I attended a web marketing event, Elevate, here in Atlanta over the last few days. Elevate is the annual user conference for Pardot marketing automation software. I could go on and on about how powerful the Pardot marketing automation tool is, but I’ll save that for another post. What is important to note here, is that Pardot allows sales and marketing teams to effectively target and nurture leads through the buying process by leveraging content, email and the Web. It also allows marketing and sales teams to track and measure the success of their efforts, both inside of the application and via a variety of innate connections it has to tools like Salesforce.com and Google Analytics and AdWords. With a tool that provides richly multifaceted marketing functionality like this, you can probably imagine that the conference sessions touched on a wide variety of web marketing topics, tactics and trends as well.

I have spent years writing and am truly passionate about the infinite power of the effective use of ideas put to words. I began writing regularly and more seriously (what I would now rather refer to as daily hard copy personal blog posts than journal entries) at about age 13, which continued for over a decade. I have worked for local newspapers, written for student newspapers and have started and made progress in writing about 3 books. Post college, my experience lies in the areas of web technology and web marketing, specifically as they relate to web content development and content marketing strategy, including SEO (obviously), SEM and social media. Strangely enough though, it was a [not-so-]chance decision to double-major in Sociology and Marketing in college that truly changed and shaped the way I feel about both writing (content creation) and content strategy and marketing.

If you’re reading this blog post, you know what marketing is, so I’ll spare you the details of my decision to choose that as a focus area while studying at Tulane. Sociology provides a unique lens and framework through which to evaluate patterns of human behavior. It allows us to observe, analyze and synthesize the ’social’ elements and patterns of humans, i.e. development, relationships,  interaction and collective behavior.

My early inclination was to pair marketing with psychology while studying at Tulane. It wasn’t until after taking a few specific courses–Sociology of Sports, Urban Sociology and Sociological Research–that I saw the obvious relationship sociology has to marketing and the potential utility of pairing the two subject matters. If marketing gives us the tools to reach and convert our target markets, in my opinion, sociology provides a framework through which to understand these markets.

I say this not to make you feel like you need to return to school, or go purchase 17 sociology publications tomorrow, but to say that it is the intersection of these fields that has rendered me uniquely passionate about and cognizant of the power of a strong content marketing strategy. Creating yours doesn’t require a degree. It requires a willingness and desire to truly understand other human beings and meet their needs. If done well, your business will be efficiently generating high quality content in its unique area of industry expertise that will in turn facilitate improved marketing reach, sales for your business, consumer engagement, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Is your business is meeting a consumer need that you believe in? Is your goal to reach and meet the needs of more potential consumers in your field? Then the right content, in the right way, at the right time is how you do it. Stay tuned for Part II, where I’ll start helping you determine what strategies and tactics might work best for your business. This shall be fun.

Unfortunately, most of us are keenly aware of the fact that most people cannot honestly say they always do the right thing when no one is looking. I’ve contended before that many search engine optimization “experts” are shady; but, then again, a good amount of people working in almost every specialty field are. Why? Because other people (namely customers) don’t understand the work they do, and hence, these “experts” can get away with overcharging and under-working. Add to the niche/specialty nature of the SEO field variables such as ambiguous search engine algorithms, web jargon like “server side scripting,” and the concept that success is never achieved and done -i.e. you don’t hit a goal and then stop, as with other tactics-  and the average user/consumer of SEO services is lost, uninformed and easily misled.

In my mind, the SEO realm [and those who operate in it] is simply and obviously a microcosm of our society as a whole. A small percentage of people trying their best to make their way while doing good and honest work, while the overwhelming majority sees it a faster, more efficient and worthwhile cause to employ shady tactics and overcharge for work that in the same time, they could actually do well.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Are you frustrated by shady business both in SEO and other fields? Will you share your example with me below?

Define Your Target Audience and Goals

If you operate a local and/or small business, let’s say a pc repair shop, ranking on the first page of Google results for “pc repair” probably isn’t what you want to be aiming for. Will you generate targeted interest from that ranking? Probably not, and because of that, you also probably wouldn’t remain on the first page of results for very long even if you did get there.

