SEO Methodology

As one of the purest forms of direct marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about putting your business and message in front of potential customers at the time they are searching for your products or services.

Our SEO framework and the methodologies are based on over a decade of experience working for leading companies in Australia, Canada, the United States and Asia.

There are no secrets when it comes to SEO, just proven methodologies that when applied to your organisation will help improve your chances of success.

Amplify's Search Engine Optimisation Methodlogy Chart for Existing Websites

Our methodology includes opportunities to define the strategy, rework the information architecture, identify conversion requirements, review templates, design and coding as well as a comprehensive testing and review process to ensure the recommendations have been implemented correctly.

Competitor Analysis

The first step is to analyse the competition in your market to gain a better understanding of what it will take to improve your site’s rankings and traffic. Here, it is vital to look past your initial competitor list and look at the websites that rank well for keywords important to your business. These sites may include informational, government or even sites outside your market.

During the review process, it is important to analyse the competition’s keywords, content, site architecture and links. Doing so will help you answer what is needed to surpass the competition.

Studying your competition’s Search Popularity (the number of inbound and internal links to their website), Search Saturation (the number of pages they have indexed by search engines), and keyword ranking reports will allow you to see how your site measures up to the competition, identify weaknesses and exploit new opportunities.

When it comes to SEO, there is very little that cannot be discovered about the competition. Strategies, links, implementation and rankings are there for the critical eye to identify, review, track & analyse. Amplify recommends a full review of up to three competitors. The Competition Analysis will provide feedback on:

• Content structure and keyword alignment
• Site code accessibility and visitor usability
• Information architecture (including navigation, menu structure and tag clouds)
• Use of social, viral and multimedia
• Internal and inbound linking structure

The end result provides a benchmark for your business to measure success and helps ensure you are able to identify trends in your market and stay one step ahead of the competition.

Link Analysis

Like a vote in an election, links help search engines determine the popularity of your website and the individual content within your website. Even if you have the best content in the world, without links, your website may never see a visitor arrive from search engines. Links are critical to the long term success of your  search engine visibility and rankings.

Using best of breed SEO tools, we analyse the external links of your website and competitors to identify possible link acquisition targets once your website is optimised. Using research from your competitors allows us to create a unique link acquisition strategy that allows you to leap frog the competition.

These tools also help identify internal link issues that may be preventing your site from being crawled and tell us how the search engines evaluate your website.

Keyword Research

To succeed in SEO, it is crucial to understand the keyword terms your audience uses to find your business in a search engine. Using knowledge from the Discovery and Competitor Analysis, we dig deeper to uncover the true keyword combinations, and if applicable, synonyms your audience uses to find your products or services. This last point is critical, as keyword research from other markets may not be entirely applicable to your market. For example, you may find that the keyword term “auto insurance” has very high volume in the US. However, in Australia, “car insurance” makes up over 80% of the keyword queries for insurance. If you miss this simple fact, you will be lucky to reach more than 10% of your target market.

Once completed, keyword research is used to optimise key areas of your website including the information architecture, Meta data, page headings, general content and menu links.

Site Architecture & Strategy

With our research complete, we now provide consultation on site architecture.

A site’s architecture or structure can play an important role in how the search engine crawlers access your content. If the structure is too flat, crawlers may not be able to determine where the content sits within the hierarchy of the website and will give it less attention. Alternatively, if the content is buried down multiple levels with few internal links to each page, the search engine crawlers may never find the important content.

In addition, if the naming conventions used in the URLs and menu structure are not aligned with your audience’s keywords, then you risk making it more difficult for search engines to rank your content against the competition’s. You will also make it hard for users to find the content once they arrive at your website.

Using knowledge from keyword research we provide recommendations to ensure important areas of content receive the appropriate attention in the site architecture. We also make sure your navigation and naming conventions utilise the same keyword phrases your audience is using to search for your information.

Based on the research, our SEO Strategy will:

• Provide recommendations to ensure the information architecture, navigation and other key usability elements are optimised for search
• Recommend an internal link theme structure to ensure content is accessible
• Identify ways to highlight specific content

Amplify will present all recommendations to key stakeholders and be available to offer on-site assistance with implementation as required. Costs for the implementation will be provided on a case by case basis.

Templates, Design & Coding Review

From code bloat to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the way a website is coded can have unforeseen consequences. While some designers and developers are just beginning to come to grasp with SEO and the importance of developing optimised websites, many employ practices that create hurdles for search engine crawlers.

For example, placing JavaScript in the HTML pushes the available content down the page. This makes it more difficult for search crawlers to access the content. To keep code to a minimum, it is best to link to your JavaScript code via external files.

In addition, it is better to use CSS to style the content and layout of different elements on the page. Many developers still use outmoded HTML techniques to display content which ultimately takes more lines of code to achieve the same results.

Finally, content management systems (CMS) can also pose a problem. Many systems on the market are not been optimised for search and present unnecessary technical hurdles which make achieving results more challenging. Understanding the role a system like DotNetNuke plays within your organisation and its impact on your SEO results is critical to your success.

With a team of in-house developers well versed in SEO, we understand the impact optimised code can have on your search engine rankings. We are thus able to offer our experience to your internal team prior to the development of a new design and review the code prior to full implementation.

