A few weeks ago, I wrote about how to use your first meeting with a client to understand their business and collect information that could later inform your keyword research. Now, you’re back at your desk and wondering what to do with all that information. To begin with, you should have three lists…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Earlier this week, ComScore released their latest report on online spending in 2011. And the general trend is: it’s up. The fact that Internet spending is continuing its skyward trajectory holds several implications for online businesses, both obvious and subtle.
Search Engine Journal summarized the findings like this:
“Online shoppers spent a record breaking $161.5 billion in 2011. This 13% increase over 2010 was assisted by several top-performing product categories, which each experienced a minimum of 18% growth compared to last year. Some of the top-performing categories included: digital content and subscriptions, jewelry and watches, consumer electronics, software and toys.
Mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, also contributed to the increase in sales last quarter. As a result of widespread mobile usage and strategic marketing campaigns by Amazon and other large Internet retailers, the use of price-checking apps became mainstream. These apps allow shoppers to easily research pricing, features and order from online retailers while shopping in physical stores.”
If you read this once, you may think, “Huh, interesting.” But if you read it a few more times and start to think about what this trend tells us, you may think, “VERY interesting.” Because buried in there are a few insights that can impact your online marketing strategy.
The fact that digital content and subscription-based services showed significant growth means that websites, in any niche, should at least consider this option. Digital content can be anything from E-books to videos, email newsletters and even Rss feeds. While many websites have been dabbling in creating videos, whitepapers, podcasts and the like, these purchasing patterns show that there is some potential in monetizing these items. Whether you’re an ecommerce site with tangible products or an information-based site, it may be worth considering digital content as an additional revenue stream.
At the very least this should be an impetus to launch the exploratory process. Start researching the most successful digital content and subscription-based services in your industry. Determine if you have the resources to get in the game and if it would be worth the investment. Just remember, the web is full of great free content and communities, so if you are going to ask people to pay for something, it needs to be spectacular. But the simple fact that consumer spending on digital content is on the rise indicates that if you’re willing to create something worth buying, there is likely a market for it.
The increased consumption of mobile Internet devices from smartphones to tablets is another strong indicator of the direction websites need to go. The question of whether or not you “need a mobile website” is becoming obsolete, as in there is no question anymore—the answer is yes. Reports 2 years ago were predicting that mobile web use would dominate by 2015 and we’re about halfway there. Current statistics point to 1.2 billion active mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide. The prevalence of mobile devices using broadband connections demands that websites in every market adapt to the fact that users will visiting their sites on smaller screens, and at this point, you adapt or perish.
But it also continues to propel us forward in terms of local search marketing. One of the most appealing features of the mobile web is the ability to instantly locate products and services in your immediate vicinity. For a business with a geographically-focused customer-base, there is no way around local search. Claiming your listings, optimizing them and getting online reviews is more important than ever. Rick did an amazing job of dissecting local search yesterday, so I won’t re-make his case. But I will reiterate that getting found in local search and then offering users a well-done mobile site will be the key to gaining that immediate business that can come from the use of mobile devices.
The last trend this report shares with us is the continuing need to bridge the gap between the real world and the cyber one.
This section in particular speaks to this demand:
“As a result of widespread mobile usage and strategic marketing campaigns by Amazon and other large Internet retailers, the use of price-checking apps became mainstream. These apps allow shoppers to easily research pricing, features, and order from online retailers while shopping in physical stores.”
The idea that someone can be in your store, locate the same product online, purchase it, and then leave your store without giving you a dime is somewhat scary.
But it encourages businesses, both brick-and-mortar and online alike, to find their own ways of connecting to customers, both in person and on the web. We’re forced to reconsider the question of why should someone buy here and now and from us? It seems that convenience is no longer sufficient motivation in all cases.
Beyond that, it asks us to adapt to emerging trends. Some of the most popular web-to-life connectors are mobile apps and QR codes. Creating a mobile app for your website isn’t necessarily cheap, and if it’s simply a novelty app, it may not be worth the investment. But if an app is functional, like price scanners, inventory checkers or offers additional product info or options, then it can help you generate more sales.
QR codes have the potential to drive revenue, but they are also an effective marketing tool. By including QR codes on products and advertisements, you can bring customers to a website from a flyer or you can provide them with coupons to come to a store. But you can also use them to promote future special events, charity programs or brand messaging. You can also have fun with QR codes planting “Easter eggs,” using humor or video content. With free QR code generators everywhere, this can also be a very cost effective approach to improving your marketing as well as increase business. The technology to bring online and offline experiences together is here. The opportunities in these areas may be endless, but the time to think about it is not.
