The Trick is to Trickle Your Content

October 21, 2010 Filed under: Content Marketing,SEO —

We have a client who is updating their website and they are in the process of loading up all the company information they can so their visitors will find everything they need.  Sounds like a reasonable plan, doesn’t it?  After all, a website has an infinitely expandable footprint, and you might as well give visitors all the information possible to help them see your benefits and make a buying decision.  Right?

Not so fast, I say.  Sure, you need to provide enough company and product information to tell your story.  And certainly you need to give background and contact information so they can take the next step in the buying cycle.   But do you need to put it all out there….now?

Most website designers will tell you to keep your content short and succinct to appeal to today’s shortened attention spans.  That is true indeed; but it’s not what I’m talking about.   I’m talking about holding back so you can trickle out your content over time.  Hold some of your content in reserve so you can add to your website over time and make it a dynamic rather than a static information source.  Keep in mind that search engines like to see activity; an active website suggests vitality, energy, relevance.  You can’t have a dynamic site for the long-term if you publish all your content at the outset.  Many sites use a blog to deliver dynamic content; that’s a great idea, but it’s not required.  You can also add webpages like FAQs, Question-of-the-Week, case studies, and more to grow your website content over time.

The important point is to think about a long-term content strategy from the start and determine what type of dynamic content you’ll produce to keep your website active for the long-haul.  Create an editorial calendar of content ideas and schedule them out several months.   Determine if you can create your future content from scratch or whether you should schedule some of your current content inventory for later publication dates.  Maybe it’s a mix of both.

Keeping content fresh on your website or blog will be an ongoing process.  Being clear upfront about how to allocate content (especially if you have a limited store of it) will ensure your website or blog has a long and active life.

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Search Marketing: Content, Credibility and Call-to-Action

September 21, 2010 Filed under: Content Marketing,SEO — Tags: , —

SEO and search spiderSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) has only been around for 10 years, but in that time it has proven its value as an important new marketing discipline, a wealth of training and information resources have become available, and thousands of practitioners (yours truly included) have turned it into a viable profession.   To be sure, there’s a lot to learn, the tools and techniques are changing and evolving rapidly, and implementation details need to be managed carefully to ensure success.  But there are some simple, broad-brush principles to keep in mind, and they relate directly to the basic principles of traditional marketing.  Keeping these in mind will help you integrate SEO as a core component of your overall marketing strategy, and link it naturally with your other marketing tactics.

Any marketer can tell you their primary job is to achieve three simple goals in generating new business for the company:

  1. Communicate a unique selling proposition to potential (and existing) customers
  2. Establish credibility for the product, service or brand
  3. Motivate people to take a desired action

All successful marketing tactics are built around one or more of these goals, and most marketing disciplines (advertising, PR, email marketing, etc) keep them actively in their sights at all times.  Search marketing should be no different.  However, since it’s a relatively new discipline, there’s a dizzying amount of advice circulating about it, and it’s not always practiced by people with a marketing background, SEO can sometimes lose sight of these goals.  Here’s a quick primer on how SEO can keep “the big picture” in its sights.

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Want to Promote Your New Blog and Increase Blog Traffic? First, Think Small.

August 23, 2010 Filed under: Blogging,SEO — Tags: , —

Increase blog trafficWhen you start your own blog, don’t expect to make it big.  At least not initially.  While some book authors make a killing on their first novel, it’s far less common in the blogging world.  Most experts will tell you it takes 6 months to a year to build momentum and traffic to your blog.  For many, it takes even longer, especially if you can’t sustain a schedule of 2-3 posts per week.

But, while it’s tough to achieve widespread fame and popularity in the blogging world, it’s very possible to build a following, establish your reputation, improve your search rankings, and draw qualified traffic and leads to your site.  The trick is to focus.  Narrow your goals.  Start small and build from there.

Focus Your Topics

Choose a handful of highly relevant keywords that crystallize the topics you want to promote and be found for.  Do some keyword research to make sure those terms are not too competitive, and to find wording that searchers are actually looking for.  Build your content around those terms.

Be Unique

Don’t state the obvious or repeat what’s already been said elsewhere.  Find your own voice, draw your own conclusions, look for unique insights.  They don’t need to be grand or profound – just a different twist on something of interest in your market (here’s a fun blog post on how to document your epiphanies, from Marnie Pehrson).

Identify A Narrow Audience

Promote your blog as a big fish

Blogging strategy: Big fish, small pond

When you first launch your blog, tell everyone you know and make as big a splash as possible – you never know who might come.  But once you’ve gone public, define the target audience where you want to make your biggest impact, and tailor your promotional efforts to them.  Aim first to be a big fish in a small pond; make good impressions and let the word spread.

