Living in California, we’re always taught to be prepared for the Big One. Being prepared is our only defense to the inevitable. However, the next big earthquake can still be 100’s of years from now (crossing my fingers it actually is) but on the internet everything changes quickly, as we learned a few months back with Google’s new Panda update.
Here are some helpful tips on how you can be better prepared for Google’s next Big One AKA “The next Panda Update”.
1. Google Targets Web Scrapers
If your website relies on any web scraping technology, you can expect to be hit. So clean out the garbage and tight down on only good content.
2. Good quality content will not be affected
Make sure you’re writing interesting content, something that has your viewers coming back to your site. Share quality graphics, pictures and useful information. You want to make sure people are browsing your site and getting a good experience from it, not dumping it right away and moving on to another site. Just give people what they want and you should see good results J
3. Excessive WebPages
A lot of times we get out of control with the excessive pages we have on our site. Take a look and ask yourself… “Do I really need so many pages on my site?” These pages can be poor quality ones and will bring down the ranking of your site. Simply merge other pages, eliminating the worst ones and create a better looking page.
4. Is your site trustworthy?
Would you leave your kids with a babysitter you just met, that works out of a cheap motel? Probably not, or at least I hope not!! Well that same concept applies to websites and the trustworthiness they portray from their page. When you visit a website, you want to make sure it has trustworthy material and that you feel assured any info they have from you will be safe. Make sure your site is giving off the right trustworthy confident image and not a sketchy one that keeps people away.
5. Double Trouble
Make sure you’re not duplicating anything on your site. Sometimes this is accidental but can give you a big headache down the line if it isn’t taken care of properly. Having duplicate content can really hurt your rankings, so when cleaning up your site make sure you’re not duplicating anything and if so, clean it up!
6. Bounce Rate
Look through Google analytics for pages with high bounce rate. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.
When will the next major Google update happen? Nobody knows for sure but one thing is abundantly clear, search engines are getting better at determining quality. Stop focusing on tricks and tactics to rank your website and refocus on making your site the best it can be and you will be well positioned for future changes. Keep yourself informed and up to date with all the new changes and the next time around you shouldn’t feel too much of a shake.
A little bit of research will reap large rewards when deciding on what keywords to target for your website or blog. It may be just a difference of a few words that will take you from a low ranked site to a high ranked one. But the key is finding the right keywords. Follow these tips to find the best keywords and ultimately increase your web traffic by connecting with targeted traffic.
The More Specific the Better
Be smart and specific with the keyword you go after. A contractor in California will benefit little from using ‘contractor’ as his keyword. Once you add a location and specialty, he will have much greater chance to connect with those looking for his service. So, ‘Bay Area general contractor’ would assuredly produce better results.
Use Available Tools
Many sites offer keyword search tools for free. These include Google’s Keyword Tool and SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. There are other paid versions that may be worth the cost for a subscription. The paid sites are not affiliated with a search engine and may be the superior choice.
Relevant to Overall Goal
If you have not already focused on a specific goal for your site and business, now is the time to spell it out. Write it on paper and then evaluate whether your keyword options will lead you to achieve this goal. As you match the best keywords to the goals you have in mind you will have a more cohesive strategy. Also, the relevancy of the keyword will be easier to determine if your goals are clear.
Check out the Numbers
Looking into the popularity of the search terms will help you determine what niche to target and whether your search terms are too narrow. You want to make sure that enough people are conducting searches with your keywords to make it worth your while. In order to not be too specific but at the same time specific enough to reach your niche market, a look at the numbers is your best tool.
Not Just a Word
We talk of keywords, but frequently it’s the phrase that we really want. You will want to hone in on all kinds of phrases that someone could use to reach your site. Along with the rest of the research you are conducting, you will be able to weed out the non-contenders and determine which phrases will best suit you.
My Name is Lance Williams and I am what some might call H.A.D.D. (Hobby Attention Deficit Disorder) I love everything from rock climbing and snowboarding to building websites and searching for the Best moisturizer for men.
White hat SEO (search engine optimization) is the perfect choice for you if you DO NOT want to risk potentially fatal blows or doing things unethical, and could even get your site banned from Google. In fact, for most companies and businesses it is the only method of search engine optimization you should ever use.
