When no one listens, there’s no use talking at all.

Do you hear me, do you care?

Remember the lyrics to the popular 80’s hit? I just got back from a dinner with a client and it’s all I hear in my head after the conversation we had tonight.  I’m really listening closely to what my clients understand about their message, and in a more ethereal sense, their words.

In my head, the lyrics are, “What are words worth, when no one listens anymore? No one notices, I think I’ll dye my hair blue.” As a chic, I get it. I don’t think that’s so different from a desperate small business point of view. When we’re young, like the song suggests, we’d do anything to get attention immediately, to be noticed – even bizarre to border line nuts.

Let me explain to you exactly why keyword research and word relevance are more important than flash and hype.

Keywords Are Powerful

Online, your words couldn’t be more powerful. You can have all the graphics and keywords, and even a fair number of readers, but to be found by the maximum number of people who need you, it will take more than that. You’ll need a small business marketing strategy. Could you use more customers? Better (paying) customers? More business?

Case in point:

Out of curiosity, I used one of the companies I represent as a model for some basic SEO and Page Rank experimentation. I’ve been doing their media releases and fliers, but not the Web site.  This company has believed that their Web site was optimized. Since competition in their field is minimal, they were easily found on the first page of Google search if you knew what to look for. I learned that not only were they absolutely not searched on for their most prevalent keyword phrases, they weren’t showing at all for the phrases people actually look for.

That blew my mind, because with a Page Rank of 3, you’d assume the keywords were working for them. But they weren’t. Zero traffic on the terms used.

So what to do? Is this a problem? Well, for one thing, if the words you think your customers use, aren’t in fact, the words they use, how will they find you if they don’t already know your specific Web site address? If your business presence online is new, will your market know your exact address?

Long Tail Optimization
Zero To Sixty Marketing decided to use this company as an example to see where we could improve our customer discussions. Using Market Samurai for keyword research, we ran the currently used keywords against long tail options that sounded more reasonable for searchers to use. Long tail keywords are words that are run through a system based on the original keywords and determined to have market merit based on the level of traffic and competition for that word or phrase.

What a difference. We realized the words we ran through Market Samurai, that were not used before, had huge amounts of traffic and very little competition.

What does that mean? It means that many people are surfing the net searching on terms and keywords that apply to this business, but the words weren’t used in tags, bullets, headers, and titles to cause that searcher to find the site. What’s more, very few other companies represented in that niche were using that term to promote their own business. Can you say ‘goldmine?’

What Are Words Worth To You?
So think about that. You may not be an SEO believer, but there’s undeniable merit to a case study like this. The advice I gave this company was to start using those keywords effectively in  posts to blogs, comments, and high authenticity sites. Working outside of the site (link building) to improve keyword strength for the term you want to use while you’re using the words that are already proven, strategically can – over time, cause your unused terms to become more common place, and therefore used. This is a very effective link building exercise, well worth the effort.

Take the time to develop relationships with high authority sites via comments and linking strategies. Use the keywords in such a way that the reader stays on the page to learn more about your quality information, interesting related links, and possibly – hopefully, comment and leave their link so that a relationship does in fact develop. That takes time. And that’s okay, because as in real life relationships, they will matter and become relevant to your business reputation.

So I don’t think you need to dye your hair blue, or anything, that’s just a song.

Picture Credit: danielleblue from Flickr

Related Posts:

Very Basic SEO 5 PT Series,

SEO: Where Do You Find Your Keywords PT 2,

Using Keyword Research Tools PT3,

How Do We Use Those Keywords PT4,

Where Are Keywords Most Effective PT5

Now its time to put forth a little effort. I’m going to ask you my favorite question:

What do you have to say to your customers, viewers, and peers?

Notice I never asked you what you had to say to a search engine. Your content is king, and if you ever start filling your web pages, press releases, articles, and blogs with randomly placed keywords, they will no longer be keywords. They will then be useless, lifeless gobbledygook that will only make you look uneducated, and there’s absolutely no authority in that.

Page by page, start writing your quality content. Remember your audience. Some will be looking for information, some will be looking at their competition, and some will be looking for your services or goods. Write to them, and although a call to action on every page is a good idea, you want to spend more time expressing the benefits to the customer than the blatantly over-done, hit-them-over-the-head sales pitch.

Pick one keyword phrase. Pick the best one for your landing page. Most times your landing page will be your home page, but sometimes it’s your services page. What page is your customer coming to first? That is where you use your primary keyword. Hint: Its not in the drop-down menu. Current logic is that every page a person lands on must be considered a landing page.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Can you use the word or phrase in your title header, naturally? 80% of all SEO results are from the page title and anchor text.
• Can you mention the word or phrase in its entirety within a natural sentence, and will that sentence work in a 2-3 sentence paragraph?
• Can it be used naturally in any H2 bullet or numbered list?

If you believe those conditions apply, see if they work into the text you’ve written. Read it out loud.

• Does it flow?
• Did it lose meaning?
• Will your customers, viewers, and peers find value in what you’ve said?

