Search Engine Optimization

Step 3 Edit

That’s right. Read, read, read. Edit, edit, edit. Proofread the article, make sure all the information is correct and sounds as natural as possible. Best SEO writing will not seem like SEO writing at all. I know it’s a bit unrealistic to sound natural using this strategy, but try as hard you can. In my view it’s OK to sacrifice a little bit of readability for traffic. Why? Because most of my visitors don’t care for content, but it’s not true for everybody. There are companies that bring new customers with article marketing, and it their case content quality is the most precious asset that cannot be compromised. It all depends on your strategy and field.

Now that you have done keyword research, written the content, and edited it, let someone else review it. Key here is to give it to somebody who knows SEO, or understands it, because a person without search engine optimization knowledge might ask you a question why do you say: red running shoes, blue running shoes, black running shoes; why not say red, blue and black running shoes? Save yourself an SEO lesson and find somebody with SEO background. Let them change up the text a big, even allow them to get rid of some keywords that are just too sore for the quality. Only the ones that are TOO sore. You still want the traffic?

Once you content is up and running, you will be set up to pick a lot of searches on Google, both short and long tail. The next part of the strategy is link building, but thats for another time. :).

In the previous 2 articles I showed you how to do proper in depth keyword research for the landing page that captures all the possible keyword combinations. Now it’s time to write the turf.

Step 1 – Write

The first step to writing content for landing pages is to write it. Nothing much I can add to this, other then – do it naturally and forget about the keywords.

Since this is an article on SEO content for landing pages, I won’t go into conversion, but ideally you want content to convert not only to capture traffic. Here we only focus on traffic, leaving the conversion part in the back ground. What you might find is that the level of keywords you have populate in the content will ultimately make it sound a bit unnatural, and hurt conversions. It’s ok in certain fields, where people don’t pay attention to content much, but might not work in others. I’ll assume you are in the field where people don’t read much of your copy. If not, well that’s too bad. Read the article and then figure out how you can compromise.

Step 2 Plug The Keywords

This can be the most cumbersome part of all. You have to go back and plug ALL those keywords from your spreadsheet into the content. YES, all of them. In the titles, in the bullets, anywhere you can stick them. Here are some rules to follow – do not repeat any keyword twice. Your spreadsheet is structured in a way where the top level keywords will get much more density than the lower level keywords. And it makes sense, since top level keywords must be repeated many times, while lower level keywords do not need as much repetition. Do not confuse this with keyword density, which does not matter. I am talking about natural spread of keywords in relation to their search volume in the content.

Once you have the keywords in the spreadsheet, select the biggest ones, and do some more keyword research. So if you term was “running shoes” and one of the keywords that showed up was “nike running shoes”, then take it and do research using that term. Set a separate column, and put all the exact match combinations that come up in the keyword tool. Do this process for all the keywords that have considerate search volume. Don’t bother with anything below a 100, unless your source term did not have much volume to start with.

Once you got the secondary keywords in, each with its own column of related phrases, you have to repeat the process, but this time for the “third tier keywords. The ones that are IN the column.

For this stage, you may switch to broad match if you’re using Google tool, since most likely you will not find much as you plug them in one after another. The key here is to only search the biggest ones. Small phrases will only take time, and won’t give much in return. Don’t get obsessive about capturing everything. The pool you already have will cover a broad tree of searches. Combined with regular words, you will capture loads of long tail traffic.

Now that you have all the keywords in place, it is time to write the SEO content and then optimize it. It’s a 3 stage process and you can find more in part 3.

Before even opening Word (or getting pen and paper if you’re old school) start with keyword research. As we mentioned in the intro to the article, up to half of all traffic comes with long tail keywords, thus the landing pages with SEO content must capture all that traffic. How do you find the long tail keywords? You do not have to. As long as there’s enough words on the page and as long as you got all the possible key phrase combinations on the page, Google will do the rest.

So go to your keyword tool, and start the research. I like the Google tool and Word tracker. Word tracker paid tool is very useful, since unlike Google it actually shows all long tail keywords in its database, while Google does not. Maybe they will expand this down the road as Wall Street presses for more profits, but for now their tool does the job. They also got sights on mobile, and finance comparison fields, so my bet it will be a while.

