by Stone Reuning

Optimizing Company News for the Search Engines

Aside from letting the world know about what's going on at your company, press releases also help your company's website build and maintain high search engine rankings. In the past, press releases were only for journalists who may be interested in your company or industry.

Now, press releases need to written and formatted with the search engines in mind as well.

Continue reading for ways you can optimize a press release for the search engines and have it pay dividends well past its initial distribution.

1. Carefully choose 2-3 keywords and strategically place them throughout your press release

The first step in writing an optimized press release for the search engines is to determine 2-3 keywords you will target. You should place these in your headline, sub-headline and about 1-2 times for every 100 words. You should also include your company name in your headline.

2. Anchor-text optimization - Create links with keywords

Creating links to your homepage using keywords, also known as anchor-text optimization, is an important way to optimize your press release for the search engines. Highlight a keyword in the first paragraph and link to your company's homepage along with linking to specific service pages within your site from keywords in your boilerplate (company description at the end).

In addition to the anchor-text in the first paragraph, you should include your actual web address in parentheses right next to it.

3. Text-formatting - Use bold, italics, underlining and bullet lists to make points and optimize for search engines

Search engines also place a higher value on keywords formatted differently than the rest of the text in a press release. Formatting keywords in bold-faced, italics, underlining or other special formatting elements can wring more benefit out of your press release in the search engines.

4. Include a RSS and "share" button

When you post the press release on your website, include a RSS and social media "share" button. These handy features allow those who find your press release to easily share it with their friends and colleagues.

Not only is properly formatting a press release to AP style guidelines like we described in part I of our article important, optimizing them to show up in search engines is equally important. Not optimizing keywords and other SEO elements in your press release means it will not have the desired impact you may be hoping for.

Even if you have the best written press release otherwise, not optimizing it for the search engines means it will not be seen by as many people as you want it to.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Moran

Image via Wikipedia

A couple of months ago, I posted on the search engines' so-called "duplicate content penalty," where pages that contain similar words are often hidden from the search results because the search engines (rightly) conclude that searchers would rather see different pages. Recently, I was e-mailed a follow-up question about a particularly difficult aspect of the duplicate content penalty--when you have two keyword phrases whose landing pages really could be twins. What do you do then?

Here's an excerpt from the question I got from Andy:One of our programs is in leadership development, so we'd like to optimize a set of pages around this (and related) keywords. However, people often use the term "management training" interchangeably with "leadership development." Therefore we were thinking of optimizing different pages for each of these different terms. The problem is that apart from differences in these two terms, the content on these pages would be identical, so the concern is that search engines would see the pages as duplicates and index only one of them. Would you suggest that we discard our idea of creating separate (and potentially duplicate) pages and instead just create one page?

I'm sorry, Andy, but your approach would probably prove problematic. In my opinion, you have at least two options (others might suggest more), either of which can work:

• Do as you describe to use both keywords interchangeably within the same page. For less competitive keywords, that will probably work just fine. It's possible that the search engines are smart enough to know that those terms are similar, so it might work regardless of competition. But if it doesn't work, you might need to go the extra mile.
• Create two separate pages with different content on them, each one focused on a different term. This is far more expensive, but in the end, it is safer and much more likely to work, not only for search engines but for conversions. It is likely that the people searching for one term rather than the other are driven by different needs and wants, so different language optimized for them will probably convert better as well as rank better.

So, in Andy's case, consider the possibility that those searching for "management training" might be looking for something somewhat different than "leadership development" searchers, even though Andy thinks of them as interchangeable. Perhaps those looking for management training are new to line management while those looking for leadership development are team leaders who are not yet managers. Or perhaps the leadership folks are long-time managers that just became executives.

Regardless, you give up a lot of marketing segmentation information when you assume that people using different keywords are the same just because you have a single product that helps them both. It is likely that subtle differences in copy that emphasize different benefits might indeed be called for. By lumping all these searchers into one category, you miss the chance to test what will optimize your conversions for each segment.

Often people feel trapped into duplicate content because their landing page contains the description for their product when it could spend more time on the problem. Focusing landing pages on the somewhat different ideas of management training and leadership development allows you to have each of those pages link to a common page that discusses your offering for both of those problems. You can still have one place that describes your product but with different landing pages for different keywords.

So, if you feel as though duplicate content makes sense in your situation, ask yourself whether you might be spending more time trying to do things cheaply rather than well, when that approach is itself wasting your time. Also, consider whether the added conversions might easily pay for the additional content costs. Focus your pages on the way that you attract people to the problem. That way you can link to a common page that describes the solution. That will reduce your impulse for duplicate content.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

Clichés are a funny thing. We don't like to hear them... especially in movies, TV shows, or blog posts, but we frequently use them in everyday conversations. Clichés are a great way to make a point because the meaning of them is pretty much universally understood, even if not entirely true.

Just because something is a cliché doesn't mean it can, or should be, disregarded. Here are some clichés that we can use to help us better understand SEO.

Good things come to those who wait

We've all heard the expression, "Good things come to those who wait". Whether you're waiting for your Heinz ketchup to pour out onto your burger, waiting for Christmas day to open your gifts, waiting for summer vacation to be let out of school, or waiting in line at the BMV, good things will come if you simply allow them to come in their own time.

But, under normal circumstances, this cliché is largely untrue. You'll still get your ketchup if you shove the butter knife into the bottle and drag it out onto your burger, you'll get all of your gifts if you choose to open them all on Christmas Eve, you'll get your summer vacation if you skip the last few days of school, and you'll still get your drivers license renewed if you go to a BMV express.

The real lesson behind this particular cliché is that patience is a virtue. And that much is true, especially in search engine optimization.

Unlike placing sponsored ads via Google AdWords or Microsoft Advertising, where results are almost instantaneous, SEO does not produce immediate results. You won't get your return on investment a week after SEO starts.

Optimizing your site for your targeted key phrases won't get you to #1 overnight. You won't find all your keywords rankings in the top 10 on Google in 19 days (despite some claims you read), nor will you get significant traffic improvement after an hour of SEO consultations. To use a simple analogy, SEO is like boiling water: you don't get a hard boil the moment you turn on the burner... you have to wait for it.

The process of optimizing a site can take weeks and, in some cases, months or years, depending on how big the site is. In most cases SEO is an ongoing process with growing measures of return. The return in SEO is good, but you've got to be willing to invest the time to let it happen.

Can't Hit the Broad Side of a Barn from the Inside

The front end of the optimization process can include hours and hours of research, site architecture, and fixing usability issues. This isn't even considering the actual optimization of specific pages. Everything from keyword research, industry research, competition research, marketing research, and more, all need to be completed before any optimization can begin.

