SiteProNews |
- How the Buying Cycle Affects Your Keyword Research – A SPN Exclusive Article
- Affiliate Merchant Mistakes To Beware Of
- My SEO has Fallen Down and Can’t Get Up
- Mobile POS Payment Solution Saves The Day!
- Social media and the Blackberry Riots
- SEO Expert: Rand Fishkin Interview
| How the Buying Cycle Affects Your Keyword Research – A SPN Exclusive Article Posted: 10 Aug 2011 07:57 AM PDT
Sites need to choose keywords on a page-by-page basis based on two things. First and foremost, you have to choose keywords that accurately reflect the content on the page. Search engines rank individual pages, not sites as a whole. Secondly, you have to choose keywords based on the intent of your target audience. That is where the buying cycle comes into play. When a searcher is at the beginning of their buying cycle, they are usually in research mode. They're just "shopping around," bouncing from site to site to gather information from numerous sources, which they will use to influence their future purchase. For instance, first time parents might spend a couple weeks researching baby cribs for their new nursery. Who are the big crib manufacturers? How much do their cribs cost? What kind of reviews have their products received? What kind of crib is best for newborns? First time parents have a lot of questions, so they turn to friends, family and the search engines for answers. They might use search phrases like "baby crib styles," "top rated baby cribs, "nursery furniture" or "nursery design ideas" to get them started. These are informational searches. Depending on the kind of information someone is looking for, they may or may not be looking to make a quick transition from research to buying. For instance, someone scrolling through Yelp reviews, trying to decide where to eat lunch that day is going to make a quick decision. Someone looking to make a big purchase (like cars, electronics, furniture, etc) might spend more time researching their options. As consumers move through their buying cycle, then tend to search using more long-tail keywords. Instead of searching for "baby crib," the first time parents search for "portable folding crib bedding set." These searchers have a better idea of what they are looking for and are searching for a specific thing. They might search for a company or product by name or include buzz words like "buy" or "order" in their search phrase. As consumers near the end of their buying cycle, your chance for converting them goes up. They are looking to make a final decision. So what does this all have to do with your keyword research? You have to decide what kind of visitors you want finding your site, and then put yourself in their mindset when conducting your keyword research. How would you search to find your site? No matter where they are in their buying cycle, a visitor to your site has the potential to convert. You want to make sure they land on the right page for where they are. For instance, let's say you own a jewelry store and are looking to build up your engagement ring business. Someone at the beginning of their buying cycle might search for "engagement ring styles." This person isn't ready to buy yet; they don't even know what kind of ring they want. However, just because they aren't ready to buy, that doesn't mean you don't want them finding your site. If you can position your site as a one-stop-source where they can get all the information they want AND make a purchase, you have a better chance of getting them to convert. However, having them land on your homepage doesn't answer their search. Your homepage shouldn't be targeting "engagement ring styles," but "engagement ring store" instead. That better reflects the content of your homepage. Visitors to your site want to find the information they need quickly, otherwise they'll leave. If your keywords don't match up with the content, they may feel like they've been tricked into visiting your site. Instead, create a page of content that focuses on "engagement ring styles" and other related keywords; build an engagement ring guide for soon-to-be fiancés. You can talk about stone cuts, setting, band types and so forth. You want to position your company as the expert in engagement ring styles, there to make the process of selecting the perfect ring much easier. To keep that visitor more involved with your site, you can link from the ring guide to various internal pages of engagement rings you sell, so they can see the finished product and possibly convert. You want your site to include a variety of keywords that will match up with searches no matter where someone is in their buying cycle. Obviously you want to target those at the end of their buying cycle, since they are more likely to convert. But you shouldn't forget about those just looking for information. You don't know how quickly they are hoping to make a decision and you have the opportunity to leave a good impression on them. They may bounce around to a few sites, but ultimately settle back on yours because you were the most helpful throughout the whole process. Nick Stamoulis is a Boston SEO expert and owner of Brick Marketing, a Boston SEO services firm. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his SEO knowledge by posting daily updates to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal, and Publishing the Brick Marketing Newsletter, read by over 140,000 opt-in subscribers. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Affiliate Merchant Mistakes To Beware Of Posted: 10 Aug 2011 07:52 AM PDT
