Study: does it pay to invest your time in long-tail keywords?

Here is a study documenting the value of long tail keywords ("LTKW"). These are "... long and specific keyword phrases that generate little traffic and few conversions each" as defined in the study.The are really referred to as "long tail" because of the shape of the curve on a graph of frequency of use of a set of keywords. These are the phrases less often searched for, and the graph shows a "long tail" going out to as far as there are phrases being graphed.

This study was done using data from AdWords campaigns, but the principle pertains to optimizing your web pages just the same.

The study revealed that the impact of  LTKW is different for different businesses. Some receive a large percentage of their total traffic from these phrases, while others receive only a small percentage. These phrases appear to be more important to SKU-based commodity retailers. That seems to me to make sense.

The author of the posting also pointed out that a company in the study that received "... only 8% of its sales through the long tail keywords made a significant amount of money with them." That got my attention! Even when the percentage is smaller, there can still be real money involved. Who wants to leave money on the table when doing business?

In the clinic, we always emphasize the value of paying attention to LTKW. It is nice to see some documentation of that concept.

Keeping Good Blogs Alive

In preparing for a class on blogging, I went back and reviewed some of my old posts on blogs and blogging to see if there was something there that would be useful to present in class. I came across a couple of old posts that I thought were still relevant and very useful information.

One of them made a reverence to using "hard links" on your blog template to boost performance on postings of particular interest. I have liked that idea and have already used it to create links to my "tags" that I thought would be useful and convenient for my readers. I don't really want to create hard links to posts on the template because I think it would quickly become so overwhelming, such a large volume of links, as to be more confusing than useful. What that made me think of is the idea of creating a new post occasionally that points back to selected posts from the past.. That seems to me a better way to accomplish the desired result, as it allows me to reflect on and add new thoughts or comments to the material contained in the old posts, while reviving them with new links.

That is when I discovered that finding an old post was not all that easy, even when I knew just what I was looking for! I had no trouble finding the post to read, but locating the individual posting so I could link directly to it was much harder. This made me think about how valuable direct links could be to someone reading the blog who would not have the information to find a particular posting from the past without conducting a real search. That is important because you don't want people to have to search for something that you want them to read. You want to make  it very easy for them to find what you want them to read!

Anyway, with a little effort, I solved the problem and here are the two posts I wanted to revive:

First is a post with some tips for making a blog effective. One of the tips from the author I was quoting dealt with "Reigniting old posts", and his suggestion was a different idea, but triggered the idea I am proposing. I thought ihis suggestions were good in themselves, but was also interested that his ideas suggested something else to me that I used instead. It is important to keep in mind that ideas that you gather in your research should always be adjusted to your own needs and environment. This situation forms a good example of that concept.

Second is a post with an example of a company that found a blogging strategy that increased its business more than ten times! Anything that can do that is certainly worth taking a look at to see how it can be adapted to your circumstances! This example was a winery that gave wine to bloggers who had written about wine. The gift of the wine caused the bloggers to write about the wine on their blogs and the activity and attention turned into a big increase in sales for the winery.

Researching marketing is good because you learn things that can be useful to you as you can see from the "6 Tips" article, but creativity really makes for the big payoff as illustrated by the story in the second article.

Footnote: The winery article said that they increased their business by "more  than a factor of ten"! That is a nice increase, but if I read the numbers correctly, their increase was way, way more than a factor of ten!! Check it out and see what factor you come up with...

Want privacy on Facebook? Here is how to get some

"... Facebook has given users many granular controls over their privacy, more than what's available on other major social networks."

Facebook is a site that can offer substantial benefits, under the right circumstances, to people promoting businesses or services over the web. It also presents some challenges, often due to the mingling of personal information with commercial purposes. The article referenced here provides some help in understanding what privacy controls are available and how to use them. With this information in hand, one is in a much better position to assess the situation in light of one's own circumstances, and to set up controls that can help bridge the gap between the demands of different uses.

The key here seems to be in understanding what privacy controls one can set in connection with custom groups that define the status of persons in your friends list. Making clear which of your friends is personal and which is commercial might make using Facebook more productive.

Another point that strikes me in this article is the caution about joining groups and how that can compromise what you have done with other privacy settings.

Finally, games and "fun things" sent by friends introduce real dangers to your system because of how your response can allow other applications access to your information. Personally, I am reluctant to participate in any of these games for that reason.

To read the complete article, click on the title above.

Synergy of Search and Social Media

"Research has shown that display ad exposure can lift consumer response to paid search."

This research refers to paid search activity, but it seems fair to assume that organic search activity would be influenced in the same way. The point to take away from this article is that your marketing efforts through different approaches support and enhance one another. It is not a good idea to conduct all your marketing efforts through a single vehicle. The success that you have in each approach reinforces the success that you have in other approaches.