We often get asked if research time can be shortened if we have performed optimization work for another site in the same industry recently. The short answer to that is "no". Every site has different construction, design, layout, history, and each speaks to it's audience differently. These are all factors that are considered in the multiple levels of research performed. No two sites are the same; therefore no research is the same.

Sure, some elements of the research can be applied, but you can't just take what works for someone else and apply it to your site. Cloning a competitor never works. But, outsmarting a competitor does.

Nothing to Write Home About

A good SEO will actually write or re-write content to properly (and effectively) work in your targeted keyword phrases. We often put "SEO writer" and "copywriter" into two different categories, with the SEO writer being someone less skilled than a "real" copywriter. This is a fallacy.

An SEO copywriter is a "real" copywriter that also understands how keywords get worked into content. Any copywriter can be trained in writing SEO copy. But, if you're not already a writer, forget trying to write SEO copy. Any programmer can throw keywords on a page and call it "optimized", but that doesn't mean it is.

A professional writer should be able to take the SEO recommendations for keyword usage and incorporate that into existing content in a way that reads naturally (i.e. does not look as if you just tried to insert keywords here and there for search engine relevance) and maintains the ability to convert your visitors to paying customers. This is no small task and should be done with the utmost time and care.

You Can Take It or Leave It

"Code bloat" is probably one of the most overlooked parts of the SEO process. Eliminating page code bloat can be an incredibly daunting task. Removing excess tables and re-coding in CSS, moving CSS and javascript code off the page, and generally making the code as lean as possible can make a considerable difference to page download speeds. Since Google, and likely other engines, are looking at speed as a significant factor, "code bloat" removal becomes an essential part of the SEO process.

There have been times where we have had to nearly rebuild entire pages, removing tons of excess code. These changes may only add fractions of seconds to download speeds, but those can weigh heavily against other sites that may be running much faster.

Even a Broken Clock is Correct Twice a Day

Validating your SEO code has no effect on your search engine rankings. I want to make sure you're clear on that... so I'll say it again. There is ZERO SEO benefit to having your code validated. However, as an SEO, I'm a big proponent for using valid code.

When code isn't validated it means there are coding elements that are incorrect. While browsers and search engines can be extremely forgiving on these errors, there are some coding errors that can stop the search engine spiders cold. The error may prevent them from reading the paper properly and, consequently, not assign values of your content correctly.

Again, validating your code won't achieve good rankings, but it can help prevent you from getting poorer rankings due to confusing and improperly created code.

If you validate your pages, it is easier to find potential problems as you continue to make edits. If one of your pages has 50 warnings but no problems with the search engines, great! But, let's say you edit the page and you now have 51 warnings, and this new one is crippling. That error is just another one in the group and, unless you're paying attention, you won't even know it's there.

On the other hand if you have zero warnings or errors and after an edit you see one pop up, you can correct it before it becomes a crippling issue for you.

All Things Being Equal

"Site maps", "custom 404 redirects" and "robots.txt" files are all important to the overall construction of your site, even if they don't necessarily have a direct effect on the actual on-page optimization of your site. Site maps help both search engines and visitors quickly and easily get to the information that is important.

A "custom 404 redirect" eliminates that annoying "page not found" error and lets you keep visitors on your site if they somehow access a page via a bad link. The "robots.txt" file is useful to communicate with the search engine spiders about content they should or should not index. This allows the search engines to focus its time on the good stuff instead of the irrelevant portions of your site.

Up against a similar site, these things can help you keep visitors engaged with your content and prevent them from jumping off to a competitor. It's often the small things that can make the biggest difference.

There are a lot of nuances to SEO and, with that, there is often a lack of understanding from those that are not directly involved. Even still, quite a bit of bad information is easily spread. You don't have to know SEO well in order to understand it, but having a basic understanding of SEO can help you converse intelligently with your SEO provider. Turning a blind eye to the work they do often leads to incorrect assumptions and false expectations. Having a better grasp on the needs of the SEO will help you ensure that you're both working to keep the SEO project on track and not chasing after pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Fleming

If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad.  You also know what they mean and how your keywords are matched to search queries.  Up until a couple of years ago, broad match meant that the keywords in your phrase were matched to queries that had all of your words in any order.

Then, broad match became "expanded broad match" where Google's algorithm was given free reign to decide if search queries were a close enough match in search intent to show your ad.  Many of the results were not even close.  Your keyword could be business cards and your ad would show on state ids and business plans.

The overwhelming advantage of broad match of course is that you get more impressions, clicks and conversions; although you most likely would have a lower conversion rate that will make you pay more for each conversion.  So for some it works and for some not so much.  The major disadvantage is that you have to spend time going through your search queries very often to weed out those that are not applicable to your business because you paid for clicks state ids and business plans.

But now, Google has given us another option that offers more flexibility in balancing the tension between traffic and relevance; the old broad match and expanded broad match.  It's called modified broad match.  This option has greater reach than phrase match, but is more controlled than broad match. 

How? With this match type, if you put a plus (+) sign in front of a word in your phrase, AdWords will only match your keyword to search queries that contain that word exactly or contain a close variation of the word.

Google defines a close variation as "misspellings, singular/plural, abbreviations/acronyms, stemming (like "floor" and "flooring") and synonyms.  They say related searches like "flowers" and "tulips" are not considered close variations.

So basically they are allowing advertisers to choose between the old broad match, newer broad match, or a combination of the two.  You can choose to "bring in the reins" so to speak on broad match and decide which words in keyword phrases are necessary in the search query for their ad to be triggered.  So, you could do this:

business +cards

This means card will not be matched with id or plan but only cards exactly or close variations of it (card, etc.).  Now, this still means that you could get matched to id card; so if you want to further filter your possible matches, you could go with:

+business +cards

This functions like the old school broad match.  Now business will always mean business and cards will always mean cards.

This really takes the realistic number of possible match types up to 6 or 7.  Here's a really cool graph that shows the match types, their relative reach and an initial bidding strategy for each.

If you would like to test these match types out, choose a couple ad groups where you are struggling, copy them and use the new ad groups to replace your broad match keywords with modified broad match.   Modify your broad match keywords and set their bids between the your broad match and phrase match keywords.  Then, after enough data has collected you can analyze search queries and conversions of each ad group to see the results and adjust using your reports.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Sage Lewis

This is a question I get asked all the time. Get the final answer right here.

Inspired from this article at Search Engine Roundtable

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

Much like life, websites have to adapt over time. When they don't, they risk becoming stagnant, outdated, stale, and boring. As times change, so should your content. Content that was once relevant becomes irrelevant or in need of an update, old products get dumped in favor of new products, and data becomes outdated and needs to be replaced.

There are any number of reasons why content needs to be changed, freshened up, or removed altogether. But rarely, if ever, do you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Something can usually be salvaged. Previously valuable content can be made valuable again. Here are four ways you can keep good content alive, even when it's old.

