What I appreciate about Jones’ book is that whether you are a search marketing guru or you work in another marketing/communications field, it paints things in a light that you may not have thought about before.  Besides a deep dive into keyword research and it’s overall impact on SEO, social media and content marketing, there is a little something in this book for everyone ranging from simple explanations of social networking sites to more detailed information on site migration and architecture.  Curious to know what useful tips I found in Ron Jones new book?

“Keyword Research is a Strategic Function”
To most professionals keyword research can seem like a monotonous task. Jones does a good job of really highlighting the importance of keyword research and how it should affect your overall Internet marketing strategy.   The position of the book is that much of your content creation should be based upon a list of tried and tested keywords that are meant to bring people to your site and draw them in.  A point about thinking big picture with keywords that hits home: “Without a strategy, you will become lost in the depths of random pages of web content without a core meaning or focus.”

“Setting up SMART Goals”
Goal setting should not be a new concept to Internet marketers.  An approach that Jones recommends is setting “smart” goals for each online channel you are using to market.  He says that these goals may take more effort to setup but they help to ensure quality.  SMART goals are defined as:

S= Specific
M= Measureable
A= Attainable
R= Realistic
T= Timely

A simple goal may be to increase the number of conversions that your site sees on a monthly basis.  If you are implementing SMART goal setting, you may focus on something more specific as increasing site conversions by 10% each month for the next six months on your contact page, about us page, and solutions page.

“Mind Mapping”
Keyword brainstorming can sometimes seem like an overwhelming task to tackle.  No more!  Jones suggests breaking down your brainstorming tasks into mini assignments which will encourage you to work on one level of keywords at a time.  Mind mapping is a great visual aid for marketers who tend to like to see plans illustrated.  You begin by selecting a seed term, draw a circle around it, and brainstorm additional words related to your seed term.

Below is an example of mind mapping that I started with my seed phrase being “Marketing”.

“Role of Keywords and Social Media”
We know that keywords are an essential part of an SEO or PPC strategy but many overlook the roll of keywords in social media.  An in depth analysis of keywords will help you pinpoint the specific needs and wants of your target audience.  A keyword plan for social media will help you communicate more effectively with your audience.  Jones does note that a strategy created for SEO or PPC may not translate exactly the same for social media so there are some differences to keep in mind. An example would be search query variances between Google and a social networking site.

“Developing a mobile strategy”
This section highlights the importance of considering the entire customer experience not just the optimized content that we provide.  Jones recommends a six step process for outlining your mobile strategy.  That process includes:

1. Define Target Audience & Personas
2. Conduct Your Research
3. Develop Your Mobile Solution
4. Design Your Pricing Model
5. Develop Your Support Model
6. Develop Retention or Loyalty Program

“Defining Metrics for Success”
One recommendation in particular that stuck out to me was his emphasis on the importance of defining success up front with any marketing campaign. Some of the goals that Jones recommends for a successful outcome include:

• Increased overall website visitor traffic
• Increased keyword rankings and top keyword placement
• Increased brand awareness
• Increased generated revenue and ROI
• Specific behavioral insights from your target audience based on keyword usage

In my opinion “Keyword Intelligence” does a great job of getting the reader to think intelligently and strategically about basic keyword choices.  By taking a moment to step back and analyze why keyword research and brainstorming is important, you are better able to see what a large impact it can have on your overall search and online marketing strategy. This is the only book that’s specifically focused on Keywords and for those that really want a deep dive on the subject, it’s worth checking out.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Book Review: Keyword Intelligence by Ron Jones | http://www.toprankblog.com

Book Review: Keyword Intelligence by Ron Jones is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

What I appreciate about Jones’ book is that whether you are a search marketing guru or you work in another marketing/communications field, it paints things in a light that you may not have thought about before.  Besides a deep dive into keyword research and it’s overall impact on SEO, social media and content marketing, there is a little something in this book for everyone ranging from simple explanations of social networking sites to more detailed information on site migration and architecture.  Curious to know what useful tips I found in Ron Jones new book?

“Keyword Research is a Strategic Function”
To most professionals keyword research can seem like a monotonous task. Jones does a good job of really highlighting the importance of keyword research and how it should affect your overall Internet marketing strategy.   The position of the book is that much of your content creation should be based upon a list of tried and tested keywords that are meant to bring people to your site and draw them in.  A point about thinking big picture with keywords that hits home: “Without a strategy, you will become lost in the depths of random pages of web content without a core meaning or focus.”

