There are many open source content management software program that makes internet site building a breeze, even so they are not 100% exclusive as well as the same template and layout is utilised by hundreds and depending upon the reputation of the theme, thousands of other internet sites. Net design companies that specialize which specialize in custom site design rather than template based net style permit you the choice and also the freedom to style your personal internet site and decrease the risk of your site looking much the same as someone else. This sort of modest organization site style business will permit you to input designing suggestions which is going to be incorporate into the design. Usually, there are several amendments that are allowed till the excellent style is achieved.

One more benefit of a custom web site for small enterprise owners will be the capacity to pick a flow of the website that is unique to your organization wants. Ready produced CMS based web sites frequently will not allow the luxury to generate a flow that’s ideally suitable for your enterprise wants. You’ll require style services for example that only a custom net designer can do to produce that flow for you.

A custom site style for your small enterprise enables you to set your standards separate from the competition and lets you stand apart from the clutter. An industry where the websites are all created in a clichéd manner would really like a fresh perspective to content presentation. Small businesses now put a good deal of effort on SEO tactics plus a custom web site makes it possible for the chance to tweak the SEO tactics which a ready produced CMS technique doesn’t permit or require considerable effort to have.

Make sure to take a look about prior to you choose on a net design business and make sure that the net style company which you do pick provides top quality, custom web design perth and is able to meet all of the needs and needs of your little enterprise.

Come back soon to see a complete course syllabus.

Consequently we’ve decided to offer Online Marketing Courses, while we in no way intend to give away the farm and uncover the tips, techniques and methods that make ZNS leaders in the field – we hope to educate the public about what’s included in SEO, SEM and SMO campaigns.  After just a few hours of education in Online Marketing Strategy we find our clients, and prospective clients, are much more at ease with what WE do and happier to let us go about our business – so they can focus on theirs.

We don’t have a regular timetable for our courses at present, and offer a course when there is demand.  Alternatively we can come and work with your marketing team or conduct one-on-one sessions to help you understand what Online Marketing is, and more importantly, is not.

In addition to their massive presence in the search marketplace, Google also commands a large percentage of the online advertising industry, generating revenues in the region of US$35 billion per annum.

Facebook, a relatively new comer to the internet, and centre of popular film The Social Network, is quickly closing on Google’s market. Currently Facebook ranks as the 2^nd most visited website online globally and holds over 750 million member accounts.  Facebook is beginning to threaten Google’s market dominance in online advertising due to the huge volume of data that the social network holds about its members.  While Google’s advertising model focuses around what people are looking for, specifically using search queries, Facebook’s model allows advertisers to utilise behavioural targeting.  A Facebook advertiser can select very precise advertising audiences by focusing on:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Employment Type
• Education Level
• Likes and Dislikes

By selecting a narrow cross section of the global audience by one or all of the above variables, an advertiser can see significant improvement in their ROI when compared with search or conventional marketing.

This is where Google Plus enters the scene.  In May Google released a limited Beta of their new social network, to approximately 10 Million users.  Google Plus, similar to Facebook, allows users to create profiles, enter personal details, connect with friends and join a global community online.  The Google +1 button is the equivalent of Facebook’s Like button – allowing users to show their approval of an idea, concept, website or product and broadcast this to their network.

It’s not a new concept that Google uses a number of user specific factors to influence their search results.  These have historically included the user’s location, past search history, bounce rate from certain sites, browser setting and a host of other signals to indicate whether or not a search result is likely to fit the user’s specific requirements or reason for search.

While not officially announced as yet, the Google +1 button will affect the manner in which search results are returned to users.  The very nature of a social network suggests that people who are connected will share similar likes, beliefs and ideas, and consequently are likely to be interested in the same websites, resources and search results.

It follows then, that the connections of a user who have historically +1ed any given search result will have these sites promoted up the list of future search results due to perceived validity and relevance of that result.

So, when will this new ranking factor, or as Google now refers to them signal, start influencing search results?

That’s a tough question, and it’s likely only to be once the Google Plus and +1 program’s reach a critical mass.  That is where the number of +1s reaches a volume and velocity that indicates considerable adoption by the searching public.

You can already see the impact of +1 within your own search results, ie. Complete a search; navigate to page 3 of the results and +1 a single result Google returned.  Now complete the same search again, it’s likely that the result you +1ed will be elevated within the new set of results.  This is exactly the same behaviour we expect to see once Google brings +1 and Plus into full swing.

We expect that this will become a ranking factor around the end of the year, likely in time for Christmas shopping season.

What can you do to gain the maximum benefit from +1?

At present the +1 signal is only being used to influence a user’s personal search results, but this is likely to change late this year so it’s time to get started on a strategy to make the most of this opportunity.  This way when Google flicks the switch you will receive all the benefits of being +1ed and you will surge ahead of your competitors within specific market segments.

