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| What Small Business Clients Need to Know About Keywords and SEO Posted: 13 Jul 2011 04:22 AM PDT Posted by Austadpro This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. OK, so I've worked-on or managed well over 100 SEO campaigns over the last few years and a common trend I've noticed is that many small business clients don't really understand how choosing the right keywords affects and defines an SEO campaign and what it takes to deliver results. Let us start off with an example. Say you're a landscaping company in Central Jersey where the bulk of your business comes from Landscape Construction (walls, patios, driveways, etc). What keywords do you want to rank for? Landscaping can cover many things: Landscaping, Landscaper, Landscapers, Landscape Design, Landscape Construction, Landscape Maintenance, Lawn Care, Plantings (Bushes/Shrub/Trees/Flowers), Nurseries, Hardscapes (Patios/Pool Decks/Driveways/Walkways/Stairs/Walls), Water Features/Fountains, Recreation (Golf green/tee/Bocce/Horseshoes/etc), Drainage, and on and on and on. Now, unless you have a huge budget and a team of people working for you, it's unlikely that you can try to rank for all of these terms. And just because your company can do all them, doesn't mean you need to rank for all of them if you specialize in a particular area. Since each of these words are not geo-targeted with a location (such as New Jersey Landscaper) it means you are searching nationally. Doing a search in Google for Landscapers brought back 11,000,000 search results. That's 11 million web pages you have to compete with. Can it be done? Yes, but there are factors you have to consider if you expect your SEO to deliver this.
So, before you even choose your keyword term, you should decide on your target area. It can be a town, city, county, region, state, or another geographic name. By geo-targeting your keyword term with a location you narrow down your customer base to who is likely to buy from you and decrease the number of competitors to deal with. This ultimately means faster results and lower costs. Keyword Research Let's look at some keyword research to get an idea of what we're in for. Right now I just want to show how different keywords terms and different locations affect the difficulty of the SEO campaign. Google provides the first three columns of results. The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool provides the difficulty percentages.
NOTE: Google Search Results gives the total search results, intitle and inanchor gives the search results with keywords in the titles and anchor text and shows your likely competition. SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Score shows the competitiveness of the keyword. You can see by this information that Landscapers get more search results and is more competitive than Landscape Construction. Even though landscape construction gets fewer search results, it would likely provide better traffic results and conversion rates since it is more specific to what our example company does, which is landscape construction. Once you add on "NJ" you really cut down on 'search noise' and have a better idea of who your audience is. It also decreases the difficulty by a good amount. If you swap "NJ" for "Somerset County" in NJ, you lower the difficulty again. Each time you narrow down your focus you can expect faster results and lower costs. A keyword difficulty percentage of 26-50 means it's moderately competitive. A keyword difficulty percentage over 50 means it's highly competitive. The higher the percentage and more competitive the keyword, the more it is going to cost and will take to achieve results. Although they can provide a lot of traffic to your website when you rank high for those keywords, getting there is a challenge and will take some time. You will have to wait much longer before you see a return on investment (ROI). Many small businesses don't really have time to wait for large SEO campaigns to develop. It's a better strategy start with a smaller SEO campaign and upgrade as you go. It's a good idea to choose one competitive keyword and then try to rank well for less competitive keywords related to that category and geography. The Benefits of Starting Small It's not uncommon for a client to say, "I don't want to limit my business to a specific area." SEO people understand this and try to accommodate where possible, but it's not always practical. Here are issues you have to deal with if you choose too large an area:
You will see better results if you start by ranking locally and then expand to more competitive markets. Begin by ranking well for your town, then County, then Central Jersey. Once you rank well for Central Jersey it's much easier to gain rankings for NJ than if you started with NJ initially. This enables you to keep your strong search results for your less competitive (and more localized) keywords providing you more reach and web visibility. If you choose to start statewide first you won't rank as well (or at all) for all those local searches. And if most people who search for your product or service are searching on a local level, such as they do with landscaping, you may be missing out on high quality leads. The same goes for the keyword term itself. By optimizing for less competitive, but similar terms (landscape stone wall construction, landscape construction water drainage, etc), you make it easier to rank for the more difficult term landscape construction. Consider this analogy: SEO is like preparing for a marathon. You need to compete in shorter races before you can compete in the marathon. It takes time to build these campaigns. It may take months; it may take years. Switching Keyword Terms When you start an SEO campaign, it's important that you know what you want to rank for. Choose a keyword term that is specific to your business. If you start an SEO campaign with one keyword term in mind, and then change your term to something different, you may be wasting all the effort and money that was spent on your campaign already. Take our landscape construction company. If, in six months, they tell you that they mostly do landscape maintenance rather than landscape construction and want to change the focus of the campaign, it will have wasted much of your previous efforts. Here's why:
Each of these is time consuming and costly. Whatever results you achieved in those six months will likely take another six months to achieve with the new set of keywords, if their difficultly is equivalent. For keywords that are more competitive it will take even longer to see similar results. Looking at the numbers below, that is exactly the case for landscaping company. Landscape maintenance is much more competitive on the state and national level than landscape construction. NOTE: Google Search Results gives the total search results, intitle and inanchor gives the search results with keywords in the titles and anchor text and shows your likely competition. SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Score shows the competitiveness of the keyword. Changing Geography Any affects changing your keyword terms might have is basically the same affects you can expect if you changed your geography qualifier. The affects will be even more dramatic if the new geography is more difficult. If you choose a less competitive (and a more localized) geography, the issues are easier to overcome, depending on how the SEO campaign was being executed. Changing NJ to Somerset County NJ will take the work you've already did for NJ and it count towards Somerset County NJ. From that point on it shouldn't take long to see good results because there has already been work done that is relative to the first campaign (although not exactly the same) and it is less competitive. The biggest downfall to this is that you waited six months before you got on track, so your return on investment (ROI) has been delayed. If you change from NJ to NY, it could be considered a whole different campaign, especially if the new geography is more difficult to rank for. Remember, changing your geography is the same as changing your keyword term. The only time you should really change your set of keywords is if you realized that you chose the wrong keywords from the start. It makes no sense staying with something because the rankings and traffic are good, but it doesn't provide you with any increased business or it brings the wrong type of customer to your website. Only you can tell your SEO person what your business does specifically and what your goals are. Once they have that information they can research the right keywords and work on your campaign. This is why knowing what your business does and what you want to get out of SEO is so important; it will help you choose the correct keywords and geography at the start. Don't waste time and money trying to figure it out. Adding another Keyword Term or Geography Ok, so you've had an SEO campaign running for about a year and it's showing results for Landscape Construction NJ and other terms like Landscape Contractor NJ,and showing up in local search results as well. Now that that's done, you can move onto other words. Wait... What? DONE? No, it's not done. Without continuing an active SEO campaign you allow your competitors to catch up and overtake your search results. This, along with a drop off of relative links being indexed by search engines can work against you. Adding a different set of keyword terms to your list without upgrading and spending more for SEO means that you're splitting the attention of your SEO person. A new set of keywords means new research, re-optimizing your website to include the new keywords, new content and new pages, and many more links. If the new keywords are different enough, it could take longer to see the same type of results you saw earlier, especially if the difficultly is equivalent. This is because you've divided up your SEO person's time between the old set of keywords and the new set of keywords. The proper way to accomplish this is to upgrade your plan to include the new set of keywords. This way your SEO person can increase the amount of time spent working on your campaign. They can spend the proper amount of time researching, strategizing, and executing your new set of keywords while increasing your reach and web visibility for your initial set of keywords. Conclusion Make sure you have the right expectations of what SEO can provide for you. There is no doubt that SEO is a long-term investment that will pay for itself and more over its lifetime. Don't waste time or money SEOing for the wrong keywords; know you business and what your goals are. Be realistic about the geographies you are trying to rank for. Popular areas will be more competitive; expect to pay higher prices for these competitive SEO campaigns. It shouldn't take longer than a month to see improvements, but SEO takes time. The harder the campaign it, the longer it will be before you get a return on your investment.       |
| Blog Design for Killer SEO - Infographic Posted: 12 Jul 2011 03:17 PM PDT Posted by Cyrus Shepard Before SEOmoz was a business, it was a blog. In fact, blogging is at the heart of everything this company stands for. A blog is so much more than a pageview generator. It speaks in your voice, provides a gateway to your community, acts as your moral center and facilitates communication with the rest of the world. And done right, it's an unbeatable marketing tool. As Blogpulse reports over 165 million identified blogs on the internet, it's safe to say that very few are "done right." I asked my wife, a terrific graphic designer, if she would create an infographic combining SEO and blog design. You probably know someone with a blog who can benefit from this information. Bookmark it and use it as a reference. It presents classic fundamentals as well as tips based on cutting edge research.  Embed this image: 1. Beauty CountsWith all due respect to Arngren.net, the overall design of your site is the first thing visitors see and it significantly influences bounce rate, pageviews and conversions. People who get scared by the idea of professional design often pay the price with a fast, cheap and mass-produced layout. Professional design doesn’t have to include the word expensive. For a "trifecta" of quality inexpensive design, I often use the following:
Whatever design resource you choose, the goal is to set yourself apart while enticing your visitors to stay. 2. Search BoxIt should go without saying that every site needs a prominent search box. Not only does it provide a better experience for your visitors, but you can also mine the data for keyword discovery and user behavior. Your search box can be the most valuable element of your layout. Most blogging platforms come pre-equipped with a search box function. Google Custom Search is a stellar option used by SEOmoz. 3. RSS is AliveEvery time a major website kills off its RSS feed, the blogosphere writes its obituary. In truth, adoption of RSS feeds has expanded every year, as shown by these surprising statistics from BuiltWith.com. RSS feeds not only encourage repeat visits, but the visitors are likely your best converters, brand evangelists, and self-motivated link builders. 4. BreadcrumbsMaybe because we call them “crumbs,” people forget how important they are. Breadcrumbs perform several essential functions including:
When I'm stuck for creative breadcrumb ideas, I pull out this fantastic guide from Smashing Magazine. 5. NavigationMany development meetings and major wars have been fought over the “right” way to structure a website’s information architecture through navigation. Solve the problem by keeping it simple with these two basic rules for useful and optimized navigation.
