by Todd Bailey

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I haven’t been in Google

by Nick Stamoulis

One of the most common mistakes I see website owners and marketers make when launching their first SEO campaign is that they let search volume dictate which keywords they should target. I can completely understand the rationale behind their thinking–if more people are searching for keyword X that means more visitors for my site which means more money for my company. Unfortunately SEO is not that cut and dry. The higher of a search volume a keyword has the more competition there is for it, which means it’s going to be much harder and take a lot longer to rank well in the search engines for. It’s also important to remember that just because a particular keyword has a high search volume that doesn’t mean it’s the right keyword for you.

For instance, “IT services” is a wildly popular keyword with over 45 million searches each month. However, “IT services” is also an incredibly broad keyword and might not be the most accurate keyword for your website. What kind of IT services does your business offer? Do you cater to small businesses or global enterprises? Do you offer IT consulting services or maybe you specialize in certain software platforms? Are you local service provider or do you have clients all over the country? More specific keywords like “managed IT services” (which still gets over 60k searches each month) might send less traffic to your site, but they will also drive a more targeted visitor. The more targeted the visitor the better chance you have of converting them.

Broad keywords with large search volumes are typically used at the beginning of someone’s buy cycle when they are just beginning to research their options. They want to cast as wide a net as possible and will subsequently narrow it down the more they learn. Someone who searches for “IT services” at the beginning of their buy cycle might end up looking for “small business IT service providers in New York” by the time they are ready to buy. While targeting “IT services” might drive more traffic to your site, you’re not driving the quality traffic you need to grow your online business.

Think about it like this–let’s say that after thorough keyword research you added 20 new long tail keywords to your website. Even if each of those keywords only drives 5 unique visitors to your site each month that’s 100 more highly-qualified visitors that have never heard of your brand or been to your website before. Those 100 visitors are much more likely to convert because they found your site through a very specific search phrase. On the flip side, a visitor that found your site through a broader keyword (even though they can still convert) might not be the kind of visitor you are looking for. For instance, an SEO client of mine had visitors finding their site by searching for “software.” While it’s great that they were getting any traffic from such a broad and competitive keyword, “software” could really mean just about anything. The majority of the visitors that came to their site from “software” weren’t good leads for their company and clogged up the sales funnel.

Many site owners think that keyword research is a one-and-done process, but that’s not the case! No one is required to get their keyword selection right the first time (it took me years to really hone in the right keywords for my site and my audience!) but you shouldn’t assume that the keyword with the highest search volume is automatically the best one for your site.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Read the original here:
A High Search Volume Doesn’t Mean It’s the Right Keyword for You

by Stoney deGeyter

Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who’s left?

Repete? Ok, Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who’s left?

Repete? How about we just move on…

In marketing, when something works it gets repeated and repeated again and again. Never letting a good campaign go to waste, imitators will jump on board and drive it into the ground until it’s no longer effective.

We’ve seen this with the Got Milk? campaigns. It wasn’t long before we started seeing imitators touting got sand, got rice, got mold, got Jesus and even got poop! (Like, who doesn’t?)

The same thing happens with TV and movies. Someone breaks an “edginess” barrier and it’s soon a race to see how soon it can be topped without losing advertisers or getting crushed by the FCC. It’s hard to believe there was once a time when it was taboo to say “damn” in a theatrical movie, or that depicting a married couple in the same bed was just not something you did on TV!

It’s inevitable that yesterday’s “big thing” is today’s normal thing.

What’s new is old again

Online marketing runs on the same principles. While solid SEO and link-building concepts remain universal, there are a number of strategies of years past that no longer work today. Why? Because they have been done to death, rendering them almost completely ineffective.

Remember reciprocal link pages? Mass article submissions? Mass directory submissions? Comment spamming? Link wheels? These are all but virtually dead, dying or soon to be declining link-building strategies that have been used, abused and discarded in the cyber junkpile of once successful SEO strategies.

All this shows the danger of jumping on any single “trick” when pursuing the holy grail of SEO: search engine rankings. These tricks often turn into nothing more than short-term gimmicks, and sites fall down just as quickly as they rose up in the search results.

In online marketing, there are many paths to the same goal. Many will work for most, some may work for all, and others only work for a period of time. Many business owners find one strategy that works and they stick to it, even long past its usefulness. Not every marketing strategy works 100% the time. Those that put all their marketing eggs into a single basket find themselves with egg on their faces when that one strategy comes crashing to the ground with the changing tide of online marketing strategies.

But I get it. We do what we are comfortable with and venturing outside of that is the unknown. The unknown means taking risks and possibly experiencing losses. But it also means possible rewards, and that’s what businesses need to be looking at.

Developing long-term strategies that get results

In any kind of marketing, its good to have multiple strategies at play at any given time. Putting aside the whole concept of marketing to specific customer personas, it’s not a good idea to put all of your time, money or effort into a single marketing approach. I can easily make an argument for investing not only in SEO and link building, but also in social media, PPC, content, analytics, etc.

Focusing all your marketing efforts onto a single avenue of growth can be effective for a time. However, marketing diversification gives you more opportunity to be even more effective.

If you’re limiting your marketing efforts to one or even two avenues, it might be time to branch out. Look at other successful marketing avenues and see how you can venture out a bit. Look at specific tactics and campaigns and see what makes sense for both short and long-term success.

Sometimes it takes trial and error to find strategies that work. Your first attempt isn’t always the best attempt, and it should never be your final attempt. You can always piggyback on what others are doing, just don’t mimic exactly. Use others’ success to build successful campaigns unique to you.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Here is the original post:
Those Who Don’t Learn SEO are Doomed to Repeat It

by Todd Bailey

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