Posts Tagged search engine

Laws of Keyword Usage – all keywords are not created equal

Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on October 31, 2009

http://www.flickr.com/photos/derricksphotos/2172690132/

This error below made me realize I hadn’t compiled the rules/laws/principles of proper and effective keyword usage for SEO:

1. One main keyword (phrase) per page. Now, sufficiently long, you’ll get other combinations of keywords which link to this page, but you are going for one particular long-tail niche (forget one-word keywords, these have been sewn up long ago and are maintained by huge sites with massive link-love coming their way.

Reason? Your page is known (reputation) by its in-bound links. Whatever they say is on the page is really more important that what is on that page – but you want all inbound links to say the same keyword as you optimize the page for. If you work on getting prime search engine real estate (top 5 positions – above the fold), then figure for a keyword “scatterbrained nitwit”, all or most of your inbound links should have the words “scatterbrained nitwit” in their text link. While you can get “scatterbrainednitwit.com” to help out, it’s not essential. (But note: having “scatter-brained-nitwit.com” can get you penalized, as spammers wasted that approach years ago.)

Two or more keyword phrases will confuse search engines and give you lower rankings. Your pages should be like you talk – one subject at a time. Don’t talk or write in non-sequiturs. If you do have to bring up another topic, it’s perfectly OK to link to a separate page on this new topic. Gives you another keyword phrase you can “dominate”.

2. Use your meta-tags for theme words, not keywords. Most of the biggest search engines don’t rely on meta-tags (thank spammers for that one, too…), but Google uses them to check the “theme” of the page, ie. does your content match what you are talking about?

If you put your keyword phrases in your meta-tags, unscrupulous spammers will scan these to find what you are talking about or trying to get search engine real-estate with and work to beat you to the punch. Just what you need – more competition.

The old tools which harvest meta tag information are good now for finding theme words – what that page should be talking about. The reason Google looks for theme words is also to help them figure where to list your page. Most words have several distinct meanings. Searching for “Apple” the computer company shouldn’t give you results on “apple” the fruit. Help them out – use meta tags for repeating theme words on your page.

3. General current use of Keywords:

a. Page title
b. H1-H2 headings (Not necessarily in the headline.)
c. Once in opening paragraph – which should be emphasized with bold (or possibly italic – but only in san-serif fonts, so it remains legible).
d. Generally, no where else on the page, or at max – no greater than 3-5% of that text copy – again, thank the spammers for this rule.
e. The rest of the page is composed of theme words and articles (an, a, the, those, that, etc.) and somewhat meaningless words which hold the sentence together (conjunctions and stuff like and, or, with, as well as of, in, by, etc.) But these common words aren’t theme words and so shouldn’t show up on your meta-tags.

This above is the result of several studies into page optimization, namely through Michael Campbell, Dr. Andy Williams, SEO2020, and some others.

While the rest of this below post seems fairly accurate, the below quote is not. (P.S. I blog this to give you all possible data, but also because their site has no particularly apparent way to add a comment -siwwy wabbits.)

Website Magazine : Keyword Research – A Foundation for Local SEO:

“Focus on one or two keywords or phrases per page – and use them in the title, subheads, meta tags, and copy of the page. Also use keyword variations in the text to enhance the keyword’s relevance.

As an example, let’s say your business is called Las Vegas Floral Boutique. You could use your business’s name as one keyword phrase and ‘Las Vegas flowers’ as another. Since most people will be using ‘Las Vegas flowers’ rather than your business name in their searches, mention Las Vegas Floral Boutique occasionally but focus more on the more generic term and use variations like ‘Las Vegas flower shop’, ‘flower shop Las Vegas’, ‘affordable Vegas flowers”, etc.”

And now you know why that wouldn’t work and what to ignore on the Internet – well, at lest some more…

Some additional posts of interest:

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How search engines used to work

Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on October 30, 2009

search engine marketing How search engines used to work

These next two sections explain how search engines are generally used in marketing. These are slowly being replaced by social media. In fact, most of these are trying to become social media. But that’s another topic for another day…

How to actually use search engines to find potential clients
But there is a single principle involved here: you want to be able to get onto the first page or two of Google and stay there long enough for your most valuable clients to find you.  That’s the simplicity of it.  When you want to expand your client base, you get back into promoting for new visitors you can turn into clients.