Keep content up to date

Keeping your content up-to-date may sound like a simple task; but, the larger the site, the more difficult it is. Sites with hundreds or thousands of pages often have a lot of little hidden gems that can easily become stale or irrelevant. Over time, you see products and services change. A simple reference to an old pricing structure or outdated way of doing things can really throw a wrench in the works for the reader. Conflicts and contradictions breed mistrust.

Failing to find and correct these nuggets will send your readers a message that perhaps you are stale and irrelevant as well. So, spending time on a regular basis, perhaps yearly, reviewing all your editorial content and brushing it up to keep it current is an important item to put on your task list.

Redirect deleted pages

Pages on websites often get moved or deleted over time. Perhaps you are restructuring your information architecture, removing services that you no longer offer, or deleting tutorials that have become obsolete. Just because this content is considered old, doesn't mean that it can't still work for you.

Simply adding "301 redirects" or a building a custom "404" page can capture that traffic and send them to other areas of your site. This allows them to stick around long enough to see if you still have something that will meet their needs, even though you no longer have exactly what they want.

Adding redirects allows you to keep visitors on your site if they have arrived, say, from a bookmarked page or an old page in the search results. Instead of losing those visitors, this gives you the opportunity to keep them engaged with your site, with the possibility of attracting them to your other excellent content.

Repurpose old content

Blogs are a great place to re-purpose old content and provide an updated spin on it. If you're running out of ideas for what to publish on your blog, you can go back several years in your archive and find old topics and discussions for which you can provide a new take.

Blog back history can give you a wealth of topics that you can pull from to create fresh, new content for your readers.

Another way to re-purpose old content is by removing excessive content from your site and moving it over to your blog. This can be necessary after years of site content build-up. This happens when you keep adding content to your site and it becomes so bloated that your readers end up spending too much time working through your site instead of being moved through the conversion process.

A couple months back, I worked on the Information Architecture for a client, and they had this very problem. We were able to take dozens of pages of content and move it off of their main site onto their blog. The content was good, but it was excessive. This hindered the conversion process, making the site both convoluted and confusing at the same time. By moving this stuff to the blog, the main site was better able to do the job of selling and the blog became the avenue of informing readers.

Link to historical pages

Content, especially blog content, often gets buried after months and years of time passing. But that doesn't necessarily mean the content isn't valuable or even needs to be re-written.

What you can do is write new content that links to this valuable content that was written long ago. You're giving your readers something fresh, while linking to something historical, that you can use to make your point or provide more detailed information for the reader to peruse at their leisure.

Take advantage of any area of content that allows you to link to another page that provides more information. The web isn't a brochure, it's more like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. That historical content can be a goldmine of information, provided you're giving your new readers a way to access it.

Good content never has to die. If you're treating it right, it never will. New people are coming to your site every day. These people have not had the benefit of reading all your past or historical stuff. No need to let it go to waste. Instead, keep it alive... and keep it working for you.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx's Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert's Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for "inconceivable content" on this blog to find them all.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Moran

Some of you might know that I like to take Augusts off. While not completely off the grid (I still clean out my e-mail—although I don't reply much—and I still moderate comments on my blog), I don't write any blog posts (on my blog or here at Search Engine Guide), and I stay off Twitter. I also don't read any blog posts or check out what others are saying on Twitter—it's a social media fast. Each year, it's interesting to find myself picking up a newspaper again. This year, I did something a bit different, because I actually returned to work on August 25th because of a client need, but I continued to stay away from social media for the last week, just to see what it was like. It's one thing for me to avoid social media while I am on vacation, but what would it feel like during my work day?

Image via Wikipedia

Well, the verdict is in. It felt very strange. As easy as it is for me to drop out of social media while on vacation and just hang with my wife and play with the kids, once I am back at work, it felt very odd to not know what is going on.

I mean, I had been away for three weeks on vacation, so I really had no idea what was happening, but to be working in that kind of darkness was a different experience. The first thing I had to do was to fly to a distant city and make a speech on Internet marketing to hundreds of people. In doing so, I was gripped by this semi-insane fear that I couldn't make the speech without knowing what is going on. I mean, what if someone asked a question about something that just happened and I didn't know the answer?

Of course, the speech went just fine. Internet marketing apparently hasn't changed all that much in the last month (even though apparently the Web died while I was away).

But I also noticed how much I wanted to say, with no one to tell. I usually tweet about where I am traveling, so I had to resist the impulse to tell people about my trip last week. People would send me links to things to read—not only didn't I read them, but I didn't tell anyone about them. I'll probably catch up over the next week and tweet some of them.

But it was the blog ideas that just kept coming. And I wasn't writing any of them.

Usually, I post to my blog once each day (usually I am the writer of the article, but I also edit contributions from some other excellent contributors), so every day it is a struggle to get that done. I take for granted that nice people out there are actually interested in hearing what I have to say. It was strange to have a few work days where I wasn't publishing anything. (Frank Reed published several posts on my blog while I was away, but I didn't have any work to do while on vacation.)

I now have dozens of ideas for blog posts. most accumulated during the last week at work, with only a couple from my vacation. So, while my vacation definitely recharged my batteries, my social media fast during my first week back from work filled my creative coffers. Perhaps many of you post just once a week, or even less frequently, so this is not an issue for you. And while I've never felt like I am running dry for ideas, going a few days without having to write anything has been an eye-opener.

So, I still haven't completely caught up on what's been going on, but I will soon. My social media fast has proven to me both how important social media is and how important it is to take a break now and then. Some have told me that they only look at social media during defined times of the day (I know some who do this with e-mail, too). I never understood that before, but maybe I am starting to.

Anyway, I am glad to be back, and I'm honored that a few of you actually want to listen to what I have to say. Thank you.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Eric Brown

Several camps are starting to chant that 2011 may well be the year of The Social Media Bubble. I would not proclaim to be able to predict the future by any means, but it sure seems more probable than not. While having little experience predicting the future, we have had an up close and personal relationship with the real estate bubble. Developing real estate used to be a pretty fun endeavor, however the past couple of years of operating our boutique apartment rental business in SE Michigan has had more challenges than we ever imagined. But as with all struggles, there has been a bright side, a bubble burst quickly trims out the weeds and the low hanging fruit.

Perhaps a Social Media Weeding is forthcoming
2010 has been the year that many small and mid size businesses have taken the plunge, and embraced the throws of Social Media Marketing. With that, nearly every unemployed straggler has hung out their Social Media Consultant shingle.

