Friday, March 18, 2005

Determining Keywords

It is obvious that choosing the right keywords can do much for your online business exposure optimizing your positioning and searchability with major search engines including Arameda. However, no one says that it is easy. Today we are happy to share with you the article written by James T. Faasse, who studied the keyword issue carefully and made up a small review of online software tools that can help you in finding the optimum keywords.

Determining Keywords
by James T. Faasse

Determining keywords is a critical step in web design. If your website and meta tags do not contain related keywords, web surfers will be unable to find your website when they conduct searches.

The formula is a little tricky - you will need to locate terms that are popular and relevant to your business. These terms may or may not be terms that *you* feel are relevant terms. The optimal terms in a site should be terms that a potential customer would use when searching for a website with your content. In order to achieve success your website should be optimized with terms and phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which receive a
significant amount of searches. The caveat, of course, is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines.

relevant + popular with searchers but not with competitors = success

Markets saturated with other sites competing for search terms make it difficult to find quality keywords. Sometimes it is better to optimize for a less popular term, one that is more targeted at your visitor, as it will likely have a higher conversion rate than a less specific popular term. The first step to determining keywords is brainstorming a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your product or offerings. This should be done by a number of individuals; sometimes people have very different ideas for search terms and by identifying a variety of people and their search terms you may tap words that hadn't occurred to you. There are a number of free and low-cost tools available online and for download that will allow you to expand and research terms that have been brainstormed. The results typically vary with the tools but overall the tools will assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts. The tools will often assist with pay-per-click engines, creating expanded, related keywords or phrases that can be bid on.

In addition to examining log files to see what terms customers are using to find a website, visit competitors' web sites and examine their meta tags for additional terms, use a thesaurus to find related terms, include misspellings of keywords in your meta tag keywords, and optimize for various forms of nouns and verbs, including tenses and plurals.

Keyword Tools

KeywordTumbler - KeywordTumbler takes existing keyword phrases and generates multiple variations, reordering the words. This allows you to build a large keyword list in seconds.

http://www.keywordtumbler.com

TheDowser - Overture Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Sandbox, Keyword Harvester, Google AdWords report analyzer, Google AdWords optimization tool, log file analyzer, conversion tracking and optimization tool.

http://www.thedowser.com

WordTracker - Wordtracker helps you choose the right internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use Wordtracker for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site promotion information!

http://www.wordtracker.com

Keyword Suggestion Tools - A handy little tool will show you the results of
your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases
are searched most often. Enter a search phrase below to see how often it's
searched for, as well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Keyword Ranking Tool - This utility can be used to check search engines for
keyword ranking and track search engine ranking for your various keywords over
time, which, as you probably know, is critical when doing search engine optimization.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Overture Keyword Tool - After entering a keyword or phrase, Overture provides
a list of related phrases that have been searched on. The tool provides a count
that indicates the number of times the phrase has been searched on. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Topword Tool - Topword Tool is a free online tool that analyzes a complete
web page and counts keyword occurrences, as well as keyword phrases (number
in brackets), equal to or above that set in the Minimum Occurrences setting.
It supplies a list of keywords and keyword phrases which are most likely to
achieve the highest rankings on a major search engine. The tool will also analyze
your meta description/keyword and title tags and then, through color coding,
inform you of words/phrases which should be included. The main use for this
tool is checking your optimization and tweaking existing web sites to rank
well.

http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html

Google Suggestion - The Google Suggestion is a new online tool for webmasters.
As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing
and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's 'Did you mean?'
feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search,
except that it works in real time. For example, if you type 'bass', Google
Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include 'bass fishing' or 'bass
guitar'. Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like 'progr,' Google
Suggest might offer you refinements like 'programming', 'programming languages',
'progesterone', or 'progressive'. You can choose one by scrolling up or down
the list with the arrow keys or mouse. The tool provides a number that indicates
the number of searches a specific word or phrase has had.

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Keyword statistics give webmasters a way to tap into what is on the minds
of Internet consumers.

