With that said, there are some basic components of every SEO campaign (not to mention a really big checklist) that form the foundation of a successful campaign. Anyone who’s been around SEO for any length of time already knows these “basics,” but they bear repeating for anyone who is unfamiliar as to where to begin with their SEO effort:

SEO & Keyword Research

Every SEO campaign starts with keyword research. It’s critical to uncover and organize your core terms and extended phrases in order to create the optimization road map moving forward.

The SEO uses keyword information to create customized titles, descriptions and page heading recommendations, along with editing the content of your pages to make them more keyword friendly. The SEO can use your existing content and rewrite it specifically to integrate the keywords selected, as well as improve the sales conversion funnel. Text edits should includes internal linking to other important pages as well as adding strategic calls to action if necessary.

As keyword performance is measured, additional recommendations should be provided, tweaking the pages to improve rankings and conversions.

Information Architecture & Usability

SEOa should regularly be reviewing site analytics information in order to seek out and uncover site architectural issues that hinder your performance in the search engines. Using this information, they can provide specific recommendations and solutions that will build better site architecture, remove duplicate content, fix problematic HTML and a whole lot more.

The mission here is to make your site search and searcher friendly on all levels.

Content Review

A site-wide content review provides strategic recommendations designed to help you produce content that better relates to your audience, effectively uses frequently searched keywords and improves the overall sales message being delivered. The goal is to create engaging content that informs, educates and sells your products or services while also attracting visitors through the search engines.

Content development doesn’t assist SEO alone, but also improves your sales process and your link and social media efforts. Without great content, your site really doesn’t deserve great search engine placement.

Link Building

Your SEO should research your and your competitor’s link landscape and provide you with a variety of linking opportunities to pursue. These opportunities include lists of  sites, directories, blogs, and other strategic sites and the best approach for establishing a linking relationship that compliments your optimization efforts.

The SEO works to establish contact with these link opportunity sites and lays the groundwork for a (linking) relationship, submits linking requests and negotiates link placement, among other things.

Social Media

Developing an immediate and long-term social media strategy is critical to leveraging your blog, Twitter, Facebook and other social streams to your advantage. In conjunction with the SEO efforts and content strategy efforts, the social strategy pushes content in the most effective way, monitors reputation and boosts SEO performance through keyword and link targeting. Part of the social media strategy is to create a publishing calendar that can help you keep moving forward and not get caught in social stagnation.

Analytics & Conversion Optimization

SEOs need to regularly review your and your competitor’s Web data to understand search performance and user trends. With this information, they can provide additional insight and strategy recommendations that assist on-page optimization, link building, social media and content development.

Based on the analytic data and findings, the SEO can conduct a/b and multivariate testing designed to test various performance and conversion options. Selecting the best performing options provides the ammunition needed to continually improve your site conversion rates.

These are just the basic fundamentals of a solid web marketing campaign. Each area noted here can produce a plethora of actions, reactions and recommendations that are designed to continually propel you forward in the search results. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the tasks in each of these categories, but it can give you a good place to start.

Follow me+ at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

So, without a plan for how to create and optimize your video content, you may end up a Sisyphus. (Just saying that word makes me giggle like a junior high girl.) In Greek mythology, Sisyphus pushes a gigantic boulder up a hill every day only to watch it roll back down again. Every day. For eternity. That’s a rough gig.

Naturally, you don’t want to be a Sisyphus. So, before you run headlong into video production and online posting, consider these 10 tips that can give your video a chance – and perhaps even an edge – online.

1. Decide where video fits with your business goals.The worst thing you can do is spend lots of time and (if you’re going for quality) lots of money on a video, only to figure out that the topic doesn’t support any of the goals you need and want to accomplish. So, revisit your goals first, and then determine how a video might fit.
2. Figure out who your target audience is, what they like, what they want to know and what they might share.This is all part of building buyer personas, which is not exactly a new marketing concept. But, it is critical and applies to every aspect of your marketing plan. Creating personas takes time, effort and research, but it will pay off in the end.
3. Outline what would make your video successful, based on your goals.Guess what? Your video doesn’t need to have a million views to be successful! If it gets the number of shares within your industry that you want, brings potential buyers to your site or generates a certain number of leads, that may be exactly what you’re looking for.
4. Know your online influencers. Who would be most interested in your content and in a position to help you promote it? You need to do this research before or while you’re making a video. That way when it’s time to post, you’re ready to reach out and ask these influencers to help get the word out.
5. Create good content. No one has to get hit in the crotch with a baseball or do voice-overs with animals for your video to have success. Yes, humor is helpful, but informative and how-to videos also do extremely well online. After all, people turn to the Internet for information. So, don’t be afraid to give it to them!
6. When you upload a video, don’t forget to embed it in your blog. According to Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR, 44% of videos are discovered on blogs. (Let me add that I owe Mr. Jarboe thanks for several other great tips in this blog post.) This gives you the best of both worlds. If you upload to YouTube, your videos will be available on the world’s second most searched website, and the content is available and searchable on your own site. Plus, any time someone views the embedded video on your site, you get credit for that view on YouTube (counted as part of total views).
7. Optimize, optimize, optimize. Video content itself is not visible to search engines. That makes the text that surrounds each video very important.

   The title of the video becomes the page’s title tag. You have up to 100 characters, so make sure the title is both compelling and contains keywords. But, the sky’s the limit with the description. You’ve got 5,000 characters! Include lots of keyword-rich content, as well as links to other videos, your social media channels, customized landing pages and more. Make sure you use the http:// prefix; otherwise, it won’t become a link.

   If you’re not sure what keywords you should use, try YouTube’s keyword tool. Or, use the autocomplete algorithm that’s part of YouTube search. Start typing keywords into the YouTube search bar and see what other terms YouTube suggests. Tags should also be as detailed as possible. Be sure to use the keywords you want the video to rank for.

   Consider putting the URL you most want viewers to visit first in your description. That way even when the description is collapsed, the URL can be seen.

   Don’t forget to do all this for your channel settings, as well!

8. Take advantage of “recency” in YouTube’s algorithm, designed to help good new videos rise to the top. Jarboe says this recency factor lasts for about a week, so, before you post, make sure you’re ready to promote the video on a blog, on social media channels, in a e-newsletter and more. Don’t post and then decide to publicize later.
9. Experiment with YouTube’s captions and annotation features. They can help your video stand out in the crowd and provide a way to link to other videos, include a call to action and generally be more interactive.
10. Monitor what’s going on with your channel using YouTube insights. After all, at the end of the day, you need to know if your video accomplished what you wanted it to.

The question is, what do you do with your keyword lists once you’ve compiled them?

Just as there is no shortage of good keyword tools, there is also no shortage of metrics that you can use to determine the value of any given keyword. A few that tend to top our keyword selections lists are:

• Search volume: How many searches per day or month are being performed for each phrase. The higher the volume, the greater the opportunity to drive traffic to your site.

• Search competition: How many sites are displayed when performing a search using a keyword.

• Title competition: How many sites are displayed when performing a search for the keyword only in title tags.

• Direct Competition: Whether a specific competitor ranks for any particular keyword.

• KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index): A score based on how often a keyword is searched balanced against keyword competition.

Each of these metrics provides valuable insight, but they ultimately should not be used in selecting keywords. Stats like these can tell us what is happening with the keywords, but it can’t tell us why. And unless you know why something is, it’s impossible to make a smart decision about it.

Here is what the stats don’t tell us:

• Search volume: How many of these searches are actually relevant? Will the searcher find what their search intended on your site?

• Search competition: Are the sites ranking for these keywords legitimate competition? Are they truly optimized sites?

• Title competition: Are these competitors that cannot be defeated? How many of them will be easy to topple?

• Direct Competition: Do you know if your competitors are getting any value from ranking for these keywords?

• KEI: Does a competitive score mean you shouldn’t try to rank for the keyword? Is there long-term value in trying?

Looking at keywords in terms of volume or difficulty is a good measure for setting expectations in terms of time and budget it will take to get your site ranked. Looking at whether your competitors rank for that phrase only tells you whether your competitors rank for a phrase. For all you know they have performed zero keyword research, or went after a phrase because someone else did. That’s not a good signal by itself.

The problem with looking at any of the signals and data above is it does not tell you anything about searcher intent or whether you can convert those keywords into sales. It’s good data to have, but not the data you need to make good keyword selection decisions.

To do that, you need to apply this simple three-rule test for keyword selection:

1. Is the keyword relevant to your target audience? There are a lot of keywords that are seemingly relevant, but when you look closer at visitor intent, you find that the searcher is looking for something different entirely. Not even all “industry relevant” keywords will be relevant to your products or services in particular. Be sure to analyze visitor intent for each of your keywords. Unfortunately, the only tool that can do that is your brain.
2. Will the keyword deliver traffic? This question cannot be answered until the question above is. Not all traffic is the same, so you need to make sure it’s targeted traffic. Don’t let high search volume bias you. Even low volume keywords can deliver a fantastic amount of targeted traffic when combined with other long-tail phrases.
3. Will the traffic sent by the keyword convert? You can take your best guess here, but only time and analytics will tell. Every keyword you invest any significant amount of time in optimizing for SEO or PPC should be able to convert your visitors into customers. Spend more time investing in keywords with higher conversion rates.

The simplified version of this three-rule test is: Relevancy, Traffic and Conversions. Every good keyword should be able to satisfy each of these satisfactorily. If they are lacking anywhere, then the value of the keyword will also be lacking.

You can select relevant keywords that drive traffic, but if you can’t convert them, maybe it’s not as relevant as you thought. You can select relevant traffic that converts, but if the traffic isn’t there. Conversions will be sparse. If you select high-volume keywords that occasionally convert, but without the relevance, the conversion rates will be low and your effort will be high. Not a good mix for productivity!

There may be some wiggle-room between each keyword, but ultimately, you only want to select keywords that will deliver performance on all three levels. If not, then you may just be wasting your time! The best keywords are keywords that you have determined to be relevant and have tested to get results. Nothing else really matters.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

But there is more to keyword research than just the research. You have to be able organize and sort your keywords into groups that will allow you to optimize them most effectively into your website.

This post will walk you through the organizational side of the keyword research process, using a customized keyword research spreadsheet I have created to make the process easy. You still have to do the research, but this tool helps us create keyword lists for on-page optimization.

Let’s get to it.

First, you need to download and open the spreadsheet linked above. You should be on the “Phrase 1″ tab at the bottom.

If you know what your “core” phrase is, you can rename that tab accordingly. We’ll work with the phrase “battery charger” since that will give us plenty of variety to work with.

Importing Your Keywords

Before you can import anything you need to have already gathered a list of keywords from your favorite keyword tools. For this post we’ll use Google and Wordtracker.

You first need to export your keyword lists from the research tool to a different spreadsheet. Make sure your search volume is to the left of the keywords. If not, you’ll need to move some columns around until it is. For Google you can insert an extra column between the search volume and the keywords so you can copy/paste cleanly into this keyword organization spreadsheet.