Establish Yourself

Search Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to find out who is talking about your topics.  Talk with them, share relevant links (including, but not exclusively, your own blog posts), host discussions, answer questions, offer helpful hints.  Give before you get. Find a Bookmarking site or an online forum that services your target audience, and make yourself known there by offering valuable comments.  (My favorite is a wonderful small business site called BizSugar).  Read and comment on other blogs in your field. This helps you get known by other bloggers, who, if your posts are good, will link back to you. Contribute guest blog posts on related blogs and link back to yours.  Or, publish interviews with other bloggers and they may return the favor.  Add some video into your blogging mix, as it will appeal to people who are tired of reading.

Ask Your Followers to Spread the Word

If your content is good and interesting and unique, people will follow it.  If you want to build your followers, ask people to subscribe, to share your posts, to retweet — and make it easy for them to do it.

Be Patient

Finally, don’t set unrealistic expectations for yourself.  Learn as you go, redirect as needed, and be patient as your following takes its natural path.  It may take you a while, so don’t get on the blogging train unless you intend to hang in there for the long haul.

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Google Reviews – Owners May Now Respond Publicly

August 5, 2010 Filed under: Local Search,SEO —

There’s a lot happening these days on the Google Local Search front.  In addition to the recently announced Google Tags and a new look in Google Local Search results, Google has now rolled out some additional improvements in their Place Pages (see here for video overview of Place Pages and the Google Local 7-Pack).

First, some good news about Google Reviews.  If you have claimed your listing and have an owner-verified Google Place Page, you now have the ability to respond publicly to reviews your visitors have posted.  It’s a terrific opportunity to add your perspective when required or to soften the blow of a negative review.  Approach this new opportunity carefully, though, and take a deep breath before responding to negative reviews.  You might want to read this post by Mike Blumenthal before you do: Responding to Negative Reviews: Your Prospects are Your Real Audience (the title alone is great advice!).  Note that this does not extend to reviews that Google pulls from other sources, only the ones entered directly on your Place Page.  This move shows good progress by Google on the Local Search front and suggests that they are putting more attention into Place Pages (some even think they intend to evolve this into a Social platform…we’ll see).

Second, Google has been incrementally improving the analytics in the Place Pages Dashboard, so you can see how many people are visiting your Place Page, what keywords bring them there, what actions they take, etc.  And rather than having to remind yourself to view these analytics, Google has now started emailing to Place Page owners a Monthly Performance Update email, so you can’t miss the data on how you’re doing.

These small but frequent incremental improvements are good news indeed for Small Business Owners.  If your business has a local customer base, you don’t want to miss this increasingly productive opportunity to establish your Google Place Page presence.

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Google Local – Changes Coming

July 21, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Local Search,SEO — Tags: , —

There’s been quite a buzz going around in SEO circles about changes that Google appears to be testing and is expected to roll out soon for their Local Search results.  These changes were first noticed in a Google test by Linda Buquet, and she writes about the news in her Catalyst eMarketing blog.  Her initial discovery was first shared in Mike Blumenthal’s blog Understanding Google Maps and Local Search, a terrific resource for following everything that goes on in the Local Search arena.  The gist of the coming changes is that Google will be making Local Search Results much more prominent on the search results page and will make it easier to identify and find a company’s Google Place Page.  This is good news for companies with a local market focus, and makes it more important than ever for those business owners to make sure they have a strong, complete, and compelling presence on their Google Place page (see my recent video post on Getting Listed in the Local Search 7-Pack).

Another new offering from Google in the local business category is Google Tags, which are yellow markers displayed on a company’s Local/Google Maps listing to announce advertised specials — coupons, special offers, and other advertiser-supplied content.  Unlike Google’s Adwords pay-per-click advertising, Google Tags advertising is available for a flat monthly fee of $25.  Google is running a promotion this week (through Friday, July 23) for a 30-day free trial of Tags for new customers.

Don’t neglect this important element of your Internet Marketing activities…Google Local Search for small businesses is becoming an increasingly important way for your customers to find you!

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Google’s Local Business Center – Getting Listed in the 7-Pack

July 19, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Local Search,SEO — Tags: , —

The Google Local Business Center – renamed recently as Google Place Pages – offers a great opportunity for your business to be found by local searchers.    When a searcher is looking for a business that serves the local market, Google will display what’s known as a “7-pack” of business listings alongside a map of the area that pinpoints their locations.  So how, you may ask, can you get your business listed in this premium “7-pack” for your local market?

See the short video below for a quick training and overview of the 7-pack and what you can do to get listed.   If you’re looking for more in-depth training and information, check out the link below the video.

For more information and to see what the local search “experts” say, see this June 7, 2010 report on Local Search Ranking Factors, from David Mihm.

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Search Marketing: How PPC Can Enhance Your SEO

June 29, 2010 Filed under: PPC,SEO — Tags: , , —

PPC keywordsIn the “old days” of traditional marketing (about 2-3 years ago) advertising and PR were the two mainstays of marketers.  In advertising, big budgets and creative talent allowed you to control your message and build your brand.  In public relations, influence and relationships with the media allowed you to add credibility to your brand through stories in the press.  But aside from shared branding themes, there was typically little overlap between the 2 worlds, and almost no shared learning.

