www.matamata-info.co.nz

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Our free click-through in the newsletters of www.matamata-info.co.nz - www.tearoha-info.co.nz - www.thames-info.co.nz - www.morrinsville-info.co.nz goes to the following town websites - www.matamata-info.co.nz/longlands (site has been totally revamped - wow!!) - www.morrinsville-info.co.nz/market (a brand new website) - www.tearoha-info.co.nz/HolidayPark (regular updates keep this site constantly at No.1) - www.thames-info.co.nz/temata (Check out their great value Spring Accommodation package)

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SOME EXTRA STATISTICAL INFORMATION:
Below are the top 20 search words and phrases that our visitors are typing into the search engines to find www.matamata-info.co.nz (there were 209 in total used during August):

Top 20 of 209 Total Search Strings         # Hits Search String         1 139 26.68% matamata 2 33 6.33% matamata new zealand 3 31 5.95% electrico 4 13 2.50% matamata%2c new zealand 5 12 2.30% on the jellicoe road 6 9 1.73% matamata map 7 5 0.96% horseland promo code 8 5 0.96% matamata real estate 9 5 0.96% tirau new zealand 10 4 0.77% flowers matamata 11 4 0.77% fuyu persimmon 12 4 0.77% hydroponic supplies 13 4 0.77% real estate matamata 14 4 0.77% red capsicum 15 4 0.77% school wear fashion 16 4 0.77% totara springs 17 3 0.58% elderly care 18 3 0.58% hydroponics 19 3 0.58% matamata club 20 3 0.58% matamata map new zealand

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Are you winning or losing in Google?

(This information will be especially useful to those of you who have your own domain websites, but although we do follow these tips for www.matamata-info.co.nz on your behalf,, it would be also beneficial for you to follow this advice for your own directory website on www.matamata-info.co.nz as well)

Currently Google holds just over 50% of search engine market share, and probably the most asked question from our clients' is "How can we improve our search engine ranking on Google?", so here are some tips to help you achieve this ...

When comparing how you're doing against competitors in Google, are you winning, losing or just holding your own? Don't know? ... then it's time to find out!

Don't just keep an eye on who YOU THINK is your prime competitor as there may be newer sites out there that you should be watching as well ... keeping score is not so difficult. Here's all you need to do:

Identify the Competition
Track PageRank
Ferret Out How Many Pages in Google
Gauge Both Quantity and Quality of Inbound Links
Track Traffic
Keep an Eye on Them

That’s it, so to start...

::Identify Your Competitors - Not hard. Just identify the top 5 competitors in your niche that you want to outrank. One way to do that, is to take the five or six keyword phrases you are looking to rank well for and see who is in the top 10 for each. Since anyone can rank well for one keyword, doing this for multiple keywords will spotlight those who show up repeatedly. This highlights them as the stiffer competition. Then repeat this every three or four months to make sure no one new has slipped in under the radar.

::Track PageRank (PR) - Once again take those same five or six "must-win" keywords you want to come out on top for. Use the Google Toolbar to track the PR of competitors’ pages optimised for those prime keywords.

Google Toolbar Tip: Simply hold your cursor in the green bar area itself. Get it in just the right spot and a little pop up box will appear that says: "PageRank is Google's measure of the importance of this page (4/10)" In this example the PR is 4.

Note the target keywords and the PR for pages featuring them on a spreadsheet.

::How Many Pages in Google? - There is a tool you can use on neutralise.com - As well as checking your own website, enter the competitor's URL. Insert a guess-timate for how many pages are on their site. Hit the "check now" button. The result will show you how many pages they've got in Google, FAST, AltaVista, MSN & Yahoo.

::Gauge Quantity and Quality of Inbound Links - Not all links are created equal in Google's eyes. Links from High PR sites are worth more. So you want a read on both the quantity and quality of your prime competition’s inbound links.

Since it's more inclusive, you may want to use ALLTHEWEB to find out the total number or quantity of inbound links. Here's how.

Using alltheweb.com put: link:www.competitor.co.nz in the search box. All pages linking to www.competitor.co.nz will be returned. You'll see something like "1 - 10 of 135 Results for link:www.competitor.co.nz" at the top of the page of ALLTHEWEB listings which would tell you there are 135 sites that link to that site.

Google on the other hand will only reveal inbound links from sites with a PR 4, or higher. BAM! There's your take on quality.

While you can do the same with Google as you did with ALLTHEWEB, Google makes it even easier. Go to the advanced search page. Scroll down until you see a heading that says "Page-Specific Search". Insert www.competitor.co.nz into the search box labeled: "Links Find pages that link to the page". Click "Search". At the top of the page of search results you'll see a result summary line like the following: "Searched for pages linking to www.competitor.co.nz. Results 1 - 10 of about 21." The above would indicate there 21 high quality links to your competitor. Subtract the internal links from pages within the website in question to determine how many high quality sites actually link to your competitor.

Record the count of all links, plus high quality external links on your spreadsheet.

::Track Traffic - Use either Alexa's Toolbar or visit Alexa to grab traffic stats. While far from perfect since it can be manipulated, you can still get a decent estimate of traffic as measured by users with the Alexa toolbar visiting the sites. To keep it simple just track the Alexa traffic rank.

Then to close the loop...

::Keep an Eye on Them - Use a page monitoring service like Change Detect to watch competitor sites like a hawk. This free service makes the process automatic and will email you whenever the site you're monitoring changes. It gives you another means of checking whether a competing website is being actively improved and updated or not. The easiest way to recognize trends is to graph what's going on. You’ll be able to see right away, if the trend is your friend or not. If any competitor is getting more of anything, you're going to have to match them or risk falling behind. Don't be blindsided.

** Track your closest rivals.
** Compare your stats to theirs.
** Act or react accordingly.

It’s easy and doesn't take more than 20-30 minutes a week with the methods provided above. Doing so gives you the marketing intelligence you need to improve your Google ranking, or at least, to hold your own no matter what your competitors are doing.

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Site of the Month is Electrico - and they receive a free direct click through and feature image from www.matamata-info.co.nz to their website.

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Leanne Taylor
:: www.wwwdesign.co.nz ::
Award Winning Website Design, Hosting & Maintenance
Phone/Fax (09) 817 9656 ~ Mobile (0274) 701990