Internet Marketing – Keywords…Keywords…Keywords

Posted on May 6, 2008
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Keywords are the central focus of any Search Engine Marketing strategy. Keywords need to be researched rather intensively to gain insight as to popularity, relative competition and, if you are engaging in PPC, the bidding data as it relates to budget.

There are various arguments, discussions, proponents for targeting less competitive keywords in the early phases of Search Engine Marketing work and an equal opposing view promoting the proposition that the more competitive keywords are the ones that are most popular. In other words, the competitive keywords are where the most honey is and therefore they should be targeted first.

However, it comes down to doing the real consulting of online marketing. Asking good questions of the client to understand exactly what the client wants to sell, where he wants the business to come from, and how he actually wants to execute the business of his / her business. It is only through this understanding that you can create a priority list of keywords and therefore focus on those keywords as the first target of generating all manner of SEO content.

Well planned, well written content generation targeting the priority list of keywords e.g. the top 25 keywords you and your client agree upon really answers both sides of the argument … less competitive or more competitive … less popular or more popular. Well written targeted and RELEVANT content does not play favorites, nor does it have to. It will address the most competitive and the less competitive; the more popular and the less popular. The fact is that you cannot afford to make a choice as to which is better, short term or long term. More general / more competitive keywords are generally searched for in more volume so you have the opportunity to get noticed by more people. If you get your “eye share” you will get business. Less competitive / more specific keywords will be seen by less folks but can also be indicative of a more serious buyer because they are being more specific about what they are looking for.

We have clients that are ranking on the top 3 pages for well more than 1,000 keyword phrases each. We know from our stats that there were over 900 keywords that were used as “entrance paths” for each of these clients. Some of these I assure you are “popular” and many are not. However, they are all valuable because the searcher was looking … AND … YOU NEVER KNOW WHO IS SEARCHING.

SEO and the Power of Web Analytics

Posted on May 6, 2008
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There’s no question; no matter if you are a well known brand, or you are a small company just starting out, you need an online presence. And the best way to create an online presence is through Search Engine Optimization and Pay per Click. Both of these methods of online visibility require one very important parameter; analytics. It’s essential to have the right tools to calculate the effectiveness of certain online marketing strategies and campaigns.

When I have to consult any client, Analytics is always a major emphasis. We can do very affective targeted marketing for a client or a brand but without proper tools and analytics, it will not mean much. We have to be able to calculate ROI because all our decisions will be based on this data. User analytics and interaction with the site will tell us everything we need to know such as interest points and weak spots on a website.

Pay attention to the flags, if a marketing campaign is getting 100,000 unique hits, 5 minutes average time on site, 10 pages per user and only 250 Conversions (0.25% Conversion), there’s a problem there. We recently experienced this with one of our clients. And the problem was the landing page with not enough emphasis on call to action. When that was corrected with an A/B Split testing, the conversion rate jumped to 1.2%.

Web analytics has a lot to do with success in a competitive online market. Do not underestimate the effects of analytics on SEO.

 

 

Written By Duran Inci

Getting Search Engine Ranking Results – The Pleasure of it All

Posted on May 5, 2008
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization | Leave a Comment

I must say I took a lot of pride today in sending out our unique Performance-Based Fee Invoices to our clients who use Optimum7 SEO to achieve top 3 page listings for Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Without divulging specifics, all of our SEO clients are getting great visibility now.  The invoice is accompanied by literally dozens of spreadsheet pages identifying the keywords, the associated URL’s, the position and associated pages for each of the major search rankings.
Our clients don’t pay these fees unless they are earned, the keywords are relevant and agreed to prior to the project, and they are listing on the first 3 pages of the 3 search engines.  The fees are scaled based on position and competitive factors with the highest fee being on the first page of Google.

However, our work is far from done.  We have to widen the reach in keywords and continually increase the rankings towards the very top.

More importantly, we don’t just define our Search Engine Services as keyword rankings; we are internet marketers and, as such, we will be paying more and more attention to human beings vs. the Google Spiders.  We now will be looking at the all important stats of bounce rates, pages viewed and time on the site.  We will pay more attention to the entrance and exit paths.  Why?  … To increase CONVERSION.  Getting found is one thing.  But what is the ultimate measure of success; it’s the business results as measured in sales or leads or other forms of conversion.

Improving conversion can only mean improving the interactive content located on the site and presenting it in a way that is relevant to the search performed, engaging to the visitor and providing the most positive of visitor experiences.

So, while other SEO companies see their job as complete or successful, we see the job as achieving a major milestone but with “miles to go.”  Now we want to make sure that our clients get the CONVERSION that VISIBILITY now makes possible.

Search Engines and the Microsoft Yahoo Fiasco

Posted on May 5, 2008
Filed Under Search Engines | Leave a Comment

Today we learned that Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo is a thing of the past.  Jerry Yang thinks he should get $38 a share and apparently Steve Ballmer at Microsoft won’t budge from his initial offer of $31, although some suggest that Microsoft was willing to go to $33.
So now what?

