SEOptimise » keyword research

5 Low Profile/New SEO Tools You Should be Using

Matthew Taylor — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:13:18 +0000

If you have worked in SEO for any period of time, I’m sure you will be familiar with a number of the better known tools around, tools such as SEOmoz Pro Tools, Majestic SEO and the Google Keyword Tool. For a lot of SEOs and situations these tools can provide all the help you need, but there are a number of awesome low profile tools that can take SEO campaigns and agencies to the next level.

Tool: Linkdex
Use it for: Competitor analysis, back link analysis, on-page keyword analysis, rank checking…
Price: from $49

Linkdex is probably one of our favourite new tools in the SEOptimise office as it offers visual analysis of back link profiles as well as anchor text reports, rank checking and on-page keyword analysis (among a host of other things).

By far its most useful feature is the ability to analyse the type of links in your profile as well of those in your competitors’ profiles (powered by a quality filtered version of the Majestic SEO index), and it even has the capability to add a time dimension to the analysis. Basically, if you want to know why you’re being outranked and what type of links to build to beat the competition, it’s all laid out in bar chart form. That’s a pretty epic tool to start with, right? Well in addition to this, if you click on any of the bars to see a list of the links (which you can sort by “influence”), you can then explore them and add them to your “to build” list. And finally, you can hit a tick box and see what links have been built recently, effectively giving you a sneaky peek at your competitors’ SEO efforts.

It’s still pretty new and there is some stuff that needs work, but it’s still a great tool that gives you loads of actionable stuff and they are constantly updating it.

If you want a more detailed write up check out this Linkdex review from Sam Stratton at Koozai.

Tool: Scrapebox
Use it for: Keyword research
Price: $97

Those of you well versed in the dark arts of black hat SEO will know that there are plenty of more boundary-pushing tactics that Scrapebox can be used for. Any tool that contains the words “auto comment” and “the complete harvesting solution” in its sales patter, and (let’s face it) has scrape in its name, is unlikely to be whiter than white, but it does have its white(ish) hat applications.

A while ago Marty Weintraub wrote a really interesting post on radical keyword research which basically shows how the tool can be used to mine the suggest boxes of not only search engines but also sites like Amazon and YouTube. I won’t cover it again, but combining it with other tools like WordTracker or the Google Keyword tool can result in some fantastic (and quick) keyword research.

I’m guessing I should add some kind of “use at your own peril” disclaimer here. I’m fairly sure that this is probably against the T&Cs of at least some of the sites it scrapes, in much the same way as tools like the SEOBooks Rank Checker technically could be and so I am in no way endorsing its use.

Tool: Workbooks CRM
Use it for: Conversion tracking, ROI and reporting
Price: Free

In the spirit of ethical blogging I should probably start by mentioning that Workbooks are one of our clients, but I didn’t want that to preclude them from my list as they have an awesome new free tool for SEOs. Workbooks supply CRM software to businesses to help track their sales and marketing efforts and keep track of ROI.

While not specifically designed as an SEO tool, through the use of cookies and their software you can actually track exact ROI right down to the keyword level. While this may not sound anything new, we have actually found it a lot more accurate than tracking both SEO and PPC through Google Analytics and AdWords, as it not only allows for first touch attribution for sales but also better understanding of the quality of leads. It is particularly effective for sites where sales often aren’t made instantly and the sales process can take months.

For example, a PPC ad for a specific term may get 100 clicks and then five of those convert by filling out a web form. This is the point at which Analytics and Adwords would stop tracking, so you’d work on a conversion rate of 5%. Workbooks would then take this forward and you may then find that three of those web forms weren’t good quality enquiries, and that of the remaining two only one fully converted, so the actual conversion rate is 1%. Knowing the exact number of conversions and exact sales then allows you work out a proper ROI and even potential in the sales pipeline. All in all, it gives you some great insights into actual performance.

Tool: Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Use it for: Site crawling and analysis
Price: Free

These guys got their tool called ugly the other day in an SEOmoz post (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-tools-that-rock) and I’m about to call it low profile (which it’s probably not anymore), so they will probably end up with some kind of complex. But as far as spidering tools go this is definitely our favourite.

The main reason we love it is that it’s an awesome time-saving tool, and an easy one to use at that. No matter what the size of the site, all you have to do it whack in a URL and it goes off to spider it for you. Once it has worked its magic (depending on the size of the site and settings, it may take some time) you get some great reports out the other end.

In the office we use it for crawling client sites, grabbing all the meta data (and highlighting duplicates), tags, canonical information, http status codes, in links and out links and various other useful bits and bobs. As a starting point for audits, to help make meta data recommendations or even just generating a list of all the URLs on a site, it’s great.

Tool: WebPageTest
Use it for: Page speed analysis
Price: Free

The final tool in this mini box of tricks is webpagetest.org, which is a website speed testing tool which was originally developed for AOL. Given the global nature of SEO, it’s a handy little tool as it lets you speed test your site from a number of different worldwide locations, using a number of different types of browsers.

Once again it is a tool where all you need to do is pop in the URL and it does the rest (after a little bit of queuing usually). Once the scan is completed you get access to some excellent information, including a waterfall view which allows you to see, resource by resource, how long it takes items to load. The beauty of this is that you can see the stuff that really slows your site down and it’s really easy to spot 4xx and 3xx header codes which could be killing your page speed.

One of the most useful tools is the Full Optimisation Checklist, which gives you a whole list of possible areas that you can improve to make your site run quicker. Given the fact that page speed is a ranking factor (although only a minor one) it’s great to see what could be holding your site back and where you can improve.

So that’s my list of some of the more hidden gems of the SEO tool world (well in my opinion anyway). If you fancy suggesting any for me to add please suggest them in the comments in the bottom and I will check them out and, if they are good, add them.

Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering, none of these are affiliate links.

*Image from the Scrapebox website.

How to Use Google Correlate for Keyword Research

Tad Chef — Fri, 27 May 2011 11:52:05 +0000

Google have just rolled out a new tool called Google Correlate. It’s similar to Google Trends and Google Insights, but it takes the raw data and analyses it. As the name suggests, it’s looking for correlations – that is, whether the demand for a given keyword matches the popularity of any other keywords.

Sometimes the results are completely random, to the point of being ridiculous and far from useful for SEO. However, after a bit of testing, I’ve found out how you can use Google Correlate for keyword research.

Note that the tool is still a Google Labs project and US only, thus not really ready for prime time. On the other hand, it can already give you valuable information for your next US campaign.

After finding some useless correlations I tried to find some parallels that really mean something. So I searched for CNN on Google Correlate expecting to see a correlation of searches for other news sources.

I did indeed find that searches for CNN almost match those for MSNBC and Fox News. By ‘match’ I don’t mean the actual numbers but the tendencies. Actually, many more people look for CNN than for MSNBC, but the actual demand levels change in a corresponding manner.

CNN: MSNBC, Fox News

What does this mean? When something newsworthy happens, people flock to the Internet and type CNN, MSNBC or Fox News into the address bar and Google searches for them.

Likewise, you can look up other matching demands. For example you can see what people search for Christmas every year.

Even more useful for keyword research is a search like [vacation] on Google Correlate. Now you can see what else people have in mind when looking for vacation:

So basically Google Correlate is great for predicting seasonal demand. Also, you can find out whether people who search for a brand search for other brands as well.

To use this for your industry you have to come up with the major generic keywords and brands that are dominating your niche and try them. Sometimes the correlations will be purely incidental. In other cases you will find out what searchers in your niche are looking for as well.

Keyword Research – SMX Advanced London 2011 Presentation by Kevin Gibbons

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 17 May 2011 21:34:38 +0000

Very quick post – but here’s my presentation from SMX Advanced London 2011 earlier today:
Long Tail Keyword Research – SMX Advanced London 2011

If you have any questions just let me know in the comments.

Osama Bin Laden, the Royal Wedding and ‘News Tsunami’ SEO

Tad Chef — Wed, 11 May 2011 12:01:55 +0000

In recent weeks we have witnessed two overwhelming waves of news I’d like to call ‘news tsunamis‘. Like real tsunamis you have no choice, you can’t escape the news when you are in the nearby area. For this kind of news the whole planet is nearby.

Maybe some tribes in the Amazon jungle or a few monks in the Himalayas haven’t noticed the death of Osama Bin Laden and the royal wedding, but apart from those lucky few, we have all been drowned in these news waves.

While I was unable to escape the news, no matter how much I tried, I at least tried to reroute the hype induced into something useful: SEO.

My first urge was to catch up quickly and take advantage of the huge waves of traffic.

Instead, I decided to watch the waves of news and to follow the steps of others who have tried to use the energy of these waves to power their websites. Why? It doesn’t make much sense to get huge news traffic without planning what to do with it.

I could have written this a few days later to get some traffic from Google News users; I did it back when the swine flu craze was all over the Interwebs. That’s a bit short-sighted of course. Back then I wanted to inform people. Today I want to be more practical, in a way. You can’t inform the people in a meaningful way anyway; people want to believe the likes of

CNN
BBC
Reuters

So telling them that the swine flu vaccine might be potentially more harmful than the virus itself is futile in most cases. You can’t tell people that what they believe is wrong. You can only give them what they want to succeed, also financially.