As reported in the Harvard Business Review...
"During the subprime bubble, banks and brokers sold one another bad debt -- debt that couldn't be made good on. Today, "social" media is trading in low-quality connections -- linkages that are unlikely to yield meaningful, lasting relationships." Low Barrier to Entry
Whenever the barrier to entry is low, to non existent, pitfalls loom. While the real estate bubble happened due to a multitude of reasons, whenever someone can sell a condo several times before the builder finished construction, and each selling party profits, all is well and good until the market falls off. It then becomes musical chairs and the last person standing is holding the bag. When profit occurs absent anyone really doing anything or adding any value, a Weed and Trim typically follows. Problem is, we aren't very adept at history or awareness.

Panera Bread is My Office
Nothing against the Nomads or Entrepreneurs, we all started somewhere, but when your only cost of business or overhead is your laptop, lots of crazies are suddenly Internet marketers and social media marketers. And, by all means, some of this lot are pretty smart. However once the check writers (the business owners) start requiring results, many of these Cast of Social Media Characters will evaporate as quickly as they spawned.

What is the Correction
Results, or lack there of will lead the correction. Business isn't as complicated as we try to make it. If you are doing Internet marketing or social media marketing for your client, and they aren't selling more stuff, you may well get fired, as you should. Marketing is and has always been about selling more stuff to more people for more money.

Engagement, Conversation, Connections and all of the buzz words of today won't cut it if sales leads don't increase. The truth is, Social Media Marketing is so much more than a Facebook page and a Twitter account. While there are lots of businesses and agencies doing a stellar job, many are not, and it seems the honeymoon may be coming to a close for those that lack the experience of delivering a real and measurable result.

Are your clients selling more stuff from your Social Media Marketing Campaigns?

We would love to hear your feedback. You can connect with Eric on Twitter or at The Urbane Way.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Fleming

If you take your PPC campaigns seriously (why wouldn't you?), you're always testing.  Always.  It's the only way to accomplish long-term growth and gain insights that will translate into all of your other marketing channels.  One problem that has been inherent since the beginning of PPC is the inability to do true A/B split-testing with variables like keywords, bids, ad text, ad groups, match types, dynamic keyword insertion, etc.

Yes, you could test them, but only by comparing metrics from different time periods (except for ads).  For example, you'd have to run ads at a certain bid price for a while, change it, and run them at the new bid price for a while.  Then, you'd have to compare the results from different time periods.  The problem? When you would compare the results, you would be likely to assume the differences in those key metrics to be the result of the changes.  But fluctuations in demand, shifts in competitor tactics, and uncontrollable circumstances (special events, etc.) can complicate things.

Google's example of this involves advertising for soccer balls.  "Let's say you're advertising soccer balls, and you decide to increase your bids to get more traffic. Two days later, the World Cup starts, and your clicks and impressions increase substantially. If you had simply raised the bids in your campaign without running an experiment, you wouldn't know how much of the increase in traffic is due to the World Cup, and how much is a result of you increasing bids."

Let's say you raised your bids at the beginning of June and noticed this trend when doing analysis in July....

Alright, looks great.  Let's go ahead and keep that new bid.  What?  What's that?  That might not be the best thing.  Well now, why would that be?

Ouch.  That's web search volume trends for that keyword phrase.  Not so fast my friend.

Enter the newest "seedless watermelon" in the AdWords system called AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE).  With ACE, you can run simultaneous split tests with most of the key variables in your campaigns by splitting traffic between you "control" group (original) and your experiment group...AND...you can analyze the results of your tests before you apply them to all auctions.  This lowers the risk of diving into new, unproven strategies by enabling you to control the amount of traffic you send to your experimental groups; which ultimately helps you make better decisions in your optimization efforts.  You can split your traffic in 10% intervals from 90/10 all the way to 10/90.

The cool thing about this is that if you want to run a low-risk experiment  and send 80% of your traffic to your control group and 20% to your experiment group, you can analyze the results and find if the changes performed better.  If they did, then you can run what is called a holdback experiment before you fully applied the changes to your campaigns.  A holdback experiment involves running the exact same experiment again, but this time with the control at 20% and the experiment at 80%.  This way, you confirm that the positive effects of your experiment are truly there as the experiment is exposed to a larger amount of traffic.

When you go to analyze an experiment, you want make sure that the statistical differences in your numbers is meaningful rather than the result of random chance.  Statistical significance is calculated based both on the number of auctions your campaign participated in, and on the size of the differences in metrics. Google AdWords provides icons in your campaign when the math indicates that you can be 95%, 99%, or 99.9% confident that differences are meaningful, and not just due to chance.

The icons are arrows that show you whether a particular element you're experimenting with has achieved statistically significant results, and how confident you can be that those results will carry over to your campaign if you apply the experiment (one arrow meaning there is a 5% probability your results occurred due to chance, two arrows means there is a 1% chance, and three arrows means there is just a 0.1% chance these results are due to chance).

The introduction of this new feature saves the account manager time and makes testing in your AdWords account much more accurate, efficient and profitable.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

When it comes to getting your visitors to take action, whether that be a sale, download, request, or call, it's your content that is going to either make it happen or leave people blowing in the wind like a sagebrush through a ghost town. If there is anything that all the years of marketing research has proven it's that people need to be told what to do if you expect them to do anything at all.

Think about it. If you're not telling your visitors what to do next, how can you expect them to do it? Sure, they can guess, make assumptions or "figure it out on their own". But, for anybody that's doing anything new, directions are a God send.

I recently spent 2 hours putting together a desk that should have taken me 20 minutes. I'll be the first to admit that I'm generally more destructive than constructive when it comes to these kinds of things, but with a little help (a.k.a. reading directions), I can usually get the job done. But, on this particular desk, the directions actually didn't help. Not even a little.

The desk had two pieces: the main desk and a small side table. Both look nearly identical, only the size is different. The directions started you out building the small table...but they didn't make that clear. I spent at least 30 minutes putting together the larger desk with the small table instructions, wondering why things just weren't making much sense.

Once I figured that out and moved on to building the desk with proper directions, I found several pieces that all looked similar, but with subtle differences. The directions didn't make those distinctions, neither verbally nor visually. Luckily, I was able to stay calm and keep the cursing to a low mumble that my kids couldn't hear!

Your content should work like directions. It needs to inform and make clear what the next step is. Giving your visitors clear directions doesn't have to be difficult. You don't have to re-write all of your content, adding in long prose of "here's what we want you to do next". All you have to do is some simple re-working of key areas.

Action Words: We often tend to write passively. We talk in terms of how things are, not in terms of what we are doing, what we've done, or what we want to do. This makes our content stagnant.

Instead, use words that convey action. Tell visitors how you achieved your knowledge or skills. Tell them how they will benefit from your product or services. Give them examples of the results they will see. And, most importantly, give them some calls to action.

Calls to Action: Using action words is never more important than ensuring your work calls action into your content. These are the directives that you provide to your visitors that lead them down the path to the conversion.

