Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

We’ve all followed links from one website to another, but did you know these links are an important part of search engine rankings?

Over the past couple of years, links – especially inbound links pointing toward your website from other sites, have come to be a sign of relevance and authority.  The more people who point others to your website the higher value that Google places on your pages and the higher your site will score on a search results page.

Some people take this knowledge and start putting up links everywhere they can, thinking that any link is a good link. Some less reputable SEO consultants create websites with no content except a massive list of links, so the page resembles a spreadsheet.  This is how some consultants can honestly claim that they will place a website link on hundreds of pages. They are just tossing pages and links around the internet with no rhyme or reason.  So yes they will do what they say, but it won’t get the benefits you expect from your investment.

Google and other search engines really do pay attention to the sources of your inbound links. It looks at the linking pages to see if those cover similar information.  Links coming in from websites within the same framework are weighted more heavily than websites that have nothing in common with your site.

For example, if you sell shoes it will do you more good to have a link coming in from “Shoe fans” than from “Hat fans”.  This is not to say that you should tell “Hat fans” that you don’t want their link.  If it’s a link from a legitimate page it’s still good.  The only links you don’t want are the ones from places that will charge you to sit on their database.

So since links are important what should you do to get good links — and get a better ranking at Google?

What I suggest may sound a bit radical and not in line with what other SEO consultants have written about. but I say forget about Google! I say that when you are looking to build up your inbound links start by thinking about how to connect with your customers instead.

Question: “What is the most powerful form of advertising?”

Answer: “Word of mouth!”

Think of links as the ‘word of mouth’ of the web.  Every time someone links to your website, it’s the same as praising you to a friend.   In a way, a page link can be just as good as or even better than a word of mouth comment since a link can stick around for years.

The key to creating a successful linking strategy in this word-of-mouth method is to focus on getting as many links in front of real customers as possible. This is the whole point behind a successful pay-per-click campaign. With pay-per-click it’s easier – and faster – to get your links in the right place, but the downside is that those link ads only last as long as you are willing to spend the money.  Pay-per-click links can be very effective in a short term but word-of-mouth links last for years.

Taking the time to find people, groups and companies who will link to your site (and use your services) is a long term solution for your business.  Most people want to think of SEO as a problem to be solved once, rather than what it is: a process that needs to be done on a regular basis.

Think about this, what would you prefer? Driving more real people to your website or having a hundred links which may or may not raise your Google ranking?  The normal response to this question is both, but given a choice most people would always prefer customers.

How to build this word of mouth campaign?  That answer will be in the next article.

Technorati Tags: seo, ppc, pay per click, link building, strategies, word of mouth

I’ve spent six articles talking about keywords for websites; however the question needs to be asked: are keywords the only factor that impacts the ranking of a website?

The answer is no.  Keywords are the foundation for getting a higher ranking on search engine results pages, but they are not the only factor considered.  Without good keywords used properly it becomes harder and harder to achieve good ranking.

What else goes into getting a good ranking?  There are a number of factors to consider, and I’ll go over each in detail in later articles, but let’s start with the basics.

Design factors for increasing ranking.

Search engines pay attention to where a keyword is located on the web pages and whether or not it is emphasized. Words included in titles and headlines or subheads, and words that are in bold or italicized text are seen by both humans and search engines as being more important than non-emphasized words in the body copy. It makes sense that search engines give text that has been treated this way a few extra points towards higher ranking.

You might be tempted to start bolding every other word, but you need to make sure that these enhancements to the text are properly integrated with the overall design and theme of the website.  It is far more important for human visitors to be able to read and use your website than it is for search engines to be able read it.  If text is difficult or challenging to read and use, your visitors will just hit the back button and possibly never come back.

The powers of links:

Links – both internal and external – are another important factor in assessing ranking.  Internal links should always be in plain English (another good place to use keywords) and should be designed so that search engines can follow them.  The types of links that search engines hate are computer gibberish such as “www.mysite.com/00023994/objcet=2&type32”.  It is much better to use one that looks like this: “www.mysite.com/business/software/”.