When you can match your marketing efforts to the various
ways people locate their items of interest on the net, potential customers
will be streamed to your site like ants to a picnic.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Hiring a Search Engine Marketer

Hiring a Search Engine Marketer
By James T. Faasse - March 15, 2005



Many website owners put the cart before the horse- anxious for search engine traffic and rankings, the first thing they do once their site is complete is buy a "submit to 1,000 search engines for $29" service. Unfortunately, what they receive is a tenfold increase in e-mail spam but no increase in search engine traffic.

Do-it-yourself SEO is a great way to go- if you've got the time to put in, anyone can effectively optimize a website. However, it makes sense to hire a professional when your time is better spent doing what you do best; running your business.

Where to start? Selecting an internet marketer can be a daunting task. There are a wide range of fee levels as well as different attitudes, strategies and experience levels.

A few pros and cons can help you in your search:

Con: Submit your site to 25,000 Engines

Any service that claims to submit your site to more than 4 or 5 engines is not submitting to search engines at all. Most likely, they are submitting to free-for-all pages or they are spamming directories. Currently, the only engines with significant traffic are Google and Yahoo and to a small extent Teoma (Ask Jeeves). You don't have to submit to any of these engines- they will find your site by crawling links to your site.

Pro: Directory Submission Service

There are professionals who will prepare and submit your listing request to the major directories as well as industry-specific portals. This is a valuable service-- a well-written description as well as a carefully chosen directory category can improve your chances of getting listed quickly and accurately.

Directory listings are valuable links that add to your link popularity and can send traffic in their own right. Many directories are still free but several have paid options that can speed your review. Directories such as Yahoo and Business.com are paid listings only. Directory submission specialists can let you know what options and fees are available.

Con: We Won't Change a Thing on Your Site

Companies that do their optimization "off-site" by building a mini-network of sites or pages on their own site that point to yours aren't really optimizing your site. They may send you traffic, but when you stop paying, the traffic goes away. You can do that yourself with PPC listings!

Other companies create software-generated "doorway" pages or "information" pages - these pages are often created with nonsense words sprinkled with keyword phrases and meant to appeal to the search engine algorithms. The key is that they are only for search engine spiders to see; not humans. They may work for a short while (if at all.) The problem is that these pages have no links pointing to them and aren't very important in the eyes of the search engines, therefore they are not very effective.

The most dangerous companies will tell you that you won't "see" any of their changes- they add hidden links, hidden text, and other tricky techniques designed to fool search engine spiders. Some create different pages that are shown to spiders than to people- this is referred to as cloaking. These techniques can and will eventually get your site penalized or banned.

Pro: We Can Optimize Your Site

A professional SEO is likely to work with you on keyword research, change your tags, your copy, possibly your links and other code on the page. They will optimize the page- making it friendly to users and search engines while making it relevant to the terms you have agreed upon.

They may recommend you remove splash pages, frames, flash navigation, javascript links, or other things that interfere with the user experience and hinder search engine spiders. While there are workarounds and techniques that can help with situations like these, they are not the optimal solution. Even if you choose to leave search-unfriendly elements on your page, your SEO should point them out to you and advise you of the best option.

Con: We Guarantee #1 Listings in the Editorial Results

No one can guarantee you a #1 listing in the search engines' algorithmically determined results for a specific term. The engines do not have special agreements with anyone that allows them to choose where your site will appear!

Read the fine print- often the guaranteed terms are "guinea pig" terms- words no one is searching or optimizing for that even a guinea pig could get you #1 rankings for! Remember that a guarantee doesn't mean they have to achieve the results- simply that they'll give you your money back if they don't.

Other companies guarantee rankings on PPC terms. That's easy enough, you just have to have a big enough wallet to be #1.

Pro: We Guarantee Improved Results

A good search engine marketing firm should be able to guarantee that they will improve the performance of your site in the search engines- you shouldn't be worse off than when they started. Really good companies should be able to improve your conversions, not just your traffic and rankings. Isn't that the ultimate goal?

Don't be surprised if, after a search engine marketer works on your site, your traffic figures decrease. Don't worry- traffic doesn't pay your bills; in fact it actually costs you bandwidth. The quality of the traffic you continue to receive should be improved- more sales or conversions in relation to the number of visitors.