“Setting up SMART Goals”
Goal setting should not be a new concept to Internet marketers.  An approach that Jones recommends is setting “smart” goals for each online channel you are using to market.  He says that these goals may take more effort to setup but they help to ensure quality.  SMART goals are defined as:

S= Specific
M= Measureable
A= Attainable
R= Realistic
T= Timely

A simple goal may be to increase the number of conversions that your site sees on a monthly basis.  If you are implementing SMART goal setting, you may focus on something more specific as increasing site conversions by 10% each month for the next six months on your contact page, about us page, and solutions page.

“Mind Mapping”
Keyword brainstorming can sometimes seem like an overwhelming task to tackle.  No more!  Jones suggests breaking down your brainstorming tasks into mini assignments which will encourage you to work on one level of keywords at a time.  Mind mapping is a great visual aid for marketers who tend to like to see plans illustrated.  You begin by selecting a seed term, draw a circle around it, and brainstorm additional words related to your seed term.

Below is an example of mind mapping that I started with my seed phrase being “Marketing”.

“Role of Keywords and Social Media”
We know that keywords are an essential part of an SEO or PPC strategy but many overlook the roll of keywords in social media.  An in depth analysis of keywords will help you pinpoint the specific needs and wants of your target audience.  A keyword plan for social media will help you communicate more effectively with your audience.  Jones does note that a strategy created for SEO or PPC may not translate exactly the same for social media so there are some differences to keep in mind. An example would be search query variances between Google and a social networking site.

“Developing a mobile strategy”
This section highlights the importance of considering the entire customer experience not just the optimized content that we provide.  Jones recommends a six step process for outlining your mobile strategy.  That process includes:

1. Define Target Audience & Personas
2. Conduct Your Research
3. Develop Your Mobile Solution
4. Design Your Pricing Model
5. Develop Your Support Model
6. Develop Retention or Loyalty Program

“Defining Metrics for Success”
One recommendation in particular that stuck out to me was his emphasis on the importance of defining success up front with any marketing campaign. Some of the goals that Jones recommends for a successful outcome include:

• Increased overall website visitor traffic
• Increased keyword rankings and top keyword placement
• Increased brand awareness
• Increased generated revenue and ROI
• Specific behavioral insights from your target audience based on keyword usage

In my opinion “Keyword Intelligence” does a great job of getting the reader to think intelligently and strategically about basic keyword choices.  By taking a moment to step back and analyze why keyword research and brainstorming is important, you are better able to see what a large impact it can have on your overall search and online marketing strategy. This is the only book that’s specifically focused on Keywords and for those that really want a deep dive on the subject, it’s worth checking out.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Book Review: Keyword Intelligence by Ron Jones | http://www.toprankblog.com

Book Review: Keyword Intelligence by Ron Jones is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

One particularly effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type in to search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors.

For example, with derivatives of ”social media” as a group of target keyword phrases for this blog, I noticed that numerous visitors each month literally typed in to Google: “what does a social media manager do?” and “what does a community manager do?” sending them to a post, ”A Glimpse at What a Social Media Community Manager Does” that ranked well for those questions.

After looking in our web analytics to see which pages those visitors viewed and any goal pages reached, it has served as inspiration to explore other related questions by providing content in the form of answers. ”

Be careful with chicken before the egg advice. I’ve heard advice from other marketers that looking at your own web analytics is the best way to find keywords to use for search optimization. Please understand what a “cart before the horse” idea that is.   This only works if a website is to some degree optimized and attracting a diversity of search traffic. That means it has numerous, relevant links pointing to it (with new links shared on social media sites on a regular basis) and new content is being published regularly. Without some kind of pre-existingrelevance to search engines in the form of new content and links, web analytics is only going to reveal what you already know in terms of keyword topics.

Give them what they want to get what you want. Using questions is simply a matter of literally finding out what information people want and giving it to them based on data that is easily discovered through web analytics.  This can be as simple as doing a search within your web analytics dashboard on the referring keywords that sent visitors to your website from search engines to find instances of words like “what” or “how” in conjunction with keywords and topics that are a reflection of the interests and needs of your target audience.  You could also just search for instances of “?” in conjunction with target keywords or “?” alone to reveal the kinds of questions people are using as search queries that result in visits to your blog.  I happen to use Clicky real time web analytics “filtering” options for this. All Clicky data is real-time, not just one report as is the case with Google Analytics.

Sourcing questions for new blogs. This particular tactic of extracting topic ideas is for refinement of a blog that has been in play for a while, not establishing a content plan for a new blog. For a new blog here are a few other ideas about how to leverage questions for developing a content plan:

• Survey your customers using a tool like Zoomerang or Survey Monkey
• Survey front line employees working in your Customer Service and Sales departments to get an idea of the common questions that come up in their interactions with prospects and customers
• Visit Q/A sites like Quora or Yahoo Answers for common questions related to keywords you’re tracking
• Tap into niche sites for aggregated questions. LinkedIn Answers and Focus Q & A are good examples for business and marketing related topics.
• Use Google Suggest as a way to anticipate what questions people are asking. Just start typing in a question in any Google search box to see how Google tries to complete it. What Google’s Autocomplete feature is a reflection of popular search phrases and potentially your own web history so be aware whether you’re logged in to Google or not when you do this. Since you can’t copy the text from Google’s suggested search queries, check out the free and easy to use Ubersuggest which will provide you with a txt file.
• Use SEO tools that compile questions like Wordtracker called Keyword Questions. This particular tool requires registration and I’ve not had the best luck finding suggestions for niche topics without a large search volume, but it’s an option.

Hopefully these suggestions provide you with some useful ideas for sourcing blog content through sourcing questions to answer. It’s a great formula that I’ve been using and advising clients to use for years. If you have an existing blog with some degree of diversity in new content and active inbound linking, then you may find a rich store of ideas in the keyword referring data from web analytics. If you have a new website, then start by literally asking your customers about their top questions and review some of the industry websites that aggregate Q & A to gain insight into what topics are hot and worth addressing in your content plan.

The fundamental takeaway: Create the kind of content (with SEO keywords as inspiration) that people are actively searching for and you can shorten sales cycles, inspire more social shares and be more useful to your community.

Have you used question sourcing tactics to build or complement your blog content plan? What have you tried that worked? What didn’t work?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Need Great Ideas for Blog Content? Start With Questions | http://www.toprankblog.com

Need Great Ideas for Blog Content? Start With Questions is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

Keyword and topic research is a significant part of Search, Social Media and Content Marketing.  An understanding of what customers care about related to a brand’s offering and how that manifests as keywords, helps drive how marketer’s approach content, optimization and promotion.

Over the past 5+ years, the search landscape has evolved significantly and optimization has extended beyond the web page to digital assets like images, PDF’s and video, news, social media and mobile. The increased diversity of content requires internet marketers become more creative in their keyword research in order to fine tune the matching of optimized content with what and where consumers are searching.

There are a mix of standard keyword research tools that most SEO practitioners will use, ranging from WordTracker to WordStream. Here are a mix of keyword tools and ways to use them in order customize keyword research for the increasing diversity of content types and methods of search.

Mobile Keyword Research:

Mobile SEO is the probably the most underrated of SEO practice areas. According to a study by Google, 77% of smartphone users visit search engine websites and 90% of smartphone searches result in an action (purchasing, visiting a business, etc). That’s pretty compelling data and if you have mobile-specific content, it makes sense to understand what words mobile users are searching with, relevant to your mobile website.

Recommended Mobile Keyword Research Tool: Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool offers several filtering options for mobile: All Mobile Devices, Mobile WAP Devices, Mobile Devices with Full Internet Browsers.  Now you can leverage mobile-specific keyword insight when creating content that is likely to be consumed via mobile devices whether it’s a dedicated mobile site or a general website that is mobile friendly.

News Keyword Research:

News optimization can impact ranking of content within news search engines like Google News in addition to Google.com. Many marketers realize that the home page of the major search engines isn’t the only place target audiences are searching. News aggregator websites like Google News can provide an important source of relevant discovery and website traffic from end users and journalists.  Internet Marketers that have access to publishing and distribution of content through a trusted Google News Source (website, mobile site or YouTube channel) may want to better optimize their content by understanding what keyword phrases are being used by News Search readers.  The difference between popular searches on Google.com vs. Google News might modest, but for popular and trending topics, it could prove a worthy investment.

Recommended News Keyword Research Tool: Übersuggest provides a useful service by collecting the auto-suggested search words provided by Google News as you type. It can do this for Google.com as well. The Google Suggest feature tries to autocomplete user search keywords, suggestion words and phrases based on previous queries. By capturing an alphabetical sequence of the variations on your search phrase, you can get some good ideas about what’s popular and a whole range of variations.  The temporal nature of news topics provides an opportunity to identify news topics that Internet Marketers can act on by creating news keyword optimized content.  Optimizing news content means end users as well as journalists, analysts and bloggers that research stories will have an easier time of finding your content.

Video Keyword Research:

Video optimization is another hot area for Internet Marketers, especially since there are over 600 new videos published on YouTube every 60 seconds. Videos that rank well on Google have a good chance of also doing well on Google.com. If so, Google will display a thumbnail of the video, which stands out from the mostly text content that makes up most Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Recommended Video Keyword Research Tool: YouTube Promoted Video Keyword Research Tool provides insights into what users are searching for on YouTube with options to source your suggestions from keywords, another YouTube video or a diverse array of demographic information.  This tool is intended to work in concert with ads on YouTube, but can provide some useful insight into words video content producers might use with titles, descriptions and even in the script.

