Monday, October 22, 2012

Improve Your Value Proposition

Your Value Proposition

By Vincent Sandford, Francesca Marchetti and Minke Oving of Seo Synovation 22 October 2012

If you had just ten words with which to describe why people should buy your company’s products or service, what would you say? Crafting a value proposition will improve your SEO and conversions.  Read on ....
In a recent Google video Maile Ohye in Five Common Mistakes in SEO said that a clearly stated value proposition will help you optimise your website. What is your value proposition? This critical question is challenging to answer, but doing so strengthens your marketing efforts.
Your value proposition whether spoken or written is one of the key indicators of your business that must be articulated simply, clearly, and very briefly.
But what is a value proposition?  
Why is it important to your business?
How can you find the right one for your business?
And can an existing company find a new value proposition?

Value propositions tell your prospective client or referral source in a clear and concise way what value you will deliver—how they will be better off after going through your "black box."
Infograhic show the key elements of a value proposition of appeal, exclusivity and credibility









Your value proposition must articulate clearly, simply and forcefully key elements of exclusivity, appeal and credibility and minimise the negative impact of material cost.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of those marketing professional services cannot succinctly describe the value their service provides. They can describe what they do but not what the essential value is of their services. Most professionals will tell you they know what value they bring, but when asked to articulate its worth they need three paragraphs to describe it. By then, however, the listener has long lost interest.

Not only does a strong statement help you capture the attention of prospective buyers, but it also goes a long way toward differentiating you from your competition. The advantage will be yours if you can clearly communicate how the client will be better off because of you, as opposed to simply describing a transaction. In this post I will share with you my personal thoughts on what I believe are the essential elements of a value proposition.

What is Internet Marketing?

The essence of marketing is the message, and the essence of the message is the value proposition. Unless you understand how to form a clear and forceful value proposition you will be shouting nonsense in a crowded marketplace in order to achieve some semblance of an objective.

Your Value Proposition

The articulation of the value proposition emphasises the elements that most motivates your audience and emphasises with quantifiable data what matters most to your audience. These are critical issues designed to touch what matters to your audience. The value you give to your audience must be laden with specifics. The value proposition is about getting people to say YES, in reality it’s a series of micro YESes, to whatever you offer and the key to that is the force of value proposition.

I cannot address or give answers to specific audiences: there are too many. What I can share with you are the common denominators that increase conversions through a forceful value proposition and, more importantly how to weigh the value proposition more forcefully.

Stress the Values and Lessen the Costs

An essential factor in creasing conversions is to “stand in the mind” of your customers. That’s an important issue, and it can be expressed in this manner: you will increase conversions if the perceived value of your offer outweighs the perceive cost. In other words there must be more advantages, benefits and value in the offer that there are associated costs. When you meet your prospects expectations when landing on your website, when reading an email or browsing through an article, you will without doubt get a positive response.
Your Value Proposition needs to weighdown the value side f the fulcrum and minimise the costs associated with a YES to buy











The essential elements of value are: appeal, exclusivity and credibility.  The elements of cost are: the mental factor of motivation and the materiality of the offer.
Meeting your prospects expectations must be done within seven seconds of landing on your page. The first phase of one to two seconds is a moment of disorientation. The prospects lands on a page and scans it to find what he/she is looking for and its vital here to visually connect with the prospect immediately with a compelling headline and sub headline. This does two important things: 1. Halts unsupervised thinking and 2. It will grab your prospects attention. The second phase of two to three seconds involves moments of conversation. The prospect reads your headline and or sub headline and is interested to read on. You must further engage the prospect with a compelling opening paragraph that emphasises how you solve issues and the benefits you provide. This leads to the third and final phase of two or three seconds called exchange of value. In the content that follows in this phases you must emphasis the elements of value: appeal, exclusivity and credibility.
Each piece of content, whether it’s an email, a web page or a printed advertisement, must answer these questions:
i. Where am I?
ii. What should I do here?
iii. Why should I do?
Infographic on moments of disorientation, moments of conversationa and moments of engage,ent











Value propositions are fundamental to success. When constructing a value proposition you must first find the understanding of this question:
If I am your ideal customer why should I buy from you  rather your competitor?
This is fundamental because using the first person “I” puts you in the minds of your prospects and gets you to think about your prospects solutions. Using the word “why” is always followed by a “what”. This promotes expressions of value that must be stated clearly and simply.
Your company or product cannot be all things to all solutions. A true value proposition is cognitive and accepting of trade offs. You can’t serve everyone and you can’t be the best solution to everyone. In fact choosing your customer set by market or customer segmentation is the surest way to develop your best solution.
A value proposition must be framed within the challenge of a competitive environment. If you are not unique in one dimension of value (appeal, exclusivity and credibility) then you don’t have the potential to be the best solution as the internet has positioned itself for many of us to be one click away into cyber space never to be found again.

