Your E-store: SEO or SEM?

Everyone can have a digital shop nowadays. Sites like Volusion, Interspire,and Magento let people with something to sell -- or even people who have nothing to sell but would like to -- set up shop in minutes.

The eStore sites often make it sound as though customers will then rush to buy from you, but this isn't quite true. Many sensible eStore owners have someone like me come and optimize their pages, and that's smart. But should you focus on SEM or SEO for your eStore?

Certainly, you should always do both search engine optimization, which is about making your pages the best they can be for search engines, and search engine marketing, which is about gaining links that show search engines the value of  your site. But one approach may be higher priority than another, once you've got the basics done.

I'd like to share with you two cases. The first, a bit of whose store is in th screenshot above, is a steampunk jeweler. She has a Volusion store with good results overall, but her store wasn't coming up well for the name of her company. I optimized her site at Volusion and did some linkbuilding for her a couple of years ago.

The second case is this purveyor of cute baby clothes. They have an Interspire store, which I'm currently optimizing and for which I'm also doing a linkbuilding campaign.

Everyone with an eStore should do those two things. The question is: what comes next? These two different stores need different strategies.

The jeweler has a narrow niche: steampunk jewelry. She spends a lot of time online, has a lot of visibility, and when I met her had a lot of places she sold from, too. I've met a number of artisans who spend many hours keeping up multiple online shops and multiple mini-sites. It often is not the best use of their time. In this jeweler's case, the best strategy was to put most of her eggs in one basket and get her strongest store higher on the search results for the term "steampunk jewelry." Here best bet is classic SEO -- optimizing her pages, getting quality links, and associating her online presence strongly with the keywords.Since she has a narrow niche, she can also expect good results from targeted advertising: not adwords, but ads on popular steampunk sites.

The baby boutique, on the other hand, is in a highly competitive niche. They need to have their pages optimized, certainly, but a small company selling baby clothes can't expect to get top billing on Google any time soon. What's more, the particular population they're targeting tends to respond more to the blogs and Facebook pages they follow than to advertising. Their best bet will be to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack in some way so they can show well for more specific searches, to work on visibility in their local area, and to focus their efforts on social media.

The specific strategy that will lead to success for your eStore will depend on your product, your niche, your budget, and your skills. You can have us do a free website analysis for you if you'd like some guidance.

Does It Matter Where You Put Your Keywords?

I've written before about the dangers of following simple formulae telling you where to put your keywords. It is more important -- and Google's Matt Cutts confimed this in his broadcast from SMX yesterday -- to have good, natural content for your human visitors than to try to game the system with arbitrary guesses about the algorithms.

Still, I always like to put the keywords right up at the beginning, where search engines can catch them quickly before they get a false impression.

Now I have some nice, current data that supports this view. I'm doing a rewrite for a client, a large third-party logistics firm. They have four pages of success stories, a good thing to have. Each story tells how the logistics firm was able to help a particular client company. Each story naturally includes a good proportion of key search terms, such as "third party logistics," "logistics solutions," "warehousing logistics," and so forth.

In looking at their analytics, I was able to see that one of those pages had significant traffic from search, while the rest had none.

All the pages had been created in the same way, with a content management system. All had messy code, some grammatical and spelling errors, and problems with layout. All had interesting points to make (at least if you're into warehousing and trasnport logistics).

What was different? Three started off with a paragraph describing the company. The one with the higher level of search traffic started with a statement about the company's logistics needs. The description came later.

By the time the search engines made it through that paragraph about beauty supplies and shea butter, they had apparently already decided that the page wasn't really about logistics.

Now, you may be wondering why the pages didn't come up for other keywords. The answer is that they probably did. Not high on search, probably, because it takes more than keywords to achieve that, but perhaps for a search on the companies being described. However, searchers then probably didn't choose to click through to a site for a third-party logistics firm -- the description made it clear that this wasn't the place to buy that shea butter preparation.

As I say, I've always favored putting keywords high on the page. I'm not trying to fool people when I write a web page; I want everyone, human and robot alike, to know what I'm talking about right away. But in this case, the analytics gives us a good data-driven answer to our question: yes, it does matter where we put our keywords. So let's get them right in the first sentence, where they'll do the most good.

Keywords, and Why You Need Some Other Words Too

Yesterday, I was working on a new website. I say new, but there actually was quite a bit of content already at the site. It read sort of like this:

"Maximize your bottom line and catapult revenues with proven revenue generating strategies that propel your business to the next level!"

I could go on, but you probably recognize the genre. There was a lot of this stuff. it makes me think of footprints on the beach: clearly, there was someone there at some point, it's evidence of human effort, but in minutes it's gone from your memory. It has no substance.

I rewrote it as nicely as I could and sent it off. The client wasn't happy.

What a relief.

So often, people are really fond of their horrible content. I explained that I always try to preserve people's existing content, unless I hear otherwise.

"For all I knew," I explained, "you wrote it yourself and you love it."

Fortunately, that was not the case. This was a work for hire, and a good example of a complete waste of money. I'll be throwing it out and starting over.

Have a look at your website. Have you just strung buzzwords together in a faint semblance of meaning? Or is there some substance there?

I have to admit that working on this client's site, when I thought it was his idea of how his business should be described, had given me a poor impression of the client. My sending it back to him as better-written yet still meaningless drivel probably gave him a poor impression of me, too. I think our phone conversation dispelled both those negative impressions.

But visitors to your site won't call you to see whether they've misjudged you. They'll read a little bit of your substance-free content and click right back to the search results -- no matter how high on the page your website may be.

Make sure you have something to say, and that you get it onto the web page.

Search vs. Branding

What do you do when your best keywords for search aren't the best for your brand?

It's a fairly common problem. Right now I'm working on a website for a local natural foods store. Checking the keywords that bring people to their current site, the search volume on the terms related to their products and services, and their preferred brand-oriented words, I came up with a good list of keywords for them. Some were new ideas for them and some were already in their minds.

But high on the list was one term I knew they wouldn't really like: "health food store."

People looking for the things this company sells -- organic foods, homeopathic remedies, vegan packaged goods, nutritional supplements -- such people very often look for "health food store." What's more, people in the community who shop with these folks often refer to their place as "the health food store," as in, "I'm going to the health food store. Need anything?"

It seems obvious that we want to optimize for that term.