A true SEO is always on the look out for opportunity in the attention economy.

The more attention, the more potential bounty. A huge attention wave propelled by a massive news story is an opportunity you can use.

Many people already monitor Google Hot Trends to react accordingly. In the case of a ‘news tsunami’ you don’t have to. Either you expect it beforehand and are prepared, or you watch where the attention and traffic goes.

I want point out two less obvious examples of recent ‘news tsunamis’, as you can’t rank quickly or at all for [osama bin laden] and [royal wedding] as keyphrases. I’d like to point out two examples of less importance but more opportunity.

Pippa Middleton

What you can do is watch out for unexpected aspects and the ensuing demand. In the case of the royal wedding it was Pippa Middleton, the sister and bridesmaid of the royal bride.

Map Abbottabad

When it comes it Osama bin Laden’s death it is the town he was hiding in, and thus the search for [map abbottabad]. It seems that nobody in the West besides the intelligence agencies had ever heard of it prior to this infamous event.

While the first SEO’ed result for [map abbottabad] is like an unintended parody, it shows ”the nearest hotels” being 100 or more kilometers from the actual city, while Pakistan’s capital is just 60 kilometers away. Apparently the site has been there since before the city became famous for 15 minutes.

On the other hand there are four impressive sites for Pippa Middleton which we can learn a lot from.

pippasass.com
pippamiddleton.net
pippa-middleton.co.uk
philippamiddleton.org

Surprisingly the first one in this list ranks at #2 in the UK, Ireland and Canada for [pippa middleton], just below Wikipedia and Universal Search results (news and images). The .co.uk and the .net domains rank somewhere in the top 30 right now, but I’ve seen the co.uk in the top 10 at #9 or 10 for a while.

Of course there is fierce competition right now when it comes to search results for her name; mostly mainstream media from all over the world is clogging up the top results. So anybody ranking there fast on a low budget with a new site is worth a look. How did they achieve this? Let’s look at what the sites have in common.

All four sites have more or less exact matching domains
They all use WordPress
They use keywords quite a lot onsite
They started blogging in April
They have just a few or several posts
There is not much user interaction (comments or likes)

All in all, this appears to be proof that the use of old SEO tactics is still working. When I started out in SEO in 2005, I took part in an SEO contest to find out what the best SEO techniques were. Surprise surprise, back then the same strategy worked out best: using a WordPress blog on a keyword matching domain with just sufficient content to be relevant and quite a few keyword mentions.

Another key component has been neglected in this post until now: link building. I took a closer look at the winner, pippasass.com, to find out how they did it. The answer is reciprocal links! A blog covering celebrity bums daily linked to it, embedding the actual RSS feed the last 5 posts). After that some press outlets (not only tabloids) linked to, one from the US, one from France and one from the UK: The Independent.

So a healthy mix of reciprocal and authority links has been key to achieving top rankings, as the site wasn’t on top just a few days ago when I first checked. The reciprocal links were enough to get noticed for a more targeted search, where the journalists apparently discovered the site and then linked it up to #2 for the main keyphrase, the actual name.

The WordPress sites get monetised via all kinds of ads, PPC, affiliate or even a shop with T-shirts, so there are always ways to earn money on a traffic wave.

How can you monetise a map? Either you sell maps, get commission from hotels or place ads as well. So even the other example could be profitable. Both examples are not really what you would work at out of sheer interest. These are sites you create for profit. The mainstream media knows as well; thus they have ads below the map. For instance, they sell flights to Pakistan in their ads.

So the business of news is ultimately that of predefined views and for SEO of page views. It’s not about what is most important but what the people want. Once you notice the wave and how to use it, you have to act accordingly and quickly. Don’t fight the current or you drown.

Salespeople: the free SEO tool every agency has

Matthew Taylor — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:30:50 +0000

I have been working as a full time SEO Exec for just about a year now and a few things have become apparent in that time, most notably that SEOs love tools and are always on the lookout for that elusive competitive advantage to give them a ranking edge. So it strikes me as odd that every agency already has access to a free tool that will (amongst other things) get them high quality links, improve their keyword research, increase their PPC CTRs and conversion rates and keep their clients happy and informed. But they very rarely use it to its full potential.

So what is this free SEO tool? It’s your sales people. OK, so ‘free’ and ‘tool’ may have been used somewhat loosely, but bear with me.

How salespeople can help your SEO

The vast majority of SEOs are pretty awesome at what they do, and there are plenty of link building tactics where quite frankly it helps to be a computer geek, but one of the best ways to get great quality links is simply by asking, and this is where a lot of SEOs can come unstuck. I’m pretty sure you will see where I’m going with this already… but rather than sitting there trying to craft the perfect email, or spending hours talking on the phone uncomfortably, get your salesperson to do it and free up your time to do what you’re best at. I can pretty much guarantee that they will have a much better success rate and will do it a hell of a lot faster. And as an added bonus, they may just pick up a new client from it: after all, these sites need SEO too.

So once they are done with a few link requests, how about some keyword research? If you’ve exhausted all the obvious keywords and are prospecting for some longer tail gold, why not ask the people who sell all day to help you? Your salespeople will spend hours every day either consciously or unconsciously perfecting the language they use and studying the language clients use as well – put this to good use. This applies doubly if you have access to your clients’ sales teams. Get them to sell to you; listen to the language and terms they use, and ask them what terms the customers use. You never know they may provide a term that you’d never even think is related but that will send conversions through the roof for little or no SEO effort.

Tip – Most larger companies will have sales scripts that their team work from and will record calls for “training and quality purposes”, so why not ask if you can have a look/listen.

How salespeople can help your PPC
Q1. How often do you sit and look at your CTR and conversion rates and wish they could be higher? Most days?

Q2. How often have you asked the professional salesperson in the office for their input? Never?

This is the most obvious area where even a little sales experience can go a long way. Your salespeople will have spent their working life approaching people, having to summarise your services in a few words to spark someone’s interest enough to get them the opportunity to explain more. Is it me or does that not sound similar to what a PPC ad is trying to achieve? Use their experience and expertise and get them to write some of your PPC ad text, or at the very least get them to brainstorm some call to action phrases for you.

Tip – Every salesperson in the world at some point will have done an elevator pitch. Get them to do one for the client’s site and then chop it down to hit the character limit.

How salespeople can help your account management

I think it’s fair to say that if you work in SEO long enough, you will invariably come across a client you explain an SEO concept to and you know full well that they have no idea what you’ve just told them. The problem is that if a client doesn’t understand a concept, they are pretty unlikely to be fully supportive of it. The next time it happens, make a note of it, go and explain it how you would normally to one of your salespeople and then get them to explain it to you as if you were the client. Salespeople make a living from taking advanced concepts they probably won’t know the technicalities of and selling them to people who may never have heard of them.

Tip – If you’re having a real problem getting past your contact to speak to the member of the development team you really need to do some work for you, ask your salesperson to have a go – getting past “gatekeepers” should be second nature.

Keyword Temperature and Other Exotic Metrics

Tad Chef — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:45:58 +0000

Do you measure keyword temperature to improve your SEO? You don’t? Well what about keyword density? Also there are other exotic metrics to fool you into believing you do something for your site’s SEO. Sounds weird? Then read on. The story starts like this:

In recent days I’ve been haunted by the ghastly specters of the past.

In several cases I’ve had to do with metrics long gone or which weren’t ever meaningful in the first place. There seems to be a need for simplistic metrics that can make complex issues appear straightforward and clear.

Such metrics are

Keyword Density

In the nineties of the last century some first generation search engines were easily tricked by repeating keywords on a page. So the more you repeated a keyword the higher you ranked. It may have worked back then and in some cases even later but it was always a SEO trick never a best practice for a legit business. Still the term keyword density appeared. It signified the number of keyword mentions in a text. Your keyword mentioned 10 times in a text with 100 words equaled a keyword density of 10%.

Google hasn’t counted keywords on page, instead it relied on links to a site or page to determine its worth. Thus the first generation search engines disappeared. Keyword density stayed with us though. to this day some people offer keyword density tools and advice on the best keyword density. It’s all nonsense. You’re better off measuring keyword temperature, really, at least it won’t affect your SEO. A keyword density beyond the common sense median will hurt your site. You will be treated as a spammer.

Google (Toolbar) PageRank

Until 2007 it was still quite common to obsess about the Google (Toolbar) PageRank aka the little green bar in your Google Toolbar. It was never an accurate representation of your actual PageRank and only in the early days was there a real correlation between TPR and actual rankings in Google but it was a good thing to brag about. Also people used it to sell links, the higher the TBR the higher the price for a paid link.

Sometime in early 2008 Google ended this madness by manually adjusting the TPR of link vendors. From then on nobody serious about SEO really cared for the little green bar. Still just recently a client of mine called me out that a blog of mine was a failure beacuse (it has a ranking of 0). He meant PageRank of course and he didn’t even consider that it was on a new domain and thus couldn’t display toolbar PageRank yet. Toolbar PageRank is not a metric you use in SEO. It hasn’t been used for years. In case you don’t know that or accept that I can’t really help you. You can buy some high PageRank links from a text link broker or from a spammer and then you might get more TBR. Your site might get banned in the process as well. Again you are better off measuring something else, for instance page radiation.

