When was the last time you updated your company website? Today? Last week? Last month? Last year? I’m hoping it was no later than last week, but a recent report suggests otherwise. SiteKreator’s Small Business Usage Study found that 54% of small businesses update their websites less than once per month.

Why it Matters: Content Is Still King.

From an SEO perspective, if you want Google and the other search engines to rank your site high for your chosen keywords, your site needs to supply a steady flow of fresh, quality content related to those keywords.

From a search perspective, when the ‘searcher’ types what he’s looking for into the Google search bar, he now looks for the most relevant information AND the most recently produced. For instance, when I’m searching for a technical solution to a website problem, I’m not interested in results from 2008. Google gives me the option to filter by time range and I find that very useful.

From a viewer’s perspective, when a new visitor arrives at your site, will he find what he’s looking for? If not, your ranking on the search results page won’t matter.

Introducing the New Green Light Sign Solutions Website

Our client, Green Light Sign Solutions, specializes in energy-efficient electronic message centers and LED outdoor signs. As we developed their new website, we returned again and again to the three perspectives mentioned above. Honing in on the viewer’s perspective, we looked for ways to build-in opportunities for engagement and interactivity. And let me add a quick disclaimer here: we’re still building out portions of the site behind the scenes.

This site is built using WordPress because it’s versatile, full-featured, and user-friendly. Our client will be able to easily and frequently add content – in the form of posts, image galleries, and video. A support forum will make it easy to provide troubleshooting assistance and answer customer questions. The key idea here is ease of use for every staff member who will have access to the site, so that quality information can consistently be delivered in a variety of formats for site visitors.

Have you been thinking about how to make your website more interactive and easy to update? Then you’re on the right track. Share your plans with us by leaving a comment, we love to hear from you. Here’s to a successful 2011!

Related Off-Site Articles:
Online Engagement and the Small Biz Success Correlation

If you’ve been diligently building links to your website, good for you! Generating inbound links to your site is one of the most important things you can do to improve your website’s visibility on the search engines. But are all those links going to your home page?

SEO Link Building 101

Each page of your website has a job to do. Each page represents a unique opportunity to share information about one specific topic – and to rank in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for that one topic. If you’re only building links to your home page, you’re limiting the ability of other pages to be found – meaning this grossly limits your website’s potential. Linking to pages other than your home page is referred to as ‘deep linking.’

How to Build Deep Inbound Links

When you leave your name, website address and comment on this site, the ‘Comment Luv’ plugin pulls the title and link to your latest blog post and adds it to your comment. If you’re a blogger, that’s an automatic deep link. If your website doesn’t include a blog, you can accomplish the same thing by leaving a specific page link in the website address field.

Think of other places you can link back to pages on your site. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn quickly come to mind, but those are just the top of the iceberg for social sharing sites.  ‘Add This’ lists 300+ social sharing opportunities! Some business directories allow you to leave deep links. How about industry forums where you participate, publishing your expertise through article directories, guest posting on another business blog?

Since inbound links are so important to the success of your website, make a commitment today to begin or renew your link building efforts. Feel free to begin here. We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

If you’re like most businesses, your phone rings at least four times a day with a marketer on the other end asking if you would like to sign up with their online directory. Some of these are helpful, others … not so much. If you’re skeptical, you drop these guys like a hot potato. Some companies really benefit however, ever wonder why?

When people are looking for a specific business and can’t remember what it was called or how they happened on it, many times they’ll type in very basic keywords to find it. Often, instead of finding one company, they’ll find a list of every company that signed up with the directory that purchased that popular domain. Keywords do work, and that’s one reason directories can be helpful. Very basic keywords used in the URL will draw quite a bit of traffic, and if you’re located where they’re looking, it can be very good. The back link to your site may also be helpful.

Over-saturation of directory listings is still problematic – both on the search engines, when all you can find are a gazillion other directories, and in the directories themselves when listings are unfinished and leave little detail. Sometimes searching for things can be a real pain in the butt for the seeker. I see this particularly detrimental in the residential service community, and I’m recognizing an equally disturbing trend in restaurant listings lately.

We advocate using directories as a subordinate method of link building. Use the DMOZ, MerchantCircle, Yelp, Google, Bing, and Yahoo listings wisely, and you’ll come out ahead. Get tied up with some of the other smaller directories and mistakenly assume that a directory listing is your total link strategy,  and it can be an awful mess.

Don’t get me wrong, the listings I just mentioned definitely have some drawbacks too, but they work on a better authority system (domain age) and don’t stick you in with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who are doing the same thing. If that actually appeals to you however, and I can see where it might, make sure you’re doing something that makes you stand out. Lesser known directories may grow in relevance, and you might want in on that as well.

Directories work because they know how to stick you in a category that will be searched on. Directories have impairments when too many are listed, too many listings are incomplete, and everyone is using the same keyword strategy. I don’t think that benefits a searcher. I also think it’s not too helpful to have directory after directory after directory when a searcher is looking for a trustworthy company. I’m sure I’m not the only one who closes out of that search to search on different, hopefully better, terms. (Good argument for keyword research!)

To avoid the hassle of getting stuck in with the ‘other guys,’ get to know a little about keyword research and proper keyword use. It’s not a bait and switch game, it’s a method to improve where you comparatively sit with your competition. Everyone uses certain words when looking for something, and you don’t have to quit using them on your site to develop a better strategy. You do, however, need to figure out how you can get ahead of others who are using the same words and phrases. EVEN in directory listings.

