Posts from the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category
Earlier today Google began rolling out a huge update to it’s search engine – the Knowledge Graph. This is a step toward what Google considers the next evolution of search – to understand what we’re searching for and return the relevant information. While I applaud this update as an improvement for searchers everywhere, this is another step toward a much more difficult world for any business operating online.
Here’s why…
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I remember growing up and having the phone ring during dinner. My Mom would run to get it, and a few second later I’d hear the familiar phrase: “We do not take solicitations over the phone.” That happened on a daily basis, sometimes a few times per day.
As with every industry cutbacks occur and what was a voice on the other line turned into a computer with a recorded message. I’d try sending the “do not call” signal to the computer by continuously hitting the “0″ button on the phone. That never worked.
Between do-not-call lists and consumer backlash I’m happy to report those days are almost at an end! But if annoying the hell out of people on the phone isn’t getting companies leads, what is?
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Before you read this post do me a small favor – open up your Google Analytics account, select your website profile, under Traffic Sources click the Overview link, and on the bottom right in the Keywords section click view full report.
Google Analytics Keyword Report
Do you see (not provided) on that list? Read on my friend…
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When do you use a search engine? How do you use a search engine? How do you decide if you need to use a search engine in the first place? Are there alternatives that provide “better” answers faster?
These are some of the questions we were discussing at a recent Ruby on Rails meetup. Let no one say we geeks don’t ask the hard questions!
As the builder of a business that helps entrepreneurs attract and convert their customers online it’s my job to consider the future and how best to postion them for it.
In November 2010 online marketing was pretty straight forward. With ideal customer profile in hand it was a matter of:
- Creating content that attracts your ideal customers
- Optimize the content for both search (being found) and social (being shared)
- Convert visitors to leads using a variety of methods
- Stay in touch with those leads until they become customers
And while the devil is in the details that was pretty much it.
Time have changed, and they are changing faster than every before.
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SEO has changed, and there is no going back. Want to ensure your site doesn’t disappear from Google and that you’re “future proofed” for the next round of vicious Panda updates? Read on.
Recently Search Engine Land reported that Google is de-indexing link networks like it’s going out of style. That means that all the links they (the link networks) had in Google are now gone. In Google, they no longer exist.
This is just the latest round of updates Google has pushed out. And they’re just getting warmed up.
Matt Cutts – Google’s head of web spam - recently gave a sneak preview into Google’s next update. Their target? Overly SEO’d websites. Here’s a tasty quote from the article:
We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.
- Matt Cutts
Too much SEO? You’re next in line for the Google smackdown.
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SEO is a continuously evolving challenge for every business looking to attract and convert their customers online, which describes many businesses today. One of the latest updates to hit the radar is Google’s support of something called microformats. In this post I want to give you the skinny on microformats and let you know how to use them to future-proof your WordPress website for the future of SEO.
Micro…what?!
In short, microformats are markup on web pages that provide a much greater amount of information about what’s on that page. The best way to understand them is to look at an example. I’ll use the movie schema from Schema.org.
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Every post you write does not have to be perfectly optimized for search engine optimization (SEO).
Every post you write doesn’t need to have a marketing goal behind it.
It doesn’t have to be published or shared at a “perfect time.”
Sometimes people just want to know what’s going on with you. They want to know what the latest going-on in your world is.
When I started blogging in 2005 I wrote about what I was up to. I shared code examples and updates about the apps I was working on. I talked about my business.
At the time I didn’t know what SEO was, but it didn’t matter. You fed your RSS feed into a blog aggregator and people connected with you. It was greatly topical back then and niche aggregators like DZone and RubyFlow dominated for programmers.
It was the time of Digg.
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In October (2011) I posted a conversation between myself and Dino where we spoke about how Google was deeply integrating social media (namely Google+) into their search results. And while some evidence was anecdotal today I have even more proof of this.
Here’s the bottom line: the searches you do and the people that you’re connected to directly impact (some might say limit) the information you have access to.
Allow me to present three exhibits.
Exhibit A: Google Search While Logged In
Exhibit A is a search result for the excellent HitSniffer service I ran while logged into Google. The keyword I’m checking for is “website statistics”. When logged in, I see them ranking at number 10. Interesting to note that there are two results from people I’m connected to on Google+.
Exhibit A - Google Search while logged in
And now for exhibit b.
Exhibit B: Google Search With Verbatim
Google recently launched a tool called Verbatim, which allows you to run searches without their “enhancement” which includes, and I quote:
- suggest spelling corrections and alternative spellings
- personalize your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before
- include synonyms of your search terms to find related results
- find results that match similar terms to those in your query
- search for words with the same stem, like “running” when you search for [ run ]
That’s search Viagra (TM) if I ever saw it…
Anyhow, the point is that they tailor your search based on a number of factors. Here’s the same search for “website statistics” using the Verbatim tool:
Exhibit B - Google search with the Verbatim tool
HitSniffer now ranks number 6, which is better than 10! I ran this same query earlier and they came up at #4. Either way they are above the #10 mark which means more clicks for them.
If you’re using Google Chrome there’s a Chrome extension called Gooverbatim to add the “Yes, really” button to Google that you see in my screenshot. This button enables you to easily run a Verbatim search.
So what about being logged out? What then?
Let’s look at our final exhibit – exhibit c.
Exhibit C: Google Search While Logged Out And Cache Cleared
I logged out of Google, cleared my cache and browsing history, and ran the search again. This time HitSniffer came up at… #9!
Exhibit C - Google Search while logged out and cache cleared
Man they are all over the board! All in all pretty interesting though no?
And Where Did My Keywords Go?!
And if you weren’t aware of it when people are logged into Google the keywords that they use to get to your website are no longer provided to you in Google Analytics or other tools that use Google information, except for AdWords.
SEOMoz has an excellent post from Josh Braaten on the subject I suggest you read – A Letter To GoogleFrom Inbound Marketers. The comments are very good too and there are some suggestions of how to handle the change…
OMG WTF Do We Do Now?!
This only solidifies my recent strategy shift. Basically for me it comes down to the combination of a three things:
- Continue using SEO. After all we know the keywords we’re targeting, don’t we?