Google Backlinks

It has been said and written countless of times: Google doesn’t show an accurate number of backlinks with its “link:” operator. To say it’s inaccurate is like saying that an elephant is not as tiny as an ant. There is a huge difference between the real number and the few links Google shows you.

Just compare it to the number of links Google Webmaster Tools shows instead. for the client who complained that has only 9 backlinks in Google the number in GWT was something like 270k (thousand) links. There is a small difference don’t you think? So measuring SEO success by the Google backlinks number is as accurate as counting Matt Cutt’s hair to determine it. Especially when he’s.

Number of Links

OK, the number of links as offered by Google Webmaster Tools must be it then! Isn’t it? Nope. The sheer number of links says as much about your SEO success as the number of sex partners about your love life. One link from an authority site might by worth as much as 100k from scraper and other low quality sites. You don’t measure SEO efforts be the number of links. Each link has, depending on its anchor text, topical relevance, position on the page and a plethora of other factors, a wort of it’s own.

You can’t compare a Rolls Royce with a Tata Nano. Even in case you count 100 of them with one RR. Ultimately links are just a means or a tool to accomplish a task or even a series of tasks like getting attention, traffic, conversions and/or sales. So you have to determine lots of factors having impact on link quality and report them, don’t you? In case you get paid by the link or have to measure your link building efforts you might try this approach. Still, showing of quality or authority links doesn’t prove that you have doe your SEO properly. You might as well measure link anxiety to find out how afraid you are of losing each one of them. Counting or measuring links for reporting purposes is the road to excess not success. Measuring the quality of your sex partners doesn’t mean a healthy relationship either.

Number of Keywords

The more keywords you optimize for the better! Don’t you think? Still many potential clients approach me with huge keywords lists, often directly from Adwords. Then after a few hours of market and keyword research I come up with just a few, sometimes as few as three they have to go after and focus on. They are often not the most prominent ones like cars, SEO or hotel but the rather keyword phrases, combinations like [used cars uk], [local SEO services] or [hotel munich]. In the past often disappointment would set in: “What? Just a bunch of keywords? Not even the big cool ones among them? You must be a very bad SEO if you target just a few low level keywords at once.” Market and keyword research is not the process of compiling huge lists of keywords though. It’s the process of finding out the keyphrases that you can reach within a reasonable time frame on a realistic budget. You want to find the few “money keywords” that will bring the revenue.

You’re after the few terms where you can compete within your industry or area. Also you can’t compete for everything at the same time. Your business has just one home page and one description. You can’t keyword stuff it unless you want to scare off your potential customers. A few years ago some SEOs would just automatically generate pages for each of your keywords and redirect searchers to the home page. Were these guys the good SEOs? No, they failed. I’ve seen client sites dropped from the index for such “SEO tricks”. So it’s not the number of keywords you optimize for, it’s the choice of keywords. Treat your keywords like friends, better a few good ones than hundreds of fake ones you don’t really care for or even know. Instead of measuring the number of keywords you could also count the number of times you have to pee as a SEO metric.

I hope by now you understand what I tried to express. There are no simple SEO metrics. Even the metrics we still use or use more and more these days are always a compound of several aspects of SEO, web design, usability, pricing, product and service quality etc.

bounce rates
conversions
ROI

depend on numerous factors:

The industry
the time of year
general market trends
the economy
the geographic location.

Don’t blame SEO for everything.

Also don’t forget that you can’t measure everything: You can’t measure your image, trust, or brand loyalty. You can try to. You can’t depend on these metrics though. You have to think for yourself and not let simplified numbers decide for you. Keyword temperature is a great metric don’t you think?

* Image by Daniel Novta.

Client’s Guide to SEO: How to Approach SEO Agencies

Tad Chef — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:16:14 +0000

Happy waiter by howard N2GOT

Today someone was searching for a “client’s guide to SEO” over at my SEO 2.0 blog. I think this topic is more fitting here on SEOptimise so I will explain the best approach to SEO companies and Internet marketing agencies for potential clients.

In 2010 most people in business already know at least something about how Google works.

Business people know about keywords and often pay for Google Ads already. That’s why it’s easier nowadays to deal with clients. You don’t have to explain anymore that SEO is needed or how it works. They already know and thus they contact you.

There also some drawbacks as many SEO clients already have had a bad experience with SEO practicioners, are convinced they know themselves what’s best for them and last but not least have too high expectations for a too low price.

A client can gain a competitive advantage by approaching SEO agencies in the right way.

Basically finding a fitting SEO agency is like finding a good restaurant and eating out. Thus I will use this allegory to make my explanation easier to grasp. You need to know a few more things to approach an SEO agency correctly.

Know what you want

Imagine yourself visiting a restaurant and asking for something tasty to eat. You wouldn’t do that. You would take a look at the menu and ask for actual dishes. You would perhaps consult the waiter what he recommends and whether the food of your choice is fresh. Ask for actual services and outcomes not for fuzzy metrics like “ranking number one” or “gaining traffic”.

So if I were a business person seeking SEO services I’d approach a SEO Agency with the following wishes and questions:

“We are in need of keyword research, onsite optimization and link building services. We prefer high quality links and content creation as a way to get them. With our SEO campaign we plan to reduce our bounce rate from 50% to 20%, increase our conversion rate from currently 1% to 2% and to increase sales by at least 50% within 1 year. Do you have the resources to achieve that? How would you try to achieve those targets and how much do you think this would cost for a year? We pay 5000$ per month already for Google ads and plan to cut costs here by at least 50% after one year of successful SEO. Please outline an SEO strategy for a year with these objectives.”

Reading this I would realize that you already know quite well what SEO is about. I wouldn’t bother to explain what keyword research, onsite ptimization or link building is but would focus on the actual measures to be taken to reach your goals. I would probably tell you where your goals might be a little unrealistic as well. Last but not least I’d outline the strategy in an easily digestible form.

Know what you don’t want

When you visit a French restaurant you don’t want to eat French fries I assume. Thus you know quite well what you don’t want. Accordingly in SEO there are lots of things you most probably don’t want. Clarifying it from the start might be very helpful both to achieve your goals and to get the right type of agency in the first place.

To make sure not to get third rate SEO you could write something like this:

“As a reputable leader in our sector we don’t accept low quality link building techniques like mass directory submission, irrelevant blog commenting, keyword rich forum signatures and so called three way link exchanges along with other kinds of link farms. We don’t want to get linked in “your network”. We seek high quality editorial links from relevant third parties in our sector instead.”

Know your limitations

Most potential clients these days already have done some form of keyword research either themselves or with by their former SEO service providers. That’s great but it’s like visiting a restaurant and bringing your own recipe. We have to do a keyword research of our own. The keyword you provide are a great help and can help reduce the time we need to perform our market and keyword research but we can’t solely rely on research done by others.

I’ve seen many client for example who were focused on big competitive terms while they largely ignored the low hanging fruit you could reach withing weeks or a few months after starting a SEO campaign. Other clients have huge lists keywords and phrases that do not make sense from a strategic perspective. You don’t usually optimize for a hundred keyphrases. You of course do by by way of increasing your overall site authority. Then not only the keywords you directly optimize rise in the search results but also those others you don’t directly optimize for.

Last but not least many clients do not know how to find money keywords, those keywords that really drive sales or otherwise make money. Just going after traffic volume, even with relevant traffic doesn’t suffice to succeed.

Don’t assume you know more about SEO than we do:

Always allow the SEO to do their work as a whole. Don’t make them rel on potentially flawed wok you or others already did.

Know how to motivate

When eating out you expect the more expensive restaurant to be the better one don’t you? By paying more you ensure quality. The same applies to SEO. The less you pay the worse the quality you get.

While much of SEO is tedious work like coding, writing, connecting with linkerati etc. that should be paid by the hour or day additional financial incentives can influence the outcome of an SEO campaign significantly. People simply work differently when they know there will be more money in it depending on the outcome. You are more focused on the results and not just on tweaking more code, adding more content and getting more links.

Your offer might sound something like this:

“In case we reach our objectives within the first year of our SEO campaign we plan to add a bonus to our payment. Also we consider a sales dependent performance based payment model. We know there is a considerable time and effort investment needed to achieve results but once we’ll see those we’re ready to share the revenue with you.”

Know our limitations

Imagine a restaurant where people just get in ask the waiter a few questions, talk about the price for a while and then leave. Just one of five actually actually sitting down and places an order. A good SEO specialist or company typically receives many inquiries. Many of those are low quality inquiries you can already sense are made just for the sake of getting one more offer.

Make sure to choose the restaurant or SEO agency before you approach them. Find one with a name, one with a great renowned cook for instance. In SEO trust is everything. A generic “SEO Services Company” is most probably low quality. On the other hand an agency with both a brand of its own and a personal brand of the people who work for it will be more reliable as they want to keep their good names.

To set up an SEO offer that makes sense takes time an effort by itself. In case you want to reply to all generic inquiries saying “hello, we are x and want SEO for website y” you’ll end up wasting most of your precious time.

