Online Marketing Blog

In my search for a new book to read on keywords I went straight to the source, Lee Odden’s office library.  Right away I noticed Ron Jones’ new book “Keyword Intelligence” while standing in front of a bookcase full of titles to choose from.

What I appreciate about Jones’ book is that whether you are a search marketing guru or you work in another marketing/communications field, it paints things in a light that you may not have thought about before.  Besides a deep dive into keyword research and it’s overall impact on SEO, social media and content marketing, there is a little something in this book for everyone ranging from simple explanations of social networking sites to more detailed information on site migration and architecture.  Curious to know what useful tips I found in Ron Jones new book?

A lot of the blog content planning for business blogs focuses on different ways to tell the same story about a company’s products, services and key messages. If it’s an SEO approach, then the focus is on content to justify visibility on search engines for specific keywords. Blogs are a great resource for people that are searching for answers, insight, how to’s, others’ experiences and opinion. Finding a way to create content that meets customer needs as well as achieving high search visibility for relevant business solutions is what makes blogs such useful online marketing assets.

One particularly effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type in to search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors.

Keyword and topic research is a significant part of Search, Social Media and Content Marketing.  An understanding of what customers care about related to a brand’s offering and how that manifests as keywords, helps drive how marketer’s approach content, optimization and promotion.

Over the past 5+ years, the search landscape has evolved significantly and optimization has extended beyond the web page to digital assets like images, PDF’s and video, news, social media and mobile. The increased diversity of content requires internet marketers become more creative in their keyword research in order to fine tune the matching of optimized content with what and where consumers are searching.

Bringing insights about content marketing to light often involves the importance of understanding what topics and pain points customers care about. Creating content for business communications with customers, peers, employees and the industry is an essential part of doing business.

Creating content alone isn’t enough to ensure intended audiences will read it, so researching search keywords and social topics related to your business is a helpful way to empathize with what customers are looking for and what they’re interested in.

Content and SEO go hand in hand, especially for improving discovery of brand stories and key marketing messages. SEO and content marketing best practices call for research into what language customers use when searching for your products and services so that content can be optimized for better visibility. The result of that research is a keyword glossary managed through a SEO Project Management tool and/or a spreadsheet. These phrases are a mix of broad concepts the company wants to be known for as well as phrases indicating more specific customer intent.

In my preview post for SES Toronto, I counted John Alexander’s Keyword Forensics session as one of my “Must See” presentations for the 2011 conference. The promise of really digging down into keyword discovery and keyword analysis techniques sounded far too good to pass up. After all, keyword research is an essential part of any SEO process.

The session starts with an inspiring quote on the projector “Keyword Forensics – Exploring the Hidden User Search Behavior for Keywords That Are Often Missed by Keyword Researchers.”

I research keywords!  What am I missing?

Here are some good nuggets from the presentation:

Understand the Difference Between Keyword Research vs. Keyword Forensics

Keyword Research: Researching identified keywords to determine which phrases will provide the most search traffic.

If you’re wondering, “Who’s Brian Larson?”, you’re not alone. Before I jump into the details of some of the can’t miss sessions at the upcoming SES Toronto conference, I’ll borrow a line from Austin Powers: “Please allow myself to introduce…myself.”

I’m a SEO Account Manager at TopRank Online Marketing – which means I have the enviable job of developing and managing SEO programs for several TopRank clients. One of the many benefits of my job is that I have the opportunity to work daily with some of the most intelligent and forward thinking companies around (you know who you are).  As I head to SES Toronto, I go with my clients’ goals and needs at the front of my mind.

Online retail websites face a unique set of obstacles when it comes to improving sales through better search engine visibility.  Repetitive product descriptions, a lack of content and frequent churn of products can all be hurdles to overcome. But with these specific tips for retail search engine optimization, online retailers can turn those challenges into opportunities and maximize their organic search traffic.

1. Add fresh content to the website. Many online retail websites focus on selling products rather than informing and providing value to customers, and hence severely lack content. It’s a good idea to include pages on a retail site that are purely content-based. Not only will informative, optimized content improve search rankings, it can help retailers sell more products by engaging customers.

Nothing will turn readers away more quickly than blatant errors, boring copy and long-winded writers. Recognizing the deadly sins of SEO copywriting—and identifying ways to avoid them—is essential whether you’re drafting a blog post or creating an article to submit to an online directory.

Critical? Yes.

Difficult? It certainly can be.

But simplify the task and reduce the risk of losing your readers by following these 5 tips for avoiding the deadly sins of SEO copywriting.

HINT: Make yourself a checklist based on these tips and your own. Refer to that checklist at the end of every writing project.

1. Stop going on and on…and on and on. As a writer, one of the biggest challenges is removing yourself from your story in order to determine when enough is enough. To make your writing more concise and to the point:

Just as with Leverage Your Brand Lovers, the “Branding and Search” session gave the SMX West audience much to think about.

Bob Tripathi, Search Marketing Specialist at Discover Financial, reinforced the need to understand your brand as it relates to SEO/SEM.

Brand Recognition: Do searchers recognize your brand?
–ex. McDonalds’ arches are recognized worldwide

Brand Perception: Do searchers know what you do?
–ex. Discover Financial doesn’t just offer credit cards, but they offer a slew of other financial services

Brand Loyalty: Are searchers loyal to your brand?
–ex. Google and its VERY loyal followers

Brand Affinity: Are searchers aspiring to be part of your brand and culture?
–ex. Mercedes and the status associated with the brand

Monday night, Jessica and I represented TopRank at a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Event in Minneapolis.

In the first of a series entitled ‘Conversations About the Future of Advertising’, Jan Leth from Ogilvy & Mather gave a presentation entitled ‘Dada, Data, Alpha and Beta’ in which he highlighted how marketers can take advantage of the digital age.

In particular I found interesting, the idea of momentgraphics versus demographics. Marketing of years past would have concluded that we need to know the age, race, income and interests of each of our prospects.

Momentgraphics focuses on the periods of time in which we need to target prospects. For example, someone searching for the phrase ‘cold medicine that works in less time’ is the prime target for a company producing cold medicine. The demographics of that person are irrelevant because we know they are in a ‘target moment’ making them the target market.

Social Media Keyword Research is Here
Whether it’s a phrase entered in a search box on a standard search engine, on a video sharing site or tags assigned to your friends’ shared social bookmarks and shared images, the meaning and intent inferred by keywords is paramount to any kind of “pull” online marketing effort.

For search marketers, that means using keyword research tools on an ongoing basis in order to adapt to trends, seasonality and changes in what’s important to the target market.

With the “participatory web”, consumers expect not only to be able to go online and search for information and products, but they fully expect to be able to contribute content and socialize as well. Keywords come into play with search engines that crawl and rank content as well as with the folksonomy of content organization that comes with consumers tagging social media with words that are meaningful to them.

Early in my marketing career I sold classified advertising for a large and influential alternative weekly newspaper in the Twin Cities.

A true benefit of this job was experienced by friends of mine, met through occasional dabblings in the local comedy scene, who turned to me to get the word out about an upcoming show via a line ad on our back page.

Anyone familiar with an alternative news weekly’s back page is certainly no stranger to the type of ad typically represented there. Without providing too much in the way of detail, let’s just say that anyone – ANYONE – will say anything – ANYTHING – just to get found.

It was this type of environment that fostered a good friend’s idea for an ad regarding his upcoming sketch comedy show – which appears word for word, minus identifiable info, below: