Internet Marketing|Seo|Blogging|Website Traffic

If you are an SEO consultant, or if you are responsible for purchasing SEO services for your organization, the ideas discussed here may be the most important ideas you read this year.

In a nutshell, the SEO industry is changing. We have integrated linkbaiting and social media marketing into our SEO toolkits, but now it’s time for the “step.” It’s also an end to a cycle—we know (to a great extent) what search engines want and how to give that to them. But as search marketers, do we know what our clients want? And as media buyers hiring SEO firms, do we know what options we have?

In the next two months (it is early April 2007 as I write this) you will read a wave of articles talking about “niche SEO.” I urge you to follow this wave closely—if you embrace it, you will be part of the new breed of SEO. If you don’t, you’ll be playing catch up by the end of the year.

What is niche SEO? The best way to answer that is to show you.

Do you have industry-specific SEO knowledge?

If you give a competent SEO a specific industry and 30 minutes, he can tell you:

·How competitive that niche is
·What the top keywords are
·Top ranking sites in that niche
·Where to get topical links from
·Untapped sub-niches (by comparing keyword popularity and relative competition)

That’s impressive, right?

Now if you handed the same assignment to an SEO with deep knowledge and experience in that industry, he could tell you, in those 30 minutes:

·Who the top link sources are
·The sites most likely to link to you (and how to get those links)
·The linkerati and how to attract their attention
·The top bloggers and their background (I’m talking names, history, email and phone contacts)
·The top communities in terms of traffic and influence—and how to use them
·Where to buy ads for traffic
·Niche-specific monetization opportunities
·Trusted information sources
·The misinformers (spammers)
·50 linkbait ideas
·Top traffic sources (and how to get traffic from them)
·How to segment and target sections of the linkerati without alienating the rest

Is this something that a ‘generic’ search marketer can find through research? Yes and no. Yes, because ultimately the resources being used are the same. No, because it takes too much time.
Knowledge, experience and an established network in an industry are the three main checkboxes your prospective hires will have to tick.

Why/How “Niche SEO” is Better Than “Generic SEO”

A real world example, to show you how powerful niche SEO really is:

On 4 and 5 April, there were two key sports-related incidents in Europe. During two soccer matches (one on each day), visiting fans clashed with the police inside the stadium. The common factor in both incidents is that the visiting fans were English. The incidents have raised serious security concerns within the game and because of the police involvement, it can (and probably will) turn into a diplomatic crisis as well.

These are serious events, but as news goes, it is also an opportunity for a smart marketing to provide unique coverage of these events and gain market share as a result.

The ideal way to do this would be to:

·Find videos related to the incident—clips from TV coverage in the English media, in the Italian and Spanish media, and video footage taken by fans
·Connect with fans visiting these matches and get their input
·Provide full (and immediate) coverage of all news related to this incident
·Pull out historical information that relates to such violence and do a timeline piece
·Find academic research on soccer hooliganism and refer that in your articles
·Start and manage discussions on this topic in different forums, using your profile and referring to your coverage/articles to drive traffic to your site
·Use your media contacts (that cover soccer/sports news) to promote your site
·Contact leading soccer bloggers with targeted pitches about your content related to this issue
·Contact podcasters in your niche and give them exclusive information in exchange for coverage

Who would be the ideal candidate to do this? Someone who:

·Knows which forums fans frequent and has a strong profile in those communities.
·Knows where to quickly get news and video clippings of this incident.
·Has a strong social network in the soccer news industry that includes media contacts,podcasters and bloggers.
·Has historical knowledge (through experience and as a fan) of soccer and specifically, similar issues in soccer.
·Knows the best strategies of promoting content in this sector.

Versus:

A crack team of linkbaiters and search marketers who will charge you $500 per hour but will then spend the next 10 hours—$5000 of your time—learning about the niche while other news sites cover the breaking news and eventually become the main hubs of discussion around that topic.

The choice is yours.

Where do you stand? If you’re a search marketer, you can be a ‘generic’ SEO or you can pick a handful of industries (through personal experience) and specialize in them.
If you’re a business owner or someone looking to purchase SEO services, the main three
questions you should ask the next SEO company are self-evident—do they have the

·Experience
·Social network
·Background knowledge

you need in your industry?

The success of your business will depend on those answers. There is much more to talk about on this subject. To follow the discussion, use Technorati to track “niche SEO53.” And if you want to criticize/discuss this topic further, find me Google my name54 and I’ll be glad to answer any questions you have.

Ahmed Bilal

Being the best usually means working with the best. Where would Johnny Carson have been without the support of Ed McMahon? You think Batman had a serious chance against Two-Face
without Robin (assuming he isn’t played by Chris O’Donnell, of course)?

Creating a sidekick with Chewbacca caliber seems impossible, but what if it were as easy as installing a few lines of code or typing in a username and password? Wouldn’t it be great if you could figure out what keywords people actually are typing into search engines and clicking through to your site? And how about what pages they are clicking through to the most?
Hallelujah! It really is that easy to access this kind of information.

Most websites today have some type of analytics installed that their SEM is overlooking (Holy missed opportunity, Batman!). While your eyes are glazing over at the thought of reading an article about analytics, I’d like to make an argument that they are more than just numbers. Analytics tell a story, and they just might be the sidekick you’re looking for.

I like to consider my client’s analytics data as a story, with 4 major chapters that build off of one another:

Chapter 1: Keyword Analysis

Looking through the thousands of keywords (hopefully) that visitors clicked through to your site on can provide you with a wealth of information that should strongly impact your SEM campaign. In the beginning you can use these keywords as suggestions as to what you should be targeting. It is a great way to dive into the mind of the customer and get a better understanding as to what language they use when describing your product or services.

Your internal search engine is like a golden ticket into the mind of your customer. You know they are interested in your services, and now you get to see what they think right keywords are. Closely analyze these keywords, and see where you could be targeting them and if they would bring in enough traffic to merit such a focus.

During your campaign, these keywords are a great measurement to determine how effectively you are using your targeted terms on your site. Analyze the long tail keywords and make sure you are focusing on the best terms. How can you tell which terms are the most important?

Chapter 2: Tracking Your Visitors

What good is ranking number 1 in Google for “Batman” if none of your visitors take action or “convert”? Your best keywords are the keywords that lead the visitor to your page, and once they get there, they click through to the rest of your site. Your analytics makes it simple for you: 50 visitors came from Google searching for “Batman,” and 0 clicked through to the rest of your site. 15 visitors came from Google searching for “batmobile die cast car” and 10 of them clicked through. Data like this tells us we need to refocus our SEM campaign to focus on the language the customer is using, not just the terms that bring in the most traffic.

Don’t overlook what keywords your visitors are coming in on from the other search engines either. Obviously most search engines have their own ranking algorithms. Use that to your advantage by analyzing the keywords your visitors are coming in from on each the engines. I’ve found great keywords that I didn’t even know I was ranking for in MSN, but I was nowhere to be found in Google. Once I knew it was important, I was able to work it into my SEM campaign.

Also included in Chapter 2 is tracking where your visitors came from. Are your paid links actually sending targeted traffic to your site? Are your links doing anything more than improving your rankings?

Chapter 3: Page Analysis

Your analytics sidekick also gives you the invaluable information of learning at what point the customer leaves your site. Was it something they didn’t like on the page? Did they think your shopping cart process was frustrating? If you find enough people leaving your site at the same point, you should put up a red flag and take another look at your page. Your best option might be to do some user testing. Regardless, you want more than traffic, you want conversions.

Looking at the pages that your visitors are clicking away from should also raise a few eyebrows. Are they finding their answers on this page? Should we expand on our content? What relevant
internal pages should we be linking to in order to make it easier for the customer to find what they want?

And while you are tracking your visitors click path, you should be able to calculate the ROI of your current SEM strategy.

Chapter 4: Measuring ROI

Identifying which keywords, search engines, links, and even email marketing campaigns are generating the highest percentage of conversions from the traffic they send is a great way to
measure your campaign ROI. If conversions are down, or aren’t improving the way you want them to, then you might want to consider modifying your current campaign.

Are the costs of your SEM project justifying themselves? If you’re like P. Diddy—writing lots of checks and still not “going platinum”—then you should be reconsidering your strategy and your investment in general.

Having the ability to see which keywords and sources are bringing you the best traffic is an invaluable resource. You need to know where to increase spending and where to focus.

Analytics are a constant measurement resource identifying which search strategies are working and which strategies are failing (or making no impact at all.) Don’t try to fight your competition shorthanded. You have an invaluable sidekick just waiting to help you. Don’t ignore your analytics. There are plenty of great free resources and great analytics blogs to keep you from being frustrated, and to maximize your analytics potential.