I personally, have never gotten any of my sites banned from Google, but I could imagine the amount of distress you would go through. Furthermore never outsource to SEO companies that use blackhat methods.
But, hey this article is about white hat SEO. In this article I want to cover some convention, l and maybe some unconventional methods you could use in order to boost your sites rank in the search engines. For starters you are probably going to want to use a good CMS (content management system), such as WordPress to make adding, and removing changes that much easier for you. (see 5 Must for SEO with WordPress).
WordPress requires minimal technical know-how and is pretty simple to use. Along with WordPress, more and more webmasters are opting to use Joomla (see Joomla for CMS)
So you have got your CMS and everything installed, now it is time to get real traffic to your site. I don’t mean spending $5 on eBay for some robot traffic, tricking people into clicking on your site, or any methods of fake traffic generation. You are going to need to apply real white hat seo techniques if you are seeking “real” visitors.
Beginner White Hat SEO
Article Marketing. Unless you have been living in a cave the first thing people learn about white hat seo is article marketing. You are going to create an article with your keywords in your title, description, and have a decent amount of keyword density, and also have your anchored text pointing to your site with your keywords in it.
Forum Marketing. Another thing people commonly do is find a variety of forums that are related to their website and answer questions. They will then leave a link in their signature with their website. Again, they will have their keywords in there with a backlink to their website. Furthermore, a lot of people are actually hiring people to answer questions in forums for very cheap. This is not my favorite method, but I guess it can work for many websites.
Blog Commenting. Leave quality comments and drop your links in the comment where they are necessary. Leaving nice post, great job, ect. are not good comments. Actually taking the time to read their post and leave an intelligent comment for them (is a great idea). Better yet, when you leave a comment; I want you to imagine that it is your blog, and you wake up and read your comment. Would you accept it, or just delete it as spam. Seriously, do it and it will help you A LOT.
Link Exchanges. Again, not my favorite, but I guess for some it might work pretty good. Basically, send an email to a webmaster stating that you will add their site on two of your sites in exchange that they will link to your site. Or you can offer a reciprocal link, but these are off lesser value in Googles eyes. The only time I really use a reciprocal link is when it is a really authority site, and I will benefit more from it.
The four above are what I call “basic white hat seo tactics.” Below are more intermediate link building tactics that you should be using.
Intermediate White Hat SEO
Guest Blog Post. You can find a lot of places around the net, such as myblogguest.com which is a network of sites and blogs that are looking for guest post. I actually used this method to get in contact with the webmaster here 
. You could tailor an article on something pertaining to your site and then leave a backlink to your site for reference. Along with that you might want to make a couple of good articles, but in one of them actually have your keywords in the title for maximum benefit. Along, with that you could always ask for a link in their blogroll. Don’t be afraid to ask for a link and a lot of times if you run a quality site people will help you.
Video Marketing. Creating videos on YouTube are going really good these days, as well as a handful of other popular video websites. Create a couple videos with your keywords in them and leave a link on your “about you page” and in your description. Most importantly, you can use a number of the free tools on the net to stamp a box on your video with an active link. Don’t forget that you are going to want to comment on others videos, as well. You can even contact people, and ask for link exchanges and guest post through these video sites.
Social Media. This is a topic that I could write forever on. Social media could be anything from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Hi5, or the other 50 million social networks on the internet. For example, on these you would setup fan pages (not on Twitter). You could auto feed your post, articles, pictures, ect to all go to these networks. This is an endless way to create an endless amount of authority backlinks to your site. Then you are going to want to participate on these networks. Better yet, outsource people to do it for you.
Directory Listing. This is a commonly overlooked tactic that you should be using if you are not already implementing into your seo tactics. There are a handful of great authority directories that you will want to submit your site to, such as, Yahoo directory, DMOZ, JoeAnt, business.com, botw.org, v7v, Aviva directory. For a full list please see this awesome list of strong directories.
These next tips are going to be some methods that you probably haven’t heard before are great white hat SEO tactics.