Fancy Java script or Flash menus, while attractive to humans, can be a problem for search engines.  They are generally unable to follow these links because the links require a mouse click to activate them; thus they don’t show up for search engine spiders.  If you choose to have Java or Flash menus on your site, plan on including text links to duplicate the links elsewhere on the page.  Simple text links are also a good backup for customers experiencing connection problems as they don’t have to wait for the website to fully load in order to get to the page they want.

External links have a huge impact on a website’s ranking.  The sheer number of outside websites linking to your site is important, but do not assume that one link is just as good as any other. Some links will have more of an impact on search engine rankings.

Links coming from ‘trusted authorities’ will increase your website’s ranking more than many other actives.  What is a trusted authority?  That is a lengthy topic, but basically it comes down to websites containing similar subject matter as your site.  A link from a humor site, for example, will help increase your ranking more if you have a humor site than if you have a banking site.

Is your site up to date?

Another ranking factor is the age of the site and its contents.  Paradoxically, the longer your website has been around the better your ranking, but the longer it’s been since you’ve updated the site, the lower the ranking. This is another good reason to plan on updating your site on a regular basis.

You don’t have to totally redesign your whole site. Just keep the content fresh and up-to-date. You can do this by always including breaking news and the latest product or company information.  Make sure that any outdated content is removed.  Outdated content is like missing a button on your suit jacket. It may not seem important, but people notice when you’re not looking your best.

Are visitors returning to the site?

Another seldom-mentioned but important factor towards ranking is the site’s popularity.  More people coming to a site will help increase its ranking.  Yes, this does sound like a catch-22, because most companies invest in SEO to get a higher ranking so that more people will see their site on Google and come for a visit.

Older sites often have an advantage because they have built up repeat visitors over time, and these repeat visitors count as traffic. In order to build your traffic numbers, become a site that people come back to again and again.  You want to be a bookmark that they click on regularly.

Depending on your business and your audience, there are many things that can be added to your website to increase repeat visitors.  For example: user manuals, training guides, resources and blogs generally help keep people coming back.  Don’t be afraid to go the extra mile and put more information and more tools on your site. Think about turning your website into a useful tool instead of just a brochure or storefront for the company.

Is that all that needs to be done?

The items above represent some of the major factors that impact search engine rankings. Search engines use complicated 200+ factor algorithms to determine rank, and there are many other small things you can do to slightly increase ranking. However, using good keywords as a foundation and following the steps above will build the frame to successful website structure.  Without these major steps the smaller steps will have almost no impact at all.

Building a successful website is just as complicated and rewarding as building the rest of your business, and with a large number of people turning to the internet as their first choice to find any business, your presence on the web requires as much investment in your time and budget as your storefront or office.  Your website is often the first thing potential customers see of your business, so spend the time to make a great first impression.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engines, ranking, keywords, algorithms, websites, visitors, traffic

With every business scrambling today to do more with less, it surprises me how many are missing the very best way to increase leads or sales with existing resources.

Marketers call it conversion optimization, which borders dangerously on being jargon but I haven’t thought of anything better to call it yet. What we’re talking about is paying attention to the points in your marketing process where you want your prospects to take action and tweaking those points to get a greater percentage of visitors to do that.

Sales people do this all the time. They are regularly judged on how well they turn qualified opportunities into sales (the closing ratio). But marketing people for some reason have stayed away from creating a better process instead focusing solely on driving more website traffic or generating more leads.

This is expensive – especially if you are driving leads into an inefficient marketing system.

If you think about your prospects’ buying process there are likely to be several points at which the prospects decide to keep moving forward toward a purchase – or not.

Here are a few common examples:

• Your homepage.
• Newsletter and other subscriptions
• Product demos
• Free trials
• Trial-to-customer conversions
• Landing pages
• Contact Us forms
• Download whitepapers or reports
• Event registrations
• Any link you want your visitors to click on

Get more from what you already have.