Taylor Pratt

Let’s face facts: our clients only care about SEO if it brings them business.

There are many times that we SEOs get hung up on search engine position and the ensuing traffic that should come from a top spot. This is all fine and good and is great for our own personal satisfaction, but what does position and traffic really do for our clients? The answer to this question is simply, absolutely nothing.

I have worked on many sites that I was able to get listed is some really choice positions in several large search engines. This position also generated quite a bit of traffic for each one of these sites day in and day out. The only problem with this comes with the client’s question, “If I have all of these hits, then why doesn’t anyone buy from me?” This is the point that I had a revelation; SEO doesn’t mean squadoosh without appropriate marketing strategies being implemented on the site.

There are a few important things that we forget when going about our SEOing on a client’s site.We forget that if the site is not appealing then their clients are not going to click to buy. We need to use a little psychology when helping a client out. Don’t be afraid to do a little research about the specific type of business that you are trying to promote. (other than just keyword research) I do this by asking myself a few questions.

· What colors drive the behaviors that this business needs? What I mean is red incites passion, and blue drives calmness, green sparks a thought of money. What does this business need to happen? A particular color scheme will really help drive the point of the site home.

· Have I made full use of a call-to-action in the title? I have found that the greatest response for a site is if the site title is set up as a call-to-action. If I can spark the interest of a potential client from the search engine content then I can definitely get them interested in the home page content.

· Does this business need products up front or would they benefit from a more detailed description of their service? Many businesses need to feature their products up front to drive a customer to an order section of the site, while other businesses need to properly describe their service to merely pique the interest of the reader.

These basic questions provide the opportunity to really focus concentrated efforts on conversion and SEO at the same time. Let’s be honest: our clients don’t really care about how many hits they are getting. They may ask about hits because it’s what we have trained them to ask, but the real issue is “How many customers are buying from me?” This is why focusing SEO in a way
that also touches customer conversion or marketing will ensure that your client will end up with a solid position in search engines and will be pleased with the number of conversions that they
receive from their site.

Once this is out of the way, I can start my normal process for SEO. Now, I know that some people may think that some of this is antiquated or more of the same but it does work none the less. I work the content to ensure that I have enough keyword saturation (and no, I don’t mean blast the page with keywords). Revising the content then leads me in to alt tags, text links, reciprocal links, and the same old stuff that we do day in and day out. To be honest I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel, I am only trying to make sure that each and every client becomes successful on the Internet and I think that many times we lose sight of that fact.

Now, I’m not saying that we all need to focus only on doing this or guarantee a certain amount of conversion for a client, but what I am saying is that by improving a client’s conversion rate we are simplifying the daily conversation, “You have blah, blah, blah, number of hits and that is great!”

At the end of the day, positioning in a search engine takes a backseat in our clients’ mind as long as we can bring them revenue from their sites.

You’ve just landed the big contract. You have been waiting over a month to get this client to sign their contract, and now that they have you can begin your traditional SEO process. You know what I’m talking about: keyword research, competitor research, building new content—the list goes on and on. All of these are vital to a successful SEO campaign.

So now you are 3 weeks into the project and you are ready to send the client some recommendations. You start your email off by telling the client everything they are going to need to change in order to achieve those desired high rankings: the JavaScript menus, they have to go; we are going to have to do some URL rewriting; and what were you thinking, using all of that
Flash?

You get a response a couple days later saying that they would like to put all SEO work on hold.They are not sure if this is the right thing for them now. They were very happy with the way the site looked; they just wanted to get traffic there now. If you are like me, your jaw hits the floor.You’ve already invested three weeks into this project and you are ready to really get the show on the road, and they want to stop? What did I do wrong?

Actually, it is not what you did do, it’s what you didn’t do. When you initially met with this client,did you do anything more than find out what their business does and browse around a little on their website? No—you didn’t do any real work on it, because you weren’t getting paid to. Of course they are willing to do what it takes to market their site, they came to you didn’t they? The problem is that we assume that a client will be willing to make changes to their site in order to achieve those high rankings. We make the same kind of mistake by assuming they will want to target those keywords that people are actually looking for, and not worry about branding. Well, I don’t think I need to tell you what happens when you assume.

So now that we have successfully lost a client, what are we going to learn from this? The answer is the creation of a wonderful evaluation—an SEO audit. At your first meeting with a prospective client you should ask them one important question: Would you be willing to let us perform an SEO Audit of your website for X amount of dollars?

The point of the audit is to bring to their attention all of the search-unfriendly practices they are using on their site, and to find out whether or not they are willing to change their ways. Stress the fact that it actually could be a cost savings process for them. Instead of paying you hourly or monthly to do all this work, only to find out that they have spent a ton of money on changes they don’t want to make, they can find out right away if SEO is for them for a much smaller cost. You still make out well because you were compensated for your time.

By bringing these issues to the table at the very beginning, you will also establish a greater line of communication with the client. They know what is going to be expected from them, and how much work they can expect from you. The business relationship will greatly benefit from a simple audit.

The important issues to include in your audit are the changes the client will have to make to their site and what kind of buy in they will have to get (e.g. from their legal department, which is not always about the audit itself, but telling them what they need to know and not being afraid to walk away from the table). Below is a list of architectural items to look at to help get your audit started.

Technical Site Architecture Issues

· Is the site being indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN?
· Do they have a black- or grey-listed IP address?
· Is the site in frames?
· Does the site use JavaScript?
· Do they have a CMS in place?
· How does the site perform in Internet Explorer vs. Firefox vs. Safari?

This is very important for not only you to have, but for the client as well. Show them where they stand, and where they are lacking. Remind the client why they need your help. They will be surprised how poor of a job they have done choosing keywords, and you will comfort them by telling them how you can help. The best part is that you will not have to worry about that horrible email or phone call saying that SEO is not for them.

Taylor Pratt

This may not be what you want to hear, but your tricks, tips, and techniques do not matter. Even if you all like to sport your white hats, your ace-in-the-hole, top-secret tactic is useless. Let’s be honest with each other—it’s okay, no one’s listening. Your newly discovered SEO trick isn’t really earth shattering or even groundbreaking. Is there anything really new to SEO?

The long-term profitability of any individual SEO will always rely on the innovation of strategy. All of us could throw tactics and tricks at our clients, but a coherent, forward-looking strategy is what it takes to win. To be the best, you must have a strategy that avoids becoming obsolete by continuously creating the new.

Very rare are the “a-ha” moments in life which seem to create new ideas out of thin air. An SEO cannot rely on these infrequent instances in life. How do you plan for continuous innovation in
the dynamic environment of digital marketing?

The irony of creating cutting edge strategies is that success depends on failure. This requires experimenting, learning from experimentation, and adapting quickly. In the realm of science, scientists use the scientific method. However, not all business innovations can be tested using this method with complete clarity in a practical way. Changing search engine algorithms and user trends are difficult experimental environments to learn in.

In order to open the door of learning and strategic innovation in Search Engine Optimization, I apply 5 changes incorporated into Theory-Focused Planning.

1. Minimize Detail

Typical plans within current SEO strategy include breakdowns of link popularity, search engine ranking, keyword density, etc. This makes it easy to troubleshoot problems with the use of tactics. For example, our “ACME roadrunner trap” landing page ranking has fallen on Yahoo! due to a competitor’s superior use of div tags and higher quality links. Again, I could fire tactics at you all day, but this troubleshooting method depends on the reliable predictability of search engine algorithms. Strategy should focus on solving critical unknowns that will make or break your campaign. How will search engines use bookmarking in their search algos? Does our target audience and environment call for the use of RSS feeds?

2. Predict Trends

Typical clients ask for a prediction of the bottom line—search engine rankings. This would make sense if search engines interpreted the sites the same every quarter. However, we are subject to the extraordinarily dynamic function of algorithms. More important than the specific ranking over any time period is the underlying trend over that period.

3. Focus on theory, not rankings

In most reporting documents sent to clients you will find endless numbers offering current rankings for each keyword on each search engine. But in our business, the theory used to achieve those numbers is far more important than the numbers themselves. Rankings, placement, and ROI have little utility in an ongoing SEO strategy. Rankings give little insight into SEO planning, especially in the early stages. Trends and performance related to the interdependent SEO operations—coding, copywriting, and linking—will provide earlier signs that a strategy is either winning or losing.