Tip: When exporting from Google, be sure to select the exact match for accurate search volume numbers. You’ll then need to use find/replace to remove the brackets before importing to your keyword spreadsheet.

After you paste the keywords, be sure to select the option that allows you to keep the formatting on the current sheet rather than importing the format from the sheet you copied from.

Once you paste both sets of keywords and search volume, your sheet will look something like this:

Note: Google will let you export up to 100 phrases while Wordtracker can give you hundreds if not a couple thousand. This spreadsheet can handle a little over 2000 phrases from both Google and Wordtracker (or your favorite source) combined. To keep this post simple, I’ve eliminated all but 600 phrases.

Merging Duplicate Phrases and Data

A good number of phrases will be duplicated between your research tools. We want to merge these so the Google and Wordtracker numbers are on the same row for each keyword.

The first step is to alphabetize the keywords. To do this, click column “D” so the entire column is highlighted. Then, over on the far right on the Excel “Home” tab, you’ll see a “Sort & Filter” option. Click that and then select “Sort A to Z.”

This will create a “Sort Warning” dialogue box:

Be sure “Expand the selection” is selected; then hit “Sort”. This makes sure that the search volume numbers stay with the correct search phrase as they are sorted A to Z.

The result should look something like this:

If you look at rows 16/17, 21/22, 26/27, and 34/35, you’ll see the same phrase with a different search volume for both Google and Wordtracker. These are the duplicates we want to merge.

This spreadsheet has a cool “Merge Duplicates” button. Click that button and all the dupes will be merged together. Just like magic!

Tip: Make sure no garbage code is imported in with the keywords. If a bad text is imported into the “All Keywords” column, the merge macro can get screwed up.

Here you can see the duplicates merged together. Notice rows 16, 20, 24, and 31.

Now you want to sort by search volume. Going back to the sort button at the top, select that; then, choose “Custom Sort.”

A new dialogue box will pop up allowing you to customize your sort options. You want to sort by “Ggl” first, then by “WT” (or visa versa). You may have to “Add Level” to get the second sort option to be available.

Tip: Be sure to sort on “Values” and order “Largest to Smallest.”

Sorting by volume, you can get a pretty good idea as to what phrases are more popular than others as noted by either or both tools.

Be careful not to use search volume alone for determining keyword value. As you can see below in rows 18, 30, and 37, Wordtracker isn’t showing search volume for some substantial Google phrases. Similarly, if you were to scroll down, you’d also see quite a number of phrases that Google doesn’t record as viable, but Wordtracker does.

Note: The lack of search volume on some of the Wortracker phrases here is likely due to me having deleted any phrase that registered less than 10 in Wordtracker search volume.

Eliminating Negative and Junk Words

Anytime you import keyword lists this size you’re going to end up with a number of junk keyword phrases. This spreadsheet provides an easy way of getting them out of your way without having to delete them one by one.

First, scan your list looking for any negative words you want to eliminate. Then add those words to column A in the negative word tab at the bottom.

In this case we’ll pretend the client sells only automotive battery chargers, so the four words we typed in above can be globally eliminated.

No, go back to your research tab and click the “Check Negatives” button. Any keyword phrase that contains a negative word is automatically highlighted red throughout the worksheet!

Note: The Negative Words tab is designed for global application. Do not add negatives that are core-term specific.

If you accidentally added a negative word that does not belong, no worries. Just remove it and re-click “Check Negatives” to correct.

Important: Don’t leave any empty cells in the negative keywords list. If you remove a keyword be sure to fill in the blank spot.

If you have a lot of negative words highlighted and want to get them out of your way, the spreadsheet has a filter option that lets you hide them all. Click the filter icon at the bottom right corner of the negative column heading, then uncheck the “x”.

This will cause all the negative words to be hidden. Notice below that rows 47, 61 and 77 are now hidden.

In most cases, using negative keywords is not enough. You will need to manually go through and eliminate keywords that aren’t any good for optimization to your site. Simply place an “x” in the “No Good” column and your phases automatically highlight red.

Note: Do not manually add “x’s” to the Negative column. If you run the Check Negatives macro again these will automatically be removed. Only manually mark negatives in the No Good column.

You can then filter out all “No Good” keywords just as you did with the negative words, leaving you only with phrases that you believe are worth optimizing!

Categorizing Into Shopping Funnels

I’ve written about the Research, Shop and Buy funnels for keywords before. You need to be familiar with that before using these categories.

The general idea is that you want to categorize each keyword into one of these funnels. You can through this section in four steps, marking phrases that fit any one category at a time, or go keyword by keyword and mark the most appropriate category for each as you go down the list.

Tip: If you organize one category at a time you can hide each category when complete leaving only unassigned keywords. This can help make sure none are missed.

Once you’re done your spreadsheet will look something like this:

Assigning Keywords to URLs

Next you want to figure out which keywords should be optimized to any given page on your site. Let’s start with the “Research” funnel. Use the filter options to hide all other keywords but those.

Looking at these keywords together can help you determine which URL(s) is/are best to optimize for the keyword group. Place the URLs in the blue area at the top of the page. Start with P1 (Page 1, see above). Now go through your funnel list and add “p1″ to each keywords you plan to optimize for that page.

Note: You will likely find that not every keyword in each funnel works for a given page. You might need several unique URLs for each filter group.

As you can see, we placed “car” and “automotive” keywords on page 1, “motorcycle” keywords on page 2 and “boat” keywords on page 3.

When you’re ready to optimize, you can use the filtering option to hide all keywords except for the page you you are optimizing. Below I’ve filtered all but page 1 keywords.

Now you can back and repeat this process for the Shop, Buy and Info keyword funnels.

One last thing. If you run out of blue URL space at the top of this spreadsheet, don’t fret! You’ll notice the rows jump from 6 to 14. There are six hidden rows that will allow you to add more. All you have to do is highlight rows 6 and 14, right click and select “unhide”.

Now you want to repeat the entire process with your next core phrase! If you need more core term tabs, just copy a blank one and start afresh.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

There are a lot of ways to measure the success of an SEO campaign and rankings can be a relevant factor, but that should not be the only factor. Heck, I’m not even sure it’s one of the top 5 most important measures of success! But instead of just yelling, “ranking reports suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck” at the top of my lungs, let’s look at how we can accurately measure the value of any particular keyword ranking. I think you’ll find a lot more here than meets the eye.

The Value of the Search Engine

Assessing the value from one search engine to the next isn’t always as easy as just looking at the popularity of any particular engine. Each engine has a different audience with varying degrees of interaction and conversion.

If you spend any amount of time looking at your site analytics, you’ll find that what gets huge click-throughs on Bing may not work so well over at Google. Similarly, what converts well on Yahoo may not convert at all on Bing.

Each engine has varying degrees of searcher interaction, search quality and searcher intensity. This ensures that the value of a top ranking on Google is very different from one on Bing or Yahoo, and not always for the reasons you think.

Market Share

Google is the clear leader in search engine market share department, currently getting more than 3x the search traffic over Yahoo and double that of Yahoo and Bing combined. This generally makes Google the primary search engine most people care about. If someone wants top search engine rankings, what they generally mean is they want top Google rankings.

But one would be wise not to ignore the “lesser” the bottom rungs of the big 3 engines. Collectively, they bring in over 95% of all search traffic. After that, it’s all small-time stuff, with Ask and AOl usually fighting it out for 1-3 percent.

Search Quality

A significant number of Google’s searchers are business owners, executives, employees and SEOs performing vanity searches and ranking reports. These are people that just want to see where they rank or where a competitor ranks for their keyword phrases. This skews the market share data. While many SEOs perform the same vanity searches on Bing and Yahoo as they do Google, it’s not to the same degree.

This means that Google may actually have a lower search quality than the other engines, as a larger percentage of searches on Bing and Yahoo are from people looking for actual information. But, Google still delivers more traffic for similarly ranked keywords on Bing and Yahoo. It may be a smaller percentage than the market share data suggests, but it’s still a significant piece of the pie.

Search Intensity

Each engine has different users with different levels of searcher intensity. Demographics can play a role in this, as do the type of searches peformed. Some searchers use different search engines depending on what they are looking for. Other engines attract users that are shoppers more than researchers, or are favored in one industry over another. This intensity can make the difference between a quality hit to your site or someone just doing some window shopping.

If you’re an e-tailer, you want ready-to-buy traffic. If you are an informational site, you want info seekers. Both of these can be intense searchers, but the intensity is focused in a different area. Look at the conversion rates from each engine and see where you prosper the most. That might help you determine where to focus more of your efforts.

The value of the keyword

Not every keyword is equal to the next, even if they are close in similarity. Keyword research and selection is no small task, nor is it unimportant. Taking the time to thoroughly research and understand the value of each of your keywords can be paramount to your SEO success and determining the value of that success.

Search Volume

There is a tendency for business owners to want to go after keywords based on search volume alone. If Keyword A gets searched 10x more often than Keyword B, Keyword A is seen as a “must get ranked” phrase. SEOs, on the other hand, often want to go after the “low hanging fruit” first. These are the lesser-searched-but-easier-to-rank phrases.

Neither of these are bad keywords, as long as there are expectations as to what value each top ranked keyword will provide. Sometimes it’s best to start with the lower-volume phrases as you build a foundation for the more difficult high-volume phrases that take more time.

What many find is the low-volume phrases can collectively outperform the high-volume, both in terms of traffic and conversions. Basing the value on a keyword on search volume alone can cause you to miss out on this important traffic.

Relevance and Conversions

If the keyword you’re ranking for doesn’t give the visitors the information they want, or the conversions you want, it doesn’t matter how much traffic it’s generating; it’s a poor keyword choice.

This can be difficult for many people to truly grasp. They just see how much traffic they are getting. But more traffic doesn’t mean more sales. Look for the keywords that are most relevant to what you have to offer and then check the conversion rates. If conversion rates are low, you may not want to place such a high value on this keyword.

The Value of Your Industry

Some industries are more popular than others. It’s easy to see some phrases for a particular industry get thousands of searches a day, where other phrases in another industry may only get a few dozen. When looking at keyword popularity, you can only compare the keywords within your particular field.

It doesn’t matter if thousands of people are searching for products or services that you don’t offer. What does matter is that there is enough searcher interest in what you do offer, and that you are able to build a successful business in that niche.

Unfortunately, there are some niche industries that simply do not have enough searcher interest to build a sustainable business model. They can get rankings for all their keywords, but the ROI isn’t there.

But don’t let low search volume scare you out of a successful model. Many niche industries thrive by ranking for hundreds of lower volume phrases that produce enough conversions to keep them profitable.

The Value of Your Profit Margin

Profit margins are a significant factor in the value of your search engine rankings. Low search but high profit keywords can be a goldmine by allowing you to get more money for less marketing investment. Many keywords – even those with very little traffic – can often be worth a premium if the profit that keyword brings in is significant enough.