These “trends” shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Predictions about the growing importance of mobile search and usability, local search, digital content, apps and QR codes started years ago. But for those looking for something more tangible than a forecast, if you follow the money, it looks like we’ve arrived. When it comes to implementing these marketing strategies the options are simple: lead, follow or lose customers to someone else.
If your online store product catalouge includes hundreds or more product SKU’s, visitors may be finding it difficult to meet their navigational needs. Although this is most commonly seen on sites belonging to multi-channel retailers, any large ecommerce site can encounter this problem. According Dave Yang in his article titled Site Search Increases Conversion Rates, Average Order Value and Loyalty, “Quality ecommerce site search has been known to dramatically increase conversion rates.”
Mr Yang goes on to show several examples of e-tailers who have seen a bump in conversions due to optimizing their site search for better usability and for conversions. How could just making changes to your internal site search make such a dramatic difference? Although on most ecommerce websites, the number of users who utilize site search relative to the total population of visitors is very low, those visitors who do use site search tend to be much farther along in the conversion process, they are looking to buy. In this post, I will cover some of the ways you can optimize the internal site search on your ecommerce site. Also, if you’re really unsatisfied with your current site search solution, I’ll lay out a process you can use to compare your various options and find a solution that will bring you results.
Zero results found handling: Make sure that for all cases where there are no results, that your internal site search offers alternative searches or options for refining search further.
Fuzzy matching, phrase matching capabilities, and spelling error tolerance: Make sure that your internal site search can provide relevant results for at least the most common mispellings for products and categories. You’d be surprised how often, internal site search serves up zero results found on search page for products actually carried by the seller. Because site search visitors tend to be high converting, this is something that may be costing you money.
Clearly label and format results page: Make sure that on the results page, the original search query is presented on the result page, both inside the search box and as a headline above all the search results for the query. This just makes sure that the visitor knows what they’re looking for. Also, it is a best practice to bold or somehow highlight where the search query appears in the results. Another formatting best practice is to number the results in your internal search.
Search Box location in template: Your search box should be located at the top right in your template, this is where visitors visually expect to find a search box.
Offer Advanced search option if warranted: Make sure that your search box is simple and streamlined. To support site structure, you’ll sometimes want to include multiple fields, for example you can add a location drop-down to your search box.
Clearly label button: Ensure that the button next to your search bar is clearly labeled and obvious to the user. Common site search button names include commands such as ‘search’ or ‘go’. I know that to some of my dear audience, this may seem obvious but it’s surprising how often simple usability concepts like these get lost during the template creation process of your web design.
In this section, I’ll discuss how one can use Analytics to get insights from site search about how to improve your site overall. After that I’ll go into optimization issues related to site search because, you know the saying, mo’ optimization, mo’ problems 
One of the main ways to improve your site using site search, beyond optimizing the site search experience for visitors, is to track your internal site search using analytics. The most common solution, available for Google Analytics product consumers, is Google site search analytics. If you are a Google Analytics user, check out the instructions for setting up site search analytics using this quick step by step guide from our friends at Google Support.
You can check out lots of cool metrics such as percentage of visitors making refinements on their initial query and the average time time on site after using your site search, including who abandoned your site after using site search. Good stuff. A while back, Avinash Kaushik wrote an awesome article on internal site search called Kick Butt With Internal Site Search Analytics, in which he wonderfully lays out the glorious Five Steps to Internal Site Search Nirvana. According to Mr. Kaushik one of the greatest misconceptions is about how many people actually use site search. He states that,”most people hugely underestimate how many people use Internal Search”. Also, Mr. Kaushik explains that it is important to investigate where visitors on your site search. The insights you can get from looking at this is spotting the pages where visitors are not finding what they need and thus, these pages are areas of opportunity for future improvements.
Additionally, you can measure internal site search quality using % Search Exits, which is the internal site search version of bounce rate. Lastly, you can generate reports on Conversion Rate, Per Visit Value, Revenue, and Average Order Size. Yum – great numbers to use to see if improving site search is worth the effort and will bring proportional ROI for the development time.
Oh My Goodness, if I had a quarter for every time I’ve seen someones internal site search results indexed in Google! Especially in these dark times of the Panda Updates, I am very frugal about what I wanna show search engines. I have seen 10,000+ pages indexed in Google of site search results. To Google, these are all low quality pages with no content. Although how to handle this issue will vary from site to site, I will mention that this is something to be on the look out for on your internal site search.