About the Authors.

The Staff at SEO Synovation's office in Italy









Francesca Marchetti, Minke Oving and Vincent Sandford are Search Engine, Search Marketing, Link Building and Online reputation Experts at SEO Synovation a European based web marketing Agency based in The Netherlands, the UK and Italy.
SEO Synovation helps small and medium sized organisations drive more traffic to their websites to increase their conversions. They can be contacted by telephone +31 592 269 804 or +31 6 428 73 480 or +39 334 990 3867. Or email thebest web marketing agency in Europe





Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Website Optimisation After SEO

It seems a little strange to optimise your website after a search engine optimisation project but you must remember that is a never ending process.  If you have completed your SEO, engaged in inbound marketing in all its elements and haven’t achieved your goals now you should  concentrate on Conversion Optimisation.

Off Page Search Engine Optimisation Part Two

This post is the first in three separate posts explaining more on website optimisation after you have completed a SEO. In a previous post called "Off Page Search Engine Optimisation" I described how Google ranks website, how search engines return search queries and gave a few tips on inbound marketing tactics.
Now is the phase in the project to explore what happens next continuing along this never ending journey of website optimisation. The most important topics now to focus upon after you’ve completed your SEO project and engage in communicating with your customers are:
  • Conversion Optimisation
  • Revenue Generation
  • Engaging with Customers.

 Conversion Optimisation

 The rest of the post is concerned with Conversion Optimisation. I take a different standpoint when I look at conversion optimisation. I focus upon a holistic view of the process path. A taditional approarch might be this:
Traditional Sales Funnel
While the traditional approach may centre upon analysis of the sales funnel and the leaks that exist from the moment a prospect enters the funnel and then drops out at various stages in the cycle, I focus upon four tactics when I review a conversion optimisation and these are:
Conversion Optimisation
 
Tactic 1 - Craft your marketing messages around your value proposition.
Tactic 2 – Maintain cognitive momentum in every step of your sales process.
Tactic 3 – Never underestimate the power of a value based headline.
Tactic 4 – Use testing as a means to developing your customer profile.

 Tactic 1 Craft your marketing messages around your value proposition.

The essence of marketing is the message. The essence of the message is the value proposition. And unless you’re able to articulate your value proposition clearly, concisely and forcefully you’re lost in the crowded market place. The goal of a message on a website or in an email is to get a click to a sign-up form, to the buying process or to a newsletter and in so doing you need to stress value in the click.

How do you craft a forceful value proposition?

Scientifically, a value proposition can be expressed in a formula that simply says the net force of a value proposition is the perceived gross force of the perceived value less the gross force of the perceived cost.
pNf = pNv - pNc
 
It is in the mind of the prospect his/her perception of value exceeds the perceived cost.
pNv > pNc
There are subsets of this to consider. We are dealing here with perceptions, human nature and individuals with different attitudes and values. However there are common attributions that we, as humans, share about perceptions of value.  These common attributes are:
  • appeal
  • exclusivity
  • clarity
  • credibility 
If the value is appealing and exclusive, and it has been expressed with clarity with credible language, as humans we will probably convert and buy. If you then combine these factors with incentives and high motivational factors but lessen the anxiety and or frictional factors in the buying process then you have a winner strategy. Not easy but can be applied to your marketing message.

Tactic 2 – Maintain cognitive momentum in every step of your sales process.