In any industry, and with any marketing efforts, you need to be aware of what your profit margins are for each keyword related to any given product or service. Some products undoubtedly have a higher profit margin than others, which makes rankings for these keywords more valuable to you regardless of search volume.

The Value of a Keyword Ranking

The ranking your site or page gets for any given keywords does factor in to the amount of traffic you’re able to bring to your site. Statistically very few people click past the third page of search results, and no small number of people don’t scroll down to the end of the page. This means you have a greater chance of getting noticed the higher rankings you have.

That’s why everyone wants to be #1!

Unfortunately, as Highlander taught us long before there was SEO, there can only be one. Only one person can be #1 out of the dozens, hundreds or perhaps even thousands of others competing for that keyword. The chances of you obtaining that position is pretty slim, even with the best SEOs working for you.

Simply put, your commercial site may never overcome the highly popular informational site which is considered the de facto authority on the topic. It can happen, but its a long hard road!

But it helps to keep in mind that a well optimized site can actually do better in lower positions than the sites in higher positions. Carefully crafted title and description tags can make your site much more compelling to the searcher, especially when searcher intent is vague.

A #1 ranking isn’t always necessary, but it sure helps the ego!

The Value of Localization and Personalization

Search engines are working hard to personalize results for every searcher based on history, preferences and locality. As localized and personalized results become more prominent, search results can vary from searcher to searcher. That site you see in the top spot is not what someone else sees.

What you think is a valuable top ranking may only be showing up for you. Or what you see at the bottom of the SERPs may be much higher for the next person. This means there really is no reliable search engine ranking report.

So what is the value of measuring keyword rankings? Not a whole lot. Should you stop obsessing over search engine rankings? I recommend it.

But whether you look at rankings or not, it’s important realize that rankings are merely a single measure of your SEO success. It is not the measure of success. You can gain a lot more advantage by focusing on other more traditional marketing aspects of your site such as usability and conversion improvement than by focusing on top search engine rankings alone.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Crafting the Story, Part 2

In the last post, we started crafting our story by looking at some basic writing and optimization necessities. As we finish up this section, we’ll look more at the content itself and how you can improve it for a better searcher and reader experience.

Keyword Integration

I talked a bit about integrating keywords into your content in the last post, but let’s provide a little more background and context for how best to do that and what, exactly, it means.

Search engines don’t read. They are not really looking for “keywords” as we seem to think, but instead they look for word duplication and context similarities on any given page. The search engines see a bunch of words, and within that content a few repeated words stand out. This gives the search engines clues as to what the topic of the page might be.

But when you add too many topics (keywords) to a page, the search engines can become confused. Or, actually, the topic becomes diluted and makes it difficult for the search engines to determine exactly what the page topic might be.

However, if all your keywords are variations of your primary page topic, you can see how the search engines really begin to understand the topic of the page because all the other keywords and content reinforce that particular topic.

The moral of the story here is to make sure your content is focused on a topic and use only keywords that reinforce that topic. You can target a lot of keywords on a single page, provided you keep those keywords tightly focused together.

Use Images to Draw Visitors Into Content

Images can greatly enhance your content and improve its readability. While your content can be intellectually interesting, images make it visually appealing. Look at the difference between the recipes site shown in the image above and the one below:

Using images can make quite a difference, much like the difference between walking into a restaurant and smelling the scent of the table cleaner versus smelling a sizzling steak on the grill. The food may taste the same, but one of those two restaurants will have far more appeal than the other.

Media Integration to Strengthen Your Message – Photos

Because web content is no longer static, but it all has (or should have) a social element to it, it is increasingly important to go beyond just adding images to your content, whenever possible. Photos in particular add the capability of creating a social component to any valuable piece of content.

Integrating your photos to or from Facebook or Flickr, or other social photo services, allows for increased interaction and tie-ins from a number of different areas where your audience might be lurking. One of the goals of social content is to reach your audience where they are, not where you think they are (or should be). By using photo integration, you are not only making your content more visually appealing, but allowing your audience to find you wherever they socialize.

Media Integration to Strengthen Your Message – Video

Video is huge online. Google’s YouTube is the second most used search engine. People spend hours every week watching videos online in favor of traditional media entertainment. But, not only are they using video to entertain themselves, they are looking to video as a way to learn.

Search “how to” anything on YouTube and you’re likely to find a video on that topic. When you do a search on Google, if they have any videos that they feel are relevant, they’ll include those in the search results along with standard web pages. Video gives you additional avenues to be explored and possibly incorporated.

Any opportunity you have to include video in your content should be grabbed. Especially if it’s your own video. However, even if you use someone else’s video, integrating it into your content can provide additional context or clarity, and bolster your content’s readability.

Not everyone will take the time to watch a video, but providing the option for those that will reaches out to a new segment of your audience. Plus, you still have the written content for everybody else!

Add Links

Once you have people’s eyes on your content, what now? Do they just read and go about their merry way? Or do you have something that you want them to do? Aside from the call to action that should be on the page, you might also want to speak to those that are not yet convinced or ready to take action. The best way to do this is to add links to other pages of your website.

Links provide a way for visitors to continue to engage with your website without having to “figure out” where they should go or what they should do to get more information. If you mention something in your content that is further explained somewhere else, link to it! If you have a resource that backs up your claims, link to it! If you mention an organization that re-reinforces your claims of superiority, link to that, too!

Links also provide a great way to add optimization into your content. Every linked “keyword” to another page gives the search engines an additional clue as to what that linked page is about. So don’t ever use “click here” as your link text; instead, use the keywords relevant to the page being linked to.

The more links you have, the more traffic you can drive to other areas of your site. Without those links, you may be losing visitors that otherwise might remain engaged. However, there does come a point when you can have too many links!

How To Please Everyone

People from every segment of your audience are going to have specific ways they interact with your content. Some people are scanners, and some are readers. Some are visual, and some are intellectual. Some want depth, and others want to keep it light and easy. But that doesn’t mean you can’t provide a method of interaction for (almost) everyone!

The three key areas to focus on to please as many people as possible are: how it looks visually, how it reads textually and what it says semantically.

Visually: If you strip everything out of your web page but the content, how does it look? Do you just have a bunch of words broken into paragraphs? Or do you integrate elements that make your content more digestible? Simply adding paragraph headings, bullet points, links and bolding key concepts can make your content much easier to read, scan and digest. Look for opportunities to break your content into smaller bites.

Textually: Keep your content focused on your point. Try not to meander, unless its done strategically. Make sure you speak in terms of how your customers will benefit rather than about how great you are. Writing from the customer’s point of view can go a long way to persuading them you have what they need. When necessary, link to supporting information, even if it isn’t on your site. Third-party verification reinforces your value.

Semantically: Keywords are your audience’s language. Use them. Keep your writing active rather than passive. This keeps the reader engaged and ready to take the next action possible. Be sure to include calls to action that reinforce the next step in the process. For some that’s a conversion, but for others that’s simply more information. Use multiple forms of call to action to keep the reader engaged.

See all posts in this series:

Part 1: Intro / How Print Audience Differs from Web Audience
Part 2: Goals of Online PR
Part 3: Background Research
Part 4a: Crafting the Story p1
Part 4b: Crafting the Story p2
Part 5: Broadcasting the Message / Conclusion

Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.

When taking your public relations strategy online, there are some similarities to the “traditional” way of doing things, but there are also a lot of differences. Going online opens up a whole new world of opportunities that, if leveraged properly, can make your PR campaign far more successful than the old-school ways of doing things.

So far in this series we’ve looked at why online readers are different from offline readers, clarified the goals of online PR, and then dived into the background research needed to craft a good story. The following two posts will focus on developing your story in a way to maximize your reach through search and social.

Crafting the Story, Part 1

Any good writer knows that there is more to a good story than meets the eye. Anybody can throw some words on a page, but it takes a lot of thought and prep work to take a story and turn it into something that is valuable, or succeeds at fulfilling it’s intended purpose. Writing online PR content isn’t much different than offline PR content. Many of the staples remain the same.

However, because you’re dealing with a different audience than you might otherwise have dealt with offline, you have to take the nuances of this new audience into consideration before, during and after crafting your story for consumption. While the tenants of good writing remain, the action of carrying out those tenants can sometimes be very different.

Grab Their Attention

Getting someone’s attention is the first step in getting your proverbial foot in the door. If you have the best piece of content out there but fail to grab the attention of your audience, then you have a fantastic, but unread, piece of content! Getting your content read is more than just having a catchy headline, it’s about saying something that really get’s people to sit up and take notice.

One of the ways to grab your audience’s attention is to use their search phrases throughout your content. When your readers see the keywords they actually searched for in your headline and in your content, it continues to reinforce the idea that this is what they were looking for. When you use words other than what the searcher uses, then you are, in effect, speaking an entirely different language. Some readers may get the correlation, but many will be gone before you can say “Hey, wait, this is what I really mean!”

Attention grabbing headlines are important, but again, keyword usage here is important. A cool headline that isn’t keyword focused can often fail at delivering the right traffic. Headlines for online content need to focus more on keywords than on “shock” or entertainment value. Those elements can still be useful, but without keywords, your content will be bypassed altogether.

You also need to make sure the content itself grabs your audience’s attention. You can’t just throw out a headline that isn’t backed up by your content. If your headline get’s their attention, the content has to keep it. If the headline entices someone to read your content, make sure your content entices them to keep reading. If your headline makes them sit up and take notice, make sure your content makes them grab a cup of coffee and read every last drop, er, word.

Make it Interesting

We all know that if we want our content to get read we have to make it worth reading. Nothing new here. But because online readers are so fickle, lack focus and have a short attention span (see part 1), there is a lot more work that has to go into making your content interesting.

As I mentioned above, grabbing your audience’s attention goes beyond a good headline. And you have to do more than throw a phrase in every now and then that shakes them up. Everything in between needs to be interesting, compelling, and valuable. Anything that’s not should be cut and (figuratively, of course) dropped onto the editing room floor!

There are four key things you can do to make almost any content interesting:

Be Unique: Put out something new. Don’t write about the same thing in the same way, instead find a way to write about something new and different.

Take a Different Approach: Tackle your subject in a different way. Even if you’re writing about the “same ole, same ole”, do it in a new way that addresses the topic in a way that no one else is addressing.

Make it Compelling: Make sure your approach is compelling. This isn’t about change for the sake of change, but about finding a more compelling way to present the information at hand. Keep them interested.

Create Value: Finally, make sure every reader walks away having learned something new. If the information isn’t valuable to them then you’ve wasted a great opportunity. Your primary goal is to make sure your audience feels they have gained something by reading your content.

Title Tags

Everything noted above can apply to any content, regardless of the forum. Here is where we get into the specifically web-related stuff.

Title tags are probably the most important real estate for producing optimized content. They are often the first signals the search engines see when determining the topic (and therefore the rankings) of a page. They’re also what the search engines display in their search results. Your title tag is the clickable link in the search results. If it’s not both keyword rich and compelling, you’ll either have a lower ranked page or one that gets clicked fewer times. Or possibly both.

