Internet Babel

Here’s a nice little idea for maybe getting a different audience to come to your Blog or Website.

Plenty of News and Newspaper Websites have areas where you can comment on news, but there are a few that actually let you have your own Blog as well.

For example, the Telegraph and the Independent (both are respected and big readership UK Newspapers) have Blog areas where you can sign up and create your own Blog area.

Of course, you can’t carry adverts on there, but you can put your URL in your Profile.

More importantly, you can Post (and comment on other readers’ Blogs) about a massively wide range of subjects – and that means that you can incorporate links back to your desired Website/Post as part of that content.

Off the top of my head I can see a number of good things about this:

• It’s another avenue for you to post content and to drive people to your site
• It exposes you to a new and diverse readership – a large proportion of whom are interested in current affairs, technology, politics, finance etc but perhaps wouldn’t normally fall in your ‘target’ audience
• You get some neat backlinks, most likely from a site with some good authority
• With the telegraph, you get a neat little ‘my.telegraph.co.uk/yourname’ URL for your Blog The independent service is offered via LiveJournal 
• It is of course free
• You can post about your selected subject matter, outside of the strict confines of your own Blog, and direct any links back to specific landing pages/posts
• As Newspapers have a fairly loyal readership, I would guess that by signing up for Blogs at a number of Newspaper sites, you would not be getting too much overlap in your audience 

I haven’t really seen anyone talk about this much before, although the Blogs themselves are very popular with the Newspaper online readership. I seriously think these Blogs have some potential to open your material up to a new audience and to drive some trafic your way. 

The Telegraph Blog area can be found here:
http://www.my.telegraph.co.uk/

The Independent Blog area is here:
http://www.livejournal.com/integration/independent/learnmore.bml

There are almost certainly others out there, but these are the two I wanted to highlight for the purposes of this post. I think it’s worth a try.

Thanks
Dave

In one of my first posts after taking ownership of this Blog, I described how the relative search popularity trends for ‘SEO’ vs ‘PPC’ as shown by Google Trends reflected the current economic climate.

I laid it on a bit thick to make the point but the link seemed pretty clear. Jim, from the NetFool, thought I was reading too much into it and that search trends didn’t reflect the economy.

Well they do - to an extent.

If you only look to see what’s Hot in Google Trends at any one time then of course that just reflects the relative popularity of current cultural/social/news topics – but if you narrow your search down to two competing ‘generic’ terms like this and refine your search to look at specific geographic areas then they do give some indication of the current economic state. 

Look again now at Google Trends, compare seo & ppc and look at the 12 month trend for USA, UK, Australia as opposed to say, China (India seems a different case, as SEO has always led PPC there and the pattern seems stable).

The trend I pointed out in my original post is continuing (and in the case of the UK and Australia the gap looks to be growing). SEO is gaining ground over PPC in the main English-speaking ‘Western’ (and European) markets and that’s not reflected (yet) in China. 

OK, I’m not being 100% deadly serious about this - PPC will always be here of course. It’s great for kickstarting campaigns and getting traffic boosts – and the guys with the massive generic domains (Fly.com is for sale at SEDO by the way – be prepared for a 6-7 figure price though) will always be secure anyway. For the rest of us it just reminds us that organic is best.

By the way – Wednesday seems to be the most popular day of the week for ‘SEO’ searches in the US

While you’re here – have a click on that nifty little ‘pencil’ in the sidebar – yes, that’s the one, it says ‘Random Post’ on it. Guess what it does? Well – if you click on it, it’ll take you to a mystery Internet Babel Post – it could be one from yesterday or a year ago and it could be about anything – you might find something you missed before. go on…Click it.

Most people coming to this Blog (and many other Blogs in the same field) are looking for an edge – something that will help them stand out. For the most part we cover broad topics relating to SEO, Blogging techniques and Affiliate matters because the standard thinking is that we want to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

Think Local

Even when we do focus on a niche, its almost always a market niche, so we’re getting (or trying to get) visitors who are interested in a certain subject matter, wherever they are geographically located.

What about we turn that on its head, and aim for a purely geo-based market? and where better to try that than in your own town?

What I’m talking about is making a Local Blog – and not just a Blog, but a Forum and a Directory, a News site or local reviews even.

The Benefits

If you get yourself a good, locally relevant domain name and content that is aimed smack-bang at a local audience – you are going to have a great chance of grabbing visitors and retaining visitor loyalty, because people feel a natural preference for a ’local’ site over a generic one. They have a sense of attachment and that is something you can build on.

