WSI Marketing, Surf, Search and Social

Getting a fully functional, effective website isn’t something that “just happens” after you sign a deal with a client. Clients can get extremely excited about the idea of having a new website and if they’ve bonded with you, they’ll assume you know exactly what they are expecting. Re-doing work because you didn’t ask the right questions in the beginning is a time-consuming mistake.

Here are some things to ask from your client before you get cracking:

High resolution pictures

You may have access to a bunch of generic pictures, but you will often see this pictures used on another site. If you are designing a website for an architecture firm, roof installers, make-up artist or any type of company that can show visual proof of their services, ask for some pictures of past projects. This will not only help you incorporating some great “Case Studies” or “Past Projects” pages, but also help to get your creative juices flowing.

Created by link

Many websites have a “Designed by”, “Created by” or “Maintained by” link at the bottom of the page. A client may be reluctant to give you this credit on their website (especially the larger corporate clients), but you may be able to negotiate if you show them how small and unobtrusive the link is. Your logo or a link to your professional site can help get you business in the future.

More business

Website design can be lucrative, but an ongoing relationship with a smaller amount of hand-picked clients can go a long way too. It’s important not to blindly call up old clients to find out if they “are still happy with their website” or “need work done”. Rather send an e-mail out once or twice a year offering a follow-up service (such as incorporating a blog onto their sites for SEO purposes or a discount on bulk business card design).

Correct copy

Very few website designers want to be stuck with the copywriting part of the website. Give a list of all the information you will need to the client (such as a company profile, full contact details, testimonials, product descriptions) etc. It is good to have a standard template that you can send to each client before you start a design job.

Title tags is one of the most important tags on a web page for on page SEO. A website title (defined with the title tag) is the first thing that appears on search engine result pages (SERP) on which the site visitors click to go to the site.

Simple on page Search Engine Optimization methods like the title tag can make such a big difference on how well a website does on the search result pages. Many website owners are not even aware about the title tag defined within the HTML of the page (<title>page title</title>). Most website owners confuse it with the big bold text on the page.

SEO Title Tag Tips

1. The length of your titles should not exceed 65 characters including the spaces.
2. Use your keyword phrases in the title tag, taking care that the title looks natural and does not appear keyword stuffed.
3. If you wish to use your site name for branding, use your brand or site name at the end of the title tag on every page of your site. A good way to separate your title from your brand/business name is by using the “|” symbol between them.
4. Each page of your site should have a unique, descriptive title tag which should match with your page content. It also makes sense to reuse the text in title tag of each page in H1 header tag too – from the viewpoint of on-page optimization as well as for enhancing user experience.
5. Shorter page titles are usually better than long ones. However, longer titles make sense when you don’t want to lose traffic from long tail keywords. You may also combine or overlap many keyword phrases in the page title. For example, a title such as ‘Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Tips’ can help you to rank for keyword phrases such as ‘Search Engine Marketing’, ‘Search Engine Optimization Tips’, etc.
6. A compelling title can attract more eyeballs and clicks when your page appears in search results. You should therefore focus on the art of writing headlines and titles for improving your conversion rate.

Can you afford to ignore internet marketing?

Gone are the days when business marketing was about creating a message. Today, success is pretty dependent on online marketing or better to say ‘Internet Marketing.’

In this era, almost every company has its online interface, which helps the company in attaining a local and global outlook as well as leaving an impact on all the web-surfers and web researchers who can turn into clients. Keeping the target users in mind, internet marketing is done in a comprehensive manner.

It incorporates several online marketing strategies, starting with On-line Competitor Analysis, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Management), Link Building, Content Marketing,  PPC (Pay per Click) Management and Social Media Marketing.

The goal is to improve your search engine rankings or ‘Your Popularity”

Content is a King

To make this statement more definite, I would change the phrase for – rich content is king. But what sense in creating the greatest content in the world if nobody can find and view it. If you want to run your online business successfully you have to be seen.

Nonetheless, this is absolutely web-based marketing but it leaves a great impact on mass, which is considered the major USP of Internet Marketing. This cost-effective marketing tactic is absolutely measurable focuses on driving web/customer traffic and converting that into revenue influx and visitor count.

A linking strategy is an absolute must

Back links are the life blood of a successful site and although you might not actually see them, the search engines do and reward you as links back to your site are seen as subtle endorsements and can be built up with a strategy of regular blogging, using social media and on-line press releases article directories, etc.  The more links to your site, the more Google see you as popular and relevant to their searcher.

Before You Do Anything, Do Keyword Research

Yes,  it is very important. Besides, keyword research does not mean that you should guess which keyword sounds good and will be ranked high in the search engines. Judging by my experience they are the worst ones.

Again work with the professionals who have access to tools providing you with information on specific keywords and the number of clicks that they attract. Also find out what keywords your competitors are using AND which words get clicked on.

How do you stay ahead of your competitors?

Though, nowadays, millions of pages are online and many of them share category listings and key words with your site, It becomes very difficult to stay ahead in the race… Internet Marketing is the only solution that can help you in emerging as the winner.

