1. Putting search engines before users
Optimisation is the process your website undergoes in order to help it achieve the best possible listings. The reason for hankering after a number one ranking? To attract targeted traffic. It's therefore surprising how many websites forget about their human users in the quest for search engine success.
Cramming as many keywords as possible into each page may yield short-term SEO results but is guaranteed to turn off human eyes. Well-written content is much more likely to result in a sale and win over the search engine web bots.
2. Link spamming
Link spamming sees the website chasing after as many links as possible, often using spurious excuses to answer forum questions or social media discussions in order to build external links. The reality here is that the links gathered are of little relevant use and no commercial value. Search engines rate links based on the authority of the sites they come from, so using link-spamming techniques actually devalues the site's authority.
A much better policy is to use time that would have been spent harvesting poor quality links for a more strategic campaign. By focusing link-building efforts on relevant sites, optimisation activities will also target the desired demographic.
3. Disregarding link text
The anchor text of the link should be written as carefully as possible. Search engines such as Google can use anchor text as an indicator of internal links (links from one page of the site to another). Unimaginative anchor text such as 'click here' also does little to add value to the user experience.
4. Not tracking progress
It's impossible to assess just how effective SEO activity is if there's no record of the starting point. Tracking is an often forgotten stage of SEO, with many people thinking the best measure of progress is simply improved organic listings. Not so. The number of sales and new search inclusions are all-important metrics indicating the success (or otherwise) of the SEO strategy. A reliable and regular report detailing these factors can be used to decide on any necessary changes in direction and assess the impact of such new activity.
5. Choosing the wrong keywords
Some SEO companies propose guaranteed listings for obscure keywords, showing just how easy it is to generate page one rankings for terms with little competition. But keywords involving product names and numbers are of little use in a strategic optimisation programme. Optimisation for 'flatscreen TV' would be a good goal for a company selling flatscreen TVs. Optimisation for 'Sony Flat Screen AB 123356BBBB' would not.
6. Overlooking accessibility
Website accessibility is a critical consideration – making your website navigable to all users regardless of disability or visual impairment. The Disability Discrimination Act 2004 is an essential guideline for any UK-based website. Making link text as descriptive as possible is a part of this, but accessibility goes much further with actions such as introducing relevant Alt and Title tags compliant with WC3 guidelines.
7. Not planning your SEO strategy
Planning a useful campaign is very much like planning a journey. One of the common mistakes made by newcomers is to be overtaken by enthusiasm and neglect to map out points of interest along the way. Rather than focusing on the end goal, set short-term objectives that are signposts towards the elusive page one ranking.
Read More..
Monday, January 5, 2009
New SEO and email marketing blog launched
A new blog featuring expert guidance and advice about email marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), social networking and Web 2.0 strategies has been launched.
Dr. Scott's Cool Marketing and Business Blog is the brainchild of Philadelphia marketing professor Dr Scott Testa who is hoping he can use his 20 years of experience and the knowledge of a number of guest writers to help educate people about the internet marketing sector.
Predicting what the next 12 months could have in store for the industry, he remarked: "I am really looking forward to 2009.
"Unique and inexpensive marketing techniques are going to be at the forefront."
As well as containing more than four dozen educational articles, the blog also acts as a hub for several other websites and blogs, linking to over 20 in total.
Email marketing, SEO and paid search should be at the heart of any online marketing strategy, according to Straight Up Search.
Read More..
Dr. Scott's Cool Marketing and Business Blog is the brainchild of Philadelphia marketing professor Dr Scott Testa who is hoping he can use his 20 years of experience and the knowledge of a number of guest writers to help educate people about the internet marketing sector.
Predicting what the next 12 months could have in store for the industry, he remarked: "I am really looking forward to 2009.
"Unique and inexpensive marketing techniques are going to be at the forefront."
As well as containing more than four dozen educational articles, the blog also acts as a hub for several other websites and blogs, linking to over 20 in total.
Email marketing, SEO and paid search should be at the heart of any online marketing strategy, according to Straight Up Search.
Read More..
4 Reasons Why PPC Is The Best Online Marketing Channel
PPC is one of the most profitable advertising and marketing channels. This view is shared by most online marketers, who in 2007, according to Marketing Sherpa, ranked PPC and email marketing as the two channels with the highest ROI.
1. Pay Per Click Yields a High Return on Investment
If you had to choose one, PPC or email, which would it be? Email marketing works best with house (not purchased) lists. Those take time to build, and one major way to build them is via PPC. Unless you have a strong house list and don’t want new customers, PPC is better.
