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 PRW eb 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.

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Properly Formatting Your Press Release for Maximum Impact - Part I

Jon Glick is one of the leading experts on search, having literally both wrote the code at leading search engines and later becoming an SEO professional. I remember speaking with him in 2004 at the Ghost Bar in Las Vegas and it was perhaps the most fascinating conversation about search I have ever been part of. I have wanted to interview him for years & just recently was able to. In some past interviews (like this one ) you have highlighted how Google’s key strength is perhaps brand rather than relevancy. After seeing Yahoo! bow out of the search game do you still hold that same opinion? What do you think of the Bing brand? Brand is still Google’s strongest competitive asset in search. It means that to get someone to switch you have to be significantly better than they are, which is a tall order. Bing is the first search offering from MSFT that is in the same league with Google, so it’s more about branding and positioning than objective quality at this point. If Bing was a standalone brand they wouldn’t have a chance, but it has the advantage of default positioning in IE, so for now it just has to be close enough that people won’t swap it out. Over time Bing may evolve some interesting differentiation from Google, but that’s not really the case right now (at least it seems to be pressuring Google to experiment/innovate a bit more). It’s been quite a while since using a MSFT product was “cool” and Bing has that drag on its brand. Some of the new upstarts entering the search game believe that perhaps the thinning of the herd is creating an entry opportunity? Have you checked out Blekko yet? Any other new general search projects interest you? Google rose to prominence during the dot-com bust when the existing players were quite disinterested in search, since at the time (pre-PPC) it was money loser. Search is so ridiculously lucrative right now that any promising technology that starts to get traction or buzz is likely to be quickly acquired by one of the major players as a blocking measure. Google’s rumored attempt to acquire Cuil for $80MM pre-launch is an example. There is an opportunity, but it’s more about getting bought out for a sweet price than taking down the SEs. There is also so much manual tuning in search these days that even a great system will take a lot of effort to return great results. “Plumber OR Pipefitter” is a Boolean query, “Portland OR Plumber” is not, and someone’s got to build code to recognize that. This is where the existing players have a huge legacy advantage. Looking at new search technologies I’m very cautious about those that ask users to do more work in return for better results. Search is a low-intensity activity that people don’t really want to learn or spend time on. This is where an approach like WA (that Bing is also aiming towards) looks interesting. We’d all like search to be like the computer from Star Trek that gives you back exactly the answer/data you ask for. The complication with this, beyond the technical issues, is what benefit it has for the webmasters (i.e. why should I let you crawl/index my site). Current SEs take your data for their use, but provide traffic in return, which an answering system would not. You are one of the few guys who literally wrote the relevancy algorithms & then later worked in the SEO space. Do you consider the roles to be primarily complimentary or adversarial? So is SEO good or bad for SEs? On the whole I think it’s a benefit for them. From an algo perspective it’s a lot easier to determine the intent of a well SEO’d page. The SEs give webmasters a lot of tools and encourage them to use them because it makes search better. 301 your pages so we know where the content went, let us know what parameters don’t impact page content so we don’t get caught in robot traps, tell us what language your page is in using the metatags so we don’t have to guess, etc. If one of these tools ends up being a net negative, SEs can always change how they treat it (NoFollow), or just start ignoring it all together (Keywords MetaTag). This is not to say that a lot of work doesn’t have to be put into removing spam and factoring out overly aggressive optimization, but it’s a lot less than what they’d need to do if no one SEO’d. Given your experience on both sides of the table, do you feel that ranking great in other search engines is like stealing candy from a