It can take just as long to optimize for a keyword that will bring in 10 visitors per month as 1,000. I’m not talking about “junk” keywords that some lazy SEO person tossed in the mix because they were easy to rank for. I mean REAL keywords with good search volume every month – and real competition. You need to become a keyword curator and get rid of those with low ROI so you can focus on those that bring in the profits.
Archive for February, 2012
Become a Keyword Curator
Sunday, February 26th, 2012Google’s Free Keyword Tool
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012Using Google’s keyword tool, ( https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal ) we find that there were 145,000 searches performed in the previous month for “New York Pizza.”.
Wow! That’s a lot of potential visitors if you nail a top spot. But how targeted will it be? Let’s look at the competition. A quick search of Google shows that we have 22,000,000 competing pages; many about New York style pizza, not about pizza actually located in New York.
A bit more research shows us that “New York City pizza” has monthly potential traffic of about 63,000 and much less competition at 6,480,000. Now, that’s a big difference!
We still have plenty of potential visitors but now with only about one-third the competition (6,480,000 compared to 22,000,000).
Let’s try again. How about “NYC pizza?”
Wow! 58,000 monthly searches and only 2,990,000 competing pages. Talk about a no-brainer!
“NYC pizza” Close-up shows the lowest competition yet
You get the idea. Not all keywords are created equal. Consider these three possible scenarios…
• Some might bring you thousands of people who are not even looking for what you have to offer.
• Others might bring in all the business you can handle.
• Still others might attract a good number of visitors interested in a free offer but not becoming a paying customer.
Knowing how to spot the best keywords is one of the most important things your SEO company can do for you – or that you can do for yourself if need be.
There is so much more to keywords than we can cover here. The topic could easily fill an entire book itself – and actually has many times over. Just know that a true SEO expert has spent years sharpening his or her skills in this area – and for good reason; keyword selection is crucial to your success.
Not All Keywords Are Created Equal
Sunday, February 19th, 2012A keyword is just another name for a search term. Basically it’s anything your potential customer is typing into the search engine to find (hopefully) your website.
A GEO is simply a geographic point of reference, such as a town, city, or state.
When properly combined, keywords and GEOs are what targeted search engine traffic is all about.
For example, if you have a pizza parlor in New York City, you would want to be very specific about your business type (product or service) – in this case pizza, as well as your location.
The keyword will most likely be “pizza”, unless you specialize in a particular type of pizza for which you want to be known. But the GEO might take some thought. Let’s work through it…
“New York” is the state name but also a shortened version of the city name; aka “New York, New York.” But is it more? In this case, yes. New York style pizza is very popular, sold all over the country and often simply called “New York Pizza.”
Using one of several available tools, a good SEO professional would start by looking at the potential volume in terms of monthly traffic you could expect based on either a broad match or exact match of the selected keyword. Let’s try a broad match for the keyword “New York pizza” using Google’s keyword tool.
The next two posts will cover this in great detail.
Make SEO Copywriting a WOW!
Thursday, February 16th, 2012The ability to craft text to not only satisfy the needs of both a search engine and live visitor is not enough in today’s world. You have to be able to WOW them. There is far too much competition to merely interest the reader, be that reader a person or a bot.
Several years ago, Google introduced its natural text algorithm (NTA) and the game was forever changed. Before that, it was easy to write just what a search engine bot wanted to see and gain top rankings for your efforts. Not so today. Nowadays you need to walk a precarious line between what the search engine needs to see and what your visitor wants to see. And this is a good thing.
Do you remember some of those top-ranking pages from the early 2000’s? What a bunch of junk! Here’s an example of then versus now…
Then:
“Plumber Boston available for emergency services plumbing for plumbing problems from master plumbers Boston.”
Now:
“Looking for an emergency services plumber in Boston? Look no further! Our certified and bonded master plumbers will have your plumbing related problems fixed in no time. We are punctual, courteous and always happy to be of help.”
What a difference! Who would you rather call: the robot or the nice friendly plumber? Google knows the answer and that’s why they added their natural text algorithm. They value the user – and thus their experience – on any site shown in their results.
All this said, if you ever have to choose between two seemingly equally qualified SEO people, choose the better writer. That bet will pay off in spades every time.
The next time you are hiring, or re-evaluating current employee job duties, make it a priority to identify a good writer. Then be prepared to eventually develop him or her into an SEO copywriter. Again, I say eventually. This is not something that will happen overnight but copywriting (of any kind) is a skill set that pays for itself many times over – and SEO copywriting accounts for about 25% of your SEO success.
Should You Commit to Submit?
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012It’s important to know that search engine submission is not the same thing as search engine optimization. Although submission is often an important part of your SEO campaign, just telling search engines about your site is usually not enough to get any kind of decent rankings – or resulting traffic – from that engine.
In fact, most websites don’t need to be submitted because the search engine spiders (AKA / crawlers and bots) will find them through inbound links. But of course, this means you have to have inbound links from web pages that the search engine visits, which in turn means you might be waiting a while before a spider ever crawls your site.
