Archive for January, 2008

Below is detailed criteria needed to determine the right Keywords to optimize for the most cost-effective SEO campaign vs bidding on them in a PPC campaign.

Reports & Considerations:
1. KEI - Keyword Effectiveness Index
2. Keyword Competitiveness (see below list of criteria).
3. Keyword Volume: Use the Keyword Generation Tools (Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, etc) and build a spreadsheet with multiple tabs. Each tab is it’s own Keyword combinations of Search Volume.
4. Keyword Report: If you are running a PPC Campaign, has the term converted in Paid Search?
5. The type of business ( B2C vs B2B).
6. The dollar value of the conversion.
7. How well your site is already optimized for the term.
8. Is your site ranking for any of the terms already?

Measurement of Keyword Competitiveness in Google top 10 results:
1. Keyword Search Volume from KW Tool.
2. Number of search results.
3. Number of results for allintitle search.
4. Number of results for intitle.
5. Number of results for inanchor search.
6. Type of sites resulting from the inanchor search.
7. Average PageRank of top 10 results.
8. Links pointing to full URL.
9. Links pointing to domain.
10. Deep Link Ratio.
11. Age of Domain.
12. Links from a .edu or .gov.
13. Internal Link Percent.

Generate tabs on a spreadsheet for delivery to Client:
1. Keyword Volume
2. Keyword Ranking
3. Keyword Demand Matrix
4. PPC Keyword Report
5. Keyword Recommendations/Next Steps

Choosing the right Target URL:
To begin with, you can see which page in your site is considered the most relevent to the keyword by conducting this Search query in Yahoo:
site:www.mysite.com keyword

Choose the webpage that makes the most sense, and then identify several similar pages. Then, begin writing content on them, and linking to your Target URL. This will increase your Internal Link Percent.

If you want to optimize a webpage on your site for a specific keyword, then here are two (2) SEO recommendations you shouldn’t ignore.

1) Adding additional Text content from your SEO Copywriting champion.
2) Adding additional internal links to the Target URL’s you are optimizing by embedding them within the content on other pages on your domain.

Your goal is to increase the Internal Link Percent of the Target URLs. The Internal Link Percent is the percentage of pages on the domain that link to the Target URL. By adding additional internal links to your Target URL, you will be reinforcing/strengthening the message on what the Search Engine spiders interpret what the webpage/website is about, and it’s importance relative to the other webpages on the domain. The text you use for the links (Anchor text) is important. Use your keyword as the anchor text, pointing to your Target URL. The more pages linking to your Target URL, the higher the page’s Internal Link Percent.

You can calculate Internal Link Percent by dividing the Number of pages that link to your Target URL on your domain/Total pages of the domain (Eg: 10/100=10%).

And, the volume of additional textual content will reinforce the webpage as a “resource-rich” webpage. And, those resource-rich webpages are the ones that Google is ranking in the top results on the SERPs. Think about Wikipedia. It ranks great for many queries. It has great internal linking, Internal Link Percent, and is “content-heavy” (many pages have a high text-to-code ratio), not to mention many inbound external links. The Wiki page on Albert Einstein is a great example of a “resource-rich” page. And, it has a great link portfolio of inbound links.

I haven’t run into this situation very much, but occasionally an SEO enquiry comes to me with the question of a guarantee. Below are a few questions I’ve received in the past.

QUESTIONS:
1) What kind of turn around time is it- when can we expect to see results in traffic?
2) What is guaranteed if we do the work that you say we need to do?
3) What sort of recourse do we have if the results do not happen?

ANSWERS:
1) After all SEO recommendations have been implemented, you can expect to see results within 1 week.
2) No guarantees in SEO. Just the confidence that you are using a good SEO Consultant that has enough experience and knowledge that you trust him/her to produce results.
3) Not sure what is meant by “recourse”? If results don’t happen, then you need to try something else. Search Marketing is a constant test. If you don’t want to test, then just lay down and give up. Basically, everything in Search is a test. Use a good SEO Consultant that doesn’t need to test too much. There’s no money back guarantee. No recourse.

These might not be the answers a prospective client wants to hear, but dat’s the fact Jack. The key takeaway here is to find a knowledgable, experienced, & trustworthy SEO Consultant.

Ad Serving is a reference to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads.
Listing Serving is a reference to a Organic Result in the SERP’s.

Let’s say you are spending $10,000 on a specific keyword phrase per month, and it’s delivering a great ROI. Question is, should you divert some or all of that money to a SEO Campaign?

Here are some things to consider:
1) Using PPC, your Ad is only served while you still have a daily budget. Once your budget runs out, your ad stops being served.
2) Additionally, your PPC ad is probably not being served 100% of the time. Versus SEO, which is served 100% of the time. If your natural listing was organically being served in the Natural Results, your listing would be served 100% of the time.
3) Are you getting the maximum amount of visitors in the PPC results. Absolutely not. Industry Research shows that 72% of the clicks are on the Natural listings in Google.
4) People trust the Natural Results more.