baby, or is it still hard? What aspects of the SEO process do you find most challenging? For SEO-ing established businesses it’s not a slam dunk, but it is still possible to generate very strong returns. At Become.com we have dozens of people working on SEO in a very organized manner and paybacks on investing effort are better than almost any other aspect of our business. The challenging part is the innate volatility of SEO and the fact that ultimately the SEs control our destiny. You can put together a great growth plan, and then watch an algo update like MayDay shred it. For the spammers, it’s like stealing candy from a sleeping Doberman. It’s easy until the Doberman wakes up. Does your experience allow you to just look at a search result and almost instantly know why something is ranked? If so, what are the key things SEOs should study / work on to help gain that level of understanding? I wish. There is always some pattern recognition that comes from experience (i.e. this is a collage site), but there are so many nuances in the code and off-page stuff that it’s not always instant, you just get better at knowing what to look for. The real learning comes from looking at pages that are ranking well for no obvious reason and seeing what they are doing. It’s no secret why apple is #1 for “ipod nano,” but what is that site I haven’t heard of doing right to get the #5 position? Also if we see a competitor suddenly see a step-function traffic lift we look to see what they changed/added that the SEs seem to be liking. Back in 2006 you highlighted the rise of some of the MFA collage websites. In 2010 content mills are featured in the press almost every week. Are you surprised how far it has went & how long it has lasted? I think Google actually likes folks like Demand Media. What they are doing is seeing where GG’s users are looking for something and not finding it, then plugging that hole. It may not be the Pulitzer Prize-winning content, but it allows users to find something and thus makes Google more useful and universal. When better content comes along those pages will slip down, but they serve a purpose in Google’s ecosystem. Collage websites (stitch sites in Yahoo! parlance) are another story entirely. They add virtually no value and are pretty much spam IMO. The difficulty is in detecting and eradicating them as fast as they can be robo-created. You mentioned looking at the aboutness of a site for Become.com when judging links. Do you think broad general search engines care about link relevancy? Personally, I have not seen it have much of an impact, which is a shame. I think the main reason is that it is quite difficult for general SEs to judge which site relationships are meaningful, and which are not. For example, a golf course might get links from a real estate site; golf and real estate might be classified as very different verticals, but the links are quite relevant because the real estate agent is pointing out one of the benefits of the community. As a result link relevancy has become more about avoiding bad neighborhoods (3Ps, link farms, etc.) than finding good ones. How important do you think temporal analysis is in judging the quality and authenticity of a link profile? It’s certainly a red flag if a site gains too many links too quickly. The same is true if the profile of the links looks unnatural. If all your new links are coming from PR3-PR4 blog sites, something’s off. If bloggers are suddenly that interested in you wouldn’t a lot of PR0 comments exist, FB mentions, tweets, and a few higher PR press mentions? At Yahoo! sites that got a sudden upsurge in inlinks were classed as “spike” sites. Legit spike sites (ex. the website of some unknown who wins an Olympic medal) have typical hallmarks like temporally-linked mentions in media sites that you can’t buy access to (AP, NYT, Time, etc.). The spikes that are blackhatted look totally different. In an interview a couple years ago Priyank Garg mentioned Yahoo! looked at the link’s location on a page. Do you feel other search engines take this into account? All of the major SEs have been doing boilerplate stripping for a while. They recognize footers, rail nav., etc. and look at those links differently. Also, SEs will only follow a limited number of links per page. They typically collect all the links, remove the checksum dups (note: if your links vary by even one parameter they will not be deduped at this phase), and follow the first N links from the code. None of the SEs will say exactly what N is, but it’s probably somewhere between 75 and 300 links (Google recommends you have