Although there are tons of free site search solutions out there from places such as Freefind , site level, and picosearch. The free versions of these tools often include ads with your search results. This is surely not how you want to represent your brand. If you don’t want the ads, you have to pay. Google also also offers a site search solution ranging from $100 to $2,000 yearly, which you can customize. You can also build your own site search using CGI programs, PERL scripts, Java applications and so on. I think that this is a very case by case issue, and it would be irresponsible to generalize about in an article. However, I will say that there are several important considerations to bear in mind as you discuss your current site search with your developer including;
Here is a great article that goes through all the technical considerations for implementing a custom site search solution, rather then the out of the box stuff.
If you don’t have an internal site search, you should consider it, and if you do, you should strongly consider making it better. In spite of the potential SEO complications, if you implement an internal site search properly the potential conversion benefits are well worth the effort.
I’m a big fan of data visualization tools. Most of the time clients don’t want to look at ugly spreadsheets nor do they want to see big data pukes. Information must be obvious and instantly actionable. Another advantage of data visualization tools, although admittedly you don’t have the flexibility to merge in different kinds of data like you would when you create charts in Excel, is that data visualization tool views are push button quick. Today, I’d like to share a couple of my favorites, some advantages and disadvantages, as well as some of the ways I use them.
SEMRush Trends Chart- I decided to start with this one because this is one of my favorite tools to see at a glance value of and power of a site. If you have a SEM Rush account, this little gem is kind of hidden on the main screen. The only way to reach it is to click on a tiny text link in the left sidebar that reads ‘<yoursite.com (more)>’, which rests on top of the little graph in SEMRush main screen. The really cool thing about this tool is that you can add in 5 compeititors and select metrics in a little drop down – you can view yourself and competitiors on metrics like number of keywords you and they rank for, SE Traffic Price (great metric that gives you an estimation of how much your keyword rankings would be worth if you where paying for them in Google Adwords), as well as a bunch of adwords related metrics.
How I Use It: What I look for in this graph is what has happened over time. Is there a sudden drop in the number of keywords in organic rankings or a sudden increase? The disadvantage of this tool is that it gives you no clickable data beyond you have the chart, you cannot drill down. You’re not able to see the actual historical keywords a site used to ranked for. I don’t lose too much sleep over this because this is a great at a glance tool where I can throw in 5 competitors and see super quickly along several metrics how they stack up against each over time in organic and in Adwords. After this, I usually move to our proprietary, super competitive tool and I can really roll up my sleeves but this tool is awesome for seeing a nice thumbnail when just starting a competitive analysis.
Spyfu Kombat - Spyfu Kombat is, on the face of it, similar to SEMRush Trends but also very different because you do get to dig into phrases that you and you competitors rank for; in fact, Kombat does some crazy parsing, so you can see what just one or both of your competitors rank for but you don’t as well as phrases all sites inputted rank for. You can then click on any of the parts of the bubble in the in the graph and you can see the parsed keyword data for that competitor, instead of having to do any wheeling and dealing to do this parsing in excel. I love easy. Spyfu will also give you a chart with competitive data. The big difference between this chart and SEMRush Trends is that SEMRush trends gives you everything a site ranks for in the top 20 and SpyFu gives you a chart for everything that ranks in the top 50. Also, SEMRush trends gives you more metrics to look using the historical chart then Spy Fu does.
How I Use It: I grab the data from the keywords that all the sites rank for and this is a super quick way to get an idea of how long the long tail is in a space. I also use this as just one way to identify keywords that competitors use but a client site may not.
SEOMoz Opensite Explorer TLD Distribution – I really like this tool for detecting the volume of not so great backlinks that a given site may have. The disadvantage of this tool is that it does not give you competitive data, unless you manually run sites though nor does it give historical data, unless you run it twice and store it locally. Nevertheless, it is one of those good quick tools, when you want to get a thumbnail view of overall site trust.
How I Use It – I know I mentioned the obvious way to use this tool is as a quick way to get an idea of the the trust of a site but I did not mention that this tools is also great for when you’re doing international SEO, you can explore how many backlinks that a site have actually come from the country TLD that the website targets. This is good to know since, links from the country related TLD and .coms, .net’s, and .org’s tend to weigh more, and this tools helps you sort through that.
Wordle Cloud - I love creating tag clouds of pretty much anything. I usually use a free tool called wordle to create them. Wordle gives you a great big text box that you can fill with any type of list item. You then hit submit and magic, you have a tag cloud with tons of formatting options, so you don’t kill the look of whatever document you’d be pasting this information into.
How I Use It: I can write a whole post about information you can throw into wordle and see what appears more then something else. One of the ways that I like to use this tool that is my favorite is to view anchor text distributions. There are a bunch of ways that you can grab anchor text data, what ever you do, the trick is to grab as much of it as possible. Also, make sure that you’re very sensitive to if you’re grabbing page level or domain level anchor text data. I prefer page level but that’s your call.