The ideal situtation is achieved when you narrow your search visitors to people who are interested in your site and they are easily able to find the information they want. This is more likely to occur when you stop focusing on unqualified but high traffic keyword phrases and start focusing on terms that really relate to your site.

Go with Your Instincts

Don't let a search marketer change your pages for the worse- slapping keywords on the page here and there may improve your rankings but decrease sales. Optimization techniques should complement and improve your site and good SEO copywriting will improve the focus of the page without losing the marketing edge.

You should feel confident that the search marketing professional you hire knows what they are doing and is willing to explain what they will do to your site and why. There really aren't any "secrets" in search marketing anymore- you can spend a few hours reading at any of the major search engine forums to find out how things work. If a marketer isn't willing to tell you what they plan to do to your site to drive more traffic, you may have a mess to clean up later.

Ask for examples of the marketer's other work; it's the best way to see what they do and how. Don't just look at the ranking reports, take a look at the page and make sure it reads well and isn't using sneaky tactics. Above all, pick someone you trust!

Monday, March 07, 2005

There Should Be More to your SEO Consultant Than Rankings

There Should Be More to your SEO Consultant Than Rankings

Potential clients are after a single goal: “Get me a top-ten ranking at Google.” Some will also mention MSN, and a few will rhyme off a list of search engines and want to rank well at the top 200 of them.


It is time to separate fact from fiction.

Yes, your SEO consultant can get you a top-ten placement at Google. But…

1. If the placement is for “dirty brown shoes”, it probably won't help your shoe store one bit, even if I get you the first place ranking. Few people are actually searching for that term.

2. Being number ten might not help much either, depending on the term. People searching for “Essential Nectar liquid vitamins”, will probably click on the first result they see, or at least on one of the “above-the-fold” results that do not require scrolling. On the other hand, someone searching for “liquid vitamins” might check through two pages of results to familiarize herself with the options available.

3. If your title tag reads like a cheap list of search terms, it will not be enticing. For instance, if it reads: “vitamins, liquid vitamins, multivitamins, multi-vitamins”, you might skip over it in favor of the next result that reads “Liquid vitamins from the Liquid Vitamin Supplements Store”.

4. If your description tag is a mess, people will more likely skip over your listing, even if it does rank number one, in favor of one that sounds like what they are looking for. Google and others use the description tag usually when the term searched for is found in it, so make sure to include your key search terms in a description tag that actually reads well.

I recently responded to a forum question, which went something like this: My site ranks number one for this term at this engine. The term is searched this many times per day, and the engine has this percentage marketshare. Can I expect this many visitors?

That's not an SEO challenge; that's a math problem: searches x marketshare = visitors

I responded with a few factors that override mathematics in the SEO game, including the site's title tag and description tag, as well as whether the term lends itself to scrolling. I also pointed out that it depends on the title tags and description tags of the competition, too.

Another factor that makes predicting traffic difficult is the abandonment factor - how many people click on none of the results because they get interrupted or confused, or abandon the search for a new one because they find themselves off-topic or searching too broadly.

It also depends on how many sponsored links there are and how they are marked. Often at Yahoo and Lycos, for example, there are so many ads that the average searcher might never scroll a screen or two to see the organic (natural) results.

And, of course, it also depends on the color of the walls in the room the searcher is clicking from, the weather outside and how well they slept last night. But there is little you can do about that.

What you can do is to work with your SEO consultant to choose the most effective search terms for your business and make sure he/she develops a title tag and description tag that sell to both humans and the search engines. Then make sure he is monitoring not just the rankings for your key search terms, but also the description used by each of the search engines.

A good ranking at Google and Yahoo is just one measure of your SEO consultant's success. A more complete evaluation is that he/she is your partner in building long-term, targeted traffic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Timothy Faasse` is an SEO consultant

Sunday, March 06, 2005

E-commerce - Ingredients for success

E-commerce - Ingredients for success

By James T. Faasse

1) Post Contact Information
The following information should be posted to the website in an intuitive location:

  • A corporate address
  • Product return address
  • An e-mail address
  • A toll-free number

2) Hire Knowledgeable People to Take Phone Calls
Consumers shopping online have the same number of questions as regular retail customers - perhaps even more. It is important to maintain a well-trained and knowledgeable staff of people to answer phones. The more these receptionists assist consumers the better the conversion rates and repeat buying. It is also important to provide incentives for your staff to cross-sell and up-sell products.

