3 Tips To Easily Get a First Page Google Ranking

Back in the day, performing programming tasks and SEO work to rank at top of the first page of Google – well, it was easy. In fact, just making sure you had the right keyword density (number of keywords repeated on a page) was enough to show up fairly quickly. And, if not – just adding some incoming links from article directories would do the trick.

In 2011, with the social inter-webs, time have certainly changed. While the core concepts of SEO (content+links) are still true, you’ll have a hard time getting listed on the first page of Google without using different strategies.

What can you do?

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SEO Copy-Writing Tips in 5 Easy Steps

You’ve been convinced!

Writing is not just important for selling your product and enticing the customer – though those are both still very important attributes of copywriting, don’t get us wrong – but you also need to write with Google as your audience as well.

You’ve read about how important this is, and you now are a dutiful convert of the no-keyword-no-customer school of copy. Great!

Now all that’s left is… figuring out exactly how to write what Google wants to see.

Never fear. We are here to support you in your smart copy endeavors. We have collected our top five tips for SEO copywriting right here that you can use immediately. Ready to foray into the dangerous Google wars to fight with your words and your wits for that coveted top spot on the search engine charts? Let’s roll…

1. Good writing

We won’t keep you in suspense as to what the most important SEO writing tip is. Drum roll, please: the content you produce has to be good. Make sure that it’s 100% free of grammar and spelling mistakes, and is both interesting and informative. Users are more likely to link to a site that is useful, and this ups your SEO through link building. Google itself is more likely to recognize your site as high quality if you have high-quality content – Google uses many indicators, but also through something called “latent semantic indexing.” Not only do you need to use keywords, but use synonyms and related words. Make your writing rich, authoritative, and interesting. This will have a lasting effect. Consider “flagship posts”, or “evergreen posts” – you’ll have happier readers too.

Remember: Content is king! Keep publishing content in various mediums, and translate/transcribe as necessary.

2. Keyword use and placement

Be aware of the targeted keywords in your copy and use them wisely. Keywords should always go in the title and in the first few sentences of your content or your articles, and then they should be strategically used throughout and at the end of the piece too – although you should think “natural”, not “scientific”.

However – and this ties into the number one rule of SEO writing – do not stuff your content with keywords to the point where the copy is either unreadable or ridiculous. Google doesn’t like it, and your readers won’t either. Keyword density – or the amount of targeted keywords appear in a piece per text page – is a useful tool, but like most tools it has the propensity to be overused. Keep your keywords in mind, but don’t let them run amuck through your copy.

3. Command the tags

If you don’t know anything about HTML, now is the time to learn. The H1 tag for example – specifically marks out certain parts of your text as a heading. Google will look at these tags, but you should test for results. If you take the advice of step 2 – have your keywords sprinkled both in your titles and through your text. Your rewards in the eyes of Google will be great.

4. Boldly use italics to underline the point

If you use any of these effects on words, search engines assume that they are keywords and zoom in. The flip side is that if you use them on words that are not keywords, the effect lessens. So use them wisely! UPDATE NOTE: This is more for the users than search engines, but we still left it here. Don’t bold for search engines, do it for the users.

5. Number it

People love numbered lists. People love to link to numbered lists. More links means better SEO results. They provide easy-to-digest information, such as this list on SEO tips.

If you take these five tips in mind, your SEO writing will improve vastly, upping both your rating in search engines and the traffic that you ultimately get for your site. We hope that this article was helpful for you in your quest to learn how to make your copy be the best it can be in regards to SEO writing.

What other techniques have you used that works for you?

Related articles

• Three Major Lessons from an SEO Amateur (dailyseotip.com)
• 7 Steps to Writing Good SEO Copy that Humans Will Read (seo.com)
• The Misleading Nature Of Latent Semantic Indexing In Website Content (smallbusinessmavericks.com)

The Secret Formula: Crossing Over From Social Media to Social Marketing

Many organizations have embraced online marketing and e-commerce, thanks to the advancement in technology. To make things even better, they are now going all out in using social media as one of their tools to sell and market their brands.