YouTube’s Keyword Suggest feature of auto-completing your search phrase is another possible source of keyword ideas. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t make it possible to copy and past the list of phrases that are suggested as Ubgersuggest does above with Google.com and News search.

Social Media Keyword Research:

Social Media Optimization can mean a variety of content types from video to images to blogs, and that makes it a bit trickier to recommend one specific tool.  Social media content can be optimized for better visibility in public search engines like Google and Bing as well as the internal search engines that power closed networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. At a minimum, understanding trending social topics can help inform social content planning so marketers can create content that’s being discussed by the social community, “right now”.

Recommended Social Media Keyword Research Tool: socialmention is a general social media search engine that provides a downloadable list of keywords that most often occur in conjunction with whatever it is that you search on. Sources range from Twitter to comments to video to forums.

There are many other tag based sources that you can use for social media optimization keyword research as well including: Delicious, Technorati, StumbleUpon, and Bing Hot Social Topics. But those are simply lists or tag clouds, not in response to a query where you get results based on popularity. Despite that, they could be worth checking for trending topics.

Image Keyword Research:

Image optimization falls in line with the intersection of digital assets and social media. Every 60 seconds, 6,600 images are uploaded to Flickr. Images are often shared through social channels from Twitter to Facebook to Instagram. Images can also appear on certain queries made on Google and Bing as well as their respective image search engines. Well optimized images can provide a very relevant source of traffic to a website.

Recommended Image Keyword Research Tool: Google Insights for Search using the Images filter, provides  ”top searches” and “rising searches” relevant to your query.  You are also provided with regional interest over time that is presented as an animation highlighting different areas on a map as the popularity of the search term rises there. There are a number of additional filters including geographic region, time frame and industry category.  Additional top level filters include News, Web and Product search, so essentially this is another tool for news keyword research as well.

Of course there are many other creative ways and reasons to do keyword research and I’m stopping at my shortlist of 5 so that you might share a few of your own. Have you found keyword research tools specific to other types of search engines or media? Have you used the tools above to any significant effect?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
5 Keyword Research Alternatives for Mobile, News, Social, Image & Video Optimization | http://www.toprankblog.com

5 Keyword Research Alternatives for Mobile, News, Social, Image & Video Optimization is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

Bringing insights about content marketing to light

Creating content alone isn’t enough to ensure intended audiences will read it, so researching search keywords and social topics related to your business is a helpful way to empathize with what customers are looking for and what they’re interested in.

Content and SEO go hand in hand, especially for improving discovery of brand stories and key marketing messages. SEO and content marketing best practices call for research into what language customers use when searching for your products and services so that content can be optimized for better visibility. The result of that research is a keyword glossary managed through a SEO Project Management tool and/or a spreadsheet. These phrases are a mix of broad concepts the company wants to be known for as well as phrases indicating more specific customer intent.

For example:  ”online marketing” is a very, very broad phrase we like this blog to be known for. At the same time, there are more specific phrases like “facebook marketing”, “twitter marketing” and “infographic marketing” that represent relevant sub-topics of interest to our readers. Even more specific phrases might include “b2b social media case studies” or “social media ecommerce examples” which are more specific indications of interest in the subject matter we cover for our target audience.

A fixed list of keywords is something that provides editorial guidance for content producers accross the organization. However, putting a keyword on a list and thinking the initial effort at producing content will result in a top position on Google for that key phrase is nothing short of naive. Broad topics that are highly competitive can take hundreds of posts and links to those posts before a search engine like Google will decide your brand is the best answer for a search query.

If I decided today that “internet marketing: was going to be a focus phrase, we might have some advantage because of an abundance of related content and numerous inbound links from relevant and credible sources, but we’d still have to work long and hard to achieve and maintain a top position. Companies that go after broad concepts from scratch will have even more of an uphill battle. That said, anything is doable with the right vision, expertise and resources.

The problem is, I’ve heard more than one new media or social media thought leader describe the notion of using keywords in an editorial calendar as “limiting” and pooh poohing the practice. They suggest that content creators write in the moment or focus solely on real-time monitoring for inspiration. Those perspectives come from a lack of implementation knowledge about SEO, especially within large organizations. That can be very costly for brands in terms of missed opportunity and allowing others to gain competitive advantage on important search terms.