You are better off paying for proper SEO research and listing with one of the free directories mentioned above than paying a regular monthly fee to be listed with a directory among many, many, many others – all who use the same wording.

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 URL box. We’ll explain why that’s so important in our next post.

Photo Credit: Le Petit Poulailler on Flickr

For more information, go to Tweak Your SEO Regularly.

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

We’ve been giving you the nuts and bolts breakdown of SEO, and we want to make sure you have access to some of the easiest keyword research tools out there. We’ve been using Wordtracker for several years now, but I’ve only recently started using this tool myself. A couple of years ago I had tried it and thought it difficult, but then again I had very little working knowledge about how to use the tool, and they’ve improved the experience for the researcher (you) by leaps and bounds. Anyone can figure this out.

First, make sure you take the tour. I don’t remember taking the tour, if they offered one on my first try years ago, but I’ve taken the tour since then and now think that it’s very helpful and can’t imagine trying to use it without taking the tour. I like things spelled out.

Wordtracker Tour

Very basically, there are four steps that you’ll be walked through in more detail:

• Enter a keyword (one you’ve chosen off of the list we worked on in the last post)
• Find the actual search traffic volume for your keyword
• Evaluate competition for the word
• Export results, and
• Research again from your list

While you’re there, take a look at some of the blogposts in the Wordtracker Academy. I thought Lyndon Antcliff’s post on social media was a really great breakdown for any business owner.

Using Market Samurai Keyword Research Tools

Another keyword research tool is Market Samurai. The 30 Day Challenge kicked off on August 1, but you can still get in. Shari and I have both taken the 30 Day Challenge, consisting of video tutorials and introductory versions of several Internet marketing venues, and have come away inspired and empowered. Neither of us has been able to complete it, however, and it’s pretty time intensive alongside a busy work schedule. We just keep going back! Give it a try, tell us what you think.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXpTazrWCQA

With this tool, you have access to every level of SEO information; link strategy comparisons of your competition, and a rank tracker tool that does exactly that, tracks your rank and so on. Complete introductory information is available with this system as well.

I don’t want to give too much away with either of these tools because I’d really like to see your unbiased comments on both.

In our next posts, we’re going to show you where and how to use these keywords that by now are excellent choices. Was this post helpful? Have you used Wordtracker.com or Market Samurai? Tell us what you think of these tools in the comments below!

For more information, go to Tweak Your SEO Regularly.

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.

For more information, go to Tweak Your SEO Regularly.

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 word-smithing 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.

For more information, go to Tweak Your SEO Regularly.

Photo Credit: Ambient Damage on flickr

Search engine optimization (SEO) is probably one of the most misunderstood terms by small business owners. It’s a huge topic; many things go into optimizing a website for search. Unfortunately, nearly anyone can pass himself off as an SEO expert, and many small business owners are taken in by “experts,” only later to discover that there were some serious holes in the actual expertise.

SEO is an easy upsell for the web developer. When the benefits of SEO are spelled out clearly, no business owner in his right mind will say they don’t care about a search engine optimized website. Clearly, there’s a financial incentive to the developer to sell SEO services, but not every website developer has enough of a grasp on the basics for it to be of any real benefit to you.

Likewise and for the same reasons, SEO on existing websites is an easy sell for the search engine marketing firm. Either way, you want your website to be found prominently online, not as #106 in the search results. You’d think a firm that specializes in SEO would know what they’re doing, right? Many do, but others engage in practices that will actually hurt your website’s rankings … and it can be hard for the untrained eye to know the difference.

To begin with, there’s more to the equation than what gets done to your site. On-site SEO is only one piece of the puzzle, albeit an important one. Real search engine optimization is an ongoing process, kind of like marketing overall. Just like you wouldn’t (shouldn’t) expect droves of traffic to a brick and mortar store based on it being set up properly for business, with only an “open” sign on the door … it’s not realistic to expect droves of traffic to your site after only the initial search engine optimization process.

In future posts, we’re going to be hitting consistently on the topic of effective SEO, breaking it down in manageable chunks. Whether you do it yourself or hire it out, you owe it to yourself and your business to understand what SEO is and what it isn’t. If you’re not yet a subscriber, be sure to take a moment to subscribe so that you don’t miss any of this vital information.

A few quick tips – SEO is not:

• a design-only function. When you purchase an SEO website design or template, you’re buying a design prepared and friendly for SEO, not to be confused with a site that is effectively optimized for search.
• adding a hidden directory or link farm on your site.
• automatically submitting your site to every irrelevant site online to gain irrelevant links back to your website.
• stuffing your META tags with every loosely related keyword you can think of on every page of your site.
• adding hidden keyword text to your pages (using text the same color as your background).
• using the same title on every page of your site.
• some strange voodoo that only the elite can master. Anyone can master it; the question is not whether it’s out of your reach, but whether you have sufficient time to learn it and carry it out consistently, over time.
• optimizing your site for keywords you could never rank for. It’s about understanding the ratio of search traffic to competition in the search results, and putting your effort where it will bring results.

I’ll come back and add to this list over time. Please chime in with what you’ve learned about useless “SEO strategies” and empty SEO promises. Next up: What exactly is search engine optimization?

For more information:

Tweak Your SEO Regularly