3 Deadly
Search Engine Marketing Sins
3 Deadly Search Engine Marketing Sins
My inbox this week provided glaring examples of three all too common
rookie search engine marketing mistakes. What you could call three
deadly search engine marketing sins. Starting with
===> Inadequate Keyword Research
Hey! If you’re going to spend hours developing a web site,
isn’t it smart to invest some time to insure you’re
focusing on the most traffic laden keywords?
Especially when typically the plural form of a keyword phrase generates
way more traffic than the singular form. For example "dog dishes"
rather than "dog dish".
Yet just this week I was asked to look at a site that had focused
on the singular form. Evidently the owner hadn’t bothered
to do any digging to make sure that was their best keyword move.
Look, you’ll never know for sure unless you research it.
Besides, you can access Wordtracker, the tool of choice for what?
a measly $7 a day.
Even better here’s a quick and dirty way to get the most
out of that day.
Search for your target keyword in Google.
Visit the top ranking sites. Use the "View Source" feature
of Internet Explorer to check out the keyword meta tag of each site.
You're looking for a site listing lots of keywords there. Do this
with each of the top listings or until you find one stuffed to the
gills with keywords. Ah-ha! There’s your starting point for
your list of likely keyword phrases.
Repeat with a couple of other sites and you’ll soon have
a long list of candidates to check out in Wordtracker.
Enhance your list further using this tool:
http://www.promoteindia.com/keywordtool-beta.htm.
It will give you more keyword ideas from Google and Overture.
Now you’re ready for Wordtracker.
Once you’ve compiled your Wordtracker results, you could
simply sort by KEI and then by searches per day.
That gives you the strongest keywords with the most searches. (And
yes, I realize KEI assumes all search engine listings are of equal
value. But I did say this was "quick and dirty" didn't
I? However if you want another approach that improves on KEI there’s
a spreadsheet available at http://www.seo-works.com/seo-resources/keyword-effectiveness-rank.html)
Anyway, once you're sorted your keywords in some way to highlight
the most profitable, simply take the top 25 on the list and create
content for those first. No, not every one will be a natural born
traffic magnet. But enough of them will be to get the ball rolling.
Repeat with the next 25. Don’t stop until you have at least
100 pages of hot content.
Remember, two or three word keyword phrases are usually your best
bets. And I really like keyword phrases that are actually several
keyword phrases in one. For example "irish setter dog dishes"
gives "irish setter", "irish setter dog", "dog",
"dog dishes", "setter dog dishes".
===> Site Bloat
Twice this week I was asked to look at sites that would have let
me read War and Peace while waiting for them to come up. And no
visitor is going to have a copy of that handy.
To avoid losing any precious visitors lose the huge graphics. One
of the sites had a graphic 501K in size! No wonder it took nearly
two minutes to load up on a 56K modem.
Then too lose the Flash - unless you have a very good reason for
using it. Even then lose the Flash.
If you’re wondering how your site's download time measures
up test it here: http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm/
It won’t cost anything to find out. But a slow loading site
can cost you plenty. Because as the Net Mechanics follow up reports
says, it's a good idea to keep your page load times under about
12 seconds on a 28.8 modem. Otherwise your visitors will be wearing
out the back button trying to escape.
===> Too Few Links
Did you know links can account for up to 80% of your success
with Google? Yet someone else complained to me about how
much work it took to get them.
Well doh! Ever think that maybe that’s why (in part) Google
assigns so much value to links? Because you can’t quite as
easily game links as you can on page content? Meaning you actually
have to work to get links. Both by having link worthy content and
by actively seeking them out on a regular basis.
It’s a given that most niches require you have a healthy
collection of links to be competitive. Yet if you’re lucky
enough to be in a niche that doesn’t, but you do, then you
can easily dominate those rankings.
Anyway in a nutshell you can easily avoid these three search engine
sins. Do your keyword homework. Keep your pages on a strict diet.
And don't forget link up with as many other quality sites as you
can.
Do all that and you’re well on your way to search engine
success. Ignore this advice and you’re, well you know, your
Google goose is probably cooked. Leaving you perpetually stuck in
Google purgatory.
About the Author How much is more traffic
worth to your business? Take John Gergye’s Search Engine Quiz
and get a special report "Coming Out On Top" with 49 tools
that make it easy to get more traffic. http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/search-engine-quiz.shtml
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