Conversion optimisation must be looked at as a holistic process from the moment the prospect visits your website to the moment he leaves it after buying or not. The process steps of a visit to your website may be defined as:
  • Clicking on a paid ad or entering the site
  • Reading the landing page or the Home page
  • Clicking on the buy button or call to action
  • Completing the buy form
  • Processing the purchase procedure
 Your value proposition must be re-said, re-emphasised, and repeated at every steps of the process to confirm the buying decision. That is what I call emphasising the derivative level values of the central value proposition, the perceived value of the prospect, the product level proposition and the process level proposition.
In each and every step of the buying process there's a series of micro Yes’s that lead through the buying process to the ultimate YES of paying for the product or service or sign-up form or whatever the goal was. These series of micro Yes’s occur at different levels in the process, for example, on entering the site (central value proposition must be expressed), on clinking to move forward in the site (prospect level perceptions of value and incentive are working here), on clicking to purchase (product meets perception and anxiety is reduced) and at the buy stage (process levels are easy and friction is reduced). The value proposition must be stated at each level and this is to maintain the cognitive momentum.

Tactic 3 – Never underestimate the power of a value based headline.

There are two principles that every marketer must be aware of.
  1. For every action you desire a prospect to make (a click or sign up) there must be an immediate promise of value that outweighs the perceived cost of that action.
  2. Like the central value proposition, the derivative value propositions can be measured by its: appeal (desirability), exclusivity (availability), credibility (believability) and its clarity (understand ability).
 Webmaster should optimise websites for thought sequences of the visitors that manifests itself in appeal, exclusivity, creditability and clarity of the value proposition.
When crafting a headline there are two principles to remember:
  1. All marketing messages must be centred primarily on the interests of the customer. Therefore when it comes to crafting headlinesemphasise what the prospects gets rather than what he must do.
  2. The goal of an headline is similar to the opening scene of a film and thai is to arrest the attention and get them into the first paragraph. There utilise a point first structure that means place the value at the front of the headline.

Tactic 4 – Use testing as a means to developing your customer profile.

 
Testing Metric to understand prospect behaviour
 
The internet is the biggest laboratory there is. It has billions of users to test all plausible scenarios.  However there are key principles to testing on the internet.
Key principle #1 – the goal of a test is not to get a lift but to get learning.
Key principle #2 – to achieve the maximum of learning your test should be designed around two key elements;
  • A research question (always starts with “which” – e.g. which ad gets most clicks).
  • A theory question (what does this test tell me around the behaviour of the prospect).
To assist you to formulate a good test it helps to remember the value proposition question: If I am your ideal customer why should I buy from you and not from one of your competitors? 

 Conclusion

Employing these four tactics will assist you in reaching a greater understanding of why you’re getting a series of micro Yes’s along your optimisation path of greater conversions. The process begins with a value proposition that should state what you do, what the benefits are and how you do it to enhance your prospects goals.

About the Author

Vincent Sandford is an SEO expert at SEO Synovation a web marketing agency for small and medium sized businesses in European markets. he may be contacted by email:  info@seosynovation.com.
 
 
 
 
 

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Off Page Search Engine Optimisation


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be misunderstood but there is a methodology, even some would say, a science but it is, most of all, a process . You need to understand that an SEO project should include efforts in the two primary areas that contribute to a site’s search rankings by search engine algorithms:

1. On-Page SEO Factors: What search engine crawlers can discern from the content and structure of your site.
2. Off-Page SEO Factors: What search engines can determine about the linking structure of other sites, and the sites inter-related to those sites, in relation to your site.

On Page factors include optimising your site with original content, placing keywords related to your page in the Meta tags and good internal structure. SEO for off page factors have a wider definition but can be grouped together under one word: linking.


Google Ranking factors for Off Page Search Engine Optimisation.

Before I discussed some of the off page SEO tactics, you must first understand the factors that Google thinks is necessary to rank your website.

1. Number and quality of backlinks is very important. Google show you only a limited number of link (use this command link:www.yourwebsite.com to find competitor links). MSN show you more and Yahoo show you the most links of all the search engines.
2. Speed of acquiring links. Too fast seems artificial so to it slowly or you might get penalised.
3. Anchor text of the backlink must be relevant to the page linked to.
4. The age of the backlink is very critical; an older link shows stability of the website. However frequently changing the anchor text can damage your ranking.
5. Backlinks from directories like DMOZ, YAHOO, LOOK SMART can boost you rankings and provide good link juice.

The above are some of the most important factors Google tracks for ranking your website.

Off-Page Search Engine Optimisation


But where can you get good links from that Google will recognize. Here are some examples:

1. Social Networking Sites

Social Networking means getting involved with social media sites and is the fundamental step with which you begin to advertise your product or service, market awareness of your brand and build your online reputation within your niche. You need to sign up to the most popular social networking sites, such as; Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc., and create yourself a profile of your own.