Advanced White Hat SEO
ScrapeBox. This is a tool that I use (it can be used as a black hat tool), but I do not use it that way. It allows you to autocomment on millions of blogs at once. However, I use it for the function of researching my competitors to see where they are getting backlinks from. You can generate a huge list of good blogs that are relevant to your site, and request guest blog post and even leave quality comments. A good tip is take all the top 20 for various keywords and generate a massive list of sites you could then “link prospect” to get backlinks to your site. ScrapeBox seriously has saved me hours and hours of time! You could do it my hand, but it worth it.
Blog Post and Reference. Another great tip for you is to have a blog on your site, and write quality content. In your blog post reference sites that your competitors are getting links from. Now right a really good tidbit about them along with a link pointing to them. Now here is the kicker. You are going to want to contact them through their “contact us” page and provide them with the link you used to link to them. Ask them if they will give you a link to your homepage. Nine times out of ten people will add you to either a blogroll or area on their site.
Google Search. In this method you are going to use the advanced functions in Google to help find other sites in which you can contact to get links from. You can either approach them with guest post, blog post and reference, ect. I use these methods all the time and it has really helped my seo a lot over the years.
• intitle:add+url “keyword phrase”
• intitle:submit+site “keyword phrase”
• intitle:submit+url “keyword phrase”
• intitle:add+site “keyword phrase”
• intitle:add+your+site “keyword phrase”
• intitle: directory “keyword phrase”
• intitle: list “keyword phrase”
• intitle: sites “keyword phrase”
Pack all these methods into one and do them naturally and your site will be thanking you! Your site does have to be optimized correctly if you want to see real results. That you must do extensive keyword research to insure you are not wasting your time. There are a lot more methods that you can use in order to get good quality backlinks to your website. I am interested to see what methods you guys/girls are using to help your sites rankings in Google. Please do share with us, or if there is something you would like me to elaborate on, please speak up
This article was written by Garen Arnold, who is a graphic designer out of Kansas City, Missouri. Garen provides people with the Best Web Hosting Service by using his expertise to help people choose the best web hosting service for their business.
#1 Know Your REAL Keywords
If you only look at one report in Google Adwords I would suggest the Search Query Performance report. Recently Google has made it easier to see this data without the hassle of running a report.
Simply navigate to a Campaign or Ad Group and select the Keywords tab. Once selected click “See search terms” and select ALL.
This will show you the actual keywords your Ad is being shown for, their CTR (click through rate) and even conversion rates. For example, if you are bidding on the keyword phrase “Gas Grills” Google will show your CTR and conversions, but unless you actually run this report you won’t see all the variations that keyword is actually showing for.
I see this problem all the time as an SEO. Someone will tell me that they make money on the keyword “Blue Widget” on Adwords and they want to rank for it organically. I then have them run this report to be sure and they find that “Blue Widget” was set to broad match and their actual conversions were coming from more specific variants of their main keyword.
You typically have to wait 1 day for data to show up but run this report on the last 30 days and you should have plenty of data to review per Ad Group.
#2 Turn a Negative into a Positive
After you run your report, scan the keyword list it gives you for phrases that don’t match your product or business. Add those keywords as a negative search term for that Ad Group or Campaign. Take the time to run your Search Query Performance report at least once a week and sift through it for keywords you can eliminate.
A large list of negative keywords is essential to running a successful Adwords campaign. Keywords set to Broad Match on Google are notorious for showing horribly unrelated searches. By eliminating these you can raise your CTR which will lower your overall cost and stop you from wasting money on customers who will never buy.
Google will not allow some long search phrases to be added as a negative. When this happens try to make some of the most important core words of the search phrase negative and leave the rest out.
While most negative keywords should be inserted at the Ad Group level you can add them at the Campaign level if it makes sense. For example, if you sell high end products Cheap or Free may be a good global negative for you. If you do not want to target customers in the research phrase of the buying cycle you might eliminate review and reviews etc.
#3 Use Tightly Themed Ad Groups
When you start a new Ad Group Do Not Overload it with Keywords! This is a major mistake that many people make. You need to keep your Ad Groups very targeted.
- Charcoal Grills
- Gas Grills
- Electric Grills
Those should be 3 unique Ad Groups. Resist the urge to pile them into one Ad Group because they are all grills.
#4 Divide Important Keywords by Match Type
Let’s say you want to sell Gas Grills. Start an Ad Group with only two keywords, “Gas Grills” & “Gas Grill” both set to phrase match. Go ahead and input at least 10 or 20 negative keywords then let it run for a day or two.