3) Big Fonts and Big Pictures Pay Off
Isn't it frustrating when you click an image to enlarge an image and it loads the same size? Since customers can't pick up the item (like in a retail store) it is important to show detailed pictures. Large keyword fonts also assist intuitive navigation (and GoogleBot loves big, bold fonts)!

4) Be Prepared
If you are trying to get on-line for the Christmas season, don't wait until November to build your online store. It takes months to earn solid positioning in Google. Once you are up and running, make sure you have allocated the proper resources for the Christmas season. Your site's traffic should increase 4-fold during peak Holiday months.

5) Befriend the Postman
It is imperative that your e-business delivers packages on time. It's even more important that your products arrives in one piece. Nothing is more frusterating to a customer than late arrivals and damaged goods.

6) Make Return Policies Easy and Fair
Maintain a return policy that benefits the end user. It is important to include return labels with the packaging, and provide refunds when requested. Repeat business is your best business. Do what it takes to benefit your customers. Next time they shop they will order from your shopping cart- not someone else's.

7) Simplify your Storefront
Customers will wait, on average, no more than 10 seconds per page to download before they choose to shop another web store. Remove graphics that take forever and a day to download, and avoide animated clip-art and annoying music.

8) Intuitive Navigation
Eliminate unnecessary clicks. By reducing the number of clicks needed to complete a shopping cart transaction your conversion rates will increase.

E-commerce - Reasons to sell online


E-commerce - Reasons to sell online


By James T. Faasse`

1) Money- It's here folks! E-commerce sales total in the billions of dollars every year. Not millions. Billions!

2) The early bird earns market share. Those who are first to enter a market will most likely control it. You probably aren't the first in your field to launch an e-commerce business, or even the hundredth- the sooner the better.

3) E-commerce is affordable. Small businesses often fear they don't have the resources to compete with the big boys. Thanks to application service providers (ASP's), small businesses can sell product on the web for as little as $79/ month. Learn more about shopping cart software and ecommerce hosting.

4) Lower operating costs. Dealing with clients over the Internet reduces operating costs. A recent survey yielded estimates that $7 is saved every time a customer checks their order status via the web compared to calling.

5) E-commerce is conducted worldwide. Sure, orders can be taken over the phone and by fax, but e-commerce enables a customer from Bangladesh to conduct business with a company in Nebraska.

6) Affluent consumers shop online. Over 65% of online consumers have a household income that exceeds $52,000.

7) Items can be added to your shopping cart 24-7. E-commerce enables your businesses to operate 24 hours a day seven days a week (as long as you have a reliable e-commerce host, that is!)

8) E-commerce is growing and growing and growing. Thousands of homes add the Internet each day.

E-commerce is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It's about solid business fundamentals and marketing strategies. With the proper mix and a lot of hard work, you can make your e-commerce dream a success.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Anchor Text Tips to Sky Rocket Your Search Rankings!

Anchor Text Tips to Sky Rocket Your Search Rankings!

Google/Yahoo bombing is the practice of placing terms you want a given page to rank for in anchor text that links to that page. Huh? Ok, here's an example: if I wanted this page to rank highly for the term "President of the Internet" I'd create a link like this: President of the Internet and have all my friends and friendly readers post that link and text on their sites.


Discuss anchor text optimization in WebProWorld.

With enough pages carrying that same text and link I'd knock the
current president
from his perch. (He's also governing
in Yahoo
, by the way...)

Google bombing is also effective on pages that don't want to rank for certain terms - Miserable Failure is one example.

The ability to manipulate search results this way indicates the weight that the two most searched engines give to the text webpages use to link to other web pages.

Matt Bailey of The Karcher Group believessearch engines attribute this value to the anchor text because it, "is very important to the user; it should describe the content of the target page and the subject
matter."