Excerpt from: 
Jon Glick Interview

Jon Glick is one of the leading experts on search, having literally both wrote the code at leading search engines and later becoming an SEO professional. I remember speaking with him in 2004 at the Ghost Bar in Las Vegas and it was perhaps the most fascinating conversation about search I have ever been part of. I have wanted to interview him for years & just recently was able to. In some past interviews (like this one ) you have highlighted how Google’s key strength is perhaps brand rather than relevancy. After seeing Yahoo! bow out of the search game do you still hold that same opinion? What do you think of the Bing brand? Brand is still Google’s strongest competitive asset in search. It means that to get someone to switch you have to be significantly better than they are, which is a tall order. Bing is the first search offering from MSFT that is in the same league with Google, so it’s more about branding and positioning than objective quality at this point. If Bing was a standalone brand they wouldn’t have a chance, but it has the advantage of default positioning in IE, so for now it just has to be close enough that people won’t swap it out. Over time Bing may evolve some interesting differentiation from Google, but that’s not really the case right now (at least it seems to be pressuring Google to experiment/innovate a bit more). It’s been quite a while since using a MSFT product was “cool” and Bing has that drag on its brand. Some of the new upstarts entering the search game believe that perhaps the thinning of the herd is creating an entry opportunity? Have you checked out Blekko yet? Any other new general search projects interest you? Google rose to prominence during the dot-com bust when the existing players were quite disinterested in search, since at the time (pre-PPC) it was money loser. Search is so ridiculously lucrative right now that any promising technology that starts to get traction or buzz is likely to be quickly acquired by one of the major players as a blocking measure. Google’s rumored attempt to acquire Cuil for $80MM pre-launch is an example. There is an opportunity, but it’s more about getting bought out for a sweet price than taking down the SEs. There is also so much manual tuning in search these days that even a great system will take a lot of effort to return great results. “Plumber OR Pipefitter” is a Boolean query, “Portland OR Plumber” is not, and someone’s got to build code to recognize that. This is where the existing players have a huge legacy advantage. Looking at new search technologies I’m very cautious about those that ask users to do more work in return for better results. Search is a low-intensity activity that people don’t really want to learn or spend time on. This is where an approach like WA (that Bing is also aiming towards) looks interesting. We’d all like search to be like the computer from Star Trek that gives you back exactly the answer/data you ask for. The complication with this, beyond the technical issues, is what benefit it has for the webmasters (i.e. why should I let you crawl/index my site). Current SEs take your data for their use, but provide traffic in return, which an answering system would not. You are one of the few guys who literally wrote the relevancy algorithms & then later worked in the SEO space. Do you consider the roles to be primarily complimentary or adversarial? So is SEO good or bad for SEs? On the whole I think it’s a benefit for them. From an algo perspective it’s a lot easier to determine the intent of a well SEO’d page. The SEs give webmasters a lot of tools and encourage them to use them because it makes search better. 301 your pages so we know where the content went, let us know what parameters don’t impact page content so we don’t get caught in robot traps, tell us what language your page is in using the metatags so we don’t have to guess, etc. If one of these tools ends up being a net negative, SEs can always change how they treat it (NoFollow), or just start ignoring it all together (Keywords MetaTag). This is not to say that a lot of work doesn’t have to be put into removing spam and factoring out overly aggressive optimization, but it’s a lot less than what they’d need to do if no one SEO’d. Given your experience on both sides of the table, do you feel that ranking great in other search engines is like stealing candy from a baby, or is it still hard? What aspects of the SEO process do you find most challenging? For SEO-ing