If you’re using your website as a way to generate leads in any form or fashion, you need to define your audience before you can target it. In the example above, if the PC repair company is serving the Easton/Lehigh Valley, PA area, which my awesome friend’s, Ryan Critchett does, then it’s better to optimize for terms around local searches. In other words, Ryan will generate business from ranking for computer repair bethlehem, pa, whereas he is not seeking to repair computers on a national level, so optimizing for the general “PC repair” term is not in his best interest. (Note in the linked example that Ryan has created landing pages for each of his local target markets, a smart move to ensures he ranks for people searching across a variety of areas in his region)

Do Keyword Volume Research

Once you’ve defined your target audience and it’s time to choose between this or that keyword, the first step is to research how people are searching. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using Google’s free Keyword Tool. If you’re already using Google AdWords, you can access it by clicking on Reporting and Tools in the top nav menu, and choosing Keyword Tool. For those of you who aren’t using AdWords, you too can use the Google Keyword Tool. You can put as many variations of your keyword in the box (for step by step instructions, check out my post on using the Google Keyword Tool), and I recommend checking the box that says, “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms.” Google will throw back some suggestions and terms it thinks are related that may or may not shed some light for you on how people are searching. To go back to an example from above, if you put just title search and title examination in that box, you’ll see that 165,000 people are searching in the U.S. per month for title search, whereas 1,900 are searching for title examination.

Taking a hint from the step 1 and determining your goals, you can infer from this data and pattern that if you’re company is providing title searches in Atlanta, you’d want to optimize around more regional metro area terms. If you were a large national title firm with a variety of franchise locations, you would first want to define your goals (i.e. is each location maintaining a website for which you’re wanting to rank? Is your branding initiative a global one that instead funnels potential clients through one site?). If your goals are to funnel leads through one overarching brand website, you’ll want to optimize for the more general terms, and pick the ones that more people ae using.

DISCLAIMER – competition is a piece you should also consider before picking between this or that keyword. There are situations in which you’ll be picking between this or that and will want to choose the less searched for word, so read on…

Evaluate Your Competition

Whether the product or service you’re offering appeals to a niche of a few thousand, or a niche of millions, you must evaluate what your competition is doing from an SEO standpoint. To go back to the pc repair example, pc repair and computer repair are searched for with fairly similar frequency. So in Ryan’s case, if his main local competitor in the computer repair market had an established site and was choosing to optimize for terms like computer repair Lehigh Valley and computer repair easton, Ryan would probably want to opt to optimize for pc repair Lehigh Valley, and pc repair easton, so he can immediately see improvements in search results without havig to compete. And because the volume is comparable, there is no opportunity cost of choosing pc repair as his core term. Should he decide he later wants to rank for computer repair, he will have a foundation of content around a very close derivative term (pc repair) that will make that process a faster and easier one.

Every organization and every SEO strategy is unique. Those differentiators are what will determine what else you add to this list, but these three steps are critical when it comes to keyword selection. Do you have others? What else do you do before deciding between this or that keyword?

Now that we’ve gotten the disclaimers out of the way, if the site name isn’t enough, the particular blog post on SEOBlackHat I’d like to discuss here provides glaring examples pointing towards the overall shadiness of information you can find from SEOBlackHat and its writers, who I assume “do” black hat search engine optimization.

The post is called “Google Lied About Manually Changes.” Yup, you read that right, “Google Lied About Manually Changes.” I could stop right there. Are these the type of people you want writing your content? I’ll add that the post is the most recent one on the site and was added back in February of 2011. For more on why this is a bad sign, check out this post on breaking the SEO rules.

The post asserts that Google contradicted itself in saying that it has no ability to manually update rankings for a term, and then later saying they ran a test on synthetic queries that involved updating the top result with a page that had nothing to do with the search term. While this sounds like a contradiction, upon closer inspection, the way the information is presented is quite biased. What Google has said in the past is that its [production] algorithm does not feature the ability to manually update rankings. Instead, a change to the algorithm would theoretically need to be made to update listings to accommodate the specific change so improvements made are meaningful and benefit all sites in a similar way.

Does this mean that Google shouldn’t or isn’t allowed to change that algorithm in testing to improve upon it? No. It also doesn’t mean that if tomorrow Google decides it wants to allow for manual updates to their algorithm, they can’t. They’re Google, you’re not. So while yes, folks at SEOBlackHat, the biased slices of information you’ve chosen to present on this topic are in fact contradictions, you are in fact the liars by way of omission. I see this type of trickery a lot and I write about it often. I’m always curious how companies see this sort of behavior as supportive of a long-term business strategy. What do you gain out of accusing Google of lying? What do you gain out of writing this poorly constructed nonsense? I would have asked you on your site, but like I said, you closed the comments. Wonder why…

If you have more examples of shady SEO advice, posts, or sites, PLEASE leave them in the comments below. I’d love to write up a post on them.