Just like averages can hide information, so can data visualizing tools. All of these tools are just a couple weapons in our arsenal – I’m picturing a ninja way with a million different awesome ninja weapons of SEO. These tools are great for providing general insights into which you can drill down into, if something looks shiny in them. These tools by no means provide a complete solution. I tend to use these tools more as inital exploratory tools rather then the answer to live, the universe, and everything. At the heart of the matter is that you absolutely must look at the same data in different ways because it will tell you different things. Especially with SEO, there is no out of the box tool suite solution that answers every SEO question that you’ve ever had about life. There are lots of tools, so paid and some freebies that give you little snippets at the whole picture and data visualization tools are little piece of that puzzle.
Have a great Friday everyone 
by Dave Cosper
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
When Apple released the iPhone 4S in November of 2011, one of the biggest splashes was made by its new intelligent speech-recognition user interface, known as Siri. It was only a beta product, imperfect, but it was still impressive in its functionality. It required no “learning” process to use. It simply worked out of the box. More or less.
Some folks dismissed Siri as a mere party trick feature. Others, including some in the search engine optimization (SEO) community, declared it to be the death knell of SEO. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Given this blog is not about party tricks, let’s examine what the advent of Siri means to web search and SEO.
First, though, a little background. Siri, a third-party technology acquired by Apple in 2010, requires either an active WiFi or 3G data connection to work. Why? Because the iPhone itself does not power Siri’s responses. The behind-the-scenes horsepower for interpreting speech and returning the desired results or requested action comes from major server resources owned by Apple. The iPhone is merely an intermediary. And in fact, so is Siri. More on that in a moment.
What Siri can do (at least as of this writing) is interesting. It can perform the following tasks for you:
Note, however, that while it can perform tasks using some built-in apps, it can’t simply open any specific app, even those built in to IOS 5! As a result, it can’t perform tasks such as sending tweets on Twitter, reading posts in Facebook, and the like. Siri supports several languages, but only partially. As of today, it understands US English, UK English, Australian English, French and German (but not Spanish!). But, more interestingly, it cannot look for any businesses outside of the US, and for people inside the US, you must be configured for US English only. This limitation also applies to maps and traffic queries as well.
The bottom line is that Siri is popular now and, by all appearances, will continue to be so. Its functionality will likely to continue to grow as well, and all of this will contribute to the fast growth of the mobile search platform.
Many bloggers and industry pundits have decried that SEO (or at least local SEO) is now dead, thanks to Siri. To that I say, “Balderdash” (I would say something stronger, but this is a professional blog). Why am I dismissive of these industry Nostradamuses ? Read on.
Part of Siri’s user popularity is due to the fact that it (usually) provides direct answers rather than a list of links containing answers (although open ended questions leading to search engine queries still provide the standard 10 blue links). The value of direct answers has not been lost on the search engines themselves. Long before Siri was released in IOS 5, both Bing and Google created Instant Answers in their search engine results pages (SERPs). But in Bing and Google, you still have the rest of the SERP to examine.
Not so with Siri results. If you ask Siri, “What is the stock price of Apple?”, Siri gives you one closing bell answer. “What’s the weather for tonight?” You get one forecast. You can even ask “How do you calculate the circumference of a circle?” and get one answer. Truth be told, you really don’t need a full SERP for these types of queries.
But what if you ask Siri an open ended question, such as “What is the best local sushi restaurant?” The resulting restaurant listings (or those concerning any local business) come from Yelp. And if you ask, “How do you drive there?”, that result comes from Google Maps. And asking, “How do you drive a stick shift?” results in a standard Google mobile SERP. You can even tell Siri to “Search Bing for ‘How do you drive a stick shift’” to see a Bing mobile SERP.
The argument for the death of SEO is that Apple is filtering the results for you. You don’t get to choose which answer is best – Apple does that for you. But go back and review the last half-dozen tasks Siri can perform from the earlier list (excepting the wise cracks). The information provided by Siri comes from known Internet data feeds. It’s true that Apple has selected which data feeds to use to provide you with the direct answer. But these feeds include modern targets of online business optimization via SEO.
For those who erroneously believe that SEO in 2012 is limited to keywords in <title> tags and submitting links to directories, yeah, I can see why they are panicking. But rest assured, professional SEO now goes far beyond basic, on-page elements. It also covers consistently used business profile data across local search venues, a targeted social media presence, and more.
Of course, having an optimized business profile in Yelp is more important than ever. To get directions to a place from Siri, the place has to be listed in Yelp. But it goes beyond that. If you ask for the closest sushi restaurant, you’ll get Yelp data sorted by distance from your location. But if you ask Siri to find the best sushi restaurant, Siri uses Yelp ratings as the sort factor. If you’re not actively monitoring and managing your Yelp business listing (among other local search venues), you are likely already ceding business to your local competitors.