Take the keyword your are targeting, and do the research. If you use Google, specify your country and set the match to exact. Obviously if the keyword is too big, like “shoes” you have to pick a smaller one, like “running shoes”, but my assumption is you got the basics down. So put in your keyword, with exact match, and take all the keywords that show up (the ones that could have some financial value to you), and copy them into a spreadsheet. If you see an entire page of keywords, your term might be too big, and you might have to select a smaller one. Usually 20 – 100 keywords will show up. Use your judgment. Don’t forget to expert the search volume, and make sure it is local.

As mentioned in the introduction, search engine optimization is a highly manual trait, as most of the process comes down to link building, and you cant automate content creation, networking, link requests, link exchanges and link buying. There are tools that ease the process of link discovery, tracking of the emails, checking for the links in place, but the whole process needs human time and human creativity. Sure you can get some software that spams blog comments for you, another one for auto directory submissions, another one for harvesting emails and another one for sending and tracking link exchanges.

You wont get far with it. The power of automation tools, black hat hacks and software comes with using it in the right way, the white hat way. You wont find anywhere on how to use the tools, which tools are the best, and the most effective techniques because people who know them keep them a secret. Yes it all comes to down to links, content and branding, but if you are in an over saturated ultra competitive field, the “build content and links will come” approach pushed by the big G does not work. When link buys is business as usual for competitors, and aggressive techniques bombard link profiles, you have no choice but to do it as well, and do it better. Many tools help with this, but it is up to you to find them, recognize them, spend few hundred or thousand bucks testing them, and learning how to use them. The tools described in the previous posts are the basic public roster. Do your research and discover more link building tools.

Content is an essential part of SEO. “Content is king” is a term you will hear a lot, especially from Google’s Matt Cutts. When writing content, such as blog posts or regular articles, you may not always have the time nor the patience to do proper keyword research and add all the long tail keywords to the article. I know I don’t do it all the time, but as you put effort into it you will reap the rewards in the form of traffic. Up to 30% percent (or 10% - 40% can’t remember exactly) of all Google queries have never been searched on Google before. This means that although if your main target is that big juicy competitive phrase, a lot of traffic will come from long tail. If you look at analytics you will see that actually up to 50% -  60% of all the traffic comes through long tail, with the key phrases you could never think about!

So how do you capture all this long tail traffic? Well, you write the content, as much of it as possible, Google will do the rest. This article however, focuses on landing pages. Pages designed to rank on search results for specific terms (usually with at least few hundred – thousand exact searches according to the keyword tools) and pages designed to convert that traffic. Getting the traffic is apart of the equation. Getting that traffic to convert is another. You will find many companies that specialize on SEO, such as this one, and you will also find a lot of companies that specialize in conversion optimization. How do you convert the traffic is another article (in fact there are books), and we won’t describe here, but to give you the run down it involves: A/B and multivariate testing, persuasive copywriting, web usability and web design.

SEO Toolbar – my favorite of em all. Data includes info such as Yahoo links, Yahoo page links, Yahoo .edu links, Yahoo .gov links, delicious links and more, for each page / site that you are browsing. The tool uses Yahoo API in order to pull data.  Apart from Yahoo, it also shows link count from majestic SEO, domain age, cache data, DMOZ listing, Yahoo Directory listing, and more. Be careful when it comes to judging rankability with Yahoo links, since the dimensions with Google vary greatly. Yahoo is dying and will be swallowed by Microsoft soon, so their search algorithms are going down the drain. Take everything with a big grain of salt. SEO Toolbar also includes rank checker and SEO for Firefox which I review below.

SEO For Firefox – this is Randy’s favorite tool, the account manager at SEO Internet Marketing Inc. He is in love with SEO for Firefox because he can explain SEO process to the clients in the language they understand while actually showing some SEO techniques. So what does SEO for firefox has in store? Enable the tool, and you will see a bunch of data under search result. The data will include info such as links, domain age, DMOZ listings etc. Data similar to that of SEO Toolbar, but under actual search results. Some people prefer it that I way. I personally distrust the info since as mentioned before, Yahoo links and Google links are two different creatures and you can’t judge one based on the other. Sure, yahoo link data is great for competitive link hunt, but not for judging why the site ranks on Google.