While you are adding negative keywords add [Gas Grills] & [Gas Grill] as negative terms as well. This may seem counter intuitive at first but by doing this your ads will only display for actual phrase searches that use Gas Grills in them versus showing for the exact match keyword.
You can then setup an exact match keyword Ad Group for [Gas Grills] & [Gas Grill]. Once this is done you will be able to truly see how your exact match keywords are performing and how your phrase match keywords are performing. You can use this same type of technique for broad match as well.
#5 Use Broad and Phrase Match to Mine Keyword Gold
Now that your Ad Groups are setup to truly show phrase or exact match terms you can use the phrase and broad matches to find great keywords.
In our case you might find something like this in your “Gas Grills” keyword report.
- Natural Gas Grills
- Weber Gas Grills
- Best Gas Grills
- Cheap Gas Grills
- Built in Gas Grills
- Consumer Reports Gas Grills
The idea here is to ditch the bad stuff and move the good stuff into individual Ad Groups. For instance, you probably don’t sell built in gas grills so why waste the traffic, make it a negative. However, if you do sell Weber grills make Weber gas grills a negative keyword for this Ad group and go create a new Ad group just for Weber grills.
Your phrase match will no longer show for weber gas grills but your new highly targeted ad group will. The keyword phrase “Consumer Reports Gas Grills” could inspire you to research the grills that consumer reports are currently recommending as best buys. Make the keyword a negative and place it in its own Ad Group with a landing page touting the grills you sell that are all so recommended by consumer reports.
You do not have to do this for every keyword, but try it and it’s a great way to eliminate bad keywords and create highly targeted Ad Groups that you can dominate for profitable keywords.
#6 Quality Score Can Destroy Your Campaign
If you do not have Quality Score enabled, click on the Keywords tab and select Columns. Make sure the Quality Score is checked. Try to get 7/10 and above for all your keywords. Try to improve any score lower than a 7 and anything lower than a 5 is a serious issue.
Usually Quality Scores can be improved simply by doing a better job of grouping your keywords and writing ads with the specific keyword appearing in the ad at least twice.
If you are doing that and still getting a low score it could be that your CTR is too low or your landing page needs to be more relevant for that keyword. As a last resort simply delete the problem keyword. This is much easier to do if it is a low traffic keyword to begin with.
Sometimes Google will give you a low Quality Score for seemingly no reason at all. You may think you are doing just about everything right and still get a lower Quality Score. In these cases you may want to use a high Quality Score broad match or phrase match keyword combined with a HUGE list of negative terms to get Google to mainly only show your ad for the keyword you’re having issues with. Hopefully you will not have to go to that extreme.
#7 Split Testing May Be Hurting You
Don’t get me wrong, you need to be split testing ads against one another. Every Ad Group you have should be running at least two variations of an ad at all times in an effort to find a better performing ad.
However, after you have been split testing ads for a while you will find it harder and harder to beat your best ad. This is where split testing can actually hurt you because 50% of your clicks will be going to an underperforming ad.
The solution is to duplicate your best ad 3 times (or more) and run it against 1 copy of your new ad. This will keep your CTR steady while you test. You can play with the mix to get a percentage you are comfortable with.
Remember to go into your campaign settings and set your ads to rotate more evenly so you can get an accurate split test.
#8 A Simple Way to Write Effective Ad Copy
Headline – Use your main keyword
Line 1 – Use line one to promote a benefit
Line 2 – Use line two to show your USP (unique selling point)
Display URL – Use Capitalization in your domain & add your keyword after the /. You can also remove the www from the Display URL if you need the extra room.
An ad like this should do well because it uses the target keyword “Gas Grills” in the headline and multiple times throughout the ad. It also touts the benefit of free shipping and 50% off combined with the unique selling point on line two of a large selection and fast shipping.
There really is no silver bullet when it comes to writing ad copy. The best thing to do is continuously test. However, if you follow this simplistic formula you will already be ahead of most of your competition.
#9 Optimize Your Campaign Settings.
Make sure you are set to the right countries or states that you wish to market in. If you don’t ship to Canada make sure you’re not advertising there.
