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Are you sick and tired of hearing about keywords, keyword optimization, keyword stuffing, keyword ratio and more? Why all the hype about keywords? What do they really do for a business?

Keywords are important plain and simple. They are the words customers, potential customers and website visitors might use in a search engine to find your information.

For example, a person researching cell phones might use the following keywords typed into Google, Yahoo, Metacrawler or any number of the available search engines.

- Cell phones - Wireless phones - Cell phone planes - Prepaid cell phone - Best cell phone - Cellphone - Cell phone deals - Cell phone reviews

When choosing keywords for a business the first step is to consider what terms people will use to find you. To accomplish this, a three step approach is often recommended.

1. Brainstorm ideas. Sitting down with a pen and paper to brainstorm keywords may seem silly at first however brainstorming is a successful strategy. The more a person is able to think outside of the box and put themselves in their prospects’ shoes, the more productive the brainstorming exercise will be. Challenge yourself to come up with 50 potential keywords. Remember that people often misspell keywords, like the ‘cellphone’ example used in the list above.

2. Consult with associates, friends and family, current customers. Step two is to start asking around. Ask people what keywords they would use to find information on your business topic. Friends, family and associates are generally the best place to go however if a business has a close relationship with their customers, then asking a few key customers may be beneficial.

3. Research using keyword popularity tools. This third step is where business owners often skip right to. However if you don’t attack a keyword popularity tool with a plan, you can end up with thousands of potential options ‘ a real mess. Instead, take a look at keywords that you are confident in and comfortable with and then use the keyword tools to tell you how often those keywords are used. This will help business owners determine what their primary keywords are and what keywords to use in their content or on secondary website pages.

Here are a few free keyword tools:

a. https://adwords.google.com/select/ Keyword Tool

b. https://www.wordtracker.com/trial/ Free trial

c. inventory.overture.com/

d. http://keywordspy.com Free Trial

That leads us right into a very frequently asked question…where are keywords used? Several places actually…The primary place keywords need to be used is the home page or index page of a business website. This is the page people land on when they come to a website. Maybe it has sales copy, maybe it tells a bit about the company’s products or services, or maybe it offers informational copy. The general rule of thumb is to focus on one or two primary keywords. Place them in the headline, first and last paragraph and then naturally scattered throughout the copy. Keyword stuffing or jamming your copy full of you keywords makes the copy read like a phone book and the search engines don’t like it.

Secondary keywords can be used on subsequent website pages, articles, press releases, press releases, advertisements, blog posts and so on. Using the example from earlier a primary key word might be “cell phone” or “cell phones” and a secondary keyword might be “cell phone reviews”

Keyword hype is justified. They are a direct contributor to a company’s bottom line. Keywords help potential customers find the information, products, and services they’re looking for. They help people find your business. Taking the time to choose the right keywords, the most commonly used keywords, and then setting up your business to highlight those keywords will help drive traffic to your business website. The end result is more traffic and more profits.

Joan Finholt is a retired teacher and loves using the internet. She is co-owner of Bound and Determined books and yes, the domain name spelling is correct.http://www.boundanddetrmined.com

Tags: keyword marketing, SE Optimization

Your client is thrilled with the new blog. It provides a SEO friendly CMS, it’s Social Media friendly, your client loves the opportunity to participate in the conversation, etc, etc.

but

despite how cool their new blog is…. despite the increase in readers, traffic, comments, etc.

at some point,

your client is ultimately going to turn to you and ask

“What about sales?”

Because unless your client is running a CPM model or is really big into branding, at the end of the day; the only thing that really matters to your client is conversions.

Is this blog making me money?

How do you get your Blog traffic to convert? First and foremost, sales tips are worthless if you don’t follow the 10 Golden Rules of Blogging.

But the 10 Golden Rules of Blogging alone won’t get you sales. They’re just table stakes to make it even possible to sell.

1) Follow Jeff Quipp’s tips for Building Authority:
People want to buy from the best. Strive to be an expert in your field. Even if you sell a commodity product where “the best” is really just better marketing, then do that. Build your online authority and you will be perceived as “the best”.

Use your blog to develop a specialty in a particular niche of your industry.