- Continue using social media to build community around my business
- Create products that are fun, useful, create revenue streams for my services and grow my brand
Is that a lot of work? You bet it is! But what isn’t?
Either way the future is shaping up to keep all of us pretty busy and on our toes, and building relationships.
I swear, if I read another post where someone is bashing search engine optimization I am going to literally freak out. I am sick and tired of hearing about how this PR person or that social media consultant or that marketing consultant over there thinks search engine optimization is full of a bunch of shady people using shady tactics to rank sites.
In every industry there are bad apples.
Thanks to the Internet there are even more of them. And thanks to the Internet we can very publicly call shenanigans and help these shady people to be buried under their own garbage. But not every SEO person on the planet is selling snake oil. Yet company after company falls for the false promises of high rankings for little cash. If it was really that easy to get high rankings wouldn’t everyone be doing it? Yes they would, because the higher up you are for the keywords that your customers use the more leads and sales you will get.
I submit to you exhibit A – the click distribution for search engine results. This backs up what I just said about getting more clicks the higher up in the results your page is. This also assumes that you are ranking for a word that’s actually relevant to your business, products, services and/or industry. Tricksy.
Click distribution for search engine results
So before I take my Thor war hammer to a few folks let’s dispel some SEO myths. If anyone tells you one of these hang up the phone or delete their emails. Strap yourself in, it’s about to get seriously fun.
3 SEO Myths BUSTED!
Myth #1: Guaranteed Front-Page Rankings
Um, no. There are no guarantees of rankings. There are many factors that go into how Google ranks your website, and the only people that know for sure are the people working at Google. And they won’t tell. Nobody can guarantee you rankings as there are so many factors that Google uses to determine your rank, and they’re changing the weight of each all the time.
We do know a few things though, and I cover that below. But let’s continue this fun and look at the next myth.
Myth #2: Blog Comments Are Great For Building Links
I heard this one early on. And while blog comments are great for connecting with people and getting more exposure to a blog owner and his or her audience, if we’re honest these are not high-value links. In fact, not all links are do-follow, meaning you get no “SEO juice” for them.
And while we’re on this topic, I wrote an article on how you can tell if your SEO company is worth the money. In that article I show an example of a comment spinning service that will essentially spam comment blogs in order to get links for your site.
I don’t condone this tactic and we don’t use it here.
Do you really want your company, your brand, your reputation besmirched by a metric ton of crap comments spread all over the Internet?
If you’re fine with that good luck to you. For everyone else, leave that stuff alone.
Myth #3: Article Marketing Is A Great Way To Build Links
This myth comes straight from Internet Marketing land. Article marketing started as a way to show publishers that you knew your stuff and could write about it. If they found it worthy of their sites, they would publish it and you’d get credit as the author. Then someone came along and bastardized it. Suddenly it became a way of building links to your site.
From that spawned article spinning software that took one article and turned it into many “unique” articles. Those articles were then spread to countless article directories, and the theory goes that Google then indexes the pages, sees the link on your keyword heading back to your site and give you credit for it.
Not so much. Google took very unkindly to this tactic and in the Panda updates gave most of these sites a polar bear sized beatdown.
Suddenly these links weren’t only worthless but sites dropped hundreds of places in the results. Too bad so sad. Franky I wouldn’t waste your time on this as it’s a huge amount of effort for little payoff.
What Actually Works In SEO
While SEO practitioners don’t know exactly how Google does their maths we do have some indications of the at least 200+ factors they use. Here are a few:
- On-Page Factors: strategic use of a single keyword or keyword phrase in the title, description, keywords (debatable) and content
- The quality and quantity of inbound links to the page
- Coming soon: social signals such as tweets of the page
I share a very effective method we use to help give our clients a huge boost in an seo case study which you can download for free.
How can you get high-quality links to your site? A few methods that actually work are:
- Guest posting on other people’s sites
- Creating content for your audience that is highly share-worthy and link-worthy
Don’t go the JC Penny route and buy the links on other people’s sites. That didn’t work out too well for them, and it definitely won’t work out well for you either. And if you call Google on the phone I doubt they’ll answer. I tried to buy something from them once and they wouldn’t even take the call.
What Makes Content Share-Worthy And Link-Worthy?
Your guess is as good as mine here. Seriously. What makes your readers want to share something? Write a metric ton of posts and see which ones get the clicks and shares.
My post “Google Proves Not Being On Social Media Will Kill Your SEO” has received more than 1433 page views, 181 tweets, 13 +1′s, 60 LinkedIn Shares, 98 Stumbles and 24 comments. And as much as my ego would love for me to tell you that I knew the post would be that popular (and the most popular post here yet) I really had no idea. I read a lot, spotted a trend, checked that against what is happening on my niche sites and for our clients and wrote about it. I then followed it up with a plugin to help you all.
Though many won’t want to hear it the formula is this – write a lot, see what people respond to, and test. And then do it again and again and again.
A Special Note To The Shady SEO People And The Companies Using Them
Your days are very limited. Google and the other search engines are clamping down on your short-sighted practices. The screws will be tightened more until you are squeezed out. Consumers are becoming more savvy. The information is out there – all they have to do is look. And looking they are in ever growing numbers.
Burn down your own house but keep the happy flames from those of us actually providing value to our customers and clients.
A Very Special Note For You
Build a community around your business of customers and fans. Help first and sell second. Capture the language of your audience, echo that back in your posts, find out what content your readers truly value, and make it easy to share. Combine that with continuous testing and you will rank higher in the search engines. It won’t happen overnight but it will happen.
Skip the shady tactics that only work in the short run. Don’t compromise the reputation of your business in a foolish attempt to get guaranteed front-page rankings. Think smarter, work smarter. The rewards do come.
Search engine optimization and social media are becoming ever more intertwined as the days and weeks go by (we move fast on the Internet folks). With the introduction of Google+ this is no longer theory it is fact. And if your business does not participate in social media it will kill your search engine optimization efforts.
Click on the screenshot below to open it in a new window. We’re going to be talking about this and it will be easier to reference.
Click on the image so we can talk about it
Let’s get to it!
