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Sep
08

Where Are Keywords Most Effective? PT 5

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (1)
I gave away a little of today’s post in my last one when I addressed how to use keywords. Remember, I asked you if you could:
Use them effectively in your H1, or header title.
Use them in your H2, or header for a bullet or numbered list.
Use them in the body of your short, opening paragraph.
That’s a start. Choosing one keyword, and using it like I showed you in my last post is very important. Using too many keywords can often take away from the quality writing you want to share with your readers. That one primary keyword should be used as described above, and it should be used in the opening lines of text under your title.
More Keyword Effectiveness
Another important placement of your primary keyword is in the anchor text of a link. Here’s why:
The anchor text, or the different colored wording used when linking, provided the links connect (and you must always check), adds good authority.
Anchor text used for linking outbound to another, possibly higher ranking site, may naturally turn into an inbound link once a relationship between authors is established. Keyword-rich anchor text coming in on an inbound link is good for authority.
Anchor text using effective keywords for your internal linking between pages of your website is also good for your reader, and by default, you.
Posting comments on relevant blogs and forums will also bring links in from other sites, so you want to include good keyword-rich anchor text when you leave them.
You’re not completely limited to one keyword for all your content. If used too frequently, you can actually hurt your site, not help it. Shoot for using your primary keyword naturally 2-3 times on a page in the places we’ve talked about. Then, go back and see if another word or phrase that you’ve researched can be used as a subordinate, worked into the text of your content. Don’t use it more than a few times.
It’s imperative that you write for your readership; your potential customers, your existing customers, and others, such as information gatherers and peers in your business to business relationships. If you can do this fluidly, and maintain the quality of your content, you’ve got the basics of a recipe for success.
One more thing as I wrap up this series. Be a good steward of your site. Make sure to reply to comments and return links to readers who have helped you link. It’s not going to hurt your company to complement or agree with a competitor’s comments or product lines, and doing so can actually be helpful for more than just linking. Once relationships are built, and that takes some time, you may very well find yourself in a situation where you may be offered extra work. Sometimes a company finds it better to send extra work to someone they trust than to risk turning down work with no alternative for their customer. That could only be possible with effective link strategies.
We’d love to hear from you. Be sure to leave your comments or questions with a link to your company along with your name below. Here’s to your small business success!

I gave away a little of today’s post in my last one, where I addressed how to use keywords. Remember, I asked you if you could:

  • Use them effectively in your H1, or header title.
  • Use them in your H2, or header for a bullet or numbered list.
  • Use them in the body of your short, opening paragraph.

That’s a start. Choosing one keyword, and using it like I showed you in Part 4 is very important. Using too many keywords can often take away from the quality writing you want to share with your readers. That one primary keyword should be used as described above, and it should be used in the opening lines of text under your title.

More Keyword Effectiveness

Another important placement of your primary keyword is in the anchor text of a link. Here’s why:

  • The anchor text, or the different colored wording used when linking, provided the links connect (and you must always check), adds good authority.
  • Anchor text used for linking outbound to another, possibly higher ranking site, may naturally turn into an inbound link once a relationship between authors is established. Keyword-rich anchor text coming in on an inbound link is good for authority.
  • Anchor text using effective keywords for your internal linking between pages of your website is also good for your reader, and by default, you.
  • Posting comments on relevant blogs and forums will also bring links in from other sites, so you want to include good keyword-rich anchor text when you leave them.

You’re not completely limited to one keyword for all your content. If used too frequently, you can actually hurt your site, not help it. Shoot for using your primary keyword naturally 2-3 times on a page in the places we’ve talked about. Then, go back and see if another word or phrase that you’ve researched can be used as a subordinate, worked into the text of your content. Don’t use it more than a few times.

It’s imperative that you write for your readership; your potential customers, your existing customers, and others, such as information gatherers and peers in your business to business relationships. If you can do this fluidly, and maintain the quality of your content, you’ve got the basics of a recipe for success.

One more thing as I wrap up this series. Be a good steward of your site. Make sure to reply to comments and return links to readers who have helped you link. It’s not going to hurt your company to complement or agree with a competitor’s comments or product lines, and doing so can actually be helpful for more than just linking. Once relationships are built, and that takes some time, you may very well find yourself in a situation where you’re offered extra work. Sometimes a company finds it better to send extra work to someone they trust than to risk turning down work with no alternative for their customer. That could only be possible with effective link strategies.