Developing a comprehensive Google Places profile is important as well. If someone uses Siri to search for your information about your business, your comprehensive Google Places profile will likely be at the top of the SERP. Your accurate business address will enable Google Maps to send people to your door.
And frankly, keyword optimization remains an important SEO factor with Siri searches, as getting in the top 10 listing in a Google SERP will still be important when SERPs are shown (especially when above the “fold” really means positions 1 or 2) . Besides, human speech requests are now search queries, and that opens potential new keyword opportunities. As proof of concept, try using Siri to search for an open ended informational web search and phrase it in multiple ways. You’ll likely find that each request produces different SERP results (I saw this in my testing). Spoken words are still query keywords, and keywords (and their order) still matter in search. Think about which keywords you target, especially in the long tail. Casual speech is typically not as well-formed or formal as written text, and you want to be discoverable for as many possible relevant queries as possible.
The Pay Per Click (PPC) story is still being written as we speak. In my testing, I noted that it was pretty hard to get Siri to show a SERP with PPC ads. Anytime you wanted information about products or services for sale, local businesses, or the like, you got ad-free Yelp results rather than Google SERPs. This diminishes the impact of buying search ads to help drive business, at least on mobile devices. If you work at it, you can get Siri to generate SERPs with PPC ads on the top (not on the side, however), but it was harder than I expected it to be.
Technically, if Google decides that Siri queries are costing it money by not showing SERPs with the full complement of PPC ads in response to popular queries, it could easily decide to block queries from the Apple user agent that runs Siri. At that point, Apple would need to decide whether it can afford to have Google block all iPhone users from accessing its deep, massive search index (including maps) that it depends on now. Then again, can Google strategically afford to abandon providing search services to such a fast-growing market segment as the iPhone? Something’s gotta give.
Some have suggested that Apple will simply become a search engine itself. These folks claim Apple could buy Yelp and other data feeds in order to stop relying on third-party data sources. I frankly find that idea to be absurd. The notion that Apple could become a search engine is simply unfounded. Even if Apple could buy Yelp or some equivalent data sources, such an acquisition does not a search engine make. Apple has no algorithm for ranking content (the Yelp data feed does that for them, as do search engine queries, and the remaining data feeds are single response feeds). Relevance is key to successful search results, and Apple has no known relevance algorithm for ranking content pages, not to mention a search crawler and an indexing engine.
Besides, Apple has always staked its flag in the ground of providing the best possible user experience. Losing access to the Google index and simply relying on secondary or tertiary data feed for Siri searches will certainly degrade the iPhone user experience and disappoint its users to no end. And if Android was the smartphone you needed to buy to access Google data, the potential loss of marketshare threat to the iPhone platform would be even more real for Apple than it is already. On the other hand, Google has to be careful about cavalierly blocking the iPhone platform due to anti-trust concerns. It’s all a big mess.
In the end, we’ll get some sort of agreement to work this out. But in the meantime, we as SEOs and webmasters need to do smart optimization for our online business presences. We need to increase investment in local SEO (not only in Yelp, but Google Places and others – who knows which data feed Apple will adopt next when they expand the Siri functionality?). We also need to continue to develop mobile-friendly websites. And lastly, we need to work on keyword targeting that specifically addresses spoken-word, long tail terms.
Is SEO a waste of time, money and effort, now that Siri is here? No. Mobile is indeed becoming a dominant platform for Internet searches. But as you saw in the Siri task list above, Apple is not curating the data feeds it uses, nor are they mysteriously sourced. We know from where they are getting their data.
Ultimately, Siri is not a search engine. It’s just another search interface. SEO can and will adapt to the challenges posed by Siri and all mobile searches just as it always has in the ever-changing search landscape. This work has become even more important when building a discoverable brand on the web, especially when you use interface agents like Siri. SEO is not dead – far from it. In fact, it’s now more important than ever to being found on the web, regardless of the user interface used to search.
This guest post is by Bill Achola of SeoArticleWriteService.com.
It would be great if the only purpose of your copywriting was to sell your products. Unfortunately your copy often has to serve two purposes: attracting visitors to your site, and then selling to them.
Attracting traffic using copy requires using search engine optimizing techniques, and adding keywords. Using the topic of baby food, in this post we will look at a few ways to include keywords in your copy.
The key to successful keyword optimizing in your copy is to keep it natural. As Greg McFarlane points out in his post Why Bieber SEO Copywriting Sex Doesn’t iPad Work Minecraft, people often make the mistake of overloading the text with keywords, and replacing every generic key term with the keyword or phrase. This will not give you high-quality persuasive copy, as you can see in the following example.
