Best use of a marketing budget of $500
One of the most difficult things to do when starting out in SEO is to determine how to allocate the resources you have to guarantee the best ROI (return on investment). Ecommerce store owners have a harder time of it as they are trying to spread their marketing dollars out across literally hundreds of keywords for all of the products on their stores. Many times clients send us lists of hundreds of keywords and want to know how to best narrow the list down and how to best allocate the resources they have. Here is what we tell them.
1. Narrow your keyword list to 5 keywords. With a budget of $500 per month, it is best to focus on a short list of 5 keywords. You can much easier track your results and get results quicker which will in turn open up your budget to focus on more keywords. To avoid getting a penalty from google you will want to have 5 keywords but only 2-3 urls. This means that you will need to have some of the keywords be variations of the main keyword. First step is to narrow your list to a short list of 20-40 keywords. Organize them by search volume. The second step is to check the all in anchor ranking for all of the 20-40 keywords on your list. For any that you already have an all in anchor ranking in the top 20, then put those on your shortlist of keywords to choose from. If a keyword has an all in anchor ranking in the top 20 it is going to be easier to push it to the top 10 or top 3 in the search engines than a keyword that you are not ranking in the top 100 for according to all in anchor.
2. Article writing. For article writing you can choose to get a few high quality articles from a US writer or a lot more articles from a Philippine writer. My advice is that if you are going to be placing the articles on your website, then always use US writers. If the articles are going to be used for link building and you are not YET a Fortune 5000 company, then Philippine writers are awesome!
3. Article Marketing. Now that you have the articles, what to do with them! My recommendation is that the first place to always start is article marketing. You can create accounts on the article directories or outsource it. There are also some distribution services such as isnare.com and submityourarticle.com that will submit your article over multiple websites. The monthly fee for sites such as these range from a few dollars per article to about $47 per month. You can put a project on odesk.com for someone to submit your articles to the article directories and provide them the article and a list of sites and your work is done!
4. Blog commenting. Although thought of as a spammy link building method by most, when done correctly, blog commenting is one of the best ways to build up a lot of backlinks to your site on unique ips. You can either do the blog commenting yourself or outsource it.
5. Reporting. Before you begin you will either want to run a report on the allinanchor rankings and number of backlinks according to open site explorer or outsource the report.
There you have it! The above is pretty much the exact strategy we recommend and implement for a budget of $500.
Keyword Competition Report
People are asking so we thought we would explain exactly what is included in one of our newest services: Keyword Competition Reports
A keyword competition report is a report that clearly shows you exactly where your site is weak and how you need to improve to dominate the search engines for a specific keyword.
What we do is we analyze your site and compare it against your top 10 competitors for a specific keyword. We take over 20 different factors into consideration and allow you to see how your site stacks up against your competition for each of those 20 factors. Each item that we compare your site with tells us exactly what types of links we need to build to get your site into the #1 position in the search engines.
Have you been building links for a while but feel like you are just not getting anywhere? Have you hired other SEO agencies and are frustrated with the lack of direction and the cookie cutter approach to link building? Would you like to know exactly how many links and the potential cost analysis of what it will take to achieve top rankings? Does your boss need to know exactly how much investment is required before you start to see a return on your search marketing investment? Order one of our basic or advanced keyword competition reports today and stop wasting your money on links that are not helping to improve your sites ranking in the search engines!
Call 760-494-7883 to place your order.
Basic reports are $1000 and Advanced reports are $3500. With the advanced reports we compare your site with 20 of your competitors and analyze with over 40 different factors. We also provide a detailed SEO strategy that you can implement or hire us to implement for you.
Allow 6-8 weeks for report delivery.
How to find the best article marketing sites for your niche!
Go where your customers are! Ever feel like you are spinning your wheels and just hoping and praying that the SEO strategies you are doing are actually working? We already covered that one factor in determining what article directory sites are the best in terms of getting urls indexed quickly, but what if your client wants not only backlinks, but also traffic? How can we determine if a site will also send traffic! One easy way is using Google Adwords Display Network with Managed Placements. Basically you create an ad based on your keywords and main target and then set up specific sites in the display network that you want to test. Start with choosing all of the basic sites you can get content placed on easily such as ezinearticles.com, hubpages.com and squidoo.com. Set your dollar amount per click pretty high so you can get as many impressions and clicks as possible. If budget is a concern, then set the campaign to have a specific start and stop date.
