Search Engine Optimisation | WebConsulting | Website Optimisation, SEO & Design - Brisbane

Optimising & Marketing a Self Storage website

The recently released Self Storage Association of Australasia (SSAA) Demand Study for 2010 has highlighted a whole lot of interesting data about the Australian Self Storage industry – and in particular how potential customers are increasingly looking to the web as a primary source for finding out how and where they can store their things.

The SSAA study highlights a dramatic increase in opportunities for Self Storage Operators to use the internet to market and promote their business online – to increase enquiries and actually make online sales.

What do Self Storage customers want Online?

The SSAA asked both Potential and Existing storers to indicate what features they would like to see on a self storage facility’s website. Some of the most requested functionality include…

	Potential	Existing
List of units available & prices	86%	75%
Ability to pay their account online	64%	54%
Ability to see their account status online	62%	53%
Ability to book a unit & pay a deposit online	59%	43%

(figures represent the percentage of respondents indicating a feature was desirable)

With the steady increase in eCommerce over the last 5-10 years, web users are not only becoming more confident with using the web for online sales and enquiries – they are actually expecting theses services to be available. It is very possible that facilities not offering these types of services could be missing out on sales and losing market share to those that do.

Self Storage Website Features

Relatively few Self Storage websites are currently offering details of current listing availability and prices. The primary reason that Storage Operators tend not to include this type of information seems to be the effort associated with keeping this data up to date. An obvious (and relatively simple) solution is to integrate the website with the the facilities management software – then no extra effort is required to keep unit availability and storage price information on the website current.

The most widely used storage management software within Australia is Storman. Storman’s range of self storage software already has modules that integrate with the operators website, automatically updating space availability and allowing customers to view their account status, pay a storage invoice , or book (reserve) a space and pay a deposit – all from the operators own website.

Marketing your Self Storage website

Providing a website that offers the types of online services that customers are looking for is a great start – but unless they are able to find the website in the first place, it is of little real value.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) describes a process for improving the visibility of a website – making it easier for the website to be via web searches. Activities designed to improve a sites rankings in the search results, Increase traffic, and maximise online sales and enquiries, are just as important as having a website in the first place.

The two most important elements that are required for good rankings are:

Good Quality, Unique, Keyword Rich Content – The content on your Self Storage website should describe the services you offer, using the “language” that your customers are likely to search for, and be informative as well as useful to your customers (and potential customers).
Links to your site – Third party sites that link to you (especially if they are in the Storage niche) are critical to achieve good rankings. You should strive to get links from Industry sites (such as Self Storage Associations, like the SSAA), Business Directories, Industry related Listing services (such as SpaceOut), and possibly even your competitors.

Feel free to contact us here at WebConsulting if you’d like to find out more about Search Engine Optimisation or would like some assistance with the development of a Search Engine Optimisation strategy for your Self Storage website. We specialise in SEO services, and have a great deal of experience working with Self Storage operators and within the Australian self storage market.

Local Search for Self Storage

The nature of the self storage industry almost guarantees that people looking for storage space, will mostly be looking in a specific area. So when they are searching online they will most likely include a locality in their search query (e.g. “Self Storage Bathurst”, or “Self Storage Prices Sydney”, or very often even specific queries like “Space for Rent Footscray”).

Again, registering a space listing with online services like SpaceOut (which has a very strong “local” focus) is a good way to improve your visibility for local search queries. Also, forming alliances, and cross-linking with other storage facility websites in other localities (who are not your direct competitors) can also be a very effective mechanism to help raise your own local search profile.

Offering the types of online services that your existing and potential customers are asking for (and may soon be demanding) and ensuring that you are doing whatever you can to maximise the exposure of your website, are critical steps to make sure that your business not only survives, but thrives in the increasingly competitive future online.

8 Link Building Tips for Beginners

Often website owners believe that getting top rankings is simply a matter of changing their website, and certainly these “on-page” factors do play an important part. However, rankings are also significantly influenced by external factors – and the most important of these is the number and quality of inbound links or backlinks (links from third party websites).

In determining rankings, all search engines also take into account the “value” that the rest of the web places on a particular website or page. One of the best ways for search engines to determine this “value“, is the way that websites link to each other. How often related websites mention a particular site and, most importantly, how they link to it, is a pretty accurate way for a search engine to determine which pages are going to be useful to searchers.

