Basic Search Engine Optimisation That Lasts

Search engine optimisation is neither a dark art nor rocket science. Sustainable SEO relies on keyword savvy content in the right places — “Right words. Right places. Right results.” — and long term link building.

Not SEO Tricks… Keywords They Use

It is not about the latest trick, out-smarting the well-paid brain power behind the engines’ algorithms or exploiting the latest web 2.0 trend before everyone else does.

Search engine optimal website development and promotion is about demonstrating an understanding of a need by using the language those with that need use… The keywords the people with that need type into their favourite search engine.

SEO philosophy brought to mind by two things today:

1. The latest edition of one of my longest running newsletter subscriptions, Jill Whalen’s High Rankings newsletter, pointed me to a recent interview Jill gave where she repeats her consistent line on SEO: “I’d say the biggest mistake is in trying to trick the search engines rather than just fixing your site.“
2. Checking rankings of a site I optimised in late 2003 to find the content had changed little and neither had the top ten rankings for targeted keywords.

I have kept an eye on the site over the years because the job was unusual. The work was confined to content optimisation. No advice was given on site changes beyond recommended meta data and body content changes. And we didn’t even touch on link building strategies.

I reworked some great content they had to include prominent use of keywords and nearly five years later…

Neither SEO Warlock Nor Search Engine Optimisation Genius

Which is not to suggest that I am some kind of warlock or genius — “neither dark art nor rocket science”, remember. I didn’t apply a secret formula or fail-safe keyword density level. I simply tried to describe the products and convey the supporting informational content in a way that both used keywords and talked to needs the target audience was looking to fulfil.

Bottom Line: Trying to trick/influence the technology the search engines’ phd rich campuses produce gets more attention than basic, use keywords people use in content, search engine optimisation but no SMB owner should be worried about algorithms.

[Hmmmm...] Maybe a bit too “me to” but, then again, a point that I really believe needs more attention

Life, Times and Blogging Best Practices

Ooops. 16 days & counting. Time flies when you should be blogging. What is blogging best practice, when comes to posting frequency?

It’s the first issue I raise when the subject of blogging comes up with clients. [With suitably serious look on face] “If you are going to do a blog, you need to be able to sustain it. If you can’t post consistently, then you’re better not starting.”… Um. Mea culpa.

But there is more to best practice than blogging consistently and frequently because, as Hayden Sutherland asserts in his excellent presentation on Corporate Blogging Best Practice posted on www.slideshare.net, “its [sic] not just a ‘Me Too’”.

If I were assessing my blog, as I assess clients’ blogs, I would be noting that leaving a new blog unattended for two weeks wasn’t a good idea.

Failing the best practice test

As it is almost always, it’s a case of “do as I say not as I do”. My goal with this blog was to blog at least three times a week… Well. At least 10 times a month. Again: “Ooops”! It is over two weeks since I last blogged.

What happened? Life happened.

[Warning: excuses of varying legitimacy follow.] It’s been a bad winter for bugs and littlies and toddlers are notoriously toxic. Jo (wife, partner, etc.) went to the doctor with a cough that had hung around for nearly a month and came back with a diagnosis of pneumonia. We flew in Grandmothers from various parts of the country but time became a precious commodity.

Then there was all the other work stuff, the Olympics, other bits and pieces that make us all time poor, the client who offered an opportunity to go heli skiing ;-)… I could and should have posted something. But I fell into the trap of being a little too wedded to a “value not frequency” based blogging strategy.

There is more to blogging best practice than frequency, though.

Listening to a couple of radio show panelists the other day, I nodded along as they agreed there was nothing worse than a blog where posts have a “posting because I should” feel rather than a “posting because I have something to say” feel.

I have already canvassed the ebb and flow of universal insight into web marketing and content. An ebb and flow that influences how often I post because I wait until:

• a) I find something interesting to post about
• and b) have something to say about that something.

Not a bad rule of thumb IMHO unless your blog is more about following/reporting the latest news. But don’t fall into the trap I fell into and set the “something to say” bar a little high.

Useful References For Developing a Blogging Strategy

As I fretted about my neglected blog I wondered what was the latest on blogging best practice when it comes to freqency. A bit of searching and reviewing revealed little that was new apart from Mr Sutherland’s aforementioned presentation. But its a presentation that offers a very useful guide to anyone developing a blogging strategy for their business. I, for one, have bookmarked and downloaded it.