We’d love to hear from you. Be sure to leave your comments or questions with a link to your company along with your name below. Here’s to your small business success!

Photo Credit:   Flickr’s danielle_blue

Related Posts: Very Basic SEO 5 PT Series, Where Do You Find Your Keywords PT2, Using Keyword Research Tools PT3, How Do We Use Those Keywords PT4

Jul
23

Link Strategies

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)

People talk often about linking. Linking from one site to another is a pretty common way to show interesting, fun, or informative sites to friends, associates, and even networks on many social sites and emails. I did some research on a site we’ve been upgrading lately, and another common situation came up. As I shared what I had learned with the small business owner, I realized that all the nodding was due to complete and total misunderstanding of how, exactly, linking strategies can offset costs associated with marketing a company.

When you’re working with SEO companies or researching and employing those techniques on your own site, its similar, but not exactly like social networking with your friends for entertainment. When engaging with your friends, there’s no real goal other than to share the information. When you’re marketing however, the goal is to gain authority to your website by the search engine so that you move closer to the top of the search engine research page, or SERP. We need to be on the first page because most searchers don’t get past the first page before they re-enter the search query to try again. If you’re not on the first page, you don’t exist.

This site I’m referring to had initially been optimized for a particular phrase, and like most things associated with technology, the keyword relevance  changed. In this instance, another company in the same business had used ‘black hat’ methods of outranking our client’s site, and had seriously knocked us down several pages. That’s going to work for him until the engines realize what’s been done, and then he will be knocked to the bottom for a long time. So, it hurts our client now and we have to do something about it. What?

How does linking improve rank?
Besides the obvious keyword research update, a site in this scenario has a real shot of outranking the impostor with a good linking strategy. This can be paid for by hiring a good content marketing company, but it can also be done by you, over time, if you’ve got the time to dedicate to it. The more links from other websites back to your site gain it authority by the search engine spiders.  When they see those links, and more coming to it, and the linking increases, they see that searchers are going to it for real, relevant information, and that’s authority. It takes time to build that up naturally, and you don’t want to do anything unnaturally or you can hurt yourself more than help.

Its not just using the right keywords, although that is pretty important. Its also about using an effective linking strategy. Keywords change and have to be updated occasionally, and links go bad and have to be checked occasionally. Using keywords in your links as anchor text is also very important, but you can only control what you link from page to page within your own site or to another site. To give you an idea of what we were up against, one of our outranking competitors had well over 600 inbound links, and our client had 12.

One reason for the low number of links was the newness of the site, but the other reasons had to do with how long that site had just been sitting there without:

1. using a blog
2. updating the blog 2-3 times per week
3. commenting on other relevant blogs and leaving links
4. article submissions referring to the site using, you guessed it, links!

Its easy to find yourself there, as a business owner or marketing director of your company. There are PPC methods to get you to the top also. But this post recognizes that we need to be resourceful today. Successful linking strategies take time and repetition to build, but with dedication your site can become optimized for your customers’ needs.

Related Articles: New Feature: Small Business Marketing Links

Photo Credit: Robert Brook on Flickr

Jun
19

What Is A Content Marketing Package?

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)

We’ve been talking quite a bit about content marketing between Express Marketing Memo and our blog here at Zero To Sixty Marketing. By now you’ve probably got a good idea about what content is, basically:

  • the milk in the jug
  • the words in the paragraph
  • the  media that gets your expertise from your company to the   public who will be buying your service or goods.

Content marketing is not sales and it’s not advertisement. It is, however, the most effective way to promote yourself online. Certain names have always been associated with certain products or services, and like branding, content marketing promotes you over time through reputation.

Content Marketing Options

What vehicles you decide to use are completely up to you, however, some are more effective than others and even that depends on your market, and how often you can or should communicate with them. We recommend:

Content Marketing Packages

Every circumstance is unique. One company may need all of these services on a regular basis, another may only need the holes filled in that they cannot get to or have no personal interest in doing themselves. One company may need articles submitted for them, another may only need their blog updated. Some businesses can easily find the time to provide and distribute their own content.

When figuring out what your company’s particular needs are, keep in mind:

  • How much time do you have to devote?
  • What is your writing and computer skill level?
  • Is your target market local?
  • What is your marketing budget?

Many times answering these questions will help you decide how to proceed. No matter what you decide, you’re not alone. We hope the information we provide on this blog will have you up and running successfully in no time. What solutions work best for your company?

