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Five Simple but Powerful Ways to Use Google Analytics
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Five Simple but Powerful Ways to Use Google Analytics
If you haven’t started using Google Analytics on your website(s) or blogs, I highly highly recommend it. If you’ve set up an account but rarely look at it – I recommend you start looking.
First of all – what is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free analysis tool which gives you information on where your website visitors are coming from, which pages they visit, how long they stay, and a lot more. There are plenty of paid stat counters available which present data in different ways, but Google Analytics is one of the best, and it’s free.
One can over-analyze or under-analyze any website. Some people spend too much time checking stats, analyzing, and planning, and don’t spend enough time writing good content and getting new readers to their blogs.
On the other side of the pendulum, you could go on week after week, blindly publishing content and flailing along with offsite promotíon, without seeing what results your campaigns are getting, which type of content is the most popular for your visitors, and which traffic-generation techniques are getting the best results.
The first is like tuning your car’s engine every day without ever turning on the ignition, the second is like driving in the dark.
In between, we have a happy balance.
I find that the best times to check stats are when I don’t have a lot of time to do a more intense project, or when I am a bit too tired to do anything more “heavy.” Sometimes just before I go to bed at night is a good time to check into what has been happening between my visitors and my websites’ pages. I can browse and poke around in my Analytics account and learn quite a lot – even with minimal energy.
Here are five simple and powerful ways to use Google Analytics:
1. Find out which of your website’s pages are getting the most traffic, and optimize those pages.
If you are running ads on the pages, make sure they are properly placed and updated. If you are linking to affiliate products, make sure your links are up-to-date and that you aren’t missing any links, or new products which should be there. If you are using that page for some other purpose, such as to generate subscriptions or whatever the case may be, make sure that the page is laid out as well as possible. This can be helpful if you have a large website which has a long “to do” list and many things to optimize or tweak. By just starting with the most heavily-trafficked pages, you will get the maximum results from your efforts and also know where to start.
2. Find out which referrers are generating the most traffic, and continue any actions you have been taking to generate traffic from those referrers.
For example, if you see that Twitter is generating a large amount of targeted traffíc, you can expand your activity on Twitter. If you see that your article submissions are getting new visitors from article directories, you can make a note not to drop those out – or possibly step them up. Conversely, if you see that you have been spending time/money on a traffic-generation method which is not getting very far, you can stop wasting your time on it (presuming you have given it time to take effect).
3. Find out which keywords you are ranking the best for, and see which ones you can “push to the top.”
If you had a website on dogs, for example, and found that you were ranking at #30-#40 on Google for many keywords, but ranking #11 for, lets say, “dog chew toys,” you might want to work on increasing your rankings on dog chew toys and focus more of your SEO efforts on this term (of course there are other factors you would consider as well, such as the searches and competition for this term). Climbing from position #31 to #20 will generally not get you a huge improvement in traffic. But climbing from position #11 to position #3 almost certainly will. Focus first on keywords or key phrases that have the best chance of ranking high in the near future, and then move on to the others.
4. Find out which pages keep your visitors’ attention for the longest.
If the average visitor on Page A stays for 5 seconds, while the average visitor to Page B stays for 150 seconds, the likelihood is that your visitors find Page B’s content more interesting than Page A’s.
5. Look at the graph of your bounce rate.
This tells you how many people left your site without visiting a second page. Depending on the website and the page, this may be a good or bad thing. But if you have a blog or a content site, it is usually a good sign when people stick around to view more of your posts and content before they leave. If your bounce rate increased or decreased after you made a certain change, you can opt to revert that change (if bounce rate increased) or keep it (if bounce rate decreased). For example, if I changed the theme of my Wordpress blog and then noticed a date-co-incident jump in my bounce rate, I might consider changing it back 
This statistic can be used in many ways – it will depend on the nature of your blog.
There are many, many other ways to use Google Analytics. The above are great ways to start, if you aren’t familiar with or used to using this tracking system. Google Analytics can give you a far greater understanding of what’s happening on your site and can guide you to continue on successful actions and drop the unsuccessful.
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Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix
The powerful capabilities of organic search engine optimization (SEO) are now a highly sought after marketing tool by many companies that want to alert customers to their products or services by focusing on certain keyphrases that highlight these offerings. And though SEO has embarked on a meteoric rise in the past few years, other non-traditional forms of marketing are now gaining a great deal of well-deserved credibility as well. More and more marketers are using paid ads to hone in on a potentially profitable client base, while other more traditional channels, such as PR and print ads, appear to be becoming somewhat less effective.
In a recent study (1), Forrester Research found that interactive marketing spending will reach nearly $55 billion by 2014, representing 21% of all marketing spend. And the fact of the matter is that marketers are continuing to place more stock in newer forms of marketing and social media, leaving many higher-ups to wonder if it is time for them to include these channels in their own marketing mixes. And with the help of your search engine optimization company, it’s possible to achieve outstanding rankings and results!