The Semantic Web Has Risen
There is no easy way for me to explain what the semantic web is so I’ll let Wikipedia do it for me:
The Semantic Web is a “web of data” that facilitates machines to understand the semantics, or meaning, of information on the World Wide Web. It extends the network of hyperlinked human-readable web pages by inserting machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other, enabling automated agents to access the Web more intelligently and perform tasks on behalf of users.
What this means is that web pages are associated with specific people and software like search engines and web browsers can see that association. This stuff has been in progress for many years, but we’re at the point now where it’s starting to come into play.
Recently Google has added support in their search engine for two HTML tags: rel=”author” and rel=”me”. You use these tags like this:
- Use rel=”author” on a link when you want to tell Google that you are the author of the page you are linking to. An example is linking your blog post author line to your about page.
- Use rel=”me” on a link that points to another profile, for instance a Twitter or Google+ page, or a guest post that you’ve written. This tells Google that you associated with that profile or content
I linked to a YouTube video on my Google+ profile where Othar Hansson (of Google) says explicitly that the big G wants to use this as a ranking signal. And this bring us to the image open in another window.
The Effect of Social On Search
The screenshot is of a test I ran in the Rich Snippets Testing Tool provided by Google to test if your semantic markup is working. We’re halfway there with this blog. What I’ve done so far is:
- Tell Google that I am the author of this blog
- Tell Google which page contains my profile information
- Linked to my other social profiles, including my Google+ profile, using the rel=”me” link tag
- Linked back to my blog on my Google+ profile
I ran a recent post through the tool as a test took the screenshot. There are 3 major parts I’ve pointed to. All are extremely important. Let’s look at each.
Part 1: The Search Result
The top part of the screenshot shows an example search result. There are a number of noteworthy parts:
- The standard SEO information is there – title, url and description
- It indicates me as the author and puts my picture beside the result
- It shows the picture of the last person to comment on the blog post – my friend Adam Teece
So we can see deeper connections between what’s happening on the blog post and the result that Google displays. It gets even more interesting from there. The next two parts of the screenshot show additional information that Google has about the people involved with this page.
Part 2: Google Knows About The Author
Here is where more of the semantic markup stuff we talked about comes in. Because of the updates I’ve made to the blog, to my profile on the blog, and the link to my Google+ profile, Google can see my:
- Name
- Author profile
- Google profile
The tool also tells me that the authorship information is correctly formatted. Now Google knows for sure that it is I that am the author of this post and can connect me with the appropriate profiles.
Oh but wait, that’s not all!
Part 3: What Google Knows About The Commenters
Looking at Adams comment on my post about knowing if your SEO company is worth the money, you see:
- His name
- A link to his site
- His gravatar image
Google sees that too, and can also split his name into first name and last name. But what’s really interesting is how it uses that information in the search result – it put Adam’s picture right beside it! And based on his Google+ profile it looks like it chose to display his gravatar profile picture rather than his Google+ profile picture.
I wonder if Adam had his blog linked to his Google+ profile if Google would display that image instead…
Implications For Your Business
The semantic markup that Google is now supporting has been around for many years. Now a growing number of companies are beginning to implement it on their sites to show who the original author of the content is.
Don’t forget that Google said they are going to use this as a ranking indicator too. This means that those annoying people that steal your content won’t get credit for your work and you’ll rank higher than they do. You win, they lose (as they should).
With social media being tightly connected with search – your social media profiles ranking highly, your image and commenters images being placed beside search results, Google connecting all the profiles together to determine authority – it’s imperative that you participate in social media, and become an authority in your niche. Your standings in the search engines will be up for grabs very soon. Wouldn’t you like to rank above your competition?
My advice: start implementing this on your blog today.
It seems that every time I turn around I see a blog post about some shady search engine optimization (SEO) tactic being used by a company. In fact a marketing program I just signed up for suggested the use of a service that creates backlinks to your site by commenting on blogs and using your main keywords in the name field. Backlinks help your pages get ranked higher in the search engines and you’d think that having hundreds of comments pointing to your page would help with that. And you’d be right to a certain extent.
This service allows to to create different versions of comments that they will automatically create on many blogs. If you’ve been moderating your comment spam you might notice a few of these showing up:
Comment Spintax Example 1
Comment Spintax 2
Comment Spintax 3
So with the plethora of low-quality tactics and shady SEO companies eagerly vying for your dollars, how do you know who to trust and how can you verify that what they are doing really works?
Keep Your SEO Company Honest
I add Dempsey Marketing to this list too, and I fully expect and welcome all of our SEO clients to verify the results we provide in our weekly SEO update reports. So here’s how to do that.
There’s an excellent WordPress plugin called Rank Tracker that will send you reports by email showing what pages on your site people are finding in the search engines, what keywords they are using to get there, and where you rank in the search engines for those keywords.
I can’t even tell you how awesome this is.
For $27 you can download and install Rank Tracker and within 24 hours start getting email reports. Here’s an example of one I got a few hours after installing the plugin:
A Compliment To HitSniffer
I told you a bit ago that HitSniffer added a similar functionality to their site where you can see in real time the keywords people are using to get to your site and where you rank. I don’t see this as a replacement but rather a compliment to that functionality.
The more data you have the better you can optimize your site. The better optimized your site the more visitors you have. And the more visitors you have the more leads you can capture and then convert.
Can You Do This For Free?
There is but it’s going to take a heck of a lot of time. So you could:
- Log into your cpanel
- Then your awstats
- Then copy and paste the keyword list into notepad
- Then go through and delete all the extra numbers that are in the data (this always drove me nuts)
- Then copy that list into a tool if you can find one that works with the way Google keep changing their layouts
- Then wait…
But why? $27 for the Rank Tracker plugin is pennies on the dollar for the value that you get. Imagine being able to know exactly where each of your website pages rank, improving them, and then bringing more of your customers to your site. And how much work does it take? Less than 15 minutes each day.
