Keyword Wars - Episode 2

If you joined us late, in Keyword Wars - Episode 1 we learned that keywords are the words and terms potential customers use to search for your company on the internet. But there is sometimes costly competition for the best keywords and you need to know how to put keywords to work for you without blowing your internet marketing budget.

In Episode 1 and a previous instalment of this blog, we spoke about the advantages of long tail keywords; those keywords that are not necessarily the most popular terms, but, collectively, form a significant proportion of the keywords for your product or business. It’s considerably less expensive to get search engine rankings for long tail keywords.

A large and growing portion of internet searches are local – that is, the searcher is looking for a product or service in their geographic area. About half of local searches include a place name to narrow the search. In other words, a large portion of web searches are for a product or service in a specific location – for example, auto repair in Springfield.

If you were in the auto repair business and wanted to get good rankings for the search term “auto repair”, you would need lot of time and effort (translation: money) because you would be competing with every other auto repair shop in the English speaking world. Unless you had garages in every major market, most of your effort would be wasted because you’d be listed in markets you didn’t service.

By including a location in your search term, you reduce your competition to the local market and reduce your chances of being listed in areas you don’t serve. Best of all, with only local competition to deal with, it’s much less expensive to get ranked for “auto repair Springfield” than simply “auto repair”. A side bonus is, by going for the local keyword term, you improve your ranking for the main keyword term too – “auto repair Springfield” improves your “auto repair” ranking.

Volumes can be written on keywords and putting them to work for your search engine optimization (SEO) and internet marketing efforts. We have touched on a couple ways here, but, if you expect to get business from the web, or to get more business from the web, you will do well to learn more.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Insulate Your Home, Not Your Web Site

We recently finished developing a web site for a customer who, long after he approved designs and layouts, would still point out other sites that he thought had some redeeming feature.

Without fail, within seconds of seeing the other sites, we were able to point out why his site design will be far better at generating business. 

Fortunately, the customer understands that generating new business on the internet means driving traffic to his web site.  He has contracted us to carry out SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click advertising) campaigns, both of which will get him lots of traffic.

So, how can we tell, from only a quick glance at a homepage, that another site will probably not generate as much business as his?  (Even if they do lots of SEO and PPC.)

Our customer’s product helps to insulate homes and that’s what the other sites were doing – OK, they didn’t increase the R-value in anyone’s house - but they insulated their web visitors from a call to action.

None of the other sites had a contact telephone number, or even an email address, plainly visible on the homepage.  There were a few nice designs (some almost as good as ours!), but still, web visitors would have to click on the “Contact Us” page, or scroll deeper in the homepage, to find a number to call or some other way of converting.

These extra steps are like layers of insulation between your customer and the most important information on your site.

The more “insulation” on your site, the less chance you have of converting your hard-earned visitors.

Driving traffic to your site isn’t an end, it’s a beginning.  Once you get them there, you should make it as easy as possible for web site visitors to become customers.

By Stephen Da Cambra

The Shocking Truth About Google Ranking

If you have any interest in internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and/or pay-per-click advertising (PPC), you know how important it is to get a high ranking in search results when customers search the net for companies and products like yours.

An examination of the exact numbers, as published by SEOBook.com, really drives home the point.  Without further delay….

The Distribution Of Clicks According to Search Ranking

          Rank Position      % of Clicks         

1                                                  42.13%                

2                                                        11.9

3                                                     8.5

4                                                         6.06

5                                                        4.92

6                                                        4.05

7                                                       3.41

8                                                         3.01

9                                                       2.85

10                                                     2.9

2^nd page +                10.18

 

While the bare numbers are incredible, a closer look really shows what the difference in moving a single position can mean for your web results.

Right off the top, there is an almost 400% increase in clicks between second and top spot.  Imagine getting four times the web results you get now.

On first glance, the difference between subsequent ranking positions does not seem very profound.  However, when you consider that you would get an immediate 19% increase in clicks if you managed to move your site from seventh to sixth – and a 33% increase from fourth to third, all of a sudden you realize there’s a lot at stake between almost every rank position.

There are two important points to be taken from this information. 

First, if you are not on the first page of search results, you are invisible to 90% of your potential customers (and probably more, because a large percentage of those going to the second page and lower are conducting non-business related research.) 

Second, if you’ve managed to get your site onto the first page that’s good, but you shouldn't stop trying for a higher rank.  You can increase your business exponentially each step you take up the ladder to number one. 

So start climbing!

By Stephen Da Cambra