I have found over the years that not all affiliate programs are created equal. Surprisingly to me there are many affiliate programs that do not do a very good job of representing their product in a way that will benefit the affiliate marketer the most. Here are a handful of mistakes I see affiliate programs make. You may want to think twice before joining a program like this. 1. Building the affiliate merchant’s list first. This is become somewhat of a pet peeve of mine as I see affiliate merchants building large lists at the expense of their affiliates. Most of them will tell you that they will continue to follow up with the subscribers and to promote your affiliate ID number. However, when a new product is launched the merchant is going to contact those affiliates and you are not going to get credit for the sale. If you are promoting a program that sells a product the emphasis by the merchant should be put on making the sale, not building their list first. Before you join any affiliate program you can take a look at the sales pace to see where that merchant is putting their priorities. 2. Build your own website first. This is a way to avoid the mistake we just read about. If you are going to promote a product where the merchant wants to build their list, build your list first. The way to do that is to promote your own landing page and have subscribers go into your autoresponder before passing them through to the affiliate sales page. In reality this is a better approach to doing affiliate marketing anyway. Building an email list is an excellent asset that allows you to make money online in many ways in the future. 3. Greed by the merchant. You can get a pretty good idea how the merchant values their affiliates by how much they are willing to pay. Some affiliate merchants are greedy. They would prefer to keep more money for themselves. The smart ones do not do this. They understand that the best affiliate marketers are greedy. If you develop into a super affiliate you can always contact any merchant and negotiate a better rate. The smart merchants are willing to pay more to both their regular affiliates and super affiliates. 4. Lack of marketing materials. There is no need as an affiliate for you to have an overabundance of affiliate marketing materials. However, today there are many ways to promote on the Internet. The best affiliate programs will provide banners of various sizes, pre-written email marketing messages, landing pages for you to promote, and videos that can be customized for video marketing. There really are a lot of excellent affiliate merchants you can join today. Be cautious of the merchant who is making mistakes that can hurt you as an affiliate before joining any program. To make money online with affiliate programs you want to join the right merchants from the start. If you enjoyed this article by Jeff Schuman please visit his article marketing website today. If you are not an article writer he offers a hands off program for getting backlinks and traffic using the power of writing and submitting articles. http://www.HandsOffArticleMarketing.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| My SEO has Fallen Down and Can’t Get Up Posted: 10 Aug 2011 07:37 AM PDT
Countless marketers, I.T. heads, webmasters and more have had to deal with this very issue over time, leading some small business owners to wonder how they can get their site's traffic flowing smoothly once again. As many small business owners do or do not understand, page rankings are critical to a company's site, especially given all the online competition there is to navigate through. Even if your site is managing to attract attention, are you actually turning those visitors into customers? For those small business owners who need to shake up their company's SEO efforts, there are several ways to go about it. They include: 1. Review the site's copy – There is a fine line between keywords and quality copy. Too many SEO heads focus in on hitting viewers with a ton of keywords, yet the copy itself is average at best. Others may have stellar copy, but it is lacking in the right number and value of keywords. Sit down with the person/s in charge of SEO and review both copy and keywords. Is the copy fresh? Is the copy relevant to your site? Are the keywords properly placed in the copy or haphazardly thrown in? Determine where the problem is and fix it sooner rather than later; 2. Review the SEO budget – How much has your business invested in SEO? It may be time to invest some more funds into the SEO efforts, especially in order to see a better return on your investment. Too many companies panic at first when things are not working, oftentimes described as a knee-jerk reaction; 3. Review your analysis – What's the sense of having an SEO campaign if you're not going to analyze the results? Small business owners need to be sure their SEO person and/or department is looking at the numbers