But "health food store" doesn't have the image the company wants. They're going for a more modern vibe, something that appeals to people who think more in terms of sustainability, eco-chic, fair trade, slow food, fitness, and maximizing wellness. "Health food store" has, in today's whole foods community, a little bit of a downmarket, outmoded feel.

How do we get the search benefits of using "health food store" prominently on the homepage, without interfering with the brand?

• Evaluate the competition. While my client isn't the only place in town that could have a top ranking for the term, they don't have any serious competition online. The most likely competitor has a one-page website with their name and phone number (and they used tables to get the name in the middle of the page), so we can feel confident that they won't be using any sophisticated SEO techniques to fight for the rankings. We can probably get that term without being heavy-handed in its use. If my client wanted national visibility for the term, or there were several other businesses in town that deserved the top ranking locally, it would be a different story.
• Use the term where it's prominent for search engines, not for people. In this case, we can slip the term into a sentence toward the beginning of the page where the search engines will recognize that it's important, but people reading will perceive it as an introductory sentence. We won't emphasize that phrase graphically, either.
• Use syntax to make your point. We can say "More than just a health food store..." or "In our forty years in business, we've evolved from the first local health food store to..." Human visitors understand that we're saying we're hipper than your average health food store, but we still clue the search engines in and welcome the many people who search for that term. As always, your text needs to be authentic, natural, and useful to your visitors -- but a little subtlety works wonders.

Another common situation is when your company wants to use a term for reasons of branding which isn't being searched for much. In this case, you can use visual effects to emphasize that term, include it with the search essential keywords, and rejoice in the lack of competition -- you may just be ahead of the pack.

Your keywords need to be the things people are searching for, but you can combine those terms with the words you want for your brand, and be right on target for your customers and your company.

Keywords in Blogging

A blog can do good things for a business:

• improve search results
• increase traffic, including repeat traffic
• provide a service to your customers

When you're working to increase visibility, you'll want to include your essential keywords in your blog copy. Obviously, if this is your primary focus, you'll be sacrificing both the benefits of having customers come back to read your blog, and of providing a service to your customers.

So how can you include your keywords in your blog posts without compromising on value to your visitors?

• Make sure you've got the right keywords. A new client is setting up a blog. They're a whole foods store, so it makes sense for them to use keywords like "whole foods," "natural foods," and "organic." These terms are very likely to turn up in their blog posts, too -- "Fitting Whole Foods into Your Budget," and "Is Organic Better?" would be very sensible and useful blog posts for them. "Cheap supplements" isn't a natural keyword for them, so they probably won't use it naturally in their blog. The best plan is not to go ahead and stuff "cheap supplements" into the blog in an unnatural way, but to leave "cheap supplements" off their list of keywords.
• Use your keywords consistently. You always have a choice of words. Another new client is a spine rehab center. A primary reason people search for spine rehab centers is for pain relief, and they usually use the word "pain." When I blog for this company, I could use "discomfort," "distress," or "soreness," but in fact I'll be using "pain." In the privacy of their computers, people in need of spine stabilization don't type "discomfort" into the search engines' search boxes. Using the same word instead of a variety of words won't make the blog posts less informative for visitors, and it will increase the chances that those back pain sufferers will find my client.
• Spotlight those keywords. The search engines will, if you do a good job, be able to see what your post is about and offer it to the people who will find it most valuable. But you can make it easy on the robots by using keywords in the title, in anchor text, and in tags and headings. If you blog regularly, you won't need any special tricks, but a new blog can get a little jumpstart by pointing out to the search engines just what is most important.
  

In order to use this advice in a practical way, you need to know what your best keywords are. Here are some previous posts that might be beneficial:
"Choosing Your Keywords"
"Another Way to Look at Keywords"
"Keywords, Marketing, and Your Brain"

Getting the Rank Your Website Deserves

The apples shown here are divided into the #1 rankings ones and the #2 ranking ones. "Not as pretty, " those #2 apples, "but just as tasty."

It's a reminder that we don't all get #1 rankings in the search engine results pages for everything. Sometimes we don't deserve that #1 ranking. I, for example, am not the biggest SEO and copywriting firm in the world. If I type in "SEO" at Google, or "copywriting," I'm not going to be #1. This is fine with me. (I'm #1 for "quality copywriting," though. Just saying.)

But I'm talking right now with a new client who doesn't have the #1 rating his company deserves. He makes a product with which I'm very familiar -- I sold hundreds of his things when I was in retail. He is, in my expert opinion, the big dog in his field. He's been in business for 20 years. His website is 12 years old.

When he asked me to have a look at his website, I typed in the name of his company at Google, and of course his site popped right up. The rest of the page was filled with retailers who sell his product. All good so far.

Next, I typed in the generic name of his flagship product, and there he.... wasn't. I tried a few more variations. Nope. Smaller companies were eating his lunch on the SERPs.

This company deserves those #1 spots. I will of course get them for him. He won't get them by magic. He needs both on-site and off-site optimization. But he'll certainly get them, because he deserves them. When someone is searching for his products, they actually want what he has to offer.

Don't ask yourself what keywords you want to rank for. Ask yourself what keywords you deserve to rank for.

Very Fast Websites

Dr. Tom Hapgood is bucking for the title of Fastest Web Designer in the West, having beaten our previous record by having a site completed in less than two weeks.

Here's the old site design:



The image of Barbara Steeps, "The Hog Lady," is a favorite poster of hers, and she likes the happy excitement it shows. Unfortunately, this design doesn't show visitors what this site is about or how to shop here.

It's an ecommerce site, but visitors have to scroll waaay down in order to see a link or indeed any hint at all of the existence of a catalog. The content listed towns in which the client had previously had stores but now doesn't, with just a quick mention of the online store and its contents -- below the fold, for humans, and search engines would have to conclude that the list of towns was the important part.

Developer Carla Romere had pristine coding, and a well-built catalog, but the usability and search issues made this site unprofitable.

Here's the new site:



Tom kept the poster, but added a subtle Razorback (subtlety's important for licensing reasons, but it also gives a sophisticated air that I love) and a crowd scene that works perfectly with Barbara's poster. The poster is set at a jaunty angle that highlights the navigation.

The same design works for the About Us page, which sports a picture of Barbara and her husband Bob with their vehicle -- a common sight around town on game day.