Increasing the number of people who take any one of these actions ultimately increases your sales or sales opportunities. Over time, even the slightest increases compound into big numbers. It’s the same “power of compounding interest” argument the Motley Fools and other investment advisors use to convince us to invest early and often.

Let’s look at product demos as an example.

Suppose that currently 50% of prospects who experience your product demo become customers and suppose that each new customer is worth $2500 a year. Here’s what happens if you increase the demo-to-customer ratio just 5% a month.

Imagine how much your revenue can grow if you optimize multiple conversion points. It’s surprisingly easy and immensely rewarding. And the best part may be that you can get more leads without spending more money on lead generation.

If you’re new to conversion optimization, you’re not alone; and if you act fast you can get a real jump on your competition – especially those who are cutting back on spending and watching their pipelines deteriorate.

Tatum Marketing runs conversion optimization programs for all kinds of clients. Contact Us if you want some help.

** Inspiration for the above chart comes from a Future Now video.

Technorati Tags: conversion optimization, conversion rate, leads, traffic, sales, prospects

In the past few articles, I’ve spent a good amount of time discussing how to choose keywords for websites.  The next logical question concerns what is to do with these keywords.

Most people focus all their energy putting the keywords within the body of the website. This is good. The body of a website is the area that human visitors see and it is indeed the place where the majority of the keywords should be used.  No matter how important search engines and keywords are, a webpage must first of all be informative and easy for humans to read.

However there are other locations on the webpage where keywords should be used.

1. Page Title

The first place for the extra keywords is in the title of each webpage.  That is the text in the bar across the top of each webpage. You should not cram every keyword for your page into this small area but use keywords that correspond to the content of that page.

For the best effect, each page should have its own unique title. Search engines will not count repeating titles in a positive fashion and by having different keywords in each page title you also increase the variety of keywords used over the entire website.

The title will likely appear on search engines results pages; and if it is a crowded line of meaningless words, people will probably ignore them.

2. Alt Tags

Beyond bodies and titles the next best location for placing keywords is the often ignored  ALT tag. An ALT tag is a little box of text that pops up when a visitor moves the cursor over a picture or other image. Often it contains a description of the picture.  That simple little box description can be also used for a keyword or phrase.  Keep it short and sweet, as long tags are often ignored by humans.

3. Intra-Site Links

One of the least thought of places for keywords intra-site links within body text.  Rather than a simple using a text link that says: “Click Here” or “Lean More,” try using a link that says “Download Purchasing Software Trial Version” or “Corporate Governance Product Preview”.  These can give a website additional keyword placements plus it provides more information to the viewer of the site.

4. Meta Tags

The final major area to place your keywords is in the Meta Tags.  While Meta Tags have fallen out of favor because Google no longer uses the information from this area as part of it search, I do not agree with people who say that any Meta Tag information hurts your Google ranking. And, because Yahoo, Ask and other search engines still use the Meta tag information for their searches Meta Tags are important to use.

Add Meta tags for title, description and keywords to your pages. As always, make the keywords relative to the content on the page. Do not stuff keywords. And you’ll be okay.

If you’re going to spend the time and energy to carefully pick your keywords, you should take the same kind of time and energy in placing those keywords on your website.  Then they will work to increase the visibility of a web page in search engine results.

Technorati Tags: keywords, seo, search engines, meta, tags, titles, descriptions, alt tags

One of the most interesting things about marketing is that it constantly offers a multitude of choices and options. There’s never a lack of things to try or things to improve.

Sometimes that leads to paralysis. Marketers and business owners just don’t know what to do next.

But some decisions are really no-brainers. Here are three. I’ve mentioned these all many times before. But judging by the questions I get from clients, they’re worth repeating.

1. Fix your website

I’m not going to bore you with stats that I’ve already posted on this subject. Suffice it to say that you’re never going to achieve a high level of quality lead or traffic generation if your website is lame.

That fact is pretty obvious if you sell online. A bad site repels buyers. It may be less obvious to those of you who don’t sell online, but it’s equally true.

If you don’t believe your prospects are looking at your website think about your own buying habits. When was the last time you bought a complex or expensive product or service without taking a look at the company’s website?

