The Forge

Researching and choosing your site’s target keywords is the first step to SEO success.   In a sense, keywords are the DNA of your master SEO plan; keywords will be the blueprint of where your site gets indexed and what type of customers are visiting you.   It may seem fairly simple – choose the keywords that best suit your industry.  However, there are several factors that must be considered and compromises that must be taken to target the perfect keywords.  I’d like to briefly analyze what factors should be taken into account when choosing your site’s keywords.

1.  Local or Not: Is your business local or not?  If you are a Napa Valley Winery, it doesn’t make sense to target the single word ‘winery’.  Although ‘Winery’ may have more monthly search traffic than ‘Napa Valley Winery,’ the competition will be much stiffer and the ROI much smaller.  On the flip side, if your website is selling a broader online product, like ‘MMA Shorts’ than it wouldn’t make sense to include a specific location (unless you had a brick and mortar store front you were promoting).

2.  Monthly Search Traffic: You can easily find the monthly search traffic for various keywords using Google’s keyword tool.   Search traffic should be a primary factor in determining which keywords to target.  If you have a super specific product, like ‘eco-friendly puppy treats’ you will probably find out that those specific keywords get nearly zero search traffic.  This probably means you want to broaden your keyword to something that gets more searches, like ‘puppy treats’.

3.  Keyword Connotations: Even after determining the monthly search traffic of your target keywords, be sure to actually search for them on Google to see what results come up.  Certain keywords may have various connotations which you hadn’t previously thought of.   Make sure that the competitors on the 1st page of results are in your industry wheelhouse.

4. Competitors: It never hurts to check out what your competitors on the 1st page of search results for your keywords are doing.  View their website’s page source to see if there is any secret sauce of keyword variations that you haven’t thought of yet.

5.  The SEO Compromise: When all is said and done, choosing the keywords that will give your website the best traffic is all about compromise.  If you aim too high at broad keywords that are incredibly competitive, the chances are you won’t break ground on them for quite a while (if ever).  If you aim too low at super-specific keywords that have nearly no traffic, you will likely see very little return on your SEO efforts. The key is finding the compromise in keywords that will provide your business the perfect amount of traffic meshed with the ideal type of traffic.

So you’ve taken the steps to hire an SEO firm for your business website – lets say you are based out of San Francisco.  Whether you are trying to climb above those pesky Yelp reviews, generate more leads, or simply want to get more eyes on a new special, you wanted to take the proper steps to drive more relevant traffic to your site.

Once the SEO site modifications have been made, the blog implemented and the  social media efforts ongoing, how do you know if it’s been successful?  As a San Francisco business owner, what measures can you take to ensure that you are getting your money’s worth?  I’d like to review several metrics and tools that can be used to gauge the ROI (Return on Investment) for your SEO campaign.

Install Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the king of all analytics programs, allowing you to simply and effectively track incoming visitors to your site.  Installing Analytics is the first step to measuring the success of your SEO campaign.  You can view various pinpoint statistics such as what browsers your site visitors are using and what content sources they are coming from.

To gauge your SEO campaign’s effectiveness, a key Analytics trend to keep your eye on is the ‘Traffic Sources’ -> ‘Keywords’ -> ‘Non-Paid’.  This will let you know what search engines and keywords people are coming from, how long they spend on site, what pages they view, as well as more helpful info.

To install Google Analytics follow the instructions on their guide here.

Calculate the Average Lifetime Value of Your Customer

Depending on your type of business, a potential customer can vary in substance and value. If you are a San Francisco deli, a customer is essentially someone that visits your website and then decides to go to your deli and buys a sandwich.  So your customer value would be the price of a sandwich in addition to factors like repeat business and word of mouth.

If you sell a software as a service (SaaS) package that charges customers per month, a customer would be someone that goes to your website and then signs up for your service.   To evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO campaign, you need to determine how much this new customer is worth for your business over time (lifetime value).   This value will help you going forward in calculating the value of an organic visitor.

Calculate the Value of an Organic Visitor

Calculating the value of an organic visitor to your site can be helpful in determining your SEO ROI.

Adwords Comparison

If you are already utilizing Adwords, you can easily compare how much you are spending per ad click vs. how much you are spending per organic click.  If you have conversion tracker installed on Adwords you should already know your cost per conversion.   If you are comfortable with this cost per conversion, you can determine that your cost per click (CPC) is in the right range as well.

Using Analytics, you can determine how many clicks you’ve received through organic search traffic over a given period of time for specific keywords.  Divide that number of clicks by the amount of capital you’ve spent on your SEO campaign and you have your organic cost per click.  Compare this CPC to your adwords CPC.