And mostly, we’ve already covered how to do this: simple, basics of SEO applied to each page as you write them, and posting your content on social media sites (which includes using a blog platform to hose your main site.) This gets you rapidly onto Google’s top listings. The more valuable content you post on a regular basis and the longer you stay up there.

I’ll go over this in more detail later, but the crux of search engine use is in helping people find your site to begin with. That’s mostly all they are good for. It doesn’t mean they are going to find it later by using search engines (unless they forget your name). And frankly, that is all they are good for.

Once people select their communities, they find more resources through that community, not through the search engines. Word of mouth, actually. They follow and subscribe to people they trust and use these peoples’ recommendations. Like habits, they continue to mostly check on their email and their favorite sites. People mostly don’t use search engines in their daily living – they are checking out their neighborhood for new stuff from the their network of friends.

This means most of this emphasis on search engines in Internet Marketing is overblown.
Search engines and advertising are like the old Big 3 TV networks and advertising. Companies who think they have to do a lot of advertising support a great number of outlets just so they can get their advertising dollar spent. Yet advertising is expensive and 97% of it is wasted. What Google, Yahoo, and others are doing is to set aside their prime eye-ball real estate (what and where exactly people tend to look at first on the page) for advertising. And charge extra for people to have their ad in this particular spot.

Google and others sell advertising spots by Keyword and then present them on the appropriate pages. By creating a bidding war for certain keywords, they make more money. In addition to that, they entice individuals to put ads on their own sites by paying them (usually a paltry pittance for the hours of work they do providing content – just to have another distraction taking their traffic somewhere else).

The kicker is that the bulk of humankind Internet users train themselves to ignore these ads. Again – you’re left with the 3 percent who are trusting or gullible enough to click-through.

Advertising is how search engines support themselves. So it’s here to stay – until search engines are themselves replaced. And this movement is en-route. (Again, I’ll tell you more of this later, though the basics are outlined above.)

Once you have helped your visitors become loyal clients, then they come directly to your blog and search engine sources are the minority. You will also find that your bounces (people who stay less than 30 seconds and visit no other page) decline proportionately. Direct access and referrals rise dramatically (loyal clients and word of mouth).

Some additional posts of interest:

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Keywords which don’t tell you anything about the Gorilla in the room

Posted by robertworstell in Marketing Research on October 30, 2009

Lowland Gorilla by TXZeiss.

That’s the problem with a lot of these niches we deal with. When we are simply trying to sell a product, we fail because some of these niches simply don’t have buyers in them. And worse, some people are telling you that the way you find buyers is to see if people are advertising in that area. (Really? How come people are advertising where there isn’t even any traffic? Google says they do – just look on their Adwords tool and see where there is “competition” even when there aren’t enough traffic results to make up a monthly tally…)

Since I got myself all worked up with that (above-linked) post, I then had to see what was actually going on.

So I set up my Keywords Genies: Google Adwords Tool and RankTracker and started to get to work figuring this all out. I started using Google Adwords to see if it would give me bigger and bigger traffic keywords through its synonyms. After I amassed about 12,000 keywords, then I quit to digest them by OpenOffice database.

Now, this is completely the reverse of what my research says to do. I was purposely looking for stuff that couldn’t possibly be a niche – waaayy too big. Of course, one of the first things I found out was that Google and WordTracker don’t agree on what the traffic for something actually is. (Big surprise – all these tools only deal with their own estimates of traffic. Your mileage may vary, as well – only your own analytics knows for sure.)

But what I did find is that there seem to be a huge number of really good one and two-word keywords with decent KEI. Even though they could (and some did) have literally a trillion pages of competition. No, you couldn’t dream of trying to get these on their own. So the niche theory of marketing empire-building still holds.