I've given her some keyword-rich content, too, so people will be better able to find her online. With a bulleted list of the most popular searches in the category of Razorback merchandise, this new design will give clear signals to the search engines and also let visitors see at a glance that they've come to the right place to get those Razorback shower curtains and hog noses.

Don't worry if you can't figure out the point of this. If you're not a Razorback fan, you just wouldn't understand.

The point, for the purpose of this discussion, is that we've gotten an exciting new look, a clear purpose and call to action, and a site that should do great things for The Hoglady's business. We're going to have Josepha do a linkbuilding campaign, and Barbara is using a blog to showcase new product and Twitter to keep in touch with fellow Razorback fans. Both her blog and her Twitter link are readily visible on her main pages.

What made this project go so quickly?

• It's not a complete redesign of the entire site -- we didn't touch the catalog -- but just of the pages that make the most difference for search and conversions.
• The clients had a clear goal, and we developed a clear strategy for them from the beginning.
• Rosamond, Project Manager on this job, insisted that we have all the images and information before we began. That let the clients sit back and relax while Tom and I did the work.
  

Depending how fast the webmaster is, you might click on the pictures here and see the old site. Old or new, you'll still get to hear the calling of the hogs, which might be an entertaining way to spend 15 seconds of your day.

Web Content: Math or Literature?

Back in the early days of SEO there was a lot of talk about something called "keyword density": the percentage of the text on your website that was composed of the keywords your customers would use to look for you.

The idea was that if you met the mystical correct percentage -- 2%, some said, or 3% or 6% or even 10% -- then search engines would serve you up to searchers. If you went under or over, then no dice.

If you had a typical 480 words on your homepage, then, you'd want (depending which figure you believed in) somewhere between nine and 48 repetitions of your keyword. Since you can work with about 10 keywords at once, you could in theory construct your entire 480 words from those keywords, just sort of rotating them randomly.

Thus, the realtor whose site I rewrote recently could have paragraphs with nothing but sentences like "Call for commercial real estate, commercial lots and acreage, income producing property, warehouses, retail and office space, warehouse space, and investment properties," and that sure makes you want to call, doesn't it?

On the other hand, sentences like, "Our highly trained and compassionate staff desire nothing more than to assist you in your quest for property-based wealth" reveal nothing to search engine robots, which are pretty smart for robots, but not smart enough to guess what that sort of thing means.

Steve, the realtor in question, was pointing out other sites to me. "They have stories," he said, and they certainly did. I have nothing against stories, and they can certainly be good for marketing, but they don't do much for search engines.

What's more, people aren't likely to read them as they surf the web. They're going to spend a few seconds deciding whether or not they want to spend more time at your website. If they decide in your favor, then they'll stay and perhaps read your story.

But first they have to find you -- and the search engines have to find you first, largely based on keyword-rich content, or the humans never will. And then they have to decide, looking at the page of search engine suggestions, to click through to you, largely based on your meta description. And then they have to decide to stay at your page long enough to read your story -- a decision based largely on what they grasp in the first few seconds from what you have in the top left hand corner of your web page.

The realty sites with stories hadn't come up when my client searched for his keywords. In one case, the site wouldn't even show up for the company's name -- my client had to put me on hold while he went and found a business card with the URL on it.

Here's the solution: have natural yet keyword-rich text on your home page. Do your research so that you know the best keywords to use for your business, and include them as much as you can while still communicating well with your human visitors. Even allow some bulleted lists, if you can bring yourself to. Your human visitors will be glad to be able to scan the list quickly to confirm that you offer what they're looking for. The search engines will be able to tell what your website is for.

Then put your stories on an inner page, where you have more space and your visitors are already relaxing and spending some time with you. Your blog is a great place for stories.

SEO Temptations

'The trouble with Google PageRank," said the fellow who had designed the website I was consulting on, explaining why he was resisting the idea of installing Google Analytics, "is that it tempts people to write stilted, unnatural stuff on their websites."

It's true that people are tempted to write stilted, unnatural stuff on their websites. Some even give in to the temptation. One of the local web design companies here where I live has a homepage that says something like, "If your Fayetteville business needs a website for Fayetteville business or any surrounding Fayetteville area business..." It does sound stilted. Stupid, even.

Other firms react to the temptation in other ways. One of the competitors of Fargo web design firm Onsharp has a bizarre paragraph that goes sort of like this: "If you want to find our website, you can find it by going to your favorite search engine and typing in 'Fargo web design, Fargo web designers, Fargo web firm, Fargo...'" This is a more creative version of the above, but no less stilted and no more natural.

Does this have anything to do with PageRank? It has never been suggested that keyword stuffing (that's what you call that kind of content) improves PageRank. Google has never recommended keyword stuffing. Installing Google Analytics doesn't lead to keyword stuffing.

Good web content is written with the search engines in mind. We have to remember that they are robots, and not able to interpret complex allusive stuff. They need to have the keywords -- the things humans will type when looking for your page -- right up there where they can see them and understand them with their robot brains.

We also have to remember that the search engines don't shop with us. When humans come to your page, they don't want to see stilted language. Even if they have never heard of keyword stuffing, they're going to notice that something odd is going on at your page if you're doing it. If they have heard of keyword stuffing, they'll recognize it and know that there's something shady going on.

This is true, but again, it has nothing to do with Google. It has to do with shady practices. Some people are tempted to indulge in shady practices. Since Google's PageRank is a measure of trustworthiness, there's no reason to suppose that shady practices will improve your PageRank. People who take up keyword stuffing can't honestly say that Google tempted them to do so.

What does the picture at the top of this post have to do with SEO? Nothing. Keyword stuffing also has nothing to do with good SEO practices. If you're considering hiring a web firm that uses this tactic, resist that temptation.


Stumble It!

Another Useful Tool from Google

Do you ever read those articles suggesting surprising new uses for common household objects? Well, you might not be up for encasing a cut lemon in an old onion bag and rubbing it on your marble countertops (I'm with you there), but you might like to try out a new use for one of Google's tools.

Google's Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool can be used for keyword development research, but it has another handy use as well.

It'll tell you what Google thinks your website is about. Just feed your website's URL into the tool and click the button, and you get Google's best guess about what you're doing at your website.

For example, Google has the impression that the guys over at FileReplicationPro are involved with this stuff:

backup software, file sync, data backup, file replication, server backup, file synchronization, offsite backup, pc synchronize, data replication, backup, file, software, sync, replication, synchronization

Google is correct. That's exactly what they do. Not suprisingly, they do well for search.