So is it better to submit your site to the search engines or should you just wait for them to find you? The answer is, an ambiguous, “it depends.” It depends on if you have the time to wait for a spider to naturally find your site. It depends on if you believe the rumor that Google gives less credit to sites that were submitted rather than found naturally. It depends on how you plan to submit your site, if you head in that direction. Yes indeed, it depends.
I tend to err on the safe side and not submit sites to Google and to only hand submit sites to Yahoo! and Bing. As for Google, I concentrate on quality inbound links to get the site picked up naturally and quickly by creating links on pages that Google considers “fresh,” meaning they come back and spider the content regularly – often daily.
And what was that about hand submitting? Why on earth would I take the time to manually submit a website to a search engine when I can have a piece of software do it cheaply or even free in a matter of seconds? That’s simple. I submit sites by hand because that’s what the search engines require. Not “request” but require.
Using a piece of software to submit your URL to Bing and Yahoo! might save you a few minutes work, but it could cost you the ability to get listed. And let’s be reasonable, they are ready to send you thousands of dollars in free sales and all they ask is that you abide by their requirements and hand-submit your URL. It’s a no-brainer. Get typing or have someone do it for you.
Avoid call Tracking Scams
Saturday, February 11th, 2012Call tracking is an incredible yardstick by which to measure ROI (return in investment), but not all “call tracking” is as it seems.
Unfortunately, some SEO companies who claim to provide call tracking of the organic search results actually hard code a unique number on your website. This might be in the form of text or an image. Either way, it eliminates your ability to find out if that visitor reached your page through organic efforts or otherwise.
The only thing this does is tell you that the caller found that number on your website; however, in this case you have no idea how they arrived at your site. They could have been referred from another site or PPC campaign or typed your URL directly into their address bar – none of which would be the result of search engine optimization. As a business owner it is extremely important to know which marketing dollars are producing results (calls in this case) and which are not.
Many of our customers also purchase additional unique phone numbers which they can utilize in other marketing vehicles (yellow pages, direct mail, newspaper, radio, etc.). If they are all feeding into one call tracking console you will have one place where you can easily review the effectiveness of all your marketing campaigns. Now that’s powerful!
Call Tracking – Here’s how it Works:
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012A call tracking phone number is secured on your behalf and entered into the call tracking system. Once in the system, a small snippet of JavaScript code is created that works just like the “find and replace” option of a word processor like Microsoft Word. Each time a person finds your website through a designated search engine organically, the phone number on your site is updated to show the call tracking telephone number. The searcher dials that number and activates the call tracking system, which forwards the call to the line of your choosing, which means…
1. That particular phone number is called only when the person searching found it on your website, and…
2. Only if it was found by clicking on an organic search match that led them to that page.
The rare exception is when someone writes down that (script generated) phone number to call later. The effect however, is the same. That person found you initially through an organic search and you can easily track that fact, whether it’s now or later.
To Track or Not To Track
Sunday, February 5th, 2012If the business you receive via phone calls is at all important, invest in call tracking. It’s worth the extra $40 or so per month. In fact, it’s too cheap not to use. When properly set up it’s like having a 24/7 operator showing you exactly how each piece of new business came in. It will even let you pick the search engines you want to track calls from, whether the calls were generated by organic search or ads, etc. This is a BIG deal.
Get Cracking on Call Tracking
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012Spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars setting up multiple telephone lines and assigning different ad codes to each, then piling through dozens of sheets of call logs is what most people envision when they think of call tracking. After all, that’s how it was done a decade ago and beyond. But, today it’s a whole lot simpler and cheaper.
A good SEM or marketing company can take care of all the complicated bits and pieces and just let you enjoy the benefit of knowing what calls came in from where – and what was said, if that’s of interest.
Here’s what you should expect:
Expect to pay $25 to $40 per month, per additional phone line initiated for call tracking purposes and possibly a “per minute” rate of 10 or so cents. One new unique call tracking number per voice line (whose number is on your website) is usually enough. And remember, this is on inbound calls only, so your per minute costs can easily be minimized.
Expect to provide a “forward to” phone number. This can be any telephone line or even a cell phone.
Expect to be asked to record a short message or have the company do it for you – usually at no additional charge.
Expect to be given the option to have the inbound calls recorded “for quality and training purposes” (with caller notification of course).
Expect to receive a call tracking console login of your own so you can check your stats or even listen to recorded calls anytime you wish.
Expect to receive a regular report that provides all of your call stats in an easy to understand manner. This is typically provided on a monthly basis.
And finally, expect to get more useful information out of this call tracking information than you ever thought possible.
With your very first report you will be able to spot calls that dropped off in less than one minute, and even those who just hung up. You will be able to listen in on calls to see how your employees treat customers and how customers treat employees. No more “he said, she said” headaches!