-
A High Search Volume Doesn't Mean It's the Right Keyword for You
by Nick Stamoulis
One of the most common mistakes I see website owners and marketers make when launching their first SEO campaign is that they let search volume dictate which keywords they should target. I can completely understand the rationale behind their thinking--if more people are searching for keyword X that means more visitors for my site which means more money for my company. Unfortunately SEO is not that cut and dry. The higher of a search volume a keyword has the more competition there is for it, which means it's going to be much harder and take a lot longer to rank well in the search engines for. It's also important to remember that just because a particular keyword has a high search volume that doesn't mean it's the right keyword for you.
For instance, "IT services" is a wildly popular keyword with...
-
Those Who Don't Learn SEO are Doomed to Repeat It
by Stoney deGeyter
Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who's left?
Repete? Ok, Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who's left?
Repete? How about we just move on...
In marketing, when something works it gets repeated and repeated again and again. Never letting a good campaign go to waste, imitators will jump on board and drive it into the ground until it's no longer effective.
We've seen this with the Got Milk? campaigns. It wasn't long before we started seeing imitators touting got sand, got rice, got mold, got Jesus and even got poop! (Like, who doesn't?)
The same thing happens with TV and movies. Someone breaks an "edginess" barrier and it's soon a race to see how soon it can be topped without losing advertisers or getting crushed by the FCC. It's hard to believe there was once...
-
Hello Again Marketing
by Todd Bailey
Have you lost sight of a well-loved service or product? People are creatures of repetition. Usually we commit when we find a service or product we enjoy using. Recently, Ryan Buddenhagen wrote a post on brand ability to bring back old services and products.
The notion is not very novel. Blockbuster movies enjoy reviving old heroes and comics. Food producers sometimes reintroduce a retired food or beverage. The Eagles once did a "Hell Freezes Over" tour... Speaking of music, you may catch sight of modern-day hipsters wearing vintage CBGB shirts. The East Village club, opened from 1973 to 2006, was a bastion of punk-rock music.
Investors now plan to reinvent the club, starting with a music festival, then plan on finding a new NY location for the old club at a downtown locale. "We're...
-
Metrics That Lie to You: Average Position (Part 1)
by Mike Fleming
I wouldn't call the "average position" metric pointless, but it's
definitely lying to you. Most people approach this metric with a
natural misunderstanding. It's natural to think, "This is the average
position that my organic listing or paid ad shows up at in a search for
this keyword." Sorry, but no. How could a tool just flat out lie to
you? Well, the tool isn't lying to you. It's your understanding of
what that metric is communicating that is lying to you. In a recent
article titled, "The big lie of AdWords average position,"
light is shed upon this subject. But, this goes beyond AdWords to
organic search and many other applications in life as well. The
temptation to use averages goes along with the fact that we really like
to have one...
-
The Right Message May Not Be So Right for Your Audience
by Stoney deGeyter
The number one key to your business growth is crafting a message that speaks to your audience. Having the right message builds up your strengths and helps you overcome any deficiencies you might have.
McDonald's doesn't make the best hamburgers in the world, but they do have a great bit of messaging that speaks to their target audience. It's that message, not the hamburgers, that makes Micky D's the number one fast food restaurant in America.
While substance is important in order to have a great message, the message itself helps establish the perception of your substance. Much to my chagrin, my kids would rather go to McDonald's over Burger King or Wendy's. They don't love the food as much as the box the food comes in, and not even close to as much as that toy inside the box.
McDonald's has the right...
-
Don't Just Build Links, Become a Thought Leader
by Nick Stamoulis
I think we can all agree that content marketing is an indispensable component of SEO and Internet marketing in general. Great content gets shared, which in turn creates inbound links to your website, which helps your site do better in the search engines, which drive more traffic to your site and so forth and so on. But too often site owners are just looking at content as a link building tactic. In reality, the content you are creating for your SEO, content marketing and social media marketing campaigns can serve a much greater purpose---it can turn your brand into a thought leader.
Here are 4 tips to becoming a thought leader in your industry:
1. Start producing more content.
If you are only writing one blog post a week, while a good place to start for many site owners, your...
-
Pinterest's Five Year Plan
by Todd Bailey
Recently, the entire Web community has been abuzz about Pinterest. Although the upstart social network is still in the open beta testing phase, it has overtaken LinkedIn as America's third largest social site, according to Experian Hitwise. At present, Pinterest is reaching millions of worldwide users per month and since January, has held the distinction of being the site to break ten million unique hits in the shortest timeframe. Pinterest is a social networking phenomenon that shows no signs of diminishing, but is there long-term viability within the Pinterest brand?
Pinterest does provide a unique approach to image sharing and could potentially give businesses a forum to display their products. Thus far, some companies have already attempted to utilize the site for this purpose, but some are still skeptical about investing much time or money into Pinterest-specific marketing efforts. As a marketing...
-
Revisiting Your Onsite SEO
by Nick Stamoulis
Every six months or so, it's important for site owners to revisit their onsite SEO. While many may think that onsite SEO is a set-it-and-forget-it process, the truth is that even "static" websites aren't 100% fixed. Even if you didn't undergo a major website overhaul in the last 6 months, chances are you tweaked a page of content here and there, added a few more links, tested new call-to-actions and so forth. Revisiting your onsite SEO will help ensure these small changes are all in working order and your site is up-to-date.
Check for broken links and missing pages.
Nothing kills the user experience faster than broken links and missing pages. You don't want to give a visitor any reason to abandon your site, so it's imperative that your site is easy to navigate. Did you delete any pages of content...
-
Under-rated Web Marketing Metric - Client/Agency Communication
by Mike Fleming
For many businesses, a major benefit of outsourcing their web
marketing strategy to a company like ours is the fact that they get the
knowledge and skill of a whole Web marketing team for what most of the
time amounts to the cost of one (maybe two) employees. Depending on the
nature of the business, that can be hard to beat. But, along with it
comes a challenge - communication. We fought with this hard for a while.
We sat in meetings and brainstormed realistic ways to communicate
better with clients while balancing the hours we spend doing this with
formulating and implementing strategies to get results. 
Proactive Communication From Agencies
Like
a lot of client-agency relationships, clients pay for a certain number
of hours, and we use those hours to try to maximize their results....
-
You've Made the Majors, Now Play in It
by Todd Bailey
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
|