For impact internet marketing, you must have the idea of your target client or target ‘persona’ enabling you to communicate with ‘relevance’ using persuasion architecture within your website to achieve those sought after conversions. This helps professionals in preparation of a well-versed strategy.

Internet Marketing should always be done with a progressive approach

Implemented by almost every entrepreneurial organization, internet-marketing tactics are considered great not only for the budding enterprises but also for those who are in queued in the list of big guns… and those smaller companies who have the drive and will to take on those ‘big guns’!

If you too want to give a boom to traffic count of your site and increase revenue generation, understand what your competitors are doing on-line in order to develop and commission an online marketing strategy that will allow you to pass your competitors and win the much needed market share.

Contact us today for a Analysis Report. This report will help you understand what you top ten competitors are doing online and what your target audience is searching on Google.

By John Alexander
These days most professional search engine marketers all have access to the most common research tools.
For this article, we’ll explore one of my favorite research tools, Wordtracker.com.

But before we get started, have you ever wondered why some people experience limitations initially in performing effective keyword research? What are the most common elements can that block some people from doing fast and effective keyword research? Why can’t some people find the best results as quickly as others?

Let’s talk about this first. Then I’ll share some quick and easy “how to” tips that I hope will help you.

A few years ago, I wrote an e-book called, Wordtracker Magic and I’ve spent time helping to teach students about how to quickly tap into the best keyword phrase trends and niches very quickly. Let’s start by outlining a couple of the more common errors some people can make initially, when first using Wordtracker. For a while, I actually had the privilege of working with Wordtracker support and answering peoples keyword related questions on a regular basis, a few years ago. That was a great learning experience.

What I learned was that often, people were sometimes not finding the best niche phrases available, simply because many people naturally tended to want to “guess” at keywords, rather than fully explore the existing fresh data.

Some people say and use the word “research,” but then tend to want to rely on their own “logic” or recent real world experience to examine specific phrases. In short, whether we admit it or not, there is a tendency for some of us to “guess at the keywords” that we *think* that make the most sense, but at the same time we miss a wealth of information in the process of having such a narrow focus.

First tip: Stop guessing at what keyword phrases people “might” be entering into the search box.

One of the biggest blocks to the process of exploring the fullness of Wordtracker’s available data, is simply that most people naturally tend to guess at keywords, rather than explore all of the data. Many Wordtracker users start out with the idea of trying to dictate to the tool, which keywords that they ***THINK*** are most relevant. But the truth is every time we guess at the terms that make the most sense, we are not really letting Wordtracker reveal its best information.

Think about the process more in this way….The more you “think like everyone else thinks” (usually drawing keywords that are already lodged into your mind based upon your experiences)….then the more you will be thinking like the rest of your competition. The more our eyes and our thinking and our ability to observe is attracted towards keywords that “make the most sense” to our brains the more we tend to discover exactly the same keywords as the rest of the world are discovering. So we can get disappointed real quick and have the feeling that there just are no real “niche phrases” available anymore. In this mindset, we only find limited results based on logical guess work.

What this usually means, is huge numbers of competing pages all trying to rank for deadly dull, obvious phrases.

Of course you can build your skills so you can compete with highly competitive phrases and you can win the game too, but that’s not the point. A much wiser approach is to learn how to “think differently” in order to allow yourself the ability to explore the data that 99% of your competition never will see or find.

Why not tap into important keyword phrases that are legitimate (with fair to high usage but that have MUCH lower competition because most competitors never even find it or often they never even see it?

The focus of genuine keyword research is not to guess at keywords, but to learn how to quickly explore the best data, OTHER than the common logical keywords that are already lodged into our minds.

Second Tip: Stop relying on allowing your “logic” and your “experience” to dictate how you will explore data.

This is easy to say but in the beginning it takes a little practice to do.

Sometimes when you research single keywords using Wordtracker’s powerful comprehensive search functionality, you will discover multiple instances of how a specific word is being used within a phrase, but without any guess work at all. Try working with a single, action related “root word.”

Now listen carefully. It does not have to be a word that your logical thinking dictates. For example, what happens if you research a term in its most generic form and let Wordtracker piece together exactly how that word is being used. This is one of the rare times when using human brilliance or natural logic can actually prevent you from seeing the most powerful truths in your process of research. By avoiding “logic” you will explore more legitimate working data than 99% of most other Webmasters ever do.

Let’s give you a few creative examples to get you started…..

1. If you are a real estate agent, instead of using an obvious logical phrase like “real estate” (with 323 million competing pages on Google) or using a keyword acronym such as MLS (over 40 million competing pages on Google.)

Let’s try a researching a single “root word” term like “listing” just all by itself…..leaving Wordtracker to do the hard part.

Here are a few examples which I grabbed in under 3 minutes of Wordtracker research:
(each example here with under 1000 competing pages)

At the time of writing this article…..