2. Blogging

Blogging is one of the best ways to promote your website. Most blogs will give you a follow link that transfer link value as opposed to a no-follow link that doesn’t give you any link value. By writing a blog for your website, you give a reason for visitors to keep returning to your site and keep up to date with your latest posts. It also helps search engines to crawl your site more frequently, as they have to update your latest blog post entries, which ultimately helps you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). You need to produce and include lots of unique content for your blog, such as; Infographics, Top Lists, How To…Tutorials, and Viral Videos.

3. Blog Marketing

Post comments on other blogs within the same niche as yours, which allow you to add a link in the comments section. These links can then be crawled by search engines, helping to point them towards your site. These blogs are commonly referred to as “Do-Follow” Blogs (Just like ours, where you can comment below!).

4. Forum Marketing

Find forums online that are related to your sites niche and get involved within that community. Reply to threads, answer peoples questions, offer advice, etc. This all helps to build up your reputation as someone who is an expert within that niche. Try to use “Do-Follow” Forums so that you can include a link to your site within your signature, which helps search engines crawl your site.

5. Search Engine Submission

Search engines will eventually find your site online, but that can take a while. To speed everything up, you should submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google. Use Google Webmasters Tools and the functionality under the Heath section as “Fetch as GoogleBot.

6. Directory Submission

You should submit to general directories like DMOZ and Yahoo, but for maximum effect, you are better off submitting to niche directories as well. The results take longer to appear but they do appear eventually.

7. Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is another great way of promoting your website. Submit your latest blog posts and pages to the most popular bookmarking sites, like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc. Search engines really like these types of sites because the content on these sites is updated very frequently.

8. Link Baiting

Link baiting is another popular way of promoting your site. If you produce a really popular unique post for your site, then other people may want to link to it. If you have post the article on your website then that article will draw traffic.

9. Photo Sharing

If you have used any of your own photos or images on your site, then you can share them on many of the major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Picasa, and Photo Bucket. Other people will be able to see them and comment on them, hopefully following a link to your site.

10. Video Marketing

Just like photo sharing, if you have any videos that you have used on your site, then you can submit them to sites like; YouTube, Vimeo, etc. allowing people to find your content in other ways.

11. Business Reviews

Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, and Stylefeeder.

12. Local Listings

Depending on your site’s niche, you might find that listing in local directories may be useful. You may have a website promoting your local business, therefore instead of going global and facing huge competition, listing your website locally, so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch the content, will be much better. This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to sites like; Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, telephone Advertising Directories.

13. Article Submission

If you write your articles yourself, then you can submit them to popular article directory sites like; Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Now Public, etc. This can help drive traffic to your site, whilst you can also gain some links to your site from other people (though it’s usually a slower process).

Want To Learn More About SEO?

Then watch the video to grasp the essentials of search engine optimisation.  Alternately you can email me Minke Oving SEO and Online Reputation Manager at SEO Synovation.

We at SEO Synovation have a passion to help small and medium sized organisations reach their goals. Call us now.


Monday, September 3, 2012

Inbound Marketing – Guest Blogging and Article Writing

Inbound marketing makes it easy for your website to be found and a decent tactic to achieve this is through correct link building is guest blogging and article writing one of many channels of Inbound Marketing

Guest Blogging and Article Writing

Since Panda and Penguin algorithm updates the search engine optimisation of on page factors are still very important but must be part of a wider content distribution and inbound marketing strategy – more off page optimisation is needed.
Search engines after Panda and Penguin are better at distinguishing tricks like keyword stuffing and punish you for them. Poor and poorly written content, imperfect site optimisation and improper linking are degradable offences in Google eyes. This has been true for a long time and the SEO business has reacted favourably and most reputable companies follow the on page recommendations well.

Off Page Factors Have Gained Prominence

Many webmasters having optimised their websites for on page factors turn their attention to off-page factors to gain relevant links – many choose guest blogging as a means to acquiring relevant links to their websites.

Link Building

There are as many ways to get links but in the aftermath of Panda and Penguin submitting guest articles or guest blogging is slowly becoming best practice. The trend is driven by a desire to follow the pack. Guest blog posts, all by themselves, do increase rankings.