Best practices SEO calls for a combination of fixed keyword lists and monitoring real time conversations for keyword and content opportunities. I’ve called this “Search Keywords and Social Topics” in numerous presentations over the past few years. These two types of keyword research and monitoring are not mutually exclusive. In fact, it’s essential they work together, especially in competitive categories  Fixed keyword lists aren’t really “fixed either”. They often get audited every few months with weekly or monthly updates based on trends observed from web analytics.

Dynamic keywords are managed with spreadsheets as well and focus on real-time and social media monitoring in combination with web analytics and public trending data sources to reveal conversational content creation and optimization opportunities.

Working together, a content marketing program that’s savvy about SEO and Social Media to inspire discovery will be far more successful that focusing solely on keyword sourcing from social media monitoring or fixed keyword lists alone.

• The cost of focusing solely on fixed list keywords is not producing and optimizing for content that’s current and trending,

• The cost of focusing solely on real-time topics is never dominating for more popular keyword phrases or general topics that represent the brand’s industry of focus. How important do you think ranking #1 on Google for “laptops” is for Best Buy? That keyword phrase represents an important product category for Best Buy and wouldn’t be possible without smart search engine optimization.

Hopefully, if you’re one of those social media rock stars, keynote speakers or agency heads that discounts SEO or the usefulness of managing the words that represent what customers care about, you’ll have a more open mind and a deeper understanding of the interplay between fixed list and dynamic keywords for managing editorial plans.

And if you do continue to think SEO and keyword insight isn’t useful, that’s OK too. Because Online Marketing agencies like mine will continue to take search market share away from your clients with smart  Social SEO & Content Marketing.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Fixed & Dynamic Keyword Lists for Content Marketing: It’s NOT Either Or | http://www.toprankblog.com

Fixed & Dynamic Keyword Lists for Content Marketing: It’s NOT Either Or is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

The session starts with an inspiring quote on the projector “Keyword Forensics – Exploring the Hidden User Search Behavior for Keywords That Are Often Missed by Keyword Researchers.”

I research keywords!  What am I missing?

Here are some good nuggets from the presentation:

Understand the Difference Between Keyword Research vs. Keyword Forensics

Keyword Research: Researching identified keywords to determine which phrases will provide the most search traffic.

Keyword Forensics: Discovering keyword variations associated with a root word.  According to Alexander, keyword forensics does not begin with any assumptions.  The purpose is to uncover how people search.

Exploring User Behavior

Challenge: One of the challenges one encounters when researching user behavior for most people is the need to lose the “keyword hunt mindset”.  The more you tend to guess at the most logical keywords, the less likely you are to find exactly what phrases people are actually searching.

Solution: Don’t guess or assume search phrases.  Uncover popular keyword phrases in tools like Wordtracker by entering a root word and discovering how that word is most often being used.  For example, entering the root word “buy” will produce variations like “What do people buy?”

Wordtracker 101

Wordtracker is Alexander’s weapon of choice for keyword forensics. Here’s a little Wordtracker 101.

First, enter a root word into the search query. Second, sort by KEI and consider the following:

Keyword Effectiveness (KEI):  The higher the number here, the better. Use this metric to identify popular keyword phrases with little competition.

In Anchor and Title: Count of the number of pages for which the exact keyword phrase appears in both the title tag and as anchor text on the page. This metric gives you an understanding of what kind of keyword focused content needs to be generated to achieve a quality search engine rank.

Think Laterally About Behavior

A person searching for baby names=diaper purchasing prospect. A brand doesn’t need to sell baby names (although that would be an interesting business model!)  in order to provide relevant content. Imagine a diaper company that aggregates all common and uncommon baby names on one site. People searching for baby names, i.e. likely parents to-be, will be introduced to the brand in an organic manner. The diaper brand can then provide special offers or relevant links to visitors so they can learn more about the products or receive discounted pricing.

To wrap up the session in a nutshell, Alexander takes a very creative approach to keyword discovery and encourages others to do the same.  Put even more succinctly, SEOs should discover keywords and not assume them. If you’re in need, here’s a list of keyword research tools you might find useful.

Stay tuned for more posts from SES Toronto. Follow @TopRank and #sesto on Twitter for real time updates.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
SES Toronto: Keyword Forensics | http://www.toprankblog.com

SES Toronto: Keyword Forensics is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

The session starts with an inspiring quote on the projector “Keyword Forensics – Exploring the Hidden User Search Behavior for Keywords That Are Often Missed by Keyword Researchers.”

I research keywords!  What am I missing?

Here are some good nuggets from the presentation:

Understand the Difference Between Keyword Research vs. Keyword Forensics

Keyword Research: Researching identified keywords to determine which phrases will provide the most search traffic.