That just doesn’t happen much these days. Your website is often the first – and last -  impression.

2. Get visible online.

Unless you’re one of very few companies that have a truly unique solution to a problem no one has thought of yet, your prospects are looking for you online. They’ll find your competitors with or without you. Which would you rather it be?

Personal referrals still top the list of the best lead generation sources for business-to-business products and services, but buyers also search. If nothing else, they’ll look for solutions to compare the referred product or service to. More likely they’ll be compiling a list of vendors to consider.

This means you need to be visible on search engines and websites where your prospects hang out. Otherwise you’re missing your best prospects – the ones who are actively seeking a solution.

3. Start with Google.

Achieving visibility on Google may be harder and more expensive than becoming visible on other search engines, but let’s face it – Google delivers the bulk of the traffic. Last April, Hitwise found that Google’s marketshare in US searches was 67%. Yahoo (at 20%), MSN Search (at 5.25%) and Ask.com (at 4%) – although not insignificant – trail far behind. Google’s dominance is even greater among business searchers.

Even if you can’t afford the click costs on Google, it’s the best testing ground because the heavier traffic allows you to figure out what works best faster.

So there you have it. Three marketing decisions you can make and act on without a lot of agonizing over whether or not it’s the right thing to do.

Technorati Tags: websites, seo, search engine, visibility, google, lead generation, traffic

You may have heard the term ‘Landing Page’ and wondered what that means.

A Landing Page is a sub-page – not the Home Page – which is designed to target or focus on a specific topic. Think of them as additional doors to the website.  Most people come in the front door, but some people come in a side door or enter through a patio door.  They all lead to the same building, but each door is different.  Of course that’s not an exact analogy, so let me use a better example:

If you look within the website of a car manufacturer, you will find that in addition to their home page they make use of several different landing pages.  The home page is a general directory with information about the company, but then there are sub-pages for each car, that they make.  While you can get to these pages using the home page you could also find them in a search for the car name.  And following that link you would wind up at the landing page, rather than the home page, with no need to click-through to find what you are looking for.

Landing pages can even be more specific than just for a particular car model.  They can be temporary pages designed for a special edition of the car or for a coupon for an oil change or a special sale campaign.

To increase visibility in online searches these landing pages are focused on a particular subject with its own content, keyword headings, keyword text, and keyword links.  Unlike a home page which normally contains general keywords, landing pages are designed to be used for niche topics or specific products.

Generally, it’s much easier to develop content with great keywords for specific products or services than it is for general topics, and there tends to be much less competition for those specific keywords. So landing pages are a valuable tactic for search engine optimization.

Landing pages can also be used for great effect with direct links from a pay-per-click or email campaign. In these cases, an online ad or mass e-mail directs the viewer to the landing page though links. Viewers skip over the home page and go directly to the landing page.

You may be getting this type of sales pitch in your inbox on a regular basis.  Borders Books uses temporary landing pages for its email campaign sent to everyone who has signed up for one of their customer loyalty cards.

Another benefit of using these targeted landing pages is that visitors who come to them tend to be more satisfied because they find the exact information that they are looking for.  These visitors tend to stay longer, and have a lower bounce rate with more click-though to other pages.

How is it possible to know these things?  Because landing pages can be tracked thanks to Google Analytics and other tools. With tracking software it is possible to create several landing pages and track and compare the results of each set.   With pay-per-click or e-mail campaigns where people are directed to come straight to the landing page instead of the home page, the statistics will show the true results of the marketing campaign and SEO stratagem.

Many companies shy away from landing pages because they do represent a fair amount of work to target niche customers or run a limited time email campaign.  One can not deny there is more time and energy involved in creating these extra pages but the reward in reaching these prospects is more than worth it. Think about it this way, if you have already captured a person’s attention and enticed them to act and go to a landing page, then you have a real potential customer not just a lookie-loo.

Whether you hire a professional or do the work yourself, make sure that your landing pages are focused with specific content and SEO key wording.  Don’t forget to setup proper tracking to insure that you can see if all the effort on the landing pages is paying off, or if you need to adjust your site for better results.