Guest Blogging – writing blogs or articles for other sites

The strength in guest blogging to blogs or websites that have a decent following is that the posts are read immediately and it can be launched without delay avoiding the embarrassment of blog posts that no one comments on. However, the guest-blog-only strategy has two fatal weaknesses:
  • There is an obviously fixed ratio of one linking domain per article placed,
  • You reach rapidly diminishing returns.
 Furthermore, using the ideal blog to post is difficult to find. They are a scarce resource. You can post to lesser blogs but expect lesser returns.

Content Strategy

A pure content strategy can be frustrating simply because the results and rewards are slow to be recognised. The best strategy is to create great content and to distribute it using all the marketing channels available: that means using inbound marketing as depicted in this info graphic – courtesy of Hubspot:


  
With great content, your guest posts will be more effective. So will your email marketing campaigns, paid search traffic, and referral traffic. We can think of content as a multiplier that adds to almost any other marketing tactic.
The advantages of unique content happen with guest posting or article writing are:
  • Bloggers will be more likely to accept posts and talk about/to you if your target site has its own credible content.  
  • Users from the host blog will share and re-share your content if your site offers something they can be excited about. 
  • People will want to link to you.

 Make Content a Pre-Requisite 

Where are we headed, and what should we do next?
You should not publish and wait. Building relevant links through blogging and guest blogging matters. You must engage in other channels to distribute your unique content. Use all the channels in the info graphic that’s appropriate to your business and raise your precious content out of obscurity.
SEO is growing, link building is essential and inbound marketing is thriving. The Search engine optimisation industry is moving towards sustainability growth and capable of providing solutions, recommendations and results that are going to have a far bigger impact than raising the rankings for a couple tracked keywords.
It seems highly unlikely that Google will penalize guest posts or articles writing or for that matter any form of distributing good relevant content. After all distributing good content does increase users experience.

About the Author



Minke Oving is an Online Reputation expert at SEO Synovation and guest blogger for a number of clients.
She is a regular contributor to this blog and can be contact at m.oving@kpnmail.nl


Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Website Redesigning and Web Page Readability

Website redesigning and web page readability has been thrust upon website owners due to Google recent algorithm changes such as Panda and Penguin. Content marketing has been revived as website owners attempt to promote their websites to regain lost rankings in search engine result pages. However when optimising web pages with search engine optimisation techniques little attention has been given to web page readability in order to engage the visitor into the conversation. The principle here is simple: present it well and it will be read.

What Is Readability?

Internet users today are in a hurry and don’t read anymore. They scan web pages picking up on keyword phrases that they’re interested in. So it seems logical to emphasis keyword phrases with font size, colour and boldness all the way to the end of your page that also will improve your ranking in search engine result pages.

If you make your content difficult to read the value propositions are are devalued as the lack of legibility causes friction and anxiety in the mind of the reader that are the basic inhibitors to conversions.  Readability is a valuable asset but often dismissed part of web site designing or redesigning and SEO.

Here are my tips.

1.People Scan Web Pages

You must first understand that visitors to your website don’t read every single word. They scan the page. You have basically seven seconds to capture their attention with good captivating content that’s emphasises the keywords and keyword phrases the visitors will resonate with.
My tip is enforce good writing, structure is a manner that attracts and keep in mind the scanning effect of humans.

2. Use a Hierarchy for Fonts

One of the better ways to meet scanning behaviour is to use a font hierarchy. That means that titles of pages should have a larger font size than headings and sub headings. Emphasising titles, headings and sub heading with boldness isn’t good to get the words to stand out. Use variable font hierarchy instead and get the words notices.

3. Use Headings

Structure you page with good headings and sub headings. Visitors to your page need to see the content structure in sections. Make your subheads large enough and descriptive enough so readers can determine whether they’ll actually take the time to read that section word for word.

4. Use Sub Headings as a Visual Aid.

Subheads are also a great way to logically outline your content and to cover the various arguments thoroughly and will help you create content that communicates and engages.

5. Use Design Elements

Eye path is very important design feature when you need to attract the visitors and lead him on a pre-determined path set up by you, the website owner: you guide the visitor to convert and buy your product or service.
Visitors in the Western World read from top to bottom, left to right. This is a very important concept to remember when designing websites. Tailor the website to your audience.