If you are not providing these directives, or are providing the wrong directives, you won't be getting the response you want from your visitors. Keep in mind that there are multiple paths to the goal. Customers need to see your products before they can buy them. They also need to know product details. Trying to move your customers to the conversion too quickly simply won't work.

Use your calls to action to lead visitors down the path of information they need to take the desired action. Some may need to see product reviews, others need to read more about your company, and still others might want to read more about what you offer. Provide calls to action to whatever your visitors might need... because they may not even know they need it.

Textual Links: Adding calls to action directly into your text is simply the best way to get visitors to heed them. Your navigation is important, but sites often put too much faith in the navigation getting the visitors to the information they want. If the visitors know where they want to go, and if they are willing to take the time to click through the navigation, then that approach would work. But, why force the visitor to disengage from your content to hunt through the navigation for what they want? Not a good idea.

That's the biggest problem with not using textual links. You're forcing your visitors to figure things out instead of providing them the directions they need right there where they are. If they are reading about your team's experience, then link to your "About Us" page. If you mention a related product, link to it. If you discuss a significant achievement, place a link to the page that provides more complete information about it.

Visitors are curious. Providing links helps them satisfy their curiosity, which in, turns gives them more satisfaction that you have "what it takes" to provide what they need.

A website that's not getting any action is a dead site. Conversion rates will be low, and bounce rates will be high. Using action words, calls to action, and textual links gets your visitors to "put out". But, unless your content is willing to provide the goods, you may not even get to second base.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx's Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert's Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for "inconceivable content" on this blog to find them all.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Sage Lewis

Best Buy wants you to tell them the moment you walk into the store.

From Marketing Pilgrim: "The "shopkick" system is designed to detect and reward shoppers just for walking into a Best Buy store. In order to accomplish this feat, consumers must download an application to their smart phone. "

What do you think of this? I'm all about it!

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

In my last post, I talked about training your text to "engage", "inform", "speak" (call to action), and "convert". The first step is to make sure the content doesn't overstay it's welcome. In this post, I'll provide some of the tricks you can teach your content; training it how to do all of these things by making it skim-able, scan-able and provide exits to where the visitor needs to go next.

Teaching tricks the audience likes

There are two kinds of tricks you can train your text to do: the kind of tricks you like or the kind of tricks your audience likes. Obviously, training your text to do the tricks you like will make you happy... but it won't make your audience happy. You think the tricks are cool, but nobody else does. And... that's just not cool.

Most people who visit websites scan them first, then skim the text. But, they only skim read if they get intrigued by their initial scan, and they read it only if they find something compelling and interesting that warrants their full attention. There are four easy ways to train your text to be scan-able:

Paragraph headings: Your page should have a proper heading and your content should be broken up with paragraph headings throughout, depending on length. Don't get carried away by placing a heading before each paragraph. That overkill. But the longer your text is, the more it needs to be broken up into easily digest chunks that allow your readers to consume it.

Internal linking: One of the biggest missed opportunities on business websites is linking their content to other relevant areas of the site. That's what the navigation is for, right? Yes and no.

Your navigation needs to do a proper job of allowing people to find what they are looking for, but relying on it too heavily forces the visitor to know what they are interested in finding. But, adding links into your content streamlines both of those issues and also helps the visitor get to where they want to go much quicker. This is more intuitive and requires little thought or effort on their part.

Bolded Text: Bolding key words, phrases, and sentences can also allow your visitors to find key points as they quickly scan your content. Note that I said "key words", not "keywords". There is nothing wrong with using keywords in your bolded text, but that should not be the reason for using bold text. You bold text because it's important, not because you want to get a keyword in bold font.

Bullet Points: Bullet points are another way to get your visitors to read key information without having to read every word of content. Most readers will read bulleted lists while ignoring everything else on the page.

Bullets provide a very easy way to read quick bits of information that otherwise might get lost in a single paragraph. Bullet points also break up your content, which also makes the text more scan-able and skim-able. You can also use bullet points to link to other areas of your site that provide additional information without mucking up the current page content.

Or, to put it another way, bullet points:

• Provide quick bits of information
• Break up content to be more scannable and skimmable
• Provide linking opportunities to related content

People love tricks. But, they don't like to be tricked. These tricks that you can use to train your content are not and should not be used as a means to deceive your audience. They are tricks that help you communicate with your audience in a way that is more to their liking. Giving people what they want isn't deceptive, unless you are pulling the rug out from under them later.

You can train your content to do things that other sites are not doing. By teaching it to keep your audience engaged with the site, and training it how to direct your readers to other areas of the site they are interested in, you're just helping people find what they need. If they don't find it with you, they will with someone else... likely because their content has learned these tricks.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx's Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert's Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for "inconceivable content" on this blog to find them all.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stone Reuning

One of the best ways to add content to your website and boost your search engine rankings is through an optimized press release. You can write about any newsworthy item going on at your company: a new product, an industry award, new hires are just a few examples.

Announcing these events has several benefits beyond search engine rankings too. Journalists and bloggers for instance will come across it and perhaps do a story about your firm. They make your company look active and lively, drawing more interest from prospective customers.

Regularly scheduled press releases do this and more provided they're properly formatted. Simply writing some text and putting it online will not do a whole lot for you. Many distribution outlets like PRWeb and PR.com will reject your press release for syndication if it's not properly formatted.

So what's the proper way to format a press release?

Continue reading for ways you should format a press release for online distribution. Beyond the tips listed below, there are some additional ways you can format your press releases to further its impact in the search engines so check back next time for press release formatting tips from a social media and SEO perspective.

•    Be sure your press release is at least 400 words (including boilerplate/company description at the end) and no more than 600 words.
•    Write the press release in the 3rd person. Meaning, use words like he, she, they and them when writing about your company.
•    Mention your company by name in the title and include your target keyword too. Include a sub-heading below your title with additional details to complement your title.
•    In your opening paragraph, include your city and date first. Example:  Atlanta, Ga. - August 23, 2010. Be sure your first paragraph covers the "5-W's and H" of your story - or who, what, when, where, why and how.
•    Next, the main body of your press release should contain further information on points in your introduction along with quotes from an important person at your company.  
•    Close out the press release by offering the reader a link to click and/or a place to contact your company for further information.
•    Include a boilerplate after the conclusion describing your company and website.
•    After the boilerplate, include your name, phone, email, title. This gives your press release further credibility. Once you have this, include a "###" or "END" to signify the conclusion of the press release.

Double checking spelling, grammar or formatting is critical to having a proper press release. Check out the AP Stylebook or some other resource for ways to format certain words or how you should abbreviate a state and more.

And here's one of the biggies and where many website owners fall down

Don't make your press release read like an advertisement. They're meant to announce events of a newsworthy fashion. If your press release has a bunch of "salesy" type language, it will be immediately dismissed by any journalist or blogger that comes across it. You can talk up benefits of your new product or whatever news you're announcing in your quotations a little bit but that's about it.

Not to mention, most distribution outlets will reject it as well.

Take a few moments and carefully review each press release before posting it on your site and distributing it to newswires and social networks. Doing so will save you lots of time and maximize the value of doing a press release in the first place.

One way to write a well formatted press release is to carefully examine other press releases like this one from a rental cabin firm in the north Georgia Mountains.

In the end, press releases are about informing journalists, bloggers and potential customers of events at your company. They're not meant to sell per se but draw the reader's interest in enough for them to want to learn more.

Check back again soon for more on properly formatting press releases - specifically for the search engines and how you can squeeze even more benefits out of announcing your company's news online.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Sage Lewis

If you aren't familiar with Google Places please watch this video. It's growing and could be significantly affecting your business without your knowing.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Fleming

Google's Display Network has two types of targeting options. The first, automatic placements, we've talked about already. This is where you create keyword-themed ad groups and Google makes your ads eligible to appear on web pages whose content theme matches the theme of the keywords in your ad group. Now, we'll talk about the second - managed placements.

This type of campaign is useful for two purposes:

1. Targeting specific websites that you've already found have performed well for your ads in an automatic placement campaign to maximize your exposure on those sites.

2. Targeting specific websites that you've found through research.

With this campaign, you do not choose keywords because you are telling Google exactly which sites you want your ad to be eligible for auction, so they don't need keywords to come up with a theme to match to websites. The way to create this campaign is to choose "relevant pages only on the placements and audiences I manage" under "Networks" in the "Network and Devices" option of your campaign settings.



The easiest way to pick some websites where you want your ad to be shown is to run and analyze a Placement Performance Report of your Automatic Placement Campaign once a significant amount of data has been collected. You can export the data in this report to Excel and find some websites that have historically met the marketing objectives you have set for your ads. Once you add them to your new Managed Placement Campaign, make sure you exclude them from your Automatic Placement Campaign by selecting the placement and hitting "Exclude Placement" above the list -



Then, you go in to the Networks tab of your new Managed Placement campaign, click on "show details" next to managed placements and then click "add placements." This is where you enter and submit the sites where you want your ads to be shown.

If you are not as patient and/or you would rather not rely on Google's imperfect algorithm to find some websites you'd like to test, once you hit "add placements" and choose an ad group, you can click on a link to take you to the Placement Tool. Here, you can look up sites by category, keyword, ad type or size, and URL and the tool will spit out all sorts of options for you to pick from to add to your ad group.



You'll want to monitor these choices over time to weed out the bad and maximize the good. Remember, just because you think something in marketing will work doesn't mean it will. It has to be proven with data. Take a look at the sites that are suggested and decide on some that are locations where your target audience frequents, select them and add them to your campaign. Once you start to find some websites that are working for you, you can start to develop themed ad groups with your managed placements and write more targeted ads for similar types of sites.

For instance, if you sold guitars and you are finding that guitar lesson sites work well for you, group all of the sites about guitar lessons together and create targeted ads for those sites. You should see click-through and conversion rates improve significantly. This makes it easier to identify sites and themes that work best for your business.

Now, you've got one campaign that is going out to hunt down sites that will work for what you're advertising (automatic placement) and one campaign that contains sites that work for you that you can optimize for the long-run (managed placement). As time passes and data is collected, continue to add keyword-themed ad groups to your Automatic Placement Campaign to replace themes that aren't working for you while pulling the sites that work to place into your Managed Placement campaign. Frequently, you should go in and apply standard optimization techniques to your ad groups and placements similar to how you would optimize search campaigns with keywords.

Hopefully, my short introduction series to the Display Network will allow you to take your online business to new heights! Down the road, we'll get into some more advanced Display Network strategies. Hope you'll hang around.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

We don't often realize this, but we can train our website content to do tricks. Unfortunately, most website content just lays around all day. This is why you see high bounce rates and poor conversion rates on so many websites. About the only "trick" this content knows how to do is to roll-over and play dead. But, those aren't tricks at all. The opossum that streaked across the highway after getting hit by a truck can do that!

What I'm talking about is teaching your content how to "engage", "inform", "speak" (call to action), and "convert". Teach these tricks to your content and you'll see a whole new level of performance on your website.

The first thing to train your content to do is not to overstay it's welcome. Like a neighbor you enjoy having over occasionally, there comes a time when they must leave. In the same way, you can train your content to know when to stop talking and show the visitor the door to the next page or pages of your site.

Leave them wanting more... and then give them more

We often try to do either too much or too little with our content. The "old school" rules of SEO said you had to have a minimum amount of content. Is it 100 words...200 words? There is a minimum number of words you need per page, but it has nothing to do with counting. It's the amount of content that is needed for the text to move the visitor to the next step.

There are three simple rules to training your text when it comes to the quantity of text to be used:

1) There is no magic amount. Some pages require a lot of text, but some don't require much text at all. But, bear in mind, that all pages need some text. Text is what convinces, persuades, informs, and helps your audience decide that they want to buy from you.

2) Keep your text as brief as possible. This doesn't mean your text has to be short, just that you don't go for length when length is not needed or warranted.

3) Use no more words than needed to convert. Your audience isn't just one person. It's many people looking at many items for many purposes. Once you start looking at personas and personalities trying to target everybody on a single page can be daunting. But, you don't have to hit everybody perfectly on a single page. Figure out what the next step is for each group, and provide that opportunity. It could be a link to an "About Us" page, a link to "Shipping Policies" or a "Buy Now" button.

The basic idea is to train your text to be minimalist while still providing ways for the reader to request an encore. They do that by clicking further into the site to get even more information, where, hopefully, that page is also trained to provide the audience what it wants as well.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx's Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert's Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for "inconceivable content" on this blog to find them all.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

I remember the first day back at my sophomore year of college. It was the weekend before classes began, and the new students were moving into the dorms. There were cars and trucks all parked out along the street with students unloading furniture, bedding, clothes, and everything else a growing college kid needs to survive in the almost-real world.

I remember this day vividly because a bunch of us guys were scouting out the hot chicks, generously helping the new batch of coeds unload and unpack. Later that afternoon, when it was only us guys within ear shot, a buddy of mine claimed, "I got dibs on the red head." I remember thinking, "Whatever, dude!" Nonetheless, everyone knew Jon had claimed Shannon and she was hands off until he said otherwise.

It wasn't long before Jon and Shannon started dating, and a few years later they married and are still happily married today.

You Aren't Special If You're Last In Line

Dibs are a great thing. It makes us feel special. Like calling "shotgun" to get the front passenger seat, dibs allows us to lay claim to something we otherwise may not have been entitled to: the last piece of pizza, the larger bed, the first shower before all the hot water is gone, and the hot red head that needs a nice, strong college man to help her move into her dorm.

