search engine optimization

Working in the tech field, I am very aware of SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) and the protest that is happening today (January 18, 2012). If you have no idea as to what I am talking about, read this article about SOPA on Mashable.

Knowing that there is a huge SOPA protest going on today, I have to admit, I didn’t look at www.sopastrike.com to see which sites were on strike. I knew about Wikipedia and a few others, but I didn’t research who else was participating. I’m kicking myself for not looking at sopastrike.com!

As the day is progressing, I’m finding myself encountering more and more “blacked out” sites like Craiglslist.org and Tumblr.com. I’m OK with Craiglist and Tumblr being down today because my tasks on these sites isn’t very pressing.

However, in the middle of researching an issue I’m having with a WordPress website, I come to find out that all of WordPress.org is also blacked out today, including the forums!

If you are using WordPress CMS, not to worry, you can still access your website, but if you want to install a plug-in or have a questioned answered in a forum, you’re out of luck.

My point? I rely on WordPress.org! If content on this website was blocked by the government, my business would hurt.

I guess I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to solve my problem.

If you’re finding that your website is just not getting the traffic you think it should have, or perhaps your website isn’t showing up in search results, the Title tags of your pages could be the problem. Title tags are the most important aspect of any Search Engine Optimization campaign (a close second is well written content, and lots of it). Before we explain how to write an effective title tag that gets clicks, we need to review what a Title tag is and where it appears in search engines.

What the heck is a Title tag?

The title tag is an HTML title element that is crucial not only to SEO, but also to the user experience. Title tags are used to briefly and accurately describe the topic of an online document. Effective title tags get attention from search engines and visitors.

Where is the Title tag?

You can find the Title tag in a few different places.

1. In the source code.

Go to any webpage and view the source code. A few lines from the top, you will see this element:

Social Media Agency : SEO Agency : Inbound Marketing - Maine, NH, Boston

2. In the browser bar and browser tabs.

3. In search results

How to Write Title Tags – Best Practices

Keep it Short

The optimal length for a Title tag is less than 70 characters. Notice in the image above that the title is truncated (“…”) – it’s a tad bit too long, so Google is only showing the first 68 or so characters.

Put Primary Keyword Phrases First

Single keywords in a Title are never a good idea. Their too broad, you won’t rank for them, and your title will look like a string of keywords. It’s best to try to use 2-3 keyword phrases that accurately describe that page.

If your brand is the most important element, put your brand name first.

Brand Name – Keyword Phrase 1 – Keyword Phrase 2

If you’re more concerned about ranking for a certain keyword phrase, put it first.

Keyword Phrase 1 – Keyword Phrase 2 – Brand Name

If you only sell to a local area, be sure to include the Geo in the tag.

Keyword Phrase 1 – Geo Location – Brand Name

Keep it Relevant

Don’t get caught up in keyword rankings. If your site is well written, has lots of great content, you will be found. Be sure to write your title tag to accurately represent the content of that page. Google is all about relevancy. Your Title tag must accurately correlate to your page content.

Home Page

Every page of your website should have a unique Title tag. The home page typically has the most ranking power, hence, use your primary keyword phrases in the Title of the home page and in the content of the page itself. The home page introduces your company to the world, so it’s important that the keyword phrases are wisely chosen.

Examples for an online chocolate chip cookie company:
Good Title: Delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies – Order Cookies Online – Cookies-R-Us

OK Title: Chocolate Chip Cookies by Cookies-R-Us

Bad Title: Cookies-R-Us

Bad Title: Welcome to Cookies-R-Us

Bad Title: Cookies, Cookies, Cookies

Really Bad Title: Home

Internal Pages

The internal web pages of your site are supporting pages. You may have pages that get very specific, like a Product page, or that are more generic, like an About Us page. Using the same structure as the Home page, an internal page Title tag may read like this:

Star Shaped Chocolate Chip Cookies by Cookies-R-Us – Order Online

Final Thoughts on Title Tags

When writing your Title tag, don’t write it just for the purpose of getting rankings on Google. While rankings are important, a Title tag that matches the content of that page is more important. As your web pages rise and fall in the rankings, it’s important to tweak your Title tags occasionally to make them more click-able, or tryout different keywords. Don’t be afraid of change here. Change is important with SEO.