established businesses it’s not a slam dunk, but it is still possible to generate very strong returns. At Become.com we have dozens of people working on SEO in a very organized manner and paybacks on investing effort are better than almost any other aspect of our business. The challenging part is the innate volatility of SEO and the fact that ultimately the SEs control our destiny. You can put together a great growth plan, and then watch an algo update like MayDay shred it. For the spammers, it’s like stealing candy from a sleeping Doberman. It’s easy until the Doberman wakes up. Does your experience allow you to just look at a search result and almost instantly know why something is ranked? If so, what are the key things SEOs should study / work on to help gain that level of understanding? I wish. There is always some pattern recognition that comes from experience (i.e. this is a collage site), but there are so many nuances in the code and off-page stuff that it’s not always instant, you just get better at knowing what to look for. The real learning comes from looking at pages that are ranking well for no obvious reason and seeing what they are doing. It’s no secret why apple is #1 for “ipod nano,” but what is that site I haven’t heard of doing right to get the #5 position? Also if we see a competitor suddenly see a step-function traffic lift we look to see what they changed/added that the SEs seem to be liking. Back in 2006 you highlighted the rise of some of the MFA collage websites. In 2010 content mills are featured in the press almost every week. Are you surprised how far it has went & how long it has lasted? I think Google actually likes folks like Demand Media. What they are doing is seeing where GG’s users are looking for something and not finding it, then plugging that hole. It may not be the Pulitzer Prize-winning content, but it allows users to find something and thus makes Google more useful and universal. When better content comes along those pages will slip down, but they serve a purpose in Google’s ecosystem. Collage websites (stitch sites in Yahoo! parlance) are another story entirely. They add virtually no value and are pretty much spam IMO. The difficulty is in detecting and eradicating them as fast as they can be robo-created. You mentioned looking at the aboutness of a site for Become.com when judging links. Do you think broad general search engines care about link relevancy? Personally, I have not seen it have much of an impact, which is a shame. I think the main reason is that it is quite difficult for general SEs to judge which site relationships are meaningful, and which are not. For example, a golf course might get links from a real estate site; golf and real estate might be classified as very different verticals, but the links are quite relevant because the real estate agent is pointing out one of the benefits of the community. As a result link relevancy has become more about avoiding bad neighborhoods (3Ps, link farms, etc.) than finding good ones. How important do you think temporal analysis is in judging the quality and authenticity of a link profile? It’s certainly a red flag if a site gains too many links too quickly. The same is true if the profile of the links looks unnatural. If all your new links are coming from PR3-PR4 blog sites, something’s off. If bloggers are suddenly that interested in you wouldn’t a lot of PR0 comments exist, FB mentions, tweets, and a few higher PR press mentions? At Yahoo! sites that got a sudden upsurge in inlinks were classed as “spike” sites. Legit spike sites (ex. the website of some unknown who wins an Olympic medal) have typical hallmarks like temporally-linked mentions in media sites that you can’t buy access to (AP, NYT, Time, etc.). The spikes that are blackhatted look totally different. In an interview a couple years ago Priyank Garg mentioned Yahoo! looked at the link’s location on a page. Do you feel other search engines take this into account? All of the major SEs have been doing boilerplate stripping for a while. They recognize footers, rail nav., etc. and look at those links differently. Also, SEs will only follow a limited number of links per page. They typically collect all the links, remove the checksum dups (note: if your links vary by even one parameter they will not be deduped at this phase), and follow the first N links from the code. None of the SEs will say exactly what N is, but it’s probably somewhere between 75 and 300 links (Google recommends you have