Technorati Tags: seo, landing page, keywords, search engines

When it comes to researching and selecting keywords you will often hear the term “Long Tail” and it can be confusing.  The name for “Long Tail” searches is credited to Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine.

The concept is fairly simple. When people search online they tend to type in not a single word but a series of words. In this grouping of words there is a main simple word, which is the head, and behind that are a few more words which are the tail of the search.

An example of this is:  Software (head) Management Inventory (the tail)

When trying to optimize a website, companies tend to focus all their energy on the head words.  But under the Long Tail theory, the tail words are actually the more useful and powerful words to focus on.

Tail words do not generate the large search volume that head words do, however the people searching with tail words tend to much more focused and easier to convert from a website visitor into a true customer. Long Tail keywords also allow for more unique products and services to be found because the searcher is not focusing on a single word but a series of words which can better describe niche items.

For example, Google says people search for the single word “software” an average of 550,000 times a month while “inventory management software” gets less than one-tenth of that. But which is the better search term?

Let’s look more closely at the above example. When I typed in the word “software” into Google, it found 1,340,000,000 pages (heavy competition) and the word is not specific enough to get a good quality of visitor.  Even if you could get ranked high for “software” it would likely generate a very high bounce rate. Since there is a virtually unlimited combination of things the searcher could actually be looking for (different kinds of software, buying software, developing software, comparing software, etc) the majority of searchers are not going to be looking for any one specific thing.

However, when I added “management inventory” Google comes back with only 9,510,000.  While this is still a lot of websites it is only a fraction of those for the single word “software” and we’ve narrowed the potential search target significantly. We can continue adding words (creating a longer tail) and improving the likelihood that the searcher is looking for us.

With the smaller search volumes for the Long Tails, the Pay-Per-Click advertising costs can be much lower because the competition is smaller. For the price of advertising on a major search word it is possible to have several different Long Tail PPC ads running at the same time.

Like all other Keywords decisions, Long Tail choices should not be picked out of thin air.  Research should always be done to make sure that there is good traffic on these Long Tails.

Are Long Tails the right decision for your website?  Perhaps. Every website is different based on what service or production they are providing. But Long Tails are definitely something that all websites owners should investigate when looking for the best way to reach potential customers on the internet.

Technorati Tags: keywords, long tail, search, volume, ppc, seo, search engine optimization

If time is money and cash is king, then where does that leave Twitter?

The media tells us social media sites are where we need to be, but does all the time and effort you spend translate into new business or higher customer retention?

If you’re a high-tech firm that has derived tangible business benefits from your Twitter investment, I want to hear from you!

Share with me how you’ve worked Twitter into your marketing plan *plus* the specific, measurable results you’ve achieved since its introduction… and in return your company could earn a prominent spot in an upcoming Twitter story I’m writing.

But please, no pie-in-the-sky…. Don’t tell me how Twitter helps you create “brand awareness,” or how you’ve built up a following of thousands. None of that matters if you can’t tell me how you’ve turned that into money for your firm. I need real data, practical examples, and concrete tips to make this story truly valuable and entirely different from all the other puff pieces out there.

Help out your fellow cynics. Summarize your real-life Twitter experience in a short e-mail sent to sue-at-marketinglure.com, and don’t forget to tell me how I can reach you for a follow-up interview.

Thanks in advance for your help and insight!

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.

P.S. Deadline for submissions is March 31st.

In my last article I talked about how to compile a list of possible keywords. Eventually you will have to narrow down your list and select the best keywords to focus on.

One of the most important – and often overlooked – aspects of a keyword is its search volume. That is: how many people search for that keyword in an average month?

Software programs such as WordTracker as well as Google’s Keyword Tool (available to all with Adwords accounts) will give you a good idea of the search history of the words you are considering.

Using these tools you’re likely to discover that some of your keywords only average one or two searches per month.   This clearly means that it is not worth the effort, the space or the text to optimize for these keywords because they are not being used by enough people.