Here's what Google thinks I'm up to at RebeccaHaden.com:

search engine optimization, search engine marketing, search engine, internet marketing, web design, marketing strategy, marketing, seo, design, copywriter, writing

That's correct, too.

On the other hand, parenting bookstore Pages of Parenting is setting up a new website on a DIY platform, and at the moment, Google thinks they're engaged in these things:

parent class, parent resource, parenting course, parent, autism, counseling, children, child, counselor, therapist

It's not exactly false, but notice the complete lack of books on the list. For a bookstore, this isn't a good thing. Neither is it very good that Google associates the site with words like "child" and "children" -- not useful search terms for this site. Pages of Parenting needs to get enough keyword-rich content onto their new website to make sure that the search engines have an accurate impression of what they do. This will signally improve the likelihood of their being offered to someone who actually wants what they have to offer.

It's a good quick check up to see whether your content is misleading the search engines. If so, of course, you can contact me for some improved website content. In any case, it's good to know.

Stumble It!

Learn From Your Keywords in Google Analytics

If you use Google Analytics, you'll recognize this as the basic navigation bar from your dashboard. Click on "Traffic Sources" and then on "Keywords," and you'll see a list of all the words and phrases people used as search strings when they were going to your website.



So, we can see that -- in addition to more obvious things -- someone typed "technological ineptitude" into Google, saw the page below, and clicked through to my blog post about making your website friendly to less tech-savvy people. More than one person, actually. I never aspired to be #6 at Google for "technological ineptitude," but I am, and people come visit me after typing that in. I don't pretend to know what they were looking for, but I hope they found it here.




The keywords are listed in order of frequency -- that is, the number of people who typed in that word or phrase at a search engine and then clicked on your page. Within a particular frequency, they're alphabetical. So all the phrases that fourteen people used will be together in alphabetical order, and then all the ones that thirteen people used, and so on.

While there can be some amusement value (I'm still wondering why that client of mine has "bar pizza" in his GA keywords list), you can actually learn some very useful things from this metric in your analytics.

Take the case of Courtney and Wise, upscale Sydney house painters. When I started working with them, these were their top ten GA keywords for a week:




While a few people found them by looking for "painting services," after that they were getting visitors who wanted information about art. The person looking for "animal art" or "art easels" isn't looking for someone to paint a house.

Here's last week's top ten:



While the folks looking for "house painters, usa" aren't Courtney and Wise customers, the great majority of people reaching the website now are looking for the business, or for house painters around Sydney.

There are a lot of lessons here. The first is that simple traffic doesn't tell you enough. Of course you want traffic. Increased traffic is pretty much always a good thing. However, Courtney and Wise could have thousands of people visiting them while looking for art over the fireplace, and expect very little new business.

By looking at their keywords, I could see that they needed a much tighter focus, and much more relevant, targeted online marketing strategy, to make their website useful to their business.

By looking at their keywords now, they can see that we've succeeded in accomplishing this. If we hadn't, then we'd know we ought to do something different for them.

If you use a blog, your keywords can tell you what topics are most useful to your readers, or most successful in reaching new readers via search. You can see below one week's top keywords for my lesson plan blog. People reached my blog that week through about 2500 different keywords, yet it's pretty clear that fairy tale lesson plans and activities were a favorite.




Fairy tales are always a favorite for the blog in question. So, while I write there about everything from science to classroom technology to music, I make sure to keep fairy tales a frequent topic. I also make sure to keep those fairy tale lesson plan posts updated, with usable links and so on, since they continue to bring me traffic for years.

If for some reason I wanted to change the focus of that blog and bring in different kinds of traffic, keeping an eye on my keywords would allow me to fine-tune my efforts and make sure that I met that goal.

You can also search for a particular word within your results -- handy if you have thousands of words and phrases on the list. Since people might approach a topic from a number of different angles, it's good to be able to find all the variations. So, when I wanted to know whether people were looking for lesson plans using Sketch Up, I was able to answer my question even though folks used phrases ranging from "Sketchup lesson plans" to "class activities for google sketch up." Knowing that there were some people interested in the topic told me that it would be a useful topic to write on again.



Your GA keyword list can give you even more specific information if you use the "Dimension" menu. Click on a particular keyword from the list, and you can find out more about how people used that word. In the example here, we can see that a high proportion of people using one particular keyword this week were from Indianapolis. Seeing this, we want to find out -- if we don't already know -- what happened in Indianapolis this week to catch so many people's attention. Whatever it was, we'll want to repeat it.

Explore your keyword list some time. You may find, as I did, that people visit you with surprising things on their minds -- not just technological ineptitude, but "2 scary things" and "strategies for avoiding piracy" are on my list -- but you'll also get some useful information.

Stumble It!

Your Competitors Affect Your SEO Strategy

I had an interesting message yesterday asking for a little light SEO help with this website, a home for the Brownies of Northwest London.

It's a cute website, isn't it?

They'd like to show up on searches for "Brownies London," "girlguides London," "girlguiding London," stuff like that. Girl Guides, for those unfamiliar with the term, are the UK equivalent of the US Girl Scouts.

I had a look at their source code and their content, and then I went to Google.co.uk and checked out the competition for the keywords they want to use.

Here's what you find when you look for "Girl Guides London": the World Association of Girl Guides followed by the official central office for the UK Girl Guides. Tough competition for a new local site.



"Brownies London" gets you the UK central office again -- and brownies, the kind you eat. Tough competition, again. Not to mention the fact that your searchers might get distracted, veer off into looking at London bakeries, and never get back to looking up the Brownies at all.



"Girlguiding London" gives you lesbian bar information. I don't know whether they're tough competition or not, but they are the kind of neighbors that make people looking for a social group for their preschool daughters change their query.


So this particular website is up against an extremely powerful competitor, a completely irrelevant term that happens to sound like them, and a controversial neighborhood.

Usually, when you find yourself in one of these situations, you work around it. Go to some other, easier search term to begin with, and work your way up to the more challenging circumstances. Since all their terms put them in challenging circumstances, the West London Brownies can't take that approach.

My recommendation for them:

• Change the meta title to get rid of the phrase "girlguide london" and "girlguiding london." They don't need to end up on the same page with bars, regardless of their personal feelings about bars, because it's not the association they want their customers to have with their product. And people searching for the Brownies probably won't scroll down this page for them -- they'll just change their queries.
  