What if optimizing for a Top 3 Ranking for that specific keyword phrase costs $5,000/month, and you just got the same amount of Revenue/Profits?

You’d effectively be cutting your advertising budget (for that keyword) by 50%, but not the Revenue!

The research slides can be viewed in an SEO Tutorial Presentation (Opens Powerpoint), I created awhile ago.

For a keyword that you don’t have any track record of advertising, then you’ll need to Calculate the Risk/Benefit by conducting:
1) Keyword Research
2) Keyword Analysis
3) Keyword Ranking
4) Keyword Traffic Reports
5) Keyword Demand Matrix (Proprietary - will explain in an upcoming post)
6) Analysis of Top 10 Results in the SERP’s.

Everything in Search is a test. It’s one continually test. And, realize that even though we’d like for our SEO Recommendations to be implemented immediately, it just cannot be that way all the time in business. So, things might go more slowly than you like, or sometimes not at all. It’s helpful to remember that Search is an ongoing test, and small changes at a time are okay.

It’s easy for people that don’t live in Search to get overwhelmed when you review a completed SEO Site Analysis & Recommendation document . It’s easy to get overwhelmed, especially if the site is in horrific shape and needs a major overhaul. So be prepared to provide guidance as to which SEO tasks need to be implemented first. When I prioritize the SEO tasks, I like to see the initial implementations give the biggest bang for the buck. It’s also fun to see big first changes.

Additionally, like to separate between the Onsite Optimizations, and Offsite Optimizations. In this scenero, I’m assuming there are no huge obstacles to indexing/crawlability and really horrible url structures, and a minimum allocation of marketing budget to development costs.

Here are the basics.

On-site:
1) Title Tag: To optimze Title Tags, make sure the Title tags are unique, and contain the keyword phrase.
Desciption Meta tag: Not as powerful as the Title tag, but it’s best to make sure you use a well written Description Meta Tag.

2) H1 Tag: Make sure the H1 tag contain the keyword phrase, and it’s font is larger than all the other text on the page.

3) Text Content: Should be about 3 paragraphs of SEO Copywriting, and use hyperlinks imbedded within the content pointing to other pages on the domain that are relevant. And, also look for pages on the domain to point to your Target URL using the keyword as the Textlink. The idea is to increase your Internal Link Percent by using your keyword in a text link on other pages, and point the links to the page you want to optimize. Notice how I’m doing that in this post?

4) Navigation: The best way to SEO navigation is for it to be made as text links. If it’s a drop-down navigation, make sure it’s crawlable. Also, take advantage of footer links to place a link to a specific optimized target URL.

5) Breadcrumbs: If they’re on the site, and easy to change, create a breadcrumb that contains your keyword.

Off-site:
1) Link Development:
- Increase link popularity by implementing a Strategic Link Campaign, by doing a careful link analysis, analyzing all the right linking criteria for a cost-effective & successful link campaign. Be careful not to waste time or money here.

Here is a 3-part SEO question that was emailed to me:

The questions:
1. “How does a business determine the value of a organic result on a term that matters to them on a place like google?”

2. “Is the value different if your listing is on the 1st page above the fold vs. listing #6-#10 or just being in top 30?”

3. “What if a term is not searched on Google all that frequently but it is important to the person or company?”

The Answers:
1a) Direct Response Campaign:
I’m sure there is more than one way. For a direct response campaign, check your web analytics to get your avg conversion rate, and amount of traffic from a given keyword across either all Search Engines, or just a specific engine like Google. For example, if you had 1000 visitors and 20 bought something, that be a conversion rate of 2%. The formula is: Orders/Visitors=Conversion Rate.

If each conversion is worth $100, then you’d have $2000 in Gross Sales Revenue. Deduct your marketing costs, and that is the value of that organic keyword. So, if you’re spending $1000/month for the time & links of an SEO Consultant to retain an Organic keyword ranking, then the Keyword in this example is worth $1000/month in Net Profits.

1b) To sell CPM-based Advertising…Impressions matter. Perhaps you are spending $2000 on a specific keyword that is driving 30,000 visits per month. If each visitor has an average of 10 page views, and you have 5 ad spots on each page…Then you could potentially make a fortune on Ad Revenue.

1c) Branding Campaign:
Keyword Ranking can impact the success of a Search Branding Campaign. Although, keyword value is not typically measured as one of the success metrics in a Branding campaign.

2) Based on the answer 1a, the position can certainly influence the keyword’s current value because research has shown that a higher position gets more traffic than listings lower on the page, or outside of the Golden Triangle.

3) A person or company might want to own the traffic on a specific term (eg: Brands). A name can be a brand. Especially, in the case of a political, or reputation management campaign. The value of a Keyword could be extremely high, even in the abscence of any kind of ROI.