Many consumers also use the social media as a sharing tool.

They can share the items they have purchased with their friends and there are several companies out there to help customers do this. The companies make this a free service – one will just need to sign up and one can adjust their privacy settings to ensure that the price of the items they are buying is not disclosed. So all the buyers need to do, is to share what they are buying with their friends and where they will make the purchase.

Using social media is not rocket science.

In fact it is user friendly. Sadly there are some businesses out there that are struggling to adopt this great marketing tool. This is simply because they try to link the relevance between the social customer relationship management and social media.

There are three stages that should be focused on when organizations decide to make the move to social commerce. They are the recruit stage, the engage stage and finally the convert stage. These have been seen to be the shortest path in achieving true social commerce.

Stage 1: Recruit

The first step that such organizations must take is to try and understand how these social channels will work for them in terms of marketing and selling their brands and products, making them first among their equals in the market. The recruit stage deals with of the authored content and giving rewards and some incentives to their customers.

Stage 2: Engage

The engage stage on the other hand uses rich media, participatory contests and email sign ups. This social marketing stage can help all those in social media explore the benefits they may accrue due to moving on to social commerce.

Stage 3: Convert

The convert stage has several points under it such as the end to end reports, customer relationship management and e-commerce integration, making public offers.

Social commerce focuses on a general path that includes a sort of outreach followed by sharing of information, starting up conversations, allowing people to share their experiences making offers and finally the good old fashion word of mouth sales. Following this path can help the businesses use the modern communication methods to their commercial benefit.

What challenges have you found?

Related articles

• Are companies listening to their social media accounts? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Ideas To Make Social Media Part Of Your Marketing Mix (webguild.org)
• How to Measure Social Media’s Impact on Customer Retention (socialmediaexaminer.com)

5 Tips For Higher Search Engine Placement

Links drive the web. For users and search engines, it’s like the central nervous system. Learn how to build links for business using your personal hi-touch.

5 Ways To Create a Successful PPC Business (B2B) Advertising Campaign

Presently over 50% of all B2B (business-to-business) leads are generated through the Internet. To stay competitive in today’s market a business needs to be present on the search engines. PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is not only a very effective marketing tool, but is also an excellent way for businesses to establish a website’s Internet presence.

A PPC (pay-per-click) campaign designed for B2B (business-to-business) is much different from a campaign designed for B2C (business-to-consumer).

Instead of relying on the high volume of traffic that a B2C campaign generates, a B2B campaign is designed to lower costs by filtering out irrelevant clicks that don’t convert into sales. The strategy for a successful B2B pay-per-click-campaign consists of driving quality leads to optimized landing pages which ultimately results in higher conversion rates. These assets will be used for PPC and SEO both.

The benefits of focusing on high value leads rather than the volume of CTR (click through rate) are that the cost per click is minimized while the sales generated by quality leads are maximized. Understanding some key components of what drives pay-per-click advertising is vital for a successful campaign.

Here are the 5 tips for a Successful B2B PPC Advertising Program:

