Web Marketing Strategies, SEO, Web 2.0, Social Media, Trends & Tips

Matt Cutts is considered the face of Google which I think is brilliant because he is such a regular, unassuming guy and gives Google the persona of an approachable person.  Just brilliant!

In the video interview below with Jefferson Graham from USA Today, Matt Cutts answers questions about the “common sense” things you can do to have your website found in Google.

Below is a summary of Matt’s responses to Jefferson’s questions and my commentary:

Matt Cutts: In response to what is the #1 thing you can do to be found in Google: Use keywords in your website content which are actually being searched by people.

Bernie Borges: Duh…Absolutely!  But, this is a bit oversimplified.  First you must research keywords.  You shouldn’t assume your keywords are good.  You may be too close to your business to know which keywords are searched most frequently.  Additionally, some keywords are very competitive.  Keyword research will tell you which keywords are more and less competitive.  Often, the Long Tail keywords are the most effective.

Matt Cutts: Title Tags Matter.  Users see the Title tags first in the search results.  But, the description tag actually describes your web page listing in Google.  The description tag should be short but very well written about your web page.

Bernie Borges: Absolutely! But, many marketers make the mistake of using the same Title tags on each page.  Each page should have a unique Title tag and a unique description tag.  Optimizing many web pages will increase your chances of being found by Google. 

Matt Cutts: Links are Important: There are many ways to get legitimate links.  One of the best is to start a blog and participate in the conversations on the web.  A blog doesn’t have to be fancy.  You can talk about your customers, why you started your business, things about your business.  People will learn more about your business.  Give people compelling ideas from your blog and you will get links. Also, participate in other social media sites. 

Bernie Borges: I generally agree, but Matt makes this sound easy and it’s not.  Starting a blog requires development of a strategy, which requires research and planning.  Once you start a blog, you must be committed to it, or you’ll lose credibility for starting and stopping a blog.  Matt didn’t mention other link building strategies such as syndicating content, or SEO optimizing press releases.  Social media marketing can be very effective in link building, but it requires strategy, commitment and resources.  Not all businesses are able to make and follow through with this committment.

Matt Cutts: The most common misconception is that you have to pay Google to get listed in the organic listings.  Not true.  Google crawls web sites for free.  Another misconception is that the PPC (pay per click) listings will help your organic search engine rankings.  Not true.  PPC has no affect on your “editorial search results.”

Bernie Borges: This is aka “separation of church and state.”  Matt’s referall to organic listings as “editorial search results” is terrific.  Media firms have always maintained separation between advertising and editorial.  This is exactly the same principle.  This is 100%, indisputably accurate!

Matt Cutts: In response to: Does it take 3 to 6 months to get your website crawled?  No.  Google updates their index monthly and crawls all websites it can find for free.  Google also provides a free tool called Google Webmaster which allows you to list all your URLs to be found there in days, not months.

Bernie Borges: Absolutely!  We use Google Webmaster with our SEO clients.  It is a valuable tool which gives a lot of insight into how Google sees your website, including identifying broken links which you may not even know you had.

Bernie Borges Final Commentary:

While everything Matt Cutts said in this interview is 100% accurate, it is a bit oversimplified.  It’s a little like saying if you want to compete in a marathon, all you have to do is train 5 miles a day for 3 months, then 11 miles a day for 1 month prior to the marathon event.  The execution of such recommendations takes discipline, coaching and just plain hard work.

SEO is hard work!  I’m sure this sounds a little self serving, given that we provide SEO services.  My argument is that the details associated with these valid suggestions are plentiful.  A successful Internet marketing strategy requires planning, execution and measurement by resources with the know how and availability to get the job done.  Matt Cutts’ suggestions, while accurate, are also just a portion of an overall SEO strategy, for example, he made no mention of the importance of the technical architecture of your website, along with other important factors. 