Photo Credit: kellypuffs on flickr

Related Posts: Marketing: The Times They Are A-Changin’

Jun
17

3 Things That Don’t Work When Content Marketing

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)

So many new online marketers and small businesses new to the online aspect of their business ask us, “Just what is content marketing?” As my mentor and co-worker, Shari Voigt,  pointed out so well in her post to Express Marketing Memo, it’s the many ways you present yourself interactively online. In order for you to be useful, you need to offer a constant stream of information, and quite frankly, it’s hard for most businesses to  offer content effectively and still do the day-to-day activities involved in running a business. Many companies choose to outsource that function, and in an effort to meet that need, we offer content marketing packages.

Shari and I were talking about the difficulties beginners face when it comes to content marketing. As we mulled it over, we started talking about what doesn’t work. Basically, there are businesses we would never respond to because of their annoyance factor or the poor presentation. I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to be you. Let’s hit on those issues so you’re better prepared when you hit the online world.

Blogging:

Let’s keep it relevant. Your title should reflect the material being covered in the blog. Links should be helpful and serve to support statements made by you.

Newsletters:

Is your newsletter just a sales page invitation for an expensive program that I have to purchase to know whatever the heck you’re talking about in the first place? An opening bait title question should be answered without having to read an entire, meaningless newsletter that when finished, still has not answered the question. Hint: If your title asks a question, answer it and please do it quickly.

Social Marketing:

This is an important component to your content marketing strategy. Its effective, fun, and time-consuming. When I’m interacting with other businesses and potential clients, getting constant machine-gun style rapid fire updates on your next teleseminar, countdown to it, or repetitive quotes that are obviously automated, I don’t see who on earth would respond to that. Those type of updates don’t make me say to myself, “OOH! OOH! I’m dying to talk to YOU, obviously you have what I’m looking for!”

Also, if you catch yourself talking about food constantly, and you’re not a chef selling food or marketing your restaurant, think about how that looks to everyone in the free world.

ALLRIGHTEE then. Enough about that from me, any of you agree with me? Love to hear it, comment below!

Photo Credit: Chris Friese on Flickr

Related Posts: What Is Content Marketing?

Apr
14

Why Article Directories?

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (1)

I’ve covered article marketing as it pertains to an author looking for a larger audience in my post to Express Marketing Memo earlier this month. Now, let’s look at the value article writing has for a writer needing a constant stream of readily available content.Susan Hamilton

Many writers, and even small business owners, are realizing that to truly take advantage of Internet marketing opportunities, coming up with their own original content proves difficult, especially at the rate it must be done to help their Google rankings. Any given site should be posting between 2-5 new articles per week. If a writer supplies content for many sites, or if new articles or blog posts compete for time in the otherwise hectic workplace, using someone else’s content is a pretty smart way to go. I am absolutely not talking about plagiarism! There is a right way and a wrong way to go about this, and doing it correctly is actually a service and not an illegal practice.

Internet marketing veterans have used generated content for some time. You wouldn’t be the first person to wonder how on earth anyone has time to come up with a continual stream of fresh content, take care of other professional responsibilities and have time to sleep, too! Time constraints on our lives can appear endless on occasion. As a time-management junkie, I can tell you to always be on the lookout for ways to work smarter, not longer. We believe that Zero To Sixty Marketing LLC , provides the ability for many small businesses to conduct business as usual while building their online credibility through the content marketing services we offer for that purpose. Content marketing services are only one way to establish a content stream, article submission sites offer a way to do it yourself. It’s an investment in your small business future that pays off over time, exponentially. Your online presence via articles, blog posts, and social media forums builds your client base of the future, and done correctly can yield results rather quickly, sometimes in as little as three months!

No, not tomorrow.

So, how do you use other writers’ content and build your credibility? First of all, you don’t build your own credibility without building theirs. Don’t even think about taking their work without giving them all the credit due in their bio box. If there is any doubt at all, contact the author and retain permission. Make sure that you use it with their copyright information, and link back to that author’s website or article submission site.

Realize that frequent postings of value-added, linked content are some of the things search engines are looking for when ranking your site. There is no reason several authors can’t boost one site’s rankings, if everything else is done right.

Have you ever used article submission sites for content?

Mar
12

Beware of Bloodsucking Plagiarists

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
MacroMosquito

MacroMosquito by Wendy on Flickr

Last weekend, on a routine check of our copy productivity, Shari and I were going over analytics and realized that an unusually high number of republishing had occurred on a lesser known article I’d submitted to Ezines before Christmas.