Keyword Forensics: Discovering keyword variations associated with a root word.  According to Alexander, keyword forensics does not begin with any assumptions.  The purpose is to uncover how people search.

Exploring User Behavior

Challenge: One of the challenges one encounters when researching user behavior for most people is the need to lose the “keyword hunt mindset”.  The more you tend to guess at the most logical keywords, the less likely you are to find exactly what phrases people are actually searching.

Solution: Don’t guess or assume search phrases.  Uncover popular keyword phrases in tools like Wordtracker by entering a root word and discovering how that word is most often being used.  For example, entering the root word “buy” will produce variations like “What do people buy?”

Wordtracker 101

Wordtracker is Alexander’s weapon of choice for keyword forensics. Here’s a little Wordtracker 101.

First, enter a root word into the search query. Second, sort by KEI and consider the following:

Keyword Effectiveness (KEI):  The higher the number here, the better. Use this metric to identify popular keyword phrases with little competition.

In Anchor and Title: Count of the number of pages for which the exact keyword phrase appears in both the title tag and as anchor text on the page. This metric gives you an understanding of what kind of keyword focused content needs to be generated to achieve a quality search engine rank.

Think Laterally About Behavior

A person searching for baby names=diaper purchasing prospect. A brand doesn’t need to sell baby names (although that would be an interesting business model!)  in order to provide relevant content. Imagine a diaper company that aggregates all common and uncommon baby names on one site. People searching for baby names, i.e. likely parents to-be, will be introduced to the brand in an organic manner. The diaper brand can then provide special offers or relevant links to visitors so they can learn more about the products or receive discounted pricing.

To wrap up the session in a nutshell, Alexander takes a very creative approach to keyword discovery and encourages others to do the same.  Put even more succinctly, SEOs should discover keywords and not assume them. If you’re in need, here’s a list of keyword research tools you might find useful.

Stay tuned for more posts from SES Toronto. Follow @TopRank and #sesto on Twitter for real time updates.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
SES Toronto: Keyword Forensics | http://www.toprankblog.com

SES Toronto: Keyword Forensics is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

I’m a SEO Account Manager at TopRank Online Marketing – which means I have the enviable job of developing and managing SEO programs for several TopRank clients. One of the many benefits of my job is that I have the opportunity to work daily with some of the most intelligent and forward thinking companies around (you know who you are).  As I head to SES Toronto, I go with my clients’ goals and needs at the front of my mind.

Now that I’m not a complete stranger, let’s get on to the good stuff.  SES Toronto is just around the corner and it’s time to start making the difficult decisions surrounding which sessions to attend.  Here are my 4 “Can’t Miss Sessions” for this year’s SES Toronto conference:

1) Content Marketing Optimization

This is a no brainer.  Although there are numerous SEO strategies, good content marketing is the engine that drives a successful online marketing program.  TopRank CEO Lee Odden (I call him “boss”) leads a presentation on unlocking the SEO potential of a brand’s content.   In the session, Lee will offer insight into how companies can elevate their content-based optimization strategies and increase process efficiencies for content creation and promotion.

My TopRank Account Manager Take: Content development and promotion is core to our work.  The minute I stop proactively looking for ways to elevate our approach to content marketing is the minute our content begins to lose its relevancy.

If you listened to Lee speak before, you know you will walk away with a ton of ideas.  If you haven’t heard Lee speak, you really should.

2) Keyword Forensics

Cleverly titled, this session seems to have the meat to support such a promising name. John Alexander, of SearchEngineWorkshops.com and Search Engine Academy, will focus the session on uncovering keyword variations overlooked by most Webmasters. Alexander also promises to dive into the hidden behavioral trends of different search personas. Understanding these trends will help determine what search results are REALLY most valued by your target audiences.

My TopRank Account Manager Take: This session immediately piqued my interest because I personally view the selection of keywords as the make or break point for a SEO program.  Why?  Keywords dictate strategies and tactics.  Keywords also represent different persona and audience needs.

To start a program with the wrong keywords is akin to heading north to go south=it’s not going to work out well.

3) Competitive Analysis

Search strategies cannot be developed in a vacuum.  Analyzing the competitive landscape and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the competition is key to the development of a successful SEO program.  In Competitive Analysis, Chris Boggs moderates a panel discussion on assessing the competition to:

• determine link acquisition opportunities
• discover untapped types of content
• identify competitive keywords/identifying non-competitive keywords
• uncover avg. ad spend

My TopRank Account Manager Take: There are literally too many tools for surveying and analyzing online marketing competition.  The problem is that when one stops to consider all these options, it can likely turn into the classic: paralysis by analysis.