Other Ways To Use The Plugin
One of the things we stress to our clients is the use of long-tail keywords for blog posts. Long-tail keywords are phrases 3 or more words in length. A major keyword would be “shoes” while long-tail keywords would be:
- red tennis shoes
- athletic shoes for running
- long distance hiking shoes
You can tell I’m not a shoe afficionado but you get the point. And this where the rank tracker plugin comes into play. Based on the keywords you know are working you can start writing blog post using variations.
That’s a lot of value for $27.
WordPress is great for publishing content, but when it comes to ranking high in the search engines, be sure you have these 7 SEO plugins installed. Let’s take a look at each.
The Magnificent 7 (SEO Plugins For WordPress)
WordPress SEO by Yoast
Out of all 7 plugins listed here, this is the one SEO plugin that you really need to go install right after you finish reading this post. This plugin does everything, including showing you a preview of what your blog post will look like on Google like so:
This is just too good to pass up!
Not only can you configure many SEO aspects of your site including titles, indexation (if a page should be indexed, or not) and your sitemap, when it comes to each blog post it will:
- Suggest keywords for you to use
- Show you if you’re getting your focus keyword in all the right places
- Analyze your page and suggest things you can do to make it even better for the search engines
In short it’s awesome and the best free SEO plugin out there.
Now blog posts and pages are great, and all that stuff the WordPress SEO plugin helps with is great, but it’s not the entire story. Do you feel the need for speed? You should. And that brings us to #2 on our list.
W3 Total Cache
Relevancy is important to Google, but so is speed. The w3 Total Cache plugin gives us that. Here’s how it’s described on the plugin page:
W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.
In plain English not only does it make your site fast, it makes it fast for people all over the world. The Internet is global, people that visit your site could be anywhere, and they all want your content fast.
I won’t bore you with the 8 levels of caching it can help with, but rest assured there’s one for everybody.
And speaking of speed, and lovely pictures and charty goodness, all those pixels can slow down our site too! #3 on our list of SEO plugins will help with that.
cSprites for WordPress
If you use pictures in your posts install the cSprites plugin. Pages can be weighed down with all the awesome images of you chatting it up with clients, speaking at events, getting drunk… I mean being lively at networking events. We know the search engines like speed so we can give em even more.
All geek speak aside what this plugin does is take all of your images and kind of squish them together into a single file called a sprite. And this sprite has some additional SEO benefit:
cSprites now has some nice SEO behavior, you can let it automatically generate ALT and TITLE tags based on things like Post title, categories, image name, etc.
Now that’s a sprite you don’t have to run away from! 
Speaking of changing direction, if you move a page to a new URL you’re going to lose all of your SEO juice. To prevent that from happening, you need #4 on the list.
Redirection
But this plugin does more than save your cookies when the SEO juice starts flying. You can also create cute little URLs and redirect them as well. And quite easily too:
Those first four directly help with SEO. The next three help indirectly, but are no less important. First up, we bring in the big G.
Google Analyticator
There’s really not much to say about this one. Google Analytics is one of the best free web analytics tools out there. It’s so big there’s even a certification for it. It’s what I like to call the Adobe Photoshop of web analytics.
With the Google Analyticator plugin you can easily tie your blog to your Google Analytics account, and then see your latest stats inside your WordPress dashboard.
Tasty stats right when you log in to WordPress
Now there’s something else you need be aware of as you’re publishing blog posts left and right, and that’s… ping spam. Avoid it with the next plugin in the list.
MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
With WordPress, each time you publish a post it automatically pings a number of services, including the search engines, to let them know you have something new and tasty for them. Only problem is that out of the box WordPress will ping whenever you update or edit a post (or page) too. So if you update a post say 10 times then it’ll ping all the services 10 times.
This is ping spam, and something you don’t want.
But don’t fret! This free plugin will stop your WordPress blog from ping spamming.
And speaking of all those blog post you’re publishing, how do you know how far they’re really going into social media and elsewhere on the Internet? Our next plugin will tell you exactly that.
PostRank
PostRank is pure awesome. In a single plugin and service you can see all of the “engagement events” happening around your blog posts. What are engagement events? A few are:
- RSS views
- Clicks
- Comments
- Tweets
- Delicious bookmarks
- Many more
The more engagement events your post gets the higher it’s score. The higher scoring a post the better you know what your blog community likes and the more of that type of content you can create.
Easy peasy.
As I recently changed my domain name most of my stats seemingly disappeared. That’s no fun, but luckily inside of WordPress we can see some numbers on each post:
More stats? Yes please!
What does this have to do with SEO? Everything. We’ve discussed how social signals are an increasingly important part of search engines, and PostRank shows us many of them on a per-post basis. Pure awesome.
That concludes the list of must-have SEO plugins for WordPress. So there’s only one thing left to do – install them all! Here’s how…
Getting These Plugins Installed
Installing plugins is easy peasy. Once you’re logged into WordPress do this:
- Click “Add New” under the “Plugins” menu item on the left hand side. This will take you to a page with a search box.
- On the search page, type in the name of the plugin and click “Search Plugins”
- On the results page, click the “Install Now” link underneath the name of the plugin.
WordPress will automatically download, install, and activate the plugin. After that you’re pretty much done.
For the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer though, you need to visit their site and download the plugin.
A few of the plugins above can be configured even more, but out of the box they’re ready to help you rank higher in the search engines.
Any Plugins You’d Recommend?
What are your top SEO plugins for WordPress? Anything not on this list?
I know this is geeky but I’m sure someone reading this is at least a little geeky, or a geek has installed a few for you. What you got?!
See you in the comments below…
Using the right keywords for search engine optimization means the difference between wasting time & money and attracting your ideal customer. But many companies believe that pure numbers on keywords are enough to bring in the business.
That idea is entirely incorrect.
Download the latest SEO guide: Keywords That Convert And How To Find Them and discover a method of using keywords that directly impact the bottom line of your business.
Oh yes, you want some of this
There’s been a lot of debate on whether or not to use Triberr to help increase your reach on Twitter. No more debate – you do. Here’s why.
Search Engines Will Like You
More and more Google and the other search engines are using “social signals” to help show the relevance of a certain piece of content. The Google +1 button is evidence that Google is looking for additional information to help them determine relevance. After all, there are limitations to algorithms, and is a computer really the best one to tell you what is relevant? But then again, is the crowd always full of wisdom?
