Anyone who knows Suman Dahal – Founder of dzineclub, knows why we here at Imagine Creative, affectionately refer to him as ‘propeller head’.

With 10 years of industry experience, Suman’s extensive knowledge of online marketing and web development strategies would have the minds of most mere mortals in a complete spin!

So, with online strategies forever changing – we thought we should ask our very own Technical Guru what works, what doesn’t and what he thinks are the key things to help keep your online presence absolutely Google-icious…

Two sides of the same coin
There are two key facets of the Internet today that companies have to understand,” explains Suman.“The first is what I’d call ‘the front end’ – and that has to do with the visitor experience on your website.

“The second facet concerns the ‘back end’ – how your web pages are ranked when search engines like Google answer a search query by potential visitors to your website.

“You could say that they are two sides of the same coin: your website has to not only optimise the visitor experience, it also has to optimise the way search engines find and rank it.”

Don’t tell me, sell me…
Let’s talk about the visitor experience at the front end.

In the early years of the Internet there was a rush to have an online presence. Most companies believed all they had to do was transfer all their print content, verbatim, onto their websites.

It wasn’t long before they realised that visitors were being turned off by having to navigate dense information dumps and corporate speak.

However, making a website more visitor-friendly was easier said than done.

As Suman explains, “In what we would call a ‘static website’, web pages are stored at a remote location, and are only accessible through specialised software. Making even a minor change to the content required specialist technical knowledge and often the involvement of the website developer”.

Because making even small changes, is costly, the website is not updated as regularly as it should be. Delay in refreshing web content not only gives visitors no incentive to return, it also has an effect on how search engines rank your website.

The ‘Google-icious’ factor
When talking about the ‘back end’ and optimising websites for search engines (or SEO, search engine optimisation, as the industry calls it) Suman is fond of quoting Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist at Google – In his words: “Google is the new homepage”.

This is another way of saying how universal the appeal of Google has become. ‘Googling’, as a word, has already passed into our everyday language, is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘a search for information about (someone or something) on the Internet’ and, using Google to locate a website has become almost an automatic response with internet users.

“So helping Google find your website faster and list your website higher on the search results page, becomes crucial in the development of an online strategy,” says Suman.

“Search engines like Google, ‘crawl’ the web to create their page listings. If you refresh your website by changing content on your site regularly, crawler-based search engines detect these changes, and this can affect how high you rank on their search results pages. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role in these rankings.

The bottom line is, updating content regularly gives you a better shot at higher ‘visibility’ on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

A key insight
Helping clients understand the relationship between enhancing visitor experience and optimising websites for search engines, is a key factor in Suman’s success.

The exponential growth of social media like Facebook, Twitter, and even professional sites like LinkedIn, have raised people’s expectations about interactivity and connectivity, feedback and instant comment.

Which is one of the reasons why our team here at Imagine Creative has worked so closely with Suman over the years.

“It’s a real buzz to work with clients who see the benefits of being proactive in making their websites more visitor friendly,” says Suman. “When Imagine’s Creative Director Mary Georgiev, asked us to help reinvent their website, we leapt at the opportunity. The new setup means their new blog can be more interactive, and can respond to feedback more readily. The team can refresh content – in real time – more easily, without it costing a fortune.”

“For us it means we can deliver more information to more people on a much more regular basis” says Mary. “Knowing that we can add new articles, examples of our work and more relevant information more easily means that we can create greater exposure for our business. Add to this the ability to link in to professional social media sites like LinkedIn and our business is exposed to all sorts of new opportunities we never had before.”

We can’t imagine where we’d be without Suman’s insights and expertise. You could say he’s given us new ways of keeping our imagination in focus.

If you’d like to know more about making your website Google-icious, or you’d like to gain fresh insights into cutting edge web strategies, contact Suman Dahal on 0402 713 712 or visit www.dzineclub.com

dzineclub is a Melbourne based Web, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), eCommerce and Online Marketing Company.

Suman Dahal – Founder
dzineclub
A Graduate of Queensland University of Technology, Suman has worked with some of Australia’s largest companies in designing their websites and setting up their marketing.

With over 10 years’ experience at the cutting edge of online marketing, Suman has worked in companies such as Returnity (Enterprise email marketing), and Omniture (World leaders in website analytics)s before setting up his own boutique online marketing company. He regularly updates Small and Medium Business Resources on his blog at http://www.dzineclub.com/blog