Content is King on the Internet

There is little else to say - on the web, content is king. In the interests of not leaving you with a blog entry of 10 words, let’s look at why.

Before we begin, for the purposes of this article, content means well researched, well-written and identifiable web copy and images.

Web content is a commodity. It is the main ingredient of the product offered by a growing number of companies. Search engines, social media sites and web directories that is, all of which need content to survive.

Pretend you started a search engine. As with any other business, the first task is to determine your product. That’s easy: search results. Step one done. Your products are the search results that your engine produces when a surfer enters a keyword.

Step two is to identify your market, or potential customers. Easy again: web surfers. Step two done. (This is so easy. I wonder why everyone doesn’t start a search engine or social media site – or did I speak too soon?) Your customers are internet searchers and you want as many of them as possible to use your search engine.

If your engine produces pertinent, high quality results for your customers, they will be happy and more likely to use your engine again; and maybe they will tweet about it.

If your engine produces poor search results, your customers may be confused or frustrated. When that happens, not only will they tweet about it, they will devote entire entries about it in their blogs and start a “Hate Your Search Engine” community on Facebook. The bad vibe will go viral and you will be out of business by teatime.

That’s why content is king on the web.

(Well, it's one reason anyway.)

By Stephen Da Cambra

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

Business Networking on the Net

Business networking is as old as business itself. It used to be called “rubbing elbows” or “working the room”, but it was all networking before the term became common.

Being a network, the internet is an great place for business networking – but you wouldn’t know it by how long it’s taken many of us to come to the realization. While LinkedIn, a business-oriented networking site, beat Facebook to the web by almost a year, it never had a chance against its more “social” rival and others, including MySpace and Twitter, which blew by LinkedIn in popularity after only two years.

Online networking is an important part of any business's internet marketing and LinkedIn is as good a place as any to start. A good example is Charlotte Business Professionals. In June, 2008, Jason McKinstry opened a LinkedIn account from his office in Charlotte, NC. While things were slow in the beginning, he began receiving messages from other LinkedIn members in town. Jason decided to start a LinkedIn group to bring together all of his Charlotte business contacts. One year later, the Charlotte Business Professionals LinkedIn group has over 4,000 members, monthly face-to-face meetings and has just launched their own website – www.charlottebp.com.

Fortunately, if you prefer to Tweet rather than link, social networking sites are not just for finding out your mother is getting her hair styled right now. Business groups and networks – and opportunities – exist on every major networking site. There might even be a networking site devoted to your industry or interests.

For most users, online networking success doesn’t just happen by joining a site. Networking requires action. In fact, it usually requires two actions: a) finding contacts, and b) being found by contacts.

When you join a network, you should actively search out those with whom you are most likely to make a connection. If you’re a real estate agent, you might want to search for mortgage brokers or lawyers. When you spot them, make contact.

Being found means developing a web profile that makes it easy for other searchers to find you and know what you are about. That way you are more likely to attract the sorts of contacts you want to pursue.

Finding and being found – that’s networking on the ‘net.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Keyword Wars - Episode 1

Keywords deserve more attention than the brief discussion on the long and short tail in our last post. If you do any business on the internet, or believe any of your customers use the internet to find your company, the more you know about keywords the more you will be able to take advantage of their power to attract customers.

Keywords are the words and terms web surfers use to find information on the internet. Studies indicate that surfers respond better to information that repeats the keywords they used to find it. In other words, if someone enters the term “red tissue paper kites” into a search engine, he or she will be more likely to choose a result that delivers exactly that keyword term.In addition, search engines will present results that most closely fit the search term. So, if you sold kites and created content and link information for your web site using the term “red tissue paper kites”, and your competition didn’t, your site would be listed at or near the top of the results – and the customer would be more likely to choose your link because it’s near the top of the rankings and it reflects exactly what he is looking for.

The big question is – what are the words and terms that potential customers use to find companies and products like yours on the internet? Search engines want you to succeed on the internet because, if you do, you will likely spend more on internet marketing. To help you get started, there are a number of free keyword search tools, such as Google Adwords Keyword Search Tool, that you can use to find the search terms that relate to your company, product and market segment.

That’s the start. Keywords are very powerful tools and your competition has the same access and ability to use them as you do. Depending on your business segment, keyword competition can be fierce – and costly. Fortunately, there are ways to put keywords to work for your internet marketing without necessarily breaking the bank. Using the long tail keywords we discussed in the last post is one of them.

In Our Next Episode:

Luke finds Leia in grave danger – what keywords will he use on his PDA to find a solution?!

By Stephen Da Cambra

Long & Short Tail Tales

Search keywords are hot commodities. As we all learn more about how our customers shop on the internet, keywords open a link between seller and buyer.

Keywords take the guesswork out of your internet marketing. Enter the name of your product or industry into a keyword search tool and ~ * poof * ~ you have all the words and terms your potential customers use to find your business or product on the internet. Use those words and terms in your internet marketing and watch your conversion rates go up.