Link Building Tips

Establishing inbound links to your pages is crucial, and Link Building, should be a fundamental strategy in any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign. But exactly how do you go about generating links to your site? Traditionally building up this “link juice” can be a hard and tiresome process, but I’ve outlined below some tips for beginners on How to Get Links:

1. Link Farms? – Not any more

First up – something that you should NOT be doing… Once upon a time – not so very long ago, a technique – called link farming – involving the creation of lots of (usually junk) sites, with plenty of cross linking was a reasonably effective way to build rankings. However, the search engines quickly realised that most of these sites were of little or no benefit to users, so they adjusted their algorithms to give priority to relevant and authoritative websites. The quantity of links to your website is not as important as the quality.

Don’t waste your time or money creating (or even worse – paying for) hundreds of questionable links hoping it will help your rankings – it won’t. At best, search engines will ignore these types of links; at worst they may tarnish the credibility of your site, and result in penalties being applied.

2. Content is Key

An obvious, but often overlooked, fact is that “if you want someone to link to your site, you have to give them something worth linking to“. If you ask someone to link to you – why would they bother unless there was something on your site that interested them or would be of interest to their users. The perfect way to encourage inbound links is simply to fill your pages with useful, informative, interesting, entertaining, or relevant content.

3. Blog about it

One great way to add content to your site is to set up a blog. Search engines LOVE Blogs as they typically contain topical, dynamic content. Blog posts are generally crawled and indexed by search engines very quickly, and can be often found in the search results within minutes of being posted. If your posts are interesting, topical, controversial, humorous, or informative people will naturally link to them, and by adding their own comments, will automatically generate extra, relevant content to your site.

4. Going Viral

Sometimes, you may hit a nerve, or strike a chord with the online community by publishing a post that becomes very popular and “goes viral“. These types of posts, for a variety of reasons, get attention and tend to have a snowball effect, as more and more people become aware of them, and feel compelled to spread the word. Articles of this type are known as ‘link bait’, because people naturally want to link to them, and can very quickly generates hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. It is worth striving for a viral post, but it is extremely difficult to do. You also need to consider the impact on your credibility – a shocking or controversial post, might generate amazing link juice, but keep in mind what long term impact it might it have on you or your sites reputation.

5. Be Social

Be active in the Blogs/Forums/Social Media sites that are relevant to your industry. Don’t just read about it, participate, and make an effort to actively comment on topics and issues that you are knowledgeable about. Develop a “presence” and over time you can subtly include references and possibly links to your site. Do NOT push this too hard – no one likes a pushy salesman.

6. Network

One very important way to develop inbound links to your web pages is to capitalise on your contacts in the industry. In your day to day dealings with suppliers, customers, industry associations, and even competitors, keep the possibility of a backlink in mind – and don’t be shy to ask. The best backlinks are those that come from relevant sites – and could there be anything more relevant than other sites within your industry?

7. Anchors Away

Not only are the quality and quantity of backlinks important – but the way the links are applied also plays a part. Anchor text refers to the text that is used in the link, and although you may not always have control over what anchor text is used – wherever possible try to use primary keywords rather than generic text. A link to your site with the anchor text “click here” is likely to be of much less value than “buy keyword now“.

8. Deep Link

Wherever possible mix up the links to your site. Although the majority of backlinks will often go to a websites home page, a natural link profile will also include links to other pages within a site. Try to establish targeted backlinks, with more specific anchor text, to pages deep within the structure of your site.

There are literally hundreds of ways you can generate backlinks to your website, this post has outlined some of the fundamentals, and provides some quick and easy tips about how you can develop links to your website, with the aim of raising your online profile and improving your rankings. If you’d like further assistance, please feel free to contact us at WebConsulting SEO.

Make the most of our Strong Aussie Dollar with Paid Directories

With the Australian Dollar hovering just below parity with the US$, now is the perfect time to take advantage of the vest exchange rate for many years, and look at expanding your link profile by spending your valuable Aussie dollars on some of the quality directory listings.

As you are probably aware, Link Building is a very important part of optimising your site. Having quality backlinks from authoritative third party websites is almost as important as having good quality unique content on your own site.

There are plenty of business directories around where you can get free listings, but most of these are of limited “link value”. There are also plenty of paid directories, although many of these are a complete waste of money. However, there are a relatively small number of paid directories which are well recognised as authority directories, and are known to pass on valuable “link juice” and will help with your rankings.