The review of these niches and their main keywords started showing something else (other than the fact I was really straining RankTracker and WordTracker – you can only check about 240 KW’s at a time before WordTracker shuts you down). That something else was the point that people who search on Google are just that – lookers. Doesn’t mean they are buyers. And you have to check that keyword on eBay or Amazon to see if people are actually able to sell something like that.

Even more striking was the observation that very little “stuff” was turning up with these keywords. Specific camera’s, or toys, or gadgets or books or authors weren’t coming up. But the big-ticket Maslow-pyramid-type phrases were. As niches.

But didn’t I just say you couldn’t sell anything in a niche that didn’t have buyers in it?

Sure. The trick is that the motivations to buy are there, not the stuff you can sell.

This means that people are actually searching for their wants and feelings, not just specific stuff they want to buy – although that happens as well, but not in two words or less (most of the time, anyway).

Your niches show up in four-word or longer phrases.

But something even more interesting showed up – you aren’t selling stuff, you’re offering solutions.

All of these wants and feelings people put in their search engine forms – these are just problems they are having in their lives (more or less). What they are plugging away at searching for are solutions which would improve their lives.

Again, go back to Maslow and Cialdini. When you take these two giants together, you see what people as individuals and as groups/niches are trying to solve in their lives. All these things people buy are somewhere on Maslow’s pyramid. And what you see selling on eBay or Amazon are translations of these items into the tribe-dominated Cialdini 6 (or 7) principle triggers.

Being blonde, young, trim, athletic, rich, famous, etc. – all of these have definite products associated with them. But below all these states are very definite wants and needs – and between those and the products that represent them are the person’s feelings. Which are what all sales are based on – feelings.

My point in this actually goes back to what I’ve spend the bulk of this life on – personal improvement and self-growth. Recently, I’ve been studying marketing to see how selling this type stuff is done. And so, now I know how to sell almost anything – find out what stresses are hitting people’s lines and offer solutions. Stresses are tied into feelings – and they come from a person’s purpose, something seemingly dis-related to marketing.

The reason I’m telling you all this is to keep you up to speed with what I’ve been discovering.

Practically, with proper market research, starting with keywords and then finding what products are selling in that niche – you could conceivably sell sun-tan oil to Eskimo’s if you wanted.

It’s all sitting there in the keywords.

So, go ahead, compile your own list of 12,000 Google Adwords and see what comes up.

May you be just as pleasantly surprised.

Some additional posts of interest:

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WordPress site-building sequence

Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on October 30, 2009

Farmhouse with Silos HDR by ajagendorf25.

[Oh, this one is a killer. I'm going to have to do a follow up for this - all full of plug-in's, etc. It will probably only show up in the membership area...]

This post on Marketing Insight is how to build your site. (And those are silo’s above – where chopped, fermented corn is stored before it is fed to fattening cattle.) Dr. Williams (below) is offering one concept about how to build a site. He’s actually converting old hand-coded sites over to a new WordPress platform. And I respect his work.

ezSEO Blog: “The overall idea of this new system is to concentrate on sub-niches, one at a time, and build those sub-sections before moving on to the next one.

THINK OF EACH SUB-SECTION AS A MINI-SITE

Suppose my website was on dieting. This is a huge niche and to try to do the keyword research up front would be a monumental task. A large part of my site would probably be the various diets that people could go on, so I would start off by setting up my Wordpress site with a super category called ‘Diets’.

I would then pick one diet at a time, e.g. the Sonoma diet, and carry out the keyword research only on the Sonoma diet. I’d keep this data in a separate database in KRA Pro.

I could then concentrate on the Sonoma diet, creating a main page for that diet as well as articles on the diet that can link back to the main page.

When you are finished with the Sonoma diet, pick another area you want to work on, e.g. South Beach Diet and repeat.

IT’S LIKE ADDING LOTS OF MINI-SITES TO THE SAME DOMAIN, AND LINKING THEM WITH THE HOMEPAGE AND MENU SYSTEM”

I would take a different approach. And as you know from following this blog I use RankTracker to query WordTracker to get my niches (which is a whole lot cheaper and more powerful).