on a monthly basis at minimum to see where improvements need to be made. Whether it is Google Analytics or another program, analyze those visitors; 4. Do you blog? – While some experts poo-poo the relevance of blogs on a company site, I have always been a fan of them. If done correctly, the blog can serve as a great mouthpiece for your company. The key to a successful blog is having quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Blogs garner search engine traffic, giving your company an SEO leg up on the competition; 5. Don't be a repeat offender – One of the sins of an SEO campaign is having too much repeat content out there on the web. The simple fact is search engines do not like repetitive copy, so make it fresh and exclusive. When you integrate some of these ideas with each specific project, your SEO campaigns stand a much better possibility of gaining traffic and increasing your return on investment. So, ready to search how to best optimize that engine? Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Mobile POS Payment Solution Saves The Day! Posted: 10 Aug 2011 07:35 AM PDT
This comes on the day you’ve just begun you’re biggest promotion of the year and you’ve got multiple customers milling about and a long impatient line forming at the cash register or point-of-sale. What should be a smashing success could potentially end up as a disaster without the proper handling of paying customers! By making sure that their payments are processed quickly they will leave with a smile on their face! I recently read about an Old Navy store in Manhattan where a customer made a routine purchase and the transaction was processed on a mobile device. The focus of the article was the emailed receipt and how it was relegating the paper receipt to the rubbish pile along with road maps, newspapers and music CDs. Although this is new and unique, major retailers such as Whole Foods, Nordstrom, Gap Inc. (which owns Old Navy and Banana Republic), Anthropologie, Patagonia, Sears and Kmart have all begun offering electronic versions of receipts, either emailed or uploaded to websites. There has been a mad scramble on mobile technology by major retailers going on since 2005, when Apple introduced a mobile POS payment system in each of their 200+ retail stores across the country. The system enables each of the blue-shirted Apple employees to act as a walking point-of-sale; there are no lines at a cash register in Apple stores. Each clerk carries an iPod, encased with an infrared barcode scanning and payment card-swiping device that scans and identifies the product, accepts the payment card-swipe, then captures a signature on the device and enables the receipt to be emailed, texted or printed in real time. It is widely known by IT professionals that a mobile POS payment system will increase sales by speeding up check outs and performing ‘line-busting’ at impatient customer check out lines. What might not be such commonplace knowledge is that the time and resources of mainstream retailers may not be needed to replicate Apple’s success. Time consuming investigations and studies might no longer be necessary to ascertain how to implement the strategy. ABC Mobile Pay has developed an ‘out of the box’ robust mobile POS payment solution that can be customized for added value. Nordstrom introduced mobile payment acceptance devices in many of their stores this year so roving sales clerks could check out customers on the spot. Nordstrom has seen the opportunity to create a better experience for the customer wherever they are in the store. Say a customer is in a dressing room and they try on a bunch of clothing and they say, ‘I want to buy this and that.’ Instead of having to gather everything up from the dressing room, wrap all of it up at the wrap desk and trudge over to a cash register and stand in line behind other waiting customers, they quickly check out on mobile devices wherever they are on site. Armed with information obtained from the CRM database such as email addresses and birthdates, special promotional offers can increase revenue significantly by enabling focused marketing efforts, from birthday percentage discount offers to coupons on favorite or best selling items. The web based administrative system means that all sales traffic from any location can be monitored in real time. The system has features such as inventory control and product look up and availability which saves sales clerks precious time ensuring the customer experience is exemplary. Rick Berry is Owner/President of ABC Mobile Pay, a registered ISO/MSP. ABC Mobile Pay provides merchant accounts to businesses of all kinds and sizes. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Social media and the Blackberry Riots Posted: 10 Aug 2011 05:48 AM PDT Shortly after President Hosni Mubarak stepped down from power, an activist told CNN that “Facebook was responsible for the success of the Egyptian people’s uprising”. The revolution in Iran was attributed to Facebook, Tunisia to Wikileaks, Egypt to Twitter, and now in Britain, BlackBerry. At the time of the toppling of the Egyptian government, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron called it a “precious moment of opportunity” to move towards “civilian and democratic rule”. But today it’s the Blackberry smartphones that have won out, with their semi-encrypted messaging system, sending England into revolt, with Cameron scuttling into position, calling it “sickening”. In the political context, this breakdown of civil order is inescapably based on poor young people of England wanting to take their plight to the streets, to defy the deeply unpopular police force and to damage the property of the rich. In short, to “take back” what they feel has been stolen from them. A mother whose store was attacked in London described the looters as “feral rats”; not quite the voice of reason that accompanied the Egyptian people’s release from repression. In a BBC interview, two girls, who had been drinking all night on stolen bottles of wine, said in “Showing the rich we do what we want”: “Everyone just wanted to riot so bad…It’s the government’s fault.” When asked why they were then targeting local people and businesses, the girls responded: “It’s the rich people…we want to show the rich people we can do what we want.” In an Al Jazeera article, one pundit put it: “So there is no single meaning in what is happening in London and elsewhere…We have a major problem with youth unemployment. There have already been cuts in services for young people. State education in poor areas is sometimes shockingly bad. Young people cannot afford adequate private housing and there is a shortage of council-built stock. Economic inequality has reached quite startling levels…” Mr Cameron, meanwhile denouncing the “mindless violence” of the looters, continues to support a “system of political economy that was as unstable as it was pernicious,” as Al Jazeera put it. And when Cameron talked about preparing to stand up to the City to drive through reforms to break up Britain’s so-called casino banks, he failed, miserably. However couched, even the best of us should have great difficulty in creating a credible link between global economics and inner-city rioting. As one looter in Clapham Junction, London, suggested, it’s not about the economy as such, he said, “I’m just getting my taxes back.” But as appealing as it is to dig out the root cause of it all, comments from the rioters have been incomprehensibly feeble, trite and vengeful. And while writers of all political hues point the finger of blame towards “social media channels for inciting and spreading violence”, others believe it’s overarching police violence, racial conflict, ethnic tensions, social disadvantage and the failure of government to deliver appropriate services for the hopelessness of youth with nothing to look forward to, while still others blame the bankers and the politicians for an alleged theft they were left to service. No one, it seems, can make any real sense of what’s happened. Just looking through some of the comments on Twitter for the hashtag #londonriots, some were enlightening. Lulu Rose thought: “The Youth of the Middle East rise up for basic freedoms. The Youth of London rise up for a HD ready 42″ Plasma TV.” While Aaron Peters thought: “Britons chose to be consumers over being citizens. This isn’t anarchy, this is the consumer society without the means.” More comically, Allison & Busby, writing for Waterstone’s bookstore, noted: “We’ll stay open. If they steal some books they might learn something,” while Declan Fay rallied with: “They’re blaming mobile phones for the #londonriots. Clearly they weren’t with Vodafone or the riots would’ve suddenly stopped after 1 minute.” But these youths who are said to lack opportunity, some from their own making and inadequacy one must conclude, are angry at “the system” and have organised themselves using social media. But while the pro-democracy demonstrators of the “Arab Spring” marched in the hope of positive change and a better life, Britain’s violence has been positively narcissistic and nihilistic, focusing narrowly on arson and looting and are only too ready to cock a snook at the rich, by whatever means they feel able. But whether this disenchantment is about today’s youth that don’t really care, the dynamics of social change is now powered by the rise of social media, a platform that allows immediate social organisation that governments are powerless to mitigate or regulate. In the Maghreb, the riots were about escalating food prices, which turned into anger at the authorities. But in Britain, with its latent social problems, compounded by a perceived cover-up of a police shooting, is an altogether a different kind of revolution. As John Bassett, a former senior official at the British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute, put it: “It does look as though social media is changing the balance of power between the state and the individual, whether that is manifested as regime change in Cairo or looting in Tottenham.” In Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy, countries that are suffering from a sovereign debt crisis, governments are struggling to placate market demands and delivering austerity. And in Britain and elsewhere, it’s been young people who have been at the vanguard of protest. But if social media really is going to be the panacea to society’s feeling of loss and lack of future, the