We had been supplying content for our pet project on http://educationalhobbiesblog.com, and bringing awareness to our work through our favorite article directory, EzineArticles.com. One thing we enjoy about that medium is the ability to offer our work publicly, and then retain the credit for researching and writing the piece when it’s republished by another content provider, whether news magazine or blog site. It’s good for our company to have our names associated with our published works, and this is one of the methods we offer our customers who are looking for blog and website traffic building through social media. Many companies don’t have the time to market their expertise through copy the way we can for them.

Some submissions are more effective than others, and we learn from each scenario what better to do next time, and repeat effective strategies. I believe that’s called business marketing! We always walk away with information, one way or another. We sure learned a thing or two this past weekend.

Although several months had passed, and we were well overdue for our quarterly check, we decided to check up on the articles and see if they had been published elsewhere. Not expecting much due to our more pressing projects this first quarter, we were pretty amazed to find it had been republished 238 times. That’s darn good for a pre-Christmas article discussing the buying trends of remote control hobbies! It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t take long to figure out why.

Apparently a guy by the name of Ronald Eapen decided to take my article, slough off the title, use my topic sentence as the new title, and republish my article under his name, taking all the credit for himself. This man then superlinked the material to his easy money making scheme which was totally content unrelated. 238 times he had submitted that article to every known reputable and otherwise article directory and linked back to a page containing otherwise unrelated content and offered yet another link to his easy money scheme.

Every article was heavily endowed with every social bookmarking plugin and affiliate link you could think of. And he’s been making money off my content for the past three months, giving me no credit or kickback for my word-for-word duplication.

People, I clearly copyrighted that work under Zero To Sixty Marketing!

We spent several hours tracking my article from directory to directory, demanding credit and compensation. We also learned who we will consider credible article submission directories for the future! After sending him personal comments on every article that was set up for comments, I remembered we had a friend in the copyright infringement business. Its clearly time to talk to him!

GoArticles promptly removed the content and sent us email confirmation. That was pretty cool. Soon we’ll know who else was willing to comply with copyright law.

Long and short of it, make sure you are being vigilant about protecting your work. It’s not bad to have your work republished all over, that’s pretty much the goal when you’re building you’re reputation. Thing is, you’re reputation is shot when a disreputable person uses it for spamming and the promise of easy money for his customers. If I hadn’t copyrighted my work like this:

Copyright 2009, Zero To Sixty Marketing, LLC, Susan Hamilton
All Rights Reserved

or even just used the word Copyright, the year, and name, I wouldn’t have had the legal right to demand that my name be associated with my work, my work remain unchanged, and compensation for monies earned. That doesn’t mean I’ll ever see a dime. This was small potatoes. But he had everything in place to be well on his way to monetizing my work under his name. Totally uncool.

To recap: beware of bloodsucking plagiarists.

Photo Credit: @N00/266164980/" target="_blank">Wendy on Flickr

Related Article: One Minute With Plagiarism

Mar
10

Comparing Link to Ink

By Shari Voigt · Comments (0)

011_010If you market to other businesses on any level, and haven’t yet subscribed to B2B Magazine, you’re missing out. We receive both the print and online versions, and tend to read them cover-to-cover each month. Today’s issue just arrived in the mail, and the first thing to catch my eye was the “New Channels” column by Paul Gillin, titled “New PR Reality: Link over Ink.”

Gillen hits the nail on the head when he says that “clients and executives mumble ‘That’s nice’ about a Web link, but get excited about a reference in their daily Wall Street Journal.” We’ve definitely found this to be true. But the rules have changed, and one or two good links can now return far greater results than a mention in the most prominent print publication.

It’s a rare business that won’t find its audience online these days. Unfortunately, it’s also a rarity for small businesses to know how to get found online. Publishing a Web site or starting a blog is not enough. Adding your Web address to your print marketing collateral is not enough. Sending out press releases that mention your business or your site … even that is not enough. Don’t neglect any of those activities, but to achieve your online objectives, you’re going to need links … quality, inbound links from other Web sites, blogs, social networks, and relevant directories.

How many times in the past month have you searched for something you read about in a newspaper or magazine? Ok, now how many times have you followed a link from Google or from within a blog or other online article? Is there any comparison?

By the way, you can subscribe to B2B Magazine and a variety of other useful trade publications for free at www.tradepub.com.

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