Oct 9 2008
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This is part 2 of a 12 part series on keyword research. This series will guide you through four distinct phase of the keyword research process, providing you step by step guidelines to help you gather, sort and organize your keywords into an effective marketing campaign.
Phase I: Finding Core Terms
When most people start with the task of researching keywords they often start by looking for keywords they are familiar with. They’ll use their familiarity with their products or services to find new word variations, maybe a few new relevant words, or even learn some new ways of phrasing what it is people are looking for. While this approach provides valuable information to the researcher, it’s somewhat disorganized.
Because keyword research is so crucial, a more organized approach to it is essential. Instead of starting the research process looking for words you essentially already know but are just in an unknown order, you must start the process looking for what is unknown. In order to find those unknown phrases, you have to start with a foundation that will guide you from where you are to what it is that you’re trying to find, a list of keywords that can be optimized into your site.
The keyword research process starts not looking for search phrases, but core terms that are the foundation of what your site, or specific pages of your site, is all about. Let’s start by defining what a core term is.
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Oct 8 2008
Achieving SEM Success Through Keyword Research
A couple years back I released a a 22-page document outlining our keyword research strategies for SEM and SEO campaigns. For the past several months I’ve been meaning to update it with some additional strategies and thoughts. What happened, however we less of an update than a total rewrite. Many of the basic concepts are the same but I’ve added new details, descriptions and even visual illustrations to make it all pretty!
The result is a 12-part series of posts (later to be put into a single downloadable e-book) that will be our new comprehensive guide to keyword research. This series of posts isn’t so much about individual tactics and strategies as it is a start to finish guide on how to find, analyze, prioritize and organize your keywords. The goal is create a solid keyword foundation for your SEM campaigns, whether SEO or PPC, that will put you in a much stronger position for success and give you a significant advantage over your toughest competition.
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Oct 7 2008
One of the hardest thing for an SEO to manage is expectations. For many SEO consultants and firms, part of closing the deal is to get the client to believe that the work they provide is going to get them “results,” however that is defined. But in doing so, many of those charged with getting the client to sign on the dotted line can easily make things sound better than they really are. That’s a product of sales.
Just look at any commercial for a new health or diet product. At the bottom of the screen you read something like “these results are atypical, your results may vary.” That’s almost the exact disclaimer that could benefit many SEOs as they push through their sales cycles.
A good SEO can undersell and overperform. The problem is getting the sale . That’s not always an easy task when underselling, especially when you’re going after businesses with limited budgets but want sometimes unrealistic achievement for the money they are willing to pay.
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Oct 6 2008
I ran into a couple of unique situations a few months that really challenged me. Both had to do with unsatisfied customers demanding that we give them money back. Each situation was different and therefore handled differently with a different result. In one case, money was returned, in another it wasn’t.
Each situation caused me to look deeply at what was right and wrong, what was deserved and what wasn’t, and what were we contractually obligated to provide vs. what was smart business. The lessons I learned from both of these situations can provide valuable lessons to both SEOs and small business owners looking to hire an SEO for their website.
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Oct 2 2008
Several years ago I hired an individual to be a copywriter for me. He’d never worked in the SEO industry before and we had to do quite a bit of training to get him to fully understand how SEO copywriting was different than traditional copywriting. Within three weeks I realized he just wasn’t working out and had to let him go. He wasn’t the first.
A few months later I noticed a new SEO company appear in our local area. After doing a bit of research I realized that this my former employee. What did he know about SEO? Well, not a whole heck of a lot. But who knows, maybe I was actually able to teach him a thing or two during his three week tenure.
His site offered an ebook he had written titled “19 days to #1″, for sale for only $195.95. Yes, that is the actual ad he used to promote the book on his site. I never bought the book though curiosity almost got the best of me once or twice. But I figure that any book promising rankings on AltaVista, Excite and Lycos, even back in 2005, wasn’t worth the digital paper it was written on.
But this was back when SEO “Guarantees” were quite commonplace. SEOs would offer ranking guarantees with tight controls to ensure that no matter what happens they can’t lose. The client’s rarely win, but that should never stand in the way of “success”.
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