The page title isn’t necessarily the title of your content, though they can often be the same. Regardless, you’ll want your optimized title to be more keyword rich, without sacrificing it’s ability to get attention. Try to keep the title tag under 63 characters, as this is the limit that the search engines display in the search results. Longer won’t matter, just so long as you know that it may get cut off.

Meta Description

While not critical to getting good rankings for your content, the meta description does have value. For the most part, the search engines will use the meta description as the descriptive text below the clickable title in the search results. This gives you an opportunity to craft a keyword rich and compelling language that will give searches additional insight and reason to click into your content.

If you are targeting a very specific keyword or group of keywords, you can create a meta description that targets those phrases. However, there are cases when a meta description may actually hinder the click rather than help. In these cases, where your content is going after what is considered the “long-tail” phrases, you can leave off the description and let the search engines pull a snippet of text from the content to display in the search results.

This allows the description in the search results to include the specific keyword the searcher used without you having to have foreknowledge of the exact phrase that might be entered in. Since long-tail keyword variations are so abundant, trying to craft a meta description with every possible variation is impossible. Let the search engines do it.

We’ll continue in Part 2, looking at other elements that are valuable in crafting a strong online PR piece.

See all posts in this series:

Part 1: Intro / How Print Audience Differs from Web Audience
Part 2: Goals of Online PR
Part 3: Background Research
Part 4a: Crafting the Story p1
Part 4b: Crafting the Story p2
Part 5: Broadcasting the Message / Conclusion

Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.

In the first two parts of this series, we looked first at how the online audience differs from the traditional off-line audience. There are several distinct characteristics one has to take into account before pushing content out onto the web that was designed for print.

Next, we looked at the goals of online PR in order to identify key things that online PR must do that are both similar and different from offline PR. Good writing is still good writing, whether you are on- or offline, but when writing online content, you have to treat each piece a bit differently.

Now let’s move on into the next phase of writing online PR.

Background Research

Every good story starts with some background research. After all, we don’t just jump right in and start telling a story we know nothing about. We have to do a little digging first to understand the issues, pros, cons, benefits, who the audience is, what their needs are, etc. Only when you have this information can you begin to craft your story.

In addition to the normal background research one does for a good story or PR piece, there are some additional factors that must be considered when publishing content online. You’re not just trying to get your content to your audience, but you have to make your content available for your audience to find.

Instead of always pushing information to people you think need to see it, you want to be able to pull in those who truly do want to read it. This is a bit of a different strategy than most people are used to, but it’s one that does bring in more targeted customers than the “traditional” method.

How People Search

Finding content online is all about keywords. We like to believe people think in terms of concepts and ideas, but when it comes to online content, everything gets boiled down to a few words. If someone sees a commercial on TV, they watched a full 30-seconds of information. But, if they go online to look for more information, that entire 30-seconds is going to be narrowed down to a very short 2-, 3-, or 4-word phrase.

The search engines have made finding information so easy that almost anything can be found using just a few words. Sometimes we might get more specific with a 5- or 6-word phrase when necessary, but the starting point is usually those 2-3 words that we feel best captures the information we are looking for.

Because keywords are so important to our online searches, people tend think and hear in terms of these keywords. We listen and reduce everything down to it’s lowest common denominator of what it will take to find the information we are looking for. This makes it important that we integrate keywords that our audience uses into each piece of content.

If you’re talking about “pre-owned cars” because that’s a nicer sounding industry buzzword, you’re going to miss out on a lot of potential traffic. Of course, you only realize this once you know that your audience is searching for “used cars”.

This is the problem. We get caught up using our own internal industry lingo when our audience is using street lingo. While you tout your internal lingo to feel smart, sophisticated, classy, or whatever, your competition is outselling you because they are using words that people actually think, hear, and search for.

If you don’t use the language your audience uses then you’ll be missing your audience altogether.

Find Keywords Your Audience Uses

If you want to use the language your audience uses you have to find out what keywords they type into the search bar to find the information related to what you do.

There are a lot of tools that will help you do this including Wordtracker or Google’s Keyword Tools. Some tools are more helpful than others and each will give you different information. But parsing through that information is well worth the time. I have a blog series outlining keyword research strategies that is worth the read.

The value of keyword research cannot be understated. Not only will you find the broad terms that your audience uses, but you’ll also find a lot of specific phrases that people are interested in. This information can give you ideas and angles to address to ensure you’re targeting as many searchers as possible with your content.

What we often find is that words we would think would be valuable are not, while words that may not have been considered jump out at us as something we should be targeting. By finding these keywords, you are able to develop content that speaks more directly to your searchers rather than to the people who think up fancy words with little meaning to your audience.

It’s up to you to focus your content toward those that are seeking, but you have to use their language, not your own.

Keywords Don’t Always Mean What We Think

One of the downsides of the keyword research tools is that they only tell us the popularity of any given phrase. What they can’t tell us is what the visitor is thinking when they type that phrase into the search engines. Keyword phrases often have different meanings depending on inflection, word order, or even singular or plural variations. This is when we have to use our heads to think through the relevance of any given phrases.

One of the best examples of this I have is when I was shopping for a headset for my cordless telephone. Walking through the isles of the Office Depot, I saw a box that read “cordless telephone headset”. Just what I wanted, right? Well, no. I needed a cordless telephone headset, what was in the box was a cordless telephone headset. Same three words, but entirely different products!

The meaning of a phrase can also change just by adding a qualifying word to it. In the image above, all the words in the circles have a single word in common. Can you guess what it is?

The word is “bag”. But the meaning of the word “bag” changes significantly just by adding each of these qualifiers to it. This is an extreme example, but it makes the point that we cannot accept every keyword at face value, we have to look deeper into the potential meaning of the searcher.

(This also illustrates why targeting single word phrases is a bad idea! Just sayin’.)

Knowing Your Audience

Knowing your audience isn’t always as easy as saying, “my audience is interested in x.” Just because someone is interested in a particular topic doesn’t necessarily mean they are your target audience, nor does it mean that they are all searching for the exact same reasons. Different searchers have different goals. It’s up to you to figure out what those are.

In the illustration above, I have created an example of three different types of searchers, three different types of interests, and three different types of needs. Each searcher may have a different interest and a different need. For example, a particular business searcher may be interested in education in order to develop a strategy, while another may be looking for ideas to give her a better direction. That’s not even to discuss the students or hobbyists!

Your job will be to put together your own list of possible searchers, interests, and needs, then determine which combinations lead to your audience(s). This won’t necessarily be used to eliminate particular segments of searchers, though, it likely will, but rather it can be used to make sure you are speaking to your audience based on who they are, what they want, and what their goals are.

Target Your Entire Audience, Not Just Journalists

The one thing PR professionals need to remember is that, when putting out online content, your target audience is not just journalists. Your online audience should be much bigger than a small group of people who may or may not be interested in writing about your PR.

Aside from journalists and information seekers, there are three types of searchers that may be interested in your content. These three groups are built around how people shop for online content, but the principles can apply to all different kinds of searchers, depending on what kinds of phrases they are using to search.

Researchers: The first group of searchers is researchers. These are people looking for information, but they may not quite be sure as to what exactly they need. They are using broad terms that will pull up a vast array of websites and types of content. Many of these researchers are using the search results to help them refine their search criteria. As they scan headlines and content, they get a better idea of what kind of information they are seeking.

Shoppers: This group has gotten enough information to begin to narrow down their search. In the shopping world they are no longer looking for a TV, but have decided on the Sony TV. As they continue to search, read and scan content, they are learning more about their topic and using that to decide what further details do they want or need and then taking that information to perform even more specific searches.

Buyers: This last group are those that are looking for very specific information. Not just a Sony TV but maybe a 52′ Sony 3D 1080p. They’ve gone through the research and shopping phase and now know exactly what information they need to be satisfied. Shoppers use 4-6 word phrases that give them a very specific set of search results to ensure less scanning of worthless content and a greater focus on getting this last bit of info.

Targeting researchers, shoppers, and buyers is critical in drawing in a larger audience, and an audience that might actually be a “converting” audience. Some of these will become customers, some will socialize your information, and others will report on it. All of these are important targets to reach.

Having done your background research on your keywords and your audience, you’re then ready to begin to start writing your content in a way that will reach the maximum number of people on the web. We’ll look more into that in Part 4.

See all posts in this series:

Part 1: Intro / How Print Audience Differs from Web Audience
Part 2: Goals of Online PR
Part 3: Background Research
Part 4a: Crafting the Story p1
Part 4b: Crafting the Story p2
Part 5: Broadcasting the Message / Conclusion

Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.

These sites are not new, nor are the complaints about their business practices and credibility. But, as Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR pointed out during a recent MarketMotive webinar, what’s new is that Google’s recent Panda updates haven’t shut down all the content farms, like many had hoped and predicted. Instead, several farms, including those mentioned above, continue to flourish in the rankings, not only in text, but also on video results.

Why? Because people who are looking for this kind of information find it of value. Surprise! Or not.

Google fellow, Amit Singhal, and principal engineer, Matt Cutts, defined the February and April 2011 updates as ones which would “provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis, and so on.”

It’s clear that certain content farms have been rewarded by Google, mainly for delivering relevant content to their target audience. And, no matter how you feel about the legitimacy of these sites, they use several effective strategies your business should duplicate.

#1: Know your audience/customers

Welcome to Communication 101. Apparently the folks from eHow and the Huffington Post passed this one because they’re reaching their target audience consistently. They’ve got the rankings to prove it.

Honestly, this concept is as old as Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and Amazon.com lists nearly 6,000 matches for “audience” in its book section. However, businesses remain slow to put this into practice. The importance of knowing your target audience (a.k.a. your customers) and their information needs is a key aspect of any successful content marketing campaign. Don’t guess or make assumptions about your customers. If you haven’t yet defined your list of customer types (or buyer personas), compile them from data you already have or create them in some other way, such as surveys and focus groups.

#2: Know the keywords and what they mean to your audience

Yes, content farms are SEO masters – obviously. You can be, too, with a little effort. There are many free tools you can use to determine what the keywords and related terms are for your business or industry. Just google “keyword research” and you’ll get a number of viable options.

One thing that’s hard for communication professionals to swallow is when their pet industry phrases don’t mean the same thing to their customers and prospects. During Stoney deGeyter’s recent presentation to PRSA Cleveland, he used a great example of “used cars” vs. “pre-owned cars.” We all know what this is about. Car dealers didn’t like the connotation of the word “used,” so, at some point, they “crafted a message” about pre-owned cars and tried to “position” them as a more refined option for the budget-conscious. Well, in the mind of the searcher, the natural term is “used.” So, sometimes you have to get over yourself and ditch the creative catch-phrases in order to meet the information needs of your customer.