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Jon Glick Interview

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics - Disreli We get presented with graphs and statistics every day. “Most SEOs think keywords in the title tag is an important ranking factor.” “Spending on search to rise by $10b”. Ever get that feeling that what you’re being presented with sounds plausible, but the conclusion just doesn’t make sense? Here are a few common ways people try to pull the wool over your eyes with statistics. Some you’ll be familiar with. If you’ve got more, add ‘em to the comments 1. Built In Bias The sample data supports an obvious agenda. For example, a company is hardly likely to show a graph that shows their product has produced negative results. Try to determine the bias of the person or organisation presenting the data - “what would they want me to hear”? then ask yourself: “what data are they not showing me?” 2. The Average The media loves to state “the average”, then neglect to tell you which average they are talking about. For example, the average house price for an area could both be 500K and 200K, depending on what type of average is being used. They could be referring to either the mean , the median or the mode . They often mix these up, depending on what conclusion they want you to reach. 3. Inadequate Sample Size 20% of web designers make over $1M. That may be true if the sample size consisted of ten highest earning people in the industry, and two people just happen to have had a great year. But what if the sample size is all those who practice web design for a living? The outcome may be somewhat different. 4. Meaningless Differences A difference is only a difference if it makes a difference. Potential employee Jill may have an IQ of 120, and potential employee Jack may have an IQ of 118, but does that really mean anything? What if Jill has an attitude problem, and Jack is a great conversationalist? Who would be the better hire? 5. Oh My God! Al Gore loves this one. The graph that shows some astonishing change in the status quo. The impression is one of significant movement and is meant to shock an audience. However, if the chart appears in a different context - say, over a longer time period - the rise may not look all that unusual. You often see this in stock price quotes. You could also change the measurement into smaller units, thus making any movement in the graph look even more impressive. 6. What You Infer Is Up To You If you can’t prove what you want to prove, prove something else and pretend they are the same thing. Often used in the alternative medicine industry. They may not be able to prove that their natural products cure cancer, but they can say that the plant extract has been used by some remote tribe, and they have a proven historical low incidence of cancer. 7. Post Hoc A study found students who smoked got lower grades. The fallacy of one thing not following the other i.e. smoking doesn’t cause bad grades. Frequently, other factors are left out i.e. the students who smoked also tended to be party animals. Look out for correlations that happen by chance. 8. Data Precision Quoting specific numbers, especially including decimals points, can look authoritative. “Real estate values up 4.95%” Why would someone be so precise if they didn’t know their stuff? The numbers can be wild guesses, but accuracy gives an air of authority. General Tips For Spotting The Lies Ask “who says so?” Are they likely to be biased? If experts are cited, check to see if those experts actually agree with the conclusions. Often, they do not. Ask “How do they know”? Is the sample size really large enough, or relevant enough, to draw conclusions? Look To See If They Change The Subject. Look for a change between the raw data and the conclusion. Does one follow the other? For example, more reported incidences of crime do not necessarily mean there is more crime occurring. Ask “Does this make sense?” - are they trying to blind you with numbers? If the conclusion just sounds wrong, look for a disconnect between the data and the conclusion If you want to delve deeper in to How To Lie With Statistics , grab the little book of the same name. It’s getting a bit dated now - it was written in 1954 - but the advice and examples are great

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How To Lie With Statistics

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.

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11 Ways you Can Maximize Keyword Exposure without Sacrificing your Content

by Stoney deGeyter Finding keywords is easy. Finding the right keywords, organizing them into optimizable groups, and determining where and how they get optimized into the site is another story all together. Generally, keyword research is done at the hands of the SEO. Taking those keywords and integrating them into the content is the job of the Copywriter. Under most circumstances, you want defer to the person who has the strongest skills for each particular task. Let the SEO determine which keywords are best, and let the Copywriter work them into the page. But, when it comes to actually deciding which chosen keywords make it into any particular body of content, the Copywriter needs to have final say. The SEO often chooses keywords based on things like popularity, importance, and ability to convert. All very important factors, and very likely the keywords that the site needs for optimization. But, sometimes keywords are chosen incorrectly. Sometimes the keyword selection process is circumvented by someone else. Perhaps a boss has a “pet” keyword they want to rank for because they said so. Don’t laugh, it happens. One of the most common ways to choose a keyword incorrectly is based on competitor usage. While you may want to analyze your competition to see what keywords they are targeting as part of their SEO efforts, you don’t want to automatically use a phrase or keyword that they did, just because they did. I’ve seen this time and time again. A client says, “We need to rank for “x” because my competitor is.” A little research will show that this particular phrase gets little to no search volume, but none of that matters to the client. Getting good rankings for that keyword may work, but there may be others that would work better. So, is it worth taking the focus off of other keywords that are likely to be more effective to focus on others just because a competitor is using them? The answer is no, it’s not. Choosing single-word terms is tempting due to the search volume those terms have. Clients often choose these words on that basis alone. Single-word terms are not only difficult to rank for, they generally produce very poor conversions as well. Still, they are tempting targets for business owners who see dollar signs in every potential visit. But, instead of creating dollars, these keywords steal profits away through efforts that are better invested in other places. I mentioned above that the ultimate decision of a keyword being worked into the page should be that of the Copywriter. Sometimes a keyword can hit all the right criteria, but when it comes to actually working it into the content, it simply doesn’t work. This can be for any number of issues, such as it containing a poor qualifier (which depicts a benefit that isn’t offered), or it’s simply an industry term that just isn’t a match for the rest of the user-focused content. The Copywriter’s job isn’t to force every keyword given to them into the page. Their job is to make sure the keywords they are given do work and to leave out those that don’t . The Copywriter might have to do some research of their own, looking at the products, features, benefits, term definitions, etc. If, when all is said and done, the keyword doesn’t work on a page, it needs to be deconsidered. (Ooh, new word… I like it!) The Copywriter may have to pull rank and tell the SEO and/or the site owner what’s what. The key here is that the keyword research process doesn’t end with the SEO. It needs to continue all the way through to the copywriting process. Don’t let the keyword selection and optimization process be derailed by people picking keywords for all the wrong reasons. Make sure all of your targeted terms work on all levels before demanding they get used on the page. Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Who Told You THAT Was a Good Keyword?