What’s more, once you are able to establish a ‘brand’ locally, it will be relatively easy to build on that by expanding the scope of your site/network – and even reproduce it for neighbouring Cities/Towns.

Say, for example, I pick up a domain “BirminghamBuzz.com”, “HotInPerth.com”, “CapeTownReviews.com” etc. (I just plucked those names out of thin air – I don’t know if they have been taken, I’m just using them as an example). I can use names like these to build a very focussed, very targeted niche site.

Aren’t I restricting my potential Visitor Numbers?

Sure, I know that straight away I’ll be ignoring the vast majority of people in the world who don’t actually live in those Cities, but in this case i don’t care, because I know that the people visiting the site will be considerably more likely to be interested in what’s on there.

More to the point, I can sell that ‘exclusivity’ to advertisers – because they will also know that the vast majority of people visiting the site will be those most likely to be interested in their services. That means that they will be guaranteed a better success rate when compared to taking pot luck on some generic term web site.

It’s the Web equivalent of local newspaper advertising – you don’t get so broad a reach but you get a better hit rate.

Getting Advertisers

What it means to you, as the Site owner, is that the normal advertising ‘model’ doesn’t apply. You will have to do more legwork to attract advertisers, as generally speaking you won’t be able to use the usual mainstream advertising/affiliate methods.

The upside (and it’s a big one) is that you will be able to negotiate deals direct with local businesses – you’ll cut out middle-men and, of course,  you will be WAY cheaper than traditional print advertising, which means you could pick up business from people who have previously avoided advertising.

You will probably have to offer ‘loss leader’ or ‘opening discount’ type deals to get people interested to start with but the freedom of being able to work out your own arrangements with local businesses can bring great benefits. Plus, the ‘personal’ touch means that these guys will be more willing to give you a chance -particularly when you can literally drop round and discuss deals face to face.

User Involvement

As with any other niche, you want to generate and maintain user involvement. And that means you need to do more than just set up a Directory site and hope it takes off. This is where Blogs and Forums in particular can pay off – people tend to feel involved in their community and are often passionate about subjects of local interest. Once you provide a means for them to air their views you will be able to develop a thriving online community, which will spread by word-of-mouth as well as by SEO.

Once a user base is established (with the help of some good ’start up’ advertising deals and special offers), you can leverage that involvement with Reviews and increased advertising.

What to Do?

So – if you live in a town with a population of say, 100,000 or more, give it a try:

• Register a locally meaningful Domain name
• Start by Blogging about local topics and news
• Identify local businesses (even just start with 2-3) and approach them on the basis that locally targeted online advertising will be beneficial to them (and also much cheaper than traditional methods)
• Be prepared to offer cheap or free advertising to begin with, or to work on a commission-only basis, perhaps using a basic ‘voucher code’ approach
• Approach local newspapers to see if you can get an editorial plug, local radio stations to get an on-air mention (offer some free advertising in return).
• Encourage Comments and set up a Forum  – exploit the fact that many people feel passionately about their town. Publish and encourage Reviews and Feedback. 
• Get some advertiser testimonials – even if you have to pay for them Put them on the site
• Get your advertisers to offer Website specials/discounts
• Maintain Visitor and Click stats if you can – use them to generate repeat business – don’t  be afraid to approach businesses in the same field as your advertisers – let them know just how well your advertisers are doing
• Don’t neglect your usual SEO tasks 

What we’re looking at here is generating maximum benefit from a relatively small user base – we’re not competing on Keywords with a million other sites and we’re maximising the chances of a visitor actually making a commitment to your site/advertisers.

Give it a go…

Cheers
Dave

Quicker & better search engine functionality and more savvy users continue to drive the trend of using longer keyword search phrases. A growing proportion of search phrases contain 5, 6 or more words. 

What this means is that that people are increasingly searching with more specific service, goods or information related phrases rather than simpler generic terms. For the ’smaller’ site owner offering a product, service or comparison tool (who isn’t already operating in a very tightly defined ‘niche’) this presents an opportunity to focus on these less competetive key phrases.

It is highly probable that people who type in more specific keywords are more likely to know what they are after – i.e. chances are they are looking for a specific item/service and are more likely to be a prospective buyer/customer rather than someone who is just browsing on generic terms.

Trying to compete with the big players on generic terms is going to see you languishing in the back-end of search results. Let them fight it out over the big phrases, and let the casual browsers go to those sites. Focus some effort on more specific and longer key phrases – the people finding you will be a lot more likely to convert.

A few simple steps to implement this approach:

1) Decide on a candidate list of potential multiple-word search terms that people may use for your site, based on the product/service you sell and the target audience.