Keyword = baby foods
As new mothers we all want our babies to have the best baby foods; we spend a lot of time researching good baby foods recipes and making sure we buy high-quality baby foods. Giving your child a good start in life with healthy baby foods ad not giving them baby foods that they are not ready for, is one of the major concerns of new parents.
The above example is not only annoying to read, parts of it have been made grammatically incorrect in an attempt to use the keyword as often as possible. While you might get a lot of traffic to your website from parents searching for the keyword “baby foods,” they will quickly move onto another site when they start reading.
Make sure you select your keywords carefully so that they fit in easily with the subject of your copywriting. This will improve the flow of your copy, increasing your sales conversions.
Here are three ways to include keywords naturally.
It can be hard to fit a long keyword phrase into your copywriting. I was once asked to use the key phrase “baby food recipes 6 months.” This is an awkward phrase to use altogether, but it works well when split up by punctuation. Search engines read straight punctuation marks such as full stops, commas and colons so think how you can use these to split your keyword phrase.
Keyword phrase = baby food recipes 6 months
Look no further for tasty and healthy baby food recipes. 6 months is the perfect time to start introducing your bay to new tastes and textures.
The above example keeps the keyword phrase intact so it will be recognized by the search engines, but does not seem out of place or awkward.
Some phrases are difficult to include because they are singular when you would usually use a plural or vice versa. Adding words to the end of the phrase can help you overcome this problem as well as giving you inspiration for your writing.
Keyword = food for baby
Adding a word or two to the end of this phrase makes it less grammatically awkward and helps you to fit it into your copy writing sounding repetitive.
Take the example of the keyword “cheap baby food.” When a parent enters this search term they are looking for good value, high-quality baby food that they do not have to pay very much for.
However, if you describe your product as cheap baby food, it will give the impression that it is poor quality, and therefore not great for their precious child. Avoid this by using the keyword to describe what your product is not.
Keyword = cheap baby food
Try out one of our healthy, easy-to-make recipes as an alternative cheap baby food. Once you’ve tasted one of these nutritious homemade meals, you’ll never want to feed your little one cheap baby food again.
Using the above techniques will ensure your copywriting remains natural and that you don’t have to sacrifice quality to keyword density.
A final tip: write your copy first and then go back with your keywords in mind and place them where appropriate. This will make your copy flow more naturally, and will appeal both to your readers and the search engines.
Visit the blog at SeoArticleWriteService.com to learn how Bill Achola can write high conventional marketing content for bloggers and affiliate marketers.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Build Keyword Density the Right Way
Who wants to be listed as the Number 1 link in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs)? (I assume you all do; otherwise, why are you reading this blog?) We all invest lots of time and money to achieve this often elusive goal. But why? The theory is that you typically get a dramatically higher click-through rate (CTR) in position 1 compared to links in lesser positions. At least, that is the common perception.
There were several studies published on this issue in 2011. Depending upon which study you read, the actual results can be dramatically different. How does it apply to you? First you need to realize that the studies are generic CTR numbers based on averaged values from large, aggregated samples. Then consider these mitigating factors:
Given all of the above, the applicability of the data is even less clear.
No one disputes that position 1 on page 1 is the coveted spot in the SERPs. Furthermore, after position 1, the CTR of the lesser page positions steadily decline in value, although the CTR differentiation between positions flattens out as you go down the line. These declining numbers define the now famous SERP CTR Curve. (Of course, occupying the top position only has business value if you actually convert the visitors who come to your page, but that’s another post — or book, to be honest).
What is in dispute is exactly how valuable the top position is from the other positions in the SERP. Note that we are specifically talking about page 1 of the SERP. The CTR Curve of lower pages is far more volatile. But how dramatic is the CTR boost for a position 1 listing? As in everything in life, it depends.
So let’s look at a tale of two CTR studies and see how they compare. We’ll examine SERP positions, their associated average CTRs, and then we’ll review the various other factors that should also be considered as you fret about either earning or keeping your top-ranking position in the Google SERPs.