#3: Create content your customers can identify with right now

The content farms that survived Google Panda are really good at creating original stuff – just about every minute of the day. Two bits of good news: you don’t have to compete with their frequency and, chances are, the information your target audience is looking for isn’t trending that fast.

But, you do need to make sure your content is well-constructed (English 101),  timely (Journalism 101) and written to address the issues your customers and prospects currently have. Engage them in your content right away. Let them know you understand where they’re coming from and how your product or service can help. This phrase, repeated ad nauseum in the content marketing arena, is apt: it’s not about you.

#4: Answer customers’ questions or take them where they need to go

Jarboe also discussed how many content farm articles and videos are responding to the how-to search, which is rapidly eclipsing the news search in popularity. Page rank with the new Panda updates indicates people are finding the answers they want, at least in some measure, from this content.

For business owners, this goes back to my first point – you have to know what your audience is asking for. But knowing is only half of it. Your content needs to either answer their questions on-page or steer them in the right direction with links to other related areas of your site. And, once you answer their questions, don’t forget to provide the call to action.

#5: Optimize each page for browsing

Web readers are so distracted. After all, there are so many interesting things to look at! Content farms and sites like YouTube do a great job of optimizing the browsing experience. Even if you don’t finish reading the article you initially discovered via search engine, the content farm provides you with a whole list of related content that might strike your fancy. Their goal – to keep the reader on site.

That should also be your goal. Make sure you give your customers as many options as possible when they visit. The longer they stay, the more likely they are to become conversions.

One feature of this tool that allows you to do just that is called “Rising Searches.” These are searches that have experienced significant growth in a given time period, with respect to the preceding time period. It’s where and how things are changing. This is golden information because by the time keyword markets are well established, it’s more of an uphill battle to dominate there. You can clearly see how the benefits you get from positioning yourself at the forefront of web search interest trends are huge. Insights for Search is a great place to look to make that happen.

So, you look at the volume of a keyword theme and you are given up to 10 rising searches in this market. This should immediately give you insights; whether it’s competitor’s names, a feature, a benefit or hopefully YOUR company name! You can immediately ask why? and gain intelligence that could help guide future decisions regarding all aspects of your business.

Let’s take an easy example from the past. In the chart below, we are shown the search volume over time of the keyword “emr” (short for electronic medical records). In just looking at the graph, we see a pretty consistent trend…

But, look at what we find in the rising searches column.

#1 is “ipad emr.”  It was a breakout term.  When you see Breakout listed instead of an actual percentage, it means that the search term has experienced a change in growth greater than 5000%.  This makes a lot of sense since doctors and nurses are acquiring ipads to look up patients medical records at a fast rate.  So, for those companies that offer EMRs, did they know that ipads were going to be used as a main emr tool?  Did they know fast enough to be one of the first to offer the app?  If they were, did they incorporate this keyword phrase into their online marketing campaigns?  Did they use SEO, PPC, content creation, etc. to attract these prospects before their competitors did?

And now, look at how things have changed when comparing this year to last year…

Looks like now there’s more of an “incentive” for using an emr, or at least more of an interest in it.  Are searchers coming to you to find out what that is?  Is that a part of your keyword strategy?

From this simple example, you can see how being at the forefront of dynamic keyword research at the appropriate time would have been a big advantage for a company in the emr market, keeping them ahead of the curve before it was too late.  Part of dominating the search game is taking advantage of the long-tail of keyword themes.  Keeping your eyes on rising searches can give you the intelligence to do it.

But, here’s the problem with your keyword research.  It’s static. You get a number and you compare it to other numbers at a single point in time.  That’s great for that day, that month, or even that year.  But as you know, your industry changes.  There’s new advances, new challenges, new demands, etc.;  and part of winning is staying ahead of your competition.

Well, how are you going to do that if you’re not understanding the ecosystem of your industry online RIGHT NOW and what’s forecasted for the future?  Those keywords you optimized for last year might still be great, but what’s old news?, what’s new?, where is there opportunity to get ahead of the competition?  Can you create content about a pressing question that searchers have that will help drive brand awareness?  The only way to see that is by looking at keyword search interest in trends and not static numbers.  It’s DYNAMIC keyword research. The trends give another dimension to the numbers that help tell a different story of what’s going on.

Are there popular keyword searches for our industry RIGHT NOW that aren’t currently on our keyword list?  If they are on our keyword list, are we currently ranking for them?  How does their search interest compare to phrases that we have targeted in the past and/or we do rank for? Has this changed since we last did keyword research? Why has it changed? Has it changed worldwide or just in specific countries? If search interest has gone up, have the visits to our website kept pace? Why or why not?

Not only can you look at trend volumes, but you can look at them by geography as well.  How does this lead to insights?  For example, you may look at your #1 targeted keyword and find that it’s very popular in the United States, but Canada is a close 2nd.  But, when you compare your brand name to your top 5 competitors in Canada, you’re nowhere to be found and your analytics data confirms it because you’re getting very little brand keyword visits to your site from Canada.  So, your product or service is very popular, but you aren’t.  Why?  How have you failed and how can you fix it?

If you’re Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft; you may notice how video games exploded in popularity around 2009 in India…

but wonder why your brand did not…

Now, I have no idea if there’s any legs to it, there may be a great reason why.  But, if there isn’t a great reason, then this would be good to know right?  Absolutely.

So, it’s simple tool but also a digging tool.  The more questions you ask of the data, questions your competitors aren’t asking; the more insights will pop out at you with market intelligence that can put you a step ahead.  You will know why the word “insights” is in the name (although I think a better name might have been “Insights from Search” because these insights aren’t just FOR search, they’re for every marketing channel).

Good marketing is a continuous endeavor of adjusting to the ebbs and flows of your industry’s ecosystem and looking for areas where you can get out in front of the competition by giving your prospects what they are telling you they’re looking for.  Get to know how to use this tool really well and you can do just that.  Stay tuned for more on this…

But, too much information can also cause a handicap. It’s not too difficult to be so inundated with info. that you get information overload or conflicting advice. That leads to decision paralysis. You don’t know the right course of action to take, or you can wind up using good information to make bad judgment calls.

Some time ago, I was working on a client’s keyword research and received the following email:

We decided to optimize our website only for keywords that bring up our competitors when searched. So, what I have to do is to take every keyword that is in your research and to run a search on Google to see if our competitors are there. You’ll hear back from me early next week.

I have no doubt that if this client’s competitor jumped off a bridge, the client would follow. This is a great example of taking information you have and making a bad decision with it.

Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be ranked for the same keywords your competitors are ranked for. But, this cannot be your sole optimization campaign strategy.

Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s Restaurant, once said he wanted to place a Wendy’s across the street from every McDonald’s in America. A smart strategy. It follows the same basic principles as to why car dealerships all congregate together: Customers looking for one may be swayed when the see more available options.

But, here is what Dave Thomas knew about McDonald’s that I guarantee most people don’t know about their own competition: McDonald’s does a significant amount of research before building a new store in a new location. Thomas realized that McDonald’s only enters markets where they are confident their restaurants will thrive. As Dave saw it, what was lucrative for Ronald would also be profitable for Wendy!

How SEO Smart Is Your Competition?

Before you follow your competitor off that cliff, are you sure each of your competitors have performed the right research on all their keywords? Do you know that they know that every keyword they are ranking for is bringing in traffic and conversions? Have they employed research strategies that have gotten them ranking for every possible keyword that will produce profits?

More than likely, the answer is “no” to more than one of those questions. That’s not to say that any of your competitor’s don’t know what they are doing. In fact, they may have a very strong and successful online marketing campaign. But, chances are pretty good they are not doing all things perfectly.

Are there some targeted keywords that they are not ranking for? Do they know all the different ways a potential customer will search for their product or service? Are they investing time into keywords that produce little traffic or no conversions? If you don’t know the answers to any of the questions posed above, then this may not be someone you want to blindly follow when it comes to setting the course for your own online marketing efforts.

Is Your Competition Making Mistakes?

From a competitive standpoint, it’s always good to know what your competitors are doing, who they are targeting, and what areas they are venturing into. A failure to know this information can lead to developing a poor business marketing strategy. While Dave Thomas wanted to be everywhere his competitor was, he also never stopped identifying locations to put a Wendy’s that McDonald’s hadn’t yet exploited.

We often explore our own client’s competitors and see that many do not have a full grasp on what keywords they should be targeting. Part of this is ignorance. Another is the lack of insight from those running the SEO campaigns. Or it could be strictly due to lack of budget invested in SEO. Who knows.

Those that employ a “me too” marketing strategy will undoubtedly find themselves following competitors through the same mistakes, costing themselves valuable time and money. Or, in the case of the client I mentioned above, missing out on entire segments of convertable traffic solely because their competitor isn’t ranking for the same phrase.

Think about what can be accomplished (and how much money can be saved) if marketing dollars are placed into a more forward thinking marketing campaign; one that doesn’t solely focus on competitors but instead focuses on the audience. After all, it’s not your competitors who’ll be buying from you, it’s your targeted consumer.

How Budget Smart is Your Competition?

But there is one area where it may be important to follow in your competitor’s footsteps. That’s in the area of breadth and reach of the campaign. I often hear from business owners wanting to outperform their competition in rankings both naturally and paid, but they don’t want to invest the money needed to make that happen.

This is where it becomes difficult for us managing the campaigns. An SEO can only do what the budget allows. If your competition is out spending you ten to one, and they have good people managing their campaigns, there is little chance that you’ll be able to out perform them, no matter how much you cross your fingers, tap your heels together, or complain to your SEO that you’re not doing as well as you had hoped.

Money isn’t everything in SEO, but it certainly does open the door to a greater online presence and bolder optimization strategy. A bigger investment can implement broader keyword research, more targeted link building, and a more keyword and search engine friendly site. These things matter in SEO.

That’s not to say you have to match your competition dollar for dollar. Working smarter is just as good as working harder. But, unfortunately, it still takes money to make money.

Doing what your competitors do, without ever really understanding why, is a bad SEO strategy. Pay attention to what your competitors are doing, but also know why, and make sure those same goals and objectives match up with your own before following them down ANY path, including one that might require a larger investment into your online marketing campaign.

Ultimately, you want to be able to compete for business for the same keywords, provided they are the right keywords. But you also want to find and exploit areas that your competition hasn’t.

If your online marketing campaign is simply a reaction, you’ll never be ahead of them. You’ll always be playing catch-up. Instead of being the “me too” guy, you can become the industry authority, leaving the others playing catch up and trying to be like you.

This post started from talking about How NOT To Do An Interview: The Basics. What was originally going to be an intro paragraph turned into a full post. When this happens, I just do what I often do… take one idea and make multiple posts out of it. Love it!

What follows are 15 questions I felt were important for a business audience to know about SEO. And, now that I know what I meant when I wrote them (see introduction), I can provide the answers I intended. Here are questions 1-5:

1. What is the most important element of a successful SEO campaign?

There are a lot of factors that go into a successful SEO Campaign. There is content, keywords, titles, descriptions, usability, architecture, and link building. All of these play a significant role and cannot be ignored. But, to narrow this down into a single thing that is THE most important element to make a campaign successful is tough.

