Posts Tagged ‘research’

What is the role of search engine optimization in media relations?

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

It’s a strategic decision. The keyword insight that comes from keyword analysis that you might do with a SEO campaign, where you can tap in to tools that monitor what people are searching on can be very useful in optimizing news related content.

The result of the keyword research is to create a glossary of phrases with metrics like popularity, relevance and competitiveness. You can then leverage the glossary across corporate communications. Try to get any digital asset that’s created whether its press releases, web pages, product pages or announcements to use phrases from the glossary. Get people responsible for creating the content to use the glossaries and find out what variations of phrases are in demand so that they’re using language that’s both relevant and popular.

Often times, people like to be creative in PR and direct marketing and that does not always bode well for search. Copywriters or content producers try to be clever or ironic or funny and those ways of communicating are not as meaningful to a machine or an algorithm as being literal in your word usage. That is a practical application of search for media relations. You optimize content according to what people are looking for.

Let’s say you’re conducting media relations for a client for an interview and the company web site and press releases are already optimized for certain keywords. You can coach the client to use those keywords in the interview. What happens a lot of times is that when that interview goes to print or even online, people remember the topics of the article but not necessarily the names of the companies involved. They’ll go to Google and search for those topics and when the company web site is properly optimized, it ranks highly for search phrases gleaned from the article.

How To Increase Your Site’s Popularity?

Monday, July 14th, 2008

This the question of which the answers you might be searching for hours on the net and getting dissatisfied again and again.

As you might be knowing that of the total of the internet search, Google has a share of 50%, Yahoo of 30% and MSN of 20% leaving other search engines like Altavista, Yamour, etc.

So if you want to increase the popularity of your site, you must, at first, try to increase the Google Pagerank of your site which can be done only after you have got your site in Google’s Directory. And to do this you might fill the add url form provided by google. But don’t do that ‘cos it is not likely to help you!

To add your url you must get your link on other site which has got pagerank. Why, I’ll explain it now; Google searches or crawls to search the required result, it means for example the search word is “weight loss”, so Google would first search an site of that keyword from its directory then search links on that site on that keyword for further results. And you can get indexed in Google within 48hrs. If you ask a site with higher pagerank to put your link on his site for some amount of money.

That would probably an easy way to get your site indexed.

Then lets think of bringing traffic to your site. You can give your site to a PTC site which would give you visitors, but not true visitors. In the eyes of Google the less words your title has, the more weight you gain.

So to get a nice title for your site, I recommend you to download GoodKeywords from www.goodkeywords.com and do research on the main subject of your site. Then get a title with good popularity but less competitors.

Top 10 Tips For Writing SEO Articles Like an SEO Pro

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

SEO Articles are designed to draw traffic to your website by giving you a higher position on Search Engine rankings. The motto of SEOs has long been ‘Content is King’, but I’m of the opinion that good content is not enough. Content needs subtly optimizing and in line with SEO strategies. Content needs to be original and regularly refreshed in order to get the most attention from Google’s spiders. I’ve put together a list of 10 top tips.

TIP 1: PLAN AHEAD: Plan your Keywords out in advance and then strategically place them throughout the article. Don’t try to stuff them in at the end; it will make the SEO article nonsensical. Never over-stuff your article with Keywords; the Search Engines are designed to avoid duplication. Try not to use your Keyword more than two or three times, but always try to use a keyword at the beginning and end of the article. The main Keyword should be in the title.

TIP 2: WRITE FOR THE READER: If you are only writing the article for a Search Engine to ‘read’ the chances are that you’ll write a dull and uninspiring article. Remember people do read these articles and they all add to your credibility. Write about what you know, show yourself to be an expert with proven skills.

TIP 3: GOOD GRAMMAR: Always double-check your SEO articles for grammar and spelling issues. Poorly spelt articles with weak grammar will badly damage your credibility.