by Stoney deGeyter Remember the movie Old School with Vince Vaughn and Will Farrell? Yeah, me neither. That’s because, while I’m sure the movie has some funny scenes, it just didn’t have the staying power of, say… Tommy Boy . Of course Tommy Boy had a very distinct advantage out of the gate… it didn’t star Will Farrell. You really can’t come back from that kind of thing. In the SEO world there is “old school” and then there is “old school SEO nonsense”. In case you haven’t figured it out, in my world, the “old school SEO nonsense” stars Will Farrell. In your world, it might star Colin Farrell, Lindsay Lohan, or the entire cast of Big Bang Theory –all viable alternatives. Like the actors noted above, “old school SEO nonsense” gets a lot of buzz, but underneath the surface, there just isn’t anything there. People are drawn to it like a mosquito to a bug light because it feels safe. It looks easy. It’s simplicity wrapped in a complexity. But, in the end, it’s hollow, useless, and generally leaves you feeling a little bit ripped off. Let’s look at a few common “old school SEO nonsense” tactics that keep coming back to bite anybody that’s still stuck in 1998. Keyword Density The idea here is that you need to have the perfect keyword-to-text ratio on your pages. A 7% keyword density means you have your keyword 7 times for every 100 words. “Perfect” keyword densities range from 5-10%, and if you just get that magic number, your rankings will soar. Of course, you gotta wonder what happens once 10 other people find the perfect keyword density, too. If you hear someone talk about getting the right keyword density on your site, shut them down faster than you would a “friend” offering to rent the Will Ferrell disaster (yeah, I know, that was redundant,) Land of the Lost . Keyword Count Keyword count is the Step Brother of keyword density (see how I worked in another Will Farrell movie reference there?) The theory goes that there is a minimum number of times you have to have your keywords on the page in order to rank well for it. Doesn’t matter how much text you have, just get your keyword in there 3 times, 5 times, 7 times, or whatever. Yeah, your keywords should be in the page if you want to rank for them. But in truth, it doesn’t absolutely have to be. If you have enough incoming links pointing to your page with that keyword in the anchor text, that can get you the rankings you want in certain circumstances. But, in a competitive field, that’s usually not enough. There is no magic number of times your keywords should be on the page. Sometimes you use your keyword more frequently, while other times you use related words. It really just depends on the content. Keyword Positioning Where you position your keywords in your content does have some merit. (Yes, I’ll admit that I enjoyed both Stranger Than Fiction and Talladega Nights so I’ll give Will Ferrell some credit.) But as so often happens, a single good idea often turns into 20 really, really stupid ideas. ( Bewitched , anyone?) Yes, you want to use your keywords in key places such as your title tag, meta description, headings, and body content. But, does it really matter if your keyword is the third word in the first paragraph or the second sentence of the last paragraph on the page? Do you have to add an additional instance of your keyword in your third heading tag on the page even though it doesn’t really work? The answer is NO. It doesn’t matter, much like most Will Farrell movies. Old School SEO Without the Nonsense Old school SEO nonsense is just that. Just a bunch of blubbering directions that have no meaning other than to make the person uttering them feel smarter than you. Real old school SEO is altogether different. It’s SEO that says, “we’re going back to the basics, back to what works.” There is nothing wrong with SEO that looks at a lot of fancy data. That’s all very important. But, old school SEO was true 10 years ago, and it’s still true today. The methods used to achieve SEO may change a bit here and there, but the same basic principles apply: Write good content, work in your keywords, and build a quality site worth linking to. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Kinda like expecting a good Will Farrell… naw, too easy! 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.