After you have it set up, let it run for a few days or a week or so. Go back and look at the number of impressions and number of clicks. What you are looking for is which sites have a higher click through rate for your specific market. The sites with a higher click through rate are the sites you want to focus on to get your content placed on! If they have a high click through rate for the ads, they will also have a higher click through rate for the articles themselves on the sites as compared to other sites. Some other factors such as layout of the ads and where your links appear in the articles will of course factor, but we are looking at general numbers to compare different sites… not an exact science!
As you are researching the backlink profile of your competitors and as you find more sites, add them to your Google Adwords campaign. Go back each week and see if any of the one’s you have added have a lot of impressions and / or clicks for your target market and then work on focusing on getting links on those sites whether it be from getting a guest blog post placed or even paid advertising.
Have a question or tip? Leave your question below in the comments area and we will do our best to answer it!
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Revisit Your Title Tags to Improve Your Click Through Rate
Title tags are one of those things that are clearly an important piece to high rankings on search engine results. Title tags are one of the first parts of code that the search engines see on a page. Many people know this, but do not take the time to look at all their title tags to make sure that they are the best they can be. Improving your title tags can have amazing results to your search engine rankings, so taking some time to look at your title tags can be really worth it.
One question people have is whether or not they should include their company name in their title tags? This is especially a good idea if you have a well known brand, but it can also help build a brand that is not as well known. You just want to make sure that your title tag also has relevant keywords and not just the title of your company. Building your company brand can be accomplished in many different ways, but using title tags is definitely a great place to start.
Title tags should contain no more than 10-12 words and it is also helpful to include, at least, two keyword phrases in your title tag. The best way to do this is to separate them with a hyphen. This is a common practice and allows you to maximize the effectiveness of the title tag. Another important part of your title tags is to include geographic modifiers if they are appropriate to your business. For example, if you are a real estate agent it would be beneficial for you to put the name of the city you work in, in your title tag. If you are an ecommerce store and you deliver products throughout the United States you probably do not need to place a geographic modifier in your title tag.
It is also important to make sure that the title tag directly relates to the copy on the page. Many people actually wait for the copy to be complete in order to create the most relevant title tag for the page. You want to make sure that the title tag you create includes keyword terms that are also in the content of the page. This also seems to be important to the search engines which will help your rankings. It is also helpful to add an action word to the title tag so that it reads like a short ad. Terms like shop, buy, now, learn, read and see are sure to drive more traffic to your site, but make sure to deliver on your promise. If you are offering a free download in your title tag, the page you are taking the consumer to must have something they can download for free. If you mislead the consumer it may eventually lead to poor search engine rankings.
Creating relevant title tags that contain primary keywords at the beginning and a call to action is sure to have positive effects on your search engine rankings. It is also a good idea to include your company name in the title tag to build brand recognition. Make sure that your title tag is 10-12 words long and that the words are also found in the content of the page and in the meta description for that page. Making these adjustments is sure to increase traffic to your site and help your organic search engine rankings.
Google AdWords – How to Get Started
Upon taking a first glance at Google AdWords one might feel a bit nauseous and maybe even dizzy almost immediately upon logging in. While creating Google AdWords campaigns is a crucial part to many online businesses it may seem like a completely overwhelming task to learn and understand. The best way to approach this type of project is to start with small tasks in order to work up your momentum. You can also find a lot of instructions within the Google AdWords application that you may want to look at before starting.
Once you are ready to start building your AdWords campaigns it is important to create a complete list of keywords to target for your advertising. It is important to create small lists of related keywords in order to make them as relevant as possible to the search results. Having one ad campaign with a huge list of keywords is definitely the wrong way to go. If you have multiple ad groups with shorter keyword lists it will prove to be a much better strategy for your AdWords campaign. This will make your ads much more relevant to searches and will maximize their effectiveness.