Who says that both you and I will find the same piece of content relevant in terms of a search phrase? It’s a non-trivial problem. Google so far is the best at it, and Bing is pretty good too.
Either way, all the search engines are looking for more signals that something is relevant. Social, while currently a small part, is becoming an increasing part of that.
So Why Then Do You Want To Use Triberr?
One of the strategies I employ with social media is going wide and deep. The reasons for that are in another post, but it comes down to this: getting your content in front of more people increases the likelihood that it will get in front of more of your ideal customers.
That’s where Triberr comes in.
Now, if you’re inviting people out of the blue into your tribes, shame on you. Dino’s posted on a number of Triberr strategies, but what I find is working for me is this:
- Seek out people similar to yourself. Some might call these your competition. If you take that view I have a link to a post below for you.
- Read a number of their blog posts, see their level of interaction on Twitter.
- If the person is a fit, invite them into your tribe.
- Sit back and bask as your content is shared with more and more people
Did I mention too that your tweet count automatically goes up as well for every post that goes out via Triberr? That ties into the “social signals” we discussed above.
And Thus I End My Argument, Well Almost
When Twitter hit the mainstream many years ago, I remember being asked if I was upset that everyone was hopping on Twitter. After all, we early adopters were geeks. We were forming relationships, sharing links and sharing ourselves. Who are all these interlopers who have no idea what they are doing?!
But no, I wasn’t upset. Because what opened up with the huge influx of people was an enormous opportunity. How else can you connect with so many people so quickly? It’s a dream come true for every business owners.
But it changed as all things do.
When I started blogging in 2007, the blogosphere was mainly people sharing stories about themselves. Now it’s a cornerstone of every online marketing strategy.
It’s not that the purity has been lost in blogging or Twitter, it’s just a different ballgame now.
Are You Playing On The Right Field?
Ever have a dream where you showed up one place only to find out you were in the wrong place, and then no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t get to where you were supposed to be? It’s like that.
Interesting thing about Twitter is that it’s both a broadcast medium and a 1-on-1 medium too, at the same time. Never break the rule of 1-on-1, but never forget the broadcast part either.
Cast a wide net, but make sure your net is made to catch the right fish.
Triberr is that net.
Let The Battle Of The Websites Begin!
In the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) case study I released last week you were introduced to the method I used to get a website to #3 on Google – the Bullseye SEO Method. This method is composed of 3 steps:
- Audience-focused keyword research
- A pay-per-click (PPC) campaign to validate the keywords found in the research
- Bullseye search engine optimization: a combination of content strategy and link building
This method is proven to work as shown in the case study. And while that’s great, you could easily be lulled into a sense of thinking this won’t work for you. It can, but it depends on a large factor – competition.
Fact #1: Getting A Website Higher Up In Search Results Takes Time
In the case study it took me 3 months to get my #1 keyword to the #3 position on Google. That’s after publishing blog posts 3 times per week for months and building a link wheel. It also took testing – putting an opt-in form on the front page, making the blog the front page, and more.
Fact #2: The Number Of Results Google Shows Doesn’t Matter
For my #1 keyword there are 1,500,000 results returned.
Google Search 2011-06-15_11-39-22
But guess what – it doesn’t matter. I’m not competing with all of those sites. I don’t have to be better than all of those sites. I just need to be better than the 10 websites on the front page. Anything past page 3 is irrelevant anyhow as research has shown practically no one goes past page 3 of search results – just us research geeks.
And one other thing – with search engine optimization competition isn’t simply a single factor..
Fact #3: SEO Competition Has More Than 10 Factors
In the SEO Competition module of Market Samurai – one of the tools I use for competitive research, there are 14 factors that make up SEO competition. And that just begins to scratch the surface.
Each of these 14 factors is applied to each website on the first page of Google to produce the competition chart below.
This actually reminds me of a story…
A Short Story About A Lady
The other day I was on a phone call with a prospect. Before the call some research was done to find a few potential keywords for her business. As we got on the call I pulled up the search results for these keywords so I had them in front of me.
At one point in the conversation I asked the lady who her competition was. She named a few companies. When I looked at the Google results I only saw one of the businesses she mentioned. It was at that point that I told her when it comes to search marketing, despite who you may think your competition is, whoever is on the front page of Google – those are your competitors.
Now back to the…
SEO Competition Charts
When you hire me to help you get more business online and receive your keyword research report, each of your major 4-6 keywords has competition information associated with it.
Here’s the SEO competition chart for the #1 keyword from my SEO case study:
The more green you see the less "competition" you actually have
The more green we see the better – the “easier” it will take to rank a website, or specifically a web page, for that keyword.
Now take a look at this competition chart for the most broad keyword in the niche my website is in:
If I was a bull I'd charge this chart
Look at all that red. If we want to beat any of those sites it’s going to take a lot of two things:
- Time
- Money
But it’s not impossible. There’s some green in the right places on that chart.
One thing to keep in mind here too is that some of these factors count more than others. So our job is finding the right formula to beat the competition.
And There’s More, Much More
No one except Google knows the formula for getting a website to show up higher in the search results. Sure they’ll give hints, but at the end of the day it comes down to many factors. If you take only one you’re missing the big picture. With SEO competition we have to look at the forest and then start looking at the trees.
If someone tells you anything different run, don’t walk away.
Within 3 months of launching a new website I ranked #3 on Google for my #1 keyword. By doing so, I saved myself $3,000 a month by shutting down a pay per click campaign. The other stats are pretty tasty too.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) always seems to be one of those magic things where you hear a lot – good and bad – but you never really know what works.
In this SEO case study you’ll see how I got this particular website to rank #3 on Google, and the benefits of doing so.
For many, search engine optimization (SEO) is alchemy. And to some extent it is. We are trying to figure out the winning formula to show up on the first page of Google, so that we can get more visitors, more leads, and more sales.