An organic click-through rate study conducted during the holiday season in 2010 by Optify examined 250 sites and between 200 and 1,000 keywords (filtered down from an initial 10,000). They concluded that the top spot in the Google SERPs gets on average 36.4% of all clicks. A link at the Number 2 position sees a drop in the CTR to an average of just 12.5%, and it continues to decline from there. See all of their results for the top 20 positions in the table below:
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As a result, the Optify CTR Curve shakes out like this:
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Another CTR study conducted by Slingshot SEO in late spring of 2011 examined more than 200 major retailer & enterprise sites using 324 keywords (from a starting list of more than 10,000). They looked at both Google and Bing results during the same time period (H1 of 2011), and while both companies shared 91 clients with 108 keywords, the results are quite different (and different overall from the Optify study). With both search engines, Slingshot SEO concluded that the CTR differentiation of the top spot compared to lesser spots was not nearly as large as earlier studies indicated. The data for the top 10 from each search engine is shown below:
| The CTR Curves for the Slingshot SEO study:
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It’s clear that attaining the top position in the SERPs of either Bing or Google offers you the best opportunity to get visitors to your site. It’s also clear that if you don’t make it into the first list of ten blue links on Page 1, then not only is it hard to get clicks from search, things are largely up for grabs, CTR-wise, regardless of position (per the Optify study; Slingshot SEO did not publish CTR numbers beyond position 10). Indeed, per the Optify study, the top link on Page 2, the Number 11 spot, is actually a more valuable position in terms of CTR than Number 10, the last spot on the first SERP page (but just barely). Additionally, when searchers actually make it past Page 1 of the SERP (which is not often), then the specific position of a blue link on Page 2 is much less critical for CTR. For example, position 14 appears to be the least effective spot, on average, in the list!
What’s different between the studies is how high the CTR is per rank position in Google (Bing was not addressed in the Optify study). Slingshot SEO, whose study demonstrated a surprisingly low CTR rate across the board, was done after the Optify study. They speculated the reasons for their different data (which also contradicts many earlier CTR studies, including the now famous 2006 AOL data leak study) was based on factors such as non-holiday timing (that may have affected the Optify study), blended searches, algorithm updates, user interface changes, the growing influence of mobile search, and social media.
Both studies posited that the richer SERPs of today are to some degree peeling off clicks from the organic results. New options such as “Related searches” in the Bing sidebar, PPC search ads, query refinements, instant answers, and media content from blended searches are likely negatively affecting the CTR for organic SERP traffic.
There are many other, additional CTR factors in the Google SERPs that have been identified. For example, according to a whitepaper published this year by SEO Effect, if a blue link is tagged with a Google +1 button (you have to be logged in to a Google account to see it), it receives an increased number of clicks, regardless of where the link falls in the SERP list. This is likely due to the higher level of trust engendered by the social +1 endorsement. To further cement that concept, if the people who clicked the +1 button for a link are in your Google +1 social circles, you’ll also see their names in the SERP listing with that link. Regardless of how Google ranks the link, your friends think it’s worthwhile, and that is a powerfully compelling instigator of social trust. Which link would you click first?
A recent study by Distilled (and published in the SEOmoz blog) about the power of Wikipedia as a brand showed why they are often near the top, if not the very top, ranked site for informational queries. The study revealed that SERP results pointing to Wikipedia.org often command their own very high level of CTR, even when they are not ranked #1 for a query. If your site is competing against a Wikipedia page for SERP traffic, you’ll likely have a built-in handicap.
That said, another interesting element of the Wikipedia Effect is the coattails result it has. When a Wikipedia link is not in the position 1 spot, its lower placement in the SERP also draws higher levels of searcher attention (as well as their clicks) to other, lower position links near it.
The same study referenced above by Distilled also delved into how much a well-written snippet mattered for clicks. (The snippet is the descriptive text shown beneath the blue link in a SERP, commonly derived from the page’sdescription tag.) The study author admitted he anticipated a large, clearly identifiable difference. His testing, however, only showed a very modest difference between a well-written snippet and one algorithmically created by Google when nodescription tag existed.
He did say, however, that his testing was based on the responses of a largely overseas audience (Mechanical Turk) to a product for which they may have no familiarity. He said that an overtly sales-oriented snippet did not perform well for informational queries (at least with his international test audience), which indicates the audience was reading and assessing the value and relevance of the snippet text. Indeed, the fact that a large majority of searchers, on average, do NOT click the top listing in the SERP demonstrates the value of this content. The adjacent link CTR lift from the Wikipedia Effect further solidifies this position.
If page metadata was not relevant to searchers, the top ranking link in a SERP would take a far greater number of clicks. Searchers would have no way to evaluate the relevance of a link, and would simply trust Google’s judgment on the matter. But clearly they are more often than not doing some level of refinement of the SERP list when choosing a link to click.
So what do we do with all of this data? Well, we can fully trust that being on the first page of the Google SERP is most advantageous position for receiving clicks, and the higher the rank on Page 1, the more clicks you can expect to get, on average. This is especially true in position 1. That said, there are many mitigating factors that affect the average CTR per ranking position. These include the following:
This guest post is by Herman Dias of SEOsoeasy.com.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will have heard about the Google Panda update and what it did to many low-quality websites last year. It was more like a Google sniper attack on all the spam and rubbish sites. Honestly, this does not seem to be the end of the Panda: there is more to come, and we need to watch out.