So make sure to approach the right SEO agency from the start:

In case you don’t like the offer then try another one but don’t just approach ten of them and compare. I can smell such inquiries and I will ignore them whenever I have the choice. I will spend my time on potential clients there are serious about working with me.

Know who does the work
Imagine entering a restaurant and judging it solely by the waiters. Does the waiter wear shiny expensive shoes and suit? Does the waiter recite the menu like a poet? Well, this must be the best restaurant, right? I remember the times when I worked in an Internet agency of the early days. We had three kinds of staff there, the sales reps, the project managers and the people who make the actual work. The sales reps and the project managers were mostly wearing suits, driving sleek sports cars and promoting everything the client wanted to get in a time frame that was nonsense.

Then the actual designers and developers had to cope with the impossible tasks of building huge excellent websites in a too short time. What happened was twofold: Many, many bugs and timelines that didn’t work out. Broken websites and projects delayed by months. While the sales reps didn’t care, they have gotten their pay already as often they got a commission based on the project size. They weren’t even present while the others were working on the project.

The project managers were running around in a frenzy and increasing the pressure on the poor developers who had to work day and night in 12 to 16h shifts. At midnight they were getting “free pizza” for their superhuman efforts. Most clients haven’t ever talked to the developers.

Make sure you know who does the actual work:

Speak with the actual coders, writers and link builders. Speak with the geeks. Speak with the guys wearing sneakers and checkered shirts. Don’t judge the restaurant by the waiters. Know the chefs. The chefs don’t wear suits.

When you take into account the advice mentioned above you will most probably succeed with your outsourced SEO campaign. It will also succeed faster.

Always remember that SEO is like good food. You don’t want the cheapest one, you probably prefer the healthiest or the tastiest.

I think I will extend this guide in two weeks should it succeed. So make sure to let me now in the comments or elsewhere that you like it. The topic of the next post will be how to deal with SEO agencies or specialists once you have found one. Success in most cases depends on how the SEO practicioners work together with the clients or rather how the clients do it on their part.

How to Use Google Webmaster Tools for SEO Inspiration

Tad Chef — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:55:28 +0000

Ever since Google Webmaster Tools added the so called “search queries” data I’ve become a huge fan of them. I’ve listed the 10 Google SEO tools everybody should use in the past but to be honest I focus on three of them right now Google Insights, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools for SEO inspiration. The wealth of information GWB offers is like a goldmine.

The tool-set has grown over the years steadily but I was neglecting it. By now there are numerous ways to use Google Webmaster Tools for SEO. Again I will focus on three of them here and explain how to use GWB for

Keyword Research
Link Building
CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization

In case you haven’t used Google Webmaster Tools yet at all I strongly advise you to read this excellent intdroductory series by Search Engine Guide.

Keyword Research
While Google offer several outstanding keyword research tools, Google Webmaster Tools enable you to find out keywords that really matter for your actual site. Hugo Guzman has written a good post on how to find your most valuable keywords using it.

The idea is to seek out the low hanging fruit of keywords already ranking on the verge of top 5 and to push them higher via low level SEO to get a high ROI. This is a really neat concept. Usually I’d focus on the big earners, high traffic keywords and important queries. Probably everybody else does as well so by focusing on these “almost there” terms you save time an money not fighting that many competing websites.

Link Building
I’m often surprised at which of my pages get the links and where from when checking “Links to your site”. Even orphaned pages (that have no connection to my main website) get inbound links. Also it’s amazing to find out that sites you have never got any significant traffic from link to you. These are often crappy scraper sites and other automated set ups but sometimes you’ll find a gem.
Then you can target these sites to get even more links. For example you can discover who links to you on Tumblr and then follow these users. While repeat links from the same do not count as much as from new ones there is only a finite number of places in a given industry so there is no problem with getting links from the site again and again. Especially authority sites that link more that once to you are a great asset.
You’ll discover these links by using other link tools be it paid ones or Yahoo Site Explorer but often you get too many links, mostly nofollowed ones via these tools to find the good or great ones.

CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization
You can find out your best and worst converting keywords. The first step of a conversion is converting a searcher to a visitor. You fail already here in most cases and it’s quite surprising which keywords and phrases get the highest CTR (click through rates). For instance we have a 100% CTR on the query [rss meta]. The searchers end up on a tiny post from 2006.
In contrast our huge resources lists often get quite low CTR. Does it mean that we should write dozens of microblogging like posts instead of one gigantic list? The 100% CTR is no anomaly, it’s just the most striking example.

Also we rank high for [seo services uk] and similar queries but the CTR is disappointing. It seems that we need landing page optimization as our competitors target the query directly in their titles and have extra pages for it. At SEOptimise users land on the homepage and don’t find the term “SEO services” immediately.

How do you use Google Webmaster Tools? Does it inspire you to take concrete steps? Do you optimize your websites based on GWT data? I often check Google Insights, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools for SEO inspiration. Whenever I need some input on what to write about I check what’s popular already and don’t rely solely on my imagination. I can check popular items on Topsy, Delicious or elsewhere but Google offers me much more accurate data for my niche and particular site.

Steal this SEO FAQ: 30+ SEO Questions You Always Wanted an Answer to

Tad Chef — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:30:00 +0000

Recently I’ve read one of those awfully misguided anti-SEO posts. It linked to another blog post called SEO FAQ. It wasn’t an actual SEO FAQ though. It was just another awfully misguided blog post from a guy I have never heard of before and who only reveled in the attention he got from displaying his ignorance. People got angry as usual in such cases of blatant provocation and disregard.

Sadly the Google algorithm still sometimes prefers those who raise hell instead of those who provide useful resources.

So that completely useless SEO FAQ ranks at #2 for SEO FAQ in Google.com and misleads lots of people looking for answers to most basic SEO questions.

Thus I decided to provide a new SEO FAQ. I want to outrank this fake resource. Also I want you to copy these questions and to provide your own answers on your own blog.

I want to see 10 or more real SEO FAQs to outrank this crap. So feel free to copy the questions I’ve compiled with the help of some SEO practicionares from all over the Web and to provide your own answers. I will link your answers in this post as well. So steal this SEO FAQ: 30+ SEO questions you always wanted an answer to.

Some of the Q&As might sound funny, especially the original tweets they’re based on. We had a lot of fun while collecting the questions and answers.