So, what makes for good web content?

1. It’s something we haven’t read/heard before.
2. It’s presented in a way we haven’t seen.
3. It provides easy to remember takeaways.
4. It makes us want to discuss it with our friends and colleagues.
5. It’s on-topic and presents a clear reason to watch/read.
6. It’s well constructed, edited and named.
7. It’s worthy of further contemplation. (Makes us think)
8. It makes us want to take action – share, comment, learn more.
9. It takes a firm stance. (Isn’t wishy washy)
10. It makes us feel something.

Before you worry about optimizing content, worry about quality content. Employing SEO tactics around content that doesn’t meet the criteria above is like giving a car that doesn’t run a new paint job. High quality content will be shared and linked to across the Web. Give your content legs and let it do some of the work for you.

What else do you think makes for high quality content?

Background: Earlier this week I had a pretty lengthy conversation with my friend Ryan Critchett about conversion optimization and how he could improve his conversion rates from his Google AdWords campaign. That prompted this post from him on conversion optimization (on which I’ve posted a very lengthy comment), which then prompted me to share this more detailed post on what you can do to help compel prospects to convert.

Hopefully if you’re reading this, you’ve already working hard to improve your site’s organic search engine rankings by regularly producing and updating high quality, well-structured web content. If that’s the case, good for you. You are setting yourself and your business up for scalable web success by doing things the right way from the start. Now that you have put time and work into organizing, managing and optimizing your site’s content, you may be wondering, where does the business part of all this come in? It’s not only a fair question, it’s a good one. While right now, your website is likely just one tool in your arsenal of lead generation, I’d be willing to bet money that over the next few years, you’ll see the percentage of leads your website generates grow more than any other. So, how do you optimize your website’s lead generation opportunities for increased conversions?

1. Remove All Barriers to Conversion, Make it Easy

The more steps involved in prospect conversion, the lower your conversion rate. Don’t make prospects think. There are other instances in which you will want to do nothing but make people think, but conversion time is not one of them. Remove as many clicks as possible from the process. Don’t bog prospects down with a manuscript on what your business does. Give them a quick summary of what they’re getting and an easy way to get it, preferably, all on the same page.

2. Require As Little Information As Is Needed, Make it Quick

Again, you want to make this whole conversion process easy. If all you need is a prospect’s email address to follow-up, then only request that he or she provides you with name and email. There are plenty of solutions out there that will allow you to conditionally present more and more form fields to prospects as they continue to come back to your site. If you’re a business looking for a solution that offers this functionality, check out Pardot’s Prospect Insight, it’s a phenomenal tool. Whether or not you invest in a tool to present fields conditionally as prospects come back, initially the fewer the fields, the better.

3. Keep the End in Sight

Preferably, all of your form’s fields AND the submit button, should be visible above the fold of the monitor. Test your landing page on different resolution settings, so you’re not just making it above the fold for your monstrosity of a 32″ monitor, most people don’t have those. If they don’t see the end of the form in sight, they will automatically and subconciously assume it is a more involved process than it is. Shorter and visible without scrolling = better.

4. Make What They’re Getting Clear

The prospect should be keenly aware of what they’re getting before you ask them to convert. Think about it like this, if I tell you I have something behind the proverbial “Door #1” and want you to give me $5000 to see what it is and obtain it, you’d probably think I was crazy. Chances are, if I present this opportunity to 1,000 people, only 1 or 2 people, one who is stubborn and willing to take chances, and one who is likely just an idiot, are going to take the risk. The same is true when people have to consider sharing their personal information with your business. They need to know what they’re getting in return. Many of them have been conditioned to fear giving out their info because of brands who have taken it in the past and used it to send an offensive volume of pitchy emails. For this reason, I also recommend including a highly visible link to your privacy policy and/or the page on your website that details exactly what you’ll be using prospect contact information for. While the relationships between brands and consumers are anything but tit-for-tat these days, the first time you ask someone to give you their information, give them a clear incentive to do so and let them know exactly what they’re getting in return, both now, and in the future. Without this, you will be sure to only draw the .1-.2% of risk takers and village idiots.