But do not jump to the conclusion that you should automatically go after the keywords with the highest search volumes.  Keep in mind that a high search volume generally means high competition.  It might also mean that that the keywords have more than one meaning or they are used in multiple industries, and much of the search volume may not be from your prospects.

If your company is considering a pay-per-click campaign, going for keywords with higher search volumes could cost a lot of extra money, again because there is so much competition on these word searches. Additionally, since many of those searches will be made by people who are not looking for your product or service, your click-through rate will be lower. This can have a negative effect on your quality score (which is too much to address in this article).

I am not saying that you should turn your back on all keywords with a high search volume, but often a company’s time and energy is better spent looking at the keywords that generate a more targeted search result. These are searches that may only have a few hundred to a few thousand searches per month, but because of the competition it can mean a better chance of being found – and you have a better chance of being more relevant.  This means that these keywords will have a lower bounce rate and will convert web traffic into real customers.

On something of a side note, if you have someone else handling your search engine optimization, pay special attention to search volumes. Sometimes less-than-ethical SEO firms or people will use low-volume keywords just to generate a number one ranking. This impresses prospects and unsuspecting clients. It’s easy to get a high ranking on little used keywords. If the words “limburger cheese socks” appears on a webpage, I can guarantee that they will be number one for this phrase, but it’s meaningless because it won’t result in any traffic.

It’s easy to become obsessed with trying to be number one in searches on Google. It makes us all feel good. But if there is no traffic for the word that you are number one for, what is the point?

Do not let an obsession to be Number One cloud your judgment in picking the best keywords possible for your site.  It is far better to be ranked number ten on a high-traffic word than to be number one with “limburger cheese socks”.

Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, Google, ranking, quality score, search volume

On the subject of keywords, one of the first thoughts that many people have is that they should take their list of keywords and stuff the page with those words as many times as possible.

This is known as keyword ‘cramming’.

While it’s good to place as many keywords as useful on a page, it is very easy to go over board and do too much. In the past this was a viable strategy; however today there are several reasons that this is a bad idea.

First there is the artistic problem of converting those keywords into text that makes sense to the humans who come to the website.  Always remember your first priority is your human visitors, and it’s important to ensure they can read and enjoy what is on the website.  If there is gibberish on the page then those humans you are working so hard to attract are going to click the back button as fast as they can.

Still want to cram as many keywords as possible on to your page? A simplistic answer for this problem, for some people, is to repeat keywords at the bottom of the page.  People who do this often try to be clever and hide the words by making them the same color as the background.  Search engine companies learned about this trick several years ago, and have designed their searches to ignore this information and even to penalize sites that use this trick.

This is the second reason it doesn’t make sense to stuff keywords on a page. Search engine companies such as Google and Yahoo are constantly reworking their search programs in order to give better results to their users and thus preventing websites from cheating their way to the top of the results pages.  If the search engine sees too many of the same words and phrases over and over again it will rank a page lower in results than one without multiple repeats.  The old tricks that used to work just a few years ago are no longer effective; and worse, they make your website look unprofessional.

Many people assume that the search engines only look at words that are right next to each other.  I think that this is because in unseen code of the webpage Meta Tag Keywords you can use commas to group words and search engines do pay attention to those groupings.

However, in the visible text each time a word appears is counted towards the total count for that word.  For example, if your website uses the phrases Accounting Software, Management Software and Network Management software search engines count software three times, management twice and Network and Accounting.

It’s possible to accidentally use a keyword too often. If the same word keeps appearing over and over again search engines will start downgrading the position of the website in the search results.

The real solution is that one must carefully craft the text that goes on the website so that the keywords are there for the search engine but are easy to read for the humans who come to the site.  When editing the text always double check that each keyword does not repeat too many times.

Finding the best keywords and making the best use of them will give you better results than trying to trick or cheat your way to the top of the search results.  If your website shows old tricks the search engines may  not be your only problem. Your potential customers will wonder what tricks you might try on them.

Next week we will discuss how to settle on the best keywords.

Technorati Tags: keywords, stuffing, cramming, search engines, penalize