Keep in mind that comparing organic traffic to AdWords traffic is a rough way to estimate ROI as organic traffic generally has a higher conversion rate than Adwords  traffic.

Simpler Methods (like actually interacting with customers)

A simpler way to gauge the effectiveness of you SEO campaign is to talk to your customers.   Questions like ‘how did you find out about us’ can pay large dividends in evaluating the strength of your various marketing avenues.  If a good percentage of people are saying they Googled a specific keyword and found your site, you can be pretty sure that the SEO campaign has been successful thus far.

A Zen ‘Koan’ is a short story or sentence that seems paradoxical in nature, but can also prove to enlighten a person.  One Koan states: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

SEO Writing  is also a bit of a paradox, due to the fact that all good online articles will inadvertently have an SEO effect, and those written purely for the ‘purpose of SEO’ will most likely fail to accomplish their goal.  In other words:  if you begin with the mindset of writing purely for the search engines, you’ve failed already.  The key to SEO writing is to forget SEO.  Kinda Zen huh?  Let me explain…

The Art of ‘No Mind‘.   Zen Masters used to profess a state of mind called ‘No Mind’.   This mindset was attained when a specific art, say archery, was perfected to such a degree that the master did not need to devote a single thought to hitting a bulls eye.  In modern athletics, this is often referred to as ‘Muscle Memory’.

I’m not saying an SEO writer needs to punch a board ten thousand times to get their article picked up, but rather an SEO writer should stop thinking about SEO.   An SEO writer should think like a REAL writer:  What sort of relevant topics are novel and interesting for my audience?  What writing style should I utilize?  What are the reoccurring themes within my article?  Do I have a beginning, middle and end?   Concentrate on writing first; forget about the keywords.

Keywords are Only as Good as What Surrounds Them.  Now that you’ve gotten all this keyword nonsense out of your head, lets talk about keywords.   Are your target keywords working for you or are you working for them?

IF you are writing SEO articles and stopping to think about throwing in your keywords, you’re working for them.   This is how SEO articles are born with titles like:  ‘5 Ways to Purchase Discount Leather Boots, Leather Gloves and Leather Belts.’   And I’ve definitely written articles just like that.  Nobody reads them, I know.

Write about something you would read.  Even if you are limited by your target keywords, like ‘Leather Boots,’ try to find an angle with some interest.  What are the recent trends with Leather Boots:  did Lindsay Lohan just puke on a pair?  Who wore the first leather boots in history?  How fast can a chimp run 200 meters wearing leather boots?  Seriously, that last one may seem a bit crazy, but wouldn’t’ you read it?

The List is a Powerful Tool…If Used Correctly. I’m sure you’ve heard the hooplah about how lists are great for SEO writing.   There is a grain of truth to this, however, just because you are using bullet points instead of paragraphs doesn’t mean your list will be a sure thing.

Good List:   Top 10 Most Ridiculous Craiglist Posts of All Time

Bad List:   Top 10 Promotional Pens and Pencils by Category – Promotional Gifts with a Difference

While the first list may not be for SEO purposes, it should be used as an example of something people might actually be interested in reading.  The second article clearly was not meant to be read by a person.

Target Keywords… Finally

So you ask, where’s all the ‘basics’ about inserting target keywords into your article?  What is the proper density of keywords to content?  How about anchor tags? And what about story titles?

I’ll answer these questions with another famous Zen Koan:

“When you can do nothing, what can you do?”

Another hot trend in search engine optimization is social media marketing.  Approaching social media work from a beginner’s standpoint can be a daunting task.  There are a ton of tools, sites and ‘expert’ opinions which you will find shoved in your face as the ‘new best way’ to get your website on the map.

The truth is, there are quite a few routes to go with social media marketing, and only several that will provide any real dividends.  When it comes down to it, as far as utilizing any social media method that requires gaining followers or building clout, honesty and repetition are the ways to go.  Many people will tell you that there are fast tracks to social media success, but there aren’t.  Like anything, it takes time, repetition, and trust to get ahead.

I’d like to take a moment to go over the basic points of social media marketing to get a beginner in the field on the ground and running.

Forums

Forums may be old school, but they are also a great place to reach a targeted group of users in your space.

Are you promoting the website of a bike shop  in San Francisco?  Post on local bike forums, but don’t just sign up for an account and blast your url out, that will probably only result in you getting kicked off the forum.  Try to participate in worthy discussions, and lend your input for at least a month before slipping your relevant site into the mix.  Be open with the forum community, tell them you work as a marketer in the field and are simply interesting in picking the brains of relevant users.

