Posts tagged search engine optimization
5 Internet Marketing Strategies You Can Do in Ten Minutes
Feb 11th
Unlike hospitality or retail, internet marketing is not an industry for those who need instant gratification. Everybody is vying for top Google results, and that means that it is going to take a lot of time to get those valuable top 10 positions. However, as turtle-like as internet marketing can sometimes seem, there are plenty of things you can do in ten minutes or less, that will help your search engine rankings. Today we go through 7 of them.
Now that's fast SEO!
- Answering Twitter questions
Set up an alert through any one of the Twitter companion programs for questions with keywords related to your industry. When you see someone ask a question about either your industry, or your brand specifically, answer them! This really makes your customers feel cared for, encourages them to visit, pushes up your Google ranking… - Write a case study
Information from experts is in short supply on the web. Knock out a case study for recent clients of yours, and note how you solved problems for them. Provide real, useful information and people will not only visit and link to you, they might even hire you. - Create a narrow ‘How-to’ article
The big, long and in-depth ‘how-to’ articles are more than a ten minute job. However, people want the answers to all sorts of small questions – they don’t always want to have to read through ‘The Ultimate Guide’ to solve a problem. - Use Google Hot Trends to decide what to tweet and blog about
Of course, it will still have to be related to your industry – but Google Hot Trends shows what the buzz is about, right at this very second. If you can link a news item or issue to your content, the traffic possibilities are enormous. - Check your page speed with Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools lets you see how fast or slow your site is. And Google has hinted that page speed will become an ever-more important factor in ranking … so make sure you know where you stand.
What Nobody Tells You About Video Marketing
Feb 2nd
Video marketing … we all know that it has enormous potential for reaching audiences, that it is becoming easier and easier, and that it costs a bit more than text articles but also has greater potential. Bet you didn’t what we’re about to tell you about video web marketing, though …
Not many people are doing it
Video still sets you apart from the crowd. While Youtube is a huge website, and people are quite used to viewing online videos, if you’re in a smaller niche then utilizing video where appropriate on your site will still make you seem like an industry leader, not a follower.
Not every one likes video … not everyone likes text
This seems like an obvious point, but it leads us to a best practice that almost all sites miss. If people don’t have time to be led through a video on your topic, they’ll go elsewhere. On the other hand, if they’re looking for information they don’t have to process too much, they’ll look specifically for videos, and might miss your text-based info.
The point is this: always have a text based version of the info in your video … and if possible, always make a video version of your flagship content pieces.
Google is not good at handling video yet
Video marketing is still more in the realms of building customer engagement and word-of-mouth internet marketing than it is an SEO tactic. Tagging helps, but the best practice is to create a text-based version of your video for both the consumers, and the search engines.
You won’t always be able to ‘do’ video
Video is not good for all info, or all topics. Content that doesn’t suit the video format (ie, there is little opportunity to ADD to the content with visuals) should be left as text!
Youtube might not always be your best friend
Youtube is an independent company, serving their own and their visitors interests, not yours. There are thousands of people worldwide who have had their videos removed for violateing terms and conditions without even knowing they had done anything wrong. Hosting your own video can be expensive, but is sometimes worth it.
4 Ways to Supplement Your Main Business Income With Your Website
Jan 29th
The internet is split along a line … I hesitate to say “roughly equal lines”, because I’ve no idea if that is true! On one side of the line are the businesses who simply use the web as another marketing and promotion avenue for a business that already existed pre-WWW. On the other side are the businesses that would not exist without WWW and internet marketing – businesses like online freelancing, sole-purpose ad revenue sites and affiliate marketing sites, etc.
What many traditional businesses don’t realize is that there are plenty of way to combine the two approaches to making money online – we explore 4 of those today. Of note, we are only looking at methods that detract little from the actual corporate identity of a site.
1. Hosting banner advertising
The suitability of this strategy depends on the setup of your site. If you have substantial information sections, then it makes sense to offer links to other sites that people might find useful. If your site is purely marketing copy, it makes less sense to dilute your message. Still, consider that a site that hosts a banner ad with a $1CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and gets 100,000 page views a month will generate $100 monthly …pretty decent!
2. Affiliate marketing
Find a business that is complementary to your own,, and also has an affiliate program. Mention them and link to them in your own copy (only where appropriate), and you have the potential to be earning commissions from your website, without changing the perceived quality.