• Add meta descriptions to all the pages, using the phrases "Girl Guides and Brownies." Right now, they have no meta descriptions.
  
• Since they're not really in competition with the other Girl Guide organizations, ask for links at the major Girl Guides websites. Also get every little Brownie and all the parents to link them at Facebook, their personal web pages, classroom pages, or whatever other online space they can command.

Have you tried typing your keywords in at Google to see who's sharing the page with you?

Stumble It!

An SEO Plan for Your Business

Littlefish IT Support reports that UK studies show only a third of small and medium sized businesses have an SEO plan of any kind.

I haven't found US studies on the subject, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the proportion was about the same.

You need a plan.

I was sitting down with colleague Tom Hapgood yesterday looking at some websites and Analytics. First we looked at his new site on a documentary film. His Analytics showed that people who were specifically looking for the site and knew what to look for were finding it. The keywords showed that people arrived by looking for the name of the film, the names of people involved in making the film, and so on. Visitors clicked through from news reports about the film, and there was direct traffic as well -- people typing in the URL.

That's stage one. Your customers can find your website.

Then we looked at a musician's website. This is a portfolio site, built by Shan Pesaru to use for demonstrations in SBDC seminars rather than for promoting the musician in question, so it doesn't get a great deal of traffic. But we can see from the site's Analytics that people find it by looking for the kind of thing this musician does, as well as looking for her specifically. That is, they find her by looking for "mezzo soprano" or "classical singer." They also click over from links at websites about singers.

That's stage two. People who ought to be your customers but aren't yet can find your website.

We could have looked at the Analytics for this blog, though we didn't, and we'd have seen that it's at stage three for search: people come here from searches for all kinds of things relevant to what I do. People who find me by looking for my name, sometimes spelled in some creative way, or by looking for "search engine marketing 72703" are probably clients or possible clients. People who visit here looking for "compelling content" or "how to use Google Alerts for SEO" may not be shopping for my services right now, but they might remember me in the future when they are.

The person who came looking for "Tim Graves llamas" was probably disappointed.

We didn't look at the Analytics for this blog. We looked instead at those for a client on whose new website design we're working. His current website's Analytics show pretty clearly that people finding him on the search engines have to have inside knowledge. His referring sites are not public sites. The few keywords people use to find him include his company name and his own name, but otherwise are random and not useful -- like the llamas mentioned above. Everyone gets a few of those, but a preponderance of lost people visiting your website says that you don't have a plan for SEO.

The details of your plan will vary, naturally. The best plan for you depends on your field, your level of authority in your field, what you're selling or promoting, your budget, the skills and talents you have available to you, and lots of other factors.

But at the very least, you should have a plan that covers these three steps:

• Make sure that people who are looking for you and your company can find you.
  
• Help people who need your goods and services but don't know about you to find you.
  
• Help those who aren't shopping right now but are interested in what you do to find you.

If you don't have a plan like this, I can help you. If you do have a plan, good for you -- you're already way ahead of those who have no plan.

Stumble It!

Choosing Realistic Keywords

In discussing the choice of keywords, I've said before that your keywords have to be things that people are actually looking for, things that are in the content of your website, and things that you can compete for.

There's another point, though, that I haven't mentioned before. The keywords that you're really pushing for ought to be things that you would actually want to rank for. In the real world.

This point arose with a new client of mine, a Fargo, North Dakota web design firm. In thinking about which keywords we should work on, we decided to go for local search first and then move toward bigger goals. But could the firm expect to rank at the top of Google for "web hosting"?

The first hit for "web hosting" -- and indeed most of the choices on page one at Google for that term -- won't be a web hosting firm at all. The first web hosting firm to show on that page is GoDaddy, a company which had a couple of commercials on the Super Bowl last night. Competing with them would be a challenge.

Challenges are fun. But would it be a good use of our time and energy to try?

Google tells us that people search for "web hosting" an average of five million times a month. If one in 200 of those people becomes a customer, that's 25,000 new accounts a month through that one keyword phrase.

That might be good news for my new client; I'll have to check on that. For me, it wouldn't be good news at all.

I'm well-ranked for "online marketing" in my geographical region. Say I was at the top of the search engines for "online marketing" without local parameters. 450,000 people a month make that search. If one in 200 of those people made a query, I'd be fielding about 107 queries every business day of every month.

I'd need a staff.

Working toward high rankings for competitive keywords is fun. I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing it. For all I know, it might also be fun to prepare commercials for the Super Bowl. For my own business, I know that working toward top ranking for my highest possible keywords wouldn't be a good use of my time. I don't want to have a staff. I like working closely with every client. I like spending most of my work hours writing, not managing my business. I like having time to teach as well. I never want to be placing commercials for the Super Bowl.

You might want to. I have some clients who would quite like to have an enormous empire, and I'm prepared to help them accomplish that.

As we move into the second month of the year, it's a great time to look at the competition for your keywords. Find the page you really want to be on.

Choosing Keywords: the Basics

Recently, I've worked with two websites which had, among their keywords, the single word "quality." I've also worked with two websites which had no meta keywords at all.

This experience reminded me that I have never really discussed here the basics of choosing keywords.

I've talked about how to use keywords once you've gotten them chosen. I've talked about the value of temporary seasonal keywords. But I don't believe that I've ever said, "You ought to have some keywords, and none of them should be 'quality.'"

Probably we need to get one thing out of the way first. There are those who will tell you that putting a list of keywords into the invisible section of your website, along with your title and description, is a waste of time. This is true if you are trying to trick people into paying you for cheap Viagra. For honest people honestly selling an honest product or service, those keywords are valuable. They're a noticeable (to search engines) part of your content, and they tell the search engines what you think is most important about your website.

Herewith, three simple rules for choosing good keywrods:

• Your keywords must be things that human beings type into search pages. Can you imagine a human being sitting down and thinking, "I wonder where I can find those goods and services I need... I guess I'll just type in the word 'quality' and see if that works"? Neither can I. People type in the name of the thing they want, and sometimes the geographical location where they want to find it. They also type in particular information they need. So you shouldn't choose random words that happen to be on your web page. You shouldn't choose words that you'd like to have associated with your company in people's minds. You shouldn't choose words that strike you as meaningful, philosophically. Just pick words people who are looking for someone like you will use.


