SEO Techniques – Have you Been Brown-Nosing the Search Engines?

Are you optimizing your content for the right reasons?

Let’s talk about why this is important…

While it’s something that is commonly talked about, and practically hammered into the heads of people online, there are still so many site owners and businesses that don’t optimize their content properly.

As SEO has grown in popularity, the rush to rank well in the search engines has been dominating labor hours behind the scenes.  Unfortunately, more and more people are diving into SEO without knowing a thing about “good practices”.

Likewise, there are many that don’t even care about site and content structure.  They would rather develop their sites for the search engines to get the best ranking and take the number 1 spot in Google.

Let’s make it clear that a number 1 spot within the search engines doesn’t mean a thing if the content on your site is nothing but a garbled mess of corporate funk stuffed with all manner of keywords and geo-location smut.

That content will do very little to instill any buyer confidence in a visitor.  Those businesses do see more traffic, but they could effectively triple their sales and convert a lot more of their hits with proper content optimization.

The content that is placed on your site pages should be written for the reader first.

It should speak clearly to them and engage them in a manner where they connect with you and your business.  When your copy speaks clearly to a consumer, then it’s time to optimize it for search engine spiders.

The ranking algorithm used by major players like Google is extremely “smart” and well programmed.  It’s designed to effectively pick out and “punish” different forms of keyword stuffing or abuse.

If you fill your site with garbage in an effort to game to the system and manipulate your way to the front of the line then there is an ever-growing chance that you’ll get caught.

Getting caught red handed in search engine rank manipulation is a great way to get your site banned permanently from their listings.

It’s best to operate your business with your customer in mind.

Embrace… the little

Did you know that a lot of site owners and businesses try to pack the majority of their content and information on as few pages as possible?  Their reasoning is often that if the visitor has to click around less, then they’re more likely to convert.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth, unfortunately.

Web users don’t do well with lengthy content, and that’s what you get when you try to reduce pages and mash content together.  With limited attention spans and the need for quick satisfaction, most people are limited to a range of about 300 to 500 words.

Exceeding that without a foundation of extremely (let me add extremely one more time) relevant and informative content will lead to visitors bailing out faster than rats fleeing the Titanic.

The word of the day is Brevity – If you’re able to do so, keep content short.  Just like this post.

Web Design – Building the Pyramids from the Inside Out

If you’ve been keeping up with the recent string of posts then you’re probably beginning to see how the building blocks come together based on the overall marketing blueprint.  Each piece connects to another piece, and then another piece and so on.

A problem that many businesses and web site owners run into is that they try to get content on the website as quickly as possible in order to launch it.

They want it live so that it’s generating sales leads and they can start pushing content through agents and so on.  That site content often gets laced with corporate ramblings that everyone is using because they lack creativity – or they think that’s what customers want to hear.

Or they just don’t think site content matters.

If you want to rank within the search engines based on relevancy, and you want to be found by people that are searching specifically for something you’re offering, then your content matters.

What’s the point of putting up a website if you’re not going to do everything possible to make sure that it gains exposure?  Without exposure, there’s no traffic.  You can’t begin to plan your site content until you understand the buyer persona.  With that aspect mapped out, you’ll know who you’re speaking to.  From there you can figure out how to deliver the message.

You’ll have a clear and precise understanding of what your primary customers want to hear in order for them to make a purchase and feel comfortable, warm and fuzzy inside about giving someone their money.

From the buyer persona you can key in on everything right down to the length of the content needed in order to get the point across.  Even someone with a solid buyer persona mapped out can hit snags here, and that’s ok.  Not everyone is a natural born writer, and not every website works with the type of conversational speech/writing that a blog or less formal Business to Consumer (B2C) site can pull off.

If you’re not sure how to get your thoughts to flow cohesively but you have a concept of what you want to say then you can always hire an agency to tackle the work for you.  That might seem like a big investment to some but the content on your website, for all intents and purposes, is your sales team.

The copy is what closes the deal when someone lands on your site.  It’s the information desk, the sales force on the floor and the checkout all rolled into one.  If it’s crippled, or ill-worded, then you might as well put up an “out to lunch” sign and lock your doors.  Strong content is vital, so if you need someone to help you communicate to your target audience then do it.

Keyword Research – Finding the Diamonds in the Rough

At this point you may be feeling a little like there’s more to this whole SEO thing than just slapping some keywords together and it might be a little overwhelming.  Yes, there’s a lot of work to do but it’s important that you understand the work does not have to be done by you.

There’s a lot to be done to make sure you’re targeting the right people, and part of all that work is keyword research.  Finding the right keywords for your market or your niche can be a tedious process but if you want the payoff you have to put the effort in (or have an agency do it for you).

Pulling on the Long-Tail

Your research into the buyer persona has given you a keen insight into the mind of the people you’re targeting.