people using it should also offer a platform of hope and engagement rather than co-opting to fight bland consumerism and materialism for their own sakes. Until that time, the politicians, the police and the rich should brace themselves for the onslaught of social unrest as the angry poor have discovered they can steal Blackberrys and organise anti-social events in great numbers. In a bygone age, the English revolutionary would have been considered it most uncivilised to stage a riot, except of course at Lord’s cricket ground when an umpire declared “rain stop play”, followed by crustless cucumber and cress sandwiches being hurled at him in an undignified pique of rage. To be taken seriously, Britain’s counter-culture of hedonistic impulses seem to have evolved into little more than a new set of dumb leisure pursuits that engage in social media as a means to satisfy a silent, dirigible “revolution” of dispossession. Yet as the second wave of recession arrived, Britain is being stifled once again by coordinated, counter-intuitive rebelliousness against those that meet the shaky criteria of solvency. From the recent reports on Britain’s riots, it seems that the dispossessed aim to get what they want by burning and looting as some kind of parlour game. But just maybe the riots are really a token gesture against a growing police state and perceived institutionalised theft that is viewed as so objectionable. The “rich” in this context, both political and economic, have once too often been found colluding with each other to get their paws in honey jar, then acquitting themselves and absolved of all wrongdoing, while at the same time having the cheek to demand that the poor finance and forgive the corruption of excess. —- V9 Design and Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) produce web design services in Bangkok, Thailand, including eCommerce and social media. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| SEO Expert: Rand Fishkin Interview Posted: 09 Aug 2011 10:00 PM PDT
Rand Fishkin is the CEO & Co-Founder of the web’s most popular SEO Software provider; SEOmoz. He co-authored The Art of SEO from O’Reilly Media and was named to the 40 Under 40 List and 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30. Rand has been written about in The Seattle Times, Newsweek and PC World among others and keynoted conferences on search around the world. He’s particularly passionate about the SEOmoz blog, read by tens of thousands of search professionals each day. David Jackson: How are you today, Rand? Rand Fishkin: Not bad. Busy as always, but at least I’m home in Seattle (a rare event indeed!) David Jackson: Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Rand Fishkin: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. David Jackson: Rand, how has SEO changed since you started your SEO business way back in 2002? Rand Fishkin: Many of the core fundamentals remain the same, but the responsibilities and opportunities have grown 100-fold. David Jackson: In your opinion, is Google headed in the right direction with Panda and all its algorithm updates, or do you think Google can and should be doing more to ensure the integrity of their search results? Rand Fishkin: I’m generally a fan of Panda – I think the goals are good and the process makes sense to me. I do worry, as I always do with Google, that their lack of direct, clear communication and obliqueness around metrics, data and inputs hurts good, honest, less savvy sites and webmasters while rewarding black hats who can test and observe. It’s been this way forever with Google and I think it’s a strategic mistake on their part. I believe more transparency around Panda and everything else to do with Google search will yield better results for the web as a whole. Rand Fishkin: It really depends on what you mean by “article marketing.” In the SEO world, there are a lot of shady tactics associated with that phrase, including article “spinning” (where a single piece is changed or rewritten to be semi-unique and then re-posted on dozens or hundreds of sites) or submission to content farms like EzineArticles, Suite101, etc. I would not endorse or recommend those techniques. If you mean contributing a great piece of useful, high value material to third-party sites, similar to guest blogging, then I’m usually in favor, but again, it depends on how it’s done and on the value you’re creating for users. David Jackson: Monolithic, mega-popular article directories like EzineArticles, Buzzle and Associated Content took a major hit because of the “Panda” update. What are your thoughts on submitting to article directories as part of an SEO strategy? Rand Fishkin: There are better uses for your time. If you find a popular blog or news site in your niche and contribute something phenomenal and useful – the kind of thing that will bring them hundreds of tweets and dozens of comments – that’s a far better goal than getting listed in 400 article directories of questionable rankings and value. Rand Fishkin: I love it, actually. I think Google’s got a potential win on their hands, but they need to be upgrading and improving quickly AND getting more and more thought leaders and businesses engaged there so it doesn’t become a