Now, as I’ve discussed, my approach is to distill my niches and their keywords. This gives me what keywords add up to the targeted main keywords I want to use to create content. I simply line them up by KEI and then work on them in that way. I don’t take a certain one and then create content for all the pages like that. I don’t do all the dog-collar keywords and then do dog-leash keywords. I’d work all of the long-tail niche keywords for dog in order of their KEI. Sure they’ll cross, but what you are trying to take over is “dog” as a main KW – and that is what your blog is named. (Yes, that is a lousy choice as a “niche”, since it isn’t really, but it gives a good example.)

Under dogs, you’d have categories (silos) of dog-collars, dog-leashes, dog-dishes, and so on. As Andy says above, I don’t really hold to silos either. Mainly because people don’t want their content served up that way. And your “back” button is there by default on every page you visit. So bouncing from a too-content-limited page is easier than not.

And WordPress has the option of viewing all your categories on the sidebar. So while they might be interested in dog-collars, they might want to compare with the content you have for cat-collars. Or just Cats. Those are all on your categories – and allow you to nest categories as well.

I recently imported a Blogger blog into WordPress and found that now I had tons of default categories. So that screwed any idea of having category-silos without editing every single page out of hundreds. (And I have more to study up on the use of both categories and tags for posts – both of which cross-link posts, making it easier for viewers, but ridiculous if you are trying to maximize page-rank.)

Another reason I like to post by KEI rather than category is to break up my week. While I still have lots of research to do on the various keywords, it gives you more diversity and options if you are posting for the best traffic/competition first. And when you have all the long-tail keywords established, you can come back to work them all in sequence again (or several times) because you already have the research done.

My writing is what I am inspired on – so I jump from blog to blog, depending on what I’m covering at the time. Lately I’ve been hobby-horsing other books, but this also gave me a post on hate-addiction, as well as putting up a new post from an old draft about expanding your marketing mix beyond email newsletters I had hanging around on that imported Blogger site. So I’m working on several keywords at the same time. Each with different publics. Keeps me from getting bored, but it’s mainly to get those-type thoughts out and written down before I forgot about them and lost the inspiration. (Plus, it makes my Friendfeed life-stream far more interesting, let alone twitter.)

And this method of writing for just a single blog also makes more sense to the search engines, since a person doesn’t just talk about dog-collars for twenty articles over a couple of weeks and then fascinate on dog-leashes. This also breaks up your flow if you are doing posts, so your subscribing public isn’t bored to tears by dog-collars, then bored by dog-leashes. A simple approach would be to write in one category, then do your next post in the next-best KEI category, and so on.

But I’m pretty sure with both tags and categories, any idea of a silo is pretty shot. Silo’s are actually a hold-over from the days when PageRank ruled SEO. And pagerank has been pretty back-watered for some time now.

The general rule is that search engines follow viewers. So Content is King – like nothing else. Build a great site and you’ll get more subscribers and they’ll stick around for more (as well as buy).

The point of doing your articles/posts by KEI then targets your most likely traffic first. Rotating through these keywords until you have several articles for each long-tail-KW – and a good leg-up on taking over the main phrase, this keeps your readers interested and coming back for more.

Some additional posts of interest:

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Misuse “Conversation Domination” for SEO – its flaws and failures

Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on October 30, 2009

search engine marketing Misuse Conversation Domination for SEO its flaws and failures

“Conversation Domination” was an ebook authored by Howie Schwartz. Other people (including myself) have worked this out independently. It’s just a natural extension of multiply publishing your content on various social media sites. Since so few people really produce effective content, it’s relatively easy to take over the majority or all of the spots for a given keyword.

[You'll see that Howie is a bit of a scammer, hiding the fact of a $197 per month fee in the bottom text on that page.]

Here’s the first of the failures for this “system”:

1. Marketing is based on conversation. Conversation is – by definition – a turn-about process. “Dominating” a conversation means you control it completely.

Now – what does a person do with a conversation that is completely controlled by one person?