At Zen Net Solutions we don’t put your business into a box, we utilise a framework to achieve the goals you map out in a time frame your comfortable with.  We utilise goal oriented SEO rather than task oriented SEO to make sure you are getting the maximum value from your SEO campaign.

Currently Zen Net Solution’s can tailor a package for your business starting from $990 one off campaign up to extremely complex monthly campaigns for competitive finance and health type niches.

Get in contact with us today to see how we can help you take advantage of the web.

What an SEO campaign should cost is a really difficult question, and is scattered with a number of if, ands and buts. Firstly there are a number of different pricing models which should be discussed:

Hourly Consulting:

Very simply the client is charged an hourly rate for their SEO work, usually comprised of an SEO consultants time – who is responsible for strategy, research and campaign direction an onsite optimiser who is responsible for making changes to your website for SEO effectiveness, a copyrighter who will generate new content for your site and 3rd party sites to assist in the SEO campaign and a link builder who is responsible for placing links to your site on a varying number of external websites.

SEO Consultant: $120-$1000/hr
On Site Optimiser: $40-$135/hr
Copy Writer: 1-20 cents/word
Off Site Optimiser: $3-$45/hr

Project Consulting:

Similar to the model employed by most web agencies and traditional marketing outfits, the SEO Company will charge a flat fee which is based on a projection of the time and components required for a successful SEO campaign.  At Zen Net Solutions, we employ this SEO price model for a Setup Campaign; including Goal Setting, Site Review, Keyword research and onsite optimisation training.

Outcome Based Services:

A large number of second and third tier SEO Consultants offer a dozens of individual services usually associated with the offsite link building component of SEO.  Such campaigns usually employ the submission or creation of a set number links back to the client site for a fixed price.  The consultant will usually employ an automated tool or cheap outsourced labour to complete the given task.  Many tier 1 SEO firms outsource components of client campaigns in this manor to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Profit Sharing:

A limited number of SEO Companies (however increasing everyday) are confident enough in their SEO skills to be rewarded by a percentage of incremental profit generated by a clients website.  The primary issue with this model for SEO organisations is that some business back end operations are not as efficient or effective as they could be and consequently waste a proportion of the traffic generated by the the SEO company.

Cost Per Acquisition:

Commonly refered to as CPA within the online marketing industry, there are an ever growing number of individuals who operate as outbound marketers for large companies resting upon the CPA revenue model.  Large SEO firms have begun to embrace this concept (including ZNS) and are rewarded on a Cost Per Lead, or Cost Per Action model where they are paid a fixed amount for each call, email or referral that their efforts generate.  For businesses who are interested in a high level SEO campaign however don’t have the setup cash this can be an effective option to begin your foray into the online market.

Monthly Pricing:

The most common structure for SEO campaigns and another offered by ZNS – clients are assigned a campaign level (often basic, premium, gold etc) which attracts a monthly fee for which a certain number of actions are undertaken monthly.  This is an ideal campaign structure for firms who are dealing with entry level clients, or those looking to build long term revenue streams.

Pay for Rankings:

This is a new model that is being increasingly offered by SEO firms, they utilize a formula to calculate the difficulty and scope of work required to rank a client progressively into the top end of Search Engine Rankings, and a fee structure to remunarate their efforts.  Usually the pricing model is split into seveal tiers:

30 – 20
20 – 15
15 – 10
10 – 6
6 – 3
3 – 1

The SEO firm is experientially rewarded for moving the clients ranks up the results, and is paid on a monthly basis while the results remain at or near the top.

At Zen Net Solutions we offer a limited number of pricing models based on what we believe will offer the best results for both the client and ourselves, primarily focusing on monthly subscriptions and CPA models.

Research

SEO research comprises a few components, the first is a goal setting session with the client, this is where we discuses and learn about your goals, what makes your business different and unique.  Sometimes  clients goals exceed their reach and it is important to make sure that everyone is on the same page prior to any work beginning or money changing hands.  Once we fully understand what our client is looking to achieve, we can then conduct extensive market research on their behalf and gather a list of keywords and key phrases that will allow us to help drive quality/targeted traffic to your website that will convert into new leads and sales for your business.  Once everyone has agreed upon a set of keywords we can devise a strategy to get the target website ranking for those terms.

Onsite Optimisation

Onsite optimisation can take many forms, but primarily revolves around modifying content, text and images and linking structures on your website to better illustrate to Google and the major search engines what your site is about, and which keywords/phrases it should rank well for.  Often we will require the client to produce new content for their site or other properties in order to facilitate proper onsite optimisation, depending on the clients current situation and goals this can range from a single 500 word press release/article all the way up to thousands of pages of new content for large corporate networks or product portfolios.