fly-by-night phenomenon. David Jackson: New kid-on-the-block Bing has been growing by leaps and bounds. What are your thoughts on Bing as a search engine, and ultimately as a credible competitor to Google? Rand Fishkin: Hmm… I’m not sure what you mean by “growing by leaps and bounds.” Bing’s definitely improved relevancy, created some very cool features in different search verticals (travel or sports, for example). But, their market share has increased in the US only at the cost of Yahoo!, AOL, Ask and other smaller engines. They’ve yet to eat share from Google. I wish them all the best of luck, but my honest opinion is that they won’t be able to win here in the US or overseas until they seriously change the search game. I believe that requires moving them out of Microsoft’s HQ in Redmond and treating them more like a separate company/entity (like what Microsoft did with Xbox). David Jackson: Is the hype about utilizing social media marketing for SEO purposes warranted, or is it overblown in your opinion? Rand Fishkin: Generally warranted. Social has a ton of positive second-order effects on SEO (links, content, engagement, audience, branding, etc) and is now starting to have more direct impacts, too. Doing SEO today without leveraging social is akin to tying one hand behind your back. It’s possible, but why would you do it? David Jackson: Google recently lifted its penalty on Overstock.com which it levied for cheating back in February. Do you think Overstock got off lightly, or was the penalty it received fair? Rand Fishkin: I’d say they were treated relatively fairly. Overstock’s content quality is still something that needs a lot of work, but they do deliver good value to consumers and so long as they’re not manipulating results, deserve to be included. David Jackson: I recently converted dozens of my articles intovideos, using conversion software. What are your thoughts on using video as part of an SEO strategy? Rand Fishkin: I feel like video conversion rarely adds a lot of value unless folks are investing tons of time into quality editing, gorgeous images, etc. Just making a video of text with a generic photo background feels like spam to me. David Jackson: Well, that’s one opinion. Personally, I don’t think a video needs to be slickly produced to have value. The value is in the content – not the packaging. I guess you and I will have to agree to disagree on this one. Rand, in the last couple of years, I’ve started to see a trend toward the use of video sales letters to promote products and services. What are your thoughts on video sales letters? Is it something you would use? Rand Fishkin: Definitely. I think video (good video) is a great way to better entice and share your message with an audience. Video lets you show a product in ways that text and images can’t. I hope we get an SEOmoz PRO video up sometime soon David Jackson: Hundreds of online retailers, including Amazon and Overstock, cut ties with California’s estimated 25,000 affiliates after the state passed a law that requires them to collect sales tax on in-state purchases, according to the Performance Marketing Association. What are your thoughts on that, and do you think other states will follow California’s example? Rand Fishkin: I think business is almost always about incentives and economics. Amazon/Overstock/etc. feel they have a shot at controlling this issue, and they’re financially incentivized to try these tactics. David Jackson: Rand, thanks again for taking the time to do this interview. I really appreciate it, and I’m sure the interview has been beneficial to my readers as well. Rand Fishkin: Thanks for having me! David Jackson is a marketing consultant and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| You are subscribed to email updates from SiteProNews Recent Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |

Keyword research may be the single most important factor contributing to your online marketing and SEO success. The keywords you select will determine who can and can't see your site for any given search. Incorporating the right keywords into your content helps increase your online brand presence, drives targeted traffic to your site, affects what search phrases your site ranks for and more. Missing out on important keywords, or putting the wrong keywords on the wrong pages, means missing out on potential clients and customers. If your site isn't ranking for the right keyword, you might as well be invisible online. 
You will no doubt make many mistakes in your affiliate marketing career. One thing you do not need is help from your affiliate merchant in adding to that.
Your company's SEO efforts have dropped and you're site is not getting the traffic you desired. Is it time to panic or search for ways to right the ship?
Let’s say you’re exceptionally busy, perhaps it’s a Friday with a holiday weekend quickly approaching and you’re the business owner of a boutique-clothing store. Your store is extremely popular and you’re selling the latest and hottest brand of ‘hard to get’ denim jeans and suddenly an employee (usually your best one!) calls in sick with a terrible flu. You’re already down one or two people because of the same influenza outbreak.

No comments:
Post a Comment