There are two parts to SEO – on-page factors and off-page factors. On-page factors include things like:
- Use of your keyword(s) in the url, meta-data (title, description, keywords), and the header tags
- How fast your page loads
- Navigation of the site
- Internal links – namely they have to work
- External links – as with internal links they have to work too
- More fun stuff…
But more important than what you have on your own site is what happens outside of your site, the off-page factors. And this gets to the heart of the question – how relevant are you, really?
What Is Google’s Purpose?
It isn’t to help you show up ahead of your competition. Google’s purpose is to get the searcher to where they want to go as fast as they can. If Google can do that, the searcher will like Google and come back again, and again. And what do they see each time they visit? Ads.
If you trust Google to deliver you relevant search results, and you know that their brainiacs can deliver the same value via their ads, aren’t you more likely to click on them?
The answer to that is yes – and many do. It’s made the big G billions of dollars.
So what does it come down to? Relevancy. So how does Google determine if a web page or a site is relevant for a given word or phrase? That’s where off-site factors come into play.
Let’s take a short trip down the rabbit hole.
In the beginning of the Internet as we know it today, links were the currency. He with the most links won the higher spots on the front page of Google, Yahoo!, and others. Today links count for a lot, however the math is more complex. Links have been joined with:
- The relevancy of the site linking to yours (measured by the number and quality of the links pointing to it)
- The number of times a piece of content is shared
- How long someone stays on your site after finding you in the search results and clicking on your site
- Etc.
But guess what? None of this matters if you are heading down the wrong road.
Do You Speak The Language Of Your Customer?
With knowledge and understanding comes expertise, and with expertise comes new language and bias. Many times, language and bias separate us from our customers. This is not a value statement – it’s simply how it is. The words and phrases we use to describe our products and services may no longer be the same our customers use. And that is what I mean by heading down the wrong road.
If we optimize our sites to show up for one keyword, and our customers use another, we’ve gone down the wrong road. We have missed the relevancy train. So to ensure we are relevant, we need to have the language of our customer.
How do you get it?
If you’re part of a larger organization ask the best sales person you have on staff. Sit him or her down and record their sales pitch.
If you are a one-man-band like me, use social media to meet new people and then get them on a phone call as soon as you can. Listen to the words they use and ensure they understand yours. If they ask you to clarify you’ve identified a knowledge gap on their part. Take notes, and then use that in your sales copy and search engine optimization efforts.
What Do You Think?
Have you found a vocabulary gap when speaking with your newest customers? How do you ensure you have the language of your customer?
Let’s talk about it in the comments below.
I’ll see you there.
One of the allegations I’ve heard about StumbleUpon is that it’s great for a quick traffic boost, but many people visit once and never come back. That’s not the kind of romance we’re looking for…we want repeat visitors!
But it got me thinking.
I’ve been a member of Triberr for a few weeks now, and am fortunate to have great people in my tribes. I’ve written before about the results I’m seeing, and am happy to report that things continue to look peachy keen.
So how well are they going?
Well, I’m not going to tell you. And here’s my reason.
The Stats From This Blog Won’t Help You With Yours
I’m making two assumptions with this statement. My first is that your ideal customer is different than mine. My second is that you are in a different niche than I am here on this blog. So unless you are going after the exact same customer I am, and in the exact same niche, my stats don’t apply to you; they will not help you build your business.
On the other hand, the strategies and tactics that I use to achieve my stats can absolutely help you. There’s a huge difference there.
This why I hesitate to talk about how many visitors I get or the number of subscribers or the number of members at IM Training HQ. It’s why I don’t talk about how much money I’m making. Should I tell you how much comes in from my web development business, or the marketing services that I provide to clients, or the niche sites that I’m building?
The Counter Argument
I can hear the wheels turning as you read this. “Cop out” you say. “He’s not making any money” you say. Well rest assured my friends I am supporting my family with my businesses, and can afford to launch what is currently 12 niche sites, and pay for some traffic.
And that is honestly as far as I’m going to take it. Because again, that doesn’t help you.
What will help you is showing you the methods and strategies that I use on this site and my other 11 to bring in customers from multiple sources.
Traditional Internet Marketing Is So Broken
Can you guess what niche I’m in? Here’s my tagline: “Strategies for Internet Marketing Asskickery.”
If you said “marketing” then you are correct! If you said “asskickery” you would also be correct. Either way you win.
And what does marketing come down to? Making money. It is marketing that connects you with your next customer. It is marketing that solidifies your relationship with your current customer. It is marketing that helps to form a win/win relationship between two people. And yes, marketing is all about the people.
But the people have been forgotten. Somewhere along the way they were turned into keyphrases and numbers. And as a person, you were sold to as a number.
Have you ever seen a person fish? Not the big commercial ginormous boats on TV but a single person fish. More than likely that person has one fishing rod, and they catch one fish at a time. To me, that is the analogy of what marketing should and can be. It’s what the great marketers do – they connect with the individual like no other.
But when you view people as mere numbers to be had, percentages to be achieved, your sales and marketing tactics match.
It’s like the Internet Marketing infographic I posted. That was meant as comedy yes, but the sad reality is that that’s how many people sell information products.
They use a combination of exact dollar amounts, outrageous promises, and a large dose of psychology to get us to buy. And buy we do.
But I don’t think this is necessary, and I need your help in proving them wrong.
So please answer these questions in the comments below:
- Would you like to be treated as a person rather than a number?
- Would you like to cut through the BS and psychological strategerie and find out how a product can really benefit you?
- Are you interested in the full picture – the benefits that strategies can bring and how much it will cost to make it happen?
I ask you to please answer those questions below, so that I can discuss them with you.
Delivering On The Promise Of The Headline
I would be remiss if I didn’t deliver on the headline that you so graciously clicked to get here. I do thank you for being here, taking the time to read this, and I really really want you to come back. And please leave a comment – I will respond.
So to answer the question in the headline, no, visitors from Twitter do not just come and go. With consistent postings, responding to the people, thanking folks for tweets, and engaging with them, they do come back.
And I thank you for doing so.
UPDATE: This report is available free when you sign up today at IM Training HQ.
Finding the best keywords for converting website visitors to customers can be a challenge.
For one of my sites I’m ranking on the front page of Google. And while that sounds great, in this case it doesn’t help at all.
