Friday, September 3, 2010

This Keyword Research Tip Could Add 5,000 Visitors a Day to Your Site!

I used to be a keyword research freak.

Seriously! If you found me at one of the big conferences in the early 2000s you would have likely heard me discussing the importance of keyword research. “Keyword research is the most important aspect of SEO,” I would say. “Target the wrong keywords and it won’t matter if you are #1 on Google or not.”

Yeah, I took it seriously.

I still do, and that’s why I’m sharing this experience from the WebmasterWorld forums. WMW member vivalasvegas follows-up on a report he submitted previously about the sudden loss of almost 5,000 visitors a day for one keyword combination.

My conclusion after doing some more research: the apparently popular 3 word phrase was made popular by the Search suggestions feature. It seems that people were typing in the first 2 words (or even just one word and a half) and the first suggestion was my phrase. Combined with the fact that the first 2 words make a very popular phrase with several million searches reported per month – the result was some nice traffic spilled in my direction. Needless to say – the 3 word phrase is no longer a favorite suggestion.

Bottom line. Google stopped using the keyword combination in Google Suggest and vivalasvegas lost 5k visitors a day. Ouch!

My point?

When you do your keyword research, you absoluteley need to ensure you are checking Google Suggest as part of that research. Start typing in the keywords that Google “suggests” and see what other phrases Google will likely be presented to your target audience.

For example, if you are targeting SEO related queries, try this:

Some queries will throw up local intent suggestions, but you’ll get a good feel for the keywords you should be adding to your mix. For bonus points clicks, don’t stop with Google Suggest. Take a look at the bottom of the results page and see what Google says are related searches:

Hey, you never know when these suggestions might result in an extra 5,000 visitors a day for your web site!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

blekko Explains Itself: Exclusive Video (Update: Exclusive Invite)

blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.

Blekko is a new search engine that fundamentally changes a few key assumptions about how search works. It's not for lazywebbers - you have to pretty much be a motivated search geek to really leverage blekko's power. But then again, there are literally hundreds of thousands of such folks - the entire SEO/SEM industry, for example. I've been watching blekko, and the team behind it, since before launch. They are search veterans, not to be trifled with, and they are exposing data that Google would never dream of doing (yes, they do pretty much a full crawl of the web that matters). In a way, blekko has opened up the kimono of search data, and I expect the service, once it leaves private beta, will become a favorite of power searchers (and developers) everywhere.

The cool thing is, using blekko's data and (I hope) robust APIs, one can imagine all sorts of new services popping up. I for one wish blekko well. It's about time.

And in case you are wondering what the big deal is, besides all the data you can mine, to my mind, it's the ability to cull the web - to "slash" the stuff you don't care about out of your search results. Now, not many of us actually will do that. But will services take that and run? I certainly hope so.

For a quick overview of blekko's core feature - "slashtags" - check out the new video, above. And to bone up on the various merits of the service, here are a few key links:

Blekko: A Search Engine Which Is Also A Killer SEO Tool (SEL)

TechCrunch Review: The Blekko Search Engine Prepares To Launch (TC)

A new search engine Blekko search: first impressions (Economist)

Blekko's Tools Give Search Marketers Google Alternative (MediaPost)

Update: First 500 readers get a beta invite! Email battelle@blekko.com to get in on it!

Monday, August 30, 2010

Tomorrow We Triple the Price on Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers Grab a Copy Today for just $9.97

copywriting scorecard bloggers Almost two weeks ago we launched the brand new ProBlogger eBook – the Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers.

Written by SEO specialist copywriter Glenn Murray it’s an eBook designed to help bloggers get their posts optimized for readers and search engines so that their posts reach their potential (you can read all about it here in more detail).

The feedback from those who have bought it has been incredibly positive with lots of great reviews hitting the web.

We are about to Triple the Price!

We launched this new eBook at the special introductory price of $9.97 and intended to put the price up to $14.97 this week. However – as often happens with launches like this – we’ve changed that plan.

The price is still going up on at midnight on 1 September (EST US time) but it is actually going up to $29.97 USD!

Yes – we’re tripling the price and we’re doing it for two reasons:

we were told time and time again by those who have bought the eBook that $9.97 was a steal and that $14.97 was too cheap too.
we decided to update the eBook significantly. One of the pieces of feedback that we got about version 1 was that it would be more useful with a working example that illustrated how to use the Scorecard. As a result – Glenn has spent time over the last 2 weeks adding a lot of new content to the eBook.