For larger businesses, getting listings on these important directories is a standard part of their marketing strategy, but for small business, with limited budgets, the cost can be an issue. Many of the best paid directories are based in the United States – with listings being charged in US$, so right now with the high AU$, these listings are more affordable than they ever have been.

Hint : You can identify other potentially useful directories to list in by examining the backlinks of you main online competitors (the sites that are already achieving top 10 rankings for your primary keywords) and looking for patterns.

Don’t be concerned that these directories are US based, and your clients are in Australia – you are not listing on these directories for the direct traffic they generate (although you may be surprised how much you get), you are listing because of the “link love” that they will pass onto you. Listings in quality directories can have a direct impact on your organic rankings – and are also likely to improve your Google Places Page rankings in the “7 pack”.

Best Paid Directories

I have listed below some of the best paid directories currently available. Each of these directories works on a “review” fee rather than a “listing” fee basis and offer no guarantee that your site will be listed. However, as long as you follow their guidelines you should not have any problems with having your site listed.

Best of the Web – US$149.95

BOTW provides listings for an annual recurring review fee of US$149,95 (this can be cancelled whenever you wish).

Currently (during October 2010) BOTW are offering a 20% discount on this – Just US$119.96 if you use the promo code “save20“.

If you are interested in receiving additional exposure and want to customise your advertising message, you can get a Free 30 day trial of sponsoring a category on BOTW at (hint: this can be cancelled at any time).

Yahoo Directory – US$299

Yahoo Directory is probably one of the most important directories. Your single listing will appear in more than a dozen international directories. You need to register your listig via Yahoo Express on the US site

Business.com – US$299 per year

You can find out more and Register Here (and get $50 Off)

Joe Ant – US$39.99

Directory World – US$24.95

Hint: many directories require you to specify which category you think is the most appropriate for your listing – and you may need to submit your site from the category that you think is best. Spend some time looking through the directory – there are often several categories where your site could belong. Take a note of where your competitors are listed.

Submitting your listing should be reasonable straightforward, but be careful about how you describe your business, what keywords you target, and what category you choose. If you’d like some assistance, please feel free to contact us at WebConsulting for advice.

Optimising your website’s Bounce Rate

The majority of site owners realise that there are usage statistics available, and understand that these can provide useful information about their site visitors. However, many never seem to find the time to review these statistics, or are bewildered by the sheer volume of data available. Most site owners will know to take a look at how many visitors they get, but there is plenty of other information available that provides valuable information about their site visitors.

Recently a client asked me what a “good bounce rate” should be, and in considering my response, I realised that Bounce Rate in particular was one statistic that site owners don’t really “get” – which is a great shame because it can be a very useful statistic. This post therefore focuses on the Bounce Rate – explains what it represents, how it should be interpreted, and how it can be used to help increase the effectiveness of your site by improving your conversion rates.

What is a Bounce Rate?

Google ‘s definition of a bounce rate is : “the percentage of single-page visitors, or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page” – i.e. the percentage of your site visitors that only view a single page on your site. So, the higher your bounce rate, the fewer visitors are actually spending time on your site.

A high bounce rate indicates that the 1st web page your site visitors see is not appropriate to them – there is nothing on these pages to encourage them to look further into the site – (although it may also suggest that the one page they looked at provided exactly the information they were looking for). A low bounce rate indicates that visitors have an interest, look at multiple pages and stay for a longer time on your site, and most of the time the longer visitors stay, the more likely they are to convert (purchase a product or make an inquiry).

A bounce rate also provides an indication of the “quality” of a page, and it is quite possible that the search engines might take this statistic into account among the factors influencing search rankings. Its also wise to bear in mind that bounce rate applies to a particular page and that each page on your site might have some other bounce rate.

What makes a Good Bounce Rate?

Exactly what makes a good bounce rate is a bit harder to specify, because it will very much depend on the type of your site and the market you are in. It will also rely on which page you are looking at. A high bounce rate on a contact page may be OK, because it suggests that the visitor was looking for your contact details and may be phoning or emailing you, i.e. they found what they were looking for. However, a higher bounce rate on your home page (or even worse your most important product pages) is much more of a concern because it indicates that people are not interested in this page, are being turned away by what they see, or are not being encouraged to click further into your site.