I think I’d have to go with website architecture. While this doesn’t contribute directly to the keyword optimization, it does give the search engines the best “sense” of a site. Without good architecture, your site can be keyword optimized to the hilt, but it won’t matter because the search engines are unable to read and decipher the content properly.

An unpublished book does no one any good. Getting your website content “published” into the search results is step one. Then you can worry about what kind of reach you can achieve.

2. What is the second?

The second, I would have to say is keyword research. This really goes hand-in-hand with the site architecture. You can build your site, but if it isn’t structured around the keywords that are important, you’ll either have a poorly targeted site or you’ll have to go back and re-focus your architecture accordingly.

There are a lot of layers to keyword research, but when putting together the site architecture, you only need to worry about the basics. The goal is to find the “core” keywords that people are looking for that will drive relevant traffic to your site. Map out those core terms to individual pages, and you’re well on your way to building a site that can develop a strong web presence targeting your core audience.

3. How do you determine which keywords should be optimized for which pages?

If you’ve built your site architecture right, then your keyword targeting for each page should already have been determined. In fact, your pages are built around the idea that you have keywords that people are looking for, so you’re building your site content and pages to provide the answers to the search query.

However, if your site is already built, and you’re not so inclined to go back and re-develop it with a keyword focused architecture, then you have to start at the other end and work backwards.

The best thing you can do here is to look at what your core keywords are and determine which keyword best integrates into what page. This is no small task and requires a lot of consideration.

Things to consider are: the current content of each page, ability to integrate a core term seamlessly, and to ensure that the page maintains it’s value for its original intent AND those coming in for the optimized term. If any of those aren’t 100%, then consider another term for the page.

4. What are the top three on-page factors that should be optimized?

The title tag is, as I have said many times before, one of the most important pieces of SEO real estate for a web page. If you get nothing else right, get the title right. That alone can work wonders on helping to get your pages to rank in the search results.

Next, is the content of the page itself. Your content must back up the title and has to maintain it’s keyword focus throughout. Look for opportunities to reinforce the page’s keyword topic (which should be the page topic). Don’t stuff keywords where they don’t work, but maintain a tight theme of content that provides answers for those searching for that topic.

The third most important element is internal linking. This is a factor partially covered with a solid site architecture, but also gets covered with content development. If you’re addressing a topic on one page that is covered more thoroughly on another, link the relevant, keyword rich content to the fully optimized page that addressed that topic.

Linking in this way not only reinforces the page topic for optimization purposes, but it also improves the usability aspects of your site, allowing visitors to move around based on topics for which they are needing more information.

5. You didn’t mention the Meta Description or Meta Keyword tag. Why not?

There’s a good reason for that. Neither of these play any kind of significant role in the optimization of a website. The Keyword Meta tag is 99.9% useless to all search engines. Might it be considered again one day? Perhaps. Likely? Perhaps not.

The Meta Description tag suffers a similar fate when it comes to search engine relevance, however it does play a very important role outside of optimization. Since the Meta Description tag is used in the search results, it has a unique role in helping visitors decide whether to click into your site or not.

Because of this, the Meta Description is actually pretty dang important. Not for SEO, but for click-thrus and bounce rates, both of which can effect the success of an SEO strategy.

If this post has captivated you from beginning to end, then stay tuned for the next set of five questions coming at you soon!

They just don’t make music like this anymore, and it’s a shame. The sweet sound of rock’n'roll has never tasted better. All it takes is a reflective look at some of these song titles to realize that these guys knew their online marketing! (Though I’m sure they were all too wasted to even know it!)

SEO Requires Knowledge and Skill

I always seem to run into people who read a little about SEO and think It’s So Easy (Guns N Roses). Throw in a few meta tags and a title, and you’re all set, right? Actually, there’s more to it than that. What It Takes (Aerosmith) to perform SEO correctly is more than just a basic understanding of how search engines work. In fact, you have to be something of a Modern Day Cowboy (Tesla) if you want your pages to rank above the competition. A good SEO will Rock You Like A Hurricane (Scorpions), making sure you get the results you want.

Beware of Spammers Masquerading as SEOs

SEO has a pretty bad history with spammers. Heck, I think just about any SEO who has been in the business for more than a decade has spammed at least once! Back then we were Runnin’ With The Devil (Van Halen), but we really weren’t Foolin’ (Def Leppard) anybody but ourselves. When Google came on the scene, they gave us more than Looks That Kill (Motley Crue), they gave a hardcore Shout At The Devil (Motley Crue) and combated spam like nobody’s business.

Spammers today are a different beast than ten years ago. You could say back then it was just our Youth Gone Wild (Skid Row). Everything was new. Today, there isn’t so much ignorance going around. Every spammer is a Wanted Man (Ratt), not just to Google, but to all legit SEO’s out there.

Spammers: you’re not making the internet better. You’re cluttering it with your crap. People want to fall in love with websites, but You Give Love A Bad Name (Bon Jovi). And for that, well, you can just Burn In Hell (Twisted Sister).

But, the real problem with websites that use spam techniques is that, while they may rank well for a while, eventually they’ll go down in a Blaze of Glory (Jon Bon Jovi).

Your Audience Matters

In online marketing, there is such a thing as love at first site. Every first time visitor comes to you with the Eyes of a Stranger (Queensryche), and you have just fractions of a second to answer the question: Is This Love? (Whitesnake). If you give them love at first site, you’ve got a convert and a customer. If not, you lose.

For too long, the needs and wants of visitors have been ignored. Instead of falling in love with your site, they come thinking, “Please, Don’t Treat Me Bad!” (Firehouse). Your audience is more than just a traffic count or a conversion rate. They are your customers, your evangelists, your survival! You need to look at each and every customer in the eye and say “Oh, dear Sweet Child O’ Mine (Guns N Roses), there is No One Like You (Scorpions) in all the world.

You have to take the time to know who your audience is and what they need. Then build your SEO and marketing strategy around meeting those needs.

SEO Is More Than Rankings… Conversions Matter

If you think SEO is just about rankings, Welcome To The Jungle (Guns N’ Roses) of online marketing. While businesses may tell you they want rankings, in reality, it’s conversions that are Wanted Dead or Alive (Bon Jovi).

A lot of SEO’s Runaway (Bon Jovi) from talking about conversions. They just want to bring you traffic, traffic, and more traffic. But, what’s the point of traffic without sales? You want your visitors to think of your site as Home Sweet Home (Motley Crue) and to be Still Loving You (Scorpions) from the time they land on your site through the end of the purchase process.

Content Matters

If you already know the importance of having strong SEO and conversion friendly content on your website, then you’re definitely Nobody’s Fool (Cinderella). Unfortunately, too many website owners still don’t get it. If you want your visitors to come Back for More (Ratt) then you have to give your content a Reason To Live (Kiss).

Content provides the justification your visitors need to complete the purchase. If you could hear your visitors thoughts, they’d say “Tell Me! (White Lion), Why are your products better? How is your service is more thorough? Can you meet my needs? Why should I trust you over your competitors?” In short, they’ll say, “Talk Dirty To Me (Poison), and tell me why I need you!”

If you can’t do that with great content, you’ll have a site that’s just like any other. Nothing special.

We All Need a Little Link Love

If you have a great website but nobody is linking to it, you’re Alone Again (Dokken). You might as well tell all of your grand marketing plans to “Kiss Me Deadly” (Lita Ford), because a new site without links might as well not exist.

When your sales-less website is asking you to “Pour Some Sugar On Me” (Def Leppard)… you better take heed. Your website just needs some lovin’. Good link marketing plans are not easy, nor are they cheap, but they are essential for new websites to be successful.

There is No Such Thing as Overnight Success

New websites are Too Young to Fall In Love (Motley Crue) with Google, or for Google to fall in love with them. And, even existing websites won’t see success in the Still of the Night (Whitesnake).

Good SEO takes time. Not just the implementation of a solid SEO strategy, but for the engines to translate all that hard work into good rankings. Once you have optimized your pages, you’ve got to have Patience (Guns N’ Roses). But, don’t just sit back and Wait (White Lion) for the magic to happen. Be proactive and continue to look for opportunities to improve your site for search engines and visitors.

You Can’t Set It and Forget It

SEO and website marketing is an ongoing process. Sometimes you feel like you’re going Round and Round (Ratt), but there is really more to it than that. It’s about continuously finding new keywords to optimize and fixing ongoing site issues as they are discovered.

Don’t Stop Runnin’ (Y&T) to your analysis tools to assess the on-page optimization, architectural, and usability issues. You may think to yourself, “Here I Go Again” (Whitesnake), but revisiting your SEO regularly is an essential part of achieving and maintaining SEO dominance.

Test and Analyze

The great thing about SEO is that it doesn’t always have to be a Shot In The Dark (Ozzy Osbourne). Routinely looking through your analytics software to see if you’re visitors love you, hate you, or are In & Out of Love (Bon Jovi) with you is important. Sometimes you make a change to help improve search engine rankings, but it turns into Bad Medicine (Bon Jovi) for conversions. You don’t have to ask each visitor to “Tell Me What You Want” (Zebra), you can let your analytics do the talking.

You Can’t Always Be #1

In the world of SEO, Every Rose Has It’s Thorn (Poison). Sometimes there is a very delicate balance between top rankings and better conversions, or rankings for one keyword vs. another. You simply can’t expect to be #1 for every keyword, or that your #1 ranking will produce as many conversions as a better targeted #2 ranking!

Everyone wants to be on the first page. But, sometimes you have to accept being Seventeen (Winger) for one keyword if that helps you improve another keyword that drives more traffic or conversions. Some keywords are better as a Fallen Angel (Poison) if they don’t contribute to profits.

Good SEOs Thinks Outside the Box

Good SEOs will have a bit of a Wild Side (Motley Crue). They are always on the look out for The New Thing (Enuff Z’Nuff) that is going to help their clients gain profits. Notice that I didn’t say better rankings! That’s a part of it, but profits matter most. Anyone telling you otherwise is involved in some Monkey Business (Skid Row) and can go Jump (Van Halen) off a cliff. Outside the box SEO is usually results driven SEO!

There Are No Guarantees

If you’ve been around SEO long enough, you know that, ultimately, you’re just Livin’ On a Prayer (Bon Jovi) that Google doesn’t screw with their algorithm so much that you lose all your rankings. There is nothing worse than getting figuratively tossed aside like a Rag Doll (Aerosmith) while Google is Bringin’ On The Heartbreak (Def Leppard). It makes you want to Bang Your Head (Quiet Riot) against the wall while screaming out, “Somebody Save Me!”(Cinderella), as the Tears Are Falling (Kiss).

But, that’s the risk we all take. This is why having secondary online marketing strategies is essential!