3. Sponsored reviews
If you are able to, or already have, built up some kudos in your industry community, people may ask you to do paid reviews – either of their site, a book, a product, etc. If they don’t ask, send out a letter to let them know! Alternatively, use sites like Pay Per Post.
4. Host Premium Content
As a business, you have lots and lots of expert knowledge. Given the quality of most content on the net (!), anything that comes from the expert’s mouth is highly regarded! Have some content on your site as free, and some paid. Offer a range of payment options – subscription, per-per-article, etc.
4 Extra SEO Keyword Research Tips
Jan 26th
Keyword research is one of the most important bases of your internet marketing campaign – it is one of the pillars that helps decide whether your campaign will succeed or fail, and it is critical to get it right the first time! We looked yesterday at 4 of the essential activities that you should engage in when deciding on the keywords you’ll use in your internet marketing – today we give you four bonuses.
1. Think about vertical search terms to use
In your keyword research brainstorming session, you probably whittled your list down to fifteen or twenty general terms that describe your entire business (for example, bathroom fittings, public restroom furnishings, etc). However, there are a number of ‘vertical’ searches that are common within every industry, that you can often capitalize on. These can be broken down into categories:
- Local terms (so add your city, your state, or your country to one of your general keyphrases. If your keyphrase is ’search engine optimisation’, your vertical alternatives could be ’search engine optimisation Melbourne’, ’search engine optimisation Victoria’, or ’search engine optimisation Australia’
- Products that you stock, including brand names and even model numbers, in some cases
2. How does querent intent relate to each keyword?
What phase of the decision-making process is a person searching for a particular term likely to be in? What phase of the decision-making process does that part of your site serve? You need to think about this to determine how much return you’ll get from particular keywords.
3. Check out the PPC data, even for your organic search terms
Even if you aren’t interested in doing PPC advertising at this stage of your SEO campaign, it is always helpful to know which keywords show the heaviest competition in the PPC arena. These trends certainly cross over into natural search.
4. Check out the related searches
Most major search engines have their own version of the related searches tool. If you just want a few ideas, check out Google’s. Simply type your term into the search box, click the ‘Show Options’ link up the top, and then hit ‘Related Searches’ down the page a bit.
How to Decide on a Keyphrase with Multiple Word Order Options
Jan 24th
One of the great practical conundrums of SEO, and often the first one people run up against, is the keyphrase word order problem. Does your business do ’search engine optimisation Melbourne’ or ‘Melbourne search engine optimisation’? Do you have a ‘Bangkok hotel’ or a ‘hotel in Bangkok’? Today we help you decide!
The all important word order
Go by the numbers
The first (but certainly not the only) decision making tool you can use here is Google’s Keyword Traffic Estimator Tool, available at https://adwords.google.com.au/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox . Type in each of your alternate phrases, with quote marks around each, to tell the engine you want data for an exact match. List how many searches are performed for a certain time period for each phrase … but don’t just decide to use the most popular one!
Popular first
You will be making the highest search volume phrase the first priority – but realize that you’ll also be using the alternatives later on. Yes, the top search volume phrase will have the most competition. More importantly, though, it represents the language and word order your consumers and potential site visitors think in.
URL Tips
There will often be one phrase that sticks out as not making much sense – you can tell it will be difficult to incorporate in the copy, probably because people are simply being a bit lazy about typing the phrase in! Use this phrase in the URL – that way you can still optimize for it without your copy sounding odd.
On page copy
Focus on the main, highest traffic keyphrase in your site copy. Try to use it 3 or 4 times in your body copy for relevant pages only … and remember to keep it natural!
Anchor text
Then, use your two or three alternative word order keyphrase in your link building campaigns. This should give you a good mix of the alternative keyphrases, weighted in favor of the one which will sound most natural to your readers being in the site copy, and help with your mix of internet marketing strategies.
Applying The Immutable Laws of Marketing in SEO, part 2
Jan 22nd
Marketing and SEO go hand in hand – SEO is simply a new tool to achieve the same position that you used to have to get by taking out ads in the Yellow Pages, and by creating crazy jingles for radio and TV 
. Today we are continuing our partial look at the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (as defined by Al Ries and Jack Trout), as they apply to your internet marketing activities. Check out our web-based analysis of the first four laws as a starter, if you like.