1. Target Qualified Traffic – Knowing what a desired target audience searches for in terms of keywords is the most crucial element in driving quality traffic to a website. It is best to use highly targeted keywords while avoiding one-word keywords and opting for long-tailed keywords instead. Data from competetitive research, and continually testing keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to a product or service with insight tools, analytics and experimentation is just as important as bidding on the right ones. This will help determine which keywords are most effective in generating sales and which ones are underperforming and in need of replacement. Find more keywords using the Google Keyword Tool (search “keywords” in Google).
2. Provide Effective Industry Specific Ad Copy – Although B2B ad copy is targeted towards a more sophisticated audience and should be tailored to include industry specific jargon, it still needs to be visually appealing when you use graphic displays (like the Google content network). By using clever copy with a clear call to action that is also formatted to stand out among the crowd, the ad will actively sell a product or service. Using bullet points, numbers, and small blocks of text with plenty of white space will also make an ad easier to read and more likely to generate a sale.
3. Insert Keywords and page data – By using HTML Title + Meta tag descriptions inserted with keywords and sprinkled naturally into the body copy, the site will attract more relevant traffic. This is a “websites-only” opportunity to make a good first impression. There is no point in getting the traffic if no one wants to click through it.
4. Apply Negative Keywords – In many cases providing a comprehensive list of negative keywords is just as important as using applied keywords. Using negative keywords allows the search engines to weed out unnecessary clicks that would otherwise cost money for no conversion. In essence, using negative keywords helps direct the right kind of traffic to a website and is an easy way to improve the ROI for a search budget. For example, a keyword like “Cruise” may mean a “boat cruise” to you, but searches for “Tom Cruise” will also show up, and you waste impressions and clicks. A combination of keyword match types (broad, phrase, exact) and negatives are important.
5. Continually Measure Results – It is most important to know what happens after the click. If a pay-per-click advertising campaign is resulting in a high bounce rate or a low conversion rate there may be a problem with the ad copy, landing page – or it may be a problem with the quality of traffic visiting a website. By continually testing different strategies for bidding on keywords and monitoring the number of relevant lead generations and page versions, a site can determine what is working to achieve higher conversion rates.

If done right, pay-per-click advertising costs are well worth the money spent. Not only does pay-per-click advertising help to establish a website’s Internet presence, but it is also a highly effective way for businesses to communicate with one another. B2B PPC helps businesses improve their website’s traffic and visibility on the Internet and continues to be one of the most popular marketing tools being utilized today. Your business can be up and running on the first page of Google, Yahoo or Bing in minutes!

Learn more about Pay Per Click Management for Business here.

How to Measure Social Media Marketing Success Easily

Tracking social media is a two-fold approach.

(contextvoice.com)

Know this: social media is a ‘media’ (press) darling. Consider how many posts and references show up for social media every hour, everyday. SEO, or search engine optimization, on the other hand – has been around a lot longer, but doesn’t get as much credit or love these days. Perhaps our friendly journalists think they are the same? Hope not. The professionals who understand the difference between user intent, tactics and overall strategies for the two forms of online marketing (drawing the line here), are clear that they both can have solid impact – for really any business. SEO tends to be easier to track for many (keywords to conversion as an example), social media – not. But, if you cannot answer the “what and the why”, you’re not doing great in either, or you are just getting started.

It’s hard to track real ROI with social media marketing. (Really?)

For most businesses the best sales and marketing campaigns involve forming strong relationships with customers/clientele. It’s because of these relationships that companies can flourish and grow as they build trust and loyalty with their patrons. As a result, it’s no doubt social media marketing found its way into the business arena. Effective networking is a key factor to implement in order to grow a business; and social media provides that opportunity. Yet how does a business know if its social media marketing campaign is effective? How can the level of success be measured? The answer is two-fold.

The first.

This is arguably the most important task to accomplish when deciding how to use social media marketing for your business. Determine your objective(s).

What is it you want to accomplish with your social media marketing efforts? And, do you know what is going on right now in your marketplace (conversation)?

Whether your business is a PR firm, recruiting firm, nonprofit organization or a simple ice-cream parlor in a small town, there is something you want/need to accomplish with social media marketing. It could be as tangible as increased sales and profits or less tangible like getting responses from customers about how to make improvements or getting success stories and testimonials to increase your credibility profile. Maybe your purpose is simply to increase your product’s brand awareness. Whatever your objective is, that will be what is weighed in order to measure your social media marketing success. Without a clear picture of your objective, the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign can never truly be measured. We think in terms of baselines to compare with as you grow.

The second.

When you want to measure the ROI on social media marketing efforts, the second option is probably what is most commonly meant when the question is raised. That is (analytics) “tracking”.