Rank Checker – plug in the keywords and check rankings. I find it is always off, so I don’t use it as much. It is useful when you have a pool of keywords that need to be checked. Rank checker can give you general idea where the site is in terms rankings, so you don’t have to check through 7 pages for each keyword to find your site.

Google Analytics – my favorite of them all, because the price is right and features match paid versions. Big downside – Google tracks your website and as a result knows a ton of information about it. I’d much rather keep this information from Google, but that is the price.

Google Webmaster Tools – one of the important features of Webmaster Tools is the link tracking. Google does not share link information with link:domain command, but does show it website owners. Top search queries is another useful feature as you can see past week rankings for different keywords. I still prefer the manual check though.

Google Alerts – useful for tracking new link opportunities. All Google search operators work with Alerts, such as intitle, inurl, etc.

Xenu Link Sleuth – this is an extremely useful internal link analysis tool. It can tell you how many internal pages cross link, how many internal link a page has, the anchor text of internal links, as well as page titles. It also reports broken links. This is the mother of all internal link analysis.

Majestic SEO – I cannot leave out majestic SEO if we are on the topic of links. It currently has over a trillion URL in the database and growing. It is the second organization after Google to report a trillion links on the web. Link analysis includes anchor text of the links, domain links, page links, banners, no follow, and much more. The amount of data may overwhelm you especially if you are dealing with a large website, that has over a several hundred thousand links.

Let’s start with copywriting tools. Copywriting usually comes 1st or 2nd in site development, so I thought it is logical to start with it.

Online BS Generator – my favorite of them all, online bullshit generator. You see meaningless newspeak sounds hip and cool. A lot of writers use it to make themselves sound smart. Can’t blame them, it does sound cool. If you want to sound cutting edge use this to: visualize strategic bandwidth and grow bricks-and-clicks niches.

We – We Calculator – fact of life, your customer does not care about you, and does not want to know the year you opened your store, launched your website, or the color of your dog. We is your enemy. You is your friend. Use you, and focus on the customer. We – we calculator will show you the density and warn if you mention your company or we too much in the text.

Thesaurus – a great tool for some additional keyword research. I also resort to it when I can’t think of synonym to a word, and have used original word too much. Usually saves me but not always. If you do a search for synonyms and thesaurus on Google you will more tools. Some of them are better then thesaurus.com for some words, while give almost nothing for others.

The next article is on useful plugs and tools that help with SEO in general.

So you’re on to search engine optimization. Want to learn the art of driving up traffic and making money online? Want to do it on auto pilot? Do you want to install software, research a couple of keywords and let the tools do everything themselves?

Me too!

Here’s the bad news – it doesn’t work that way. SEO is hard work. It’s full of little details and apparently unconnected steps if you’re not keen to how search engines work, but it can never be automated. OK, I’m lying, there’s the black hat world that loves automation, but that’s another universe, for another blog. I personally don’t know much about black hat, apart from basics, but what I know is that black hat tools can be used in a white hat way that bring long term results.

The downside with black hat is you have to constantly be on the edge of things and look for the true loopholes, which are always there. Once you find some, you keep it a secret and make a lot of money, until search engines catch on, or somehow the technique gets mainstream, at least in the black hat world. Thats what I know of the dark trait.

There is a saying – respect the tools of your trait. So respect your SEO tools and make sure you have your computer running fast an smooth. Nothing is more annoying than working on a slow machine that keeps freezing and can’t run few programs.

Using several link builders is an essential strategy at keeping yourself save.