4. Review very frequently

The winning SEO will not be the first to start or the one with the best initial strategy, but the one that learns the quickest. As an example, an SEO that reevaluates his or her plans monthly rather than yearly has the potential to learn 12 times faster than a competitor.

5. Hold yourself accountable for learning, not results.

Clients, corporations, and SEOs themselves must understand that the plan is a hypothesis and the goal is to adapt as quickly as possible. In this type of environment SEOs will evaluate themselves on how quickly they learn and will be able to more effectively validate their thought processes and utilize their ability to adapt in an experimental environment.

Some may disagree with taking Theory-Focused Planning and applying it to Search Engine Optimization. To some, theory does not equal practicality. However, the tactics and techniques you use are based on some theory of what will work and what will not work in the future. Your reputation, your services, and your profitability are all being wagered on this theory. Therefore, a practical approach is to continually test and adapt the theory upon which you place your bet.

The SEO Article You SHOULD Read—5 Reasons Accountability Matters

Three weeks ago, the most popular article in the running for the SEM Scholarship was Nick Urbani’s “The SEO Article You Shouldn’t Read.” While I agree with many of the points he makes, we differ in several areas. I agree that a “coherent, forward looking strategy” is important in SEO. Furthermore, I like to win as much as everyone else—but what does it mean to “win”?Is it just about getting a number one ranking?

What I love about SEO is not just the thrill of getting a number one ranking, but the accountability that we have to our clients. This is the biggest thing that Urbani’s Theory Focused Planning is lacking—accountability. He mentions holding yourself accountable for learning in his last point, but is that all accountability is or should be?

1. Predictions + accountability = rankings, leads, sales

Predicting trends is not just about rankings, whether in the short or long term. Yes, we are at the mercy of the search engines and algorithm changes might drop rankings you’ve worked for months to obtain. My challenge is this—a client asking for predictions solely regarding rankings isn’t asking the right question. More importantly, if you answer in terms of rankings, you’re not being accountable to the work you’re doing for your client.

Ranking number one doesn’t matter if it’s a term that no one queries. Rankings matter in terms of their impact on your client’s bottom line. Over the long term (accounting for monthly ebbs and flows and giving you time to adapt to algorithm changes), you can look at how you’ll improve your client’s rankings, but the more important factors that you should hold yourself accountable for are the increase in amount and quality of traffic those rankings drive for your client, as well as increases in leads and sales.

2. Focus on measurable results

I agree with Urbani that a keyword ranking report is not the determining factor of a successful SEO campaign. However, he dismisses ROI as having “little utility in an ongoing SEO strategy.”
I understand that ROI won’t help you get terms ranked, but rankings won’t matter if they do not increase the client’s site traffic, leads or sales.

Moreover, what does a client really care about your SEO theory? If you can’t return a positive ROI for your client, rankings will not matter. In the end, analytics and measurable results will keep you accountable to your SEO theories and rankings (and your clients)—then you’ll know whether you have a winning or losing strategy.

3. Patience is a virtue

As SEOs, we belong to a community of learners. However, it’s not enough just to read and learn. You have to know how to implement, and more importantly, when to implement changes and strategies. Reviewing the status of a campaign monthly is a good thing. You want your clients to do well, your clients want to see results. However, constantly re-evaluating and changing your strategies may not be a good idea.

You cannot force the search engines to pick up your keywords or changes. Being accountable to your clients means knowing when to tell them it’s going to take more time to obtain rankings and how long is long enough to wait before making another round of changes.

4. Be accountable for learning and results

Search engine optimization is a dynamic process. Those of us who have been doing this for 6 months and those who have been doing this for a decade can improve upon current strategies. Clients have to understand this is not a perfect process. When Urbani addresses accountability,he talks about being accountable for learning, not results. He states, “The goal is to adapt as
quickly as possible.” However, you can run into problems if you implement new ideas too quickly.

What happens when an engine’s algorithm change starts returning spammy results while your client’s keywords drop? I would hope you aren’t immediately compromising the integrity of your client’s site to obtain a higher ranking. Accountability means sometimes taking a hit in the rankings for a little while, explaining it to the client, and continuing to research the issue and a solution. This shows the importance of focusing on your long term ability to return a positive ROI for your client in terms of rankings, leads, and sales.

5. Accountability to Everyone Involved

I love the competition in SEO. Who doesn’t love beating someone else for a top ranking? At the same time, there is a lot of responsibility that comes with being involved in SEO, which we don’t always acknowledge. You have to remember that you are accountable to:

· The rest of your SEO team. You always have to bring your “A” game. Your colleagues rely on your ideas and learning as much as your clients do. There is only one number one spot on Google, and for a competitive keyword, you probably are not the only SEOs trying to target it.

· Your clients. Clients need your help choosing keywords that they can not only rank well for, but that will also drive meaningful site traffic as well as produce leads and sales.Hold yourself accountable (and prove your value) to your clients with measurable analytics.

· Searchers. The keywords that your clients are ranking for are terms that actual people are looking for. Are you helping them complete their search? If your client ranks well for “blue widget parts,” is there relevant content there? Or will the searcher leave immediately for another site?

As Urbani points out at the end of his article, “to some, theory does not equal practicality.”Maybe I’m a person who thinks analytically, but I’ll take practicality over theory. I want to be accountable for my work product and able to prove value to my clients—and to me a winning SEO strategy means going beyond theory and rankings to measurable metrics like ROI, leads and sales.

Ask ten search engine optimizers if they know the difference between a strategy and a tactic and I bet all ten of them will nod their heads. If you then asked those same ten people to give you an example of a strategy, nine of them would in fact describe tactics instead and not even realize they did so.

Pointing out their error would likely elicit a response along the lines of, “It doesn’t matter if I don’t know the difference. I can optimize a site better than anyone!” However, it does matter because one day they’re going to have to compete for the opportunity to work on a very large SEO project and what’s going to really help them land the project is understanding the language that senior management uses. This understanding will help them craft a message that resonates with executives who are then more likely to sign the contract.

Vision, Strategy, and Tactics

When a big SEO project comes your way, it’s often accompanied by a vision from the project stakeholders that goes beyond the “get me more traffic” requests common of mom-and-pop sites. The vision will probably be something along the lines of “be the leader of such-and-such” or “be the most respected for this-and-that.” The best response to a vision statement is a strategy that describes the overarching approach to achieve the vision. And only when the strategy has been thoroughly examined and received general approval should you dive in to the actual steps, ie the tactics that you’ll use to fulfill the objectives of the strategy.

I’ll admit that I once had a hard time wrapping my head around what having a strategy really meant. Yes, I was one of the nine optimizers that would list tactics when asked for a strategy.What actually helped me understand the difference was working backwards. First, I listed all the things I do as a professional SEO such as keyword research, writing keyword-rich titles, removing session IDs from URLs, submitting links to directories, and analyzing Web traffic reports. The list, as you can imagine, ended up being quite long. The light bulb started to brighten when I moved to the second step of marking each item as either being a tactic or a strategy. Much to my chagrin, not one of them qualified as a strategy. It then all came together with one simple question that popped into my head. If I executed a selected set of tactics perfectly and the results were as expected, how would the client’s situation change over a period of 6 to 12 months? The answer to this question is a strategy, which would yield the appropriate list of tactics.

Strategy in the Real World

The problem is that while this backward approach is helpful for understanding concepts, it can waste time in practice since a lot of thinking can go in to figuring out the tactics that end up
leading to a strategy that fails to address the vision. Instead, it is much more effective to start with a strategy and work your way through to the tactics.

Are you still unsure of the difference? Here are a couple of generic, but hopefully illustrative examples:

The client’s vision: The CMO of Company A has been charged with making her company the market share leader for the recently developed Product A.

Your analysis of the situation: Company B’s website which sells Product B is such an established authority that Company A’s website will never rank #1 for relevant, high volume keywords.

Your SEO strategy v1: Increase the perception of quality of Product A so that more people will buy from Company A.

Partial list of tactics v1: Build a comprehensive resource around why Product A is better than Product B and use SEO best practices to obtain first page rankings. Use catchy browser titles to draw attention away from Product B’s #1 ranking.

Your SEO strategy v2: Build awareness for Product A with potential customers when they are in the research phase of the buying cycle so that when ready, they’ll buy it instead of Product B.

Partial list of tactics v2: Publish an information site that discusses issues and trends in the industry. Apply SEO techniques to the site to obtain search engine traffic. Place banner ads in highly visible locations on the information site to drive buyers to a site where they can purchase Product A.