Owning a Word
Laws 5 and 6, which state respectively that “The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind”, and “Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind”. These realte to the entire discipline of SEO … only you have to own a word in Google’s mind, but not necessarily in your prospects. Nice parallel … but we did know that anyway!
Strategy Determination
Ries and Trout observe in the seventh law that the strategy you should use depends on what rung you occupy on the ladder. The ladder is generally understood to mean the hierarchy of products within a category that exist in a consumer’s mind … and the main difference is what you do when you are number one, versus number 2, 3, 4 or lower. This gets a little complicated when you start thinking about details though – a web marketing firm will be an essential partner for implementing this one!
Follow the leader?
The ninth law comes next in our partial review of Ries and Trout’s genius – and it states that if you are shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader. That is, if you are competing with a very strong brand in your category, and can realistically expect to get to the number 2 spot on the strength of your company and product … you should do the opposite of what the #1 company does. People want an alternative, not an imitator … and there are plenty of ways to give yourself that label through your web marketing activities.
SEO and the Changing Google Algorithm
Jan 13th
Much like raising children, SEO is a discipline where the playing field, and the rules, keep changing. It is one of the reasons that there is so much misinformation about it on the web, and one of the major reasons that people turn to SEO professionals to sort it all out. Today we check out how the game plan for SEO has changed over time, by exploring the changing Google algorithm. These rankings are a selected view of our personal opinions about internet marketing, including our observations about which activities get which results.
We’ll be looking at four major factors that Google uses to rank pages for a particular search query:
- Keyword usage on site, including keyword density, positioning, relative appearance next to related words, etc.
- Anchor text used in external links
- Link popularity – how many links of what level of ‘authority’ you have linking to your site
- Trust and authority of the domain hosting the page
2004 – Back in Aught-Four!
- Trust and authority: Only had a very slight impact on SEO rankings. Having a .gov or .edu domain probably would have helped relatively little in rankings.
- Keyword usage: Was of moderate importance in determining rankings
- Anchor text: Was very important in determining SERPs
- Link popularity: Was seen as the dominant force in determining the SERP
2007 – Back in Aught-Seven!
- Trust and authority: Was moving up in importance, we could now see a moderate impact
- Keyword usage: Again, of moderate importance
- Link popularity: Moderate importance – the top three factors had relatively equal weight
- Anchor text: However, was seen as immensely important by Google
2009 – Back to the Not So Distant Past
- Trust and authority: Our recent SEO projects have shown much better results for host domains with good trust and authority in Google’s eyes – it seems this is now of quite dominant importance.
- Keyword usage: Still has a moderate impact on internet marketing activities
- Anchor text: Still important, but not so much as it was a few years ago
- Link popularity: Currently this has the least effect on over all ranking of the four major factors.
This is all very interesting to note – but an important point to remember is that you shouldn’t neglect to use keywords in your achor text just because Google doesn’t care about it right now … those links will still be there in a couple of years when Google may have changed its mind. For the same reason, there’s still no excuse for neglecting on-site optimization or working on building link popularity as an internet marketing tactic.
Deciphering Google-ese: How to Know if You’ve Gotten a Google Penalty
Jan 12th
Just like women (or just like men, depending on your gender!), the ways of Google are mysterious. Deciphering its laws is full of conjecture, testing, personal experience and word of mouth. It’s almost like a religion 
. If you have noticed a sudden drop in your Google rankings lately, you may be wondering whether you have incurred a Google penalty. While fixing this unfortunate occurrence is a whole ‘nother set of posts, today we’ll explain how to determine the type of SEO penalty you may have suffered and point to some initial steps you can take to get your web marketing back on track.
First SEO check: Is your site still indexed?
That is, when you do a search in Google for site:www.yourbusinesswebsite.com.au, do you still see pages from your site?
If you don’t: Your site is probably banned from Google (unless it is too new to have been indexed yet). To get banned, you need to do something really awful … your mistake will probably be easy for an internet marketing specialist to identify. Get help, and file a re-inclusion request.
If you do: See below.
Second SEO check: Does your site still show up in results when you search for your domain name, or your business name within “parentheses”?