What does SEO stand for? The acronym stands for Search Engine Optimization but by now it’s not only about search and engines anymore. See 2.
What is SEO? To define SEO is not an easy task as it’s changing all the time. In 2010 the SEO definition might sound something like this: Everything done to ensure getting found on the Internet and to make sure that the ensuing traffic converts.
Is SEO spam, bullshit, dead etc.? Who knows. The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, BBC etc. certainly don’t think so. They practice SEO like most of other website owners. Last time I checked all the people who blame SEO for global warming, the Iraq war, the global economic crisis have optimized their websites according to SEO techniques. By the numbers SEO is booming all the time for several years a in a row.
Why aren’t we #1 or on page 1 at Google? You haven’t done SEO yet? You have no content? Your site consists mainly of Flash, AJAX or simply graphics? You have asked Jason Calacanis or Derek Powazek for SEO advice? Also you most probably rank for long tail queries already. Question by @rishil and @peteyoung – Answer by @IngoGuava
Why am I on #1 all the time but when my wife searches for me she doesn’t find me? Maybe you need a divorce? No, just kidding. You probably need to disable personalized search. Otherwise Google will serve you the results you most desire.
When will we see results? It will take a while depending on what results you expect what for. Some keywords might even take a year or more while others may work after weeks or months. Perform a thorough keyword and market research first to know. Also SEO is basically a continuous process that never stops. Question by @IngoGuava, @tonyboney and @DolphinPromo – Answer by @IngoGuava
Can we rank for iPhones? Do you sell iPhones? Are you a representative of Apple? Do you sell iPhones globally or just nation-wide? Do you want to spend 50k+$ on SEO monthly? Then maybe yes. Question by @rhyswynne – Answer by @rhyswynne
Can we rank for everything (huge list of keywords)? If you are Jeff Bezos and your site is Amazon you probably can. In all other cases you have to choose and set preferences. You have to determine your main keywords, a few of them, and go after them. Your main keywords are the most popular and profitable ones. A hotel in London would go after hotel london probably and similar combinations. Question by @maxyRo
How much does SEO cost? How much does a car cost, or a house? First we need to know what kind of car or house you need then we can try to assess the price. Otherwise we can just say somewhere in between 1k and 1 million dollars per month. Everything below 1k is low quality and/or automated. Question by @seowolf
Why is SEO so expensive? Why are cars and houses so expensive? Because it takes lots of time, resources and work to build them. Besides SEO makes your website actually earn money while setting up website and designing it by itself does not. So at the end of the day SEO earns more money that it takes. Also remember that SEO is not just like a house or car. It’s more like a shop or a hotel when it comes to the house metaphor and it’s more like a race car when it comes to the car metaphor.
How long does it take to get indexed by Google? Google needs minutes to weeks depending on your site to index it or new content appearing on it. Without SEO it might even take forever.
How to submit my new site to Google/Bing/Yahoo etc.? You don’t submit sites to search engines these days. You link to them from already indexed sites, you ping them via blog posts and or you submit an XML sitemap.
How do I submit to 1000 search engines? Only idiots do. There are only a handful of search engines that you need at all. Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask in the US. Mostly Google in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
Do I need an XML sitemap? Depending on your site you may or may not need one.
Do I need meta tags for SEO? No, the meta description tag is good for search users though who might decide whther they click on yours based on the description you offer.
Do I need a high PageRank for SEO? You need internal Pagerank for your site to get indexed. Toolbar PageRank (the green bar in your Google toolbar) is not a prerequisite.
What is linkbait? There are at least two common definitions of linkbait (or link bait). One negative and one positive. The negative one says that it’s luring people to link to you for a reason they normally wouldn’t. The positive one explains that linkbait is a highly linkable masterfully crafted peace of content people not only like but also recommend to others by linking.
Can’t my niece who is a graphic designer do the SEO? She probably can cook as well but you probably would go to a restaurant nonetheless. Designers in most case underestimate the importance of SEO and misunderstand it. They assume that the designer should be decide how a website should be build and when the site is done, they, or rather their clients realize that they’re not even indexed by Google. SEO should be part of website design not just a add on. An open minded designer can provide a good findable site architecture that works for SEO as well. S/he in most cases needs an SEO expert to accomplish that task.
Can’t my nephew who is a web developer do the SEO? Many old school SEO professionals have started out as web developers. Nonetheless they had to focus on other non-technical SEO techniques. A good web developer can provide roughly one third of the skills you need for SEO. Sadly most web developers are clueless about SEO beyond the most common basics.
Can my son-in-law who is a Perl, Java and C programmer do my SEO? Programmers often underestimate the difficulty of SEO and attempt to to attain rankings by creating scripts that automatically enhance websites. This is a very risky business as it often crosses the thin line of waht’s allowed by teh search engine guidelines.
Why should I outsource my SEO? SEO is a full time job for a person or requires a whole team with several skills ranging from web development, content creation to marketing. Unless you have at least one experienced full time SEO inhouse it is strongly advised to seek assistance from a SEO compnay or consultant. Question by @seowolf
Can’t I just use WordPress plus plugins for SEO? You can but it’s not enough. Nowadays most modern CMS and blog software has built in technical SEO capabilities. To outrank others who use mostly SEO friendly software as well you have to stick out.
Does Google hate SEO? No, Google even offers SEO advice and a plethora of SEO tools itself. It’s an ages old myth that Google fight SEOs. In fact the Google employees and SEO practitioners speak at the same conferences and work together as business partners. Most SEO companies are big clients of Google as they also buy PPC ads from Google.
Does SEO mean optimization for search engines spiders not humans? Some people still assume that SEO is used to please search bots only. Most reputable SEO experts advocate search engine optimization for users.
Is buying links, hidden text, IP delivery etc. black hat SEO? Some techniques considered by many a s SEO are also considered black hat. Still most them can be used ethically as well so only the context can tell you when a particular measure is black or white hat.
Is black hat SEO legal? The question to ask should rather be whether black hat SEO is recommended. No it is not. Most of it is probably still legal, depending on the technique. It pays only for the few who do it on large scale.
Does site size matter? Historically it did matter. For a period of time bigger sites by the sheer number of pages seemed to rank batter. By now the pros and cons outweigh each other – so it does not makes sense to inflate the size of a website artificially by adding low quality content.
Do domain extensions (top level domains like .com, co.uk) matter? Yes they do. Especially when it comes to country based domains like .fr, .de or .es – for local results in respective countries you should use preferably a country domain to get a small advantage. Also many in the SEO industry assume that .edu and .gov domains are trusted more by Google. Google itself has denied that explaining that .edu and .gov domains get more links and thus Google trusts them more. Question by @Ramkarthik
Do nofollow links count? Indeed it has long been known that Yahoo doesn’t discount nofollow links completely. It also seems that Google makes exceptions as well. Plus remember that the main function of a link is to bring visitors. The search engine “juice ” is just a side-effect so a link is a link no matter the attribute. Question by @amabaie – Answer by @amabaie here.
Do you offer PageRank optimization, search engine submission, meta tag optimization? You should try some time travel back to the dark past of early SEO. These things are secondary or negligible.
Is blog commenting for SEO spam? Like in many other cases, it depends dear london real estate! Try changing your name to some real name and add something of value to the conversation and your comment will be very welcome.
I have a question or answer that is not on this FAQ what can I do? There is a comment section! Add your questions and/or answers there. They might get added to the actual FAQ.

OK, now steal this SEO FAQ and provide your own answers. Make sure not to copy both as in this case this would be a case of duplicate content and most likely lead to at least the copy losing ground in the search results.

Also make sure to read this post by Rishi Lakhani where he answers a lot of questions you might encounter in future.

Update: Thanks everybody for taking part in the SEO FAQ meme and providing your often excellent answers:

30+ SEO Questions You Always Wanted an Answer to by buynary (offline by now)
SEO Questions and Answers Worth Stealing by SEO Web Help
SEO FAQ by SEOForums.org
SEO Tips – Your Search Engine Optimization Questions Answered by SubHub
SEO FAQ by Jeroen van Eck [in Dutch]
32 SEO Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Answers by Shannon Steffen
SEO FAQ – Answers to your SEO questions by David Leonhardt

http://www.sksdesigns.com/2010/02/32-seo-frequently-asked-questions-faq-and-answers/

10 Free Google SEO Tools Everybody Should Use

Tad Chef — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:11:39 +0000

Some people, even at Google, still think that Google hates SEO. In some cases it really does. At the same time Google loves SEO as actions speak louder than words. Google provides not a few, not several but by now 10 free Google SEO tools everybody should use. I remember the times when we had none of them. Today we have an abundance of data Google allows us to mine.

You know, I’m often quite critical of Google but when there is one thing the search giant does right then it’s the plethora of tools it offers. So here is the list of 10 free Google SEO tools everybody should use. Most of these SEO tools are good for keyword research and on page SEO. Please read to the end, I guess some of you won’t know all of them.

Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster tools is the equivalent of a mechanic looking after you car daily but for websites of course. Identify broken links, malware and other issues and find out what search queries lead to your pages even with clickthrough statistics. It even checks your website speed and tells you why it’s too slow.
Google Analytics
In case you still don’t know GA you have probably slept for years. Some SEOs don’t use it due to paranoia of being controlled by Google though. You have to decide yourself what’s more important, a very useful analytics tools or the fact that Matt Cutts can look under your skirt.
Google Website Optimizer
With Google Website Optimizer you can test different versions of your pages. This way you can determine the best converting ones. It’s called A/B split testing or multivariate testing and is all the rage lately in SEO circles and beyond.
Google Zeitgeist
Google Zeitgeist is not a tool in the strictest sense but you can use it keyword research nonetheless. In fact it shows the most popular queries so it’s a good starting point in your SEO campaign. Take the Zeitgeist popular keywords and then test some keyphrases containing them with the other tools that will follow in this list. Also checkout the current Zeitgeist aka Hot Trends.
Google Trends
Google Trends lets you compare traffic for popular search terms and websites. This way you can determine whether a topic is rising in popularity or not. Works gret combined with Google Zeitgeist and Google Insight for Search
Google Insights for Search
Insights for Search is like Google Trends on steroids. You can look up most keywords here, even those that aren’t popular at all. Compare up to five keywords and their ensuing traffic.
Google Traffic Estimator
This is a classic tool. It says “Adwords” but you can use it to find out the probably number visitors a keyword can bring to your site.
Google Keyword Tool
The Keyword Tool is like the Traffic Estimator but from a differnet angle. Some people prefer this others prefer that. You’ll want to check both to make sure you’re on the right track with your keywords.
Google Search Based Keyword Tool
This very neat tool allowas you to find out related keywords to a site or existing keyword or rather both. It’s connected to Google Insights for Search is a very useful way.
Google Ad Planner
Google Ad Planner is like Alexa and SpyFu in one. Use it to screen popular sites or your competitors for keyword intelligence or both.

While using theses tools remember to take the numbers with a grain of salt, they are never completely accurate but in many cases thy are the best numbers we can get. As you can see Google facilitates both keyword research and on page SEO. We get even some assistance with link building by Webmaster Tools.

So does Google hate SEO? Maybe some engineers are rooted in the past or prefer prejudice over judgment but based on the tools Google works together with webmasters and SEOs the best it can. Don’t ignore the tools Google offers. You lose money right now when you do.

On a side note: Guess what the Google Search Based Keyword Tool suggest me when I add my site onreact.com and SEO? The first result is: Google SEO tools. This is just coincidence, I didn’t check the tool to get inspired to this article but the other way around. So in a way Google knows what I will think next.

Active vs Passive SEO

Tad Chef — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:22:05 +0000

CC Image Couch Potato by Shawn Allen

As a SEO turned business blogger I noticed that the main difference between old school SEO and new school SEO is the level and focus of activity/time spent working on your site or blog. I say site or blog as formerly you had only a site and now you most often have a blog (on top of a site). The time spent on different activities like

on page SEO
content creation
link acquisition

changed considerably.