No forums on your specific topic of interst?  Create your own.  Our friends over at Lefora provide an easy to use Web 2.0 forum solution that will get you going in a jiffy.

Social Sharing Tools:  Twitter / Tumblr / Jaiku

Twitter is fast becoming spam central like MySpace, with legions of marketing bots attempting to gain as many followers as possible.

Don’t spam people on Twitter: what goes around comes around.  Sure, you may end up with thousands of followers using twitter bots, but they will be essentially worthless.   It’s pointless to have followers if most of them don’t care about the subject you are tweeting about.

Any real value you will gain from twitter will be sending out tweets to people in your space.  100 followers that are somewhat relevant to your San Francisco Bike site are far more valuable than 1000 irrelevant followers (most of which that are primarily spammers and robots).

If you are building a twitter following, send out relevant tweets with the topic’s # (hashtag) attached.

Ex.  I can’t wait for the #SanFrancisco Bikeathon in Golden Gate park this Weekend!  Anyone planning to attend? 

Building your following won’t happen overnight.  Keep a schedule of consistent tweets and be flexible.

Social Aggregation Sites:  Digg / StumbleUpon / Reddit

There are all fantastic tools for ‘blasting out’ your relevant blog post, site news, or site launch to the masses.  The key here is using the tools for what they are meant to be used for: allowing users to find and share interesting / entertaining information.

Of course ‘interest & entertainment’ value can be somewhat difficult to achieve depending on the subject of your site.  If you working on the SEO for Tom Brady’s new webpage, filled with updates about his latest date with Giselle, getting the word spread will be fairly easy. However, if you are trying to find an angle to make a used toilet brush site look entertaining, it may be an uphill climb.

The key here is picking the interesting content out of a haystack and ‘blasting’ it to the right audience.  Make sure to categorically classify your used toilet brush site update and get it to the right people.  Stay tuned for a post on the basics of SEO writing, and how to make a totally uninteresting subject somewhat palpable.

Social Networks:   Facebook / MySpace / Ning / LinkedIn

Just as in forums, the key to utilizing social networks for marketing purposes is reaching the right users.  Don’t go crazy and simply try to get as many friends as possible- find users that may actually be interesting in what you are promoting.  Join and create groups, fan pages, etc about your site or subject, but do so discreetly.  Build some trust by participating in discussions even if they don’t directly relate to you marketing your site.

Search Engine Optimization has been a trendy topic over the past several years, and while it has certainly proven to be very effective, some ‘experts’ can often get out of hand with the details.  Google & Co’s algorithms for crawling websites and providing search results are  constantly evolving,  which can explain the need for SEO experts to adapt their methods to a constantly changing field.

However, there are several basic SEO techniques which are proven and haven’t changed much at all.  It is important to always keep the SEO basics in mind, and not get too caught up in the details.  I’ll start with three of the most important things to keep on the top of the list when implementing an SEO friendly site:  Title Tags, Page Copy and Content.

Title Tags

Title Tags are definitively one of the most important single elements in a website’s SEO structure.  These are the integral keywords that appear on the top of each search result listing.  It is important to keep title tags simple, descriptive, and to-the-point (under 68 characters).

For example, if you run a San Francisco catering and event planning service:  San Francisco Catering and Event Planning | Caterati

Of course, there are other factors to take into account, such as keyword traffic and page copy relevance.   Otherwise, fairly simple and straightforward.

Page Copy and Headers

It is important that your page copy and header tags (H1, H2, etc.) mesh with the general topic your site covers.   If you have a website about puppies, the pages should generally be about puppies, from different types, to how to train them, etc. Makes sense, doesn’t it? There are a surprising number of sites out there that don’t follow this simple rule though, whether it be covering too wide a breadth of topics or simply not staying on topic.

The target keywords on eac page should be inserted deliberately but discreetly within the copy.  This means the keywords should go unnoticed (from the rest of the copy) to your average human reader.  Try testing this: have a friend read a page without ‘keyword pretense’ and see if they notice if something is ‘off.’

Fresh Content

Providing ongoing fresh, keyword relevant and interesting content for your website is probably the most important thing you can do to give it a boost in search rankings.  This isn’t about ‘tricking’ Google or any other sort of work-around:  it is simply about keeping a regular schedule to publish your fresh, on-site content.

We often recommend installing a hosted Wordpress blog as a forum for publishing your fresh content.  Wordpress can do wonders with SEO.  Even if you don’t have anything to write about, just write and see what comes out.  If possible, throw in some of your relevant topics / keywords in a discreet,  ‘non-spammy’ way.