However, the settings with the biggest impact are in the Networks and Devices section.
In general I would advise you turn off the search partners, display network and iphones/smart phones. I start almost every campaign with these three options disabled. Once I get the campaign running smoothly I will create a new campaign that just targets the display network.
The display network is a whole different animal and you need to know your market before even trying it. Also, it is much easier to view your data with Search and Display in their own unique campaigns.
Unless you are selling pizza or ringtones I would stay away from advertising on smart phones unless you have a very specific plan of attack.
By eliminating these networks until you are ready to expand into them you can save a ton of wasted money early on.
#10 Google Instant Will Change Search Behaviors
As more people get used to Google instant search it will start to change their search habits. Make sure you are prepared. Go to Google and type in your main money making keywords. See what Google starts suggesting. Make sure you have compelling ads for each of the relevant phrases that Google suggest.
If you do this now you can position yourself with high CTR and Quality Score in anticipation of your customers search behavior.
Closing Thought
Adwords can be a major source of frustration for beginners and even pros. However, if you take the time to set your campaign up the right way and monitor it closely you will limit the headaches and most importantly stop wasting money.
Please feel free to post your favorite Adwords tip in the comments!
One of the first things I do when conducting an SEO site review is to check a sites major keywords VS its top ten competing sites in Google.
Two recurring problems I find are a lack of keyword rich links from unique domains or way too many keyword stuffed links being built. Both of these situations can wreak havoc on your search engine rankings.
People spend a lot of time picking out the keywords they want to rank higher on Google. However, they usually assign arbitrary goals for how many links they need to acquire for each keyword.
This is a huge mistake but one you can easily avoid or correct. There are many free tools that can get you the information you need I recommend http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ and http://tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer/ but there are plenty of others out there.
Both tools are free although you need a paid account to get all of the data from Open Site Explorer but the free data is available instantly and easily exportable to excel.
Simple Steps
1. Make lists of the top 10 Google results for your major keywords.
2. Run one or both tools on your own site as well as your competition. Make sure you filter out internal links. (Open Site Explorer even has a way to filter out no followed links which is nice)
3. Once you have your list, filter out duplicate urls. Google is not going to count 500 links from the same site. So the best way to do this is to act like site wide links are all just one link for our purposes.
4. Sort your anchor text by unique occurrences and be sure to count things like “SEO” and “seo” as the same word. (Do not worry about capitalization)
You should now have everything you need to compare your anchor text density to your competition. This is great information because these sites are already doing well for the keywords you are targeting. The perfect anchor text density is whatever Google is already showing you it likes.
This will eliminate you simply guessing how many links you need for each keyword. However, there are a few things to watch for. Sometimes you will see people ranking with very few keyword rich links. So they may have a super low density and still rank. In these cases just build up links slowly but don’t worry if your density is 6% and there’s is .02% etc.
Sometimes nobody in a niche is actively building keyword rich links and you can reap the rewards. You just don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb and have your anchor text density be 45% while everyone else is in the 3 to 10% range. The key is to have a natural looking anchor text keyword profile.
All links are not created equal so if you are in a situation where you cant have too high of an anchor text density to be successful make sure you use POWERFUL links for that keyword because you won’t be building as many.
Do not worry about having a high density for your company name or url. That is actually pretty normal and can help bring your other anchor text densities down to a natural looking range.
Use your discretion because each niche will have wildly different acceptable percentages but whatever you do, stop guessing when it comes to anchor text density and develop a customized strategy.
Bonus
The list you just put together is linking to your competition. Why are they not linking to you? Simply run their results VS your domain’s backlinks and now you have a highly relevant list of sites to target for link building.
I have been using SEOmoz tools now for a while so I thought it would be nice to do a review of some of the SEO tools they offer. There are many free tools but I will be focusing mainly on the PRO membership.
Knowledge Resources & Guides
One of the best things that a Pro membership offers is actually not the tools at all but resources. One of the best sections is the SEOmoz Q&A. This gives you the ability to connect with the SEOmoz staff directly. You can either ask them a question in private, or post in the public section. This great feature allows you to learn from other members questions as well as your own. It’s like having your own private SEO specialist available to you at all times. Questions are generally answered within a couple of days or less.