By using several companies you:

• You can spread out one project between several companies. In case one of them goes south, the project will still stay afloat, and you won’t lose as much money as you could. Obviously it depends on the size of the project, and link builder simply won’t give you a priority if they aren’t seeing much money coming from you, so keep the size in mind. Spread it out in way where you can still survive if you lose a portion of the budget, but it creates some nice revenue for the link builder.
• You will never be left without a link builder. Business is business and for various reasons relationships go bad. You didn’t pay on time. Link builder did a bad job. You don’t like each other’s hats. Whatever it is – if companies walk on you or if you walk on them, you never have to think about it. The consequences should be minimal to your project. In the best scenario you will lose a bit of time looking for replacement, and nothing more.
• By using several companies you can strategize link efforts. Some link builders are fast. Some are slow. Sometime you need a fast punch. Some jobs are not a priority. Use strengths of each company to your advantage. The more you work with link builders, the better you will understand who to use and for what purposes.
• When using several companies you will save money. Eventually you will find cheaper rates, better support, and higher quality (if you keep looking). It won’t happen if you’re using one link builder.

I have to mention this again – you will never be left without links if you engage several companies. From my experience, and some mistakes we did in the past, it is a horrible situation to be in. It’s like being left without an arm, you can still use another one, but its half as effective.

PS

Many SEO companies outsource links. It is a fact. Many link building companies outsource link building. It is a fact too. So do your homework and cut out the middleman to save a lot of money.

Pretty straight forward. Specify anchor text, URL, and description for the link (not always required but preferable to have). The age old format is:

Anchor Text (also called Title): Keyword

Description: few words about your website, no need to keyword spam here.

URL: the page you want to link to go to. Specify deep links when needed.

In the word document create titles and descriptions for the keywords you are targeting. You may want to spread out the volume a little, but it depends on the speed of each link builder. Send the project out and wait for the results.

Quality control is an essential part of link outsourcing, and you have to review reports link by link in order to keep quality to the maximum. It is a lot of work, since sometime you have to review dozens of links, make comments about each one, and send feedback to the link builder. Like it or not, it has to be done.

You see, link builders and link building companies are like people. They can start out well and go down in quality with time. This is true especially if you engage a company that is “stuck” with link building business, and employs people who are there for a check, to keep the tabs in life. Most people hate what they do, and its true in SEO, so if you do get a company like that, then reviewing quality is essential simply because you do not know when you engage one! First project comes with good links! Second project is OK, while third and fourth are awful!

If you ignore quality control you might:

• Spend money on something that does not cost its price. D
• Get links from bad neighborhoods
• Get links next to Viagra, porn, sex toys, gambling, warez sites (though this won’t hurt you if there are only few, I feel fear every time I see my link next to porn…)
• Get many low quality links, which were not part of the deal when you engaged the company first

You have to monitor the reports and report your feedback. If you agreed for work in advance, then you can simply deny payments for links that you determine can hurt you or are of extremely low quality. Be very conservative here, since you can severe the relationship if you withhold payment for too many links. Obviously if there is no link at all (which happens), or link is nofollow / from a porn or gambling site / a spam comment, etc, then you can withhold the payment for that link. If however you simply don’t like the link personally, then there’s not much choice but to pay. Look at overall quality of the report. If it’s a total of 60 links, and there are few OK links which you wish weren’t there, then it makes sense to let it slip, and just make a comment in an email.

If you pay in advance then write your feedback, and state that you don’t accept bad links (give examples from the report). Alarm link builder that there’s a chance of losing you as a client.

Yes and no. If you are new to link building, reputable companies will do the link building job for you, using whatever means they choose: content bait; link buys; or even regular link requests (believe it or now it works well for high quality sites – article on search engine land). Companies have the knowhow, experience and people to do the job right. Makes sense to pay them if you’re new but understand the basics. Just don’t run into the bad apples out there. The best way to find good companies is to dig through blogs and find authoritative posts. This way you can actually see the company showcasing its expertise and knowledge to the public, something all professional do nowadays… Back to links.

I prefer to go after the best links myself. Why? Simple, it saves me money, and I find lower quality links, from the right sources do the job  (along with other very important factors… no.. not today :)).

So, to sum up the chapter:

• Send trials in order to test out link building services
• Observe results on search engines (obviously DO NOT TARGET competitive phrases, but go for something more realistic, consider very small number of links with the test job)
• Review report link by link