Oh, one more thing.  I take exception with people who say that SEO is a one time process and once you’ve completed it you are done (Matt Cutts did not say this).  Whoa!  That is so far from the truth.  That’s like saying today is sunny and therefore I assume everyday going forward will be sunny…Others are doing SEO in your keyword space and you will lose ground if you stop working at it.  I will agree there is more effort required on the front end, but you should not just walk away from an SEO plan or you will see declining results, unless perhaps if you are a in very unique niche with little competition for your keywords.  

Your thoughts?

 

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This podcast is complementary to a post I wrote on May 13th about long tail keywords.

In this podcast I provide a brief explanation of long tail keywords from Chris Anderson’s book, appropriately named The Long Tail.  I highly recommend the book to anyone in marketing.

I have the impression that some marketers have yet to learn the concept of long tail marketing.  In SEO, effective long tail strategies require that we research and discover keywords that have some reasonable search volume and are relevant. 

Long tail keyword strategies allow you to be found for less competitive keywords that you can often rank on page one.  Compare that to broad and very competitive keywords where you may never rank in the first three pages. 

As Chris Anderson says in the subtitle of his book: The long tail is about “selling less of more.”

I would like to hear from you on this subject.  Please comment.

How do you rank high organically for a competitive keyword?  Before we look at this, first consider if the competitive keyword you want to rank for is the right one.  Sure, there are obvious keywords in each business.  But, consider less competitive long tail keywords too for “winning strategies.”

If you want to make the investment of time and resources to rank well for a very competitive keyword, here are some factors to consider.

First, study the ranking results on the first page of organic search results for your desirable keyword.  If more than half of them are not relevant to your target audience, I take you back to the point above and consider other keywords. 

For purposes of this blog post, let’s assume all the search rankings on page one are relevant to your target audience and you’re not ranking on the first page.  Where are you ranking for this keyword?  If you are currently ranking on page 25 for this keyword, is this keyword really the best use of your time and resources.  If you are willing to make the investment and have the patience, read on.

So, you’ve decided you are willing to make the investment of time and resources to compete for this keyword.  And, you are willing to be patient.

First, study the websites ranking on the first page for your keyword.  Study their content, their meta data, their source code, their URL structure, their domain age and their link count. What is their PageRank and what is your PageRank?  As Sun Tsu wrote in the Art of War, the way to defeat your enemy is to know their strategy and defeat their strategy. 

When you study the content and links from the competitors on page one you will gain insight and ideas into how they got there and what you need to do to compete effectively for your desired keyword.

In many cases, you may face a real uphill battle (refer back to the long tail strategy).  But, if you are able to get even to position #10 on the first page, that can be a good accomplishment.  But, you may need to be realistic.  If some of the rankings on page one have a combination of content, links, domain age and website architecture that you simply can not compete, then either be content with a lower ranking, or defer back to the long tail keyword (winning SEO) strategy.

Studying your competitor’s (ranking on page one) content will give you insight and ideas for what you need to do.  Because, if you are expecting this blog post to reveal some secret formula, you will be disappointed.  You will need to develop a lot of really good content and attract links.  And, there are many effective ways to do this. 

You can write content about how your (keyword centric) product is used, who uses it, why they use it and all the great things they accomplish by using your product.  I’m sure there are many people who also agree with all these great factoids, so they should contribute to your content.  For example, are there specific industries who benefit from your products?  Write about all of them, and write a lot.   

Writing all this content can take on several forms.  In addition to adding web pages with this content, you should consider press releases, articles which can be syndicated and blog posts.  If you don’t have a corporeate blog, start one.  If you do, add more content and look for relevant blogs where you can conttibute about these topics. 

You should promote some of this content in selected social media destination sites for visibility and natural link building.  After all you will need to build links for your content to compete for your super competitive, desirable keyword. 

If all of this sounds like time consuming, hard work, it is.  Did I forget to mention that?  Sorry….

A concept that I find some clients have resisted is the use of long tail keywords and long tail copy in their website. The concept seemingly goes against common sense and intuitive interest in being found for some of the most desirable keywords.