What follows are some common considerations that should be analyzed prior to the launch of an SEO campaign so that you will know what you are getting into, what you will need from your team and your prospective search engine optimization company, and how to most effectively pursue this particular form of marketing.
Achieving Buy-in
Search engine optimization is unlike many traditional forms of marketing in that several departments must be involved in order for the SEO campaign to be successful. Apart from the obvious need to get buy-in from upper management (unless, of course, you are upper management), you will also need to get buy-in from your sales department and, very importantly, your IT department before pursuing the powerful capabilities your search engine optimization company can bring to the table.
Upper Management
While a well thought out, highly targeted SEO campaign is becoming an increasingly popular marketing tool, many “old school” bigwigs are uncomfortable pursuing something that is completely foreign to them. This is not an indictment of the individual – keep in mind that the traditional marketing methods that the company has likely relied upon (trade shows, direct mail, print advertising, etc.) have been relatively unchanged for decades.
While these traditional marketing channels may have remained relatively stagnant, the allocation of spend for them has not. According to a 2008 SEMPO report, more marketers are shifting their budgets to search rather than spending it on the more traditional channels of the past. Nearly 26% of advertisers shifted budget for print magazines to search; 23% from direct mail; 18% from print newspaper; 15% from website development; and 7% from email marketíng.
One of the reasons for this is obviously the effectiveness of the channel. In the same study, SEMPO found that respondents viewed marketing online efforts as their strongest tactic or best ROI. 63% of respondents saw paid search as the best return on investment in terms of marketing or advertising efforts; 49% for organic SEO; 43% for email marketíng; 12% for conferences and exhibitions; 11% for public relations; and 6% for print magazines.
Another reason for the shift in marketing dollars, which can be used as ammunition when you are trying to convince your higher-ups to go with a search engine optimization company, is the ultimate accountability that goes along with online marketing: the data that indicates success or failure of your SEO campaign is of the black-or-white variety.
When describing the effectiveness of a company’s marketing strategy, there is often an old sentiment tossed around – “I know that half of my marketing is not working, just not which half.” Because of the analytics involved in search engine optimization, your company higher-ups can take comfort in the fact that this is not another marketing initiative that will self-perpetuate indefinitely – the metrics involved in your SEO campaign will demonstrate that it is working, justifying the continued expenditure.
When trying to get buy-in from upper management, you also have a formidable weapon in the actions, or inaction, of your competitors. If your hated rivals are actively embracing the tools offered by a search engine optimization company, there will be a tendency among upper management not to want to let them get too far ahead. If none of your top competitors appear to be actively pursuing this channel, your company can gain traction before your rivals do and thus gain the competitive edge. Whichever the case, it is now much easier to present a compelling argument to pursue an SEO campaign.
Sales Department
There is often a mutual suspicion and distrust between sales and marketing, but in order for your SEO campaign initiative to be as successful as possible, you should involve sales in the process of selecting a search engine optimization company as early as possible. Achieving buy-in from the salespeople is critical in making certain that the leads that are generated from the website are followed up on as diligently as they should be. By asking sales to assist in important areas of the SEO campaign, like creating an ideal prospect profile and helping to identify targeted keyphrases (after all, they talk to your prospects more often than anyone), you should be able to ensure that when the leads start coming in, your sales team will believe that leads from the website are high-quality and worthy of their immediate attention. After all, without increased revenues, the SEO campaign is not a success – and your salespeople will play a crucial role in determining this.
IT Department
This can be your most difficult challenge. Unlike most other forms of marketing, search engine optimization is a mixture of marketing and technology. Without achieving buy-in, or at least acceptance, from the IT team prior to the launch of an SEO campaign, you are likely to run into problems. IT teams can be particularly protective of their “turf” and may be reluctant to hand over information to your prospective search engine optimization company. This is not inherently bad (it obviously shows dedication to the job), but it can make things difficult when your search engine optimization company is requesting that changes be made to the company website or that analytics platforms be introduced (to name only two likely scenarios).
If you are not used to dealing with your IT department, it would probably serve you well to involve your prospective search engine optimization company in the process of achieving buy-in with them. After all, the vendor should have years of experience in approaching these situations without ruffling feathers. If you choose to approach IT yourself, make it a point to let them know that they will receive a fair share of recognition for the success of the initiative and involve them in how you are defining success. This may be enough to win them over to your side.
Works Cited:
1. U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 – 2014
Discover the Answers to the Top 10 SEO Questions
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 26, 2010
Discover the Answers to the Top 10 SEO Questions
Any type of online business will strongly benefit from a few SEO techniques. However, everyone and their brother has advice on how to do it. All this ‘expert’ advice can make the simple task of optimizing your site incredibly confusing. Here are some straightforward answers to the most common SEO questions.