We just went through the year-end agency/client review process of what did and didn’t work in 2008. We assessed the ROI of each marketing channel and helped them plan their 2009 budgets accordingly.
One of our biggest clients is planning a six to seven-figure AdWords spend in 2009. This is because their ROI from AdWords was, on average, five times stronger than other online advertising and marketing channels. In 2008 we helped this company increase its revenues by 36% in a vertical hurt by our recessionary economy.
2. Pay Per Click Gives You Instant Targeted Traffic
We frequently recommend PPC for new websites. SEO has long-term benefits and is a great investment in your site’s future value, but the big bottom-line results take months or years. PPC gets immediate traffic and can help generate significant sales within weeks. We recommend both strategies in parallel because of their complimentary pros and cons.
3. Pay Per Click Helps You Find Problems With Your Offering, Promos, or Website
As soon as you have traffic, you can see what your site does and doesn’t do well. At what rate is it converting sales or leads? If highly targeted traffic converts poorly, you need conversion optimization or a usability reassessment. Sometimes an uncaught programming error or design oversight obstructs critical site functionality. Noticeable lack of conversions or low conversion rate spurs PPC managers to investigate what’s wrong.
The disadvantage of starting a site with SEO but without PPC is that traffic can take months to ramp up to significant levels. If you have a usability or conversion problem in those first three to six months, you may not have enough data to detect it or to fix it quickly with conversion optimization.
4. Pay Per Click Brands Your Company While Selling Its Offerings
Some of our clients occasionally ask about branding with PPC. I won’t belittle branding because it really is an important strategy and discipline.
Sometimes what clients mean by branding is simply increasing their exposure to new prospects. Whenever I hear “We also want to do some branding,” I ask “What do you mean by branding? What are your ultimate goals? Leads? Sales? Email list building?” After three to six months of PPC, if the client doesn’t have the leads or sales that bring in the revenue, branding won’t seem like such a good idea anymore. If you went along just to make them happy or avoid the work of educating them, you won’t look so smart or effective at this point and you may lose the client.
Read More..
1. Pay Per Click Yields a High Return on Investment
If you had to choose one, PPC or email, which would it be? Email marketing works best with house (not purchased) lists. Those take time to build, and one major way to build them is via PPC. Unless you have a strong house list and don’t want new customers, PPC is better.
We just went through the year-end agency/client review process of what did and didn’t work in 2008. We assessed the ROI of each marketing channel and helped them plan their 2009 budgets accordingly.
One of our biggest clients is planning a six to seven-figure AdWords spend in 2009. This is because their ROI from AdWords was, on average, five times stronger than other online advertising and marketing channels. In 2008 we helped this company increase its revenues by 36% in a vertical hurt by our recessionary economy.
2. Pay Per Click Gives You Instant Targeted Traffic
We frequently recommend PPC for new websites. SEO has long-term benefits and is a great investment in your site’s future value, but the big bottom-line results take months or years. PPC gets immediate traffic and can help generate significant sales within weeks. We recommend both strategies in parallel because of their complimentary pros and cons.
3. Pay Per Click Helps You Find Problems With Your Offering, Promos, or Website
As soon as you have traffic, you can see what your site does and doesn’t do well. At what rate is it converting sales or leads? If highly targeted traffic converts poorly, you need conversion optimization or a usability reassessment. Sometimes an uncaught programming error or design oversight obstructs critical site functionality. Noticeable lack of conversions or low conversion rate spurs PPC managers to investigate what’s wrong.
The disadvantage of starting a site with SEO but without PPC is that traffic can take months to ramp up to significant levels. If you have a usability or conversion problem in those first three to six months, you may not have enough data to detect it or to fix it quickly with conversion optimization.
4. Pay Per Click Brands Your Company While Selling Its Offerings
Some of our clients occasionally ask about branding with PPC. I won’t belittle branding because it really is an important strategy and discipline.
Sometimes what clients mean by branding is simply increasing their exposure to new prospects. Whenever I hear “We also want to do some branding,” I ask “What do you mean by branding? What are your ultimate goals? Leads? Sales? Email list building?” After three to six months of PPC, if the client doesn’t have the leads or sales that bring in the revenue, branding won’t seem like such a good idea anymore. If you went along just to make them happy or avoid the work of educating them, you won’t look so smart or effective at this point and you may lose the client.