If you don’t: There may be issues with the validity of some of your links, or there may be some issues with your content that are viewed by Google as on-site spam. If you haven’t updated your site in a while, it is highly likely that SEO techniques that were acceptable back when they were implemented on your domain are now seen as black hat. Keyword stuffing is a good example, or you may have links from a site that has been found to be engaging in black hat internet marketing techniques.
If you do: See below.
Third SEO check: Do you still rank for any reasonably unique phrases within your title tags, in the top 10-20 results?
If you don’t: It may just be that links that previously held lots of weight in your link popularity equation have been devalued, for one reason or another. Or there may have been some well-marketed competitor sites developed in your niche.
If you do: There’s no problem – you may have just noticed a drop in rankings. Get your internet marketing experts onto the case!
Snakey Keywords: Using Long Tail Search Terms for SEO Benefit
Jan 11th
Actually, calling long-tail keywords ’snakey’ may be a bit of a misnomer. The ‘long tail’ in the term ‘long tail keyphrases’ is most often visualized as a lizard’s tail. The exact animal doesn’t make a lick of difference to your SEO success, though … your application of the long tail keyphrase principle does!
The Long tail of SEO
What is a long tail keyphrase?
In broad, overall Google terms, a long tail keyphrase is understood as any that falls outside the top 100,000 most popular searches that are made in a day, a week, or a month. Usually to people trying to determine their keyphrases, or internet marketing specialists doing so for clients, it means that the little tail of letters heading across the screen is longer.
Long tail keyphrases are much more useful in web marketing than shorter ones. Shorter search terms get a high volume of searches, but there is heavy competition, especially for large sites. You are much more likely to get good web marketing results, and therefore traffic, if you target more specialized terms.
How to help define your long tail keyphrases for best SEO results
Generally, long tail keywords consist of three or more words. You are probably used to thinking about your business in broad terms, trying to explain it to people who understand little about what you do. To define your long tail keyphrases, either you or your SEO specialist will have to get much more personal with your business!
Here are some quick ways to start defining your long tail keyphrases for SEO:
- Add your location to one of your terms, especially if you are the only business in your niche in that area. For example, you might use ‘internet marketing Melbourne‘, rather than ‘internet marketing’.
- Dust off your Unique Selling Point and pair it up with a plain description of your services. For example, ‘environmentally friendly printing services’
- Use the names of your popular products or services, even if they are much more specific than your overall business. For example, ‘full colour brochure printing’ is a good choice, though your business might do all sorts of printing.
How to Turn Robots Into Humans! Web Marketing and the Impact of Latent Semantic Indexing
Jan 7th
Scientists have been working for decades on artificial intelligence … but perhaps the problem has always been that there was previously no way to make money off the research in progress! Well, it seems that the Google-bot is getting closer and closer to human status, with the ongoing development of latent semantic indexing technology to analyse the content of websites. Today we are looking at Latent Semantic Indexing, how it works and what it means for your SEO efforts.
What is Latent Semantic Indexing?
Basically, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI from hereon) is a mathematical way for Google to determine the relationships between words and phrases, based on their proximity, the number of times they occur together, etc. It’s knowledge base for creating an understanding of these relationships is the entire web. The easiest way to understand it is by example: If your company site sells car parts, you would expect to find the terms ‘radiator’, ‘engine’, ‘car’, ’suspension’, etc, scattered throughout your site. Google analyses the number of times a word occurs with another word in order to determine which pages are more relevant to a search query … even though there may be only one instance of the search term. LSI isn’t new, it has been in full effect for a few years now; however some people still aren’t aware it exists.
How should that affect my search engine optimisation efforts?
The advent of latent semantic indexing means the end of keyword stuffing. Now you can write as naturally as possible, in language that speaks only to your consumers, and the search engines will still hear you, index you, and push you up the rankings.
You can now build a much broader profile of keyphrases (preferably long tail ones) that are related to your business, without the fear that you are diluting your keyword strategy and missing out on clicks, because your SEO strategy wasn’t focused enough on a particular keyphrase.
In fact, if you write for humans (which the Google-bot is increasingly becoming, remember!), you’ll get higher traffic figures, and more unsolicited links, which will be of big benefit to your web marketing campaign anyway. Enjoy your content freedom – and if it’s all a bit much, the specialists at Web Marketing Experts can help you out.