Archive for keywords
Buzz Goes Mobile
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle has integrated Buzz onto its mobile home page in the top right corner of the display. Download the mobile Buzz webapp at buzz.google.com. To post just click on the Buzz icon and magically it not only lets you post it can not only tell physically where you are but also identify if you are at work, home, a café, etc. Wow…Orwellian! That has some implications and brings up some real safety concerns for some and a ‘cool’ for others. One young Buzz user quipped, “What if I am on the john at home, will it know that?” Well….not yet! But give it time…but what the heck are you doing using your droid on the toilet anyway? In a way this scares me.
The thing that most users seem to totally miss the boat in their assessment of Buzz is Google’s integration between local search, real time, and their mobile device. On the Droid, according to Joe Hafner of Ocho Consulting, “Buzz is drastically ahead of its competitors on this one integration making it a trend to watch in 2010-2011.”
An interesting real life search scenario happened to me today as I was perusing my Google Alerts from my Gmail account. I set up a Google alert for Cheddr Media so I can watch their growth and lead up to launch of their new product 20 Decibels a Twitter campaign management and analytics tool http://www.20dbs.com/…so imagine my surprise when I clicked on one of the alert items and it was a Buzz stream between two people I don’t know and have never emailed! Now take that one step further…it is searchable? Indexable? You can have a public Buzz string using keywords to drive traffic and more SEO possibilities!
Leo Chen – Google Profile
Leo Chen – Cheddr Media, Inc. – About me: Co-founder & COO of Cheddr Media,
Inc. – Companies I’ve worked for: Lake Partners Strategy Consultants.
<http://www.google.com/profiles/leo.hj.chen>
From his profile I went straight to his public Buzz stream…Cool…but also makes it obvious how we need to make sure we don’t have public record chats accidentally on Buzz! So I eavesdropped on his Buzz and now find him to be another cool Cheddr guy. Wonder if he minded?
Now if you are a real technophobe and want to turn off Google Buzz simply go to the footer of your Gmail page. There you’ll see an option that says, “Turn off buzz.”
Subdomains or Subfolder – Does it impact SEO?
Posted by: | CommentsSearch engine optimization is critical to a website/blog’s success. When building a site and creating the infrastructure you are able to create elements such as a blog incorporated as part of a site on either a site’s subdomain or the subfolder. For example you can set up a blog as a sub domain (http://blog.website.com) or as a sub folder (http://www.website.com/blog/
Subdomains are seen by search engines as a separate site bringing no search juice to your parent domain. A sub folder is a part of the parent site, any content added on that folder contributes to the value of the parent domain, and it all works together to add to a site’s pagerank. That content if keyword rich and relevant to the rest of the site will make your site appear in the SERPs of more keywords. Those sub-domains of your site will not get picked up for SERP unless all your subdomains are super relevant to the keyword(s) searched.
Sub-domains do have a purpose if they are to act as a “new” site with a different purpose than the main site. But that requires a significant time investment in additional SEO efforts. So plan carefully and know what the reason is for each individual structure on your site and its target purpose. When in doubt build a sub-folder.
Long Tail Keywords – Finding Competitive Search Terms
Posted by: | CommentsKeywords are tough to “own” in some niches. Let’s face it, if you are in the diet and nutrition industry you have tens of millions of competing sites. Landing on page one of Google search for the phrase “weight loss” is darn near impossible. So what is the small business owner with little or no ppc funding in the budget to do? Ah…that is where the long tail keyword comes into play!
What are long tail keywords and how do they help a site with appearing in front of their buying niche? Long tail keywords are the phrases that people use when they are looking for a specific good or service and are ready to buy. The customer knows what they want and are no longer a ‘Looky Lou’ but ready to whip out their credit card and make a purchase. They are out of the research mode and out of the comparison shopping mode they are now in the ‘click here to add to shopping cart’ purchasing mode.
Search usually works like this:
1. Customer enters the keywords ‘diet techniques’ and gets 21,800,000 sites to choose from and clicks through the first three or four sites for information about various dieting sites. That’s a lot of competition to make your diet product stand out to this potential customer!
2. Customer decides they want to pursue the ever popular ‘detox’ technique to investigate various techniques and products. They enter ‘diet detox techniques’ and narrow the list of sites to explore to 2,960,000. Still a lot of competition for your product to have to outshine.
3. Customer is now going to look for a specific type of detox, ‘fat flush detox diet’ to see if it really is for them. There are 51,800 competing sites. The competition is thinning out.
4. Customer is ready to buy a book on how to safely detox. They use the search term, ‘fat flush detox safely diet book for women’. There are 34,600 competing sites. You now have a good chance of getting in front of the customer using that exact keyword phrase and a little hard work to get to the top of the pile.
Create content on your pages that bring in those customers who use the long tail keyword searches. Creating more content might require creating more pages. More pages is a good thing! Unique pages make the search engines come find you more often. Use variations of specific long tail keywords that will bring in the niche you want. Make sure each page has a distinctly unique title, meta tag, and content using your long tail keyword phrase.
The key to being competitive is to quit focusing so much on the broad keywords and target the long tail keywords that are so much easier to rank for and attract those buying customers in your niche!
Keywords and Keyword Stuffing
Posted by: | CommentsKeywords, if some is good is more better? If you start keyword stuffing Google will drop you faster than a girlfriend who picks up smoking! Google looks at keyword stuffing like a turd in the pool. They just don’t belong there and are distasteful displays of poor social etiquette for your blog or website. Keyword stuffing smacks of spamming. Don’t do it!
When you overdo the keywords on a page and the content language appears ‘forced’ or not in natural language patterns you are running a high risk of search engines blackballing your site and discounting your content as spam or bot created. Make your content clear, concise, easy to read and compelling. Concentrate instead on keyword density in your title, headings, and first paragraph. If the entire blog has a keyword density of less than 5-8 percent you should be okay with search engines. If you fear you are over the limit you probably are. Find second tier keyword synonyms that work to convey the same information. There are some keyword density tools out there that do a decent job of helping you analyze your pages.
Good copy writing requires content that flows, has a message, and is easy to interpret. Good websites have not only good SEO but good copy that makes logical natural use of keywords in content that was written for both search engines and for people.