Another important thing to remember when you create each ad is to link to the most relevant page on your website. For example, if you are selling dog items and you have an ad campaign for dog houses you should have a page on your website that focuses on dog houses, only. You want to make sure that if someone is clicking on your ad for dog houses that they arrive on a page that will give them exactly what they are looking for so that your ad money is well spent. If you have an ad for dog houses and you take them to a home page that lists multiple categories you may distract them from their original purchase and probably lose the sale. Keeping your ads targeted and focused will help them be more successful.
Once you have a complete list of keywords you can start creating the actual verbiage for the ads. It is always a good idea to see what your competitors are doing before you write all your ads and then realize that they are not very competitive. It is important to include a “call to action” in your ad such as buy now, on sale today, order yours now. These terms will help create a sense of urgency with your ads and will help you attract serious buyers. It is also helpful to include words that evoke emotions, such as unique, stylish, designer and friendly. If you can create some sort of emotional response from a shopper they will be more attracted to your ads over your competitors. You may also want to consider adding pricing information in your ad. This will also help to target shoppers, so if they are looking for something for $50, but your site has more premium items, if your ad says $100 they may not click on your ad which will cost you money.
The most important thing to do is to start your Google AdWords campaign. It is important to keep your ads focused, easy to read, include a call to action and at least one adjective that evokes an emotion. Create at least 4 ads per campaign and allow them to run for about a week to get an idea of which ones are working best. You can then make small adjustments to the other ads in order to get better results.
How Google Reader and Google Alerts Can Help Your Internet Business
Many people spend hours each day researching the latest and greatest internet marketing tools and their competitors to get their internet business on the cutting edge. Google has two tools that can really help you stay on top of the most recent information without you spending any of your precious time doing the research yourself. Google does all the research for you and alerts you of new information on topics that are important to you. Two of these tools are Google Reader and Google Alerts. They can work hand-in-hand as your research assistant and give you more time to work on other projects or give you more free time with your family.
Google Reader is a tool that constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for updated content so that you do not have to spend time checking them all yourself. It is a consolidated view of all your favorite sites and shows you when updates are available for topics that you find important. You don’t have to spend hours searching each individual site for new information. Google Reader does all the hard work for you and saves you tons of time. It also makes sharing the information you find with friends and networking partners easy, too. It even allows you to post the information on your blog or website to give it fresh content without taking tons of your time. A tool like Google Reader can allow you to become a much more efficient internet marketer, which is a priceless tool for any internet business owner.
Another tool that can work with Google Reader is Google Alerts. Google Alerts takes things to the next level by emailing you whenever new results for your search terms show up on Google. You can also have your Google Alerts sent to your Google Reader account or iGoogle page. This tool gives you tons of options. You can get updates on news, videos, web pages, blogs and Google groups. Google Alerts allows you to decide how often you want to receive updates, whether it is once a day or each time there are updates; you can customize Google Alerts to fit your needs.
These tools allow you to keep your business on the cutting edge by keeping you current with moves that your competition are making and staying current with changes in your industry. Real-time information like this can be priceless towards the growth of your company. Google is full of amazing information, and with tools like these it can be easy to stay on top of things without spending tons of time doing research. With the time these tools can save you, you can get ahead of the competition and enjoy more time with your family and friends. These tools can really help you with your internet marketing research so that you can grow and expand your company faster and more efficiently. They make it easy to find out about the latest internet marketing techniques and keep you ahead of your competition. Go and give them a try and see how amazing Google Reader and Google Alerts can be.
SEOQuake Firefox Helps You Pre-Qualify Link Partner Sites in Seconds
For many SEO experts it may seem like their job is never done. This is so true because SEO is constantly evolving and changing in order to ensure that people get the best results possible in their online searches. The nature of Search Engine Optimization is such that any tool that can help speed up any part of the process can save SEO managers hours a day, allowing them to focus on other SEO projects. SEOQuake for Firefox is one of these such tools that no SEO manager should do without. It can help you analyze many SEO parameters literally in seconds.