While old school SEO was something like 25% on page SEO, 25% content creation and 50% link acquisition new school SEO using blogs is more about content creation. The time spend these days is probably 5% on page SEO, 90% content creation and 5% link acquisition. The longer you have a blog the more SEO equals content creation after initial on site optimization using some plugins or making minor tweaks.

While I’m quite fond of blogging and clearly prefer getting links for “killer blog posts” than begging people to link to you with link exchange requests it occurred to me that the time spent on creating high qualitative blog content is overblown compared with the results.

Let me give you an example to illustrate my point. On my SEO 2.0 blog I have 314 published blog posts but only a handful of them work in the long run getting steady traffic from Google. Still many posts got substantial attention from social media sites etc. but in the end the best performing posts after two years are only 5 – 10% of them.

It’s difficult to know which posts will perform over time. Keyword research and a good dose of opportunism allow you to predict it to some extent but it’s still more of a lottery.

In order to achieve the best possible results with the least time spent, you have to merge old school with new school SEO techniques.

The ideal is passive SEO where you create a great resource once and then it gets traffic and sales for a long time with little effort.

Active SEO forces you to create more content or build more links incessantly. Passive SEO ideally works almost on autopilot once correctly executed. While considering setting up a blog or rather choosing traditional SEO strategies focusing on the active vs passive decision is more effective than thinking in old school vs new school categories.

Think about results not personal preferences or trying to act just like everybody else. For each business and niche the question whether you need a constantly updated blog or a site with evergreen resources requires an individual answer.

The SEO industry is rapidly changing and highly competitive so you either have to keep posting or acquire more links to stay afloat. In many other niches you won’t have many new developments. Take alternative medicine for instance: Acupuncture has been there for thousands of years. So a resource dealing with it will remain valid for years or decades to come.

So for a site about acupuncture you would be able to create a few in depth resources and just add new studies over time.

Of course a blog is part of a different approach to SEO. It’s not only about traffic and sales. It’s done to get a reputation and become part of the blogosphere in a particular niche. It’s an interface to interact with the public. You get in touch via a blog without having to buy or sell products or services but in many cases you will later on.

A blog is very time consuming compared to a conventional website. It’s not only the content creation. It’s also the constant updates of WordPress and the comment moderation. Also the social media activity connected to a blog is not be underestimated. You have to announce blog posts to your community in a meaningful way or better several:

RSS
Email
Twitter
StumbleUpon
Sphinn (or your niche community/forum)

Sometimes you even have to ask for votes to get initial traction. Traditional SEO often works for a while with no extra effort. Google of course notices that your site hasn’t changed but as long as from time you get new links you won’t lose your valuable positions.

In recent years bounce rates, conversions and ROI have become much more important for SEO practicioners all over the world. Blogs have higher bounce rates, do not convert well and the ROI is fuzzy. Of course there is ROI as I explained a few times but it’s not as direct as with ecommerce sites for instance.

So how do yo reconcile both the art of modern SEO, including blogging, bounce rates, conversions and ROI with the notion of passive SEO? How do you manage not to spend half of the week hunting for new blog content?

You have to determine your gold mines and mine them. You have to obsess with details and getting the most of the main resources you offer.

Check your search analytics for questions that get asked over and over. You also can find them on forums or Q&A sites. People tend to ask the same question over and over. Answer the question with a resource that offers both free answers but as well leads to a solution sold by your company. In every niche there are several gold mines.

So the basic passive SEO steps are as follows:

Identify your gold mines using keyword research, search analytics and social media
Create a stable and comprehensive resource to deal with the questions that get asked repeatedly, be it a FAQ, glossary, tutorial or resource list
Get some authority deep links for that resource and make sure they stay for a while
Employ A/B split testing and other landing page optimization techniques to refine your page
Fix broken links and update your resource from time to time adding additional material

So let’s say you spend 4h for keyword research etc., a day for the resource another day for the links then some time for the testing and optimization. Then sit back and relax. Come back in 3 months to fix the links and add some new pieces of information.

The mistake I commit and most other bloggers as well is not returning to old postings that work but frantically trying to find new stuff to write about. Google often ranks blogs on top that haven’t been updated in a year. So it’s not necessary to blog all the time for SEO reasons. It is though to keep in touch with your peers and the industry. Evaluate whether you need to blog frequently as in active SEO or you can get away with passive SEO for a while. I definitely recommend the passive SEO way especially if it also yields stable revenues.

41 Ultimate Tips from SMX London 2009

Kevin Gibbons — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:46:26 +0000

Update: We now have a 15% discount code for the SMX London 2010 event.

For those who couldn’t make it to SMX London I’ve written up my notes from the last 2 days spent at the event.

Flickr Image credit: burningmax

I didn’t quite make it to up to my 77 SES London takeaway tips, but overall I felt this was a very useful conference and the audience certainly seemed to appreciate the more advanced approach to the sessions this year.

Anyway here’s the tips I took away, I’ve tried to credit the presenters for these ideas but let me know if there’s any I’ve missed:

Search Needs & Trends

Search can be used as a very effective market research tool, you can use keyword research to identify what people are looking in the language of your consumers.
Search marketing only has a 1.5% mindshare of the average Fortune 500 CMO. Brian Featherstonhaugh recommended to increase the importance of search by considering the way this can interact with TV advertising, direct mail/email, print, telemarketing, face-to-face retail, sponsorships and recruitment.
69% of agencies are predicting an increase in social media marketing this year. According to Econsultancy/Guava’s UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report.
Online PR optimisation is growing, this is important to integrate offline and online marketing.
Top social media sites used for marketing in 2009: Facebook 65%, Twitter 49% (up from 3% in 2008!), YouTube 39%, LinkedIn 38%, Delcious 31%, Digg 31% and Wikipedia 24%.
58% believe SEO is the most cost-effective form of marketing during the recession.
Bas van den Beld told us that there are 400 million internet users in Europe and of these 93.89% use Google, 2.14% for Yahoo!

Social Media / Linkbait

Dean Chew spoke about how Twitter Search is to become a search engine by indexing links from tweets.
Lyndon Antcliff recommended tactics for smash a brick into the face link building, by understanding people/bloggers and the reasons why they may choose to link to you.
Choose topical linkbait issues, such as swine flu related articles for promoting credit cards or hotels.
Discussion sparking content can be very powerful towards creating a buzz and different opinions around the web.
In the Blow Your Mind Link Building session Patrick Alfoft recommended that you shouldn’t add a Tweet This button to linkbait. This to help ensure that bloggers link to you instead of tweeting/retweeting a link instead.
Massimo Burgio suggested you follow the four P’s of social media marketing; Passion, Patience, Perseverance and Proactivity. Also following the four don’ts; Presume, Panic, Push and Procastinate.
Ciaran Norris showed that only one of the top eighteen videos on YouTube is actually user generated content!

Reputation Management

Mikkel deMib Svendsen suggests that it may be easier to offer to buy offending websites so that you can remove any negative content. Everyone has a price!
Reputation management can also be a very effective method of finding honest market research. Mel Carson gave an example about how social media has been very effective to help provide feedback for Microsoft products so that any issues can be reacted to quickly.
If your brand has negative listings, in addition to try to outrank these with positive articles or neutral social media profiles, try using PPC to quickly make your side of the case visible. That’s if you have a case!
It can be difficult to remove negative content from authority domains which are ranking for your brand. So instead why not try and find a positive story on the same domain. By building a few links containing targeted anchor text it may not be too difficult to switch the negative story with the positive one.
Rob Ousbey suggested that you explain your side of the story to the author of negative content (or back-up your side of the story in comments) often they will edit or remove the post if you ask. Always an easy option before trying to outrank them, plus if people want to find a negative story they may search deep enough to find it anyway if it’s still active.

SEO / Link Building

When reviewing competitors, Rand Fishkin suggested reviewing on-site SEO factors such as; where keywords appear in title tags, URL’s, H1′s, body text etc. Also looking for weak sites which are ranking highly because of a high number of keyword-rich anchor text links.
Use Wordle to quickly review the main keywords a webpage is optimised for.
Target misspellings using SEO, perhaps using a glossary to target these keywords so that they do not look unprofessional when used in web copy.
It was suggested that buying lower value, keyword rich anchor text links may have a positive impact to authority domains which already have a large number of quality inbound links. This is a strategy which would be very risky for weaker websites with average link popularity.
Patrick Altoft showed how you can build a directory containing an individual profile page for each business within an industry. The aim is to rank for company names and later request that they link back or add a badge to the directory which can prove to be very powerful in terms of generating high-quality inbound links.
Rand Fishkin recommended that you use your analytics package to identify any 404 error pages so that these can be 301 redirected.
Rand also pointed out how you can perform a query such as “keyword site:domain.com” in order to find the most important pages for a keyphrase on your own website. From here you can add internal links from the top related pages to the URL you are trying to rank for this term.