Your membership also includes access to a ton of reports & guides on various aspects of SEO with titles like “The Professional’s Guide to Link Building” and “The Beginner’s Checklist for Small Business SEO (Local Search)”etc. These guides are very instructive and are updated pretty frequently.
You will also have access to a ton of video and audio cast all aimed at teaching the latest SEO techniques. This can be a great way to supplement SEO training for a new staff member.
SEO Tools
Along with the Guides and Q&A sections, your pro membership will also give you access to the SEO toolbox. The SEOmoz Toolbox functions very well, and is very reliable.
The mozBar for firefox is extremely valuable. When you are logged into it as a pro member it gives you even more valuable data. One of the huge advantages of this toolbar is that it won’t get your IP banned by Google. Most toolbars scrape link data and PR from Google so this can result in a temporary ban on your IP address. The mozBar pulls internal data so you can use it without fear of being banned.
The mozBar also connects to arguably the best tool seoMoz has to offer. Open site explorer – will let you see up to 10k links pointing to a specific URL. You get the data in an easy to use tabbed format and can download it to excel. The data loads almost instantly too which for SEO research this is truly a gold mine!
The two features I use all the time are how many unique Root Domains are linking to a URL and the anchor text breakdown of links pointing to the site. I find these both to be very telling stats. It doesn’t matter much that you have tons of links, it matters that you have tons of unique root domains linking to your site. Also, anchor text density for specific keywords can be too high and too low. Check your site vs. the top 10 to find out what is working in your niche.
When you are doing your on page analysis, the SEOmoz toolbox will also come in handy. You have access to a Term Target tool that helps you decide whether your pages are doing a good job of targeting your relevant keyword phrases. The crawl test tool will help you fix any internal server errors, and helps you fix any duplicate title/meta tags.
Previously the best tool SEOmoz had to offer was Linkscape. However, open site explorer really has replaced it and IMO it’s really not needed anymore. The company is now recommending pretty much the same thing.
Problems
In general there have been few issues to date but I will list out a couple because no service is perfect. Initially the Keyword Difficulty tool was basically not reliable. It has since gone through a major overhaul and is much better. However, I do find the % score they give out can be confusing to a client at first. The % is from 1 to 100 but they start saying things in the 50% range are “highly competitive” and it goes up from there to extremely competitive etc. The issue is a person not familiar with their score is going to see a batch of keywords and think oh look this keyword is only 56% that’s not too bad and it gets a ton of traffic etc. Anyhow, my advice is to not look at the % just look at the description bellow it, such as “extremely competitive” to get the real feel for it.
Open site explorer is truly amazing but one thing that is very annoying is that when you look at the anchor text used in links pointing to your URL it separates upper and lower case keywords that are the same word. So..”Widgets” and “widgets” are considered two separate keywords. I have seen sites with like 6 keywords listed that were all really the same exact keyword just with different capitalization. I realize some may want to see that but I should be given the option to standardize the data. This would make it much faster to see the true anchor text density.
The Crawl Test Tool is really neat but is no match for the IIS SEO Toolkit which is also free. However, it is super-fast and nice for quick hits…and again its free so no big deal.
To be honest the problems we have had are very minimal and we have seen seoMoz actively improving its tools all the time.
Conclusion
Overall it is well worth your money to buy a pro membership. I did not have the time to cover all of the tools SEOmoz has to offer. These are just a few that I find the most useful. Head over the SEOmoz website to learn more about the membership packages they have available.
What is your take on their services?
If you’re reading this, then you no doubt realize how important the online world is in establishing and maintaining your authority. Regardless how big the offline portion of your business is, online is the key to your future success. But let me ask you: how are you measuring your online success?
It’s a difficult question – and there’s no one single answer for everyone. But there isn’t a business (or individual, for that matter) out there that can’t benefit from using an analytics tool to help track, measure, and improve their online presence. I specifically reference Google Analytics, because it is free and best in class, but really any package will do the same thing. What does analytics measure, anyway?
How do people find you?
Wouldn’t it always be nice to know how people find you? You can ask everyone who ends up being a buyer, but when it comes to website customers, you can even find out about people who just came to browse as well as those who make a purchase.