It is widely believed that Yahoo has been seeking cooperative deals with Google and others to thwart the bid, potentially hostile.  If Microsoft stays away, will they feel the same sense of urgency to make these types of relationships become reality?  Any careful of analysis of Yahoo vs. Google doesn’t present a pretty picture for Yahoo when it comes to Search.  Ask.com has already changed its business model considerably, from one that tried to actively compete with Google (“it’s the algorithm”).  Yahoo sees its share of the search market stagnating and declining.  It appears that some combination or further relationship with Google is “in the cards.”

Here is what is important for Search Engine Marketing Companies, Professionals and their clients.  Google is king!  There is little doubt that this will change for a considerable period of time … for as far as the eye can see.  Whether Yahoo and MSN combine, stay separate or horse trade somehow with Google, the fact is that SEO professionals must stay focused on Google and “stick to their knitting.”

I say let’s keep it simple and straight forward.  The present and future path to online search engine success lies in RELEVANCE.  No matter what is going on in the boardrooms of Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, relevance in the eyes of the Google Spiders is what those seeking online success should be entirely focused on.
It’s all about generating great websites and great websites are all about great content and great content is all about presenting human friendly and spider friendly engaging and valuable content.

Remember, it’s all about the visitor.  Google et al will take care of the rest.

Search Engine Spiders are Hungry!

Posted on May 5, 2008
Filed Under Search Engines | Leave a Comment

SEO professionals, and hopefully their clients, are acutely aware that it is a very competitive world at the top of the search engine pages. When you are vying for top positions on the major search engines, you are now way beyond the mundane tasks of meta tags, title tags and other basic internal components that are best described in Search Engine Optimization “101.”

Competing effectively comes down to gaining and maintaining the attention of the spiders … the technical jargon for the search engine mechanism for “crawling” your website. The spiders are looking for new content and they keep coming back more and more often the more you feed them with new and relevant content. Yes, they have a voracious appetite for this.

The spiders are not much different from you and me, however. If it’s just reruns on TV, will you watch the show? Will you consider it of interest? On your website, if all you are providing the reader and the spiders, the same stuff (reruns), they will visit less often and will value your site accordingly.

Fresh and unique content is the food that drives the rankings ultimately because valuable content that is unique and published online and within your website is what the spiders are looking for, indexing and giving value to in doing their job for Google and the billions using this top search engine.

Public Relations weigh in here as well. Press Releases should be an important part of what you feed the spiders for a “well balanced diet.” Regular placement and wide deployment of well optimized highly linked Press Releases are nutritional boosters that Google Spiders crave.

At the same time, you are making your site more relevant and more interesting to regular human beings that are the ultimate target. Always remember, well fed spiders can help you get found; well fed human beings can help you actually generate the ultimate goals of your website.

Google Search Rankings and the Grocery Store

Posted on May 2, 2008
Filed Under Online Marketing and Business | Leave a Comment

Sometimes a simple analogy goes a long way towards explaining how things work. Search Engines and Search Engine Marketing are often times confusing to consumers and businesses alike. What is Search Engine Marketing? How does it work? What can it do for my business?

Anyone who has gone to the grocery store knows that it all works pretty much the same way as it always has. You go to the supermarket with a shopping list or the list is memorized in your head. You go up and down the aisles selecting the items you desire. After you’re done, you go to the checkout line and you bag and pay.

While this is a very orderly process, have you ever thought about the products you selected vs. the products you didn’t select? Why did you buy those products and not others? The grocery store knows this and the food manufacturers and distributors know this too. They know and you may know as well that it is mainly “steered” by shelf space or shelf location. What few may recognize is that in the back offices of the grocery store and meetings in other nearby locations, there is a marketing war going on; it’s all about shelf space. The manufacturers and distributors seek the best shelf space, the best location in the store and on the shelves or in a strategic location on the floor and in the aisles. We are talking ferocious competition to achieve the best locations in the store. It’s simple; they seek to be found, noticed, picked up and purchased simply by catching your eye.

Search Engine Marketing is the successful and ever ongoing war to achieve top rankings in the biggest online markets of Google, Yahoo and MSN. First page listings are the desired shelf space of all savvy online marketers. Just as in the grocery store an intense war is fought daily to compete successfully to win the attention, the notoriety and the ultimate relevancy score in the eyes of The Google. Getting the eye of the buyer, precisely when they are ready to buy … occurring daily at your nearby grocery store and at your fingertips through Google.

Whether it is PPC Advertising or Organic Search Engine Optimization or SEO, these are the avenues to the consumer. Online, the consumers don’t want to take the “scenic route” … they want main street and that is defined as the first page of a relevant Google Search.