Paid Search

Kerstin Baker-Ash showed a study of increased clickthrough rates for brand queries when the TM or Official were used in the headline. This reassures users that this is the brand they are searching for.
Use the extra space in display URL’s to contain targeted keywords, this helps to describe the landing page more clearly so that users know they’re likely to hit a specific landing page targeted to their query.
The Google content network has improved greatly during the last 12 months, take advantage of being able to have more control over the sites targeted.
You should establish all conversion goal metrics, for example there may be many different types such as; buy now, apply now, add to cart, enquire online etc…
If you’re looking for inspiration in finding new PPC titles and descriptions, Guy Levine suggests visiting the local bookstore and looking at how the magazine headlines are crafted to make you want to pick it up and read. Try applying the same methods to your PPC ads.
Find potential opportunities by comparing traffic from a city or county and comparing this with the actual population. If this is not in proportion perhaps you need to increase your bids in London, for example, to maximise the traffic in this location. This was recommended by Brian Clifton.

Keyword Research

Look at your internal site search data to identify top keywords on your site or new content you can create which your users are already looking for.
Build content around popular and topical stories by reviewing search volumes in Google Trends.
Look to target transactional keywords as the main goal, but also be aware of high search volume and important industry terms which are likely to be important to a client.
Use Twitter tools such as Yahoo! Sideline, Tweetbeep, Twhirl and Tweetdeck to find popular keywords and trends. Suggested by Christine Churchill.

Web Analytics

Will Critchlow gave a very useful presentation looking at how to use Google Analytics to filter IP addresses, find the referral page of search results, identify real PPC keyphrases, separating Google.co.uk and Google.com referring domain, find universal search clickthroughs and many more. Plus he saved his wife from a night with Rand by winning the vote-off!
Analytics should be used to find the customer journey, highlight the when and where reasons why users bounce and using this to identify why this has happened and how it can be improved.
Analytics and tracking should be for all traffic sources. Often just paid search traffic is analysed when direct and organic traffic as likely to be just as valuable sources.
Calculate the potential analysis of traffic using the formula: (1- Keyword Volume/Search Engine Referrals) (Pages Viewed) (Time) (1-Bounce Rate).
Look at the following 5 analytics performance metrics:
- Keyword performance – breakdown where traffic from by applying the 80/20 rule to find which keywords are sending the bulk of traffic.
- Brand engagement – find the percentage of brand queries by performing a partial matching filter search to exclude brand terms in keyword reporting.
- Percentage of pages yielding search traffic – Look at keyword referrals per page and optimise landing pages specifically.
- Bounce rates – Red = 50%+ bounce rates should be improved. Amber = 20-50% – lower priority to be improved. Green = >20% this is good.
- $Index - find the value of pages which contribute to a conversion, looking to increase views for high value pages and reduce importance towards lower value pages.

As for the SEO give it up panel, us bloggers have 30 days to keep quiet and take advantage of some great tips before all is revealed! :D

So what did you learn at SMX London? Please feel free to add your top tips to the comments.

The Golden Rules of Keyword Research

Kevin Gibbons — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:33:03 +0000

We recently published a post on the golden rules of paid search, leading to extensive debate here at SEOptimise Towers on how some companies get it wrong.

Image credit: edmittance

There are online marketing forums out there filled with baffled businessmen and women who are unable to explain why their PPC spending has not resulted in the promised returns.

Because they do not really understand how to choose keywords, their results were not what they could have been if they had researched them more thoroughly or used an agency.

So, here are our recommended top tips for choosing the best keywords for your paid search campaign. As always, please feel free to add to the list.

Be relevant
Make sure the keywords you bid on are relevant to your product and not hugely general. If your company sells ergonomic keyboards, then buying advertising on the keyword “computer” is not going to do you much good.

In fact, it will be costly and any traffic it does push to your page will most likely quickly leave.

Be specific
It may be worth bidding on some relevant and competitive keywords but you should also spend some of your budget on highly specific terms.

These are likely to be cheaper and, while fewer people will be searching for them, those that do are more likely to be interested in your offering and result in a sale.

For example, if you sell ethical jewellery then bidding on the competitive term “engagement ring” will drive relevant traffic to your site.

However, while those visitors may buy a ring, they have not expressed an interest in your specific offering. Searchers looking for “ethical engagement ring” have already expressed a particular interest in your product angle. The same would apply for users searching for tailor made holidays, as opposed to the far more general term “holidays”.

Be local
It can be a great idea to bid on localised searches – often people like to look for a nearby service provider, meaning that could be one more edge you possess over your competitors.

So while it may still make commercial sense to bid on the all-encompassing competitive term – for example, SEO – it is likely to be a good idea to also bid on a more localised alternative – for example, Oxford Search Engine Optimisation.

Be smart
The great thing about the web is that it is measurable. There is no need for guess work because many analytical tools exist to show you which keyword terms are the most successful.

Such programs will also reveal the bounce rate of a given keyword, allowing marketers to make timely decisions and to quickly move their budget to maximise potential returns.

For example, if you sell fancy dress outfits and bid on “Peter Pan”, then that could drive thousands of visitors to your pages.

However, if your analytics tools show 87% of those visitors leave straight away, then you can clearly see that this is not an appropriate term. Try adjusting it, maybe “Peter Pan costume” would result in fewer hits but more conversions.

Be sneaky
What terms are your competitors bidding on? Positioning yourself above your peers is an important goal, both for raising your returns and simply gaining a strong and authoritative market presence.

It can be tricky to assess competitors’ search marketing efforts but it is not wasted time. As well as flagging up keywords it may be profitable to bid on, their pay-per-click advertising may also give you an insight into the focus of their organic efforts.

That can help you reassess the focus of your own, to ensure you remain in the strongest possible position.

Be flexible
The importance of each individual rule depends on your product. It is essential you keep track of your campaign’s returns and be prepared to change tack at short notice to keep ahead of the curve.

Keyword Research: 7 Keyword Modifiers to Optimise New Websites For

Tad Chef — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:46:25 +0000

This post is about keyword research, it deals with so called keyword modifiers. Let me tell you a story to explain those and why you need them:

When potential SEO clients approach me my first question always is “how old is your domain?”. Then the second question is “how long has it been indexed?” Most people don’t know how important that is and I prepare them for my answer to their first and second question:

How much does SEO of my site cost and how long does it take to see success?

My answer always is: It depends! Whenever I tell them the truth (it might take a year or longer) they never call me again. Well it’s just the dark part of the truth. Once you know you have a new site and all SEO experts know that Google does not like new domains, we can adapt our keyword research and thus aim for goals that can be reached within a shorter time frame.

The solution to overcome the problem of the so called Google sandbox (Google not allowing new sites to rank for competitive terms) is focusing on modifiers. While a new site will rarely be able to compete in a crowded niche it can immediately fight for keyword phrases and keyword combinations that are neither the most competitive terms nor long tail (very specific or unusual) phrases.

Keyword modifiers to optimise new websites for can be (as I refer to keywords I will write everything in lowercase like search users do):

A city or region

seo oxford
oxford seo
seo company uk

Even with Google Local/Maps getting more popular people will still look for local businesses like in the traditional Google results.

A verb that signifies the searcher’s demand

buy iphone

It’s incredible how many people really add verbs like “buy” instead of the noun “shop”. Also “rent” is popular.

A noun that signifies the searcher’s demand

iphone price (wants to compare prices)
iphone shop (wants to buy iPhone)

An adjective that specifies the demand

cheap iphone
iphone cheap
iphone unlocked
affordable seo
local seo

A noun that specifies the demand

small business seo
blog seo

A term that specifies the target audience

small business seo
business blogging

This can apply also to students, women, seniors or whatever demographic group you want to reach.

Brand or product plus alternative

iphone alternative
iphone competitor
iphone rival
better than iphone
like iphone

I see a lot of searches like that where people know only one brand but don’t want to stick with it.

Entering the market late means you’re a “mom and pop shop” opening in the vicinity of a huge WalMart or Tesco store so you can’t compete by offering exactly what the huge chain offers. You got specialise and be different.

Choose several of these modifiers, the most apt ones for your business and start optimising for them right away. Using modifiers brings SEO results much quicker. Later on you still can rank for the most competitive terms.

Travel SEO – How to Target Searchers at the Right Stage of the Buying Cycle

Kevin Gibbons — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:16:08 +0000

Having been involved in a wide range of travel SEO projects during the last 12 months, I thought it would be a good time to write about the buying cycle of searches when purchasing a holiday online.