Not only do you know what is typically troubling them but you’ll have a clearer understanding of how they try to find a solution online.  That includes the phrases they toss at the search engines trying to find answers.

The primary keywords they use are likely going to be extremely competitive and won’t get you anywhere.  There’s no way you can compete with the big dogs in your niche right from go.

You could throw a lot of money at an SEO agency to promote you for those primary, vague “head” keywords and it would take you months just to get within the top 50 (if you’re lucky).

From the phrases your buyers use, you want to start finding synonyms that relate to primary keywords as well as the more specific searches on long tail keyword phrases that are more targeted to people who are ready to make a decision as opposed to those just kicking tires.

As you work with an agency to refine the phrases and keywords you plan to target, you’ll begin weeding through the larger competition to grab the low hanging fruit that’s much easier to get your hands on.

There may be less fruit at the bottom of the tree, but it tastes just as good as the hard to reach fruit.

The important thing to remember is to use the information on your niche as well as the research from your buyer persona to develop keywords that are niche specific.  They should relate directly to the problems that your buyers have, not your products and not your company.

People don’t care about products and services, they are self-serving by nature.  Your marketing efforts should leverage that.

The Buyer Persona – Engaging With a Bullhorn

So we’ve talked about the importance of optimization and how pushing yourself into marketing online will without a doubt bring you some returns.  There are still some vital steps that need to be covered and one very important question you need to ask yourself.

“Do I know who I am marketing to?”

Most business owners have some idea that they know their customers, but many don’t know their customers as all.  This is a fatal mistake that can cause you to waste a lot of marketing bucks, so it’s important that you identify who you’re marketing to.

Developing the Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a representation or portrait of the person you want to serve, and they need to be extremely detailed so that the persona you create is an accurate representation of your real audience.

• Goals
• Concerns
• Preferences

And other things that influence their purchase decisions.

Ultimately, it’s a short biography of your typical costumer.  We’re not talking about a simple job description but an actual personal description.

This should include information right down to their daily activities, social standing, and typical problems they face.

So Why is a Buyer Persona so Important?

Sales and marketing isn’t a passive deal.  It can be if you let it, but that won’t foster the growth you want. If you don’t know or understand the people you’re marketing to or the people you’re trying to influence, then you won’t ever communicate effectively.

Creating accurate buyer personas will help you understand and focus on who you’re marketing to.  With that, you’ll know exactly what type of content you need to serve them.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you won’t necessarily have one buyer persona for your niche.  You may actually have multiple buyer profiles based on products and services you offer, and each could be very different.

You wouldn’t want your site content to try to target all of them so you would settle on the most prominent and develop secondary content marketing campaigns for the others so that traffic from that demographic will find its way to your site.

A clear understanding of your buyer persona(s) will make it extremely easy to generate targeted messages not just within the confines of your website but in all forms of content marketing (videos, podcasts, articles, and blogs).

When you’re armed with complete insight into your audiences then you can anticipate their needs and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.  Through your content, you’ll effectively capture your targeted buyers and create a connection between the solutions you’re offering and the most urgent problems of the buyer persona.

Defining a New Direction for your Website & Online Business

In the last post we discussed how SEO is indeed worth the investment, something that many business owners struggle with.  It’s a normal concern, because the recession is hitting every market hard.  It’s important to remember though that any investment you make is going to come back to you.

Pulling marketing funds or freezing marketing in order to save money only hurts in the end.

So you understand at least the need to optimize your site, launch a content marketing campaign, “do some SEO”, etc. but you have no idea where to start – take a deep breath, it’s easier than you think and it won’t suck a  lot of time from your business.

The SEO for a website and online business should be handled in the same manner that a house is built – with a detailed blueprint showing exact, precise steps in the process.  It’s an integral part of launching and maintaining a website.

A major part of SEO is the content.  A site should be designed around that content.  Your website should be configured so that the images and layout flow seamlessly around the most important content points and your overall message.

Since content and keywords play a major part in search engine optimization, it’s obvious from this point alone that your SEO plans should start from the ground up and weave with other projects as your build progresses to completion.

A Little Now Equals More Later

With the right method, your active SEO should launch the minute your site goes live.  This refers to things like link building and content marketing to drive traffic.  Since you can’t do things to build your link profile and credibility with the search engines until the actual site is optimized, you can see where the need to be ready from the word “Go” is not negotiable.

Now, obviously with the massive scale of the internet (we’re talking about billions of websites and pages) it’s obvious that not everyone was able to get SEO involved in their launch plan.

That stands to reason that there are a lot of businesses out there that need to do SEO after the fact.  If you’re one of them, don’t sweat it.