The whole reason Google made these changes was to give Google users a good experience when they use Google search, and why not? When I look for something on Google the last thing I would want to see is rubbish information.
That is why, as SEO marketers, we need to take a different approach to ranking on Google and driving free organic traffic to our sites. If you have done any kind of SEO, you know what the key principles of ranking on Google are.
These are the core principles of SEO, and they may get you on page one of Google, but you won’t stay there for very long. You have to do more and more of what the big G wants.
Google has started giving social media a lot of importance. It rewards sites that incorporate the core SEO principles and social media strategies by ranking them on page one and keeping them there. In fact, I think last year was the start of the cleanup process by Google. So if you think you got away without incorporating social media to rank on Google, you’d better make the change now or you may be surprised.
In the near future, you won’t be able to just pick keywords, optimize your site, and build links, and expect to rank on page one and stay there. Your site probably will rank on page one, but it won’t be there very long.
You really have to incorporate social media into your SEO efforts to rank and stay on page one. Here’s how you need do it.
These steps will not only help your rank on the search engines fast—and get traffic from them—but they’ll also help you attract traffic from social media sites. These visitors will then have the option of liking your page on Facebook, tweeting your post, giving your page a +1 on Google, subscribing to your YouTube channel, and commenting on your blog post.
This process plays a very important role in ranking on the first page of Google, fast. It will not only create extra traffic and user-generated content, but it will also create backlinks naturally, as well as a community of people who will visit your site often.
This is exactly what Google is looking for. It wants to see activity on your sites; it wants interaction between people; it wants to see fresh, good-quality content; it wants to see quality sites backlinking to your site; it wants to see how long people spend on your site.
For this entire process to work successfully you need to create a three-month plan and execute it carefully.
Please note there are many more backlinking sources you can use to build backlinks—consider directory links, blog contextual links, blog comments, and video directory links, for example. You don’t need to stick to the ones I’ve mentioned above.
But make sure whatever method of backlinking you choose, you use it consistently. That’s why I prefer picking a few sources that have worked for me and using them for about three months. Then I introduce the other back-link sources.
Now’s the time to integrate social media into your SEO plans. If you follow this process, you will see some good ranking in Google and other search engines—as well as decent traffic from Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and YouTube.
Here is a live free case study were Herman Dias shares the exact same method of How to Rank on Page One of Google in 15 days . He also likes writing on topics related to SEO Tips, blogging, list building, traffic strategies and other Internet Marketing Topics.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Your Social Media and SEO Game Plan for 2012
In October of this past year I had the luck to be able to visit Kharkov, Ukraine to speak at Optimization 2011. While there I was lucky enough to be able to hang out with one of my very favorite SEO’s in the world, Ann Smarty. The following month Ann and her husband were able to come over to the USA to visit me and the office of the Ninjas. Now I’ve met a lot of Internet Marketers in my day, but there are few internet marketing experts that are as knowledgeable, personable, professional, and as sweet, as Ann…. I knew that I’d be lucky to have her on my team, and after a few talks, it was settled, and Ann has now joined Internet Marketing Ninjas.
I have admired and been a fan of Ann’s writing and work for years. I’m sure most of my readers as well are familiar with Ann and her writing over the years. Ann has written a lot on her own blog at SEOSmarty.com and she’s written for several other blogs including SEOmoz, Mashable, Search Engine Journal, Social Media Examiner and others….and now she will be blogging for the Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog. Yeah!!!!!
I believe she’s tested and reviewed about every internet marketing tool in the world, and that knowledge and experience is key to our business (we love tools…and one day we will release many public tools again). Ann has also written extensively on link building, social media marketing, and several other areas of internet marketing that our company is now highly involved in. This knowledge and experience will greatly assist our growing business
Ann will be assisting us with writing on our blog, assisting us in our social media, and assisting us on our tool development….to say that I’m excited about Ann working with us is an understatement…it’s more like a dream come true…
Oh…and in case you missed it, we also announced on Tuesday that Rick DeJarnette Joined the Ninjas as well! Rick is a Former Bing Webmaster Center Blogger and Bing SEO Consultant and will be blogging and assisting our social media and our SEO Analysis team.
It is truly an honor for me to announce that Ann Smarty is now on the Internet Marketing Ninja Team. Look out world….because I’m Feeling Lucky…and I’m surrounding myself with some of the best people and minds that I know of…
Read the full press release on Ann Smarty joining the Internet Marketing Ninjas!