Read More..
Saturday, January 3, 2009
The Future Of Search Marketing In 2009
The experts are gazing into their crystal balls and sharing their visions for 2009 in terms of search, social, online, mobile and marketing in general.
Google will cull non-revenue generating services in an effort to exceed analyst expectations. The share price will not recover to its $600USD high.
Google will also face a massive legal challenge in 2009 from a non US country regarding its business practices.
The Web 2.0 bubble will burst with many companies entering the "dead pool". The only companies which will survive will be those who have a sustainable business model.
Twitter will be bought by a major internet player and whilst will remain free to use for basic version, a premium service offering will emerge. Will continue to be plagued by reliability issues whilst seriously challenging mainstream media and blogs in breaking news.
Yahoo! value will drop considerably, forcing even further reduction in forces worldwide. Their search market share will continue to decline at the benefit of Google and Microsoft. Microsoft will over take Yahoo! in terms of search share within the US, forcing Yahoo! to reconsider its search options.
Search spending growth will slow considerably in the first half of the year but still grow (single digits). Growth will accelerate to double digits by end of 2009.
2009 will be known as the year that SaaS becomes mainstream, with fortune 500 companies adopting it to reduce costs. Amazon will loose its place as the number one provider of cloud services to start ups, with major IT vendors all offering competiting products but with a far superior development interface i.e. merging of cloud services into traditional desktop development tools.
Read More..
Google will cull non-revenue generating services in an effort to exceed analyst expectations. The share price will not recover to its $600USD high.
Google will also face a massive legal challenge in 2009 from a non US country regarding its business practices.
The Web 2.0 bubble will burst with many companies entering the "dead pool". The only companies which will survive will be those who have a sustainable business model.
Twitter will be bought by a major internet player and whilst will remain free to use for basic version, a premium service offering will emerge. Will continue to be plagued by reliability issues whilst seriously challenging mainstream media and blogs in breaking news.
Yahoo! value will drop considerably, forcing even further reduction in forces worldwide. Their search market share will continue to decline at the benefit of Google and Microsoft. Microsoft will over take Yahoo! in terms of search share within the US, forcing Yahoo! to reconsider its search options.
Search spending growth will slow considerably in the first half of the year but still grow (single digits). Growth will accelerate to double digits by end of 2009.
2009 will be known as the year that SaaS becomes mainstream, with fortune 500 companies adopting it to reduce costs. Amazon will loose its place as the number one provider of cloud services to start ups, with major IT vendors all offering competiting products but with a far superior development interface i.e. merging of cloud services into traditional desktop development tools.
Read More..