Analytics holds a scary amount of detail about each and every person that visits your website, including:
- What country they’re from (and in some cases, state/province, or city)
- What browser they’re using
- What website (banner ad, director link/etc) they used to find you
You can use the tool to segment these visitors into different groups, and understand the buying patterns of each better. Does your site seem to resonate more with Germans and less with Americans? Is that banner ad a waste of time, whereas the premium directory listing sending in lots of leads? All here, just waiting for you to have a peek.
What do people really think about your website?
In the old days (read: less than a couple years ago), you had to ask customers for their opinion, and hope that enough people took you up on your offer and actually told you what was on their mind. Something of an inexact science, to say the least. Now, you can see your online buyer’s behavior without them even knowing. Consider the statistics that analytics provide:
- Do people linger over your sales pages, or immediately turn away when they find them?
- Do you have key content that nobody ever manages to find?
- Are there popular pages and content that is missing a strong call to action?
These are all fairly easy problems to fix, but only if you know about the problem.
How’s your search engine optimization?
You know how important getting backlinks is. Maybe you’ve researched your keywords and maybe you’ve done a little outreach to get your website more visible in search. But do you measure the traffic search engine send you?
Google Analytics provides data from all the major search engines (not just Google). With this information you should be asking yourself two key questions:
- Are the search phrases you expect to see actually sending traffic?
- Any surprises on keywords you didn’t know you were ranking for?
After all, it just goes to say: you cannot tweak performance if you aren’t measuring.
Andy Hayes is the managing director for Travel Online Partners, a travel online marketing firm. Don’t miss their popular Google analytics ebook, a simple yet effective resource to keep your own authority in check.
To Brand or Not to Brand
First and foremost you have to decide what is right for you. If you’re more concerned with branding and don’t get as excited about the traffic you could potentially receive from a high value exact match domain, then exact match is less of an issue. You should also take your competition into consideration. Is your niche saturated? Are the people in your niche generally SEO savvy or have they not caught on? One way to find out is to type your topic into Google and analyze the results. You can easily do this with a tool such as SEO toolbar from SEOBook. When you have the SEO toolbar installed and you perform a search on Google, the results show up with all the important information you need to determine how competitive your marketplace is. This tool allows you to see the volume of your competitor’s backlinks, whether or not they are listed in important directories such as DMOZ, what their Alexa rank is, and other valuable information listed directly below the result.
Keyword Selection and Domain Brainstorming
Once you get a better understanding of your market and determine whether or not you can devote the time necessary to move perform well in this niche, the next step is to locate available domains. Start brainstorming and write down several variations of the top 5 or so keywords for your market. Plug these variations into keyword research tools such as Google or Wordstream to see traffic estimates and remember to specify exact in the search. If you’re pleased with the amount of search traffic that particular keyword phrases yield, start checking if they are available for purchase or if they are already taken.
Premium Exact Match Domains May Cost a Pretty Penny
Typically, popular keyword phrases are not available, and if they are, the price for a premium exact match tends to be significantly higher. There are various places to look for premium domain names and some of the sites to utilize are Buy Domains, Sedo, and Flippa. Don’t be discouraged if all of the names you’re looking up are already taken, and don’t rule out a .net or .org extension. In terms of SEO, .com, .net, and .org are all eligible for an exact match bonus.
If all of the extensions are taken for the phrases you’re typing in, you might want to consider using a catchy name with only one of your major keywords in the title. Although you won’t be eligible for the exact match bonus, you still have a keyword in the domain and it might actually work out better for you in the long term if you focus on a catchy name that is good for branding rather than exact match traffic.
Exact Match is not a Sure Thing
Remember exact match traffic is not a sure thing! If you think you can buy a domain name that gets a ton of exact match traffic and sit back and get rich, you need a reality check. Just because you buy an exact match domain doesn’t eliminate the hard work that it takes to actually start ranking for your keywords. This is especially true in a saturated market. Buying an exact match only increases your chances of ranking but remember, it doesn’t guarantee them.
Guest post by Sarah Harris, of Zen College Life, the premier directory for online schools. Find out more information about criminal justice degrees.
You may have heard Google is rolling out “Brand Links” suggestions for a ton of generic keyword searches.