5. Test, Test & Test Some More

Every prospect is unique. Every business is unique. Every offer is unique. While general conversion optimization rules like the ones above apply to most scenarios, your business may cater to a market that thinks and behaves differently. For example, a business that offers a product or service that’s procured via a long sales cycle and is a longer term commitment for prospects from a psychological standpoint, may see better conversion rates by including more content on landing pages. Use A/B testing to determine what works for you. Play with changing landing page layouts, form position and page copy/messaging to see what works best. Don’t assume you think like your prospects do.

In my next post, I’ll discuss what you can do post-conversion to keep prospects engaged with your brand and coming back. I’m interested in your ideas and tips for conversion optimization. What other steps do you recommend businesses take to improve conversion rates?

Below are 5 tools to check out to help you keep track of your site’s inbound links.

Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo Site Explorer is one of the few things Yahoo still does arguably well enough to continue using. It’s a completely free tool, and you can get a pretty comprehensive listing of links to your pages. The results can be filtered to exclude links from your own domain, or to show just inbound links to a specific page, rather than all pages of your site. The first 1,000 results can be exported for you to play with.

Backlink Watch

Backlink Watch is another free tool. It’s a good one for cross-analyzing backlink output results from other tools, but tends to be not as comprehensive as some of the other inbound link checking tools in this list. But, it’s free, so you get what you pay for. One cool thing about Backlink Watch is that with a decent amount of accuracy, it also displays the anchor text associated with your inbound/backlinks. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer has both a basic (free) and pro (paid) version. The tool is a strong one, and even if you only use the basic version, it’s a great way to get an idea of inbound link volume. You can also see the number of root domains linking to your site with the free version, and do some other cool things like compare link metrics.

Majestic SEO

Like Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO has both a free offering and subscription services. All that is required to use the free backlink checking tool is that you fill out a simple registration form. But as a free user, the data you have access to is limited. Under the “Top Backlinks” tab, for example, you’ll only be shown the top 5 backlinks to your site as a free member. As a paid member, Majestic SEO has tons to offer.

Advanced Link Manager

Made by the same people who make Advanced Web Ranking, Advanced Link Manager allows you to report on the evolution in volume of your inbound links. Advanced Link Manager also has an area where you can view inbound links by site and check out the anchor text of your backlinks, which is great insight to have. [Tip: If you're trying to rank for a particular keyword or keyword phrase and you see an inbound link from a site run or managed by a friend or someone you know, reach out to them and ask them if they'd be willing to tweak the anchor text of the link to your site. 9 times out of 10, it's no big deal and they'll be happy to do it].

What tools and resources do you use to measure the volume or impact of your inbound links? Share your tips or questions in the comments below!

I’ve talked to many folks both prior to employing a grey or black hat firm of SEO bots and afterward. In either scenario, I tell them the same thing. SEO is not a one-time thing. Anyone who tells you that if given the option to choose an SEO project’s length and budget, that they would choose a short-term one-time gig with inadequate budget for anything longer, is either not doing good SEO work, or lying.

Unfortunately, many who work in the SEO field, even those who do employ honest SEO tactics when possible, are forced to often make it a one-time thing in order to stay afloat or stay competitive. Why? Because of client misconceptions, which can be partially attributed to the faulty SEO claims being made in the first place, it’s a seemingly never-ending cycle. A marketing person is convinced that to achieve first page results, all they need is some automated backlinks placed on content farms and scraper sites (although they don’t know that’s what they’re buying into) and from that point forward, they’re often under the impression that all SEO is done this way.

I know many folks who do content work and feel the need to justify why true SEO is not a package you buy one time. Forthe SEO landscape to change, it is our job as SEOs to educate our clients. It’s our job to take those extra few minutes to explain that SEO is not about placing 1000s of links on low quality sites. It’s our job to communicate that a long-term,  sustainable SEO strategy takes time, resources, and continued effort. Obviously, this does not imply that all short-term SEO work is dishonest, that’s just not the case. But as I mentioned, common misconceptions often lead to SEOs being forced into these types of projects.

If you do SEO work and you find yourself in this position, don’t turn the job down, take it. But take it also as an opportunity to educate your client on the necessary resources they should invest in future SEO projects. Educate them on the fact that ranking for any term on the first page is not the same as ranking for relevant and highly searched for terms (a distinction rarely made by shady SEO firms). Not only will they appreciate the honesty, but most of the time, when they do have the resources to embark on a longer-term SEO journey, you’re the person they’ll contact.