2) Use any historical stats you have (e.g. from Analytics, stats or any Affiliate tracking tools you may have access to) to see the kind of search terms that have brought the kind of traffic you want to your site in the past (i.e. conversions).

3) Use the SEOBook Keyword search tool or similar (Google, WordTracker etc) to see search volumes for the phrases you have identified (and potentially throw up more candidates) from past search data.

4) Trim down and customise your list to suit. Keywords/phrases with results in the hundreds/thousands are  likely to be pretty much covered already. Longer phrases at the lower end of the results are potential candidates for your ‘long key phrase’ experiment (as long as they are still relevant to your site and audience). Always bear in mind that even if a phrase yields just a handful of searches, hits on your site using those terms are likely to show a good conversion ratio, so low-volume phrases shouldn’t be ignored.

5) Finalise your list, based on the results from the steps above, and SEO tweak your site/landing page/content accordingly. Where appropriate, use brand & model names and features.

6) Monitor, assess, review and repeat as required….this is important as the exact pattern of longer search phrases will change more frequently than straight generic terms and will be influenced by trends, current events etc. Using highly focussed key phrases to draw traffic to your site requires regular monitoring and tweaking to ensure that you stay relevant to the popular search terms of the moment. Use your agility to stay ahead of the game.

 
You should still SEO for your generic terms and phrases of course – treat these longer phrase tactics as an additional weapon in your SEO/traffic arsenal. Any existing generic type traffic you get will still be there, and although the volume of extra traffic actually driven to your site by the longer terms may seem small these extra visitors are much more likely to be of a high-quality.

It’s true of course that being on Page 1 for something that no-one searches for is of little benefit in itself, but I’m not talking about getting traffic just for the sake of it - what we’re trying to do here is driving quality traffic to your site. Highly specific and targeted multi-word key phrases will allow you to get a higher ranking than in your generic terms AND attract the kind of visitors you want most.

Google trend figures show that the term ‘SEO’ is now becoming consistently more popular than ‘PPC’ in the major Western, English-speaking markets such as the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

For the last few years of the ‘boom’ economy, ‘PPC’ has generally had the upper-hand over ‘SEO’ as a search term, but the last few month’s figures show a steady reversal in fortunes, with ‘SEO’ gaining ground, overtaking and recently building a lead over ‘PPC’. The actual proportions vary from market to market but the pattern seems to be there.

This could be a reflection of the tougher economic times in the ‘Western’ markets, and an associated tightening of wallets. ‘PPC’ is going to be the first to feel the pinch because it’s more of a luxury item than bread-and-butter SEO. Consequently, more businesses are having to adjust to the reality that the slow-burn and long-tail business of GOOD SEO is always going to be reap dividends in the long term, even if you don’t get the ‘bang’ of a PPC campaign.

PPC is a ‘target’ traffic booster that is good for individual campaigns but of course it’s effect is generally short-lived and in the current financial circumstances PPC can be the first thing to be put on the back burner.

I had a quick look around at different regions and the same trends didn’t seem to be reflected in markets such as China and India, which seems to confirm the ‘recession/cutback’ idea – but there is every chance that China in particular will follow suit if their economy starts to overheat.

Just another reminder (if one was needed) that PPC and campaigns have their value in the right time and place, but content and quality SEO still rules the roost.

Comments welcome.

I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about SEO; What it is and how hard it is.

Personally I just see it as following rules and never like to admit people as experts on it as it’s always changing and I don’t think it’s hard enough a field to have experts in.

I’ve always done fine in search engines and have never needed to get an ‘expert’ to use their special powers to do it for me. It’s literally as simple as following instructions. As long as you keep up with what’s good and what’s not, it’s all good.

Some basic SEO pointers from a non-SEO-expert:

• Write clear, descriptive, keyword friendly page titles. Never compromise viral ability or site integrity for search results though.
• Write short, effectively distinguishable, relevant META tags.
• Write quality content. If you can, fit keywords naturally into your rhythm but again, don’t force it. If it happens or, you can make it happen naturally, do it. But great content will result in great backlinks, which in the long run are much better practice for your SEO.
• Use no-follow on links you do not trust or links you do not feel are relevant. But in my opinion, if you have to use no-follow, why are you linking that link anyway? I only ever link to relevant sites or sites that I deem trustworthy quality.
• Use image tags on all your images. I have found images to be pretty effective SEO wise. On one of my first posts I was the very first Google Image result for ‘YouTube Logo’ in a post about YouTube. Just because I used that as the image title tag. I foolishly changed this image and I never got that position back but on some of my other sites, I cover a lot of the first few pages of Google Images with image results for decent, relevant keywords.
• Use a redirect on your URL to have it point to one only; It should only ever point to http://www.yoursite.com or http://yoursite.com so that if someone types one of them, it will go to the other. If you don’t do this then search engines will treat your 1 domain as 2 domains; Defining http://www.yoursite.com and http://yoursite.comas separate sites. This isn’t good, you will get different pageranks and it will weaken the overall SEO effect of your site.
• Do NOT make any paid posts or sell links, Google will punish you. If you don’t care about PR, as I don’t, don’t worry. But if you do and you do either of these, expect a bitchslap from Google.