• Your keywords should be things you can compete for. Companies that promise you #1 Google rankings know that it's very easy to get #1 for some terms and very hard to do so for others -- that's the basis of their promise. I was at #1 for "glow in the dark skeleton dice" once with absolutely no effort on my part. But your chances of being #1, or even on the front page, for a term like "books" is very slim. Even if you sell books and your target customers are people so unfamiliar with books and with search engines that their first thought upon feeling a desire to buy a book is to type "books" in the box at Yahoo, you still aren't going to show up in the top left-hand triangle on the search results. "Books" just isn't a good keyword.
  
• Your keywords should be in your content. If you're being honest about your website and doing a good job with your content, then the words and phrases that make the best keywords for you will also be elsewhere on your page. I've seen many cases where that wasn't what happened. Maybe all of your text is embedded in graphics and therefore unreadable to search engines. Maybe you have a moody picture on your homepage, or a giant logo, and no text at all. Maybe your homepage talks about only one thing your company does, but there are other things you think are equally important, so you want them in your keywords. In all these cases, you're making mistakes with your content. Don't compound them by trying to let your keywords make up for the mistakes.

When I do keyword development for a client, I look at a lot of data. I ask a lot of questions, and encourage the client to ask some, too. There are some specific things that make one set of keywords better for one particular situation than another.

For example, my own clients often are savvy businesspeople who know they need a strong internet presence for success in their business in the 21st century -- but don't know a whole lot about search engines or internet marketing. I know this, because I've been there. When I was looking for an SEO expert for the store I managed, I didn't know the term "SEO," so I didn't type "SEO Fayetteville Arkansas" into the little box at Google, and I never did find anyone locally to help me.

Instead, I had to go to the trouble of becoming an SEO expert myself. So of course when I chose the keywords for my own website, I used terms like "online marketing" -- phrases that occur to people like my clients when they search for the kind of help I can offer. I think that the people who were billing themselves as SEO experts probably couldn't really have helped me, actually, since they weren't able to make their websites visible to me back when I was desperately seeking that help.

Don't make this error with the people who are looking for you. Choose your keywords well. Then use them consistently. The search engines want to help your prospective customers find you. Make it easy for them.

Stumble It!

Refresh Your Blog

We've talked before about the good things your blog can do for your business. It can bring you traffic, give you links, provide a valuable service to your customers and clients, and increase return visits to your website. A good blog is a lot like the interactions you have with the people who visit your physical place of business.

Not every blog will do these things, though. Some blogs are better at these jobs than others. So what if your business has a blog, but it's not doing what you need it to do?

A little refreshment is in order.

I've been freshening up a client's old blog while her new website is being built.

The blog was written by a worker who has now left the company, so it needs an update to reflect the new people who will be writing it. It also had some problems from a business standpoint, and needed a little work for that reason, too. In this kind of case, your first thought might be just to start a completely new blog.

However, it has been in at least a tenuous existence for years. There are pictures of clients there, and descriptions of happy times at the organization. There are things worth saving.

There are also advantages to having an established blog. People who visit a blog and see only a post or two are less likely to return. Blog catalogs and webrings may not list an obviously new blog.

The best choice in a case like this is to freshen the blog up a bit.

Here's a bit of a page from the old blog. We can see that there are some negatives here. For one thing, there are only a couple of posts a month.

We can see that, while this blog has been here for years, it hasn't been being posted to regularly during that time.

We can also see that there is some sloppy content. In this example, there's html showing on the page -- not desirable. Other posts have spelling and punctuation errors, random font variation from having cut and pasted things, and even some stuff that has been taken from other sources without attribution.

There are some technical trouble too: pictures missing and broken links.

So how do we fix all this?

• Freshen the whole blog up by getting in and editing the posts. Some should probably be deleted, but all should be proofread and have any bad links or other problems fixed. Remember, both search engines and humans consider you more trustworthy when you have clean copy. This may not be fair -- I'm not aware of any studies proving that bad spellers are bad people -- but it's the reality.


• Use your keywords. While you're cleaning up past entries, make sure to include your keywords. As we've discussed before, if you've chosen your keywords correctly, it should be natural to include them when you're writing about your business and your own field of expertise. Using the same keywords in your blog as at other pages in your website will help the search engines realize that they should offer your blog to people searching for your services. Don't forget the alt tags!


• Fill in the blanks. If posting has been sporadic in the past, you'll need to fill in with some new posts. Don't think this is dishonest in any way. Your organization had news during all those months that should have been posted. Comb your files for news stories, press releases, pictures, and information from the past. It's important to do this for the SEO benefits of having an established blog, and also so that visitors can browse through your archives and see what your company is like. Just think of it as finishing up an unfinished task.


• Make the blog match the website, or the rest of the website. Many of us use handy free blogging services, and this client was one who did so. But the blog is completely different in look and in web address from the website. There wasn't even a good link back to the company's main website. The organization is having the blog styled to match their main site (this blog that you're reading has had that done, too, by the clever people at Sharp Hue). At the very least, choose colors that match your main site, and make yourself a good link back to your home page.

Now go celebrate the fact that your old blog with its flaws can rise again as a fresh, new blog that will do your business good.

Stumble It!

Another Way to Look at Keywords

A client asked me a very good question: "Remember in the last couple of months when people searched for election bulletin boards, we came up third in Google? Can we make that happen with other products? Explain that process to me."

This client is still on the front page for that phrase. In fact, here are the top keywords for her catalog this month, according to Google Analytics:

1. election bulletin boards
2. halloween bulletin board
3. election bulletin board
4. election bulletin board ideas
5. presidential election bulletin boards

Later on, she has "presidential bulletin boards," "bulletin board election," and then this little grouping:

33. election bulentin boards
34. election bulletin board set
35. election theme bulletin boards

That's not all!

54. "election bulletin board"
55. 20 drawer mobile organizer
56. 20 weekly word study poetry packets scholastic k-1
57. 2008 election bulletin boards
58. 2008 presidential election bulletin board

Skip down a bit more:

97. bulletin board for election
98. bulletin board for elections
99. bulletin board halloween
100. bulletin board ideas for election time

One hundred is enough. You can see that among the top hundred keywords people used to visit this online store's catalog in the past month, 15 were about election bulletin boards. Since she has had visitors to 1,261 different pages of product, that's noticeable.