Sweet, Sweet Success

Properly implemented SEO and additional online marketing strategies will, ultimately, bring the sweet flood of success as you see rankings, conversions, and sales pushing their way upward. When all your online marketing efforts are going well, you’ll think Heaven’s On Fire (Kiss) while you’re living in Paradise City (Guns N’ Roses)!

Or if you’re a physician looking to manage health records online, you could search for: EHR, EMR, electronic health records, electronic medical records, medical software, personal health records, practice management software, and so on. One of the problems many business owners and SEOs come up against is how to optimize their site for each of these variations that all potentially mean the same thing.

Quite often, your website will have different pages on your site that can be (or already are) focused on different aspects of your service that cover each of these topics as separate entities. In other cases, your similar phrases can be (or are) used interchangeably throughout the site.

The problem comes when each of these similarly defined terms is extremely competitive, and using them interchangeably won’t allow you a strong enough SEO focus to achieve rankings for any of them. You need pages that focus on one (or just a couple) phrase(s) at a time if you want them to be successful.

Optimize Similar Keywords on Existing Site Pages

Ideally, you want to target keywords that are already a natural fit for any given page. But, when several keyword phrases essentially mean the same thing, there is no clear distinction to be able to say definitively which keywords fit where. For example, “keyword research” is pretty clear while “keyword optimization” can mean the same thing as SEO and all the other phrases.

One easy solution is to find a content page relevant for any group of similar meaning phrases, choose the highest volume phrase and target that. Since each phrase basically means the same thing to the common searcher, changing all instances of various phrases to the single phrase you’re targeting can be done without changing the meaning of the page in any way.

The value here is that the core message of the page hasn’t been changed or the sales message diminished. It’s simply a matter of talking about “online marketing” as opposed to “internet promotion”, or “search engine marketing” vs. “website marketing.” I should note that you don’t always want to change every instance. Some variety is a good thing.

Reduce Site Clutter… Blog Instead

The strategy above works great, but it can become problematic once you run out of pages and still have a number of phrases left to optimize. Most people will just go about creating new pages of sales content to target the remaining phrases. The problem here is you’re going outside your core marketing message to do this and creating site/navigational clutter as well.

Usually these new pages offer nothing new that is substantial or relevant that can’t be found elsewhere on the site. Your site then becomes over-run with pages of content that were built for the sole purpose of getting keyword rankings. That may help with rankings, but not for converting visitors once they arrive.

This is where blogs can come into play. Putting together keyword focused blog posts can help you optimize for additional keywords, while not worrying about adding additional “optimization” clutter to your main site.

But before you rush out to create some generic content to get your keyword on a page, think it through. Your blog isn’t your sales content. So don’t go creating another sales page. Think of a way to present new information in a new, unique, and informative way.

Once you have this awesome piece of standalone content written, place it on your blog, but not as just any other blog post. Instead, you can create a standalone “article” that is linked from your blog navigation. This keeps that content timeless and prevents it from getting buried with the rest of the stuff. Be sure to update this information regularly as necessary.

Be Selective When Optimizing Your Phases

Undoubtedly, when performing keyword research, you’ll find a number of phrases that are similarly themed. Usually these are phrases using a single core term (say, “internet marketing”) that add additional qualifiers such as: “internet marketing services”, “internet marketing strategy”, “internet marketing consultant”, “affiliate internet marketing”, and so on.

One of the worst things you can do is to try and target all of these phrases on a single page. The better strategy is to organize these phrases into supporting themes and then build pages around each theme. Think of it as building in sub-categories for your product and services.

When going this route, adding new pages to the site (rather than the blog) is actually a good idea. You’re building strong, relevant content that targets the specific needs of your visitors using language that addresses that.

Building Strong SEO Content

When keywords are applied correctly throughout your site, whether to existing pages, new pages, blog posts, or wherever, content can be written naturally without feeling forced or being noticed by your visitor. The end result will be a robust site, targeting dozens, if not hundreds, of keywords, all effectively optimized to bring in targeted traffic while still increasing sales.

Unfortunately, many would-be business owners plunge ahead in this new marketplace as if it were some magic beans that will suddenly grow into a giant money tree. To be fair… for some, it has. But for the most part, these online business successes are rooted in the old-school business brick and mortar business philosophies. What has changed are the methods of marketing and advertising used to generate new and repeat business.

Location, Location, Location

Achieving top search engine placement is the B&M (brick and mortar) equivalent of choosing your store’s physical location. When deciding where to open up your B&M shop, location is everything. You want to be where your target audience is most likely to find you, not hidden in some back alley where the only foot traffic you see is a wino curling up in front of your door each night.

Unfortunately, online businesses can’t just pick the most convenient space for lease. Sure, you can rent advertising space on websites, blogs, and even in the search results, but that’s just advertising. The online equivalent to leasing your space is organic search search engine rankings. But, you can’t buy or rent those either–they have to be earned.

Get a first page ranking for your keyword, and you’ve earned some prime real estate for your site. But, this isn’t anything new in the world of SEO. People come to us because they want rankings. Top search engine rankings, they believe, are all that is needed for them to be successful. But, how many B&M stores in prime locations have failed? If you’ve lived or shopped in one area for any length of time, you could probably recall the turnover of many businesses that have come and gone over the years.

While location certainly matters, there is much more to it than just picking any location with a nice facility. And, search engine rankings mean nothing if you’re not ranking for the right keywords.

Research Demographics

B&Ms can choose their location based on any demographic research they have performed. This research can tell them who their target audience is, what type of selling points work, and what city or area of town they should be in.

When it comes to finding the right demographics for your online business, the very same research can, and should, be done. But, there is an added component of demographic research when doing business online: Keyword Research.

Keyword research is the backbone of all your online marketing efforts. Whether you are advertising, building copy, or optimizing your site pages for top search engine rankings, your keywords matter.

All too often a business owner chooses their keywords on one or two factors: search volume, and/or what a competitor is doing. While this is good information to have, neither is a sole reason to select a keyword to invest in for top positions.

Selecting a keyword based on search volume is like looking at your demographic data and deciding that, since there are far more humans than women, you want to target all humans for your women’s clothing store. That’s not really using your demographic data to your advantage.

Such a business owner looks at a keyword and says “I want to rank #1 for that.” But, without having done proper analysis, this “selected” keyword is really not much more than a pet keyword based on whatever whims the business owner feels important. The more these types of keywords are selected, the further away the site gets from bringing in it’s target audience and achieving any meaningful conversions.

Tune Your Marketing Message

The keywords you select will help you plan your marketing message for your customers. Just as B&Ms produce marketing content as a means to speak their audience’s language, websites must do the same.

Search engines have given us far more insider information about our customers than any other source. This information can help us build a marketing message that doesn’t simply use the words we feel are important, but the words the customer uses when looking for your product or services.

Searchers type in phrases based on terminology they use. This is how they think of the products or services you offer. These words are the qualifying words that help them narrow down their search. These are the key words that need to be used in the content of your site to ensure you are speaking the language of your customers.

Advertise

Advertising is an important part of business growth and sustainability. Those that don’t advertise can easily find themselves falling behind their competitors. Even businesses with a prime location are seen advertising on the TV, radio, billboards, and newspapers. You might even notice that some businesses advertise in other stores, with coupons and discount fliers. All this is aimed for the goal of bringing in even more traffic than the location itself allows. And, it’s good business sense that many online business owners forget about.

Technically, SEO can be considered a form of advertising and marketing, but it’s not a perfect science. Advertising lets you get specific placement in front of specific people. SEO can move you to the first page and even #1 spot, but nothing is permanent or guaranteed.

When building or growing your business online, there are avenues other than SEO that should not be ignored. One of the most common is the use of Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing campaigns. When SEO struggles to deliver top rankings for competitive phrases, PPC can fill in the gap. With PPC, you can also implement image and text based advertising on other related websites that are looking to make additional money from Google.

PPC shouldn’t be an afterthought, but should be considered an important part of your total business growth strategy.

Other areas of online advertising can include: referral deals, affiliate partnerships, and other strategic partnerships between your company and another. These all lead to the continued growth and strengthening of your online business.

Growing Your Online Business the Brick and Mortar Way

The web has done wonders in helping people break free from the confines of brick and mortar business ownership or workforce. Unfortunately, though, too many don’t take the lessons of brick and mortar business into account when building their online business.

Business growth depends on more than just setting up shop, opening your doors, and crossing your fingers hoping for success. In fact, “old school” B&M strategies are ineffective by themselves, but compliment each other when used together.

Building your online business is no different. You can’t just rely on a good website, good rankings, good advertising, or good marketing alone. You have to put these together to create a total marketing campaign that be able to generate success and wealth.

If you’re in the market for a (quality) SEO, you’re going to find providers that go well beyond services aimed at achieving top search engine rankings. In fact, if your SEO only knows how to throw keywords you want to rank for onto your site pages, I can tell you that you’re NOT getting your money’s worth (even if you are only paying a few hundred dollars a month).

SEO, in today’s world, is much more about online marketing than it is about manipulating a site to achieve top rankings for a few keywords. Here are some key components to a well-rounded optimization campaign:

Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the most important elements of the optimization process. While it’s not as important as the site architecture, you need to perform some initial keyword research in order to build your site architecture properly.

Spend some time to research your core terms, and then figure out how they will apply to your site. Be sure to build your site with your main keywords in mind, creating sections and pages around user search patterns.

Later, you’ll do more research and organization in order to make sure each of your pages is targeting your search audience in the best way possible.

Website Architecture

A solid architecture is the foundation for all your online marketing efforts. If your site isn’t built in a search engine friendly way, then you’re going to have trouble optimizing the site for search engines to index your data properly. You’ll also run into trouble with visitor usability.

It’s a good idea to start with some basic keyword research and information architecture (the site flow chart, if you will) to figure out how your site navigation and pages will be structured. Build this around your keyword research, while also keeping your industry and visitor expectations in mind.

Usability & Testing

You can get more sales by bringing more people to your site, or by improving the conversion rate. Bringing more people in before improving your conversion rate is like trying to fill a bucket with holes in it. Sure, if you pour fast enough, you’ll eventually be able to fill the bucket. But, if you plug the holes, you’ll fill it much faster and with a lot less waste.

In this case, instead of wasting water, you’ll be wasting money. Most companies fare far better by plugging the holes in their site to bring in those immediate sales, then worry about delivering more traffic to the site once that issue has been corrected.

Testing is an important part of this process. You can’t just make a change because it feels good. Test every change to see if it actually improves the bottom line or not. If not, change it back. If it does, keep it and move on to the next improvement.

Copywriting

A good Copywriter is essential to being sure that your content performs its conversion duties properly. Far too many people create text for the sake of text, not realizing that it is an extremely important part of convincing and converting searchers to become buyers.

If you lack good copy on a page, you just have a bunch of words and/or pretty pictures. Visitors read copy because it helps them learn about what you offer, the quality of the products or services, and what they can expect. It also tells them what to do next or provides them more ways to find needed information.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is critical for optimization success, but it’s not a stand-alone process. It’s more of an oversight process. The SEO needs to have a balance between keyword targeting, usability, site architecture and more. SEOs have their hands in all of it, hopefully with the goal of creating a perfectly balanced page for both visitors and search engines.

