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3 Deadly Search Engine Marketing Sins
First Published: Sep 2004
Last Update: Sep 2004
Author: John Gergye
My inbox this week provided glaring examples of three all too common rookie
search engine marketing mistakes. What you could call three deadly search engine
marketing sins. Starting with
Inadequate Keyword Research
Hey! If you’re going to spend hours developing a web site, isn’t it smart to
invest some time to insure you’re focusing on the most traffic laden keywords?
Especially when typically the plural form of a keyword
phrase generates way more traffic than the singular form.
For example "dog dishes" rather than "dog dish".
Yet just this week I was asked to look at a site that had focused on the
singular form. Evidently the owner hadn’t bothered to do any digging to make
sure that was their best keyword move.
Look, you’ll never know for sure unless you research it. Besides, you can access
Wordtracker, the tool of choice for what? a measly $7 a day.
Even better here’s a quick and dirty way to get the most,out of that day.
Search for your target keyword in Google.
Visit the top ranking sites. Use the "View Source" feature
of Internet Explorer to check out the keyword meta tag of
each site. You're looking for a site listing lots of
keywords there. Do this with each of the top listings or until you find one
stuffed to the gills with keywords.
Ah-ha! There’s your starting point for your list of likely keyword phrases.
Repeat with a couple of other sites and you’ll soon have a
long list of candidates to check out in Wordtracker.
Enhance your list further using this tool:
http://www.promoteindia.com/keywordtool-beta.htm .
It will give you more keyword ideas from Google and
Overture.
Now you’re ready for Wordtracker.
Once you’ve compiled your Wordtracker results, you could
simply sort by KEI and then by searches per day.
That gives you the strongest keywords with the most
searches. (And yes, I realize KEI assumes all search
engine listings are of equal value. But I did say this
was "quick and dirty" didn't I? However if you want
another approach that improves on KEI there’s a spreadsheet available at
http://www.seo-works.com/seo-resources/keyword-effectiveness-rank.html )
Anyway, once you're sorted your keywords in some way to highlight the most
profitable, simply take the top 25 on the list and create content for those
first. No, not every one will be a natural born traffic magnet. But enough of
them will be to get the ball rolling.
Repeat with the next 25. Don’t stop until you have at
least 100 pages of hot content.
Remember, two or three word keyword phrases are usually
your best bets. And I really like keyword phrases that are actually several
keyword phrases in one. For example "irish setter dog dishes" gives "irish
setter", "irish setter dog", "dog", "dog dishes", "setter dog dishes".
Site Bloat
Twice this week I was asked to look at sites that would
have let me read War and Peace while waiting for them to
come up. And no visitor is going to have a copy of that
handy.
To avoid losing any precious visitors lose the huge
graphics. One of the sites had a graphic 501K in size! No wonder it took nearly
two minutes to load up on a 56K modem.
Then too lose the Flash - unless you have a very good
reason for using it. Even then lose the Flash.
If you’re wondering how your site's download time measures
up test it here: http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm
It won’t cost anything to find out. But a slow loading
site can cost you plenty. Because as the Net Mechanics
follow up reports says, it's a good idea to keep your page
load times under about 12 seconds on a 28.8 modem.
Otherwise your visitors will be wearing out the back button trying to escape.
Too Few Links
Did you know links can account for up to 80% of your
success with Google? Yet someone else complained to me
about how much work it took to get them.
Well doh! Ever think that maybe that’s why (in part)
Google assigns so much value to links? Because you can’t
quite as easily game links as you can on page content?
Meaning you actually have to work to get links. Both by
having link worthy content and by actively seeking them out
on a regular basis.
It’s a given that most niches require you have a healthy collection of links to
be competitive. Yet if you’re lucky enough to be in a niche that doesn’t, but
you do, then you can easily dominate those rankings.
Anyway in a nutshell you can easily avoid these three
search engine sins. Do your keyword homework. Keep your
pages on a strict diet. And don't forget link up with as
many other quality sites as you can.
Do all that and you’re well on your way to search engine success. Ignore this
advice and you’re, well you know, your Google goose is probably cooked. Leaving
you perpetually stuck in Google purgatory.
About the Author
John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his just updated eBook "Traffic
From Google in 35 Days". Find out more here:
http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml Or test your search
engine IQ by taking his seo quiz
http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/search-engine-quiz.shtml
and get the free special report "Coming Out On Top".
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