I generally see bounce rates of between 50% and 70%, however, many of my clients (mostly in niche areas) are obtaining bounce rates of 20% or less.

Why would I want a better Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is an indication of page quality. A higher number of pages on your site with low bounce rates means that users are spending longer on your site – and are therefore significantly more likely to convert. Reducing bounce rate is a Conversion Optimisation strategy, and can eventually be a lot more effective way to improve sales and inquiries on your site than conventional SEO techniques.

How can I improve my Bounce Rate?

Generally you ought to be trying to achieve as low a bounce rate as you possibly can. We recommend that you start off by examining the bounce rate of your key pages such as your home page, landing pages for PPC campaigns, and pages associated with conversions (inquiry form, product pages, etc).

Take a close look at these pages from a users perspective – do they provide the information or functionality that a user would want or expect?

The original source of the traffic to your high bounce rate pages should also be examined. You should normally expect a lower bounce rate for direct traffic than you would for search traffic. A very high bounce rate for search traffic may suggest that the page is ranking for keywords and key phrases which are not properly answered on that page. After some manipulation of Google Analytics, it is possible to ascertain which key phrases are ending in greater bounce rates for a certain page (if you’re unsure on how to do this, contact us and we can help you to analyse your usage stats).

If you are operating a Paid advertising campaign make sure you take a very close look at the bounce rate of your Ad landing pages – if these are receiving a high bounce rate, not only are you wasting cash on click costs, but your Cost per Click is also apt to be high because of a low quality score.

In this post we’ve really only had a chance to provide simple facts on the information open to you through your web site usage statistics, or techniques that will help you to enhance conversions of your site. If you’d like to discover more about Web Analytics or Conversion Optimisation, don’t hesitate to contact us at WebConsulting.

Google Webmaster Tools offers improved Parameter Handling

Google Webmaster Tools is very important for any website owner to be familiar with as it provides a valuable insight into how Google perceives your site. It also gives you a variety of options for “tweaking” the way Google crawls and indexes your website. Much of the information provided by Webmaster Tools is not available anywhere else, and for Search Engine Optimisation it is fundamental to measure and monitor some of the stats Webmaster Tools provides.

If you are not already using Google’s Webmaster Tools, I suggest that you get yourself setup ASAP. Find out more about Google Webmaster Tools, or if you have any questions, concerns, or problems with setting it up, please feel free to contact us for web/internet advice and assistance

What are Parameters?

You have probably noticed URLs which contain a variety of different characters – often including “?” and “&”. Most often these URLs are used by dynamic sites that generate page content, and the parameters are used to determine what information is included on the page and how it is displayed. Here are some examples :

www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999
www.example.com/product.php?caregory=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456&sort=asc
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456&sort=desc

In the above examples the parameters are :

category – a text based title of the category (good for SEO)
cat-id – a numeric code for the item category
sid– a numeric code representing a visitors session id
sort – a field indicating in what order items should be listed

Some parameters affect the content of the page, others can influence how the page is laid out. Search Engines have long been able to recognise and crawl these types of dynamic URLs. However, one problem that can be introduced through the use of parameters is the issue of dynamic content. Each of the example URLs provided above could conceivably reference exactly the same page content – presenting search engines with a dilemma to determine which is the most relevant URL, and which ones should be ignored. Search Engines will try to make a guess at this – but will not always choose the one that you would.

Webmaster Tools Parameter Handling

Since September 2009 Webmaster Tools enabled site owners to specify up to 15 parameters that Google should ignore when crawling and indexing the site. The main benefit of the feature was to improve the canonicalization of a site in Google’s index due to duplicate content. Canonicalization issues occur when multiple URLs load the same content (as in the example URLs above). However, this was a bit limiting – when you choose to ignore a parameter, you are telling Google that this parameter has NO impact on the displayed content. However, some parameters may not affect the content, but may affect how the content is represented.

Google has recently announced improvements in the way that parameters can be defined in webmaster tools. The new functionality allows webmasters to specify “default values” to certain parameters which don’t necessarily affect the content. This provides greater flexibility for webmasters and improved indexing for Google.

So, using the above example URLs, the webmaster could specify that cat-id and sid parameters should be ignored, and that the sort parameter should default to “asc” (displaying results in ascending order).

Parameter Handling can be found in Webmaster Tools via Site Configuration >> Setting >>Parameter Handling (tab)