That doesn’t mean you need to tear your proverbial house down to start from scratch.  It depends on the work that’s needed and your site infrastructure

You might only need a little elbow grease but in some situations there will be a company that needs to restructure and recode their site to fit new content, new designs and make their pages more accessible to search engines.

Time is money in cases like this, but you don’t have to personally handle the optimization or micromanage the process.  You just need a strong agency that will stand behind you to prepare your website for greatness.

Stacking the Benefits of your New Journey into SEO

If you’re working toward optimization and dominating your target market, and you’ve never really gone down this road before, then one of the first concerns on your mind is if SEO is even worth it.

It is, and the payout is huge – let make take a little time to tell you why:

With the right strategy, your site will climb the ranks of the search engines.  Thanks to proper link building your website will gain authority based on high PR links.  That page rank transfers to your site as well.

As page rank increases and Google begins to establish the credibility and relevancy of your site, your journey from the depths of the search engine result pages will gain momentum.

As your site nears page 1, traffic will increase not only from the links you’ve established but from your own organic listing.  In the long run, you’ll be looking at

• Page Rank of 3-5 in a short span of time
• Elevated Traffic in the range of hundreds to thousands of hits per day
• Increased leads and conversions
• More Opt-ins to subscription services
• Page 1 listing – Always in view for your keywords
• Higher credibility with users
• Much higher conversions for PPC campaigns due to relevancy of keywords to content

The bullet list could continue but I’m not going to write an eBook here.  The benefits are many and the risks are null.  Keep in mind that SEO is about more than just getting listed on Google though.  These techniques work across the board.

Google may represent a dominant share of the search engine market, but they don’t have a monopoly.  There are hundreds of millions of other users on the web utilizing other search engines.  With proper optimization, you can dominate your niche within all major and minor search engines.

Of course with any type of benefit there are terms and conditions.  You simply can’t fire off a campaign and walk away; your competition will overtake you.

Coupled with that, there is a good chance that you will see benefits decline heavily as you let your campaigns run out without continuing your SEO work.

• Page rank can deteriorate
• Rank in the SERPs will fall away
• Traffic drops

Some have touted success by running a one shot campaign and having the site stick in #1 for years to come.  This is misleading.

Usually, once a site hits top spot, it is carried by other sites through links and content sharing – particularly if you’re regularly sharing good content on that site or the content you put up is so good that people continue to carry it.

If you want to get people to carry your site, share your content, enter your store, call your number, etc. then you’ve got to take that first step.  You have to begin your journey into the unknown valley of SEO.

Funneling your Traffic with Conversion Optimization

First impressions are an important thing, and in terms of marketing online the conversion optimization that takes place as part of your marketing message and copywriting in your PPC ads makes that first impression.  Equally important to that is the second impression made when a user reaches your landing page.

With SEO and generalized optimization we often become so concerned over improving traffic and landing at the top of the rankings that we often forget the most vital step – focusing on conversion optimization to make sure visitors reach our intended goal.

In order to maximize the potential of a landing page with conversion optimization, you need to ask yourself a few questions to make sure that you’re performing – or will be performing – on task.

• What message are you sending to visitors when they hit your landing page?
• Once they arrive on the landing page, where do you want them to go next?
• How strong are the calls to action within the landing page?
• Are my calls to action focused or am I trying to ask too much?

Another step in the conversion optimization process is to identify and assess the behavior of visitors once they land on your site.  Using free analytics tools like those provided by Google you can view how well your landing page is performing and thus where you can optimize and improve your conversions.

As you review the analytics, pay special attention to the bounce rates and the exit rates in order to see which of your landing pages aren’t performing and which landing pages are your stars.  This can show you which pages don’t carry the right magnetism to retain the attention of visitors; those that need the most help from conversion optimization.

Another strong source of data is the Entrance path report available from Google Analytics.  This provides you with the information on the pages that are visited next on your site from the landing pages as well as the overall traffic percentage that visits those pages.

The OnPage Analytics section of Google will also let you view your site pages with appended CTR (click through rate) percentages on page links to help you identify where your site visitors travel to next.  Overall, you get a solid visualization of the activity within your site.

Identifying the information is easy, but when it comes to conversion optimization it’s not always easy to start tweaking and adjusting landing pages if you’re not sure where to start.  The idea is to strengthen your sales funnel so you retain as much traffic as possible.  Here are some ways you can improve your overall funnel.

Navigation

Include minimal navigation that emphasizes the destinations you would like users to travel to once they complete the page they’re on.  You can use a call to action to reinforce the navigation, as having multiple messages leading toward one goal can provide stronger and more consistent results.  Similar navigation should be used in the footer of longer pieces of content to direct people who reach the bottom of the page.

Text Links

Links within the primary body content should also link to supporting pages that are relevant to that specific content – especially where it brings the user closer to the end of the funnel through conversion optimization.  Visitors tend to use these links first within the copy.  Make sure links take them closer to your goal, not further away from it.