1. What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are however, hundreds of search engines available to internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they’re looking for, in the places they are looking, they’ll find you and place you in their results when a person is looking for your information.
The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.
2. How Important is SEO?
Let’s just put it this way. What’s better, a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase?
With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an internet millionaire.
3. What are Text Links?
Links are just one of the tools you can use to improve your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you’re looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, ebook, or web copy to your website.
An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy and provided the links are maintained, you’re encouraging links to your website.
4. What are Link Farms and Link Exchanges?
Search engines don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you don’t want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they’ll actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to improve your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.
5. What is Duplicate Content?
The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Don’t publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.
6. How do I Find the Right Keywords?
There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords.
The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them.
7. How do I Optimize My Web Pages?
Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph.
Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.
Title Tag. Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about.
If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this:
Keeping your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to improve the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.
Meta Tags have lost their importance to the search engines, however, it is still helpful to place your keywords in your meta tags. In your source code they look something like this:
8. Do I Need to Submít My Site to The Search Engines?
The simple answer is – no. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed in a dírectory, like the DMOZ Open Directory Project, then you will need to submit to those.
9. What are Spiders?
Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bots. They’re basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking them.
10. How does Content Help My SEO?
Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and boost traffic. The key to content is to make sure you’re offering quality content and you’re updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:
• Blogs
• Forums and chat rooms
• Articles
• Reviews
• Case studies
• Reports
• How to guides
• Tutorials
• e-books and much more.
Keyword Fundamentals Will Determine Your Website Success
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Keyword Fundamentals Will Determine Your Website Success
Successful sports teams have engrained in their heads the fundamentals of their sports. Business leaders and coaches alike who dwell on the fundamentals usually have the most successful outcomes. Failure is almost always rooted in a deviation from the fundamentals. So if your website is not delivering clients, perhaps you’re missing the fundamentals.
Part of the answer is no one actually taught you the fundamentals of website success. Most businesses understand the need for a website, few understand the fundamentals. Getting your website to deliver clients is an exercise in fundamentals. First and foremost is a back to basics, grass roots understandng of your market, website style.
Keyword research is the first thing every website owner should have done but most didn’t. With respect to your online business, keyword research equals market research. The coolest thing about being online is that you can absolutely KNOW your market, understand their interests and create an online business and marketing plan relative to your market and their needs.
There are probably hundreds of keyword research tools online that can help you do research. Our advice is to seek out an expert. Getting the data is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is quite a different thing.
Relative to keyword research, here’s what we can find via search engine tools: keywords and keyword phrases, search volumes, total web pages using those keywords, web pages optimized for those keywords, keywords in hypertext (called anchor text) linking to other sites and pages. We can even look at any specific website and determine what keywords they are at least trying to rank for. And of course, type the keyword phrase into a search box will list the top ten sites ranking for that term. The result of such a search is referred to as the SERPS or the Search Engine Results Pages.
The best keywords to use are ones that will generate reasonable traffic AND have very little competition. One of the parameters we seek in our keyword research is to determine the competitiveness of the keyword phrases. Google will tell us how many web pages are indexed for the search term. Just run a search and notice in the upper right of the results that Google will tell you how many pages are indexed with your search keywords. Without getting too technical here, Google and the other major search engines will also tell you how many web pages use those keywords in the page title, an indication that those pages specifically cover the topic of your search. Having keywords in the page title is one of the key ways to optimize a webpage for the keyword. Knowing how many pages are doing this gives you a better idea of how many pages are intentionally using the keywords you’re researching.
KEYWORD STRATEGY
The first thing that has to go is the ego of the site and/or business owner. Unless you show up in the first page of the search engine results, you’re NOBODY! Worse, you can’t push your way through the crowd to get to the top of the SERPS. You can get there by Google sponsored ads – Adwords guarantee your visibility on the SERPS. But still the point is, you’ll pay.
Let’s consider three strategies for beating your competition relative to the search engine results.
DIRECT STRATEGY
Choose the same keywords that your competition is ranking for and go head to head. If they are doing pay-per-click, you do it too. In this scenario, you’ll end up spending a lot of money to achieve and maintain top SERPS positions. If your competition is ranking on good, high traffic terms, plan on spending time, money and resources to get to the same position it may have taken them years to achieve. A direct strategy can get bloody. Ultimately, it is the most obvious choice, the least creative and the stupidest!
INDIRECT STRATEGY
Choose keywords that your competitors didn’t even think of! An indirect strategy is often associated with cross marketing and selling through an indirect channel. If you sell a service or product that your competitors don’t have, you channel your efforts through that market knowing there’s some pull-through relative to your other products and services. Very often you could be sucking business right out from under your competition’ s nose and they don’t even see it!
