How SEO Can Drive Non-SEO Marketing

April 4, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment 

SEOA year ago I was asked by a friend and former colleague of mine, who is now a Partner at a prominent Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm, to come be the lead speaker at a “Marketing Meetup” they were hosting.  It seems that many of the companies that the firm had invested in were struggling with (or at least hesitating) to take advantage of online marketing (e.g. search engine optimization, search engine marketing, email marketing, blogging, social media, etc.).

How Marketing Changed in the 2000’s

I was recently reflecting on that session and thought it would be interesting to go back and see what, if anything had changed in my perspective.  When I gave the talk, I did my best to provide some context of how marketing had changed during the last decade (or at least back to when my former colleague was pushing product out the door for Netscape Communications).

  • Access to media, thought leaders and influencers was somewhat limited and pre-defined by the traditional bounds of print (and even early online) publications and the relationships that Public Relations (PR) professionals had with the media whose coverage they sought. Read more

Filed under Marketing, Search, Social · Tagged with , , , ,

Journey to SEO Nirvana | Keyword Research (step 3 of 5)

February 3, 2011 by admin · 3 Comments 

Now that we got quantification and some basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) housekeeping out of the way, step three in our journey to SEO nirvana is one of my favorites — keyword research.  Clients I work with often have strong ideas on what words they want to “own” on Google or the other leading search engines.

After years of experimenting and monitoring, I have found there are often too many words that could conceivably be SEO targets for optimizing their site.  The result of keyword research should be a very clear delineation as to which select words are targeted for optimization on a page-by-page basis.

Here’s a magic keyword selection formula . . . all thing’s being equal, you should target keywords that have:

  • High volumes of search traffic (in your geography)
  • Low levels of competition
  • High current ordinal rankings (for your website) on search engines
  • High levels of your website-specific search traffic (e.g. the terms visitors to your website are searching on to find you, and the search terms visitors use on your site itself)
  • High performance in Search Engine Marketing campaigns (e.g., high rates of clicks generated and/or conversions in any Google AdWords, or equivalent, campaigns)

Sounds simple, right?  Let’s walk through each of the above. Read more

Filed under Search · Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Journey to SEO Nirvana | Housekeeping (step 2 of 5)

January 13, 2011 by admin · 3 Comments 

GinsuKnivesIn my recent blog post “Journey to SEO Nirvana | Baseline (step 1 of 5),“ I aired my dirty laundry (and that of most consultants, teachers and parents – “do as I say, not as I do”) in that despite offering strategic and practical online marketing advice and services for my clients, my own website is not well optimized for search engines.

The main reason for this is that my business is driven through relationships and my professional network, as opposed to the website. But I still feel that my site should adhere to the best practices I espouse, so…

I’m going to chart a practical path towards search engine optimization (SEO) bliss!  Come along; it’ll be fun — or if not fun, hopefully relatively painless. Read more

Filed under Search · Tagged with , , , , , ,

Journey to SEO Nirvana | Baseline (step 1 of 5)

December 10, 2010 by admin · 2 Comments 

shoesThis high-tech cobbler is committed to making shoes for his children this holiday season.  Let me explain.

The clients I help with SEO, SEM and social media strategy often tell me that they imagine my website must be “super well optimized” for search engines.  As embarrassing as it is to admit, I have to tell them,  “No, it is not.”

The truth is that as a busy consultant and owner of several small independent businesses, I rarely get to focus on the online marketing efforts of my own web-based consultancy, SmokeJumper Strategy.

Therefore, much like the cobbler who is so busy making shoes for paying customers that his own children run around barefoot, my website runs around the Internet without any SEO-optimized shoes on at all!

Well, hopefully that will all change soon. Read more

Filed under Search · Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dude, Where My SEO At?

June 25, 2009 by admin · 2 Comments 

Recently I was engaged by a security software company to assess their rankings in search engine results.  As their new SEO consultant, the results were not good.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) had not been core to their online marketing practices:
* No knowledge of keyword search market. Without understanding the volume and competitive dynamics for search keywords, it is hard to target SEO effectively.
* No understanding of where they ranked. Due to the lack of focus, the firm was ranking low (or not at all) on many highly relevant search keywords.
* Poor execution.  The website was sub-optimal from a search engine perspective – lack of keyword density; non-unique headers, missing descriptions; inconsistent utilization of header tag: and no quality link building.
After analyzing the market for search keywords, assessing competition and baslining the site’s current search engine ranking, we established a list of 25 target keywords (with a broader list of 75 keywords that could be dran from).
From there, we took the top 125 pages of the site and developed SEO recommedndations to improve search engine rankings.  (Due to client direction, we opted to leave page copy link-building alone for the time being).
Several months passed and we re-assessed the client’s site.  Badd news – performance hadn’t moved much, begging the question (my worlds – not the clients):  “Dude, Where My SEO At?”
Well as a dutiful SEO consultant, I came up with the following 5 factors:
1. Changes to website
The client was making some structural changes to their site hierrchy.  Previously URL’s were structured country.company/com.  Now, the URL’s were reading home.company.com/country.  Overy time this will be fine.  In the short-run, however, the search engines hate this kind of change.
2. Implementation lagging
Despite the passage of time, few of the changes on the 100+ pages have been implemented.  This is due to resource constraints and competition for scarce development talent.
3. Keyword densities – page copy
Product (and other) pages were not drafted with search egined keywords in mind.  As a result, there is much opportunity to redraft many pages with targeted, SEO-friendly copy.
Google measures “keyword density” which helps it establish the content and relevancy of a webpage to a keyword search.  It is measured by copy in the main body of the page and the page’s meta description.
4.  Links
The quality of links to a page help establish its relevancy and authority for the search engines.  Fore one of the targed keywords,  here are the # of  external site links pointing to each of the 3 pages:
Client: 8
Competitor A: 182
Competitor B: 2,550
Page Rank is a Google measure of “authority”.  10-point scale.  10 being best.  For example, www.google.com rates a 10, www.facebook.com a 9.
Sticking with the same keyword example:
Client = PageRank 5
Competitor A = PageRank 7
Competitor B = PageRank 7
5.  Competition
Lastly, the search market is dynamic and increasingly competitive.  While the client has stood relativelystill and, in the case of site structural changes, actually moved backwards, it is safe to assume that for highly searched terms, that competitors are putting forward a concerted effort at improving their own organic rankings.

chicken-little-sky-falling“The sky is falling!”

Chicken Little

Recently I was engaged by a security software company to assess their rankings in search engine results.  As their newly appointed SEO consultant, the results were not good.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) clearly had not been core to their online marketing practices:

  • No knowledge of keyword search market. Without understanding the volume and competitive dynamics for search keywords, identifying the most appropriate search keywords is impossible.
  • Low organic search rankings. Due to the lack of focus, the firm had low search engine ranking on many highly relevant search keywords. Read more

Filed under Search · Tagged with , , , ,