Offsite Optimisation

A primary component of any SEO campaign is offsite optimisation, commonly refereed to link building.  A very simply way to think about link building is considering each link to your site from an external site as a vote, the more votes your site gets – the more it will influence the search engines will assign to your site and consequently the higher your ranking will be.  Unlike an election however, not every vote carries the same value links from websites related to the same topic as your website carry more weight and links from sites that themselves have many links carry additional weight.  When building links it is important to keep the links relevant to your sites content and don’t build too many too fast – too many links built in a short period of time can be viewed as SPAM and have a negative effect in the long run.

The most important aspect to any SEO company is that they understand your brand, your business and your goals.  So many will promise the world and deliver very little, make sure the company you end up dealing with is realistic in their expectations of your campaign – and compare them with other SEO firms.  The majority of SEO firms use similar technique to generate traffic to their clients sites and thus should have relatively similar expectations and predictions of your success and timeframes.

Don’t sign until you agree on keywords – most SEO campaigns revolve around a set of predetermined keywords, and if you and your SEO firm are not on the same page with regards to your keyword selection, there is no way they can be upfront and honest about your success, predicted traffic volume and overall ROI prior to beginning work.

Keywords Rankings
Traffic Volume
ROI

Each method has distinct advantages and disadvantages….

Keyword Rankings

The majority of SEO campaigns will be centred around a set of pre determined keywords, usually between 5-15 however this may be larger for bigger organisations or those with a divers product portfolio.  The majority of SEO firms will provide a periodic report including the ranking of the clients keywords within a number of major search engines and their movement from the previous result.  The problem with only measuring a small number of keywords is that it really does not give an overall indication of progress, while the client site may only pick up a SERP position or two over the allotted time period the site may in fact gather ranking positions for a number of additional untargeted however valuable keywords.

The above image is extracted from one of our sites and an internal monitoring application which we use to track Search Traffic trends, the coloured segments represent traffic from target keywords, the Grey (almost 95%) represents traffic from other keywords.  This site receives in excess of 2000UV per day across over 700 unique keywords and has aprox 120,000 pages currently indexed in Google.  As you can see the absolute majority of traffic is generated by keywords other than those specifically targeted, tracking keyword rank for a set of 10 keywords would not paint an accurate picture of Search Presence Performance.

Traffic Volume

Based on the above data it seems pertinent to track the total number of people visiting the site in a given time period and compare that to the previous time period, in the case of the site above we are seeing month-to-month growth of 16%, a very health growth rate for any business.  In the case of a site which derives the majority of its revenue or value via advertising, then the traffic volume is a good measure of campaign performance.  That is, a site that sells banner space at a price of $4 CPM and grows at a constant rate of 16% would increase its revenue by a factor of 5 each year.

The issue with measuring traffic volume is not all traffic is created equally, some sources and keywords will refer traffic that is unlikely to convert into a sale or lead for your business, similarly other traffic sources will send highly qualified traffic that can convert as well as 1:2.  For this reason the majority of business should not asses their campaign performance based solely on incremental traffic growth.

ROI

The best manor in which to asses your site and SEO campaigns performance is by pure ROI tacking.  That is, how much money did I or my business derive as a result of our SEO campaign.  The unfortunate situation is that ROI is actually the hardest metric for us to measure – as there are very few manors in which we can capture the resulting actions of our new website visitors (unless your using the ZNS CPA campaigns).  Business owners need to be meticulous in the measurement of and recording of their lead sources this includes verifying the source of leads who contact you via phone, email or walk in.  Once you put in place a reporting and measurement system for recording the sources of your new clients you will likely be surprised by the ROI of your SEO campaign, we have had clients report up to a 4,600% ROI from SEO within the first 12 months.  Just think, if you gave us $10,000 now on the condition we give you back $460,000 at the years end, is that a deal you would take?

To increase your websites ROI, get in contact with ZNS today.

In Australian Google is responsible for 90% of all search traffic, Yahoo and Bing share the remainder.  Therefore sites who are looking for raw traffic volume need really look no further than Google for their traffic needs, the time required to satisfy the Yahoo and Bing search engines is disproportional to the rewards received for your effort and consequently at ZNS we advise the majority of our clients to focus on optimising their site for Google.

One metric that needs to be mentioned prior to making any significant decisions relation to a client SEO campaign is conversion rate.  We have found across a significant sample size Bing traffic converts up to three times as well as Google traffic in a given set of niches.  We find clients who’s site reside within the technology niche tend to convert far better from Bing  than any other organically generated source – while there are no solid reason why this occurs we believe it is due to early adopters ie. those who begin using the newest search engine first often will convert better with products and services within the technology market.