Ben Wan Web Solutions

Over the past Month I’ve been really enjoying doing some Local Search Engine Optimisation for my local Perth clients. If you wonder that this is, well, the techniques used to improve the search engine rankings for the website of a local business in a specific city or the local area is called local Search Engine Optimisation (Local SEO in short). This post will show you how you can get your website to rank very well with the search engines when people search for businesses like yours in your city, suburb or town.

As a whole, search engine optimisation is traditionally used for a broader reach within search engine results but this approach can be use to help business rank well within their local area. This post will reveal the five most important factors for local search engine optimisation and getting ranked within your immediate area.

Factor #1: Local Long-Tail Keywords on your Website

Discover the long-tail keywords you will be using for your business through the Google Keyword Tool. Search for relevant terms for your business and then make sure you add your “city”, “state”, “postal code” and nearby locations to improve your long-tail phrases. Use your keywords on your web pages, body copy, links and more. Diversify your keyword usage but always aim to rank well for the main term that will bring you the greatest traffic based on the results shared by the Google Keyword Tool. An example of such a keyword would be

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Guest Post by Danielle McGraw

WordPress is Versatile and Adaptable

Many years ago, HTML was the only way that you could have a web site. You had to hire a web site designer if you wanted to have an appealing site online for your business. You had to pay good money if you wanted your site to look professional. The more things you wanted it to do, the more money you were likely to pay. Since WordPress came along though, things have changed drastically.

At first WordPress was just used to power blogs. Many people turned to blogging as a means of representing their business because it was easy to start a blog. You could have WordPress up and running with your own hosting and your own domain in a matter of minutes. People loved it. It wasn’t blogging that they loved as much as the easy-to-use content management system (CMS) though. Businesses and entrepreneurs that wanted their own site no longer had to dish out hundreds of dollars (or more) for a website designer because WordPress was free and it was something they could learn to use themselves!

The more people used WordPress and its simple CMS, the more uses they found for it. Although it started out as a blogging platform, people have since found that there are many other ways that it can be used thanks to the wide scope of WordPress Themes that are available. While […]

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One of the most common problems I hear about people who are doing some business online is the lack of action taking. I too have had to face this problem as well. See, I haven’t published a new blog post for quite a while and I’ve been pondering why. Here is what I observed and how I overcame my writer’s block.

At first, there was a sentence I kept repeating to myself, “writing is hard”. So I decided I’d rather concentrate on my strengths. While it is wise to focus on our strength and not our weakness, the other reality is also crucial: an online business is primarily made up of having fresh and original content and releasing them on a continual basis. So I noticed while I kept repeating to myself “writing is hard”, the result was: no new blog post was being written.

What you keep telling yourself (to your subconscious) is self-prophetic, if you tell your mind, “writing is hard”, your subconscious just “agrees” with you: “You’re right, so be it”. So, while it makes sense to focus on your strength and not on your weakness, it also makes sense to also aim, at the same time, to turn your weakness into your strength. So how do you go about doing that?

How I changed my thought pattern and turned my weakness into my strength

So how did I change my thinking and behaviour around and start to write again? It’s by stopping telling myself “writing is hard” […]

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Guest Post by life coach Olivia Antonic

The life of an Internet marketer/blogger newbie could be very lonely. Invariably they work alone, the people in their immediate circle don’t share their ‘nerdy’ enthusiasm and they often don’t even have someone as a ‘sounding board’.

Like most things in life results for the newbie Internet marketer don’t come immediately – on the contrary, if they achieve results, chances are it took a lot of trial and error, wasted money on empty promises of so called ‘gurus’, who sell ‘secrets to success’ that are only secret to the naive newbies.

But worse of all, it erodes the confidence of an already despairing aspiring Internet marketer whose low self-esteem is the only thing decreasing at the speed of light, and as if on steroids, the roots of self doubt are choking the last dwindling gasps of hope… Soon they are lost in the lush dense ‘forest’ of the ‘Internet’. Sure, the net provides an abundance of information, however, the inexperienced newbie has no way of knowing which bit is actually useful, relevant to the needs of their business or, whether it is really the latest in technology or if it is outdated.

Now most newbies are conscientious people who want to do things ‘properly’ and everything has to be ‘ready’ and ‘perfect’ because they want to do a ‘good job’. Getting stuck on details and fine tuning along the way inevitably takes the focus off, a resulting in that ‘lost in the forest’ feeling, […]

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Here is a quick tip to WordPress users and web  masters in general about a practice that could be detrimental to your search engine ranking. (Warning WordPress jargon is used in this post)

One of the main advantages of WordPress is the ability to quickly publish a new web page or blog post and to edit the content of a web page after it’s been published. Now with WordPress it’s very easy to change your webpage URL as well after you’ve already published a page.

Beware, this is a change you must not do. Do not change your web page URL after it’s been published and the page has already been indexed by Google (i.e. found by and listed in Google). Google doesn’t like that.

The reason is: when you change your URL (slug), Google thinks there is a broken page (former URL), and a duplicate page on your site (new url): it may penalise both URLs (pages), and your page severely drops in ranking on Google: well at least for a while until Google decides drop the old page from its index.

So choose your URL very carefully before you publish a new page and never change it from then on.

However, if you do need to change a page URL, make sure the old page URL has a 301 redirect to the new page to avoid the above mentioned problem with Google. A 301 redirection means, you are telling Google that […]

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I’ve been online long enough to observe 2 groups of people who are doing some form of business online.

1. those who are struggling and

2. those who are going from success to success

What’s the difference between the two groups? Is it that one group has more talent or intelligence than the other? No. I’ve observed that the struggling group is making one to three deadly mistakes that the successful group isn’t making. Those 3 mistakes are:

1. Not investing in the right source of information

2. Not investing in the right people

3. Not investing in the right technology

Of course there aren’t only three mistakes, but these are the most deadly and the ones that will stop you from moving forward with your online business. The good thing is, they are easy to correct. Mistakes are just experience. Once you recognise those mistakes and learn from them, you can put them behind you.

No matter what, don’t beat yourself up about mistakes, or time or money lost, that’s in the past and it’s all part of the journey to success

Biggest Mistake No. 1: Not investing in the right source of information

When you get started online, if you haven’t already, you’ll soon realize that the Internet is immense and everybody online is screaming, ”read me”, ”watch me”, ”listen to me”, ”go to my webinar”’, “open my email”, etc.

And because the information is “free” and you are somewhat interested or believe that maybe the information offered […]

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