Moral of the story is, don’t pay anyone to do your SEO. It’s not worth it. A lot of so called ‘experts’ charge ridiculous amounts per hour to do easy work, stuff you could do yourself with minimal effort.

There are some legitimately good SEO people out there such as Aaron Wall – creator of the SEO Book. He genuinely knows a lot about SEO and I believe he genuinely likes to promote the development of it and help the knowledge of it grow amongst webmasters. I own his SEO Book and it’s definitely the best stuff I’ve read on the subject. That being said, there wasn’t too much in there that I didn’t know or wouldn’t deem easily findable for free. But, it’s still a very nice SEO guide and collection of links and helpful tips. I recommend reading it just for the knowledge expansion.

I know this title is a little provoking as there are a lot of people who base their careers on this subject and me saying ‘It’s easy’ does sound a little disrespectful. I don’t mean it to be perceived quite like that though, I just mean; It’s really not as hard as you may think and with a little research and effort, you can be a self-proclaimed expert on it much easier than you could be…. an affiliate expert.

Here we go. Second part in the saga. I say saga but that actually means a series of novels or stories. Can hardly call each one of these posts novels now can we! But I don’t care, saga sounds nice. I’m going to call the series a saga.

I’m not going to bore you with the same old cliche speech on content. Yes we all know it’s important and we all know (and I feel sick I’m about to say this annoyingly over used quote) CONTENT IS KING. There we go, a bit of vomit just dribbled willingly down my chin.

So, how do you make great content that is also good SEO wise? Keep reading…

Know Your Audience

In order to write content that will humor, inspire, motivate or in some way capture your audience. You need to know your audience. Which is why you need to know your niche. If you know nothing about Internet marketing but you’re trying to make money via Internet marketing, fine. But don’t write about it as if you’re a pro because people will see through it.

Writing Great Content

So, how do you write great content that will both satisfy your readers and Google. It’s incredibly simple – forget about Google.

Write for humans. Write quality, thought out, well produced, grammatically sound content and you will get a flood of high quality backlinks, if you market your content accordingly.

No need to try and slip keywords in here and there. Forget about it, Googlebots crawl your page but there are many aspects. More important aspects, that contribute to your SERPS. Such as; quality backlinks, general mention, overall originality, quality and unique output as well as other things I’m sure.
It’s a whole combination of things and nobody really has the faintest idea what Google really looks for in order to assort their complex algorithm. So don’t bother trying to figure it out, just have fun and produce great content to the best of your ability.

Keyword Dropping

Although I don’t agree with it as it’s just dancing to Google’s tune and possibly compromising your content along the way. Keyword dropping can help.

But if you’re going to do it. Do it naturally, don’t stuff keywords because Google are smart and they will see through that too.

For a nice mini-tutorial on how to naturally drop keywords or at least an opinion on it. Check out this post I did on it way back last year.

Final Thoughts

I think bloggers have almost claimed the word content. Don’t forget – blogging is a very small segment of the Internet. There are much bigger and more creative ways to put out media and content. By far.

This SEO saga is sort of aimed mainly towards bloggers as that’s mainly my audience and this is somewhat a blog about blogging. But I wouldn’t call myself a blogger by a long shot. I started off making pure content sites. Text, music, videos, images etc. As well as pure community sites and interactive platforms like; forums, image galleries and so on.

Never tie yourself down to one specific medium or format. Just do what you want and be creative as possible whilst having as much fun as possible.

Next in the series? Meta Tags

Over the next few days I’ll be covering SEO as a whole. I haven’t gone too much into SEO on this blog as I’m not really an SEO enthusiast but I think it’ll be nice to break down the basics in a nice series.

So let’s get into the first post in this series; page titles.

Why Do We Use Page Titles?

I think the best thing we can do first in this break down is establish why we use page titles. Let’s go back to pure basics.