DIVISIONAL STRATEGY
Find out what keywords your competition is NOT ranking for in the same keyword set and go after them. The divisional strategy is the primary marketing method of niche marketers. Most business owners will equate the word “niche” with the word “small”. On the web, niche site owners are millionaires! Get rid of your pre-conceptions. The web is huge.
We use a two step process for choosing keywords. First, you have to take your direct competition into account. The second part is to look specifically at the search engine optimization parameters to determine which keywords make sense for you to specifically go after.
The leverage a website carries is in part determined by its page rank. Page rank is in large part determined by how many other sites on the web link to yours. Your exposure in the SERPS is in turn affected by your page rank. The reason you need to know this is if the top ten websites all out rank you in terms of page rank, you’re better off choosing another keyword.
Fundamental lesson: Small Fish eat smaller fish to grow bigger.
The Three SEO Factors That Really Matter
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Three SEO Factors That Really Matter
Search for a list of SEO factors and you’ll find that most feature at least 50.
That’s 50+ elements of your website that influence your ability to rank in search engines. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?
Some SEO Consultants will tell you that ranking in search engines is about applying a precise formula to these 50+ elements – about using “special proprietary techniques” fine-tuned to search algorithms to boost your website above the competition.
Not exactly.
There are actually more like 200+ signals that search engines use when ranking websites.
Imagine trying to reverse-engineer something like that? Sounds impossible, right?
That’s because it is.
The good news: it doesn’t matter.
You don’t need to be a computer engineer to rank well in search engines. Relieving, isn’t it?
The truth is that everything boils down to three factors:
1. Search-Friendly Pages
2. Relevant Content
3. A Trusted Website
All of those other factors and elements of SEO? They all fit into one of these three basic categories.
You don’t need to be a search scientist to understand the basics of what’s going on with these three factors and improve them for your website.
1) Search-Friendly Pages
Essentially, this first factor has to do with the technical aspects of how your website and pages work.
Search engines use crawlers (or “bots”) to browse the web by following links. As they browse, these crawlers scan the content they see and store it in databases. These databases form the search engine’s web index – and when a user comes along and enters a search phrase the index is scanned for pages that match.
The basic idea: you want to make sure your pages, and the content that fills them, are visible to search engine crawlers.
There are a few things you should know about crawlers:
• They don’t support JavaScript – so that rollover menu, those drop-down links, etc, might not be visible to search engine crawlers.
• They don’t support Flash (mostly) – while there have been a few developments in this regard recently, Flash websites still aren’t too search engine friendly .
• They can’t “see” – sometimes designers use images instead of HTML text (usually because they want to use a certain font that isn’t web-safe), and search engine crawlers can’t read or index this text. Crawlers can only read code – and if your content isn’t found there it’s essentially invisible to search engines.
• They skimp on resources – it takes a lot of energy and time (and money) to crawl the web (there are a lot of pages out there) so crawlers are usually programmed to be conservative with how far they’ll dive into a page. If your web pages take a long time to load or feature a tremendous amount of content crawlers might leave without scanning/indexing everything.
There are some other things crawlers can’t/won’t do. To get a sense of what they can see on your website try SEO-Browser.com . This tool allows you to enter the address of a web page and see it as search crawlers see it.
The bottom line: you might have the best content in the world, but if crawlers can’t see it you won’t rank for relevant keywords.
2) Relevant Content
This factor is all about the words on your pages.
As we discussed above, the visible content on your pages is stored and searched every time someone uses a search engine. If the keyword or phrase entered doesn’t occur on your page you probably won’t show up.
There are a few key places where you’ll want to use the right language on your pages:
• Title tags
• Headlines
• Body copy
• Anchor text (links pointing to internal pages)
As you browse the web you’ll probably notice that lots of webmasters have gotten a bit, shall we say, “overzealous” with optimizing their content. Title tags stuffed to the brim with dozens of keyword variations is common. Sometimes even the body copy itself is stuffed with keywords in an attempt to boost rankings.
You might be tempted to do this yourself to try and enhance your chances of ranking for a given keyword.
Don’t do it. Please.
Why not? Try reading a page that’s been stuffed with keywords this way. It’s an awful experience, right? Certainly enough to stop your reading flow and send you to another website, isn’t it?
Don’t sacrifice your user’s reading experience in the aim of ranking for a given keyword. It’s not worth it. All of the traffic in the world won’t mean a thing if the users who land at your pages are turned off and leave. Your competitors are just a few painless clicks away.
To learn about what keywords people use when they search for your products/services/info try Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool – enter either your website address or a keyword and this tool will return a líst of related keywords including numbers on how many people search for them.
The bottom line: it’s rare to rank for a keyword that doesn’t occur on your pages so use the language your users do when they search. Don’t overdo it and stuff keywords, though, because you’ll annoy your visitors (and search engines don’t like it either – they might flag you as SPAM).