Leave – find somewhere else to converse.

Next:

2. Search engines evolve according to human needs and wants. Spammers find themselves isolated eventually, kicked off all search engines. Why? Spam is unwanted communication. A one-way flow. Old-style marketing tactics.

And:

3. When someone “dominates” search engines by taking several or all of the top spots for a given keyword, it means no one else can participate in that conversation. So, ultimately, this means that such techniques will eventually be labeled spam and search engines will move elsewhere.

But:

4. Original, great content is king - always has been. That’s what the Internet was created for. So people could find information (content) they were looking for. Spamming your way to the consistent top of the search engines doesn’t mean you have the best content – you’ve just figured out how to make the search engines think you do. And search engines ultimately penalize all spammers – drastically.

Also:

5. Marketing (ClueTrain Manifesto) means conversations – real conversations. I give, you take. You give, I take. No shortcuts. No “Igiveyoutake. Igiveyoutake. Igiveyoutake…” Doesn’t work – except in extraordinary circumstances (jails, prisons, visiting in-laws). Usually temporary until situations are resolved.

Finally:

6. “Conversation Domination” (or anything touted as “domination”) is a dead-end street – and it has “SPAM” graffitied on that back wall when you reach it.

7. But setting up a bunch of remote blogs under aliases to comment on your own stuff in order to raise its search engine ranking – just more spam. You’ve already got tons of backlinks coming in from all these tools above. Squidoo pages are fine – but if they are only about you, then they are just more old-style marketing, aren’t they? Converse, don’t pontificate or posture.

Why is OnlyWire fallen by the wayside, less important than it was originally – because people were spamming with it. Simple. Spamming isn’t a conversation – it’s old-style marketing. Social Media handles it by shunning and voting you off the island. (update: OnlyWire has reinvented itself and is back again..)

8. The real purpose of Marketing and Commerce is to provide something of value so people can improve their lives with it. That’s how you earn word of mouth and client loyalty. No other way.

When you block other people’s content by artificially and constantly grabbing the spotlight… Those actions just can’t last.

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Real, timeless, practical approaches:

A. This doesn’t mean you don’t optimize your pages so search engines can read them easily. Doesn’t mean you don’t theme your pages so they make sense to the readers and the search engines at the same time. (Most people still don’t do this – and there is no way to educate them to do this, so this is a completely valid solution.)

B. This doesn’t mean you don’t tell directories about your site. Still works.

C. Doesn’t mean you don’t submit (or auto-submit) your content changes to RSS directories.

D. It does mean you interact with people leaving comments on your site. It does mean that you track people commenting on your content and leave comments on their site – as well as linking to them.

E. It does mean to re-purpose your content in many ways, so lots of people can find it in a format they like. Articles, press releases, podcasts, slideshares, videos – and whatever else comes down this pike.

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If you do the first 1-7 above – I hope you sleep really well at night for all the “long-tail niche keywords” you’ve just “dominated”. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to tape up that corner of the bigger-than-life poster of you on your bedroom door. And don’t forget – you’re sleeping alone most nights…

If you do A-E, welcome to the real world.

Keep your search engine optimization work honest and always a real contribution – and then you’ll succeed way beyond your wildest hopes.

Because you are helping everyone win, helping them find the content they need to improve their lives.

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Update: I may have mentioned this elsewhere, about an experiment I made. What happened is that the social media flooded the search engines initially. They all linked back to my site page. That site page didn’t show up to begin with. But after a month or so, the social media faded to lower rankings, while the site page kept up there at about #3 or #4 for that keyword phrase.

While you make take a majority of the top postitions temporarily, other people can come along with new content and push them down the stacks. But your make page seems to stay, essentially as it’s SEO’d for that phrase and has incoming links from social media sites, which tell the SE’s that it’s an authority. (Google, anyhow.)

Some additional posts of interest:

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Waste your time with PageRank instead of improving user experience.

Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on October 30, 2009

search engine marketing Waste your time with PageRank instead of improving user experience.