Search engine optimization is basically the ability to optimize any internet content so that the major search engines can find it and like it enough to post it on the first few pages of their search results. Gaining these listings, organically, without spending thousands of dollars on Adwords costs can be the secret to the long-term success of a website. SEOQuake for Firefox is a tool that can help you analyze potential partner sites and help you compare your site content to your top competitors in seconds. The results can then be used right away or saved for a future date.
Let’s say that you are thinking of paying for a link from another website. You can simply run the SEOQuake tool to pre-qualify that site and see if it will be worth the expense. SEOQuake provides you with a wide range of default parameters such as Google PageRank for the current page, Google Index shows you the number of indexed pages, Google Link gives you the total number of links pointing to the page, and similar parameters for many other search engines. But SEOQuake does not stop there, it also offers you the ability to create custom parameters that you can turn on and off whenever you want to use them. This makes SEOQuake a truly powerful tool for anyone that is trying to maximize their site for SEO.
Here is a specific example of how SEOQuake for Firefox can help you with your SEO. If you kno
w anything about SEO, you know the term keywords. As an SEO manager you spend countless hours researching keywords to find the most profitable and popular ones that consumers use in their searches. SEOQuake has a density tool plug-in that allows the user to see key information about keyword frequency, density and page arrangement so you can compare your site to the top site on a specific Google search. This can give you the opportunity to closely examine how you can improve these parameters on your site which can have dramatic effects on your search engine results.
Having the ability to analyze your competition is a smart way to improve the performance of your site. Like they saying goes, “Why reinvent the wheel?”. If something is working well for another site it certainly should work well for your site. SEOQuake can make a huge impact on your SEO strategy quickly and effectively.
Great SEO Means Diversity
When you are putting together your SEO strategy it is important to understand that one of the most important steps is diversity. This means that not only should you be diversifying the keywords you are writing about, and the url’s you are pointing too, but also the places you are posting your content. The best way to keep track of each of these things is to create a simple Excel spreadsheet listing each article you post, the keywords used, the url’s you are pointing to and the place you are posting the article. This way you can have a clear picture of what you have accomplished and what you need to focus on.
It is very important to use different keywords so that you are maximizing your SEO strategy. This will help make your articles more appealing to the search engines and will help your site show up under many searches instead of just one or two. It is a good idea to use multiple keywords in your SEO strategy because certain keywords will have less competition than others and will move up in the search engine results faster than others. This will help to increase the traffic to your website as quickly as possible. The more traffic you get to your site the more products you will have the opportunity to sell.
Another way to diversify within your SEO plan is to point articles to different pages of your website. The more url’s you can have listed on the search engines the better. As you add content to each of these pages you will see them move higher on the search results. If you make the mistake of having all of your articles point to your home page you will be missing out on an important part of your SEO strategy.
It is also important to remember to post your articles to different sites, blogs and directories. Mixing up where you post your content is just as important as writing interesting content. This will also help your site show up on the search engines and give you exposure to different customers. Think about it, just as some people only use Google to do their internet searches, some people may only use Hubpages or EzineArticles to search for information online. By diversifying where you post your articles you are able to reach many more customers.
It is important to understand that diversity is one of the key ingredients to any great SEO strategy. There are a number of things to remember to diversify: keywords, url’s, and the places you are posting content. Understanding the importance of diversifying your SEO strategy is one of the key steps to your SEO success. It is also important to keep a clear picture of what you are doing and where things are being posted whether you are doing your SEO or if you decide to outsource these tasks. SEO can be time consuming, but it is one of the best ways to get higher rankings on the search engines and increase traffic to your website.
Why Search Engine Optimization is a Must for Your Business
Search engine optimization is understanding how to maximize both your website content and your marketing plan to gain high rankings in the popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and now Bing. It is simple, high rankings give you more free exposure to online shoppers and therefore will boost your profits. Many people spend thousands of dollars each month in pay per click advertising when they can reduce these costs by paying a little more attention to SEO. Search engine optimization does take a considerable amount of time to accomplish, which makes it an excellent task to outsource to a reliable company. While you will be paying a fee for these services, in the long run you will save much more money by decreasing or even eliminating your PPC campaigns.