Friday, January 2, 2009
101 Blogging Tips I’ve Learned in 2008
1. Choose WordPress
2. If you use blogspot, get your own domain
3. Choose the right hosting provider
4. If possible, have keywords on your domain
5. Use dashes for long domain name
6. Opt for .com or .net and avoid the rest
7. Have the post-install checklist
8. Optimize your permalink
9. Plugins does wonder to your blog
10. Choose the right plugins
11. Too many plug-ins will slow down your blog
12. Pick your niche carefully and stick with it
13. Be passionate about what you write
14. Aim to be an expert in your niche
15. Don’t lose your credibility by faking it
16. Be accountable to what you say write
17. Posting frequency is over-rated
18. Read more than you write. Organize your RSS subscription
19. Avoid chunk of long article. Break it down into paragraph
20. Use bold headings
21. Use list
22. Write long article to get traffic
23. Picture speaks a thousand words. Use images
24. Start and end with questions whenever possible
25. Proofread twice before you publish
26. Focus on keywords in post title
27. Write for both readers and search engines
28. Your readers come first, everything else second
29. Learn the importance of keyword research
30. Being #1 on Google doesn’t necessarily brings in the traffic
31. Keywords must be searchable. Check its average search volume.
32. Don’t be afraid to link out
33. To get attention, link out to inner pages and not homepage
34. Explain What is RSS? Not everyone is tech-savvy
35. Use feedburner
36. Offer email subscription
37. Don’t display your subscribership too early
38. The first 100 is the hardest. The next 100 is easier to achieve
39. Back up your blog
40. Speed up your blog
41. Optimize your blog
42. Design matters, first impression counts
43. Get a premium theme
44. If budget isn’t an issue, get a custom theme
45. Unclutter your sidebar
46. Have an “About Me” page. It makes it more personal
47. Don’t hide behind your blog
48. Mascot is the trend but real picture improves your credibility
49. Always have a “Contact Me” page
50. Dofollow your blog to get your community off the ground
51. Promote your blog via commenting
52. Leave relevant comments. One-line comments are frowned upon
53. Get yourself a gravatar and see #48
54. Link to inner pages when commenting
55. Use Fast Blog Finder
56. Be the first to comment
57. Avoid A-list blogs when you are new as
58. No one cares about your opinion unless you are John Chow
59. Moderate your comments. Use Akismet.
60. Always reply to comments
61. Don’t underestimate the use of keywords on your comment
62. Visit your commenters’ sites. Reciprocal commenting is the key
63. Activate top commentator plugin
64. Enable “Subscribe to Comment“
65. Join my PageRank list
66. Learn the art of pin-point commenting
67. Reward your top active commenters
68. Don’t monetize too early
69. Adsense isn’t going to make you rich overnight
70. Adsense works best with organic traffic
71. Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is higher on niche sites
72. Subscribers don’t click ads
73. Learn the art of affiliate marketing
74. Write product review
75. Check your stats
76. Study your popular pages and
77. Monetize those pages
78. Optimize your old articles for search traffic
79. Learn basic SEO
80. Make use of SEO tools
81. Duplicate content is a myth
82. Google sandbox is real
83. Focus on one-way link building
84. Have keywords on footer
85. Write a guest post and invite guest posters
86. Promote your blog site with article marketing
87. Learn the power of outsourcing
88. Use signature links on “dofollow” forums
89. Join Twitter and use it creatively.
90. Digg is useless
91. Use Squidoo and promote with Knol
92. Join Technorati and claim your blog
93. Make into 45n5 Top 100 list
94. Be patient. There isn’t any shortcut to blogging success.
95. Have perseverance. Your passion is your passport to success.
96. Find out what people want and help them get it.
97. For blogging tips, read ProBlogger
98. For copywriting tips, read CopyBlogger
99. For personal development tips, read Steve Pavlina
100. The ‘gurus’ are not always right
101. Create a 101 list
Read More..