Unfortunately, too many business owners let "dibs" on their website go to everyone else, except those that matter most: the target audience. All too often site design and content is developed for the boss, or the marketing team, or even the search engines. But the audience--the people who the site is supposedly intended for--get left out. They don't get dibs, they get whatever is left over.

Does that seem right to you?

Your audience is your "A" Girl

I knew someone once who had a philosophy on his women. You could have an A-Girl, B-Girl, and C-Girl. A-Girl could in no way know about B- or C-Girl. B-Girl could know about A-Girl, but couldn't know about C-Girl. C-Girl could know about both A- and B-Girl.

Don't laugh, this is true.

This was obviously his way of attempting to build a playground in a minefield. I'm not sure how that worked out for him, but it will work as a good analogy here.

Your audience absolutely must be your A-Girl. Your content must be for her. Your visual presentation must be for her. Your site architecture and usability must be for her. And she doesn't need to know about your B- and C-Girls... the search engines, or that guy that pays all the bills and has really strong opinions.

What you write, how you write, and the overall presentation you put together on your website shouldn't be based on the boss' opinions or what we think the search engines want. Those don't have to be totally disregarded, but your audience, your A-Girl, comes first. She's the one that matters. And if she catches a whiff that the site isn't for her, she'll be out the door and onto the next site in a matter of minutes.

Keywords are important, and as I noted a few weeks back, your content isn't good content unless it's optimized. This is very true, because optimizing for your audience is the same as optimizing for the search engines. The problem is when C-Girl becomes too prominent, A-Girl is sure to notice.

Building a perfect relationship

Your keywords should be present, but not obvious. They should be a part of your relationship with A-Girl, but not overbearing. If you suddenly start giving your girlfriend gifts, she may suspect you're covering for something else. Same is true here. If you add too many keywords to your pages, they become overpowering. A-Girl isn't dumb.

Keep your content persuasive. Just because someone knows you love them doesn't mean you don't ever have to tell them. Your content should tell your audience what you want them to do. Do you want them to purchase? Download? Learn more? Add to cart? Failure to have calls to action throughout your content will lead to a stagnant relationship. The audience won't know what you want them to do next and, sooner or later, they will wander off.

Overall, you need to maintain value in your content. If you're just adding text for the sake of B-Girl or C-Girl, A-Girl will realize that there is nothing there for her. You have to keep your audience engaged. You do this by writing content that helps them learn, grow, improve, understand, etc. A relationship that does not help each side to grow is a dying relationship. If your audience isn't getting anything new, just the same content they found on every other site, they'll soon grow bored with you.

Your A-Girl needs dibs. She needs to be the first priority on your website. Sure, you can build a site that pleases the higher-ups, and can write content that is optimized for search engine placement, but your audience must come first. She's too important for anything less.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx's Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert's Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for "inconceivable content" on this blog to find them all.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Fleming

Now that you've created your keyword-themed ad groups and masterfully rolled out your display ads for those ad groups, your ads are running and collecting impressions, clicks and conversions. The next step is to allow a fair amount of data to collect so that you can then analyze how different sites are performing for you.

The most useful tool for this is the Placement Performance Report in your Google AdWords account. It segments your ad serving by domain or individual URL so you can see the performance metrics for them separately. This will allow you to find sites and categories of sites where your ads perform well and where they are struggling. The best, most important metric to analyze when looking at a site's Display Network performance? Cost Per Conversion.

Why? Google uses what they call smart pricing as their method for click charges on the Display Network. Basically, if your ad wins the auction and is placed on a site, Google determines if that page is more or less likely to end in a conversion action for you and they adjust the price of a click accordingly. This makes cost per conversion much more important than conversion rate.

Why? Smart pricing will very likely give you a scenario of metrics like the one below when comparing two sites:

If this scenario is true its because Google determined website #2 to be less likely to result in a conversion. So, they discounted the cost per click to advertise on website 2 to make up for this. But, as you can see, you are performing relatively well on this site because they've discounted your price enough to make your cost per conversion 25% lower than website 1 despite your lower conversion rate. Therefore, website 2 is working better for you despite the lower conversion rate. So, you can see how smart pricing changes the game and make cost per conversion your most important metric.

Once you run a Placement Performance Report, you will have data that you can use to make decisions about your ad's exposure. You will find sites that are both performing well and not performing well for your campaigns. If you want to block your ads from being shown on specific sites, you can use the Site and Category Exclusion Tool within your AdWords account to block these sites.

With the sites that are performing well, you may want to have more control over your bidding and targeting flexibility with them. In this case, you can take that placement and use it in a Placement Targeted Campaign, which we will talk about in my next post.

Here are some ways that you can block your ads from being shown to specific web traffic using this tool:

1. Blocking Domains - You can block top-level domains, subdomains and directories. Blocking one doesn't block the others, so you will need to enter them separately.

2. Undesirable Content - There are six types of content that you can block if you are concerned about brand protection.

3. Video Sites - You can block your ads from being shown as content ads within video.

4. Page Types:

a. Error Pages - these are displayed when a page does not exist. If someone attempts to navigate to a domain that does not exist, a page can be shown that has ads based on the mistyped URL instead of a "not found" error page.

b. Parked Domains - These domains are owned, but they have never been developed. So, all you see is ads when you navigate to these pages. This traffic comes from users mistyping a URL or using a domain name that does not exist.

c. User-generated sites - forums, image-sharing sites, social networks, video-sharing sites

In my next post, we'll take a look at targeting specific sites on the Display Network that you find through your gathered data and/or through a little research to take your online business to new heights...

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

One of the most important things business owners often fail to do is to make their website remarkable. It really doesn't matter what industry you're in or how many other websites you're competing against, making your site stand out from the pack is absolutely essential.

Take the movie Avatar.

Plot: Tired.

Story: Been there, done that.

Acting and directing: Nothing special.

Special effects: Absolutely outstanding.

Worthy of a "Best Picture" nomination: Not by a long shot.

Worthy of a "Best Special Affects" Oscar: Without a doubt.

So, how is it that a story we have all seen played out in 100 different movies and "message" Star Trek episodes turns into one of the most popular movies of all time? It's because James Cameron took a great heaping pile of "Meh.", and made it all, "Oooh, shiny!". It's uniqueness overshadowed the complete and total hollowness of everything else on the screen.

A lot of business owners out there feel that their business is just the same old, same old. Nothing special there. But in reality, they can take what they are doing and turn it into something remarkable. And the easiest way to do that is through the content.

A vast majority of internet searches are informational. That means people are not looking for your products or services, they are looking for information about them. They want to learn something new. And, you can be the one to give it to them.

The key to creating unique content that searchers are looking for is keyword research. Let your keyword research become your idea generator for blog posts, articles, e-books, and whatever else strikes your fancy.