Above the Fold

As often as possible, keep your golden opportunities to advance a user through the funnel above the fold.  Opt-in’s, calls to action and incentives should all be clearly visible.  Don’t make them search for a reason to stick around.  Part of conversion optimization means putting your content in plain view, in a way that inspires interest.

Depending on the results you get, you may need to get into the real grit of conversion optimization with A/B and multivariate testing.  Sometimes there’s no better way (or faster way) to determine how well everything you’ve chosen to do is going to work.  The right kind of testing can shave time, budget and help you find the most targeted message that provides top level conversions.

How to get the Most Out of Your Business with Niche Marketing

When you are preparing your marketing plan as a small internet business, you have to discover who your customers are so that you know better how to cater to their needs. When you do so, you might begin to see more conversions trickle in as people realize that you are catering to their niche. Niche marketing is about focusing on a segment of the market that you really care about and earning their business through unique service.

Making New Content

Your content is the number one driving force of his motion. If you are not a talented writer yourself, there are a lot of talented search engine optimized copywriters available on the internet to serve your needs. Once you have a competent writer, it is your task to develop the individual strategies that you intend to employ.

The ideas themselves shouldn’t be that hard, just choose the subjects that you love about what you do.

Sign Up for a Lot of Lists

Not only does this help you keep a watchful eye on your competition’s content, but it might help give you ideas for your own strategy. Their quality and quantity levels are the most important aspect to you because you need to know what a lot of subscribers are going to expect. This falls under the “know your enemy” heading in marketing strategy.

Look to Other Media

No matter how obscure the niche, as long as there is a profitable market to support it, there is probably a magazine devoted to it. Some wonderful ideas for you own content are likely to be found there, whether through e-zines or real magazines. Niche marketing requires a lot of creativity, so always be on the lookout for fresh new concepts that would appeal to your audience.

Attack of the Blog

You have to keep up with the latest news in your niche, and often that comes in the form of blogs. The posts that are the most popular are the ones to really read every comment on the post. If you have something valuable to add to any post, feel free, but do not spam every thread with your ads because it is tacky and it irritates internet users.

Video blogs also fall into this category as well, and there are more of these every day that can help you strike just the right tone for your niche.

Never Neglect a Forum

You know when you have good content because you will begin to get comments about how helpful you advice was and emails from people telling you how you help solve their problems. That is the real benefit of niche marketing, is being close enough to your consumers to be able to directly respond to their needs. Content marketing hinges on the ability to touch people in a way that makes them think of your business as a trusted ally in their personal struggle. By communicating with them in the places that they go to talk about your products, you are keeping a much more personal line open.

The New Age of Customer Service: Enter Twitter

Anyone who has ever had to deal with customer service knows the golden rule: “The customer is Always Right.” This often means that we are to cater to the needs of the customer better than they might realize, and gently steer them towards the best choice, basically making them think it was their idea in the first place.

When it comes to the internet, we have a multitude of tools available to us as service providers that allows us to inform the people in the most complete way possible, and ultimately let them make the decision.

This is the function of the sales funnel, but what happens after they convert?

You can’t just leave your customers twisting in the wind. If they have a problem, they need to be able to contact you -preferably through the internet- with their concerns, and you need to be able to respond quickly with the answers.

Previously, the fastest way to get this done was through email, but even today that is considered to be too slow. Many times, after the customer sends an email it could take up to a few days to receive a reply, and then if the answer isn’t satisfactory, the customer must wait another three days. Today there is a better, faster way.

Twitter as a Customer Service Tool

Imagine submitting a customer service request and receiving a concise answer in a matter of minutes instead of hours. Would that impress you as a customer? Anyone can access Twitter anytime and anyplace, making it easy to put an employee “on call” in the sense that they had to field the questions that Tweet in. As a small business, it is still fairly easy for a one or two man operation to stay competitive as customer support, due to the convenient use of the social media.

Less is More

Sometimes the best way to convey meaning is in the most condensed form possible. This isn’t to mean that you should sacrifice grammar when you reply to your followers with solutions (no matter how butchered the question was). This may mean multiple tweets in a row, but try to keep the information as compact as possible, because after all that is the point of the Tweet in the first place: to be concise.

If nothing else it saves the chatty few opening sentences of a customer service email and cuts right to answering the customer’s problem. You might be surprised how much less you actually have to write in the answer because you can do away with formal pleasantries.

Your Competitors Aren’t Doing It, Yet….

There is a pretty good chance that you can be the first one in your niche to get on board with the rapid pace of the Twitter machine to improve your customer relations. As time progresses, it will become more and more ubiquitous. Is your business going to be at the head of a new trend, or the last one on the bandwagon?