2. If you use blogspot, get your own domain
3. Choose the right hosting provider
4. If possible, have keywords on your domain
5. Use dashes for long domain name
6. Opt for .com or .net and avoid the rest
7. Have the post-install checklist
8. Optimize your permalink
9. Plugins does wonder to your blog
10. Choose the right plugins
11. Too many plug-ins will slow down your blog
12. Pick your niche carefully and stick with it
13. Be passionate about what you write
14. Aim to be an expert in your niche
15. Don’t lose your credibility by faking it
16. Be accountable to what you say write
17. Posting frequency is over-rated
18. Read more than you write. Organize your RSS subscription
19. Avoid chunk of long article. Break it down into paragraph
20. Use bold headings
21. Use list
22. Write long article to get traffic
23. Picture speaks a thousand words. Use images
24. Start and end with questions whenever possible
25. Proofread twice before you publish
26. Focus on keywords in post title
27. Write for both readers and search engines
28. Your readers come first, everything else second
29. Learn the importance of keyword research
30. Being #1 on Google doesn’t necessarily brings in the traffic
31. Keywords must be searchable. Check its average search volume.
32. Don’t be afraid to link out
33. To get attention, link out to inner pages and not homepage
34. Explain What is RSS? Not everyone is tech-savvy
35. Use feedburner
36. Offer email subscription
37. Don’t display your subscribership too early
38. The first 100 is the hardest. The next 100 is easier to achieve
39. Back up your blog
40. Speed up your blog
41. Optimize your blog
42. Design matters, first impression counts
43. Get a premium theme
44. If budget isn’t an issue, get a custom theme
45. Unclutter your sidebar
46. Have an “About Me” page. It makes it more personal
47. Don’t hide behind your blog
48. Mascot is the trend but real picture improves your credibility
49. Always have a “Contact Me” page
50. Dofollow your blog to get your community off the ground
51. Promote your blog via commenting
52. Leave relevant comments. One-line comments are frowned upon
53. Get yourself a gravatar and see #48
54. Link to inner pages when commenting
55. Use Fast Blog Finder
56. Be the first to comment
57. Avoid A-list blogs when you are new as
58. No one cares about your opinion unless you are John Chow
59. Moderate your comments. Use Akismet.
60. Always reply to comments
61. Don’t underestimate the use of keywords on your comment
62. Visit your commenters’ sites. Reciprocal commenting is the key
63. Activate top commentator plugin
64. Enable “Subscribe to Comment“
65. Join my PageRank list
66. Learn the art of pin-point commenting
67. Reward your top active commenters
68. Don’t monetize too early
69. Adsense isn’t going to make you rich overnight
70. Adsense works best with organic traffic
71. Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is higher on niche sites
72. Subscribers don’t click ads
73. Learn the art of affiliate marketing
74. Write product review
75. Check your stats
76. Study your popular pages and
77. Monetize those pages
78. Optimize your old articles for search traffic
79. Learn basic SEO
80. Make use of SEO tools
81. Duplicate content is a myth
82. Google sandbox is real
83. Focus on one-way link building
84. Have keywords on footer
85. Write a guest post and invite guest posters
86. Promote your blog site with article marketing
87. Learn the power of outsourcing
88. Use signature links on “dofollow” forums
89. Join Twitter and use it creatively.
90. Digg is useless
91. Use Squidoo and promote with Knol
92. Join Technorati and claim your blog
93. Make into 45n5 Top 100 list
94. Be patient. There isn’t any shortcut to blogging success.
95. Have perseverance. Your passion is your passport to success.
96. Find out what people want and help them get it.
97. For blogging tips, read ProBlogger
98. For copywriting tips, read CopyBlogger
99. For personal development tips, read Steve Pavlina
100. The ‘gurus’ are not always right
101. Create a 101 list
Read More..
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Blog Tips for SEO
Blogs are the current rage, and many webmasters have blogs but fail to use their blog to it's full potential. Blogs provide a steady stream of fresh content, and if this content is written and managed properly, blogs have the ability to increase a website's ranking in the search engines.
1. Host Your Own Blog
In order to prosper from a blog, be sure to host it on your own domain. Hosting the blog on your own server will maximize the links to your website. Link popularity is one of the factors search engines use to rank websites. Resist the urge to use free hosting services, do not give away your link popularity!
2. RSS Feeds
All blogs should have an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow for your blog posts to be easily syndicated. The syndication will result in links back to your blog from RSS directories or others who display the feed. Blog entries should be available via an RSS feed. Website visitors who subscribe to the feed will receive notification when new blog posts are added. If the title is of interest, they will click through to your website. This gives subscribers an easy way to know when a blog has been updated.
3. Use White Space
Be sure to make your content scannable. Few website visitors actually read blog posts; most web visitors simply scan a blog entry to determine its relevance or point. With that in mind, the blog posts should be displayed in short paragraphs. Overly long posts should be segmented into concise paragraphs or broken into bulleted lists to make scanning easier. Avoid the urge to "clutter" the post.
4. Titles Matter
You only have seconds to grab the attention of scanners browsing your blog. Use keywords and catchy titles to draw readers in. Blog post titles can be bolded for emphasis and white space should be used to buffer the content.
5. Grammar Matters
You will be judged by your knowledge and use of the English language. Search engines will make note of blog entries that lack proper punctuation or capitalization. If a blog post does not respect the rules of grammar and punctuation, it is possible search engines will make the assumption that a bot cobbled together the posts leading to a potential ban.
6. Legibility
As with any web design select fonts carefully, do not use micro or macro-fonts. Colors should be web safe, making it easy to discern and read. The background and background color should not obscure the text.
7. Navigate
Give readers somewhere to go, include links to additional information resources or extended information in the blog post. Including links in the actual blog post will ensure back links should the RSS feed be syndicated.
8. Communicate
If you create a post about someone, let them know, they might surprise you and link back or they might blog about your blog post, essentially creating a virtual dialogue. This is an easy way to build link popularity. Be warned however, simply mentioning a popular blogger on a blog will rarely result in a link back, the content of the blog post must "grab" their interest.
9. Incorporate SEO
Blog posts should be written as you would write a web copy. Posts should be natural and make sense while still incorporating keywords and keyword phrases that relate to the content.
10. Speed Matters
Web pages that are slow to load will frustrate users, be sure to use reliable web hosting. Compress graphics to maximize load time.
Use your blog to help your website attract traffic. Attention to search engine optimization details could mean the difference between popular and unpopular.
Read MOre...
1. Host Your Own Blog
In order to prosper from a blog, be sure to host it on your own domain. Hosting the blog on your own server will maximize the links to your website. Link popularity is one of the factors search engines use to rank websites. Resist the urge to use free hosting services, do not give away your link popularity!