3) A Trusted Website
When you’ve got 1) search-friendly pages and 2) relevant content it’s still not time to sit back and let the search traffic pour in.
The truth is that most of your competitors will have looked into these factors already – they’re kind of the “low hanging fruit” of SEO, because they’re not usually terribly difficult to work out.
Trust is what sets you apart. It is by far the most important of the three factors.
Before Google came onto the scene using PageRank (a measurement of link popularity) to rank websites, search engines generally based their rankings on the first two factors we’ve discussed.
What was the problem with that approach?
Webmasters are greedy. We can’t help ourselves. We love traffic.
Keyword stuffing was rampant, and rarely did webmasters stick to the honest truth about what their website was relevant to. The result: search results littered with SPAM and just about anything with very little relevance.
The reason links were a better signal to Google was simple – it’s harder to game. While you can control the content/keywords on your website, it’s a lot harder to control it on someone else’s. It’s pretty tough to get someone to link to you against their will.
The model simply worked – Google’s results were better. The other search engines quickly caught on and looked to signals of trust for sorting through the SPAM.
Some signals that search engines use to determine whether they can trust your website:
• Inbound links – quality is more important than quantity here – that’s why those “500 directory links for $49.95″ deals are worthless. The easiest links to get are the least valuable/powerful. A single link from Google.com, for example, would outweigh tens of thousands of weaker links – that’s how much quality matters.
• Website age – if your website is new there’s not much you can do about it without a Delorian and a working flux capacitor (“Marty, the website is in place – now we gotta go back to the future!”). A website that’s been around for a while is simply more trusted by search engines.
• Who you link to – it’s not just about inbound links. Search engines also look at what websites you link to from your pages. If you’re linking out to SPAMMY websites, they might consider you part of that “bad neighborhood” and penalize your website. Be careful who you vouch for.
There are other signals involved, but if you’ve got these three trust factors working in your favor you’re very likely to dominate the competition.
The bottom line: search engines don’t like getting burned by ranking SPAMMY websites. They want to know they can trust your website. Once you’ve got your on-page factors right (#1 and #2 above), you’ll need to build trust signals before your website will rank competitively.
Simple And Successful SEO Strategies – On Page Optimization
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Monday, February 22, 2010
Simple And Successful SEO Strategies – On Page Optimization
SEO doesn’t have to be complex and by following these simple on-page optimization techniques you can give your SEO campaign the perfect start.
SEO is often seen as being a difficult and in-depth process, but the reality is that by following some reasonably common sense guidelines it is possible to get good rankings. That’s not to say that optimization is a simple or quick process; there are, unfortunately, no short cuts. Your SEO efforts should be a concerted and long term endeavour, in order for you to enjoy the best possible results, and should incorporate both on-page and off-page optimization techniques. By following the on-page SEO strategies below you can set a strong foundation for all your SEO work.
Keyword Research
Before you begin penning content and writing title and meta tags you first need to research the keywords you will use on each of your pages. Using the wrong keywords can negatively impact your entire campaign, causing you to lose untold hours and days of work and eventually forcing you to concede that you made the wrong decision and start all over again.
The most appropriate and most beneficial keywords are popular enough that they will enjoy regular searches but without being prohibitively competitive or overly generic. A number of keyword research tools exist and your competitors’ websites are a good place to start your early research. Ensure keywords are targeted specifically to the type of content you will provide as well as the service or product you will be selling. More targeted keywords will result in more targeted visitors and targeted visitors mean greater conversion rates and an improved return on your efforts.
Niche And Semantically Related Keywords
A good strategy is to incorporate a reasonable list of competitive keywords with less competitive ones. The more niche keywords will serve you well during the early days of your website and over time you should be able to start competing for the more challenging of the keywords you use. Also incorporate semantically or topically related keywords into your keyword list because the search engines are placing more and more emphasis on those pages that use related keywords as well as primary keywords.
Accessibility And Standards
Site accessibility is an integral part of good website design, but it should also be considered an important factor in any SEO strategy. Using standards based code for your website will help to ensure that anybody that wishes to access and view your website will be able to do so. It will also mean that the spiders used by search engines will be able to access and index your pages effectively ensuring that you get the full credít for your site.
Navigation And Intra-Linking
Your navigation menu and internal links should be prominently placed, easy to see, and easy to follow for the spiders. It is good practice to include a text link from the home page to a compliant sitemap on your site, alleviating any potential problems that might arise from broken links or the use of graphical or flash based navigation menus. You can also consider adding links into the main body of your content, although too many will make the page difficult to read and therefore diminish the overall effectiveness so don’t get too carried away.
Title And Meta Tags
While search engines do not specifically use the meta tags to help assess the value of a page like they once did, meta tags are still critical to good SEO performance. The title and description tags that you add at the top of a page are used in various ways including in the compiling and display of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This is the first thing a potential site visitor will see from your site so this mini listing needs to be as effective as any paid advert or PPC ad. Poorly written titles and descriptions can put many readers off viewing your pages so a little time and effort here can have a very positive effect.