Start designing your content with important features on the left side on the page as that is where your eyes focus upon first: natural instinct draws them there. Use these design elements of eye path to create engaging pages:
  • size 
  • motion 
  • colour 
  • position 
  • shape 
  • paths of familiarity 
  • attraction 
  • relevance 

6. Use Images in your Content 

The web is getting more and more visual. Take advantage of that by using images to break up the flow of your content. Not only that, but you can use images to augment the text. You can tell a story or a joke with that image or make a connection for readers that they might not have made through the text. However bear this mind: the image must be totally relevant to the content of the page. If the image is irrelevant it could damage your content.

7. Legibility Matters

 Of course you need to use a font that’s easily legible. It really doesn’t matter that much as long as its legible, easy and comfortable on the eye. 

8. Resources 

There is a useful blog post that gives you a useful insight into levels of optimisation and details useful tips on how to optimise a website. Read it I think you’ll find it helpful

About The Author 

Vincent Sandford is Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation and Web Marketing expert at SEO Synovation a web marketing agency with staff in UK, The Netherlands and Italy. He writes articles, blogs for websites and is a regular contributor to SEO The Essentials, MarcheRustico, Vino Marche, Wine Tasting, Online Reputation Management and Tasting Italian Wine and Wine Tasting tips.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Improving Search Engine Results

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is an important process to improving the ranking to your website in search engine results.  Its a process that involves several levels of optimisation ranging  from keyword research, website architecture, usuability  and linking strategies to correct imagery and fresh content.  In this post I explore the options.

Improving Your Web Page Ranking

User behaviour

Studies have revealed that 90% of Internet users find websites through search engines and out of those users, 85% do not go past the first 30 results displayed. With this in mind it is easy to see why it’s important for your website to rank high in these results. Your website must be displayed within the first 3 pages of search engine results.

Search Engine result Results Pages SERP

Search Engine Results Pages, or SERP for short, are the pages you see after you type in your keyword query into the search box of a search engine. Ninety percent of internet users query search engines to find what they are looking for. The most important elements first seen by users in SERP’s are the page title, the page URL and the page description. So it makes reasonable sense to optimise those elements with keywords that are relevant to the content of the web page, are present in the page title, page description and are part of the page URL. Simple right.

Types of Listings

The Search Engines Result Pages can be broadly divided into two categories:
  • Non paid organic listings sometimes called natural listings
  • Paid Advertisements sometimes called Pay per Click or PPC.
Clicks on organic listings account for approximately 80% of all traffic. Organic lists are free and attract the vast majority of clicks and are the overwhelming reasons why is it important to get your site to rank naturally in the search engine result pages. Website owners need to follow a process to get their websites to rank higher.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of engineering your website so it can be properly read by the search engine spiders. A useful blog post to read is on levels of web page optimisation

What are Search Engines?

Search engines are programming systems that analysis text and only text. If your webpage is full of images and no text your site will be crawled but not read and not indexed by search engine simply due to no text on the page. You need text on the page, you need to target each keyword/keyword phrase on the page. For example, if you want to target the search term “web marketing agency” you need to have one page with the title “web marketing agency”, a URL with “web marketing agency” , page description with “web marketing agency” and lots of content about ““web marketing agency” plus all the page elements (H1 – H6 headings, Alt image tags, Bolded words and Links). Website optimisation is performed by internet marketing specialising in all levels of optimisation.

What NOT to do!

However it never makes sense to call a home page “home” or have their business name on the title of every single page of website. This is great for corporate branding but useless for other purposes. The owners probably search for their business and are pleased when it comes up first in Google. This is only good for the customers that know your company name or brand which is fine for large brands like Argos or Amazon but if you’re trying to get customers from internet users you need to optimise your text for keyword or keywords phrases that internet users are searching for.

What TO do!

Other aspects of getting higher rankings for your website are trust, authority and link building. The trust you get is via good link building and from algorithms. The more links you get from already established trusted (authorities) sites the more Google will trust you. It makes sense really, because a good website will not link to a rubbish or an irrelevant website.
It is important to understand that the value of link juice transfer to your website is the page rank of the web page divided by all the inbound, internet and outbound links on the page plus yours times a damping factors .

