Search engine optimisation is critical for driving traffic to websites. We all know that. Some organisations spend an lot of money constantly reviewing, optimising and tweaking their site to get to the at all important #1 result.

Small business in NZ don't often have access to the same kind of resources or budgets, so must focus on the fundamentals that are going to get maximum return for the level of investment they can afford.

So what is the biggest mistake we see?

"I type my company name into Google and I come out on top!"

Well - yeah. If it worked that way, we wouldn't need the yellow pages - the white pages lists company's alphabetically and is easy to use.

Of course your business is going to be the first result if your company name is even somewhat unique.

But it relies on people having already made the decision to deal with you.

The sale is half way made already!.

Your businesses may be missing out on all the potential customers that don't know you . NZ small business rely a lot on networks and referrals. This is fine but why wouldn't you want business from those people who you haven't met yet?

To be fair, with their limited resources, SEO can be daunting for the one or two-man band.

Other common mistakes include:

• Leaving it to their web developer - who doesn't really care
• Relying on a short term PPC campaign run by a take-your-money-and-run outfit who don't care about anything but their fee.
• The usual collection of meaningless or missing title tags, non sensical description tags and missing headings
• Minimal amounts of content
• No understanding of the keywords and phrases being targetted
• No linking strategy
• No measurement or tracking of search behaviours

A good SEO consultant should be able to provide a level of assistance to suit any budget, although if your funds are modest, you will have to do a lot of the work yourself. And you'll see the return.