When a panel of pros meets to share the tools they use to assess the competition, I’m all ears.

4) Killer Facebook Targeting Tactics

As Facebook continues to evolve at an impressive rate, so too do the online marketing opportunities within this 700+ million member social network.  From Facebook Ads to Fan Pages, and Sponsored Stories to Groups; options to target and engages audiences are abound.   Marty Weintraub, President of aimClear, another fine Internet Marketing agency from Minnesota, hosts this Facebook targeting session, with a focus on reviewing some of the most successful Facebook marketing campaigns to identify their common characteristics.

My TopRank Account Manager Take: Too often companies view the success of their social media efforts in terms of Fans, Friends and Followers instead of affecting business outcomes.

The fatal flaw for many companies is the assumption that audiences can’t engage and transact with a brand through their social channels – that those interactions must happen on a corporate website.  Facebook may be the leader in providing companies with a variety of ways to create a rich user experience for their audience.  I can’t wait for this one.

Of course I’ll be sitting in on more sessions than 4, but these are my core.  Both Lee and I will be liveblogging sessions so be sure to watch for the #SESTO hash tag on Twitter, our Facebook page or just come back to Online Marketing Blog.

If you’re new to SES conference, I’d recommend reading this helpful post on how to get the most out of marketing conferences.

Here are the conference details:

SES Toronto
June 13-15, 2011
Hyatt Regency Toronto

There’s a 20% discount for TopRank Online Marketing Blog readers – just use the discount code: TRB20.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
4 Must See Social Media & SEO Sessions at SES Toronto | http://www.toprankblog.com

4 Must See Social Media & SEO Sessions at SES Toronto is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

Ron started things out by taking a poll to qualify the audience (smart) to see how many have done keyword research before. Most have.

The importance of keyword research:
Is keyword research strategic or tactical? When we use keywords we reinforce searcher expectations. As marketers, then we have the responsibility to deliver on that expectation. Picking the right keywords plus having relevant content to match equals conversion. As a result, the use of keywords and keyword research is a strategic function.

What happens when you use the wrong keywords? You waste significan resources, not reach the right audience and attract visitors who will not convert. Think about how long it takes to achieve top search visibility for tough keywords only to find out they’re the wrong keywords – waste of time.

The role of keyword research and how it relates to other marketing channels. Keywords are the fundamental building blocks for all online and offline marketing campaigns. This means tactics like: SEO, PPC, Mobile, Social, Local, Video and Images and Traditional Marketing. Keywords have been used in product naming and naming of services. Keyword referrers and subsequent website interaction can provide clues to consumer behavior and preferences.

Buying Cycle describes the buyer’s behavior as they move from research, refining search, content research and then decision/conversion. Keywords at the top of the buying cyucle tend to be broad and as the search process is refined towards decision, the keywords become more specific. The question to answer is what is the time span of your product or service.

Broad vs. Narrow keywords are a reflection of where the searcher is in the buying cycle. Example: bicycle and bycicle shop vs. trek madone 6.9 and bicycle shop denver co

Developing a keyword research process:

• Blue Sky: Find all possible keywords
• Refine: Identify the best performing keywords
• Categorize: Break down into categories or themes
• Test: Test the performance of keywords

As you start the process of keyword research, think about going outside your industry “standard” phrases. Understand your target audience and speak the language of your customers vs. than the language and jargon of the company/industry.

Keyword research tools

Suggestion tools include:

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Keyword Discovery (paid & free)
• Wordtracker (paid & free)
• Wordstream (paid & free)

Forecast and Trend Tools

• Google Traffic Estimator
• Google Search Insights
• Google Trends
• Google Sets

Others:

• Local Keyword Lists
• SEOBook Keyword Tools
• Wordze

Look at the competition by visiting their website, looking at meta data (meta description & keywords) as well as title tags. Here are a few competitive keyword research tools:

• Compete
• ispionage
• Spyfu
• Keywordspy
• (I would also add SEMRush as a handy competitive tool as well).

Refining your keyword list. Just because a keyword phrase is the most popular, doesn’t mean it’s the right one to focus on. Weight the keyword phrases in your list with different data including populartiy, relevance, specificity and competition.

Remember that with keyword visibility, you’re setting expectations for consumers that discover your content in search using certain keywords. For great conversions, it’s essential that the content you deliver on that search visibility syncs up with whatever consumers are searching on.

How many keyword terms should you target? With SEO, it’s best to optimize at the page level for specific phrases, 1-3 phrases per page. Any more than that, and there will be dilution of relevance.   With PPC, you can target as many keyword phrases as you can afford. Think in terms of ad groups and the individual ads themselves. With social media keyword research, focus on core groups of keywords that reflect important conversations for your business.