Using your keywords in the title and the description is good practice because these will be highlighted in the search results if they were used in the search query itself. This will make your result more prominent and instantly identify your page as being relevant to the user. Don’t needlessly use keywords, however, and don’t throw extra keywords into the description at the cost of a well written, short ad.
Other Formatting Tags
On-page content should always be written with the visitor in mind, although obviously it can still be optimized for search engines. As such, proper page structure is important to your reader as well as to the engines. H1 and H2 tags are an effective way of breaking up page content, and give readers the chance to skim through a page and determine its relevance.
A page should only contain a single H1 tag at the top of the content but can include multiple H2 and H3 tags. Alt tags on images should also be included and these as well as the actual file path to the image itself can include important keywords (but do make sure that they actually make sense and are more than just a keyword thrown in for the sake of SEO).
Page Content Optimization
Finally, we get to the heart of the page – the content itself. Use the keywords you researched for a page, including semantically related keywords. Write as naturally and appealingly as possible while keeping those keywords in mind and don’t get carried away stuffing or cramming them into the body of the text. Not only is this unappealing to readers but is seriously frowned upon by the search engines.
The reader really is the most important aspect of your content. If the majority of your visitors are coming from the search engines, remember that they arrived using specific keywords. This means that they are searching for equally specific information relating to those keywords – make sure you deliver on the promise that you made in your title and description tags.
How to Recognize a Bad SEO Company
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about getting potential customers to visit your website. It is also about building a quality website full of great content. It uses keywords appropriately and gets links “naturally” because people love what you have on your site. SEO companies can provide very useful services including keyword research, site review, providing technical advice on your website development and also management of online business marketing campaigns. They can also help with content development, article marketing and article distribution. Although it’s not brain surgery, it is hard to do and usually requires a lot of thought and real work.
Some unethical SEO firms attempt to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. These practices could get your website ranked lower or even banned. When looking at SEO – either to optimize yourself or if you are looking to hire a company, here are some things to take into account.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Say They Will Get Thousands Of Links To Your Site
It is not the number of sites that make the difference – it’s the quality of the sites. When firms promise huge numbers of links, or say that you will become part of their “network of sites”, it usually means a link farm is involved. A link farm is any group of websites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Search engines don’t like this and it can lead to penalties. Instead, practice reciprocal linking with legitimate and related websites for better search engine ranking.
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Guarantee A High Ranking On Google
No one can guarantee a high ranking on Google. Some SEO companies provide a guarantee on their services. This is fine. What’s not fine is guaranteeing high ranking in an incredibly short period of time. When these unrealistic results fail to happen, the company will balk at giving a refund, suggest other services instead and start to become unreachable or disappear.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Send “Spammy” Emails
These emails are unsolicited and usually begin with “We’ve noticed that you are not lísted in some search engines…” You should be searching for a high-ranking SEO company; they will not be searching for you. Spam means scam. You don’t buy your medications from spammers so why buy SEO services from them?
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Are Secretive Or Don’t Clearly Explain What They Are Going To Do
Most reputable SEO firms are upfront with their clients and like to share their knowledge. They are confident that even if their clients understand their process, they won’t leave them. If the SEO firm claims it’s too complicated for you to understand, or if they say they have trade secrets and proprietary technology, it’s a sign that they may not be ethical in dealing with your website.
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Say They Will Submít Your Site To Thousands Of Top Search Engines And Directories
Besides the small fact that there aren’t that many search engines, consider that the guidelines of the search engines themselves tell you that it doesn’t do any good anymore. Search Engines are good at what they do – searching for sites – and you don’t need to pay someone to submít your site to a search engine. If they make this claim, they will probably use Free For All (FFA) junk sites that might damage your site’s standings.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Say They Can Optimize And Promote Your Site For A Low, Low Monthly Fee
Not all monthly SEO or SEM (Search Engine Management) service contracts or monthly fees are a scam. There are real reasons to pay a monthly fee to an SEO expert. These would include conditions when you would require SEO management: when you or someone else is constantly generating new content or new features for your site; implementing link-building campaigns; implementing PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns; or starting a brandcasting campaign. Press release distribution, email campaigns and article marketing campaigns could also require a legitimate monthly fee.
Not-so-legitimate fees could include monthly re-submittíng of your site to search engines, “tweaking” your code to keep up with changes and regularly submitting your site to hundreds of useless free-for-all directories. The worthwhile companies that charge a monthly fee will usually be able to tell you exactly how much it is per month to generate blog entries or generate and distribute articles or press releases. And it won’t be for the low, low price of $79.95.