If not, then try again. If your writing doesn’t meet those conditions, you’ve wasted your time on keywords. Trial and error, my friend. In the end you’ll be glad you put effort into the quality and style of your website copy.

Is SEO Just About Keywords?

ABSOLUTELY NOT. You also need to consider and address:

• The number of pages on your site. You want several pages of good content, including drop down 2nd and 3rd tier pages.
• The age of your site. Even when it’s built right, time improves rank because familiarity will bring necessary clicks and comments, and links.
• The frequency of updated, quality content. Blogs, calendars, and product reviews all add quality content if updated regularly.
• The internal linking strategy, and quality external links. Quality external links will build your inbound links, and we’ll be talking more about that in our next post.

Our next and final post in this series addresses where those keywords will be most effective. Did you find this helpful? We’d love to hear from you, please leave any questions and comments below, and be sure to use your name (not your keyword phrase) in the name box, and a link to your blog or website in the URI box. We’ll explain why that’s so important in our next post.

Photo Credit: Le Petit Poulailler on Flickr

Related Articles:
Very Basic SEO – Pt 1
SEO Where Do You Find Your Keywords – Pt 2
Using Keyword Research Tools – Pt 3

SO you need keywords, but if everyone in your service industry is using the same words, how will that help you? With that logic, how do the right words help you? First of all, you’re not completely wrong! Random words aren’t going to be the Holy Grail you’re looking for. Second of all, start your list already! We’ll discuss where you use what words and how you use them later.

Your keyword list should include:

• Brainstorming the words and phrases you think people use when looking for your company or service.
• Look at your competitors sites, what words are they using?
• What problem does your service solve?
• What names are used in your product lines?
• Your list should be extensive, a couple hundred to start.

What words are we supposed to be using?

Now that you’ve compiled your basic list of keywords and keyword phrases, how do you know which will perform best? After all, if everyone else is using them, how will they help you more than your competitors? This is time consuming, but remember, you could pay to have it done.

• Check out your competitors that outrank you on the search engine pages. Pay special attention to the top ranking positions.
• Can any phrases or wording be altered just enough to be similar, but not exactly the same, and still get the point across? Circle.
• Wordtracker.com and Market Samurai have excellent keyword/phrase analysis tools that will help you decide what words will have the most impact. Both have free versions for a temporary basis, and I think that’s great for comparison sake.

Now, using your new tools, plug in your keywords and phrases. You’re looking for:

• High volume of search traffic, preferably over 30,000 searchers.
• Low volume of competition, under 300 is optimal.
• Relevant words and phrases that can be used conversationally and fluidly. Remember, you’re not writing for a spider, you’re writing for your readers at all times.

You need to know this information because you not only want to stand out, you also want to be able to “answer the cry” of your market. If people are searching on certain terms, but few of those terms are actually being used by your competition, you’re on to something. Obviously, meeting needs that aren’t being met is a huge benefit for your company.

Remember, SEO is an ongoing, constantly updated science involving not only keywords and their use, but also effective linking strategy, number of pages, and even length of time your site has been updating new quality content. You may want to revisit these tools occasionally if you see your rankings start to slip over time.

In our next posts, we’ll be covering a little more about Wordtracker and Market Samurai, and show you where and how these words you’ve discovered will help you the most. Was this post helpful? We’d love to hear from you! Leave your questions and comments below.

Photo Credit: jurvetson on flickr

Shari does a great job explaining what SEO is not, a very important read I strongly recommend. This is a very basic synopsis broken down for the small service company that is just now learning that their site can do more for their company than just hold a place for chance visitors.

Search engines are not as hard to understand as it can seem to a smaller, service website owner. Most businesses understand by now that they must have a website so their company information can be easily accessed by prospective clients, but just having one doesn’t guarantee that.

The major search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Whenever you look for something online, these engines have a search box that you can type information into, and then click on ’search.’ The engine then goes through its data, and pulls up information from sites that correlate exactly with what you’ve entered into the box. I told you, very basic.

So what gets entered by the searcher matters very much, but so does the wording on your site or blog. You want your site to be accessed by a person or business who is already looking for you. The art of causing that to happen, is SEO.

You want the wording you use on your website to produce the most favorable result possible, and that would be for your website to exist on at least the first Goggle, Yahoo, or Bing search page, hopefully the upper third, and optimally the first listing for what your customers are typing into the search box when they are looking for you.

The wordsmithing part of SEO simply combines the science of researching what words are best for you, and then weaving those words naturally into the sentences, titles, links and phrases used throughout your website. It also involves the number of pages and links you’ll be using, and how you’ll be using them.

Small service companies of America, stand strong. I encourage you to learn from these pages and the excellent information available on ExpressMarketingMemo.com so that you can adopt practices that will keep you in the running through this economy. We not only offer services, but  consulting as well. Many of you are working very hard and are finding yourselves stretched to capacity. We can get you back up to speed, so you can enjoy the business of doing your business again.

Was this helpful? Is there any specific information you would like us to elaborate on further? Leave your comments below.

Photo Credit: Ambient Damage on flickr