Depending on the scope and budget, you could have multiple strategies and most certainly your list of tactics would be longer than my examples. You might also find that with your SEO projects there is significant overlap between the tactics used for different strategies and visions. Overlap is to be expected given that there’s only a limited set of SEO tactics and many are closely related. The key idea is that a strategy will help you win the backing of senior management in a way that droning on and on about duplicate content, H1 tags, and PageRank will not. In addition, explicitly developing a strategy will help guide your team’s thought processes and decision making throughout the engagement.

So, what’s your strategy?

Marios Alexandrou

You have your own way of doing SEO, and that’s how it should be. However, streamlining your SEO process will make your life much, much easier. Take it from the Zephyr. The Zephyr was one of the first “Streamliner” trains introduced in the 1930s, designed to be fast, efficient, and sleek. The Zephyr changed the rail industry and brought it from hardship to profitability. Why streamline your SEO process? Because you and your clients benefit when you are faster, more efficient, and yes, even sleek.

So, here are five steps you can start doing right now to streamline your SEO process.

1. Define your services

Create a list of all services that you can offer, including those you subcontract. Consider services relating to keyword research, content writing and optimization, link building, and site optimization, and categorize your services into these (or other) areas. Services that complement SEO such as marketing, advertising, and website design may also be on your list. Review your website content, marketing material, and advertising campaigns and make sure they reflect your list of services.

2. Create standard checklists

You’ve gathered quite a list of SEO do’s and don’ts and now it’s time to materialize this knowledge into checklists. The advantage of checklists is having a structured, consistent, and thorough review of each project to ensure that you remember even the small points of SEO. Each area of your services (keywords, content, link building, etc.) should have its own checklist of items to look for when doing a project review. Each of your services (from step 1) should be represented by at least one item in a checklist, and most services will have multiple items. Items in a checklist can be in the form of questions, points to check for, or tasks to complete. As an example, here are a few items from two of my checklists:

Keyword Checklist

· Have individual landing pages for each keyword
· Run topical keyword analysis tool for top keywords
· Find competitors’ PPC ad keywords

Content Checklist
· Landing pages have main keyword in title, header, and body
· Client has an active blog and allows comments
· Data or pages primarily behind search forms are accessible with text links

Each checklist serves as a starting point for new projects. With each new project, walk through your checklists and mark those items that have been completed. Each item left unchecked then becomes a task on your to do list.

3. Create a set of reports

When you first meet with a client, provide at least one report, such as a competitive report or a site analysis report. Reports benefit clients by informing them of what you have found and what you will be doing to address the issues at hand. Attractive, informative, and periodic reports can go a long way in building and maintaining trust with clients. Having an automated report from your website may be a great way to catch the attention of potential clients.

Not only are reports for your clients important, but you should have internal reports to gauge your progress.Internal reports are more technical and advanced than client reports, as they are meant for you. In addition to tracking progress for your projects, internal reports may point out ways in which you may be underperforming or excelling.

4. Find or develop a set of tools

SEO tools allow you to not only perform a function, but to do it faster. You can find better keywords, optimize your content, identify pages needing more backlinks, check rankings, and so much more.

Your first step is to try out all the tools you can. Keep a log of the tools that you try out (include the tool’s name and URL). Mark the tools you really like and find informative or useful. As I try out tools, I like to save a screenshot of the tool’s results so I can quickly be reminded of what each tool provides.

As you try out various tools, you may find yourself thinking, “They should have added this, then it would be really powerful!” Suggest your idea to the author of the tool, or redesign the tool yourself. Brainstorm ideas for new tools that would complete your “suite” of SEO tools, then build them yourself or partner with someone who can. By establishing a set of tools you regularly use, you can dig deeper into each project while saving time.

5. Create your team of specialists

If you’re like me you’re not a master of all things SEO. You might prefer using a specialist for link building or for writing unique content. Start by finding a specialist for each service that you offer but do not perform yourself. These specialists become your “team,” your set of specialists to whom you source out work. If you’re not sure where to start in finding specialists, try recommendations from fellow SEOs.

In working with your team of specialists, establish a standard communication workflow for each project, from start to finish. Agree beforehand with the provider on a cost and time frame for their services. If the services are based on factors that vary from project to project, try to work out a set cost and time frame for a range of possibilities.

Michael D. Jensen

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of internal (on-page) and external (off-page) efforts to bring a website to the top of search engines. The purpose of SEO is not only getting the site to the first page of SERPs (search engine results page) but also keeping it there. SEO is not just a craft; it’s both an art and a science.

What is TRIZ?

TRIZ is a Russian theory of inventive problem solving. It’s an algorithm as well as a set of methodologies and tools for resolving a given task by breaking its contradictions and providing steps to complete it. TRIZ is a powerful problem solving tool based on the patterns of inventions discovered from decades of study of the world’s most innovative patents. Use search engines to discover more about TRIZ.

What is SEOTRIZ?

SEOTRIZ is a new approach to SEO powered by the TRIZ methodology. With SEOTRIZ, one is able to solve SEO tasks better and faster with more efficient tactics and strategies. It helps get successful results with less effort and expense. TRIZ tools like “Ideal Final Result,” “Reverse Action,” “9 Screens,” “- 2 +,” or “Cutting the Pie” are applied here for SEO purposes.

SEOTRIZ includes:

·A set of problem solving principles;
·A “shadow algorithm” of ones from search engines;
·A database of resources/knowledgebase;
·A professional development model.

SEOTRIZ allows anyone to be ahead of competition by better understanding SEO tasks and using tools to achieve better results. It’s not just about solving the problem but rather how to choose the most elegant solutions: those that use the most effective means. Here are some samples of major SEO tasks and contradictions and how SEOTRIZ solves them:

Problem: Content is a king. No time to write lots of original content. Optimization requires time and knowledge too.

Solution: The content is generated by users (wiki) or by a program (auto-content, directory, lists) and is automatically optimized (CMSes, blogs + plugins).

Problem: Links are everything. Asking for links is time consuming and not very efficient.

Solution: External resources link to you by themselves. Because it:

· earns them easy money (affiliate/referral program);
· shows their authority in a field (network member/contests/background checking site/technical support system);
· or gives their visitors something more on the subject covered (reference resource/useful tools, info or data).

Problem: Keywords are highly competitive. Too costly to compete with major players, and it requires a lot of time.

Solution: You “cut the pie” and aim specific parts of the market divided by:

·locations (countries, cities, ZIP codes);
·industries/products;
·time periods (daytime, season, future);
·user types (ages, sexes, professions, languages, social groups).

And use a “long tail strategy” by competing for a good number of less competitive keywords.

The best example of SEOTRIZ is the well-known Wikipedia60. It encompasses everything that SEOTRIZ represents: original, useful, optimized, and self-created content; automated, “heavy,” one-way inbound links; effective vertical Web-wide expansion; amongst others. With SEOTRIZ, you can maximize SEO goals or incorporate the concepts into your own marketing applications.

This new powerful methodology SEOTRIZ helps both novice and advanced SEO specialists to maintain their pages at the top of search engine results with a stronger method in their hands.

Shavkat Karimov

1. Underestimating the intelligence of your viewers.

It is not an uncommon mistake for many marketers, both on- and offline, to inaccurately assess the intelligence of their target audience. While it seems that poor assessments run in both directions, it is a grave error to assume you know more about your visitors than you actually do—more than anything, you must not assume your visitors are stupid. It’s easy to clump your visitors into a large nameless blob, to think of them as cattle, susceptible to your clever gimmicks and likely to fall into the traps you’ve set. The reality is that your readers are individuals. If anything, they’re especially single minded on the ‘net. Many people feel empowered by the Web, not only to be who they are, but also to assert themselves, their opinions, and their way of doing things. To this end, your visitors are about as far from a herd of followers as you can get. And while it may be prudent to make certain predictions about their behavior, it is a major mistake to assume too much about those you intend to draw to your website. This is why analytics are so important to your efforts. The following sites can help you get an idea about what your visitors are actually doing on your site.

· ClickTracks
· Google Analytics
· WebTrends
· Omniture
· CrazyEgg

2. Multitasking too much.

Skipping from project to project too frequently can result in ending up with partially finished tasks or projects that are not well thought out or clearly focused. It is essential to productivity to make sure you keep inefficient multitasking to a minimum. The tool I have found most useful in keeping myself on track with projects and time management is Basecamp66. It has great features like to do lists, milestones, and time tracking. Another great tool I use is TimeSnapper67. This tool takes periodic screen shots throughout the day that you can play back later to have a great record of exactly what you did during the day. If you aren’t sure if you have a “multitasking problem,” try this program for a week. Then decide.