“house listings parry sound” – Currently only has 90 competing pages for this exact phrase.
“Wyoming MN home listings” – Currently only has 197 competing pages for this exact phrase.
“michigan real estate listing” – Currently only has 197 competing pages for this exact phrase.
“Wisconsin Home listings” – Currently only has 697 competing pages for this exact phrase.
“Central Virginia land listings” – Currently only has 95 competing pages for this exact phrase.
“north oaks minnesota home listings” – Currently only has 233 competing pages for this exact phrase.

2. If you are an affiliate marketer.

Instead of researching the exact product you want to explore in a phrase (for example “candlestick holders,”) try using a single word like “holder” to determine exactly what type of “holders” are in highest demand with lowest competition.
You may discover many other products with much better windows of opportunity.

Examples using a root word of “holder”….(my research time here was 90 seconds – each phrase under 10 competing)

“motorcycle wheel holders” KEI 676.0 Competing pages on Google 1
” southwest pot holders” KEI 768.0 Competing pages on Google 3
“hanging vine holder” KEI 924.5 Competing pages on Google 2
” folbe fishing rod holder” KEI 1156.0 Competing pages on Google 9
” .30 Remington shell holder” KEI 1444.0 Competing pages on Google 1

3. Try working with descriptive verbs.
Instead of researching a specific product using comprehensive search, try researching descriptive verbs like “new” or “old” or “rare” or “limited” or “reconditioned” or “polished” or “bronzed” or whatever…? Try using any type of descriptive terms to explore all kinds of interesting data.

4. Did you know there are differences between the written word and spoken dialogue?

Instead of researching common descriptive terms, try exploring natural sounding “dialogue.” Try to remember to explore “words” based on dialogue, not just on written copy. Your customers often will say things to you in their dialogue that give you a great starting place to explore data.

5. Don’t forget to research and explore the world of color.
What happens if you enter a single term representing a color like “red,” or “aqua” or green or any color?

6. Explore any type of data at all in terms of a root word.

Don’t forget to explore everything and anything that comes to mind. From a topic you notice on the news to something that may not even be a word at all. What happens if you try to explore a number or a price like $9.95 instead of a word?

7. Instead of just thinking of your research as “keywords” try thinking in terms of your audience’s “topics of interest.”

8. Instead of researching keyword phrases try watching for “behavioural trends” or keywords that “tell a story.”

Examples of keywords that are telling:
“miniature doll instructions” KEI 961.0
“golf swing instruction dvds” KEI 1741.0
“how to build secret compartments” KEI 280.3
“building a basement in your home” KEI 512.0
“easy build shed kit” KEI 520.0
“How to Build an Icehouse” KEI 661.0
“build a reptile rack” KEI 676.0
“how to build military bunkers out of sand bags” KEI 729.0
“how to build custom furniture” KEI 1444.0

9. Consider any type of tools that you might research using terms like “calculator” or “maps” or “directions.”

10. Consider exploring topics related to specific seasons, which may be appropriate for your Web audience.

11. Consider exploring common acronyms (related to your industry) to open up more “unexplored data.”

12. Try to discover and satisfy the searcher by delivering up highly valuable content that meets their needs first.
Make your objectives come second and give the searcher what they are looking for first based upon your research.

13. What if you are feeling stumped…about keyword research? Try a reverse approach. If you feel challenged because the keyword you’re researching seems to have no potential, try and explore your audience’s “searching behaviour” first to see what else they want or need based on the conditions, then create the exact high quality content that they’re looking for.

Examples:
Instead of common terms like “Web design” try to chunk it down to the services or special aspects you offer as a designer. You might try root words like “database” or “content” or other aspects that you offer in your services.

14. Develop your lateral thinking skills to press beyond a keyword hunt mindsest.
While most people are thinking about what keywords to use, try to expand your scope to focus on discovering the fullest possible picture of what your customer REALLY wants, what they really are doing, by simply studying their searching behavior on the major search engines.

15. Don’t forget to explore the most common, everyday type single terms that most people will assume have no potential.

Example: From exploring a boring sounding word like “word”….in 90 seconds I found:
“free wedding program word template” KEI 289.1 1 competing page in Google
“Words to a Spanish Song” KEI 462.3 4 competing words in Google
“What Does the Word Hinder Mean” KEI 841.0 4 competing pages in Google
“WORD TRIVIA QUIZZES” KEI 5712.0 10 competing pages in Google
“Words That End with Letter Q” KEI 53,730.0 10 competing pages in Google

Is there any greater discovery than having an understanding of a target audience’s “search behavior”?

Best described, if you are researching your data well, it’s like a light coming on in your mind. It’s like flipping a switch on to an huge “idea generator!” Truly it is like looking through a porthole on the world’s searching behavior.

Wordtracker will give you absolutely AMAZING detail if you take time to think about it laterally and outside of the context of just a “keyword hunt.” Don’t let the natural tendency to “guess at keywords” stop you from exploring all of the hidden evidence that just needs a little practice to uncover. I never get tired of exploring behaviorally related trends that are easy to gather like “low hanging fruit.”
Have you checked out Wordtracker’s Academy for more articles?
Would you like to check out an alternative Niche Finding Tool?
Watch the short little video of Micro Niche Finder now.
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