if your have a location based product/service but if you do, it can be an incredible source of traffic. Thanks to some recent ‘local search’ changes in Google, this has become very important. Websites with a well optimised and relevant Google Maps Listing are taking full advantage of this traffic source.

Piggy Back: There are many large websites on the Internet that allow users to contribute and post content within their site. Smart users are able to use the power of these larger sites to get their content rankings in the search engines. A great example of this is finding Youtube videos appearing in the search engine results.

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is when someone already knows the address of the website, types it into the url bar and skips the search engines all together. You could also argue that when someone types a companies name into a search engine that this is direct traffic as well. Even though they are using a search engine they already knew exactly what site they wanted to find so you wouldn’t really call it ‘searching’.

Viral/Surfing Traffic

Viral or Surfing traffic can be an incredible way to generate customers and interest to your site. The popularity of Social Media, Email & User Contributed Sites has meant that it has never been easier for something to go ‘Viral’. Surfing the web has become a favorite pass time for almost everyone who has access to a computer and an Internet connection.

People love spending hours browsing the net, yet more importantly there are now so many ways that people can recommend their favorite sites, articles, videos etc to their friends. If you can take advantage of Video Sites, Blogs, Rss Feeds, Email Marketing, Social Media, Bookmarking Sites etc. you can spread the word about your site incredibly fast.

Paid Traffic

Most people don’t realise that when they use a search engine lots of the results are actually paid advertisements. There are many other forms of paid advertising online but the most common one is called ‘Pay Per Click’ (PPC) advertising. Quite simply you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad. The great thing about this is that if no one clicks on your ad you don’t pay a cent. Gone are the days of paying $20,000 for a newspaper ad only to find that no one who read the paper that day was interested in your product. Unfortunately the ‘Cost per click’ (CPC) has been steadily increasing as more people wake up to the possibilities of online advertising.

How much does ‘Pay Per Click’ advertising cost? The answer changes dramatically depending on what niche you are in.

The CPC for a Hair Salon or Tennis Centre might only be $1-2 per click whereas a Lawyer or Broker might pay upwards of $10 per click. Some high competition keywords can even fetch a lot more than that, which is an incredible amount to pay when you are only getting one visitor with no guarantee of a call or email.