Now, I need to tell you that this client has a small store in a small town. She's not a giant chain. Her webmasters recommend that she work only on the keyword "Arkansas teacher store." But I say that, when someone in a completely different state looks for an election bulletin board, they might just as well get that bulletin board from my client as from a giant chain. And she has been shipping her election bulletin boards all over the country, too.

Looking at the Navigation Summary for just one of the election-themed bulletin boards she offers, we can see that the vast majority came from Google, searching for one of those keywords. Another significant proportion came from Google images.

Many people in SEO belittle the Google image search. People who use image search, they figure, are just coming to steal a picture, or maybe to look at it for a second. They're frivolous searchers, not real customers. I beg to differ. If you want to buy a bulletin board, an image search is a great way to find one.

And if you do a Google image search for "presidential election bulletin boards," my client's catalog is the #1 result.

Now, presidential election bulletin boards aren't going to be a big seller again any time soon. We don't want to use these phrases in the client's homepage meta language or add them to the memorized keywords she now uses in all her materials. These are temporarily important keywords. We now want, as she says, to do that with other products.

In her case, we'll want to get Thanksgiving bulletin boards, Christmas bulletin boards, probably gingerbread houses -- I'll have to ask her what she wants to sell most of in the next few weeks.

The thing is, bulletin board sets are a commodity. Any teacher store can sell you pretty much the same ones, at the same price. True, my client is particularly sweet and fun and has a really cute dog in her store, so you have good reasons to buy from her, but the search engines don't know that. They have no reason to serve up her store for a bulletin board instead of someone else's. My job is to give them a reason.

Here's how:

• Make the target items featured products at your catalog, or use whatever other methods you have available to you to make them stand out a bit. This often depends more on your particular ecommerce solution than on what's optimal, so we'll leave it at that.
• Get those target items into some useful content somewhere on the web. You can write articles, mention them in your blog, ask other bloggers to review them for you (plan to send one along to the blogger in question), or post about them at social media sites. This method works best if you do a good job on the posting and put it somewhere that actual customers who actually want the item visit. Since I write an educational blog, and also a store blog for this particular client, I ran several posts on election lesson plans at one and election bulletin boards at the other.
• Do your SEO for that content. Since I know there are lots of election lesson plans on the web at this time of year, including plenty at sites like PBS.org with whom I don't really try to compete, I went for the long tail. I've been on the front page for "Preschool Election Lesson Plans" for three months now. It's a useful post, too, and has had 2,964 views, plus of course subscribers reading it on feeds. Don't discount the value of narrowly-focused content.
• Include links, and pay attention to anchor text. I use anchor text like "election bulletin boards." I add pictures, and use alt tags with them like "election bulletin board." Not the name of the store, not "teacher supply store" (though I'm happy to say that this client is #5 at Google for that useful phrase, right under the multi-million dollar chains), not the product number. I use the keywords people are going to use to search for those products. The links go to the items at the catalog. This will drive traffic as well as telling the search engines that you have those products at your catalog.

When you do this, the search engines notice that you have the products in question. They figure they might as well offer searchers your election bulletin boards as anybody else's. You get to the top of that page for those searches.

Then you move on to the next target. Remember, we're not talking here about your basic, foundation keywords. We're talking about which of your many products you want to focus on next month. Not that the advice above won't work for your foundational keywords, too.

But think about it: if my client's store is high on search for election bulletin boards and Hallowe'en bulletin boards, is it so surprising that she's the only small rural store on the front page for "teacher supply store"? Doing this work for your temporary keywords -- seasonal items or special offers or topics you're focusing on right now at your blog -- pays off in the long run for the overall strength of your website.

Stumble It!

Anchor Text and Online Marketing

I've whined a couple of times in these pages about the fact that my new professional website didn't make it to a solid #1 on Google for my name the day it launched. It's possible that you skipped right over those whinings; that's what I do when faced with whining, so I wouldn't blame you at all. But I'm really making a point here, so I'm going to recap.

My name is Rebecca Haden. My domain is www.rebeccahaden.com. The website in question is my actual website, the one that someone who was searching for me would want to find. I know that Google works hard to offer people the things they want, so I knew that eventually that website would land at #1 on Google, and after a few weeks it did so. The reason it didn't start there is, to be honest, that I was messing with the search engines.

I do SEO for a living. I'm honest about it, so I use my name when that's appropriate, and the websites that beat mine on Google were all sites for which I've done search optimization, or social sites at which I hang out, doing good for my clients, so it was just an occupational hazard.

But one particular website hung out at #1 for quite a while, and I was mystified about it. My name isn't on the website, not even as a link back to me. It isn't in the source code. I searched at length to try to find where my name could possibly be hiding on that site, and it just isn't there at all. I was mystified.

I shouldn't have been. I should have realized that I blog for that website at some professional journals, I sign my name to the blog posts, and I always include a link to that website. I also use that website and my own name when I comment at forums on the client's subject. My name was anchor text for that website at some highly respected sites.

This experience convinced me of the importance of anchor text. What is anchor text? When you create a link, you type a word for the people to see, and you place a link so that when people click on that word, they'll go to the web page you want them to visit.

For example, my professional website is about SEO services, so when you click on "SEO services," you'll go back to the homepage. "SEO services" is the anchor text for the link. When Google saw my name used as anchor text for my client's website, they decided that the website must be about me in some way.

How often, when you place a link in your blog, do you use some phrase like "click" or "here"? Now, that may not matter at all if you're not thinking about SEO, and maybe you're not when you write your blog. Maybe you don't care at all if the search engines think the site you're linking to is about "click here."

But when you are thinking about SEO -- for example, when you ask someone to place a link for you on their website -- you'll want to pay some attention to the anchor text. Here are some suggestions for ways to make the most of your anchor text:

• Arrange for relevant anchor text whenever possible. Since search engines use the anchor text of links to determine what a site is about, you'll want to have your keywords for your anchor text as often as you can. If you ask courteously, maybe even offering a snippet of code to the person linking to you to make it easy, they'll often be willing to oblige. If you're the one placing the links, then all you have to do is remember your keywords (and we've talked about that before).
• Don't get carried away. Remember, links are votes for the usefulness of your website. There's nothing wrong with asking for someone's vote. But if all the anchor texts in your links are identical, you'll lose That Natural Look (and we've talked about that here, too). When people just naturally link to you, they won't all naturally use exactly the same phrase, and they particularly won't just happen to use your favorite keyword.
• Return the favor. Once a former client noticed that I had given his site a link, and he emailed me to ask for a change of anchor text. This was back before I fully appreciated the importance of anchor text, but I'm an obliging person, so I made the change. Since then, when I link to him (which I do fairly regularly, since he has a useful website), I make an effort to use his keywords. Why not? They're natural choices for his website, so it's easy enough to use them in natural sentences. When your network sees that you make that effort for them, they're likely to make that effort for you, too.
  