3. Obsessing.

This is a common pitfall many SEOs run into. It can be exciting to see how traffic is rising or falling, or how your rankings are changing, but “checking your stats” too often can serve as a huge time waster. So how does one overcome compulsive rankings and analytics checking? Simple—limit yourself. One of the best tools I have found can be found at PageAddict68. This nifty tool allows you to see a summary of the time you’ve wasted on each website.

4. Not knowing when to move on (give up).

Sometimes we get involved in projects or tasks that take up large amounts of time but produce few results. Many times you may find yourself wasting hours on something trivial. This can be a particularly big problem for perfectionists who have trouble simply letting something be “good enough.” A great technique for determining time wasters goes like this:

1. Make a list of all your tasks and estimations on time spent on each. (This is where the time tracking/task management tools like Basecamp can come in handy.)
2. Next to each task, make a note of the amount of focus that must be devoted to the task. (Is this something that requires a ton of brain power?)
3. Now assign priority to each task. When are your deadlines? Organize by what must be done now, and what can be done later.
4. Reprioritize, moving high priority items to the top and cut as many items as you can that use up a large amount of time and focus but have low priority.

5. Not seeing the whole puzzle (or obsessing over a single piece).

It can be difficult to separate your goals as a search marketer from the ultimate goals of your clients or even you. Ultimately what matters are conversions, not traffic, not PageRank, not SERP spot, not creativity, not clean code, not page beauty. All of these may play a factor in conversions but each may also be holding you back. A good search marketer must consider how each piece fits into the larger puzzle. Always ask yourself, “Will this lead to more conversions?” for whatever you have defined as a conversion.

6. Allowing good ideas to be forgotten or left by the wayside.

Ever had an idea that seemed like a winner at the time, but that you later forgot? Maybe it came right before falling asleep, or while you were driving, or maybe even while working on a separate project. It has happened to us all; a great idea left behind simply because we forgot about it. Here are some tools to help:

1. A simple Web-based tool for recording ideas quickly and easily: Wridea.
2. This tool really helps me to organize my ideas, flesh them out, and create the
connections between ideas much more easily. Quite simply, a life saver: Mindjet.
3. A voice recorder (cell phones work great)

7. Believing everything you read.

On the Internet anyone can be an “expert” but those who really are can sometimes be a bit difficult to find amongst all the fakers. Usually the top 5 or so in a field can be identified pretty quickly, from here it gets more difficult. Finding reputable niche experts within your field or hidden treasures can take a great deal of time. The absolute fastest and most productive way to find credible sources is to find out what those top 5 or so people in the industry read. Here are some suggestions

1. See what blogs the industry leaders read: MyBlogLog.
2. Again, see what the industry is reading: Bloglines.
3. See how popular a blog might be: Technorati.

Daniel Tynski

Though I have been online intermittently since 1996, I’ve been semi-computer-literate since the days of Planetfall and Mousepaint. I have been doing SEO for almost 2 years. I can trace the start of my career to SES New York in 2005. I do in-house SEO for a growing company, #1 for our most competitive keyword, and the advice I offer here originates from our own experiences, mistakes, successes and failures. I’m offering this advice so that other companies might not make the same mistakes. Without further ado:

1. If your website is built in PHP, do not pay $100+/month for a blog platform you cannot customize. Use WordPress. If you don’t know how to work with it, ask the guys that built your site.

2. Understand that business blogging is a two way street and the idea is to collect usergenerated content. Your blog is a conduit relaying information between you and your readers, not a platform for pompous pronouncements. Enable comments, but also have a backup plan for solid reputation management. If you’re not comfortable hearing from your customers and making their comments public, reconsider blogging.
3. If you’re planning on outsourcing menial SEO tasks to an offshore company, in India or elsewhere, make sure that their company website actually exists somewhere in Google’s index.
4. Teach your PR team about how the Internet works, especially submitting content to a selfpolicing community. This will come in handy when you begin writing Wikipedia articles. If your PR guys keep submitting vague articles to Wikipedia which read like “Company X is committed to becoming the proven leader in generating actionable solutions for goal-oriented, enterpriselevel providers,” expect a great deal of resistance when you finally send them a real article.
5. Understand coding languages. If you don’t know how to code, at least be able to recognize it in the wild. If you can’t tell the difference between JavaScript and PHP, look for regular expressions. These are common to all languages and you can sometimes figure out what a script does without knowing code. Having an in-house coder is a tremendous help. If you are determined to do this yourself, learn C/C++. It may be challenging but it is probably the best first language to learn because many other languages share the same elements, and you will gain a valuable understanding of programming logic.
6. Invest in strong CSS development and design. Valid XHTML/CSS allows for greater freedom in placing your content within the page source, takes up less room on the server, often improves page load time, scares savvy competitors, looks like a real business website, sets a solid foundation for future development—the list goes on and on.
7. Understand basic netiquette. This can mean the difference between a successful viral marketing campaign with strong return on advertising spend (ROAS) and a zillion deleted forum spams with negative ROAS.
8. Track everything. Use a log file analyzer as well as on-page codes. Consider that using cookies for conversion tracking may affect your site’s usability. Also understand that ClickTracks is incredibly resource intensive if you have large log files. You will need to upgrade your computer just to be able to run the client application. You may need to have a ClickTracks server box running locally. Even then you will need to invest considerable time in learning how to integrate this program into the life of your business. Dealing with the quirks of this software requires patience. That having been said I don’t think there’s anything else which provides the same level of reporting and ROI tracking as does ClickTracks. If you need a fast solution, I recommend 123LogAnalyzer.

Your tracking should not be limited to just one program—it’s a matter of selecting the right tool for the job. If you use a good PPC bid management software you can often get integrated onpage tracking tools. The importance of Web analytics cannot be understated. This component forms the sensorium of an online business, allowing you to make decisions informed by real data.

9. PageRank is not really a useful metric. There are other factors at work here and PageRank is definitely not equivalent to Google rank. With a bit of investigation one can find other ways to
determine the value of a link. Since everyone else is using PageRank as an indicator of a link’s value, you can deal shrewdly in this inflated currency.
10. Set goals. Long-term goals allow your in-house SEO staff to see exactly where you want to go. Try not to deviate from these goals too much. Understand that a lot of strong SEO initiatives are focused on results in the long-term. If you’re concerned about accountability (and you should be), setting short-term goals can help keep your team on target. It sounds basic, but the way a company handles shifting priorities often determines its overall effectiveness in its own particular space. It can mean the difference between being outmaneuvered by a competitor and outmaneuvering him yourself.
11. Understand that SEO is a continuous process, not a “fix-it-once” task. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that we inhabit a parallel universe where search engine ranking algorithms will never change. Even so there will still be a constant need for SEO practitioners/Internet marketers as businesses grow. Entry-level SEO projects creep and metastasize into major initiatives. Lucrative opportunities get oversaturated, necessitating a change in strategy. New opportunities spring up overnight. Growing companies will hire inhouse link moguls, SEO content writers, social media optimizers, bloggers, etc.—promoting from within. Even if every in-house SEO graduates into lucrative self-employment, back at the old firm there’s still plenty of opportunities for the next generation of in-house SEOs, in turn creating demand for SEO consultants and trainers.
12. Go to SES conferences. Identify the speakers that aren’t overly self-promotional, the ones that seem passionate. Read their blogs every day.

Sad, but true: our industry is pointless. But don’t go and trash your beautiful keyword research (or worse, kill this browser window!). Of course SEO has a purpose. Simply stated, the purpose of “pure” SEO is to generate more qualified traffic to a website. And that’s good—more is better. Right?

Not always. Sometimes, more is just more.

How can you tell if your SEO is pointless? Here’s an example: Jim Bob’s Weddings-and- Webdings contracted with an SEO company. Six months into the contract, Jim Bob is forwarded a disturbing article that claims “SEO is Pointless.” He calls his SEO for the conversion rate, as suggested in the article. After some prying, Jim Bob finally gets a breakdown:

Pre optimization: 335 unique visitors/month 5 conversions/month
Post optimization: 9500 unique visitors/month 50 conversions/month

Initially, these numbers look vaguely impressive. After all, Jim Bob is now getting ten times the conversions that he was before. But Jim Bob persists: what’s the conversion rate? Calculate out the percentages: Jim Bob’s gone from a low-but-okay conversion rate of 1.5% to a muchless- respectable 0.5%. Jim Bob terminates his contract. Jim Bob’s ex-SEO suffered from tunnel vision and focused on delivering more traffic instead of more value.