To put it another way, look at all the tools that you have available to promote your site and make use of several of them simultaneously rather than putting all your eggs in one basket. Your web site itself, is the core around which your other marketing revolves. This core effort is then supplemented and strengthened by your activities with blogging, newsletters, article publication, press releases, social media sites, reciprocal links, and, yes, even paid Internet ads! Plan to use several of these tools in concert based on your personal and business characteristics and capacities to support different approaches.

While our focus here is on Internet tools, don't overlook the importance of what you do in more traditional marketing through your use of business cards, letterhead, brochures, promotional gifts, and networking, which also reinforce your online marketing efforts. A well managed mixture of approaches could be more effective for your business than a single-minded focus on one strategy alone!

How to Build Links Fast: 101 Tips & Strategies

"Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings."

The authors of this article have provided a very useful list of ways to get links for your web site, and illustrated it by starting with a tip that really works! This blog post proves that it works!

Reviewing this list is definitely worth your time. You won't find every item useful for your own business, but there are plenty of things that can be very helpful to you, and work in your specific environment. Within the 101 items on the list are about 30 bad ideas pointing out bad practices, so be sure that you note the point in the list where it switches from things-to-do to things-to-NOT-do!

You do need to go through the list to get the details, but I will summarize some of the key ideas here.

• Become an authority and create lists. There are a number of specifics listed in this general concept, but the basic idea is to put something on your site that is worth linking to. Observe that I am proving this concept by blogging about this list and linking you to it!
• Use PPC judiciously. This is the most interesting idea I have come across giving a reason to use PPC ("Pay Per Click")! The idea is that, after you have created a "link magnet" (see the first point!), you promote that page by purchasing some keyword phrases that will get traffic directly to that information. If it works for you, you will get a lot of leverage for the money spent on PPC.
• Use news and syndication. We talk about this technique all the time in our search engine marketing clinic. The list provides several specific ideas that you can use in pursuing this approach. Basically, you are planting links all around the web with this approach.
• Directories, social media, etc. Many directories can be really helpful to you, and all social media are becoming much more important and useful.
• Join local organizations that provide links. Many professional associations include a link to your site on the membership lists. Look into these in your business field and consider local chambers of commerce, networking groups, etc., etc., etc.....

There are many more concepts in the list, but this should be enough to give you the idea. Near the bottom of the list, the authors switch to telling you things to avoid. Many  of these just have to be tongue in cheek to fill out their total of 101 ideas, but many of them are practices that used to work or techniques that people actively use today, but that can get you in trouble if you get caught at it. These are worth your time to review, but make sure you have mentally switched gears to put a big "X" through each of these points as you absorb them!

Addendum: I posted this article on 10/3, and set up a PPC campaign to send traffic to it. On 10/17, when I checked my traffic, this page had ten times the pageviews of the next highest page on my blog! I have to believe this works!!

Improve Your Google Rankings!

Google is adding a new feature to its searches that provide more opportunity for informed search engine marketers ("SEM") to improve their listings. The new feature is additional links that are included within the search engine results listing to take searchers directly to relevant information within a target page of results. A good description of the new feature is provided in this blog post. The objective of the feature is to provide the searcher with more focused results when they are available and identified properly. The goal of the SEM is to take advantage of this new feature to provide more focused results for the search engine (Google) and the searcher.

The key to accomplishing this is to first segment your content pages to provide very focused subsections within the text. A good illustration of this and the following points can be found on the American Heart Association site. When you look at this page, pay special attention to two features; one, that page is divided into sections with captions identifying the topic in each, and, second, there is a "table of contents" at the top of the page that jumps to the "bookmarks" associated with the captions identifying each section. These are the necessary steps to getting the new Google feature to work for you. The code that establishes the bookmark will look something like this ("<a id="HDL" name="HDL">") in the html of your page.

A description of the "named anchors" concept is provided in this blog post. Reviewing this post while examining the American Heart Association page and its source code should make this enhancement easy to understand and implement on your site.

Search engine marketing is always changing, and the best way to keep abreast of the latest information is regular attendance at the free Internet Marketing Clinic offered twice a month at the UH Small Business Development Center.

Calling In Pros to Refine Your Google Image

"Google's ubiquity as a research tool has given rise to a new industry: online identity management. The proliferation of blogs and Web sites can allow angry clients, jealous lovers or ruthless competitors to define a person's identity. Whether true or not, their words can have far-reaching effects."

Several people, at different times recently, have had problems with people posting things on the web that they were uncomfortable with. In one case, a friend's associate put up a lot of links to his name offering "escort services" so that it would look like he was in the business of setting up connections for people. This was a deliberate attempt to embarrass and cause problems. In another case, a search for my contact's name brought up some other blog postings that could be awkward for her business to be associated with. This was more of a "coincidental" situation rather than something deliberate, but it was still a problem.

In both cases, I had to tell them that there was no "direct" action that they could take to remove the problem materials, and that the only thing they could realistically do is to "push" the problem references out of sight by establishing a more robust presence on the web for material that they did want to be associated with.