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It Isn’t "Old School SEO" If It’s Just Nonsense SEO

Marketing generally has 2 core strategies in terms of customers: finding new customers & keeping your current/old customers happy. The best businesses tend to keep the interest of their customers for months and years through consistently improving their products and services to deliver more value. Whereas the other sorts of businesses tend to be hard-close / hype driven & always promoting a new product / software / scheme. It is never a complete system being sold, but some “insider secret” shortcut that unearths millions automatically while you sleep - perpetually. One of the problems with false scarcity hype launches is that it attracts the type of customers who can’t succeed . The people who are receptive to that sort of marketing want to be sold a dream, they are not the type of people who want to put the time and effort in to become successful. They are at stage 2 in this video : “my life sucks” … so sell me a story that will instantly make everything better without requiring any change from me at all. Another one of the problems with the hype launch business model is that it requires you to keep repeating the sales process like a traveling salesman . Each day you need to think up a new scheme or angle to sell a new set of crap from, and you have to hope that the web has a short enough memory that the scammy angles used to pitch past hyped up product launches don’t come to bite you in the ass. I don’t mind when the get rich quick market work their core market, as there is a group of weak minded individuals who are addicted to buying that stuff . But I always get pissed off when someone claims that your field is trash or a scam (as an angle to sell something else), and then they later start trying to paint themselves as an expert in your field. Here is a video snippet of Ryan Deiss exclaiming his ignorance of the SEO field & how he got ripped off thrice because he knew so little he couldn’t tell a bad service provider from a good one. “If you want to get free traffic you have to get good at the cut-throat game of SEO (which I for one am not). … SEO for most of us isn’t the right answer.” - Ryan Deiss And his latest info-product (in perhaps a series of dozens of them?) is called Perpetual Traffic Formula. In the squeeze page he highlights that it offers you the opportunity to… “Discovering a crack in Google algorithm so big it simply can’t be patched. Being able repeat the process for similar results in UNLIMITED niches.” You don’t have to be an expert to create an info-product ! The Droid has a pretty good review of how awful his sites are doing in terms of ” perpetual traffic .” If you want to buy from a person who *always* has another new product with a secret short cut to sell, Ryan is THE guy. If you want to learn how to evaluate the quality of products being sold, here are some good tips on that front . And if you want to get a good overview of the internet marketing world for free you will love this .

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Ryan Deiss Perpetual Traffic Formula Review