Well, page titles help people see what a page is about before they visit it. Simple as that. I believe, personally that relevance is better than keywords. Meaning, the more relevant you make your page title, the better chance you have of Google placing you higher in the ranks. Also, the better chance you have of people clicking on your page title.

By stuffing your page titles with keywords galore you cheapen the image of your site, page and immediately put forth a perception of spam. People will just intuitively blank page titles like this out as it doesn’t look attractive or explain much.

Remember, the average person, the average web user doesn’t know anything about SEO. Even remotely. Neither do they know about PR or why sites are where they are in search results. All they know is they’ve searched for something and they are going to click on the most relevant title. Subconscious maybe, but true.

What Makes a Good Page Title?

To me, a good page title is one that briefly but perfectly defines a page and one that is 100% relevant.

You need to remember though, what makes a good page title to you aka a web savvy tech who knows about SEO doesn’t necessarily make a good page title to the average person.

It all depends what market you are in and what type of site you own.

If you’re in the Internet marketing niche then it will be, a lot of the time – SEO, web savvy people searching for the things that you provide or write about.

If you own a store selling comedy DVDs for example though. Then even if you know about SEO and how to rank well and think Google are only looking for keywords. Remember that it’s average humans that will be looking for what you provide.

A title such as: RICKY GERVAIS DVD, DVD RICKY GERVAIS, GERVAIS, THE OFFICE. For example. Would be awful! Yes it has a popular comedians name in it numerous times and a relevant association people would often search for with his name.

But, do you think that title is attractive to the average person? Neither do I. They would be more likely to click on something like: Ricky Gervais – The Office DVD.

It’s clean, 100% relevant and has all the keywords you need for Google to gobble up. Difference is, it’s not overkill. It mentions everything, once. That’s all you need.

It’s covers both sides of the fence. Google likes it because it has relevant keywords and the average Joe likes it because it’s exactly what they’re looking for, it says all it needs to say.

How to Write Good Page Titles

It’s not rocket science. It’s very simple actually, there’s no particular skill or art to it. Just write what you see but write it for humans. Yes, make it keyword friendly but NO do not make it stuffed with keywords to try and manipulate search engines.

Well, I say ’search engines’ but let’s face it. Google.

Here are some very simple rules to follow when writing page titles

• Make it as short as you can whilst still fully explaining the nature of said page
• Include relevant keywords in the page title but do not stuff it
• Write for humans
• Use proper grammar

If you search for something. Anything, like a Photoshop tutorial. The results that come up in the first 10 are always the neat and tidy ones that get the point across and are 100% relevant whilst being as compact as possible.

Google likes to display the most relevant pages. But also the highest quality pages first.

Just write what you see. If you have a page explaining how to peel oranges. Call it that.

So something like: How to Peel Oranges

As I’ve already mentioned, using proper grammar is also a plus. It’s not essential in content but in page titles I’d say you have a much better chance of Google ranking you higher and a much better chance of people clicking on your link, if the grammar is readable. It immediately shows you are more professional.

Now, that How to Peel Oranges page title example I just gave. I know, it seems too basic right? Surely there are tons and tons of other pages with the same title that have been indexed and ranked well before me.

You’re right! But this is where content comes in.

I’ll be covering content in Part 2 tomorrow. Stay tuned!

After the first PR update this blog endured, it was PR2. I then did a few sponsored reviews and a PayPerPost post. The next update this blog then went to PR0!

I think Google may of bitch slapped me for that PayPerPost review.

I don’t care though, PR doesn’t bother me as much as most. It’s nice to have a high PR but it’s not essential to me. What’s more important to me is SERPs, viral buzz, general awareness and credibility within the given niche.

I’m hopefully going to build that over time with this blog. I hope I’ve built some sort of credibility already but it takes a long time to gain all round respect and awareness, especially in the Internet marketing niche.

I should have a good PR though given relevant mention within this niche. I’ve got quality backlinks ranging from PR2 – PR6, all genuine, non-payed, quality backlinks to inbound pages ranging back way last year.

I have also read elsewhere that Google have gone after PayPerPost, so they must have set my PR back to zero as people are suggesting they are doing. Personally I just think that’s stubborn and petty. It’s like they don’t want anyone else to make money.

If a blogger tries to earn some cash, they bitch slap em, if an Adsense publisher makes too much they say they’re cheating. They can have sponsored links but we can’t? 

I don’t care though. Up yours Google, you evil people. Lol

Just to let anyway who doesn’t know already. A Google PR Update has happened.

This blog is now a PR2

So anyone who didn’t know, go check your PR, you might be happier