There you have it! Have questions on Title tags? Need help optimizing your site? Just ask!

Keywords, the most important aspect of any SEO campaign. But keywords in and of themselves don’t matter at all if the wrong ones are chosen for optimization. Understanding how to choose the right keywords for your website, and your niche market, is crucial. Choose the wrong keywords and your site may never be found by those that will actually purchase from you.

Before you start researching potential keyword phrases, let’s talk about what you shouldn’t do. First, save industry terms for your printed brochure, not your Title tag. Your potential client searching on the web for your type of product or service is totally unaware that you call the synthetic blue widgets you make “SynWidgers”.

Next, don’t assume you know what your audience is searching for. Unless you have a crystal ball, there is no way for you to know exactly what your visitors are searching for and how often. Hence, keyword research tools are your friend.We’ll talk more about those in a minute.

And, finally, don’t try to rank for single keywords or very broad keyword phrases. I’m telling you right now, you will NEVER rank for “business software,” or “white paper,” or “real estate agent”. Your goal is to find targeted keyword phrases that your potential client is actually using.

So now that we know what not to do, let’s discuss what to do.

1. Start with a brainstorm list. This is where you do sit down and think of all the possible keyword phrases a visitor will use to find your site. Remember, this is not the final list, so we aren’t breaking our 2nd commandment. We’re just giving ourselves a starting point.

2. Next, get to know your keyword research tools. We use a variety of tools when conducting keyword research. Each have their pros and cons, so you have to decide which to use, or if you want to use a variety of tools.

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Keyword Discovery
• Wordtracker
• Google Suggest
• Thesaurus.com – to name a few…

3. Plug your brainstorm list into one (or more) of these tools. The key is to not only look at the average monthly searches, but you want to look at the competition as well. Understanding the competitiveness of a keyword is crucial. The more competitive a phrase is, the harder it will be to rank for it.

4. Do an actual search for the keyword phrase in Google. Now look at the top 10 results. Are the sites in the top 10 relevant to your industry? Do you see some competitors listed? How do these top 10 use the keyword phrase? Is it in the title alone; in both title and description? How many inbound links does that domain have? In other words, analyze the results and cross out the phrases that aren’t ideal.

5. Finalize the list. Now that we crossed out words that are overly competitive or irrelevant, it’s time to look at your list and compare it to the content on your website. Do you have the content needed to rank for that phrase? If you do not, then put those words on a separate list until you do. For example, you may really want your site to rank for “blue suede shoes” because that keyword phrase has a high search volume and a low enough competition volume. However, you haven’t made blue suede shoes yet, and right now are only offering “brown suede shoes.” If you optimize your site for blue suede shoes, but the visitor does not see those on your website, then you may drive traffic, but it will be traffic with a high bounce rate.

6. Optimize your site! Choose one to two keyword phrases per page and include your keywords in the copy, Title tag, meta Description, header tags, alt text, and anchor text of internal links.

7. Monitor your progress and rinse and repeat. Keyword research is never finished. To really be successful, you have to keep an eye on how keywords change as far as search volume, competitiveness, and those that drive traffic and convert to sales.

People ask me all the time how their website can get higher rankings on Google. Perhaps they are the website owner, a CEO, or a Marketing Director. Somewhere down the line they’ve been told that websites that rank #1 on Google get tons of traffic and are hugely successful. Maybe you’ve even thought this. It’s not uncommon, but is a huge misnomer.

Yes, first page rankings, especially those above the fold (positions 1-5), are important, but aren’t everything.

Hypothetically, let’s say your website ranks #1 on Google for a very competitive term in your industry. Let’s also say that 85% of visitors who see your #1 listing click through to your website (this would be extremely high by the way). Now what?

When visitors land on your website, what should they do next?