What’s in the Update?

The update is pretty significant – it adds a lot to the original version (it’s now over 100 pages) including:

NEW — A 33-page worked example, where we score one of my own posts and discuss our reasoning.
NEW — Electronic scorecard that automatically totals your score. You just select Yes or No.
NEW — Single page printable scorecard, containing all the the recommendations, but scaled to print on a single page.
NEW — Recommendation on using sentence case or title case for headings.
NEW — Expanded discussion of SEO copy.
NEW — Improved navigation, with bookmarks displaying to the left of the PDF, so no need to scroll back and forth between Recommendations and Scorecard.

Who gets the update?

In short – everyone will get the new version.

As of 1 September at midnight – anyone buying the eBook at $29.97 will get version 2 of it automatically. We’ll also be sending it to anyone who bought version 1 before that time.

So if you’ve already bought it – you’ll get an email sent to you (your paypal email address) with download details of version 2.

If you’ve not yet bought it – but want to get it before the price rises – you can buy version 1 today and you’ll also get an email with download details of version 2 when it is released.

Again – everyone will get the new version – it’s just a matter of how much you pay for it. If you buy before midnight on 1 September you’ll secure it for $9.97 – if you wait until after that time, you’ll pay $29.97. The choice is yours.

More Updates and Bonuses?

Will there be more updates? At this point Glenn and I are pretty happy with how the eBook looks and works and are not planning too many more updates to it. However we are putting together some extra bonuses and resources for those who buy it.

We’re hesitant to announce them right now as they’re partly based upon reader feedback but we already offer those who buy the Scorecard a newsletter which we’ll be using to send send some extra content/tips out with. We’re also looking at running a Q&A podcast session for those who’ve bought the eBook.

So yes – there will be a few bonuses for those who have bought the Copyrighting Scorecard for Bloggers.

Grab Your Copy Today

So if you’ve been umming and aaahing about whether to grab the Scorecard – it’s time to make a decision and lock it in at the intro price.

We’ll not be returning to the price of $9.97 again as it is only becoming more valuable as we add content to it.

Grab your copy today.

A Few Facts About SEO

The other day someone I know approached me about taking a look at a business website because they’d spent a fair amount of money with a search engine optimization company toward getting the kind of traffic they thought they deserved. The mission failed miserably.

I’ve been working with SEO as a content writer for several years now but I’m no expert. If I was though, one of the first things I would do when writing a top ten list about the things you need to know about it is let everyone know there are no experts.

Of course there are people who know more about search engine optimization than others, but if they start telling you things like you can get a number one page ranking in Google in a very short amount of time, you should take your money and run for the hills.

Still, there are a few things I have learned about how SEO works and because I haven’t made any of them up but learned them from other people, I can leave you with some of them and feel fairly confident they work fine regardless of all the shifting parameters Google continually throws our way.

You need good content. Don’t even bother trying to stuff keywords in the landing page content either. Like a friend of mine said once, you might even get away with keyword stuffing for a little while and drive traffic to your site, but you look pretty silly when visitors arrive to the kind of broken English that too many keywords creates. You’ll just wind up with traffic arriving and then clicking away in record numbers.
You need a good landing page. I’ve seen people with floating content on their landing page and all kinds of graphics and buttons and tabs and in the end it all looks really psychedelic ( for those of your old enough to remember that phrase) but it doesn’t give the Google bots anything to grab onto. There’s still nothing that can replace good optimized content . Someone I work with is even experimenting with video as the main source of information on the landing page, but they still get me to write a blog at the bottom so Google has something to hang its hat on.
You don’t need to use every keyword you can find. That’s why it’s called keyword research. Too many keywords doesn’t have focus. Others may disagree but I think you need to focus on a few keywords best suited to your market. Even if there’s competition, just dig in and fight it out.

Remember you need to beware of anybody who tells you they can get you a page one ranking in just a few short months. And there’s just one more thing too. If you don’t get the kind of traffic you’re expecting after three or four months, adjust the methods and keywords you’re using but don’t stop advertising with search engine optimization techniques. The minute you abandon ship, it sinks and you lose whatever ranking you’ve gained.

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