Content Review & Optimisation

Once all of the technical hurdles have been discussed and sorted, the next step is to optimise the on page content. The key here is to make sure each main content page within the website is seen as a unique page with its own keywords. Armed with our keyword research, we apply the keywords used by your audience to key elements of your web pages including:

• Page titles
• Meta keywords and descriptions
• Page headings and sub-headings
• On page content
• Navigation

For large multinational businesses, it is important to check for duplicate content and to make sure the content being used in your target market is optimised and unique for that audience. If the content is too close to other international websites, your results may be hampered in your home market.

Amplify understands that markets are unique and will work with your brand managers, writers and traditional marketing agency to ensure your content in Australia is localised for Australians. This will help improve your chances of success in Australia as well as ensure any other websites you have do not hamper the results.

Conversion Analysis & KPI Strategy

Traffic is great, but if visitors from search engines are not able to solve their issue or complete the desired task (download a PDF, buy a product, learn about your services or contact you), then you are wasting your money, your visitor’s time and ultimately harming your brand.

To guarantee your SEO project is a true success, we look at all the issues which prevent visitors from reaching their goal and provide recommendations to reduce any impending hurdles. We also help you identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for SEO and provide assistance to analyse and quantify SEO results for management. 

At Amplify one of our goals is to make your team look like rock stars. Great results have a positive effect on your bottom line, so we help you quantify your SEO results to show a positive Return on Investment.

Website Migration Planning

One of the biggest mistakes associated with the launch of a new website is that organisations forget about the impact the new website has on past search results and links to the website. Whether you change the information architecture, URL structure, or domain name it can take time for search engines to crawl, analyse and index the new URL structure. Search engines may take months to pick up the new URLs. Transferring the link popularity and indexing the new URLs can be a huge task for even Google.

Amplify will:

• Review the current site visitor traffic
• Identify existing links to the site
• Provide a Website Migration Plan and Checklist
• Provide key strategic advice to ensure a smooth transition

SEO Quality Assurance Testing

To help ensure that as much content is accessible to search engine crawlers via the current site architecture, Amplify will run a series of distributed tests using our proprietary crawler. Our tests will report and verify:

• Load testing
• Page headers (301 redirects)
• Page duplication
• Content verification
• Meta data
• Runtime .Net/SQL errors
• XML sitemap validation

The final report will help verify whether the current combination of content and architecture will hinder or support SEO efforts moving forward and identify any issues that need to be resolved immediately.

To accomplish this task, Amplify will need to have access to the testing environment prior to launch. At the end of the test Amplify will provide a detailed report and instructions on how to make any necessary fixes.

Link Acquisition

Search engines are constantly striving to eliminate spam from their databases and provide relevant search results for each search query. Historically, search engines based their rankings primarily on the content found on a webpage or site – and more specifically in the Meta data and title of a page. Due to the exploitation of Meta data principles using spamming techniques, search engines have started to give more importance to off page criteria such as links.

A website’s ranking is also based on the number of links a search engine finds pointing to the website. The more popular the site, the more likely the site is to have quality content. Quality sites are more likely to have content rich pages, allowing the search engine to provide relevant quality results to search queries. To this end, search engines give higher rankings in their search results to pages that come from a site with high link popularity.

Generally, link popularity provides a good indication of your website's visibility on the Internet and has emerged as one of the most important off page factors in determining how well a site will rank.

The number of links to your site helps search engines define the importance of a particular website or page. The more links you have from other websites, the greater the credibility you have. This should translate to higher search engine rankings for a particular keyword term.

The quality of incoming links is more important than the number of links, so link exchange should be thought out carefully with any complimenting sites.

Amplify will help build a strong link presence through a combination of sponsored links at unique and highly valuable organisations throughout Australia and by optimising existing connections.

Review Placement & Reporting

For well established websites, the results of SEO can happen quickly, sometimes within a few business days. However, for most websites, and especially new websites, the impact of your changes won’t be seen for weeks or months (up to 6 months for new websites).

Using keyword research and early benchmarking reports, Amplify monitors your search rankings against the competition and provides monthly reports to show progress. More importantly, we use the analysis and metrics to adjust the keywords, content and link strategies to further improve results. SEO is constantly changing and businesses like yours need to adjust their strategies on an ongoing basis. Ultimately, the strategies and methodologies we use at Amplify are in the best interest of your brand and help ensure long term success.

To provide Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Amplify will:

• Identify key metrics and recommend a reporting structure
• Advise on appropriate tools & training
• Set up reporting templates

Review & Start Again

SEO is never done. Whether it is your competition, a change in the search engine algorithms or a simple mishap with the development of your site, your SEO can always be improved. Great businesses understand this and great agencies help their clients strive for long term excellence.

At Amplify, we don’t rest on our laurels and strive to constantly improve results for our clients. We take the learnings from your campaigns and use them to develop new content and link strategies to help your organisation stay ahead of the competition.

With over a decade of SEO experience, Amplify’s leaders and staff understand the value of SEO and strive to achieve the best possible results for our clients.

Contact us today to optimise your website and make it more profitable.