Failing the “no just ‘Me Too’”, I can’t think of anything I would add to the presentation or dispute in it. I would, however, note that SMBs probably don’t have to deal with the corporate politics that can stymy a natural voice and remove the necessary edge from a blog. If you are looking for a set of guidelines for your business blog you may have found it:

The other useful guide/reference on the relationship between blogging frequency and having something to say is an old blog from my ex-boss Stephan Spencer. Stephan’s take on “Optimal blog posting frequency” is well worth reading.

Bottom line: Aim to post frequently — once a week is probably the minimum — but aim to have something to say when you post. The trick is to find the right mix and be consistent i.e. do as I say not as I do.

King Content, Advertising Effectiveness & Adwords Placement

“Content is king” is a tired old phrase. But phrases don’t get used enough to get tired unless they warrant repeated use. And this old friend of web content specialists is ever more relevant even, it seems, with respect to online advertising’s effectiveness. Something to bear in mind when setting up Adwords placement campaigns.

According to e-consultancy’s Drama 2.0, who references two recent studies:

“it may be smarter for advertisers to focus on content, content, content — which really means location, location, location on the internet.”

It is not only the relevance of the content that your ad appears in but also the quality of the content that determines effectiveness.

• Referenced study one (Ipsos MediaCT’s MOTION digital video study) says — as Drama 2.0 notes, a concern for the likes of YouTube — that people will put up with ads in video if the video is off sufficient quality.
  • Advertising in downloaded full length TV shows or sports clips, acceptable to 75 & 66% of people, respectively.
  • Advertising before that 16 second clip of the cat, fur bolt upright, sizing itself up in a mirror, not ok.
• Referenced study two, by the Online Publishers Association, finds that:
  

  “…ads on content sites have greater impact on the overall purchase process, including customer awareness, brand awareness, brand consideration, brand preference and purchase intent[...]“

Makes Sense… Relevance to SMBs?

Makes all sorts of sense to me and is, in some ways, statistical confirmation of common sense and existing reality. You pay more for space in quality publications offline not just because they are quality publications with good distribution but also because the implied endorsement makes readers less wary of your message. Same scenario online.

“So. OK. Yawn. Thanks a lot. If I want my ads to be effective online, I have to pay big bucks for popular/recognized authority sites. Very helpful.” says you, SMB owner with your tight ad budget in mind.

Well, yes. Hang on a minute, though. There is an opportunity/point in this…

Where Does Adwords Come Into This

I spent a bit of time creating a Adwords placement campaign for this site yesterday and enjoying the new control on offer.

Google’s content network is an effective, if flawed, traffic generator. People often ignored it in favour of search results because the traffic was generally less likely to convert and therefore less valuable. In my experience, not always the case. But often the way to lift Adwords traffic conversion rates is/was to turn of content network placements.

The newish ability to see sites in the content network where your ads are appearing opens means the content network is no longer an inpenetrable black hole.

It opens up the possibility of focusing on content network sites that refer valuable traffic. What a change. Now you know where your ads appear and you can target very specific sites. Target those authority/high credibility site for affordable rates. (I will report back exactly how affordable after my campaign had been running.

So, that is exactly what I was doing yesterday. The tightest of tight budgets in mind, going through sites in the content network relevant to my services and checking out sites I wasn’t familar with before adding them to my placements.

And the Tie in With Content Quality and Ad Effectiveness is?

With very little to spend I can’t afford to place my ads on sites that don’t have some credibility. I made sure to read a couple of articles on sites I was considering, which were all content sites rather than service providers.

Seems I was right to be wary and you should be too.

Bottom line: Adwords or otherwise, when you are vetting advertising opportunities don’t just think relevance to your target audience; think quality content.

Added bonus: you’ll be doing us all a favour by helping starve those begged*, borrowed or stolen content based sites whose only raison d’étre is adsense revenue. These sites have been cluttering up the web with poor quality content for too long.

And by the way: Also from e-consultancy, and related to the nexus between website content and online advertising, Graham Charlton’s 12 PPC Landing Page Tips are well worth a reading — nothing too startling there but a useful checklist.

*Freelance writing sites and places like Elance and Guru are overflowing with [embed tongue in cheek] amazing opportunities[dislodge tongue] to write 500 words for one of these sites for $2 or even $3. Lest we forget, Internet marketing is sullied by slave labour just like many other industries.

Uh Oh Somebody is Listening

Maybe I understand the appeal of diaries a bit better now. Blogging here without any readers was somehow liberating.

But wait. Somebody is listening.

Imagine my surprise to find two comments when logging in today.

• One from Paul who obviously has his reputation management sorted and is courteous enough to thank me for commenting on the service he is offering.
• A second from Sue, who is very complimentary — thank you Sue!