Although Google has gotten better at crawling Javascript links, classic HTML/CSS links work most consistently for both users and passing link juice. 6. ImagesOne of the things I’ve noticed about the recent Google Panda updates is that many of the sites hardest hit contain tons of auto-generated content that lack unique images. Think EzineArticles or consider this screenshot from wiseGeek about Red Pandas. The stock image on the left appears on several other pages across the site, isn’t contained within the main body of text, isn’t topical and contains no alt text. Danny Dover made a great video worth checking out about optimizing images. The best thing you can do is include rich media every chance you get. 7. Keep It Above the FoldStatCounter Global Stats reports that the average browser height is 768 pixels. By placing your best content above this line, you ensure visitors see it without scrolling and increase the chance that search engines will crawl both your content and links. We’ve seen evidence that Google places less emphasis on content further down the page and sometimes seems to ignore it altogether. Test whether content falls above the 768 pixel height using this this tool from Google Labs. 8. Link to Your Best ContentTake a look at any given page on Wikipedia. Although I wouldn’t recommend going to this extreme, Wikipedia is master of internal linking. Too often people write brilliant blog posts, then fail to ever link to it again. Eventually the post falls out of visibility as it becomes lost in a backlog of archives. The best practice is to place links within the body of your text when it is relevant and helpful to the reader. Other, somewhat less effective ways to link to your best content include:
9. Don’t Overdo LinksLinks may be good, but too many dilute link juice and may cause crawling issues. Without sufficient PageRank, Google only crawls so many links per page. How many is too many? It varies, but 100 is a good rule of thumb as explained here by Dr. Pete. If you do have a lot of links, place your important ones in the body of text. These carry more weight, and search engines may devalue links found in the header, sidebar and footer. 10. Watch Your Ad SpaceOne of the most interesting findings from the 2011 Ranking Factors was the negative correlation between rankings and Google AdSense metrics. This in itself isn’t proof that ad spaces hurt your rankings, but couple this with the fact that a large number of sites hit by the recent Google Panda updates contained a large number of prominent ads above the fold, and you begin to see the damaging potential if overdone. Including ads on your blog is fine and even encouraged as the most legitimate way to monetize your content. Regardless, don’t let ads overshadow your original content in either placement or raw pixel area. 11. Encourage CommentsAt SEOmoz, we love comments! They provide one of the best, most prolific forms of UGC (User Generated Content) that we know of. Content generated by comments not only helps you to rank for long tail keyword traffic, but websites with lots of user interaction tend to perform better with search engines. A blog without comments is just plain lonely and sad. 12. Sharing for EveryoneThe statistics are staggering. Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook users share 4 billion pieces of digital content everyday on Facebook. This includes photos, videos, blog posts and news stories. Sharing now produces 10% of all Internet traffic. While way behind search, this number continues to grow. New services like Google+ only add to the mix. Test different locations on your blog to find where sharing buttons make the most sense. Don’t neglect them as the landscape changes fast. 13. Test for SpeedThere’s nothing worse than a blog that loads agonizingly slow. A recent study by Geoff Kenyon showed average page load speed to be 2.9 seconds and his findings appear right on the money. Page load times not only affect user experience, but slow sites can see a rankings dip as well. Watch this video to see how Wikipedia loads compared to Amazon. Can your site beat these times? Created by Webpagetest.org Unless you have the Domain Authority of Amazon, take steps to optimize your site for speed. 14. Crawl and ValidateOnce your site is built, you’ll be amazed at how many errors lurk unseen beneath the surface.
Use free tools like Xenu’s Link Sleuth or paid applications like the SEOmoz Web App to check for common SEO problems. Be sure to test your site in different browsers using services such as the Adobe Browser Lab or Browser Shots.
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