The US Economy, The Media and Your Online Business

Posted on May 1, 2008
Filed Under Online Marketing and Business | Leave a Comment

While the media, traditional and online, provides its daily drumbeat of negative economic and financial woes, there seems to be precious little discussion of what the hard facts really are in the US Economy and the global economy.  You would think from all of the mindless chatter and stale debate between supply-siders and demand-side promoters that the unemployment rate is approaching double digits, inflation is racing to hyper inflation 1970’s style numbers and that the US economy will soon be dead and buried.

However the facts speak a different truth.  The unemployment rate is about 5%.  This used to be a dreamed about goal.  The GDP didn’t fall in the first quarter; instead it rose by 0.6%.  While this is an admittedly anemic number, it doesn’t forecast anything more than a slowdown in the economy and not the first quarter of actual recession.  This is despite a poor housing market and a falling dollar, which has a great deal to do with increase in the oil price.  Does anyone speak about the fact that oil and gasoline prices are actually cheap in other countries that currently enjoy a stronger currency?  The decline in the dollar is the worst part of the economy; yet it has recently turned and the price of oil drops sharply every time the dollar rallies.  This is an indication that we are near the bottom of the dollar decline and near the top of the oil bull market.  In any case, the American economy has so much underlying strength that even a $120 price per barrel and a decline of almost 30% in the dollar have not yielded a recession.

The fact is that the largest contributor to doom and gloom is the frantic and sensationalist media.  CNBC has everything under a super electronic microscope providing great significance to the clearly insignificant.  All you have to do is look and see that they measure time by hundredths of seconds and measure stock prices on charts in tiny ranges to accentuate stock price changes to make them look more significant than they really are.  They do this microsecond by microsecond, hour by hour, day by day … and they follow the exact same script asking the same questions with no real guidance or proportion to the meaning of the information they provide.  CNN, Fox and the rest are no better I assure you … it’s the same information with a different emphasis, but equally out of proportion.  It’s the information age or so they say … however we have never seen so much disinformation in the history of the world.

So, what does this have to do with you?  Everything!  Don’t let all of this noise throw you off your game.  Let me tell you what I see.  Our clients are enjoying record traffic to their websites.  As internet marketers we rely on statistics, not what the pundits in the media tell us what they want us to think.  The stats tell a far different story.  If the media was accurate, there would be less people searching for things to buy or transact business with.  The stats show that record numbers continue to dominate.  Record numbers of searchers … and if you are an effective internet marketing company, record numbers of impressions, visits, and conversions.  This is precisely what we are seeing and, I might add, without exception.

How to Keep Marketing Costs Low During an Economic Downturn?

Posted on April 29, 2008
Filed Under Online Marketing and Business | Leave a Comment

Google and the Corporate Focus

Posted on April 29, 2008
Filed Under Online Marketing and Business | Leave a Comment

The biggest SEM Conference in the world was held in New York City in March at the Hilton Hotel. This is one of the few events where SEM Companies, Agents and Independent Websites can gain knowledge and the most recent Industry News on all aspects of SEM including SEO, PPC, Social Media and Social Book marking. Industry giants such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and many other companies show up with speakers, and also to promote their presence. 

It’s a huge advantage for anyone in the Online Industry to even be in the same room as Google, as they do not get to ask many individual questions since Google is very secretive about many of its operations. Their Algorithm and Universal Search gets criticized a lot due to the fact that they do not release much information. They have also been criticized a lot lately about not practicing what they preach. Google has always been the defender of relevant search however lately we have seen that they do not want to be just a search engine that provides relevant results, they want to be more. The purchase of YouTube and many other companies by Google supports this concern.

“Universal Search” is just another name for “Show me everything related to my search term”. So if I search for Britney Spears, I probably want to see some videos of her where she embarrasses herself (YouTube), I might want to see revealing photos for her (Google Image), I might want to read a biography or her life story (Google Knol), I might want to read some news about her (Google News) or I might want to click on a link to buy a CD or her merchandise. (Google Adwords PPC) 

As we can see from this example, Google has it all and more. Google used to be a search engine and they basically forwarded people to relevant information. Now, they want to capture that second and third click and keep the user on their network because the more people stay, the more Ad Revenue.  

Can you blame them? Yes and No. NO, because they’re trying to expand and keep making money. Just recently, Google was one of the very few companies to post more than expected quarterly earnings and of course there’s a reason for that. YES, because they’re following a policy where they’re going against their original idea which made them billions in the first place; relevance. So, if a video on Metacafe is more relevant to search than YouTube, who do you think Google will display?  

The theory is quite simple; as corporations get larger and more powerful, they lose focus because money is sweet and that’s how companies can often “lose their way.” However, I’m not suggesting that Google will lose their; they’re far from it. They have a good team, almost perfect management and they have all the talent and the revenue to support it. All I’m stating is that new geniuses and opportunities will arise from this lack of corporate focus. 

Written By Duran Inci

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