James Faasse of iNETready described the way text link works this way: "by identifying your pages through relevant keyword links you are "telling" the search engine which keywords the linked pagesrepresent. The rule applies for both internal and external anchor text."

"Proper use of anchor text," said James, "can help you show the relevancy of your web pages to key search engines to help rank for desired keywords."

I wrote to James, Matt, and two other SEO experts recently and asked them about their thoughts on anchor text and anchor text best practices.

"Anchor text is extremely important to rankings, especially in Google. I've seen some evidence in Yahoo, but not to the extent that Google rankings can be influenced," said Matt. James Faasse of iNETready said, "I believe in the value of anchor text."

Anchor Text Best Practices

Matt's anchor text best practices include excellent general guidelines for you to follow:

1. Do what's best for the user.

2. Make it easily understood by the user.

3. Don't try to hide your intentions.

4. Be honest about the anchor text. What it says is what you should get.

James's anchor text best practices offer some specific advice that will help you make anchor text decisions on your site:

Use Judiciously

1. Navigation maps (the text-links at the bottom of each page) Nav Maps are a great place to put keyword enriched anchor text. These text-links tend to be found at the bottom of each page in a site. An important note is that these links WILL be used by site visitors and MUST be created and phrased with live-visitors and SE Spiders in mind.

2. Links on the INDEX page

The INDEX page of a site is the most powerful real estate found that URL. Again, all work on the INDEX page MUST consider live-visitors before SE Spiders. When keyword-enriching text on the INDEX page, there are often ways to link into internal pages. This is a good thing as it pushes spider traffic while associating the keyword (anchor text) with the specific page

linked to. An important consideration is that the INDEX page often has a higher page rank than internal pages.

3. Links on Internal Pages

Links on internal pages are not as important to search engine rankings as on the INDEX page. Nevertheless, each internal page is terribly important to the clients and can add to a good internal linking strategy.

4. External Links

Links coming from other URLs should use effective anchor text. With larger campaigns we can mix and match the keyword phrases targeted through anchor links in order to associate keyword phrases with specific internal pages.

Fathom , a moderator from WebProWorld , offered these six suggestions to those who want their anchor text to work well for them:

1. Important link positioning top left to bottom right. (throwing tons of links at bottom helps little).

2. Exact anchors that best support the content on the link to page It's great to use tons of links where the anchor text suggest importance to "web design" however if the page is specific to "web development" then the use of "web design" link anchors will be less effective.

3. The use of "broad" has the benefit of aiding "broadly" e.g. using links to a website about "college degrees" where the link indicates "degrees" has the benefit of gaining associate degrees, bachelor degrees, masters degrees, as well as the specific subject matter for the degree itself link computer science degrees.

A link anchor however about "masters degrees" dilutes the value to other degrees e.g. bachelor degrees - so it is a game of tradeoffs.

4. If attempting to do item #3 for "web" to capture "web design", "website design", "web development", "website development", a text link anchor looks quite inappropriate.
Thus the value of image links e.g. Web where the broad term is less apparent and the image actually reads "web design".

5. Avoid "stop words" such as and, with, by, from etc.

6. Internal site linking structure has a significant impact of supporting and
propagating weight, relevancy, and PageRank to similar topical pages... e.g. Google's indented secondary results for a specific query helps show this. If you are listed (ranked) with only a single results listing - your internal linking structure is likely the cause, and fixing this can help improve overall results.

James Faasse of iNETready contradicted some of what Fathom said, however. "In terms of anchor text being found on relevant vs. irrelevant sites I have yet to see any substantial proof supporting the claim that relevant websites will yield a better return in the natural rankings." From a purely pragmatic perspective though, if you've got links on a page that's more relevant to your site you're
more likely to get foot traffic in that way rather than if you've got your text links up on unrelated/irrelevant sites.

Well, I imagine you're ready to start optimizing your text links. Remember to focus on those within your site as well as those your link partners use to mention you. Anchor text is an important way of showing the search engines, as well as your visitors, just what they're getting when they land on the page. And, for now, it's a powerful way to raise your ranking for particular keywords.