TIP 4: KEEP IT BRIEF: Don’t use more words than you need to get the job done. You should aim for no more than 1000 words and no less than 250 words. Keep your paragraphs short too, no more than five or six lines.

TIP 5: KNOW YOUR STUFF: It’s essential that what you write is accurate. Many people will not trust writers who have not worked in the area on which they are writing. However, a good article writer can write on any subject, if they do their research. The Internet is a powerful research tool, but don’t take everything that’s written there to be fact. Check your facts before submitting the article.

TIP 6: HAVE AN OPINION: No one said that you had to write neutrally about every subject. It’s okay to have an opinion. Just remember that people may not agree with you and a grossly out of touch opinion may damage your credibility. Nonetheless, it may bring you more traffic and higher rankings. That’s not an encouragement to be outrageous though.

TIP 7: BOAST ABOUT BENEFITS: Don’t worry about features, always talk about benefits. These help sell whatever you are writing about to the reader because they want to know what’s in it for them. Features are what you offer, benefits connect to the reader’s inbuilt selfishness.

TIP 8: HYPE YOUR LINKS: If you can embed some quality hyperlinks into your work, you will benefit from drawing more general interest. Furthermore, the Search Engine’s spiders have a great chance of finding your site by linking to quality websites.

TIP 9: WRITE LOTS OF ARTICLES: Okay, this one is rather simple and obvious, but the greater number of keyword optimized, credible and well-written, hyperlinked articles that you have all pointing to the website of your choice, the better chance that the Search Engines will find it.

TIP 10: CALL TO ACTION: End your well-written article with a call for the reader to take action. The idea of most articles is to have the impressed reader click your link and go to your website. See below for an excellent example.

SEO Success and Keywords

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

In order for web site optimization to succeed and succeed well there needs to be extensive keyword research and analysis. Generally your not going to find too many, if any one word keywords to use on a new site that are highly competitive. So it’s instrumental that researching the competition and analyzing the industry for the best keywords and keyphrases be done. To be done correctly time must to spent on this analysis.

Not doing the proper keyword research is the biggest mistake that any SEO company can make. It is what will make the web site optimization a success or a failure. With all of the off-page and on-page work that needs to be done for good optimization to occur, not having the right keywords will make the whole process a waste of time and energy. So to have a successful SEO campaign insure that time is taken to find the right keywords and phrases for your web site.

SEO - Back to Basics

Friday, June 20th, 2008

A German Company Sistrix recently analyzed roughly 10,000 web sites to see if there were any common elements to reaching the top of the SERPS in Google. Here are some of the results that they found in their research:

They found keywords in bolded type, h2 to h6 tags (not so much in h1 tags), title tags along with these words in the body text were important. Image names and domain names with keywords helped also. Keywords in file paths or the parameters in a dynamic web site url didn’t seem to have a positive effect. Having inbound links seemed to have on of the biggest impacts in Google’s SERPS, for example a SERPS at number 11 in Google had about 4 times less the inbound links as did the number 1 spot.

Once again it seems sticking to the basic rules of SEO over time will garnish favorable rewards! Happy SEO-ing!

Rand on Keyword Research Data

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

It is not often that I link to other posts, but today I cannot seem to help myself.

Rand has written “An Exhaustive List of Search Engine Based Keyword Research Data“, and fairly exhaustive it is. I read quite a few blogs on a daily basis and there very few post that have me searching for the print icon, this is one of them.

Keyword research is a subject close to my heart at the moment. Yesterday, along with two colleagues, I gave a presentation called “How to make search engines love your site” to an audience of Chartered Institute of Marketing members. I believe just over 60 people attended, each having paid a reasonable, fee the pressure was on. No guessing what my main subject was… yep, keyword research. If only I had read Rand’s post first.

I have been toying with signing up for the SEOmoz premium content, this finally convinced me that I should and I am now approx $400 lighter, but the content and tools are more than worth it.

Cover Topics that Need Attention

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it’s particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you’re virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.