But, effective SEO strategies are about creating winning strategies. In some cases (actually in many cases) optimizing for the most desirable keywords for a business can be quite challenging. Everyone wants to be on page one. But, often page one is filled with mature, keyword rich, link rich websites. Penetrating the page one list can be difficult at best and impossible in many cases. So, we must go after winning strategies.

How do we do that? Long tail keywords, that’s how…Consider this example in our industry.

If we want to be search engine optimized for “Internet marketing” there are more than 79 million results in Google! Considering the age of www.findandconvert.com and current content and link count, the reality of ranking even on the first three pages for “Internet marketing” is nill in the near future. Consider that we are an “Internet marketing company” and not everyone searching on “Internet marketing” is necessarily searching for an Internet marketing company like Find and Convert. So, if we optimize for “Internet marketing company” we’re still dealing with a very competitive keyword that has over 13 million results in Google. In fact, we rank on page 6 for “Internet marketing company” (at the time of this writing).

As I browse the results, there are many Internet marketing companies with geographic descriptors in their titles such as “Philadelphia Internet marketing company” and “Dallas Internet marketing company.” So, a winning strategy for us is to optimize for “Internet marketing company Florida.” There are only 635,000 results in Google for this phrase. Obviously, the search volume for “Internet marketing company Florida” is lower than the broader phrases mentioned above. But, the likelihood of someone who finds us for this phrase being a qualified opportunity for Find and Convert is pretty high.

If this “long tail keyword” stuff sounds a little like shooting with a rifle, or being laser focused (or whatever cliché you prefer) that’s exactly what it is. Consider that long tail keywords allow you to write copy to accommodate it with relative ease. It’s easier to write content about specific topics than it is about more general topics. It’s also easier to rank well for various combination of long tail keyword phrases such as “Florida Internet marketing company.”

Go for a winning strategy with long tail keywords supported with long tail keyword copy that will drive the most qualified traffic to your website.

I often talk with marketers about the difference between SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click advertising).   I remind myself that, unlike me and my team at Find and Convert (and others in our business), most marketers don’t spend their days thinking about Internet marketing strategies as we do.

So, when we look at the difference between SEO and PPC, it goes beyond the costs.  After all, most marketers understand that PPC can cost a lot more than SEO.  But, for so many marketers PPC (also known as SEM) is the path of least resistance. 

Many marketers believe they can measure results from PPC easier than from SEO strategies.  But, let’s examine some of the facts.

We spend a lot of our time producing reports for clients.  These reports summarize (usually in painstaking detail) many statistics.  For the sake of this blog post I’ll hone in on the most telling stats which really point to the advantages of SEO over PPC. 

Time and again we see that visitors to our client’s websites which come from organic searches spend more time on the website, visit more pages and have lower bounce rates than paid search traffic.  The first two stats mentioned here should be self evident.  A bounce rate refers to someone who visits a web page on your site and does not visit another page, essentially “bouncing” off your site.

Moreover, when we provide reports on our PPC plans for clients, we track the cost of conversion (the desired action for the client).  Such conversion costs are tracked for the ads and for the keywords.  The most telling conversion cost is for the keywords we track.  This metric really tells us the cost to produce a lead for the most desirable keywords.

All too often we see marketers show the most interest in the most competitive keywords.  They wind up paying dearly for these keywords simply because they are competitive.

In SEO strategies, we are able to (with a lot of hard work) build optimization strategies for select keywords which are less competitive (long tail keywords).  For example, we work hard for a client to rank on page one for “project accounting software.”  But, the software client we represent has a product that runs only on Oracle.  So, when someone searches for “oracle project accounting software,” we hit a home run in ranking and in a qualified website visitor.

So, the message in this post is to think long term with SEO strategies.  Do the hard work which will require ongoing care and feeding, but can have long lasting and cost effective sales results through organic search traffic.  And, don’t be afraid to target lower searched, less competitive and long-tail keywords. 

I’ve always said I’d rather be found by the 10 people who are a perfect fit, than targeting 1000 people who may be a fit but are harder to reach and therefore a higher risk search strategy.