With pay per click or sales tracking a business owner has a tangible means of measuring; however, with social media tracking it is much less straightforward and the method depends on the site and approach.

Facebook, for instance, might be measured by the number of confirmed friends; Twitter might be weighed by the quantity of retweets following a tweet; number of followers acquired in a month; a Web Forum might look at the quantity and quality of its threads. The list goes on and will continue to grow as the world of social media continues to grow and evolve. Free tools like Social Mention helps to capture “sentiment” – another metric that can be used.

The bottom line is this: measuring the success of social media marketing is subjective, and each business must identify what objective it wants to accomplish. When that aim is being met, the business can say with confidence that its social media marketing campaign is effective and is a success.

Next, try some tools that can help:

Tweetburner – BudUrl – track how many times people click on a link you share via Twitter

Twitter Search – powerful search in real time, advanced search helps to drill down and inject yourself into the conversation as well

Tweetbeep – Google alerts for Twitter – free

Google Analytics – free – ability to track traffic, content, referrers (where traffic came from) and a lot more

Swix App – Like Google Analytics – for social media properties

Listen to fellow Jim Sterne - do you agree? (Recently from OMMA San Francisco):

6 Essential Ways To Local SEO Search Engine Optimization

Local SEO and Some Tricks of the Trade (and free “tips to local ranking” PDF download below)

Compared to nationwide SEO, local search engine optimization is accomplished a little differently. The principles and the goals remain the same; that is create and organize your business’ website in such a way that it places high in search engine rankings and is thereby visible to the public. You want your business to go from Lost to Found in the hopes that you will increase your business. That’s it. That’s what small business SEO is all about. However, there are few tips to be offered that can help maximize your local SEO marketing efforts.

• Know the Locals

Depending on the region where you’re doing business, there can be differences in idioms or figures of speech you should be aware of when selecting the keywords for your site content. For instance locals my use words like The Windy City in place of Chicago or Sin City in place of Las Vegas. Being aware of the idioms and using them in your list of keywords will give your local SEO efforts an advantage.

• Use Address and Contact Information

Accessible, correct address and contact information is essential. If possible put it on each page of your site. Also, listing a local phone number in text, not an image, is a good idea, even if it’s alongside your toll-free 800 number. This helps identify a location. It’s also advisable to provide directions and/or a map to your location. In addition, verify your information is correct on online local directories such as Yellowpages.com, infoUSA, and CitySearch (Los Angeles example) to name a few.

• Link Up With Locals

Networking throughout your community is a must for any local business; and in order for your local internet marketing to be truly successful it’s important to have good quality in-bound links to your site from respected organizations and businesses in your community. The Chamber of Commerce is one example of a good networking venue.

• Get Reviews

Ask your current customers/clients to give you a review on online local directories. These will increase your business’ visibility.

• Become an Online Socialite

Depending on what type of business you have, consider establishing yourself as an expert in your field by creating your own a blog or using social media marketing tools such as Facebook, Yelp and Twitter to name only a  few. Also, relevant, newsworthy press releases can be a valuable local internet marketing tool.

• Post Good Content

The point of creating a good SEO campaign is to get people on your site. If you want them to stay there and eventually make a purchase, the information they read must be interesting. Most people don’t really read all the content on a website, rather they scan it. So keep to brief descriptions. Use bullets, highlights and pictures to draw attention to relevant or important information you want to make sure they don’t miss. Also, make sure your content doesn’t sound contrived or overstuffed with keywords as this can threaten your credibility.

These are just a few tricks of the trade that will help get started on launching your local SEO campaign; however if you follow them, your competitors will think you hired a local SEO expert as they watch your search engine ranking begin to soar.

For more information and a free local SEO report, more local directories and tips, check your local seo services company.