Marketing generally has 2 core strategies in terms of customers: finding new customers & keeping your current/old customers happy. The best businesses tend to keep the interest of their customers for months and years through consistently improving their products and services to deliver more value. Whereas the other sorts of businesses tend to be hard-close / hype driven & always promoting a new product / software / scheme. It is never a complete system being sold, but some “insider secret” shortcut that unearths millions automatically while you sleep - perpetually. One of the problems with false scarcity hype launches is that it attracts the type of customers who can’t succeed . The people who are receptive to that sort of marketing want to be sold a dream, they are not the type of people who want to put the time and effort in to become successful. They are at stage 2 in this video : “my life sucks” … so sell me a story that will instantly make everything better without requiring any change from me at all. Another one of the problems with the hype launch business model is that it requires you to keep repeating the sales process like a traveling salesman . Each day you need to think up a new scheme or angle to sell a new set of crap from, and you have to hope that the web has a short enough memory that the scammy angles used to pitch past hyped up product launches don’t come to bite you in the ass. I don’t mind when the get rich quick market work their core market, as there is a group of weak minded individuals who are addicted to buying that stuff . But I always get pissed off when someone claims that your field is trash or a scam (as an angle to sell something else), and then they later start trying to paint themselves as an expert in your field. Here is a video snippet of Ryan Deiss exclaiming his ignorance of the SEO field & how he got ripped off thrice because he knew so little he couldn’t tell a bad service provider from a good one. “If you want to get free traffic you have to get good at the cut-throat game of SEO (which I for one am not). … SEO for most of us isn’t the right answer.” - Ryan Deiss And his latest info-product (in perhaps a series of dozens of them?) is called Perpetual Traffic Formula. In the squeeze page he highlights that it offers you the opportunity to… “Discovering a crack in Google algorithm so big it simply can’t be patched. Being able repeat the process for similar results in UNLIMITED niches.” You don’t have to be an expert to create an info-product ! The Droid has a pretty good review of how awful his sites are doing in terms of ” perpetual traffic .” If you want to buy from a person who *always* has another new product with a secret short cut to sell, Ryan is THE guy. If you want to learn how to evaluate the quality of products being sold, here are some good tips on that front . And if you want to get a good overview of the internet marketing world for free you will love this .

Read the original here:
Ryan Deiss Perpetual Traffic Formula Review

Marketing generally has 2 core strategies in terms of customers: finding new customers & keeping your current/old customers happy. The best businesses tend to keep the interest of their customers for months and years through consistently improving their products and services to deliver more value. Whereas the other sorts of businesses tend to be hard-close / hype driven & always promoting a new product / software / scheme. It is never a complete system being sold, but some “insider secret” shortcut that unearths millions automatically while you sleep - perpetually. One of the problems with false scarcity hype launches is that it attracts the type of customers who can’t succeed . The people who are receptive to that sort of marketing want to be sold a dream, they are not the type of people who want to put the time and effort in to become successful. They are at stage 2 in this video : “my life sucks” … so sell me a story that will instantly make everything better without requiring any change from me at all. Another one of the problems with the hype launch business model is that it requires you to keep repeating the sales process like a traveling salesman . Each day you need to think up a new scheme or angle to sell a new set of crap from, and you have to hope that the web has a short enough memory that the scammy angles used to pitch past hyped up product launches don’t come to bite you in the ass. I don’t mind when the get rich quick market work their core market, as there is a group of weak minded individuals who are addicted to buying that stuff . But I always get pissed off when someone claims that your field is trash or a scam (as an angle to sell something else), and then they later start trying to paint themselves as an expert in your field. Here is a video snippet of Ryan Deiss exclaiming his ignorance of the SEO field & how he got ripped off thrice because he knew so little he couldn’t tell a bad service provider from a good one. “If you want to get free traffic you have to get good at the cut-throat game of SEO (which I for one am not). … SEO for most of us isn’t the right answer.” - Ryan Deiss And his latest info-product (in perhaps a series of dozens of them?) is called Perpetual Traffic Formula. In the squeeze page he highlights that it offers you the opportunity to… “Discovering a crack in Google algorithm so big it simply can’t be patched. Being able repeat the process for similar results in UNLIMITED niches.” You don’t have to be an expert to create an info-product ! The Droid has a pretty good review of how awful his sites are doing in terms of ” perpetual traffic .” If you want to buy from a person who *always* has another new product with a secret short cut to sell, Ryan is THE guy. If you want to learn how to evaluate the quality of products being sold, here are some good tips on that front . And if you want to get a good overview of the internet marketing world for free you will love this .

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Ryan Deiss Perpetual Traffic Formula Review