Thing is: the idea was to start building up content and get into a reasonable blogging routine as I got the site to version 1.0 and then start actively trying to build traffic. Cunning plan: have a reasonable amount of content before sending people here — furnish the house before you ask people in, sort of thing.

Seems all that is needed to get noticed is a few links to other blogs, etc. We’re definitely not talking traffic to write home about [Ahem. What am I doing now? :-)]. But people are reading what I am writing.

Second thing is: um, duh, isn’t being read the whole point. Yes all I am saying is there was something liberating about writing down comments that would previously have been part of some sort of internal dialogue.

I often find the act of writing helps me discover what I think about something. [Interlude to scramble round the web confirming the Oliver Goldsmith quote about knowing what you think after you've written on a subject. Discover the quotation that follows has been attributed to a few writers but Joan Didion wins the prize on the basis of most results on major search engines. Well established misconception corrected.]

“I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”
Joan Didion

S’pose I can still discover a lot of my own thinking with an audience… [Internal editor: "Get over yourself; judging by the analytics your audience would fit in a small lift."]

And the lesson/point is: if you are struggling to create content around a product/service/idea, it’s worth just writing down what you think, to start fine tuning your thoughts. Thought can be viral and the thoughts you explore often generate others that can be revised to suit your content’s goal.

Wordpress+Theme = Presentable Site with Capable CMS

After multiple false starts I decided to use Wordpress for this site. I found a customisable theme that offered the mix of pages and posts I was looking for and started tweaking. A month later I can report Wordpress is proving an able, affordable and low cost site building and content management system.

The current site is barely version 1.0 but Wordpress offers the flexibility to take us to 2.0 and well beyond.

If you are looking for an easily managed website consider getting your web developer/designer to modify a Wordpress theme. If you know what CSS* stands for, consider doing it yourself . The key to success is finding a theme that will suit your needs.

A Presentable Small Business Site Shouldn’t Cost You Your Entire Marketing Budget

The days when a getting a presentable small site required an investment of thousands of dollars are past. Options now abound when it comes to building a small site like this. Indeed, there are almost too many of them with most web hosts offering some sort of site building facility and multiple software options to download or install…

I know. I’ve tried a few (which I might revisit here). I found they either:

• required too much effort,
• offered too little flexibility in templates,
• lacked functionality options
• or failed the search engine friendliness test.

In short: the end result ended up looking amateurish or required too much customisation.

I didn’t want to spend any more than was absolutely necessary. What to do?

The Wordpress Option

I had used Wordpress to blog but a couple of things made me consider it more seriously for the blog-site combination I was after:

1. My long time employer/client Netconcepts adopted a Wordpress platform for its site.
2. I read a series of articles about an experiment with launching a ecommerce store using a modified Wordpress theme

It took a while to get to the point where the site is live — life’s competing priorities, etc. — but after reading the series of articles I decided Wordpress was my best site option.

Choosing a Theme and Making it Mine

As I write this I realise I have much more to say than I have time to say it…

I’ll expand on the process of choosing and customising a Wordpress theme — think “website template” — in the article I am now planning. But, long story short, a long search for a free theme that fitted the bill ended up with many options but nothing that really felt right.

Then I came across a theme that had the sort of mixture of functionality and layout I was seeking. The increasingly popular Revolution Theme cost me US$75 but considering what a bespoke site with comparable functionality would have cost…

It has lived up to its “ïnsanely customizable” billing as I have fiddled to take it from here:

To here:

There is much to do — all sorts of things I would point out to a website benchmarking & review client populate a growing “Not doing as I say” list… A website is never optimised!

I’m pretty happy though. And the last month has shown Wordpress’s worth as a content and site management tool.

Bottom line:
Working with Wordpress is probably easier if you have a level of understanding of CSS and HTML. But the right theme and host will minimise the need to delve too deeply into the PHP code & MYSQL database that makes it all work. And you are more than likely to find a theme that suits your needs without customisation, if you are less fussy than me.

*CSS stands for cascading style sheets a way of determining how your site looks and feels via one file rather than having to modify individual page files.

99designs.com: A New Logo From Romania

My 99designs.com logo contest has finished and I’m happy with the result. My NZ based, US hosted site now boasts some Romanian design.

Over the week the contest ran 104 designs were submitted with some designers revising their submission multiple times on the basis of feedback.

Some of the later submissions were way off target — frustrating when the brief, previous submissions and feedback I had offered gave a pretty clear idea what was needed. But overall the quality of submitted designs was pretty good.

Bottom line: I ended up with a design that fitted the bill.

A need to send money to Romania before I had the design files prompted a bit of concern and a call from PayPal about “activity on my account”. But I’ve had a lot more trouble getting people a lot closer to deliver promised work.