In my latest report – The Importance Of Good Keyword Research For Conversions - I show you the exact keyword phrase I’m targeting, the specific Google rankings, and why it with this keyword phrase it doesn’t matter.
Subscribe to the IEJ RSS feed to get access to this free report. If you’re reading this in RSS, look down…
Awesome pic by donbuciak
How do you know your SEO works? Effective search engine optimization begins with keyword research and analysis.
Many people have opinions on how keyword research should be done – I’ve read many of them. What follows is the best way I’ve currently seen to go about doing it.
Introduction to the Blog SEO 101 Series
Today we’re going to be looking at the basics of SEO, which includes initial keyword research and mapping our keywords to our site.
I’ll be presenting this information with the assumption that you are offering a product or service. If you don’t have one yet that’s okay. Bookmark this page and come back once you do.
And just to be sure we’re on the same page during this process, I’ll be providing all of the files I used during this research, including the Market Samurai and Excel files. Keep a lookout for those in the post.
Now before we dig in, let’s be sure we’re speaking the same language.
Terminology We’ll Be Using
- Keyword – the word that we want to show up in the search engines for
- Keyword phrase – a 2-3 word phrase that a searcher might use to find our site
- Major search terms – the high-level words that represent what we offer. These form the basis of our site.
- Core terms – 2-3 word phrases that fall underneath our major search terms
- Keyword groups – groups of related keywords that fall under our core terms
Tools We’ll Be Using
In Search Engine Optimization Tools for Blogs Part 1 and Part 2 we looked at all of the tools we’ll be using for this course. In this part we’ll be using two of those plus one more:
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool (free) – I’ll use GAKT for short
- Market Samurai (free trial available)
- Microsoft Excel
With our tools at the ready let’s dig in!
The Big Picture
SEO is more than just the metadata (title, description, keywords) on a web page. It’s a complex mix of keywords, navigation, pages, internal and external links, authority, and more. But it all starts with keywords.
There are many ways to start choosing your keywords, but it comes down to how you answer a few questions:
- Do you currently have any products or services you offer?
- What words do you use to describe them? More importantly, what words do your customers use to describe them?
- How do your competitors describe their products and services?
- Forget features for a moment – what key benefits are you offering?
I’m as guilty as anyone of being so close to what I do that it’s difficult to get into the heads of customers. But that’s exactly what we need to do to be successful with this.
Keep the above questions in mind as we go through the next 4 steps:
- Step 1 – Initial Keyword Research
- Step 2- Core Terms
- Step 3 – Expand on the Core Terms
- Step 4 – Map Your Terms To Your Site
When you have finished these steps, you will have:
- 5-10 major keywords
- 15-20 core terms
- 15-20 keyword groups
- Keywords mapped to site pages
Doing these steps in order is crucial so let’s start at the beginning with initial keyword research.
Step 1 – Initial Keyword Research
Sometimes starting is the hardest part, so let me help you with that. Get your pen and paper or digital tool ready and take notes as we go.
Where To Start
If you have a current site and use a measurement tool like Google Analytics, you can look at the keywords people are currently using to get to your site. If your site isn’t currently converting in any way shape or form, you need other methods. Keep reading…
The names of your products and services are another great starting point. If you offer web development services you can start there, or get more specific by using the programming language you use. If you are a freelance editor you might start with “freelance editing.”
For e-commerce people brand names are huge. Think of Amazon and all the brand name products on the site. If you sell heavy machinery like John Deere tractors, use the name. They are already well-known, so use that to your advantage.
Speaking of Amazon, not only is it my favorite place online to shop, it’s a great research tool. Go to the books section, look at the most popular and best selling books in your niche, and open up the table of contents of those books. What are the names of the chapters? Are they using the same language you do or something else? Nothing in a book happens just because, so pay attention to the terminology they use.
Each industry has it’s own jargon. Look on the main industry websites and forums to find out how people talk.
And finally one of my favorites – the competition. Chances are that you have competition, and they’ve been around for a bit. Using the Google tool we can see what keywords Google thinks are relevant for the site, and go from there.
Now that we know where to start, we want to create a master keyword list.
Thanks to my peeps on Twitter I’ll be using the “digital agencies” niche as an example.
Create a Master Keyword List
Being in the web world I was somewhat familiar with the term “digital agency” but I went to Wikipedia to be sure I knew what one was. Here’s what I got:
A digital or new media agency is a business that delivers services for the creative and technical development of internet based products. These services range from the more generalist such as web design, e-mail marketing and microsites etc. to the more specialist such as viral campaigns, banner advertising, search engine optimization, podcasting or widget development.
A quick search on Google shows that “digital agency” has 89,300,000 results while “new media agency” has 77,700,000 results. Both of these are high competition, but we need somewhere to start.
At this point all we want an initial list of 5 to 10 major search terms that are between 1 and 3 words. They also have to be relevant. If you’re digital agency is located in NY, do you want to optimize your site for “digital agency” or “digital agency ny”?
We’ll keep it simple and add both of the terms to our list, so we need 3-8 more. Let’s look at the competition (they might hate me for this).
At this point you have two options:
- Brainstorm a list of high-level words yourself
- Use the GAKT to help with ideas
Using Google AdWords Keyword Tool to Help
I’m pretty damn close to my subject matter so I need help from the GAKT. This is how you can use it.
Fire up Google and search for “digital agency.” Then for each listing on the front page, open up the URL and copy and paste it into GAKT. Here’s the results from Wikipedia:
Wikipedia GAKT results
Next export the entire list of keywords into an Excel file and save it somewhere you’ll remember.
Do this for each of the sites on the Google front page, saving each file to your new folder. For the sake of brevity I used the top 5 results.
Once you have all of the files, you want to merge them all together into one big Excel file. I’m assuming you have a basic understanding of Excel, but long story short you can copy/paste all of the files into one big one and save it as an Excel file.
Digital Agency Keyword Research
Clean up the Excel file by removing the following and saving it to a new file:
- Search trend data
- Ad Share column
- Search Share column
- Extracted From column
- Duplicate words and phrases
Now that we have our clean file sort it by global monthly searches descending and competition ascending.