While PPC is a great way to get customers to your website, it can be extremely costly. With a few Search Engine Optimization techniques you can drastically reduce the amount of money you are spending on paid advertising and gain tons of free exposure. When building a Search Engine Optimization plan there are two things to remember. First, quality, unique content is what the search engines are looking for; therefore, this is not an area you want to cut corners. Second, Search Engine Optimization needs to be done at a moderate pace, consistently throughout the entire year. You don’t want to go pay a company to post 5,000 articles and blogs about your company in one week and expect to see amazing results. The search engines will not like this technique and it may even hurt you beyond repair.
With SEO your main goal is to get noticed by the search engines in a “natural” way. Therefore, it is best to post a few articles each week to article directories and blogs in order to build reputable back links to your website. The more unique each back link is the better. However, it is extremely important to understand that the content you are linking to your site needs to be useful. Taking a bunch of poorly written articles and posting them all over the internet will not only get you nowhere with the search engines, but potential customers may actually be turned-off by the lack of quality information about your company. While the main purpose of SEO is to get your site noticed by the search engines, it can also lead potential customers right to your doorstep.
Search Engine Optimization is definitely a task that you do not want to push-off any longer. Defining a weekly strategy is one of the best ways to make sure that you stay on track with your SEO plan. Like we said before, SEO is one of those tasks that needs to be done consistently throughout the entire year in order to see results. If you take this task seriously you will see amazing results which will allow you to minimize, if not eliminate, your huge PPC costs. Even if you choose to outsource these tasks you will still save thousands of dollars a month while increasing the profits of your business. Don’t wait any longer; you need to develop your SEO plan today!
More Tips for Tweeting on Twitter
If you signed up for Twitter and just love sharing things that you have learned that are making your business bigger and better you probably have some of the basics of tweeting down. Maybe you read our post “Tweet, Retweet, Hashtags: The New Language of Social Media” that showed you a few of the basics. If you are finding that Twitter has been an amazing tool for your business and are in need of more, this article will take your tweets to the next level. While tweeting can be a great way to share information you shouldn’t forget that Twitter is a two-way-street and may teach you a few things, too.
A great tool, that isn’t the easiest to find, is Twitter’s advanced search. The advanced search feature can help you find posts about a term, 
a person, a topic, a location or even a certain date. The tool can be found by scrolling to the bottom of any page on Twitter and look for the “Search” link. There is also another link there that lists all the Twitter search operators like “from:” which allows you to find tweets from a specific person or shows you that putting words in quotes to find tweets about a specific term. Advanced search can really help you find information on exactly what you may need help with at the moment you need it.
Another cool feature that is available to Twitter users that also have a Facebook account is the ability to install Twitter on Facebook. This allows you to update your status in one place, instead of two and keep your social media endeavors efficient. All you need to do is go to twitter.com/widgets/facebook and click on the button that says “Install Twitter on Facebook”. You will be taken through a few steps and you can choose to either let Twitter update your Facebook or Facebook update your Twitter status. It is a bit easier to configure your Twitter account to update your Facebook and doing things this way will help you keep your tweets to the 140 character limit.
If you are used to desktop applications like AOL Instant Messenger there is a Twitter application that can be added to your desktop to make tweeting a breeze. Digsby is an application that Windows users can use to view postings from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all your email accounts in a long window that looks like an instant messenger window on steroids. It is a great way to keep track of things without having to sign in to multiple accounts. If you like a larger view you can use an application called TweetDeck which allows you to personalize how you see your tweets and can also be configured to see your Facebook updates and also has a ton of other features.
If you have realized how important social media marketing is to your business, it is important to make the process as efficient as possible, or you can easily find yourself spending all your time tweeting and updating your Facebook account. While these tools can be amazingly beneficial to you, it is a good idea to specify how much time each day you want to dedicate to this form of marketing. Remember, it is very important to utilize multiple marketing techniques for your business and never put all of your eggs in one marketing basket.