That’s the good news. The bad news is: you are not alone in knowing the good news. Every day, more businesses learn more about how their prospects use the internet and the value of keywords. Depending on your industry, countless other companies could be creating web content using exactly the same keywords as you. Pity the poor shoe store trying to get noticed by internet customers for terms like “shoes” and “footwear” – imagine the number of other companies trying to get ranked on search engines for the same keywords. Loyal readers of this blog will know that if you are not on the first page of search results – a total of 10 spots – you are as good as invisible on the internet.

The Long and Short of It

Luckily, there’s more good news. While there might be lots of competition for rankings on the most popular keywords in your market segment, there are many other keywords that, while not as popular, still produce results. Their lack of popularity makes it easier to get good rankings for them.

In our shoe store example, while a Google search for “shoes” produced 302,000,000 results, a search for “leather sandals” got only 10,000,000 results.

If the keyword popularity for any given industry is graphed, it would probably look a little like the image above.

Tale of The Short Tail – Relatively few keywords enjoying lots of search popularity. Getting a good ranking when your customers use these keywords will get results, but it will cost more and take more time.

Tale of The Long Tail – Lots of keywords with fewer searches. In some cases, ranking can be had for long tail keywords without too much effort – and for a lower cost.

The Moral of the Story

Chasing short tail keywords can have a huge payoff, but they carry a heavy price tag. Similar results can be had by ranking for a number of different long tail keywords – for less cost and less effort.

The End

(Not really "The End", keyword marketing is, so far, a never ending story about finding out as much as you can about your customers’ internet shopping habits.)

By Stephen Da Cambra

Get Committed (Before Starting a Blog)

Straight up: blogging requires a lot of time. If you cannot devote time daily to writing and maintaining a blog, you should rethink the tactic.

However, if you make the time commitment, the rewards can include becoming an authority in your industry, influencing buying decisions and - let’s not lose sight of why we do anything in business - an improved bottom line.

So, before you move forward on a blog, you need to know how much time it will take. Different industries and niches will require different commitments. If you want a real estate blog to be noticed, prepare for a significant daily grind for a couple years because of high internet competition.

Fortunately, most business sectors aren’t as competitive as real estate. Many SMEs do business locally and can tailor their blog to their geographic market to help cut down the blogging competition – and the amount of time needed to be noticed.

In other words, a blog about “real estate in Toronto” will get noticed locally in Toronto long before a blog about “real estate” will get noticed anywhere. If your business deals only locally, your blog doesn’t need to compete with one in Brazil. (If you are in Brazil, why haven’t you subscribed?!)

If your blog gets noticed sooner, it means you will have a smaller time commitment. But don’t think that focusing your blog locally, or otherwise, is an easy way out of a time commitment. The best blogs, regardless of industry, subject or purpose, are tended to daily.

In addition to actually writing the blog, you need to budget time for research. Sure, the first few entries might roll off the keyboard easily because you know your stuff and there’s a lot to tell. But, while everything you know about your business can be written up in your blog, it is the low hanging fruit of blogging. Sooner or later you’ll need to spend more time researching your posts, reading other blogs and corresponding with bloggers, customers and colleagues to get the fuel you need to keep your blog burning brightly - and getting attention.

Not only will a blog help you become an influential authority and improve your bottom line – it will probably help you learn a lot more about your business.

By Stephen Da Cambra

An Internet Search Story

When did TV remote units start controlling functions on your set that you can’t do without the remote? Lose the original and you will need a universal remote that costs more than the TV is worth – and pray that one of the programming codes works for your TV brand and model - to get all your functionality back.

Or, even better (and cheaper), you can search the internet for a replacement of the original remote. How clever I am is that? Find the model number (how do they come up with those – TVR45620pdq8pie4U?), enter it into Google and go get the remote.

We’re not sure if there is a strange trend rippling through the TV remote control corner of the web, but they could use a few lessons in web design. It makes the problem of choosing from unknown online suppliers much worse.

Credibility symbols - BBB, Verisign, etc., - are scarce, they only want online orders, so you won’t find phone numbers, and addresses are hard to come by too. Faced with an absence of the usual measures of trust, you need to find other means of choosing the right online supplier - even if it means checking out the dreaded “About Us” or “FAQ” page.

Sometimes “About Us” and “FAQs” are a waste of your time. Will “About Us” ever say anything other than how incredibly customer driven the company is? FAQs are hard to wade through, even with search functions, and are often filled with trite bits like “Do You Sell Remotes for TVs?”.

However, in situations where customers are unsure of what they are buying, or with whom they are dealing, “About Us” and “FAQs” can win them over.

Check out the “FAQ” at newremotecontrol.com. The plain straightforward language (no marketing speak), in response to exactly the sorts of questions a user might have, shows that this company probably does what it says. Newremotecontrols.com won the purchase, even though their remote was more expensive.

By Stephen Da Cambra