Search marketing changes things.  In the Internet Marketing world, search advertising (PPC) is the latest form of paid brand-building, while SEO and Social Media are the newest strategies for boosting your  credibility online.  Traditional advertising and PR still exist, of course, but there are good reasons why companies are increasingly shifting their marketing budgets away from these channels into search-based Internet marketing.  The most obvious reasons are:

  • the growing number of hours that people now spend online
  • the fact that businesses can target audiences more effectively and less intrusively, since PPC ads and organic search listings display only when they’re relevant to what someone is actively searching for
  • the ability to measure results and improve the return on your marketing investment

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Building Links to Build Your Business

February 12, 2010 Filed under: SEO —

Building links to your website is a critical step in getting it found by the right people.  You might think links are important because people can click on them and come to your site.  That is certainly true.  But they can also be extremely valuable, even if nobody follows them.  Because search engines use the number and quality of incoming links to determine your website’s importance in their ranking algorithm, link-building can be an important strategy in building your business revenue for the long term.   As your site moves up the search ranks for search terms that are valuable to your business, you’ll enhance your ability to attract your most-desired visitors to your website.

Why & How Links Matter

A search engine’s ranking algorithm – the mysterious calculations used by Google, Yahoo & Bing to list websites in ranked order — is a dynamic beast, extremely complex and changing all the time.  While some people attempt to manipulate or “trick” the search engines into boosting their website’s ranking, it has become increasingly difficult to do this because Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have gotten very skilled at detecting such manipulations and will nearly always catch up with you.  The result of such behavior can be a “demotion” in rankings or, if serious enough, can be cause for de-listing a website altogether.  A much better strategy is to respect what the search engines are trying to accomplish, and to feed them what they want to know.   Here are the three primary questions a search engine is trying to answer when it indexes and ranks your website:      (more…)

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Local Search & What it Means for YOUR Business

January 4, 2010 Filed under: Local Search,SEO — Tags: , —

We’ve been working with several small-to-midsize businesses and medical practices recently who want to attract more local visitors to their website.  In other words, when someone searches for your keyword phrase, together with the local city or region, how can you make sure your website will appear to the right of the Google map in the search listing?   Local Search is the answer.

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Top 5 “Content Quality” Measures for SEO

December 2, 2009 Filed under: Content Marketing,SEO — Tags: , , , —

website copyediting

If you’ve spent any time in SEO circles you’ve probably heard the expression “Content is King.” It’s because search engines are all about content – their job is to “read” it, index it, and match it as closely as possible to the search intentions of their users.  The higher the quality of content, the more effectively search engine spiders can bring searchers to their desired destination — and bring qualified visitors to your website.

But what does high-quality content mean in the world of SEO? Correct use of grammar? Valuable insights? Newsworthy copy? A clever turn-of-phrase? Lots of SEO keywords?

The answer is Yes to all these questions. Your first priority is to understand what  your target audience will define as content quality, and you are probably the best judge of that. There are, however, some important SEO-focused quality measures that will help the search engines to rank your website higher. Perhaps not surprisingly, these are tips that most journalists use to make a story rank higher in the minds of their human readers too.  At the end of the day, these are qualities that make content worth reading – by anyone.

  1. Clear, well-articulated, and focused content. Each page of your website (or contributed content that links to your website) should have a clear main point, expressed simply and clearly in the title, heading and first sentence.  As any good journalist will tell you, don’t wait to tell readers what your page is about.  Search engines would agree.
  2. Unique, original content. The more you can differentiate your website content from your competitors, the more you’ll stand out.  Like a newspaper reporter looking for a unique angle, the search engines will ignore (or worse, penalize you) if you duplicate copy found elsewhere. Be clear on your unique selling proposition, and tell it in your own original way.
  3. Fresh, new content. Ask any reporter – news is hot! Fresh, frequently updated content lets a reader know your site is vibrant, active, and worthy of repeat visits.  Search engines will read it as a sign of reliability and a signal to return to your site often.  If you can add content regularly (with a blog, for example, or new pages), you can expand your range of content and enlarge the “funnel” of keywords that point visitors to your site.
  4. Action-focused content.  Journalists know that action makes for a good story. Good marketers know that a “call-to-action” can turn a prospect into a lead and ultimately into a sale. It is also a good way to draw a website visitor deeper into your site, and convert them into a paying customer.
  5. 5. Keyword-rich content. The journalist analogy is a stretch here, as reporters don’t intentionally fill their stories with loaded words for calculated effect (or do they?).  While human readers don’t fall for such tactics, search engines do, and they’ll rank you better for keywords that are prominently (but naturally – no stuffing!) featured on a page. 

At Sound Web Solutions, we’ll help you develop high quality content geared to improve your search engine rankings.   We can:

  • Suggest SEO-friendly edits to your website that will help it rank better in the search engines
  • Help you re-purpose existing materials (white papers, research, press releases) into fresh, new content that can bring new visitors and links to your site
  • Have our copywriters create new, original, high-quality, keyword-rich content
  • Train and mentor you to create your own blog or other SEO-focused content

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