Choose Your SEO Company And Services Carefully
Do your research and don’t make the decision lightly. If you were hiring a contractor to remodel your kitchen you would want to see other kitchen projects they’ve done and speak with the owners about the company’s business practices. You should do the same thing when hiring an SEO company. Get referrals and really speak with them.
There are many online tips about choosing and hiring SEO firms that you can check out as well. Remember, SEO is a long-term strategy and you should take the time to do your research before buying or you’ll probably be buying again.
Top 10 Don’ts for SEO Copywriting
Following in the footsteps of Rand Fishkin and Guy Kawasaki, I decided to come up with my own list of don’ts.
There is no shortage of don’ts when it comes to SEO copywriting. It seems this niche got off to a rough start many years ago when early comers somehow misconstrued the core principles of the trade. Allow me to elaborate on how not to write SEO copy.
1. Don’t shove as many keyphrases into the copy as humanly possible. It’s not about the sheer volume of search terms you include. Yes, Google and other engines should be able to follow what the page is about. Yes, engines are looking to match a searcher’s query with search engine optimized content on your web pages, but which pages land at the top is decided through a series of calculations far more complex than any simple ratio. When you overload copy with keyphrases you sacrifice quality and user experience.
2. Don’t lose site of balance. If SEO copywriting isn’t about the percentage of keywords within the copy, then what is it about? Balance. You have two audiences with SEO copywriting: the search engines and your site visitors. But surprisingly, the balance doesn’t come with serving both masters well. The balance comes in how much you cater to the engines. You see, your site visitors always come first. However, if you write with too little focus on the engines, you won’t see good rankings. If you put too much focus on the engines, you’ll start to lose your target audience. Balance. Always balance.
3. Don’t let someone else choose the keywords. If keyword research isn’t a service you offer, an SEO firm, keyword specialist or some other professional that your client hires will have to conduct the research. Don’t just accept keyphrases these folks toss your way. Ask to see the entire list with recommendations as to which terms would be best strategically. Then you, as the professional writer, can decide which will also work best within the copy.
4. Don’t sacrifice flow for numbers. This is a follow-up to number three and is a major issue with bad SEO copywriting. SEOs or clients sometimes insist on using hacked-up search phrases that simply don’t work in a normal sentence. An example? “Candies samples free.” Many copywriters will just grin and bear it, sacrificing quality and flow for the sake of competitive values or other numbers. The result is often some obnoxious sentence like, “If you’re looking for candies samples free, you’ve come to the right place!” Forcing a phrase into the copy at all costs never turns out well.
5. Don’t use keyphrases that don’t apply to the page. If you operate a site about wedding receptions, don’t try to force a search term about wedding dresses into the copy just because it pulls a lot of traffic. (A) Unless you sell, alter or design wedding dresses, it won’t be applicable. (B) Even if you manage to get the page ranked well for the phrase [wedding dresses], once the visitor clicks to your site and realizes you have nothing to do with wedding dresses, they will leave. It’s a waste of time and effort and it creates a poor user experience.
6. Don’t use misspellings and correct spellings on the same page. I fully understand that the misspellings of keyphrases can be valuable search terms. However, to mix correct spellings and misspellings within the same page of copy looks like you’ve got a bunch of typos in the content. It’s just not professional. Some writers will go for the old, “We rent limousines (sometimes spelled limosenes) for the most affordable prices in town.” I don’t care for that approach. It’s just not natural. Would you ever see brochure or newspaper copy that reads that way? I think not.
7. Don’t use keyphrases the exact same way every time. This is how we end up with horrible SEO copy that sounds like a 4th grader wrote it. (See #4.) There are lots of ways to use keywords in copy, not just one. In order to sound natural, you have to get creative with your keyphrase use. One way is to break up phrases using punctuation. Since search engines don’t pay attention to basic punctuation marks, you can easily write something using the search term [real estate Hawaii] that reads like this: “Currently there is an impressive selection of available real estate. Hawaii listings can be.” See? “Real estate” is at the end of the first sentence and “Hawaii” is at the beginning of the second sentence. The engines ignore the period so there’s no problem.
8. Don’t use all types of search phrases for every situation. There are many ways in which this “don’t” applies. One quick example is that of an ecommerce site. It wouldn’t be advisable to use specific, long-tail keyphrases on the home page of your site. They are much too specific in most cases and are better suited for individual product pages. Broader terms are typically best for an ecommerce home page. If you don’t understand the best applications for the various types of keywords, you’re likely to have lackluster results.
9. Don’t neglect ALT tags/image attributes. These tags are the ones associated with images on your pages and they carry a good deal of weight especially if the image is used as a link. The ALT text counts the same as anchor text in a text-based link. Depending on a few different factors, ALT text may be a good place for those misspellings mentioned in #6.