Some clients are satisfied with a lower conversion rate as long as they have more conversions. Don’t let those complacent clients lull you into thinking that SEO should end at a landing page.No amount of traffic can compensate for a website that won’t convert, losing visitors like water through a sieve. This is even more true in a PPC campaign, where you have to pay for each visitor. Eventually, the client will realize that they’re paying for something pointless and worthless, and you’ll lose them as a client.

SEO cannot just be about getting visitors to a site or even making the site nice for them to play on. There must be a goal that is larger than simply bringing more people to the site. Why do your clients want higher rankings and more traffic in the first place? To get more buyers, not more page views.

So what’s an SEO to do? Think about that statistic I mentioned earlier: conversion rate. With a little work, Jim Bob’s Weddings-and-Webdings could creep up to a 3.13% conversion rate. Before you point out that 3.13% is less than 3 percentage points better than the SEO’s original effort, fire up the calculator for a little more math.

Jim Bob’s SEO is proud of 9500 uniques/month. Now, instead of sitting back and waiting for the revenues to roll in (and getting fired), the SEO turns her attention to the Weddings-and Webdings site itself and make a few adjustments to get up to that 3.13% conversion rate. The 50 conversions/month jump to almost 300 conversions/month. Want an even more impressive statistic to share with Jim Bob? That’s 600% lift—or 6000% lift over the pre-SEO+Conversion Rate Enhancement numbers.

How can you offer such amazing value to your SEO clients? The plan is three-fold: adjust client expectations, deliver and report.

1. Adjust client expectations. Why is this important? Chances are your SEO clients will be very well-educated about (and fixated on) the “search engine” part of SEO. They want rankings and the commensurate traffic. That’s good. That’s why they’ve hired you.But don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal of their website: sales, leads or whatever other conversions they track. If they find out in 6 months that their conversion rate has dropped significantly—or if their revenue hasn’t increased proportionately with their traffic—then they’ll realize that more is just more, and they don’t want to pay for “just more” anymore. If you can always keep the ultimate goal of not just more traffic but more conversions in sight, you can show your client the value your services provide.

2. Deliver. Great. Now your client expects you to improve their conversion rate. How do you do it? Here are a few tips to get you started:

● Examine exit pages and bounce rates. Look at the pages which turn people off,especially people who’ve just found your site. Are your landing pages turning people away? Your 55 question, 17 page order form? Reexamine the pages that drive your visitors away. Are they targeting the right audience? Are they too complex or too simple? Can the visitor see where to go next?

● Create clear paths. Show visitors what they should do next. Say they arrive on a landing page. They can learn more about your products, order now or see related products. Don’t make your visitors ponder long and hard about where to go from here. Put more calls to action in your text and graphics, placed prominently above the fold. Guide them down the “conversion funnel.”

● Simplify, simplify, simplify. This goes hand-in-hand with creating clear paths.Make your navigation standard throughout the site, easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to use. Eliminate any unnecessary fields and steps from your order form. If visitors use site navigation to abandon a shopping cart, eliminate it from the checkout process.

3. Report. Make sure you and your client track the conversions generated in your campaign so that you can show the value of your efforts.

These tips only scratch the surface of conversion rate enhancement techniques. SEO as an end unto itself may be pointless, but all your keyword research and content creation need not be in vain. Just keep the true goal of the website in sight and you’ll be on your way to providing your clients real, demonstrable value in no time. Stop your clients’ websites from losing potential customers like a sieve and start funneling them through the conversion process with conversion rate enhancement services.

Jordan McCollum

I love the Internet. I just celebrated my 22nd birthday last week, and I already make more money than I know what to do with. I’m not trying to win this contest, because I’ll be at SES regardless, I’ve already bought Aaron’s book, and I have plenty of great research tools. Besides that, there is shortage of good SEOs in the industry and I would really like to see someone with great potential but little resources go on to benefit from this contest.

I am writing this to the judges as more of a wake up call. You are all worth much more than you selling yourselves for. You have great brands, you are recognized, accomplished, and have a good track record. Fortune 1000 Companies, CEOs, and decision makers all across the country have no idea how we do what we do, but they know that they need it. They need it bad.

In my experience, most SEOs come from a background in programming or web design, or something like that. That’s great, but they don’t know business. I went to school for business, sales, and marketing training, then I realized the huge demand for SEM. I work with a real estate company that recently signed a 2-year contract that pays me $55,000 per month, plus a 15% share in the upside. That is good money, and I don’t even have a valuable brand name like all of you have. You need to start charging more, you need to find people with a sales background to learn SEO inside and out, and we all need to stop discounting what we know. In a CEO’s eyes, it’s worth more than you think!

On a completely random note, I think one of the best articles I have read on search engine optimization was on “Pull SEO” by Mike Grehan. When I first read that article back in January, I completely changed the way I was approaching SEO, especially for new domains. Offline and online are beginning to mesh more and more. If you can create a strong buzz around a new site it will jump right over the sandbox for sure. Who needs PageRank when you have the weight of the world pushing your site to the top? Link baiting 2.0 is going to get exciting!

I love talking about marketing and SEO. All I do is experiment and come up with new ideas that work. That is why people want me to help them, and my sales background is what makes them pay me so much to do so. Feel free to email me any feedback you have on anything I said whether it’s good or bad. Thanks!

Many of us have converged on search marketing from other disciplines, be it media marketing, advertising, web development or programming. This diversity is one of the reasons why it’s so much more fun to socialize in our industry than to do so within any single discipline.

But moving into SEM from other disciplines is not always easy. With Web design and programming, the results are usually visible—there are phases of release and visible outcomes.The client nods approval while looking at a screen or printout and everyone moves down the project path. The ads run on the selected media property at the selected time. The ad proof is approved by the client before hitting the magazine. The client can be lazy in their review—they feel they’ve covered the bases by seeing something on the screen or in print. But you can’t “demo” SEM results—there is no way to “beta” a Google rank.

Outcomes are often dependent on product and presentation factors over which we have no control. So I’ve struggled, like you, with each unique, impatient and demanding client while learning things each time that make the next time a little easier. Here are a few that might help you.

1. Help the client understand how results will be measured. Unfortunately, some clients will begin asking you why they are not ranking a week or so after signing a contract. Even if you’ve
carefully screened your clients, someone you’ve never met before, such as the CFO, will come “out of the woodwork” and start to scrutinize your efforts in an unpredictable fashion. Be ready to re-explain.

2. Talk with clients about “frames of reference.” Many times the client will use a different language from their customers, and therefore in their assessment of an SEM effort. Educated surfers use better-constructed queries than others with less experience. You can use search data and a lot of careful listening to help clarify the vocabulary of the searcher and understand the disparities.

3. Help the client think about real-world searching. I think businesses often think about their customers as sitting at a quiet, clean desk, lots of time, a super-fast computer, a big 24” monitor and a T1 line all to themselves. This is rarely the case, of course, so it’s good to dirty up the lens a bit and see what customers are seeing. Take them down the hallway to a PC, and ask them to look something up. Interrupt them a few times, call their cell phone, and generally make yourself annoying.

4. Introduce the client to the concept of split testing. Almost every client I say “split testing” to nods, but few understand the concept. A handout and a five minute explanation make it clear how keywords, ads, landing pages, and navigation flows can be tested and retested to improve site performance. A burst of confidence in my experience and the technique usually follows. You just showed that you’re not trying stuff at random.

5. Show the client how the customer is, really, the best designer. Even when hurting from writing a large check to a Web designer for their current site, you must explain how split testing and other findings are to be folded into the site once proven effective, and why. Sometimes it’s good to show them the numbers so they can make the call.

6. Introduce your client to the eye-tracking concept and landing page design. Even if you don’t use eyetracking reports, talk through some of the recent data. Let them get the feel for how people truly look at sites. The concept of the golden triangle, inverted pyramid and Fshaped scanning are not black magic, and clients find it both fascinating and comforting to know real-world testing has been done. This kind of a-ha moment relaxes the relationship even more.

7. Keep the client thinking about what’s going on. SEO can be a lonely road. Sometimes it’s like riding fences. Often we need to wait for data accumulation or for time to pass before executing a new phase in a link building campaign. But during these delays, we must still communicate. A quick email seems to do nicely. I have some automated systems that crank out some very, very simple PDF reports weekly.

8. Help your client keep true goals in mind. We often get absorbed with bringing people to the landing page and spend too little time and money optimizing call to action and conversion goals. A 95% exit rate is a very bad thing indeed, especially if you’re paying for clicks, yet many forget it’s happening. It’s better to have fewer, better converting visitors in many cases, but some clients are initially obsessed with the visitor count. Sometimes introducing a simple grading system can take the focus away from “hits” and let you discuss quality of visitor more frequently.