As Jeff says, this is a difficult balancing act. You don’t want the niche to be too narrow that you limit people’s perceptions of your abilities (not unlike type casting to some actors), though too broad and its near impossible to establish yourself as an expert, and less and less likely over time.

Reach out to others in your field. Or as Jeff says, be an uber networker. One great way to do this in your blog writing is to find other industry blogs to link to when writing your posts. Many blog platforms will ping them that you’ve linked to them.

2) Follow the Loop Strategy in your post writing.

The Loop Strategy suggests that we never want to leave the visitor without telling them what the next step is. There are no dead ends because each page leads to another page.

Think about the most logical path for the consumer to take. If I enjoy this content then I’ll probably like that too. Build the next step into your template. Don’t add new content without thinking about what it relates to. Link it to the next step. This will substantially increase your opportunity to convert.

3) Make sure you have an “About Us” section in your Blog

Depending on your product or service, some people will jump right the buy, but others may want to know a little more about you.

Picture this. I found your blog through a long tail keyword search. I read your post about Rugs, Plastic Products, Petroleum, whatever and it really spoke to me because that’s my industry too.

I find myself thinking wow. Why haven’t I heard of these guys before? Who are they? And sadly, I’m left wondering because there is no About Us page. And if you’re afraid to tell me who you are - then I don’t trust you.

4) Use a Landing Page to ask for the sale

If you’ve given your reader really useful content, there is nothing wrong with linking out to a product page if that product is related to your article.

The Weight Loss Industry is really good at this: for example, do a search for “green tea, weight loss” you will find a plethora of helpful informational articles about the benefits of Green Tea for weight loss. Pretty much every one of these articles was written by someone who is trying to sell you Green Tea.

Does this bother me? Not if the article was useful. Make sure you give thought to color, language and placement when designing the landing page.
5) Make sure you have a call to action on the page you link to not in the blog post.

There are many possible ways to do this:

1. Just ask for the sale. Include an order now button beside the product information (The Direct Close method)
2. Use a deadline. For example, “product will be going up in price by July 30th (The Time Driven Close).
3. Make an offer. i.e. order these two products and save 20%. This makes the buyer feel like they’re making a smart choice or saving money (The Concession Close Method).

Whatever method feels right for you, make sure you use persuasive writing techniques like Brian suggests.

Getting you blog traffic to convert is really just a matter of applying successful marketing techniques to your Blog. The trick is knowing what’s appropriate for a Blog and what belongs on a separate page.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Optimizing for top Google rankings includes a number of factors. In Part 1 of 3 we discussed onsite optimization. In Part 2 we will touch on incoming links as well as using Google Webmaster Tools.

LINKS
Links are very important in today’s Google rankings, but just how many links you need will depend on both the competitiveness of your target phrases, and the quality of the incoming links themselves.

Essentially the number one rule of links is to keep it relevant! Topical relevance is very important in order for inbound links to give your site the most value. If the page that links to you is relevant that is good, if the entire site linking to you is relevant, that is better.

First to get an idea of how many links you may need, take a look at the top 10 ranking sites in Google and record how many links Yahoo is noting for each site. (This is because Google does not display anywhere near all the links they have noted). The average of this count is often a good indication of how many links your site may need.

There are many different ways to get links to your site including the age old reciprocal link trade, directory links, article based links, and links from press releases.

Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal linking has seen its value drop considerably over the past few years, however, if the site you are trading with is relevant you can still receive value from these links.

Paid Links
Google frowns on paid links, however that is not to say that they don’t work. Often you can find highly reputable and relevant websites which are offering paid advertising spots. If these links are coded to link directly to your website without passing through any tracking redirects, you will in many cases see value in the form of both direct traffic and increased link densities and rankings.

Articles
Writing and distributing industry specific articles is a great way to help increase both your link counts and site traffic; for examples of such content see StepForth’s SEO Blog News articles. Consider writing articles on a regular basis and submitting them to some of the more popular services such as EzineArticles. Be sure to include a link to your site from somewhere within the article, or at the very lest within your bio. Try to use a target phrase as part of the anchor text for additional value.

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Tags: Google, optimize for google