It is unfortunate that this is the case, but there is simply no way to get things that are bad for you removed from the web. This article describes a solution offered by different companies whowill help you deal with this if it happens to you. What they are doing is implementing the practices that we teach in the Internet Marketing Clinic each month to help you build a strong position on the Internet.

Social Media: Mixing Business with Pleasure?

"One of the questions I hear most often when I'm teaching a social media seminar is how to balance their professional social media presence with their personal one. People ask me if they should blog and Tweet as themselves or as their business. They ask if they should mix business contacts with friends on Facebook and LinkedIn. They want to know if they can talk about their hobbies on their business profiles. Basically, they want to know the pros and cons of mixing business with pleasure in the blurry-lined landscape of social media."

Social Media is (are??) intruding in our lives more and more every day. All of these new forms of communication and interaction pose new challenges and opportunities for us to consider. Jennifer has written an interesting article exploring some of the issues that arise in this area that we all need to think about seriously before we become active in this arena. A big point to remember is, "you can't take things back!" Once you have put something out into this environment, you have lost all control over it.

In my own experience, I find I am mixing business and social more and more on the web, but I tend to be a pretty private person anyway, and I am very cautious about the personal things that I post. Even so, this information, especially over some time, can become quite revealing, and you can inadvertently tell people things that you might not always be comfortable with.

One suggestion that I might make to newcomers to this field is to do some "lurking" before you become active. What this refers to is the practice of hanging around and reading what other people are saying without participating yourself. There are many forums on the web where this practice is really frowned upon and discouraged, but the newer forms of the social media are so wide open that I have not seen that same sort of attitude expressed. What it does for you is it gives you a chance to see what other people are doing so you can form your own impression of what is appropriate and comfortable for you before you commit yourself. When you see the material that other people are putting up on the web, I guarantee you will have a personal reaction to what you see. This reaction will help to inform you about your personal comfort zone, and you can use that information to guide your own participation.

As Jennifer's piece makes clear, it has to be a personal choice for each of us to determine the correct balance between these different interests. My own decision is to continue as I have been doing, but always remember that there is no private conversation taking place here and anything that I say can be seen by anyone else on the web, today or tomorrow, into the indefinite future! If you are not comfortable thinking about that prospect when you get ready to post something, don't post it! I want to err on the side of caution at all times.

Start Your Own Web Business

"It’s always pays to get around like minded people and see what you can learn."

Brian Armstrong is an Internet entrepreneur who maintains an interesting blog that is worth visiting. He has spoken in our clinic int he past and has been invited to return for another session, but, unfortunately for us, he has since moved to Argentina!

His blog is called StartBreakingFree, and it is all about his effort to become independent via his Internet activities. If you are interested in starting a business on the web, you might find a lot of interesting ideas on his site.

I was initially attracted to Brian's blog because he published a series documenting his thirty day effort to increase traffic to his web site. This was a great series because you could follow his thought process day-by-day as he tried different strategies to boost his performance and reported back on whether they worked or not! You can take a look at the "build traffic, get more subscribers, and sell books" strategy series to see if there are ideas that might be helpful to you in your own efforts to improve.

Brian continues to post his experiments on his site, as well as references to other people who are doing interesting things on the web. His site is a great resource for researching topics about internet marketing. When he comes back to the US for a visit, I hope we can get him in to tell us some of his adventures directly.

Beware of spam!

I have just received a particularly insidious scam that is going around now. It is described further in the attached link:

http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/phishing_Tagged_dot_com.php

What this thing does is send messages to everyone that you have ever emailed, inviting them to look at photos from you. I received one from a friend, and the inclination is to say, "How nice that they sent me this!" Below the invitation is a message saying "Please respond or Nancy may think you said no :(", using your friends name. The idea is to make you feel guilty if you don't respond! That is a big tipoff.

I have only gotten a couple of these, but my wife has gotten more recently, and a friend last night at dinner told me about receiving one (that he did not respond to!)

Be very careful about responding to anything that you did not expect to receive, even from people that you know. If the message makes you feel guilty, be extra careful!

My reaction to this message was just what the scammer wanted me to think, "Oh, this is from a friend, it must be okay." Fortunately (maybe because another friend had just mentioned this to me a few hours before), I paused and thought about it further. I had never heard of this site that I got the message from, so I opened another window and googled it, where I found the link above. Everything was pretty clear after that.

I sent a message to my friend (her real email) telling her what I thought had happened to her and got an immediate response saying, "Yes, that is exactly what happened, and she now was working frantically to try to undo the damage". Unfortunately, it is pretty hard to undo! Anyone who received it and opened it has already spread it further! In addition to that, it is pretty hard to send an email to everyone in your own address book. I am trying now, and there are so many bad addresses accumulated in the book that I am having a lot of trouble sending a legitimate message to all the good addresses!!

Always be suspicious and use caution before responding to mail that you weren't expecting. These things are playing on natural responses and on a moment's inattention on your part. Believe me, if you get tricked into responding, you will feel terrible as sooon as you realize it, but it is too late at that point!