There are many steps a small business can take to start optimizing for mobile without spending big bucks. If you’re looking to do this in-house, here are some preliminary steps you can take to begin honing your mobile optimization strategy:

• Know Your Mobile Visitors, Create an Advanced Segment- If you aren’t already looking at the analytics data of your mobile users separately from the rest of your visitor data, please start doing so now. To do so, you can create an advanced segment in Google Analytics by clicking “Advanced Segments” under “My Customizations” on the left of the analytics interface and following these steps:
  • Click “Create New Custom Segment
  • Under “Dimensions,” click “Visitors”
  • Choose the “Mobile” dimension and drag it into the slot provided
  • Leave the “Condition” set as “Matches Exactly” and under “Value,” choose “Yes”
  • Give your segment a name, most likely “Mobile”
  • Click “Create Segment”

Looking more deeply at mobile user data in Analytics can provide tons of valuable insight into successes and bottlenecks in your mobile visibility and usability. You may notice that certain pages have a higher bounce rate among mobile users vs. your standard web user. Perhaps different keywords are being used to find your site and its pages from mobile users. You can also look at information specific to a given mobile device and identify strengths and weaknesses there. Take whatever discrepancies you find and create deeper advanced segments to further evaluate where you need to focus your mobile optimization efforts. If you don’t have budget, this is a good way to start small and identify areas for concern.

• Optimize for Local Searchers – According to Google, 95% of smartphone users have searched for local information. That is a HUGE number. If you put yourself in a local user’s shoes, chances are they’re not trying to read about on your corporate history, or recent news stories. They are more than likely looking for information on where you’re located, when you’re open, or how to contact you. Focus your mobile optimization efforts on your contact and location pages. If you see high bounce rates here, you’ll definitely want to work on these areas of your site.

• Remove Barriers to Purchase & Pricing Information- In that same study from Google², 35% of online purchases are now being made via a mobile device. If you are selling a product online, this is a critical piece to consider. If you’re going to invest money in your mobile strategy, this is probably the place to do it. At the very least, you’ll want to make sure you’re pricing information is easy to find, as 79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices, finding more product info to locating a retailer.

In Part II, I’ll look more closely at the role social plays in your mobile strategy. Social is having a huge impact on the way people find and perceive businesses, and with its increasing use among mobile users, it has become even more important that you factor it into your overall marketing strategy.

¹Global Mobile Stats
^{2 Google Mobile Study}

Accessing the Keyword Tool

If you use Google AdWords and have an account, you can visit http://adwords.google.com and click “Reporting and Tools” from the top navigation menu. Select “Keyword Tool” from the dropdown.

If you don’t have an AdWords account, you can access the Keyword Tool by visiting: http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/

Using the Keyword Tool

Before entering any keywords, and really before using this tool, it is important to consider the core terms around your product. In our example, an arts and crafts online retailer will have lots of words to consider. General terms around the site, like “arts and crafts store,” and variations thereof (derivative keywords), such as “arts n crafts,” “art supply,” “arts crafts store,” should all be considered. Furthermore, words for specific product type subpages, such as “construction paper,” “glue” and “adhesive” etc. will need to be pondered when optimizing these pages deeper in the site. For our example, we’re going to start with the general terms.

Enter a list of general (and related) terms in the search box as shown below:

Make sure you leave the “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” box checked.

Once you click “Search” the results thrown back will be sortable by both competition (which refers to saturation of PPC bids on those keywords) and monthly search volumes (the number of users searching for these terms monthly). You’ll want to sort by the latter, and look at which terms are most frequently used by end users to find sites like yours. Focus your efforts on derivatives of those words.

For example, we learn from these results that “arts and crafts supply center” is searched for only 58 times per month, while “craft and art supplies” is queried 6,600 times. This gives you an idea of how users are searching and where to focus your efforts. You’ll want to pick a set of words that cover not only those with larger search volumes, but also a few that add a regional element (i.e. – arts & crafts Peoria, IL) to the search term and a few with lesser volume. This ensures that as you focus on building momentum with the broader terms, you’ll get some quick wins as well.

For information on where in your content to infuse the words you generate from Google’s Keyword Tool, check out my post, “On Page SEO – Keyword Placement.”

If you have questions related to using the keyword tool, or on choosing which terms to start with, please leave them for me in the comments. I’m happy to help however I can.