Image credit: Australia Photos

Richard recently took a look at the most important aspects of travel PPC and below I have listed how we interpret the typical search behaviour of online travel customers when looking to purchase a holiday online:

Get Holiday Ideas – At the initial stage the travel consumer has a reasonable idea about the type of holiday they are looking to go on, but will still be looking for inspiration. They will go straight to a search engine to find further information about the destinations they can visit to meet this requirement. They will try to identify the holiday via a series of searches such as “summer holiday 2009”, “beach holiday”, narrowing down towards the location with searches such as “beach holiday in Europe” etc.
Destination Research – The type of results users will be looking for at these stage are generally travel guides, they have a budget in mind but the most important goal is to identify the location. Users will continue by performing informational searches such as “Climate in Greece”, “hurricane season in the Caribbean”, “best Mediterranean beach holidays in September”.
Confirm Location – In order to find a suitable destination which meets the user’s needs they will perform queries such as “summer holiday in Italy”, “weekend in South of France”, “self-catering holiday in Tenerife” or “all-inclusive honeymoon to the Maldives”. Once comparing multiple destinations a decision is made to confirm the destination. Next they are likely to research deeper into the more specific locations via various research and long-tail queries such as “beach holidays in the South of France”, “best location in the French Riviera”, “hotels in Nice”, “where to stay in Monaco” etc.
Compare Packages & Transport Options –The next stage is to identify the preferred mode of transport, this will include various comparisons for flights, trains or driving. Users will look for a range of travel related queries such as “cheap flights to Nice” and “Eurostar to Nice” as well as considering holiday packages which include transport. These are still mainly research based queries, but the user now has a clear idea about where, when and how they want to go on holiday.
Select Hotel – Ok, they’ve found a cheap flight to Nice, which is the best travel option so far, now time to find a hotel which matches up with this or perhaps a holiday package which combines both at a cheaper rate. Back off to Google searching for “hotels in Nice” this time. They will scan for the best option to find the most suitable hotel features/location and at the most reasonable price. Again more research, checking out the hotel review websites.
Decision Time – Once they’ve read the reviews and found the perfect holiday, will they add this to a shopping basket and order like you would with any other e-commerce website? No, probably not. Some travel websites you may have to enquire to confirm pricing details and then book over the phone, others you can check for availability and book there and then. But instead they’ll probably think it over one last time, just to make sure.
Revisit Website to Book – Ok, they’ve thought it through, decided it’s time to get away from the UK’s glorious grey summer skies, booked the dates off work and got their creditcard ready, great! So back to find the holiday previously selected. If they’re clever this would be saved as a bookmark, the problem is many people won’t have remembered to have done this and even if they did there’s a good chance it’s a dynamic URL which may no longer work. So instead you perform a brand query “Expedia” or “Expedia holidays to Nice”, for example. Eventually browsing to the correct listings and hopefully finding the price hasn’t shot up considerably!
Purchase – They’ve reassured themselves (several times) this is the holiday package they want to purchase and they proceed to complete the transaction either online or over the phone.
After Sales – The buying cycle will continue following the sale with customer service and support involved, hopefully with the opportunity for repeat business in the future. This means it’s important to ensure you dominate all brand queries, both paid and organic. Making sure that when potential customers are searching for your brand they only find you and the glowing reviews and PR you want them to, without a competitor in sight!

How does this affect your SEO strategy?
By now you should have a clearer understanding of a searchers needs and have a good idea of which stage of the buying cycle they are at for each specific search. But which type of users do you want to capture and at what stage?

Identify your audience and goals…
Firstly you must consider the market and type of users you are looking to attract to the site, Google provides the following travel search marketing tips to consider:

What is the end objective for your business – transactions, branding, lead generation? Your approach may differ based on the decided outcome.
Determine the success metric in advance. What cost per transaction is acceptable? What is your target gross/net ROI?
Have a clearly defined target market or user in mind. Are you primarily interested in attracting leisure or business travelers and/or discount, mid-scale, or luxury travelers?

Research your keywords…
Google’s research showed that catching the user at an early stage of a buying cycle can still result in a sale 40% of the time. This is very interesting and creates a strong argument for capturing users early into their search for a holiday. However the main difference between targeting keywords for paid, as opposed to organic search, is the volume of keywords you can target. PPC allows you to have flexibility over the keywords which generate traffic and is very much about refining keyword selection and continually changing key targets based upon performance and seasonality.

With SEO you’re unlikely to get that luxury and have little margin for error when selecting keywords with high-conversion potential. I would highly recommend using the pay-per-click data you have collected to help identify the top converting keywords. After all if six months after optimising for “When to go on holiday to Cancun” you finally generate enough clickthrough data to realise this has a 0.1% conversion rate, it’s then very difficult to re-adjust and target “luxury holidays in Cancun Mexico” instead.

Test, test and test again…
Despite targeting the early stages of the buying cycle proving to be more successful than expected, I would still recommend targeting more specific queries as this is more likely to generate targeted visits from users who have a clearer idea about what they are looking for. For example, someone searching for a “long-weekend city break in New York” is more likely to complete a sale than a user performing an informational query such as “places to visit in New York”. At this stage the user is also likely to be narrowing down the number of websites they are looking to shortlist for completing a sale, so the competition should be fewer than a more generic search.

However, if you have a strong website which can rank highly for more competitive and popular search queries it may be worth targeting information keyword phrases, a lower conversion rate is likely but this may be outweighed by the increased search volume. You should also consider the search volumes and conversion rates of plural and singular versions of keywords before selecting which to target.

You must also remember all travel websites are different and will not have the same conversion rates, for example, “all-inclusive honeymoons” may be a high-converting keyword for a honeymoon specialist but not so successful for a general website offering the same package. While an average e-commerce transaction will take a few days, it can take 2-3 months in many cases for an online holiday sale to be completed and users will revisit the website by multiple channels and keyword searches, this means you need to test and track user activity over a longer period of time to ensure that you value the importance of a traffic source or keyword leading to a sale.

Now you are ready to begin your SEO campaign…
In summary, to find the best keywords you need to consider both the conversion rates and search volumes in order to estimate the overall value of referred converted sales. Search engine optimisation is a long-term process, so the effort put into evaluating the quality and cost-effectiveness of keywords via paid search is incredibly important to ensure you’re targeting the most valuable traffic sources as a business.

Once the top-keywords have been identified, then it’s time to optimise and push towards achieving the high search rankings. Then you can take a holiday of your own to sit back and relax, whilst enjoying the 56% clickthrough rates which are only possible via the top organic listings!

What to do with your site next Christmas

Patrick Altoft — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:55:07 +0000

With Christmas 2007 coming to an end most webmasters are thinking about how best to promote their sites in 2008. Many people are also doing a bit of forward thinking and writing a strategy for next Christmas.

Check Google Trends to see if any of the hot terms from this year are likely to come up again next year. Use these to predict next years terms. For instance if a new toy comes out that requires web activation make sure you rank highly for the activation url.

Imagine if your affiliate site ranked for the www.zune.net/setup page and had some links to Zune accessories.

Some of these terms are very easy to rank for with a bit of planning. Most navigational queries have only limited competition.

What search terms will be popular over New Year? The Google Trends data doesn’t go back that far but it will be interesting to see the results.

Wordtracker to launch UK keyword tool

Kevin Gibbons — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 06:56:00 +0000

Wordtracker have announced that they will launch a UK only option to their keyword database later this month.

“The new UK service will provide essential keyword research for:

UK websites serving the local market
Businesses wishing to target the UK (the world’s fifth largest economy)

Search engine optimization companies and design agencies with UK clients”

This looks to be an excellent addition to Wordtracker, allowing users to choose from global and UK only searches. Earlier this week I posted about which free keyword research tool to use, writing about how I found Overture’s UK keyword tool to be very useful, now it looks like they’ll be a good keyword tool to compare UK search popularity figures with.

Which free keyword research tool to use?

Kevin Gibbons — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:51:00 +0000

This has been an important week for free keyword research tools, Overture’s tool has been unavailable for the last few days (now back online) while Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery have both released free versions of their own keyword research tools. So now there seems to be much more choice to find the best keywords, but which tool is best to use?

Overture

I’ve been using the Overture keyword tool for over a year and while the responsiveness has sometimes been very slow I have generally been quite pleased with the results. The search count has been lower than I expected as these figures are only based upon Yahoo! queries from the previous month and occasionally some strange long-tail results appear, such as the “beer college college…” result above but overall this gives a good idea about the popularity of keywords. Another advantage I like is how you can search to find the popular keywords in the UK using the Overture UK tool.

Wordtracker

My first impression of using the Wordtracker keyword tool is that I’ve found the search figures to be very low for most terms, this is calculated using Netapplications.com which only account for 0.63% of searches and as a result this gives a rough idea of the popular keyword searches but really needs to be based upon a wider range of searches to provide more accurate results.

KeywordDiscovery

I’ve only briefly used Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery tool but I have been very impressed with the results returned. The accuracy of search figures looks to be much greater than both the Overture and Wordtracker keyword tools, mainly because search data is collected from all major search engines.

Overall I find KeywordDiscovery to provide the most accurate results and search terms but would also suggest comparing results over a couple of keyword tools to make sure your not missing out on some valuable long-tail keywords. Personally I would probably compare the KeywordDiscovery results with the Overture UK list to check that the British have the same search trends.

Google Trends or the AdWords keyword tool could also be useful options, but I’d prefer to use tools which combine keyword suggestions with search stats (although the AdWords does display a search volume indicator) so I normally wouldn’t use these as regularly. What does everyone else think, which keyword tools do you prefer to use?

Wordtracker release free version of keyword tool

Kevin Gibbons — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:29:00 +0000

Aaron Wall has just posted that Wordtracker have launched new free version of their keyword tool.

Mike Mindel from Wordtracker commented about this to confirm that “We’re offering 100 results free, adult filtered with drill down into the long tail.”

This is excellent timing as the Overture keyword tool has been regularly unavailable for the last couple of days, although Yahoo! have confirmed that this has not gone but “the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the sheer volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.”

Here is the Wordtracker keyword tool, this looks to be an excellent way to quickly find the popularity of search terms, based upon Dogpile.com and Metacrawler.com figures, and I especially like the way you can easily drilldown to the long tail results, as Mike said.