How Link Juice is Transferred

If you get a link from a website with a Page Rank of 4, and this web page has 250 other links pointing to other websites the value of link juice transferred to your website is calculated as:

the standard weight of a page PR 4 is 625 divided by the total of links plus 1 (yours or 251) times a damping factor of 85% equals 2.117 which is added to your webpage page rank.

You can read a very useful blog that explains in detail the value of link juice transferred.

Another aspect of trust is by executing your link building strategy within accepted good practice and search engine guidelines. This means building links naturally, creating keyword rich anchor text, pointing links to relevant pages and not using keywords excessively on your page. Adding an unreasonable number of pages to your website in one day is not a natural progression. Search engines like websites to expand naturally, anything else and your website comes under the radar and possibly get penalised/banned.

Summary

So the only way to obtain high SERPs is to stay within search engines guidelines and accepted practice. This means building websites that are easy to navigate (so users and the crawlers can find every page easily) ,have lots of good relevant interesting content and plenty of trusted links. Make your website the best site on the internet in your chosen niche and you shouldn’t go far wrong.

About the Author:

Vincent Sandford of SEO Synovation is the author of numerous articles and blogs on search engine optimisation, online reputation management, web marketing, wine and real estate. He has a passion for website marketing and helping professionals, small and medium businesses grow. Learn what Vincent can do for your website by visiting SEO Synovation a web and search marketing agency.
 

Monday, August 20, 2012

How to Research Keywords

Getting traffic to your website, article or blog means choosing the roght keywords in the title and in the content. Google in July 2012 let it be known that they only "give out the most commecial keywords" when users use any of their tools.  therefor by deduction there are many more keyword permutations in the market than you realise.

How to Research Keywords


Researching keywords for your web page, article or blog is fundamental in getting traffic to your submission. Keywords have a direct influence on the type of traffic a website will receive and will determine the level of profitability. Paying attention to what people are searching for is critical to keyword research.

Fundamental Concepts on How to research Keywords

Before I delve into the nuts and bolts of how to research keywords we must consider two fundament concepts:

Search Engines

When users insert a query into search engines they are not actually searching the entire web. They are scanning websites, articles, blogs and other documents that search engines have found, crawled and indexed. Search engines use the users query to scan all the words they have indexed (actually referenced) using hundreds of data centres and return the best match in an authoritarian order. Search engines are re-activating to past search queries and new queries are unlikely to be included in any result. Google can only return search results powered by past queries, in other words they are reacting to past historical data.

User behaviour

Users are unpredictable in the manner in which the create search terms in queries. Studies have shown that over 80% of users will re-create a search query if they don’t find what they are looking for on the first page. If you combine this with th fact that over 55% of users use more that three terms in their search queries and that 25% of all search terms have never been used before , that is they are unique. This means there are more keyword permutations exist than any keyword is giving you.

Tip 1

If you focus on multiple but low volume search terms you may get better conversion results than focusing on high volume competitive keywords. Publish web pages, articles and blogs often as each submission is a keyword net.

Tip 2

Look deep in your analytics for keywords that have found your website and use those terms for blog titles, article titles webpage titles, webpage descriptions, and starter ideas.

Keyword Analysis

Use these 4 ideas to create your own keyword list for a specific webpage, article or blog, Put yourself in the shoes of an internet user who is looking for the solution to a problem that your document may provide. Think about:
Use 3 or more terms in your query ( long tail keywords) - single keywords tend to be generic and thus don’t convert into sales. They are also very competitive as companies and marketers with large budgets bid very highly for them. Long tail keywords are therefore more specific and have less competition which means that they are cheaper and convert better.
Use appropriate terms in your keyword query for your niche market - It is useful to use keywords that best describe the product or service being marketed. Avoid gargon oor industry terms that are not widely known. Use location in the keyword like – toy shop in Long Island – as will target a prĂ©cised local niche market for toys.
Use popular keywords as starter ideas - Using popular terms is one of the most important pointers of how to research keywords. You have to find out what terms people are using to find the kind of product or service you are marketing. You can use free tools like
• Word Tracker
• Google keyword research tool
• Google trends
• Google Insights
Use each of these keyword research tools with the same keyword phrase and dump the results into a spreadsheet, eliminate duplicates phrases, and then calculate the keyword efficiency index (KEI) . Perform  SEO the page .
Use low competitive terms - After finding popular, specialized and long tail keywords, you should drop those that are highly competitive and focus on low competitive and low volume keywords.

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