FREE DOWNLOAD:

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Little Known Tips For Free Google SEO Traffic

photo credit: kevinmarsh

After you’re done reading this post, you’ll understand the importance of copy and and persuasion thinking, both on your website, and off. You should also recognize that there are many variables that can and will imply specific user actions externally, and on your page – from the brand itself, usability, navigation, page layouts, offer, pricing, site design, shopping process, the competition and more. Start with the basics though, get your copy down tight. Using a simple guide – AIDAS can help you. (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action and Satisfaction).

A robust SEO strategy uses multiple ways to drive traffic to your web site. Relying on keywords for search engines to find your web site organically (your first step), is a must – and, optimizing a web site or page relies on understanding the relationship between effective copy and how it is presented – both on the page (what the viewer sees) and what’s in the code (what the search engine sees). Fast loading pages is another potential “signal” now used by Google.

The key to writing effective copy and driving traffic, repeat visitors for SEO is creating content that is both relevant and value-driven. Relevance refers to matching what viewers are looking for to what you have to offer. This is accomplished by implementing keywords in the title of each web page, variations in the URL, Metadata, page description, and image and video descriptions, if it’s included – and we suggest you do. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, and it’s a straightforward process to add an “embedded” video on your page.

Additionally, keywords in the content need to be placed in prominent positions, early on the page, such as in titles of pages, subtitles, and within leading sentences of paragraphs. This not only helps determine relevancy, but also can structure the content into a more organized and presentable format for users and search engines.

Value-driven content focuses on the legacy of the copy, which will determine how useful and re-usable the copy is for readers. Part of that is formatting the copy into shorter paragraphs, structuring the content with bullet points and sub-headings, using active and not passive words, and providing descriptions for graphics, charts, and other multimedia. This is also where structure influences SEO, as creating easy-to-follow content adds value to your site and can help promote traffic to other pages within your site.

In order to effectively provide value, you should structure links to other pages within your site and organize them in a way that is easily accessible and readable. Adding links within your copy makes it easier for readers to go from one page to the next and acts as an open door to the other areas of your web site. Getting quality and slowly built merit-based citations will add tremendous value, and over time. Search engines make adjustments all the time, and Google allegedly, daily.

Don’t simply add directories, for example, but use a combination of press releases, blogs (don’t just mass-comment), articles, syndication of custom content (to partners), email marketing, ad swaps and social media platforms (no spamming).

Think about where the user is coming from, and what their mindset is. You have different visitors coming to your site, from the ones who know what they are looking for, to those more in a “browse” mode, and do have a general interest, to those looking for something, not sure what they want, to the visitors with no interest at all. If you provide quality and consistency, these visitors will share content and link to you. Don’t miss this important point.

If performed diligently and accurately, the combination of these factors will create an effective SEO strategy that will result in increased traffic levels to your site.

Here’s How To Create Successful Web Landing Pages in 24 Hours Or Less

Once you have your website up and running, and once you have some traffic & attention to it, you must think about some ways you can get folks to take action on your pages.  Traffic to your website with no/little action serves nobody well.

A good landing page tries to convey (quickly) to the user; a clear action step. You can think of it this way: “what is the one thing I would like them to do next?”. We call this the most-desired-action (MDA) on the page.

Top Five Tips for Creating Effective Landing Pages

1. Relevance. Design landing a page(s) that is directly related to the link or ad that brought the visitor here.
2. Credibility. Establish credibility and create trust through a clean, professional appearance. Eliminate all grammar, spelling, spacing, formatting and design errors.
3. Navigation. Provide minimal or no navigation buttons. Every link is a temptation to leave your landing page.
4. Brevity. Keep text brief, simple and to the point. Text that is technical, confusing, long-winded, or gets sidetracked will bore visitors and drive them away.
5. Call to Action. Tell the visitor exactly what to do and how to make a transactions. If they can’t figure it out, they’ll leave.

Please note – while these are great starter principles for good website landing pages, you must always test this. For example, we often see simple designs outperforming flash, complex ones. Why is that? Answer: you let your users tell you, by testing the pages. (Tip: Try Google Web Optimizer!)

ACTION: Go to your page/website right now. Can you make some changes as per the list above? Do it – and you’ll have results in by tomorrow.