Before you ask, “how can we get first page rankings on Google?”, ask yourself (or your marketing department, or your CEO) these questions:

1. What is the goal of our website?
   Hence, when a visitor lands on your website, what should they do next? Sign up for a newsletter, buy a product, share your content?
2. What is our content strategy?
   Without content, there are no rankings essentially. How often will you update the content on your website? How often will you add fresh content to your website? Who will write and add the content? Is our content original and relevant?
3. Do we understand what our visitors want?
   Do you know which search phrases your visitors will use to search for similar products or services? Do we know what they expect when they land on our site?
4. What makes our site better than our competitors?
   In other words, what makes your site unique?

Again, stop trying to achieve a number one slot on Google. Instead, spend your time and effort on what really matters … the visitor experience.

The SEO industry is all aflutter with Google’s latest algorithm change that is intended to wipe out sites that are suspect to be link and content farms. Google says: “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”

Google also states: “At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” What Google has not addressed here is how they are going to handle sites, specifically large brands, that participate in link or content farms.

In February alone, brands like JC Penney and Overstock.com got their hands smacked by Google for unethical linking practices. While JC Penney’s SEO agency was definitely steering them in the wrong direction by purchasing spammy links, Overstock.com was actually quite inventive in their link buying scheme. Heck, never mind college students, if Overstock.com gave me a product discount just for including a link to their site with a keyword as anchor text, I’d be tempted too. But I digress.

Link farms and content farms have been around for years. Google has always publicly warned site owners that if they participate in black hat SEO tactics, that their site may get “punished” and banned from search results. But not since BMW’s “doorway pages” scheme of 2006 has there been such an uproar.

So why now Google? Could it be that Google is trying to save face from the recent antitrust investigations? Or the claims that they promoted “Doodle-for-Google” to get kid’s social security numbers?

It just seems to me that this latest algorithm change comes at a time when Google is under scrutiny for multiple reasons. Is this Google’s version of crisis management? You decide.

I often hear stories from frustrated Marketing Managers who are responsible for SEO for the company website. They’re constantly asked by their CEO why their website is not ranking on Google and why website traffic has not increased, and so on and so on.

Most recently I visited a client who has multiple marketers responsible for optimizing different portions of the corporate website. These marketers have to report back each month to their department heads with stats on keyword rankings and traffic to their specific web pages. Month after month, they are frustrated to see that traffic from Google is very low.

During the meeting I clicked through some pages of their website, looked at their Google Analytics, and did a few keyword searches. It was clear that the website had taken a back seat to other priorities. The marketing team even admitted that they push SEO to the bottom of their ever growing task list.

If your company also operates this way, here are my top 5 reasons why businesses should outsource SEO:

1. SEO Agency’s make optimizing your website a priority.
   SEO is a process with many different moving parts. While SEO isn’t hard to do, it is time consuming. It may take your marketing team months to write a few title tags. While by hiring a dedicated SEO Agency, you can rest easy knowing that your website SEO will take top priority each month.
2. SEO Agency’s keep abreast of important search engine updates that may affect your websites performance.
   Google makes over 500 updates to their algorithm each year. Some of the updates are minuscule, while others are major and may affect how your website ranks in search engines. Just look at the May Day update, Google Caffeine, and Personalized Search.
3. Your Marketing team doesn’t have time to learn SEO.
   Search engine optimization is an evolving industry. New or improved techniques are discovered all the time. Your marketing team may have learned the basics of SEO, but probably won’t have time to learn the advanced techniques. SEO agencies stay abreast of all the current tactics that can benefit your website.
4. Your Marketing team does not have interest in learning SEO.
   I’ve been doing SEO now for 10 years. SEO is what I love to do – yes, I’m a nerd like that. I was once an in-house marketing person who was responsible for SEO. I happened to really enjoy it and made it my career. However, I’ve met so many marketers who hate SEO, they just do it because it’s one of their responsibilities. Hence, the company’s website performance suffers for it.
5. Your company will save money and see an increase in ROI by outsourcing SEO.
   Seriously, you will. According to Indeed.com, the average salary of a Marketing Communications Manager is $66k/yr. On average, a one-year SEO campaign with an agency could cost anywhere between $12k – $36k or higher, depending on target geographical location, competition level, industry and other factors. When you figure in your cost per lead, etc., you will soon see your ROI is greater with an SEO agency.