Excel Spreadsheet Cleaned Up
Select Your Major Search Terms
What we’re looking for are the single word or phrases that form the basis of our site. Here’s my short list for these terms:
- digital agency
- new media agency
- online marketing
- branding
- web design
Remember, these are the very high level keywords that describe the products and services you offer. Don’t worry too much about competition and other factors at this point unless you really want to (hence the sorting). The key is to ensure that the words are highly relevant to what you are offering. Optimizing for something you don’t sell is a huge waste of time.
With our list of major terms in hand, let’s get our list of core terms.
Step 2- Core Terms
Core terms are two and three word phrases that fall underneath your major search terms. These terms are what we will use for the pages on our site. So while “digital agency” is great for the home page, it isn’t for an internal page.
The fastest way to find good ones is Market Samurai. So fire it up and let’s go. I’ll run through one example, however you’ll want to do this for each of your major search terms.
Using Market Samurai To Find Core Terms
Start a new project using your first major term. In this case that’s digital agency. Set the phrase length filter to be between 2 and 5 (just in case) and hit the Generate Keywords button.
NOTE: if you have a Google AdWords account you can use it to sign in and get more search results. By default Google limits you to 300. By signing in you can get up to 800.
ANOTHER NOTE: The Market Samurai Dojo has great videos on how to use Market Samurai. I highly suggest you check those out to really learn how to use Market Samurai
Filter your results by removing all words that don’t make sense for your business. I removed terms like “accountancy”, “accounting”, and “recruitment” as they have no relevance.
Market Samurai filtered list
After you filter the list, hit the Analyze Keywords button to get the keyword data.
On this screen, be sure there is no preset filter in place, and that total searches is selected.
Market Samurai filters
With the filters set up correctly click the Analyze Keywords button to get your term data.
This is where the huge time savings come in. No more spreadsheet for us – we’re rocking the SEO tools. I kid you not when I say that this alone can save you hours of time.
Now this is where it gets really interesting…
In the Market Samurai Dojo you are told to look for keywords based on certain criteria. These criteria, known as the Golden Rules (a filter in the software) help you to find keywords you might actually be able to rank for. These Golden Rules are:
- SEOT = 80 min
- PBR = 15 min
- SEOC = 30,000 (max)
- SEOV = 30 min
That means you’re looking for keywords that have a potential of 80 clicks per day if ranked #1 on Google, a minimum of 15% PBR, a maximum of 30,000 pages globally that mention your keyword, and a keyword value of at least $30 for a #1 Google ranking.
If we apply this filter to our list, we only have no words. So we need to go a bit higher.
The latest filter I’ve heard to apply is:
- No more than 300,000 competing pages
- A minimum of 1000 clicks per month (34/day)
If we apply that filter and leave the PBR and SEOV filters in place, we have a list of 27 keywords.
27 is a great number, but we still need to narrow down those keywords we’re going after. So…
Are you in it for the money? If so sort by SEOV (SEO Value).
If you want less competition, sort by SEOC (SEO Competition).
If you’re all about the traffic sort by SEOT (SEO Traffic) and go with that.
Choose one of those three or a combo, but choose 3-5 from the list. For the “digital agency” keyword I looked at overall competition and relevancy and chose the following core terms:
- small business web design (service)
- electronic advertising (service)
- web marketing agency (descriptive – about page perhaps?)
Do this for each of your major search terms, and you have your list of core terms.
These terms are going to become pages on our site, but we need more – we need keyword groups. Keyword groups will give us lot’s of ideas for blog posts and such. Let’s see how to do that.
Step 3 – Create Keyword Groups
For each of the core terms, we want a list of related terms, or keyword groups. Using Market Samurai this is easy. Let’s see how.
Going back to the keyword analysis we did, add a tab for each of the core terms. Do this by clicking the key icon beside the core term.
Market Samurai Key Icon
To get a list of related terms for this keyword phrase, we run through the same steps as before:
- Open the Keyword Research module
- Generate your list of keywords
- Filter out what’s not relevant
- Apply our Keyword Research filters
- SEOT = 34
- PBR = 15
- SEOC = 300,000
- Sort based on your preference for money, traffic, competition, or a combination
You’ll be getting some long lists of keywords, so prioritization is the name of the game.
And that’s where the science comes into play. Just because a search term has a lot of traffic (SEOT) doesn’t mean that searcher wants what you’re selling. So always remember when going after any keyword or keyword phrase, keep it relevant to what you’re offering.
To continue with the example here I created a keyword group for small business web design. After filtering out words like cheap, cool and flash (does anyone create flash sites anymore?!), I have 173 keyword phrases to work with.
Step 4 – Map Your Terms To Your Site
At this point you have a list of 5-10 major keywords, 15-20 core terms, and 15-20 keyword groups.
Congratulations! You’ve done a ton of work, and much more work than most people do. Believe it – I see it ALL the time.
So now what to do with all these words and phrases? Map them to your site pages.
In the next part of this course, which you can get only by subscribing to the RSS feed, we’ll look at setting up our site for both humans and search engines. But let’s get started now.
If the url of our company is awesomedigitalagency.com, then on our home page we want to use our top 3-5 keywords. That leaves the rest of the site, and our blog. We said before that core terms map to pages. Let’s see an example.
We have three terms to work with: small business web design, electronic advertising, and web marketing agency. For this company I would create three different pages and optimize each for a keyword group. I would also use the keyword phrase in the url of the page. What we would end up with is this:
- awesomedigitalagency.com/small-business-web-design
- awesomedigitalagency.com/electronic-advertising
- awesomedigitalagency.com/web-marketing-agency
That last one looks really good for an about page…
Applying What We’ve Learned To Our Site
So that’s the start, a huge start. If you followed along and did the research then you are WAY ahead of a lot of people out there. But there’s more to do.
In the next part of the course we’ll dig into using all of what we’ve done to set up our site for both search engines and humans. We’ll also discuss the importance of link text, and how to get more link love.
Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to get it.
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Thanks for your help.
What Questions Do You Have?
What questions do you have on what was covered in this post? Ask away, don’t be shy!