Setup your campaigns, test and refine:  PPC is a great tool for testing keywords you’ll end up using for SEO.  PPC provides quick results for keyword performance and helps you know whether you’re getting the “right” audience. Ongoing monitoring of performance on the target keyword list will validate what’s working and what’s not so you can refine.

When should you use negative keywords? With a branding strategy you may or may not use negative keywords, but with a conversion strategy, you want to use negative keywords to filter out those visitors that are most unlikely to convert.   Some of the benefits of adding a negative keywords list to your PPC campaign:  Improves quality score, improves conversion rates, more qualified leads, lowering cost per conversion, improves visitor experience, improves relevancy, decreases bounce rate.

How to find negative keywords:  Use Google’s Keyword Tool, Google Analytics, PPC reports, Search Assist and Google Alerts.

Remember: Keyword Research is a strategic function, not tactical,. Keywords help marketers deliver the right content to the right consumers and increase user experience as well as conversions.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Advanced Keyword Research – SES Chicago | http://www.toprankblog.com

Advanced Keyword Research – SES Chicago is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

Marketers must prioritize what will work best and in the mix of online marketing tactics. According to eMarketer, SEO and PPC have been rated the most effective for conversions and ROI and while some companies are using software like PPC management tools to make things easier, there’s a lot more to consider for better segmentation.

With any type of marketing, relevance is essential for achieving a profitable program.  When it comes to search marketing, understanding customers, the keyword searches they use and the offers they’re most likely to respond to are essential.

In order to move your online marketing from fragmented to prioritized and more relevant through search, here are 3 key concepts search marketers should master.

1. Understand searcher personas

It’s fundamental marketing to anticipate and understand customer needs.

To really make a difference with more targeted online marketing, search marketers need to become more sophisticated in their understanding of customer profiles and developing personas to represent who they’re trying to attract via search. Delivering generic content to a searcher looking for a specific product is a common mistake that creates a disconnect for search engines and customers.

“Searcher personas and search acquisition workflows are integral to the way I approach search strategy. Before you can start attracting visitors to your web site, you need to know who you are attracting and why.” Vanessa Fox

Knowing what kind of content and types of digital assets your customers will respond to can improve effectiveness at driving “organic” search  traffic.  The same goes for designing Pay Per Click ads and landing pages that are relevant to the needs of customers you really want to reach.

2. Develop an ideal keyword mix

Many companies start with a list of keywords they think are best for SEO and implement them with on-page optimization and link building.  According to MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report (SEO Edition), 67% of small businesses place more value on on-page optimization over keyword research. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your ideas about keywords are more important than those of your customers.

Developing a keyword glossary is essential and starts by collecting a raw list of concepts, topics and phrases from sources like website content, interviews with front line employees and actual customers, competitor web sites and good old fashioned brainstorming.  That raw list is brought into a keyword research tool that will output provide a list of actual search phrases plus variations sorted by popularity.

Understanding keywords from the perspective of the searcher and where they are in the buying process allows the search marketer to properly optimize content, landing pages and ads accordingly. Same goes for making the ads and landing pages more relevant because it leads to better performance with click through rates and conversions.

From an organic perspective, specifically optimized pages that have attracted relevant links from other related web sites will result in higher rankings for keywords that are being targeted. Customers will self-segment themselves with the search terms they use. By developing an ideal keyword mix that is focused on customer needs and the solutions offered by your products and services, your search marketing efforts will better target customers in a relevant way and increase sales.

3. Optimize content for specifics

Content can mean web pages, digital assets and any other documents that can be optimized for organic search.  Optimization also applies to landing pages used with pay per click advertising to improve quality score. If you read Online Marketing Blog with any frequency, you know my mantra: “If it can be searched, it can be optimized.”

If you don’t have enough content to accommodate all the keywords you’re targeting, then you have an opportunity to create more content.  A common misconception is that updated content is important, when the reality is that adding new content that reflects the search needs of customers is what’s important. The addition of every new web page means another potential entry point to your web site via a link or search.

Being focused helps search engines understand and rank pages so that customers get what they’re actually looking for. Delivering on the promise of a compelling search result is priceless for conversions.

Wrap-up

Fragmented marketing with search helps no one. Marketers would do well for themselves and the customers they’re tying to reach by paying attention to the development of searcher personas, developing quality keyword research and optimizing specific pages and digital assets for specific phrases according the searcher needs in the buying cycle. As a result, you’ll deliver a more relevant experience for both search engines and customers.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Moving from Fragmented to Segmented Online Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

Moving from Fragmented to Segmented Online Marketing is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site