For even more tips, check out “Web Design for ROI” by Loveday and Niehaus, or “The Landing Page Handbook” by Marketing Sherpa Publishing.

P.S.

Here is a list of great landing page examples that you can get started with.

Amazingly Simple PR SEO Link Building Tips

Think of link building as Public Relations (PR), not Page Rank (the other PR).

When you do this, you are thinking about quality for your brand and online presence. But, none of the link building effort is worth it, or frankly, matters – if you don’t have a relevant page and strong offer/content to provide to your visitor that is searching for that information. If you do this right – you will get rewarded *everywhere*, from Google, user stickiness, sharing of your information, and opportunity for link reputation, while providing value.

To prepare, ask these questions below – about your page content, about your service, about your product and overall positioning. Can you offer a unique value (or sales) proposition? Are you clearly calling this out in every content piece? (without spamming, of course)

1. What can your product / service do for me? And, that nobody else provides?
2. What can you guarantee me, that nobody else can?
3. What is unique about you, as compared to your competition?
4. Why should I do business with you, and why should I trust you — and nobody else?

These are important questions to ask, and creates a solid foundation for everything you do. Not easy to answer for most, but a necessary discussion along with a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats). This will help keep more visitors on your website, and keep them coming back too.

So, here are reasonable tips that anybody can do.

Controversy tends to work well, but you’ll be amazed how well this can work against you as well. As Matt Cutts (thanks for tips here) at Google says, “it can be okay to uncork a good rant sometimes” but don’t  use this as a norm. You’ll be like a boy who cried wolf, hey, look at me,  pay attention to me, over here, etc – be careful.

You can use humor or bring something original to the table, that’s a lot better. (Dilbert comic strips are classics)

A great way to get links, is to participate in the community. Answering questions on LinkedIn, for example, can work really well for you. If you know the answer to something and say: “hey I know that – I can help you!”. People will be more receptive to clicking to your site and seeing what you’re up to. Answering questions to help other people is really cool. Try Yahoo Answers and even groups in the social media space.

Original research is another great way to create hooks to your site. Danny Sullivan created a comparison of all the spam out there for about 30 days of different e-mail providers and he documented that. He blogged it and a lot of people linked back to him.

You can go out to Google groups, Yahoo! Groups, and other places in the social media space where people are discussing your topic to see what they’re asking.

Social media is really cool. You can enjoy a participation on friendfeed and twitter and look  where people are spending their time. Perhaps it’s more on the Facebook and Twitter – then spend time there. If you have a video and you spoke at a conference, for example – you can you can list that and people will see it.  It helps to create trust and visibility.

The ‘ol “Top 10 lists” are are good, but they have been overused and lost some of their their allure – so you might want to look at that sparingly.

Make sure you get yourself a blog. I set this one up WordPress from an open source download. But, you can try either on WordPress.com, Blogger.com or download the source to install it on your own domain. Update it a couple times a week at first. Then, make sure you join the community and share your blog as appropriate. In the social sense, it’s more about “them” than you, remember that. Your blog can also be a great asset to establish yourself as an authority and thought leader in your business.

How to and tutorials are always great. People are looking for information on the Internet. Your site can be a great way to get awareness to you and your business. And, keep in mind –  if you build this out as useful, quality content pages, you don’t have to think too much about top keywords only – but long tail keywords – that tend to draw really quality traffic  can help you tremendously.

You can make a product or a widget and give it away for free, like a Firefox extension or a WordPress plug-in. Those types of things can be really good. People tend to link back to you as a thank you. You do the work once, and then lots of people can access it and download over time w/links.

Make sure that you have easy access to your site both from a search engine perspective and from user perspective. The site architecture, navigation and structure are very important. Make it easy to get to and links within it. 2-3 link depth is good.

Make sure to create a couple of videos. Short how-to tips or information about your space uploaded to YouTube and others – easy to do.

That’s it!