2. RSS Feeds
All blogs should have an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow for your blog posts to be easily syndicated. The syndication will result in links back to your blog from RSS directories or others who display the feed. Blog entries should be available via an RSS feed. Website visitors who subscribe to the feed will receive notification when new blog posts are added. If the title is of interest, they will click through to your website. This gives subscribers an easy way to know when a blog has been updated.
3. Use White Space
Be sure to make your content scannable. Few website visitors actually read blog posts; most web visitors simply scan a blog entry to determine its relevance or point. With that in mind, the blog posts should be displayed in short paragraphs. Overly long posts should be segmented into concise paragraphs or broken into bulleted lists to make scanning easier. Avoid the urge to "clutter" the post.
4. Titles Matter
You only have seconds to grab the attention of scanners browsing your blog. Use keywords and catchy titles to draw readers in. Blog post titles can be bolded for emphasis and white space should be used to buffer the content.
5. Grammar Matters
You will be judged by your knowledge and use of the English language. Search engines will make note of blog entries that lack proper punctuation or capitalization. If a blog post does not respect the rules of grammar and punctuation, it is possible search engines will make the assumption that a bot cobbled together the posts leading to a potential ban.
6. Legibility
As with any web design select fonts carefully, do not use micro or macro-fonts. Colors should be web safe, making it easy to discern and read. The background and background color should not obscure the text.
7. Navigate
Give readers somewhere to go, include links to additional information resources or extended information in the blog post. Including links in the actual blog post will ensure back links should the RSS feed be syndicated.
8. Communicate
If you create a post about someone, let them know, they might surprise you and link back or they might blog about your blog post, essentially creating a virtual dialogue. This is an easy way to build link popularity. Be warned however, simply mentioning a popular blogger on a blog will rarely result in a link back, the content of the blog post must "grab" their interest.
9. Incorporate SEO
Blog posts should be written as you would write a web copy. Posts should be natural and make sense while still incorporating keywords and keyword phrases that relate to the content.
10. Speed Matters
Web pages that are slow to load will frustrate users, be sure to use reliable web hosting. Compress graphics to maximize load time.
Use your blog to help your website attract traffic. Attention to search engine optimization details could mean the difference between popular and unpopular.
Read MOre...
Natural Writing vs. SEO Copywriting
While it’s well known that someone has to write the copy, there’s always been a question of whether SEO copywriting or natural writing is more effective in getting conversions. I, for one, am torn between the two, and I say that as a confident SEO copywriter and specialist.
The problem is that SEO is theory – not fact; witness the many conflicting tips, tricks, hints and information on the subject. For instance, one SEO guru may extol the virtues of keywords in the Meta tags, while another may tell you to forget the keyword tags all together.
In copywriting for SEO purposes, keywords “seem” to be the most important thing about the content. As you read articles on the Internet, you’ll find keywords that jump out at you; unnaturally placed, redundant, oddly written, some misspelled. Is this natural writing, written badly? No – it’s SEO.
Now, we in the optimization game know that SEO works. We prove it when our clients reach the first page of Google on a strong search term and their traffic and conversion numbers rise. What often happens, however, is what I call the “vitamin” effect. You take a lot of vitamins and you feel better, but you don’t know which ones are working and which ones aren’t so you keep taking them all.
While we may not know everything that works versus everything that doesn’t, we do know that key words and phrases are effective. So perhaps it isn’t the use of the keywords; perhaps it’s our implementation of them.
Read More..
The problem is that SEO is theory – not fact; witness the many conflicting tips, tricks, hints and information on the subject. For instance, one SEO guru may extol the virtues of keywords in the Meta tags, while another may tell you to forget the keyword tags all together.
In copywriting for SEO purposes, keywords “seem” to be the most important thing about the content. As you read articles on the Internet, you’ll find keywords that jump out at you; unnaturally placed, redundant, oddly written, some misspelled. Is this natural writing, written badly? No – it’s SEO.
Now, we in the optimization game know that SEO works. We prove it when our clients reach the first page of Google on a strong search term and their traffic and conversion numbers rise. What often happens, however, is what I call the “vitamin” effect. You take a lot of vitamins and you feel better, but you don’t know which ones are working and which ones aren’t so you keep taking them all.
While we may not know everything that works versus everything that doesn’t, we do know that key words and phrases are effective. So perhaps it isn’t the use of the keywords; perhaps it’s our implementation of them.
Read More..
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