So far I have heard a ton of whining about how this is going to kill mom and pop shops (again!). Where others see despair I see opportunity. Here are 4 ways to use Google brand links to your advantage.
SEO/Link Building
- Search Google for as many generic terms that relate to your products as possible.
- Write down all the various brands that show up.
- Sort your list between brands you carry and your competition.
For the brands that you do carry make sure to check your search engine rankings. Concentrate your link building efforts on your brand pages that are lagging in the search engine. Maybe do a contest giveaway for brand x. That always nets some good links.
Also make sure you take a look at your on page optimization. Could you internally link to that brand page more? Are your internal links to that brand keyword rich? Would a new title tag be more effective than the one you have?
Content Creation
I know some of you are thinking…but I only sell MY brand not my competitor’s brand and this new Google feature is going to kill my organic traffic. First, the longer you complain and envision the sky is falling, the longer you put off doing something about it. Second, although generic searches can yield a lot of traffic they rarely offer high conversions. These searches represent someone at the start of the buying cycle, not the end.
A simple solution would be to create a landing page for each of these competing brands and compare your widget to their widget. Be honest and show the pros and the cons and why you think you come out ahead. If you do not want to host a review on your own site then leverage the domain authority of a site like squidoo and do reviews of brand X and compare it yours.
Drive some links to these review pages and you can get them ranking in no time. Especially by leveraging web 2.0 sites like squidoo if your domain is not an established authority.
As a customer gets closer to the end of the buying cycle they start doing brand searches and comparing widgets. By positioning your site to rank on the various brand searches Google is suggesting, you will keep yourself in front of the customer and do some positive branding of your own. This will be huge for your site if you do it right.
PPC
I tend to skip biding on generic traffic like “laptops” because it converts poorly and is usually bid up too high by people with “broad match” turned on. Google brand links gives you an opportunity to gobble up some quality traffic by bidding on their suggested brands.
Again, you don’t have to sell that brand to put up a PPC ad for it. You will have to test but from my previous experience you are likely to see a nice ROI on those branded searches.
Also, getting your ad there now before everyone else figures it out can help you to establish your click through rate and account history for that keyword, which is huge for adwords.
Research
Looking to expand your product offerings? Take a good look at all the brands Google is suggesting in your niche because that is where you know additional traffic is going to be headed. I have seen some rather small brands showing up for high volume search queries. Jump in and start carrying that brand and establish your site before your competition does.
I also find these links extremely helpful when researching a new product. Simply do a generic search and Google shows you some popular brands. You can quickly build a list of who you would want to start out carrying or who you would need to beat in that sector.
I hope this sheds some light on the possibilities this new feature brings. While everyone else is complaining, take action and get a leg up on them!
If you have additional ideas please post them in the comments.
There are several benefits for finding exact match domains for a website. There are probably many business owners with websites who are completely unsure about what the term, ‘exact match domains’ even means. This means that one should make certain that the domain name or web address of their website matches their business name or most targeted keyword. It is not a new method and is certainly one that is recommended. Regardless of the products or services that are offered, it is important that a good domain name is used.
It has been known for years that the name of a company should describe exactly what it does. If a company name is confusing, it deters new customers. The same is true when online. The domain name should describe quite briefly what it is that the website in question specializes in. This helps customers feel confident when clicking on the web address. This helps customers to remember the domain name. This helps customers to not have any confusion whatsoever.
Customers need to have an easy time finding what it is that they are looking for. By having exact match domains, they are able to search for the item they want and easily find the solution since there is no confusion. The average consumer is not professionally trained about how to do internet searches. That is why it is critical to make finding the website of any company one that will be easily found and understood. While it is important to avoid confusion, make searching easy and describe what the company does in an exact match domain, there is also another reason it is such an important choice to make.
The simple fact of the matter is that having exact match domains helps websites’ search engine rankings to be much better. Search engines use algorithms to decide which websites should be put at the top of the search results. These algorithms are based on a variety of factors and change continuously. Something that has been discovered, however, is that exact match domain names have proven to have better results with search engine optimization. That’s why a website that sells DISH Network, for example, should have the term, ‘DISH Network’ in the domain name if possible. Indeed, there are several benefits to having exact match domain names. So be sure to do that when selecting the website domain name for any webpage.
This is a guest post by Eric Rea.