Outsourcing SEO may not make sense for every business. However, it does make sense if you find yourself in a situation like my client… too many cooks in the kitchen and no recipe to follow.

For all of you who could not make it to the Inbound Marketing Summit 2010 last week, I was a participant on the “Driving More Qualified Leads into Your Funnel” on day 2. Chris Brogan lead the discussion for the panel that included myself (Patti Fousek), Mike Damphouse the CEO/CMO of Green Leads, Benjamin Diggles the Agency Channel Sales of Webtrends,  and Bernie Brogan the CEO of Find and Convert.

The CreativeMind gang is back from the Inbound Marketing Summit 2010 (IMS) which took place October 6th and 7th at Gillette Stadium in Foxoboro, MA. IMS is the brain child of Chris Brogan, Justin Levy, and Colin Bower of New Marketing Labs.

This was my second time attending and speaking at IMS. I have to say, each year just keeps getting better and better. While last year seemed to focus on big brands and B2C, this year was chock full of great information for B2B companies. Here are the top 5 lessons learned for B2B marketers.

1. Don’t be afraid to engage.
   For the past two days I kept hearing  the buzz word “engage”. Scott Stratten (@unmarketing on Twitter) told a great story of how he gained 10,000 followers on Twitter in 30 days. How did he do it? He engaged with his followers and tweeted about 7,000 times in those 30 days. Now we all can not be as aggressive as Scott with our Twitter engagement strategy (and he doesn’t suggest it, either), however, we can get over our fear of meeting new people and start conversing. Those that do not engage their audience are those that won’t get anything out of social media.
2. Make useful stuff for free.
   No one likes filling out forms to get stuff.  Why not offer whitepapers on your website for free? There are plenty of ways to generate leads by those who download your free whitepaper.
3. Social Media is about building relationships and trust.
   Social media is about being “social” and building relationships and trust. Social media is not about broadcasting your message with the hopes that someone will buy from you. People buy from those they trust. If you’re pushing sales on Twitter, then you’re not doing it right.
4. Write great content.
   While you may have heard this tip before, ask yourself “are we writing really great content?” People share unique, they don’t share “meh” (thanks Mr. Unmarketing).
5. Think outside the box when it comes to lead generation.
   Many B2B companies focus on generating leads with a PPC campaign, then they wonder why their leads aren’t qualified. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t run PPC campaigns, but you should experiment with tools that can reach your target market better and see if it works for you. Try answering questions on LinkedIn, or running a LinkedIn paid ad. Or maybe a Facebook ad would work for you. The point is, social media generates warm leads. Try thinking outside the box the next time your boss says, “run a PPC campaign for this.”

Were you at IMS10? What lessons did you learn?

Google Instant, released a few weeks back, has received lots of mixed reviews. Some hate it, some love it, while some are still undecided. Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with Google Instant. Here’s why.

Why I hate Google Instant

1. Seeing the search results page (SERP) change three or four times as I type makes me dizzy.
2. I don’t like it when anyone (even Google) tries to predict what’s on my mind.
3. Patience is a virtue, even for search.
4. The possibility that GI will increase impressions, hence lowering click-through-rate annoys me.

Why I love Google Instant

1. No longer need to hit “enter” on the keyboard – the search results are right there.
2. It’s super fast.
3. It gives me something to do when I’m bored.

What do you think of Google Instant?

Mike McDonald of Web Pro News spoke with Vanessa Fox, founder of Nine by Blue, and Avinash Kaushik, Google’s analytics evangelist at SMX West in Santa Clara. Both spoke about how real-time search and social search affects marketers.

What does this all mean for marketers?

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