Understanding Alt Tags

The content that greets visitors to your website is enormously important. The stuff "under the hood" -- the meta language that human visitors don't see -- is also important. We've discussed keywords here before. Once you've gotten your description and keywords set up, you should also think about your alt tags.

Alt tags are descriptions of images. People with limited vision can hear them and know what pictures are on your website. At some pages (like the example below) you can see them when you put your mouse over a picture.

They also tell the search engines, which cannot see pictures, what images are on your page. When people do image searches, alt tags tell the search engines what to offer the searchers.

Many of you have never heard of or thought of alt tags, and many more don't bother using them. This explains the weird stuff you get offered when you do image searches.

Taking the time to create good alt tags can do good things for you:

• They help clarify what your page is about. When you use your keywords in your alt tags, search engines get another opportunity to identify your page with those keywords.
• They let you add keywords that don't fit into your visible on-page text. A jeweler client of mine makes lots of different kinds of jewelry. A list like "pendants, bracelets, earrings" wouldn't fit with the style of her website, but descriptive alt tags on her photographs let her include all those words. The painters I work with could list all the suburbs they serve, but again such a list wouldn't fit the upscale design of their site. By using the locations of the houses in the alt tags on their images, they can include the place names.
• They can draw a different group of customers. While SEOs may complain that most searchers who come to see images just bounce right away again without shopping, I think that isn't always true now, and is changing. As more of us use alt tags well, image searches will become more useful and popular. One of the most popular searches at my educational blog this summer was for "monkey bulletin board." I was top at Google image search, and visitors not only clicked through to look at the bulletin board more closely, but went on to visit the client whose products had been used to create it. Since my blog is about lesson plans, the people who visited through image search were different from the ones who came to the same post through regular search.

So what's a good alt tag? We're talking about keywords here, and the same things I've said about keywords before still apply:

• They have to match the content. Often, web designers will just use the basic keywords of the site. I've even seen the page descriptions being used. This looks shady. If you have a picture of a pendant, the alt tag should call it a pendant, not "first class handmade jewelry." A stock photo of a laughing child should not have your company name. Think how you feel when you do an image search and turn up pictures that seem completely irrelevant to your search. Don't do that to your potential customers.
• They ought to be related to your overall purpose. You can use a picture of a cute puppy and label it "cute puppy." This could bring people to your website. However, unless your goal is to have lots of random visitors with no interest in your goods and services, this isn't going to get you the return on your investment that you want.
• They should be things people are actually searching for. As with all your keywords, the words in your alt tags should be terms that your customers and potential clients might type in at the search engines. If people looking for your services won't be searching for "Five years in the same location" (and they won't), then that shouldn't be your alt tag. Use a word or phrase that someone will actually search for, and you increase your chances of being found enormously.

How do you create alt tags? It's easy. Go to the HTML of your page and find the image. It will begin with "a href..." Then there'll be a string starting with "src" and then you'll see "alt=" That's the place to put your alt tag. You can just type in "cute puppy" or whatever you've decided on in place of whatever follows the term "alt=" even if it's an empty space. This may be the kind of task you let your webmaster do for you. In that case, you should be able simply to ask to have your alt tags changed.

Then just watch your site statistics and see how many more people are visiting you through image search.

Stumble It!

Keywords, Marketing, and Your Brain

The brilliant team at Sharp Hue got my website up and styled my blog to match it. You can see it if you push the "homepage" button on the right. Naturally, I wanted to thank them.

Last week, I had a client tell me I was "a delight to work with," and another said she was "grateful to have you in my life." This sort of thing is heartfelt and wonderful to hear. It makes a person feel as though her work is worthwhile. I sent something of the sort to the Sharp Hue CEO, along with some flowers.

But in the back of my mind, I was thinking of the testimonial letter I would send him for his files. Naturally, it would have to include his keywords*, so that he could post a line or two somewhere where it would do him some good with the search engines.

I realize that this kind of thing can sound a little crazy. When I send my clients the list of keywords I've prepared for them, I suggest that they print them out and tape them to the computer, or simply memorize them. I don't get to see all their desks, of course, but I'm guessing that most of the clients to whom I say this think it is a bit of gentle humor. Or outright looniness.

I'm serious.

Here's what happens when you use your keywords all the time:

• It becomes natural. In SEO, we are always striving for That Natural Look. If, instead of trying to stuff a certain percentage of keyword phrases into your text, you just get into the habit of using them, they'll come to your mind very naturally, and your website will include them in completely natural ways. If you need evidence of this, think about all the people you know who have the habit of saying "like," or "you know" or the latest movie catchphrase. It's easy to get into the habit of using particular words when you speak or write -- it's just a little service your brain performs for you. Just take advantage of the fact.
• You train your customers. You can't entirely foresee what people will type in at the search engines when they need your products or services. I can give you the most probable choices, but there will be surprises. I wasn't expecting that person who came here after searching for "rotten haden." (I'm trying not to take it personally.) But you want your clients to find you very easily. By using your keywords not just on your website but on your print documents and in your presentations, you encourage the people you contact in the real world to use the words when they search online that are most likely to find you.
• You test those keywords. Things change. Maybe your initial keywords are no longer the best choices for your business. Maybe they never were. If you find that you can't use your keywords easily and naturally in most of your writing and much of your speech, then they probably aren't really the right ones for you. It's time to do some new keyword development. When you make the effort to use your keywords in your daily work, you'll have warning signs when they become outdated or inaccurate.

Using the preferred keywords of the people you work with? That may be a little bit extra. But the fact is, once you begin getting the habit of using your keywords, it'll be second nature to think this way. Just another of those little services your brain performs for you.

* If you're wondering what keywords are and why you need to think about them, leave me a comment and I'll get you up to speed.