10. Don’t forget the chain of protocol. There’s a method to the SEO copywriting madness. The idea is not to get as many different keyphrases onto a page as possible. Just the opposite, in fact. Rather than having 12 different search terms used only one time each, you need to use two to four keyphrases (depending on the length of your copy) per page. The title, META tags, ALT tags, other coding elements and on-page copy need to support each other as far as keyphrase use goes. Your goal is to let the engines know that you have original, relevant content about a narrow topic.
Unless you have an exceptional number of back links built up, just mentioning [dark chocolate], [chocolate strawberries], [chocolate chip cookies], [chocolate cake], [chocolate desserts], [organic chocolate] and [chocolate cheesecake] once each on a web page isn’t likely to do a lot of good. Instead, pick two or three terms which are closely related and use them several times each along with mentioning them in your tags.
When you avoid making common mistakes, you’ll find your SEO copywriting flows much better, is more natural-sounding and ranks higher, too.
Top 5 SEO Copywriting Mistakes That Will Cost You Money
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 19, 2010
Top 5 SEO Copywriting Mistakes That Will Cost You Money
Just as there are different ways of writing for novels, for advertising and for films, there is a way to write for the Internet. To find content on the web we use search engines. To make sure the search engines find our content we optimize it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) copywriting is writing content that the reader wants to read and will be easily found and rank well with search engines.
The object of writing for the Internet is to get the reader to use your content to click through to your website. If they don’t get to your website, they can’t look at your products or services and you will have lost a potential customer. Here are a few mistakes that you’ll want to avoid.
Mistake #1 – Have a Boring Or Vague Title
This is a very important mistake not to make. If they don’t even look at your article, all your time and effort are wasted. If you provide an attention grabbing title, one that makes them curious enough to open your article, you’re halfway there.
Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking: Use titles that describe the content of your article but are short and concise; Use keywords in your title that people might be searching for; People can’t resist articles with lists or tips such as, “Top 10 Copywriting Mistakes” or “Top Tips on Getting Your Articles Read”; and “How to” articles are popular as well.
The bottom line here is to put some thought into your title. Think about how to get a reader’s attention.
Mistake #2 – Create Bland Content
From beginning to end – try to keep it interesting. Make reading your article a pleasurable experience for your reader. Here are a few suggestions.
Make it fun, relevant and grammatically correct. Nothing pulls the reader out of a story more than bad grammar and misspelled words.
Use short sentences and try to limit paragraphs to two or three lines. Concentrate on writing rich and appropriate copy rather than just practical words.
Have a sense of humor. This gives your articles personality. Don’t give a sales pitch – use a call to action. The purpose of your article is to get your reader to get to your website. Your writing could include a reason for them to find more information, either from another article that you’ve written or from your website.
“Content is king”. If you keep this in mind, you’ll be ahead of the game. Search engines love well-written and useful content. So do readers.
Mistake #3 – Make Your Article As Hard To Read As Possible
Every post should be easy to scan. That means your reader should be able to easily scan your article and find headings that will tell them what the section is about. You can use numbered lists and bullets to organize your ideas so they are quickly read. If you italicize, bold or underline a word, the search engine assumes that it’s a keyword. You can use this to your advantage. However, if you use these tags a lot or if you use them on non-keywords, you’ll confuse the search engines and lose any advantage you would have gained.
The other thing that makes a page easy to scan is short paragraphs. When you look at your copy on the page, you should see a lot of white space. Looking at a page that’s completely filled with words is intimidating to a reader. You want to make it as friendly and welcoming and as easy to read as possible.
Mistake #4 – Misuse Keywords
Keywords are at the core of writing for the web. You should research and know your keywords. Here are a few suggestions about keywords:
• Target a set of keywords in every post but don’t use them more than three or four times on a page. If you use the same keywords again and again, search engines can tell that the article isn’t very useful.
• Use a wide variety of words that pertain to your topic.
• Use synonyms of your keywords in addition to the keywords.
• Don’t stick to a standard keyword density for every article or post. You want your words to flow naturally, and overuse of keywords makes your copy sound forced.
• Review your keywords every so often. Sometimes your business changes and you want your articles to change also.
If you provide your reader with content that lets them learn or experience something, you’ll have a happy reader. If you provide the search engines with good keywords and a variety of them, you’ll have a happy search engine.
Mistake #5 – Try To Trick the Search Engines
Practicing questionable tactics like cloaking and using hidden text is a bad idea. The last thing you want is to get your site banned. These kinds of tricks will do it. So can using hidden links, link farms, linking to bad sites, distributing viruses and sending spam. Don’t try to trick the search engines and don’t work with any companies that use these techniques.
Overcoming these common mistakes can give you head start when creating effective content on the Internet. SEO copywriting requires effort. Putting content on your site and distributing it on the web takes time. If you work at it over time and create lots of valuable content, effectively “brandcasting” your site, you’ll be rewarded with more traffíc.
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