8 Arguments Against Sculpting PageRank™ with Nofollow | AudetteMedia

This little page has a great deal to say about “no-follow” as an SEO strategy – both plus and minus.

I’m going to reverse myself where I told you to get Dr. Andy’s Website Builder. Or any other. If you’re like me and work just at getting stuff online at all, then you don’t have time to spend on building these SEO-optimized pages. True, you should build mini-webs, particularly if you can afford to invest in separate domain names for them. But worrying about linking them with no-follow is a no starter. Worry about how the user can find and make sense out of them first.

Main scene: Google is devaluating PageRank and has been for years. Things change. Except for one point this article points out – the key point is user experience and always has been. That’s why the search engines are putting social media on the front pages: better content.

So don’t worry about Michael Campbell’s various diagrams to build mini-webs and so on. Concentrate on building websites with great content. (Now, you can build mini-webs that are subdomain-based and link only within themselves, particularly where you are selling an affiliate link or a particular product. That makes sense. One link on the main page which lets them out – but only to your ecommerce page or to a sales link. But again, we’re getting pretty geeky here. Concentrate on great content, user experience and you’ll win.)

How you build a top-notch, profitable web site:

  1. Make a great landing page that is exciting and tells someone everything they need to know above the fold (first screen-full). Elevator pitch sells them on checking out the rest of the site. Has an opt-in for mail list, plus RSS feed.

  2. Use templates to simplify your Navigation and page building.

  3. Build with WordPress or similar blog function, where you don’t have to worry too much about updating navigation links or search (even Dr. Andy is using this right now, as it simplifies adding pages immensely.)

  4. Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate on improving user experience for your site.

  5. Monetize everything – make everything contribute and everything count.

  6. Add pages daily, if possible. (Weekly is quite OK.)

Some additional posts of interest:

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Cheap way to get in-bound links from social media with images

Posted by robertworstell in Search Engine Marketing on September 20, 2009

search engine marketing Cheap way to get in bound links from social media with images

(Couldn’t resist the pun.)

Now we all know that people love to see pictures when you blog. Especially funny ones, or those which help the explanation.

So I’ve been doing this for years, but never twigged that I could be getting incoming links as well as giving outgoing credit for those I use.

How to do this:

  1. Go to Flickr (a great and “old-time” picture sharing host) and search for images under advanced search (http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced)
  2. Click the three boxes at the very bottom (scroll down) so you are looking only for Creative Commons-licensed content.
  3. Enter your search query and select the one you want from the results which come up.
  4. Copy the image location (right click and select from menu)
  5. Insert this image by pasting the image location into the box which calls for it (whatever you use for blogging).
  6. Be sure to link back to the image location, so the author gets credit.

Now, this is all I was doing before – and then I saw those comments down below. I noticed that some were giving links telling the author where they had used their image. Links – see?

So I tried this myself and found out what – that you can give the keyword text you are using for that blog post (the title in your All-in-One SEO plugin under WordPress) and so get a link back to your site for exactly what want to get search engine recognition for.

Cute, eh?

Now this is not saying that you are going to be getting link love or anything like this. But since you want to give credit back to the author for posting such a great  photo – you might as well leave a little link to your own. After all – you are already there, already have the keyword phrase have spent your time and sweat finding…

I’m sure there are more of this type to use – let me know if you find anything, just use the comments below…

Cheers!

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Oh – and yes the posts are coming along nicely. I just found Windows Live Writer, so hope to get this sped up now. I was busy with some other blogs, plus this great fellow from India who emailed me is just firing up his own self-help blog (under my tutorage) so I’ve been spending some time getting him started.

So I’ll start getting all these posts set up and scheduled for you. A Dozen or so are already in the pipeline, so stay tuned…

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Update: 0909925

An additional point you want to do is to “favorite” the image. This helps the image get higher ranking in Flickr – which helps the owner. And also, every fave goes back to you – so they can see the other things you faved, which all have a link to your website, as well as your Flickr profile. (So make sure you have the website you used linked into your profile…)

Some additional posts of interest:

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