Social Media / Links

I like Social Media over traditional link building because it is far more audience targeted. Link building is about getting a link purely for the “link juice” it provides. Social Media leverages your target audience to get links, name recognition, and branding. So instead of a link for link juice, you get a link for your audience that comes with link juice.

Using Social Media, each link gets passed around and broadcasted, which generates even more links, therefore reaching even more of your potential audience. When it comes to customer acquisition, the value is in Social Media. But, sometimes you just need a link. Either way, links are an important part of the process.

Analytics

Optimizing without analyzing is like getting all dressed up for a date, but not looking in the mirror before going out. Sure, you see people giving you a double-take as you walk by, but do you really know why?

Analytics provides you with the feedback you need to see why people are reacting they way they are. It allows you to plug more holes and open up other opportunities for success.

SEO Maintenance

SEO isn’t set-it-and-forget-it. It’s an ongoing process of optimizing, reviewing, analyzing, tweaking, and optimizing some more. There is always some new problem that can be uncovered and fixed. There are always more keywords that can be targeted. There is always something that can be improved.

SEO maintenance allows your SEO efforts not to go stale. Competitors are actively engaged in bumping you for those top spots. Inactive SEO makes that all the easier.

PPC

PPC isn’t necessary for an SEO campaign, but it can be a valuable asset. Roughly 30% of searchers click into the paid ads. That’s 30% of traffic you can be missing. Not only that, but running PPC ads with SEO efforts helps fill in gaps where the SEO is under-performing (there is always something, somewhere) and increases brand awareness where the SEO is performing strongly. This results in more traffic and higher sales.

As you can imagine, rolling all these into a single optimization campaign can be quite pricey. But, take any one of them out, and you’re missing a crucial component. Cut corners on any of them, and you’ve got half measures that may move you forward, but not necessarily as fast as you want.

This is where you have to balance budget with expectations and results. Lower your budget, and you have to lower your expectations… because you will get lower results. Increase your budget, and you can increase your expectations because that will increase results.

Leave something out, and you may get good results in one area, but it won’t necessarily translate to good results in another.

For example, even if you get rankings, but no one is converting, what’s the point? Or, you can test and make sure your pages convert well, but if you’re not driving traffic to your site, then you’re just all dressed up with nowhere to go. If you build traffic through Social Media, but the site isn’t optimized to target specific types of keyword searchers, you’ll see higher than normal bounce rates. I could go on and on…

Unfortunately, too many people look at all of these as separate entities that can be added or removed ad hoc. And while they can, they are best when working together for a common goal: your business success.

Take the movie Avatar.

Plot: Tired.

Story: Been there, done that.

Acting and directing: Nothing special.

Special affects: Absolutely outstanding.

Worthy of a “Best Picture” nomination: Not by a long shot.

Worthy of a “Best Special Affects” Oscar: Without a doubt.

So, how is it that a story we have all seen played out in 100 different movies and “message” Star Trek episodes turns into one of the most popular movies of all time? It’s because James Cameron took a great heaping pile of “Meh.”, and made it all, “Oooh, shiny!”. It’s uniqueness overshadowed the complete and total hollowness of everything else on the screen.

A lot of business owners out there feel that their business is just the same old, same old. Nothing special there. But in reality, they can take what they are doing and turn it into something remarkable. And the easiest way to do that is through the content.

A vast majority of internet searches are informational. That means people are not looking for your products or services, they are looking for information about them. They want to learn something new. And, you can be the one to give it to them.

The key to creating unique content that searchers are looking for is keyword research. Let your keyword research become your idea generator for blog posts, articles, e-books, and whatever else strikes your fancy.

When perusing your keyword research here are a few things to look for:

Easy to Rank Phrases: When looking for good traffic, you can always start with phrases that have little or no competition. Find queries that match what you provide that others have not yet optimized for. This gives you a chance to build up some rankings and traffic for good (yet lower traffic) phrases. You can immediately start siphoning off traffic from your competitors and start building a loyal audience that will keep coming back.

Niche Areas: Look for an area within your industry that your competitors are not covering or not covering very well. Find obscure topics that people are interested in, but, after conducting a few searches of your own, show that the available content on the web isn’t sufficient. This creates an opportunity for you to fill in the gaps and create authoritative information of your own.

Highly Targeted Phrases: These are long-tail phrases that are very targeted for your audience, addressing specific areas of interest. Highly targeted phrases are generally pretty easy to get ranked but they also bring in an audience that has a very specific need. Write information that targets these searchers by providing new information, a new spin, a new take on, or a new way of looking at things.

Info Queries: These often fit into the categories above, but are queries performed by people looking for information and nothing else. They are typically the queries with a question that answers questions, such as “how to…” or “what is…”. These queries provide a great opportunity to provide content beyond simple text. “How to” videos, diagrams, flash animations, and podcasts are all great ways to provide this type of content in a way that people find valuable. Telling someone how to do something is great, but showing them how to do it is even better.

Just because you are providing a product or service that someone else is, that doesn’t mean you have to provide content that someone else has. There are plenty of ways to step outside of the box and provide valuable information that nobody else is providing. Look for these opportunities, and take advantage of them . . . before someone else does.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.

Under most circumstances, you want defer to the person who has the strongest skills for each particular task. Let the SEO determine which keywords are best, and let the Copywriter work them into the page. But, when it comes to actually deciding which chosen keywords make it into any particular body of content, the Copywriter needs to have final say.

The SEO often chooses keywords based on things like popularity, importance, and ability to convert. All very important factors, and very likely the keywords that the site needs for optimization. But, sometimes keywords are chosen incorrectly. Sometimes the keyword selection process is circumvented by someone else. Perhaps a boss has a “pet” keyword they want to rank for because they said so. Don’t laugh, it happens.

One of the most common ways to choose a keyword incorrectly is based on competitor usage. While you may want to analyze your competition to see what keywords they are targeting as part of their SEO efforts, you don’t want to automatically use a phrase or keyword that they did, just because they did.

I’ve seen this time and time again. A client says, “We need to rank for “x” because my competitor is.” A little research will show that this particular phrase gets little to no search volume, but none of that matters to the client. Getting good rankings for that keyword may work, but there may be others that would work better. So, is it worth taking the focus off of other keywords that are likely to be more effective to focus on others just because a competitor is using them? The answer is no, it’s not.

Choosing single-word terms is tempting due to the search volume those terms have. Clients often choose these words on that basis alone. Single-word terms are not only difficult to rank for, they generally produce very poor conversions as well. Still, they are tempting targets for business owners who see dollar signs in every potential visit. But, instead of creating dollars, these keywords steal profits away through efforts that are better invested in other places.

I mentioned above that the ultimate decision of a keyword being worked into the page should be that of the Copywriter. Sometimes a keyword can hit all the right criteria, but when it comes to actually working it into the content, it simply doesn’t work. This can be for any number of issues, such as it containing a poor qualifier (which depicts a benefit that isn’t offered), or it’s simply an industry term that just isn’t a match for the rest of the user-focused content.

The Copywriter’s job isn’t to force every keyword given to them into the page. Their job is to make sure the keywords they are given do work and to leave out those that don’t.

The Copywriter might have to do some research of their own, looking at the products, features, benefits, term definitions, etc. If, when all is said and done, the keyword doesn’t work on a page, it needs to be deconsidered. (Ooh, new word… I like it!) The Copywriter may have to pull rank and tell the SEO and/or the site owner what’s what.

The key here is that the keyword research process doesn’t end with the SEO. It needs to continue all the way through to the copywriting process. Don’t let the keyword selection and optimization process be derailed by people picking keywords for all the wrong reasons. Make sure all of your targeted terms work on all levels before demanding they get used on the page.

Core Term Qualifiers

Optimizing your website for core terms is only part of the optimization process. The vast majority of searches are performed using longer, more specific phrases. When it comes to keyword research, these phrases are really nothing more than your core terms with key qualifiers added to them.

Using your keyword research tools you can find dozens or even hundreds of qualifiers for just about every core term. Each of these new phrases must be carefully analyzed for appropriateness for your site, whether it targets what you offer and fits with the page’s content for which that core term has been applied. Those that don’t can either be discarded or set aside for optimization to other pages.

Research Takes Time

The process of researching your keywords isn’t something that should be rushed. Each phase of the research process needs to be performed deliberately, ensuring that you take the time to find all relevant terms and discard the irrelevant. Any attempts to rush through the keyword research process will likely lead you down the wrong paths at best and at worst cause you to have to rethink your entire keyword targeting strategy.

Unfortunately the research process isn’t always linear. You can often be working on several phases of the research process at a time depending on what your focus is on at a given moment. There is a lot of overlap and moving backward and forward through the processes but care needs to be taken that you don’t skip over or leave any of the phases out.

Keywords are the blue-prints from which all your marketing efforts are built upon. Keyword research tools provide valuable insight into what words people are searching on the major search engines. But research tools are just the first step in a thorough and well-planned keyword research process. Great tools like Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker or even Google’s tools don’t tell you the intent of each search, however that information can be deduced with a bit of analysis and keyword organization.

But before we get into that, let’s look at how people search so we can better understand how to segment and organize your keywords into an effective optimization campaign.

Yesterday, as we begun the fourth and final stage of the keyword research process, we looked at several ways to analyze your website and segment keywords into groups based on user intent. Today we’ll wrap up the entire research process, and this series, by outlining the final act of keyword grouping. Often times even your segmented keyword lists can be quite extensive and it’ll be important to group these phrases even further in order to be properly optimized into the website. This ensures that each page optimized maintains a tight focus but still able to be optimized for a significant group of keywords.

Grouping phrases together for on-page targeting

The process of organizing your keywords is similar to the process of splitting a single core term into multiple cores, only its done in a much more fine-tuned scale. With core terms you were dealing with multiple themes, or different ways to search for the same product. In this phase we are working with only a single core term and deciding how to segment literally hundreds of phrases into manageable groups that are similar in nature.

Phase IV: Organizing Keywords for Success

Making SEO Successful

Organizing your keywords into an effective marketing strategy is the most important of the four phases of keyword research outlined in this document. While most often SEOs and keyword researchers focus on the research phases, organizing your keyword properly can truly help you create a vastly more successful optimization and marketing campaign.

Let’s use the analogy of building an engine to help us understand the value in this final step in the process.

Analyzing Phrases for Quality

As we began Phase III of our keyword research process we discussed several different aspects of analyzing phrases. This helped us better understand the value of each phrase and the pros and cons that each bring to the table. Each of these much be considered and weighed carefully when determining if a keyword is valuable or not.

All of the above noted elements are pretty cut-and-dry and fairly easy to analyze. But in addition to those there are also some more vague elements that must be duly considered as well. These additional elements are far more subjective and require a good deal of thought and analysis.