9. Talk about the multi-visit sale. It’s amazing to me, but almost every client I speak with thinks of SEM in terms of the one-visit, one-sale mindset. Few consider the proven fact that many items require multiple visits to convert and your analytics and SEM success factors must take this into account. Not only must measurements allow for it, but the entire design process needs to consider this “fourth dimension.” People coming back to the site have a very different mindset than initial visitors. Help your client think in these terms too.

10. Set expectations—SEM is not easy. I’ve found that some of the best clients are those who’ve tried other methods first. If their site was not banned from these efforts, they have an appreciation for how hard SEM is. These folks are usually in a listening mood. But for some, who’ve been inundated with spam about $99 SEO from overseas, the 4-6 months’ effort to build strong organic rank can be too much to take. There is no one way to explain this process to clients except to say that it is going to take a while to accomplish and consider what works for different personalities. If they have great difficulty with this, have a PPC package available. You know the drill.

11. Bonus Idea—Explain #1 is often impossible, often not required for incredible success. Don’t go into a SEM project set up for client disappointment. #1 may not be possible, ever. Help clients understand that an across-the-board five-position improvement for their 40 major keywords will quadruple their traffic, even if the improvement is further down on the SERPs. Focus on the business results, not the ego-driven Google-summit.

Scott Clark

You know you’re an entrepreneur when you’re sitting in the cinema wondering how much money you could have made by buying popcorn wholesale and selling it at the door.

You know you’re into SEO when you look at SERPs like “leeds hairdresser“7 and you wonder how quickly you could become as a hairdresser, how much you could afford to charge per cut (CPC) and what your ROI would be.

Now, most startup businesses fail in the their first year (reference8), and that figure might seem daunting if you’re thinking of starting a business, but the truth is that these businesses were doomed to failure anyway (“robot horses“9).

A scary number of people start a business without a real way of making money. Similarly, a scary number of people launch their website without a strategy to get potential customers to their site.

How running an SEO project is like a business

· Many more people talk about doing it than actually do it

· There is no ‘secret’; there is no ‘magic bullet’

· It’s more about execution than it is about having that killer idea

Many more people talk about doing it than actually do it

How many people do you know that have been ‘quitting their job’ for the last 10 years? How many people have ‘a great business idea’? How many actually go out there and take the plunge?

I knew that I wanted to run my own business and yet I went out after university and got a job working for someone else. Then I got another job. Finally, I felt ready to go for it. The stats told me starting a business was a big risk. Not to mention the longer I waited after my first job, the higher my salary got. People are lazy, they don’t want to rock the boat, so they never jump ship.

Everyone has heard of the entrepreneurs that have made it, everyone knows (of) someone who has made a fortune from a website that ‘came top of Google’ and now turns over a lot of money
every month. However, Mr. Branson didn’t just ‘decide to start’ a multibillion, multinational business, and you can’t just ‘decide to launch’ a successful Web-based business. The blood, sweat, tears and uncertainty puts off a huge number of people.

I am guilty of it; I have been almost running a serious SEO project for my sideline business offering whisky gifts for at least a year. I am prevaricating in the same way that so many people
who have dreams of running their own businesses continue to show up to their job each day.

There is no ‘secret’; there is no ‘magic bullet’

Business books, journals and newspapers are sold on the grounds that they’ll tell you how to be the next Google, or the next YouTube.

Truth is, there is no magic bullet.

The real secret is that there is no secret and you need to commit time, energy and passion to succeed. I am a huge believer in learning from books written by people who have made it—I got a lot from Losing My Virginity10 by Richard Branson and couldn’t have started my business without Selling to Win11 by Richard Denny—but no book is going to give you the drive to
succeed.

Similarly, I read widely on SEO and don’t believe there is a magic bullet in the SEO world either. Just because everyone knows that you need to write good content, update it regularly, build your reputation in your field and garner high quality, relevant inbound links doesn’t make it easy. There is a lot of mystique around link building services and I have no doubt that the best in the field are indeed very, very good. Having said that, for the most part, I think most white hat SEO consultants are mainly executing their strategies better than the competition. For the most part, they aren’t doing anything much different to what you know you need to be doing; but they are doing rather than talking.

It’s far more about execution than it is about having that killer idea

In the business world, it’s your friend who is “going to start a business just as soon as I get my great idea.” In the online world, it’s someone who thinks that the only way to optimise their small
business website is to come up with something that is so new that people will simply have to link to it.

Execution is the step that is missing from so many hypothetical business plans. You can analyse successful companies all you like and look for similarities that point towards success, but only the more subtle examinations reveal the truth: the most successful companies are rarely the only ones in their field.

There were other search engines before Google but they built their dominance through doing search better. There were other online bookshops when Amazon launched, but Amazon made
their inventory and fulfillment process better.

In the final link to SEO, I believe that the best SEO campaigns—the ones that generate great profits—do not generally contain ideas that no one has used before. ‘Killer ideas’ very often fail but well executed strategies rarely do.

So next time you are waiting to do something because it isn’t a ‘killer idea’, step back and remember that you are far more likely to succeed by doing than by not doing.

There’s a reason Nike’s slogan is ‘Just Do It’ rather than ‘just hold off till you have that really great idea.’ In answer to the title, “Want to rank top in Google? Wear Nike shoes,” it’s not about
rocket science or magic; it’s about just doing it. I guarantee you’ll be ahead of the 99% of your competition that are still talking about it.

And when you execute, drop me a line and let me know how you get on.

Will Critchlow

What if I were to tell you that you could cut the amount of time spent on a certain element of SEO by half and, at the same time, double your productivity for it. Is that something you might be interested in?

If so, read on, grasshopper. :)

SEOs will generally kick off an optimization campaign by examining analytics, performing keyword research, checking on-page elements, analyzing links, and so on and so forth. However, there is an extremely useful tactic that is often underutilized or left out completely from the SEO’s arsenal. What am I talking about? Ladies and gentleman, I present to you . . . competitive intelligence.

What is competitive intelligence? As it relates to search marketing, I would define it as the process of performing research to gather information about your competitors’ websites and analyzing that data for the purpose of extracting methods used and formulating strategies that you may use to optimize your own website.

Competitive intelligence can open your eyes to many things, including:

·What your competitors are doing.

·How you compare to your competitors.

·Predicting what your competitors will be doing.

There are plenty of resources and tools on competitive research and analysis that are readily available for you to use. Simple searches on the SEM Search tool for competitive intelligence , competitive research , and competitive analysis will return a barrage of blog posts and articles that will lead you to a slew of resources and tools you may incorporate.

These tools and tactics that you will find will lead you well on your way to gathering useful data on your competitors. Being the swell guy that I am, I’ll present two of my favorite tactics.

View the Source

Often, you will find that your competitors will leave a bunch of clues and/or trails in the source code of their pages. Some of the things you may find include:

·The keywords they are targeting (meta name=“keywords”)

·The kind of content management system they are using, if they are using one.

·The analytics package they are using, if they are using one.

·The other third-party companies your competitor is using.

You may use this knowledge to exploit your competitor’s weaknesses, implement these practices on your own site, and/or obtain additional information through further research, if you
know what I mean. ;)

Another item in the source you should look for are comments. Many Web developers and designers will leave notes in comments like this:



You should also look for entire elements or blocks of code that may be commented out. These may reveal such things as new elements that may soon be introduced to the site and/or items
that are being tested on the site.

Competitive Link Analysis

And now we get to the answer to the initial question: How can you spend half the time on a certain element of SEO and get twice as much out of it?

The element I’m talking about is inbound links. Everybody knows the importance of inbound links in an SEO campaign. Why not use your competitors to help you out? You can easily
analyze the backlinks of your competitors.

There—there’s half the work of researching for potential link acquisition targets all done for you.

Now all you need to do is implement the usual link building strategies to acquire backlinks from the same sites that are linking to your competitors, right?

Well, you could, and I’m sure many of you are doing this.

But I have more. Using those usual link building strategies, what if you were to get the website that is linking to your competitor to change that link to go to your site, instead?

Then, instead of your competitor having 1 backlink to your 1 new backlink, now your competitor has 0 and you have 1.

Bang! Double your productivity. Not only are you gaining links, your competitors are losing them! :)

Of course, you will want to avoid anything that may cause the search engines to become suspicious. I’ll speculate that your competitor’s backlinks being replaced by yours across hundreds of sites may do just that.