When perusing your keyword research here are a few things to look for:

Easy to Rank Phrases: When looking for good traffic, you can always start with phrases that have little or no competition. Find queries that match what you provide that others have not yet optimized for. This gives you a chance to build up some rankings and traffic for good (yet lower traffic) phrases. You can immediately start siphoning off traffic from your competitors and start building a loyal audience that will keep coming back.

Niche Areas: Look for an area within your industry that your competitors are not covering or not covering very well. Find obscure topics that people are interested in, but, after conducting a few searches of your own, show that the available content on the web isn't sufficient. This creates an opportunity for you to fill in the gaps and create authoritative information of your own.

Highly Targeted Phrases: These are long-tail phrases that are very targeted for your audience, addressing specific areas of interest. Highly targeted phrases are generally pretty easy to get ranked but they also bring in an audience that has a very specific need. Write information that targets these searchers by providing new information, a new spin, a new take on, or a new way of looking at things.

Info Queries: These often fit into the categories above, but are queries performed by people looking for information and nothing else. They are typically the queries with a question that answers questions, such as "how to..." or "what is...". These queries provide a great opportunity to provide content beyond simple text. "How to" videos, diagrams, flash animations, and podcasts are all great ways to provide this type of content in a way that people find valuable. Telling someone how to do something is great, but showing them how to do it is even better.

Just because you are providing a product or service that someone else is, that doesn't mean you have to provide content that someone else has. There are plenty of ways to step outside of the box and provide valuable information that nobody else is providing. Look for these opportunities, and take advantage of them . . . before someone else does.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx's Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert's Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for "inconceivable content" on this blog to find them all.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stone Reuning

One of the important pieces of building high search engine rankings and driving traffic to your website is keyword phrases. In the old days of SEO, you could simply pepper your web pages with high value keywords and the search engines would rank you right up there with the best of them.

But with today's more advanced search engines, content on your site has to achieve more than that. Not only does it need to contain keyword phrases people use to search for you, it also must serve to inform the reader and offer some value as well. In other words, simply stuffing content with keywords just won't cut it anymore...search engines like Google will flag your site and perhaps penalize you.

Not to mention, most people won't give it the time of day.

So what can I do to get more keywords into my copy without sacrificing its flow or getting me in trouble?

Below are 11 ways you can maximize keyword exposure without your readers picking up on it. And search engines will credit you with having a strong keyword presence without sacrificing the quality of your content.

Remember, only optimize a page or article for 2 or 3 keyword phrases...any more dilutes the impact each keyword has on your rankings.

11 ways you can maximize keyword exposure without sacrificing content include:

1.Separate keywords into different sentences and/or paragraphs

Search engine spiders, or computer programs that read and index a site, do not register punctuation, bullet points, line breaks and other things when deciding on where your site should be ranked - they only see letters. Therefore, keyword phrases can be separated by a comma or period.

Your readers will think it's just the natural flow of your copy but search engines will see keyword phrases, in turn, boosting your ranking potential.

See this example:

Increase revenues for your small business today by investing in SEO. Content creation, crawlable site architecture and SEO design elements all work together to increase your site's exposure and position in the search engines.

2.Create quotes for "first-person" keyword phrases

Keyword phrases stated in the first person are very powerful but hard to work into any copy because they're simply not natural. Keyword phrases like content for my website are not natural for any web copywriter to use - content for your website is a more natural phrase.

Instead, put the keyword phrases into a question and put quotations around it, like this:

How can I create valuable content for my website that gets me high rankings in the search engines and increases my revenues?

3.Make your bullet lists work harder for you

From a strictly content position, bulleted lists are great because they make reading and scanning much easier, naturally drawing the reader's attention - a missed opportunity for many web copywriters unfortunately. Adding keywords into each bullet point is pretty simple though but be sure you don't become too repetitive, blend them in well.

4.Split your copy into sections

Search engines find keywords on any crawlable place on your website. Articles or landing pages are not the only ways you can get more keywords out there. You can break copy up so it looks natural to a reader, like placing some in a headline and a few sentences on the top then some in a sidebar then more at the bottom of the page underneath some graphics.

The search engines will see a keyword goldmine...your readers will only see great, informative content.

5.Include a "more information" link

Another way you can get more keywords into your page is to include a "more information" link at the bottom. This link will in fact be the same page but your reader will think they're going to another page since they will have to click a link...in essence, it will look short and concise to them but offer more information if they choose to go there.

6.Include keyword phrases that are "opposite" of what you are

Some strong keyword phrases in fact state the opposite of the image you're trying to convey. For instance, "cheap online marketing" may be a popular phrase but isn't exactly a reputation you want to convey.

Get around this by writing a page or article warning readers about the dangers of "cheap online marketing." Not only will you get this popular keyword phrase into your copy, you will also build credibility for your business.

7.Try and use "stop" words in choppy phrases

Without stop words like "of", "the", "a", "for" and so on, some keyword phrases are incomplete thoughts. Including stop words like these makes them more complete. Since these words are so common, search engines choose to ignore them...much like punctuation and line breaks outlined earlier.

8.Have keyword specific pages

Especially if you're an ecommerce site, many keyword phrases are unrelated. And including too many keywords on a single page dilutes the focus of that page. So create keyword specific pages and focus on one or two keyword phrases per page. Doing so will make the copy look natural to your readers but make the search engines drool at all of the naturally fitting keywords.

9.Combine keyword phrases

Using some stand-alone keyword phrases too much makes copy sound repetitive and impersonal. But you can make your copy sound more personable and natural by combining some keyword phrases. Search engines will see two keyword phrases but your readers will only see one.

Example: website SEO content, SEO site optimization

10. Add other words

Many keywords by themselves sound unnatural to someone reading a site's copy. Standalone keywords can make copy clunky and difficult to read. Sometimes they need some help to make them sounds better.

To make these keywords sound more natural, add words to the beginning or end of a keyword phrase. Descriptive phrases like "experts", "agents" or another term that applies to your business are great candidates.

Example: content creation experts, web copywriting professionals, online marketing agent

11. Include keyword phrases in testimonials

Testimonials offer a great way to not only provide potential customers with others' prior experience with your company, they offer a great opportunity for keywords as well. Much of the time though, a customer writing a testimonial will not use keyword terms someone may use for a search online...they will simply name the product or say "it."

With their permission, replace these phrases with your keywords for even more ranking opportunities.

These are just a few, but effective ways you can work more keywords into your copy without sacrificing its quality or flow. You want to include keywords in your copy because that is how people find you online. Having a strong presence of good keyword phrases is a major step in bringing high-quality traffic to your site.

Following the steps above will go a long way toward maximizing the amount of keywords on your page without creating copy that's repetitive, boring and gets you penalized by the search engines.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.