So, you obviously should be replacing not just a single competitor’s links, but many other competitors’ links.

In addition, keep in mind that this strategy should be just a part of your link building campaign, as it is best to keep your link profile diverse.

Summary

So, there you have it, folks—competitive intelligence and a few tactics in a nutshell. I would really need something larger, like a clamshell, to expand on the subject, but I hope I have provided enough information for you to get started on the right path.

Being aware of competitive intelligence will not only help you gather information on your competitors to use to your advantage, but it will also make you aware of what you should and shouldn’t be doing on your own Web properties so that your competitors can’t gather the same type of information about your websites.

Of course there are more sneaky tactics you may use with competitive intelligence, but we can’t go into those here. :D

CK Chung
aka Kid Disco

Buying your way into natural search rankings with press releases

The concept of paid search marketing is not new for online marketing experts. By bidding on keywords, a website is positioned in a search engine’s sponsored listings. Anyone willing to spend the marketing dollars is able to compete.

Paying for space has long been the distinction between pay-per-click (PPC) and natural search rankings. However, recently with the new rules of Web 2.0 that line is being crossed. Now the two are blending together with press releases. New tools are providing marketing experts ways to pay for high natural rankings as well as sponsored search positions.

Press releases have not changed from their basic concept. They are still a way for companies to communicate to the public about news and events. They were and are a way to get news and media outlets to mention your company.

However, the Internet has changed the way press releases are processed, read and distributed. Unlike the older system, press releases are not just going to a handful of journalists. The modern online press release is going to RSS feeds, search engines, social tagging sites, news feeds, as well as traditional journalism outlets.

The long term affect of a press release is much more important. Because there is complete control of the link and the keywords associated with the link, press releases are the best form of link building available. With the increased number of quality links, websites will quickly climb in search engine rankings.

You must pay attention to the details to receive the full benefit of press releases in search engines. Optimizing press releases is a unique craft that consists of important, visible headlines,
compelling stories, proper structure and links. Mixing all of that together with targeted keywords can prove to be a difficult task. However, below are some general guidelines to push writers in
the right direction.

Tips for great online press releases

·Link building is key. Links are the single most important feature of press releases. Each time a press release is picked up and published on a website, those links are multiplied.
This is the major source of increased search engine rankings.

·Link guidelines:

o Stay on target. Stick with the most coveted keywords and make sure the anchor text includes those words.

o Create search friendly links. By keeping the links short and “search friendly,” the impact of link building will pay off when the press release is distributed across the Web.

o Avoid too many links. One link per hundred words is about the right amount. Any more than that and the press release looks like spam or a link farm. Any less,then the press release is not getting its full benefit.

·Avoid sales pitches. Although not always an easy task, the purpose of an online press release is clearly not a promotion. The main goal of a press release: To increase search engine rankings. Editors do not want commercials; they want valuable information that will interest their readers. The financial benefit of the press release will come later, when users begin their search and the website appears high in search engine results.

·Write from a third person point of view. Press releases are published on various news websites and in some cases offline media. It is best to view the press releases from the reader’s point of view. Do not use words such as: us, we, your, and you.

·Link to relevant landing pages. It is important for Web content editors to make sure there is information on the site that corresponds to the event or news item in the press release.

·Build original content. To increase your search rankings, the press release needs to be picked up by as many websites as possible. This is done through using good stories and information.

·Add targeted keywords to press release. Whenever possible, fill the press release with targeted search keywords. It is often easier to add keywords after the press release is written. Ideally, the closer the keyword is to the top of the press release, the better.

·Keep the reader in mind first, not the search engines. If the text does not read well with a specific keyword, then do not include it. Use words that your customers use. More importantly, use words that they use in search engines.

What should I look for in a press release distribution company?

The quickest way to get a press release distributed is through a wire service. These services provide instant distribution to a network of news services, such at Google News and Yahoo!
News. There are a variety of press release distribution services available. Below are a few qualities and capabilities to look for in a press release distribution company:

·Editorial staff—A company that will help you optimize your press release will maximize its reach.

·Search engine presence—Does the company offer a direct feed into search engines? Since many journalists and Web editors use search engines to find stories, having your story there makes that process easier.

·RSS feeds and syndication—Allowing a webmaster a direct feed multiplies the number of times your press release will get picked up, thus increasing search rankings.

·Social tagging—Having a company that will assist with tagging and bookmarking will help the press releases connect with more people and more websites.

What does all this cost?

As stated in the subtitle, “Buying your way into natural search rankings with press releases,” this all comes at a price. You have to pay a fee to be part of this distribution service.

The price for distribution varies from company and depends on the options. The cost per press release can be as low as $40 to as high as $300 for complex configurations.

Keep in mind the most important goal of online press releases: increasing search engine rankings. The best way to get those rankings is through (1) very precise and targeted links within the press release and (2) large distribution. The route that is going to meet more of those targets at the best price is the solution for you. All other options are just icing on the cake and in some cases are not even that important. Do not get swayed by other options, at additional costs, that do not help with those two goals.

Act quickly

Like any search engine ranking technique, it is only a matter of time before the effects of this tool are diluted because people abused the system. It is important to get in early and often and make a claim on these new press release formats.

Search engine optimization press releases are a proven commodity. This not the familiar press release that so many communication managers and marketing professionals have grown accustomed to. Online marketing is evolving quickly and people are looking for more and more information and fresh content. By containing interesting stories, your press release will make
Web editors happy which will ultimately affect that your position in the market.

John W. Ellis

When used separately they are good, when used together they are even better! I have achieved success with press releases using the following technique for two years.

The components include a well written press release and a special combination of keywords and Google Alerts (your new best friend).

What is Google Alerts? It allows you to enter keywords and subscribe to those keywords for email updates as Google finds news related to them.

Lots of people use this service and I have a secret ingredient that will increase the exposure of your press releases. At the bottom of each one of my press release I include a statement such as, “My company currently competes with Competitor A, Competitor B, Competitor C, etc.” Carefully selected and used in moderation, this will expose your press release directly to your competition’s customers!

What happens next is amazing! Everyone that is currently subscribed to the keywords “Competitor A,” “Competitor B,” and so on, receives my press release, while my press release receives a significant increase. Google Alerts spreads my press release to the competition’s customers with the end result being more traffic and more business for me!

Like Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans you need to be careful with the quantity and know when enough is enough! The one thing I suggest is using a simple, true and factual statement such as
“I compete with Competitor A”.

The moral of the story: utilizing “Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans” (competitor names as keywords in your press releases) will result in additional exposure, but using too many may keep you up at night!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the holy grail of Internet marketing because of the allure of ‘free’ traffic.

There’s no doubt—achieving a number one ranking in Google or Yahoo for high-traffic-volume keyword phrases can be extremely profitable for any business.

Because of this, SEO may be one of the most competitive and difficult areas to achieve online success in. Think about it—there can really only be one website ranked number one in Google or Yahoo for each country!

But how much is a top ranking actually worth?

One way of estimating the value of a top ranking in Google or Yahoo is by calculating the cost of a top position for a particular keyword phrase in the pay-per-click (PPC) engines.

For example, let’s say you want to estimate the value of a #1 ranking in Yahoo for ‘car insurance’.

Here’s one way of estimating the value of this ranking:

1. First we research the number of people searching for ‘car insurance’ on Yahoo Australia. We find that there were 26,210 searches last month for that phrase.

2. Next, we research how much the top position is costing the advertiser per click (CPC) for the keyword phrase ‘car insurance’. We find that the top bid is $4.49 per click.

3. Next we take the average click-thru-rate (CTR) of an advertiser in the PPC engines, which is 1%, and we calculate the estimated value of the #1 position.

Here is the formula:

(number of searches per month x CTR) x CPC = estimated value of #1 ranking

or…

(26,210 x 0.01) x $4.49 = $1,176.83

So, from this calculation, the estimated value of a #1 position in Yahoo for ‘car insurance’ is $1,176.83 per month.

Now if you were able to get a 2% CTR (which is very possible if you know what you’re doing), then the estimated value would double to $2,353.66 per month.

And if you were able to get a 3% CTR (which is possible if you’re very good), then the estimated value would triple to $3,530.49 per month.

The reason we estimate a #1 ranking using this formula is because we can automatically get a #1 position for ANY KEYWORD PHRASE by bidding the highest amount.

Importantly, getting a top ranking for any keyword results in ‘free’ traffic—but it does cost time and money to get that position.

SEO is only viable when the estimated value of the #1 ranking is higher than the total cost of getting that position through PPC advertising.

Alex Cleanthous