Why You Need to Be Blogging

By John Eberhard

Blogging is something that you can do that doesn’t cost you anything, and it drives traffic. It can drive traffic to a standalone blog or a blog that is part of your main web site.

How does it drive traffic?

There is a network of blog search engines, and every time you post something on your blog, you have to notify these search engines and your new content will be included in those search engines. And people search and find your content and come to your blog.

Wordpress blogs are set up by default to send a notification to all the blog search engines every time you post something new. For Typepad, Blogspot, Posterous or other blogs, you can send a notification (called a “ping”) to these search engines for free at www.pingomatic.com.

If you have a standalone blog, meaning one that is not part of your main site but is on a separate web address, then you have to put things in the sidebars that will get them to come back to your main web site. See one of my blogs to see how I do this:
http://www.realwebmarketingblog.com/

Notice that I have ads in the sidebars promoting my book and a free eBook, as well as links to my other sites and my various services.

I track traffic to my main web site at www.realwebmarketing.net using Google Analytics, and my blogs are the biggest single traffic source to that web site over the last two years (even bigger than Google).

Setting Up a Blog

There are several ways to set up a blog:

• Wordpress: You can set up a hosting account and have Wordpress installed on it. You can also set up a sub-folder under an existing web site and install Wordpress in just that folder, so that the address of the blog would be www.yourmainwebsite.com/blog.
• Typepad: You can set up an account with Typepad who will then host your blog, so you don’t need a separate hosting account. You can use a custom web address that you register.
• Free Blogs: There are several free blogs, including Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, Posterous.com, and Blog.com. Note that Wordpress.com is a free blogging system and is different from having a hosting account and installing Wordpress there. I know, it’s pretty confusing. We used to use LiveJournal.com but the site has been broken for some time, and we used to use Tumblr.com, but they got all high and mighty on us and closed down our accounts because we (gasp!) wrote blog posts with links to other sites. Recently Wordpress.com has also started closing down accounts if you write blog posts with links in them to other web sites.

Linking in Your Blog Posts

One of the advantages of blogging is that you can put links inside your blog posts, to pages on your main site. And getting lots of links coming back to your main site helps its search engine rankings.

Putting links into your blog posts is very smart to do and over time will add a fair number of new links to your site. I would put a max of 3 links into each blog post.

As mentioned some of the free blogs are objecting to links from your blog to commercial web sites, which I think is idiotic and symptomatic of the general “anti marketing” bias within the IT community. So my advice is not to use Wordpress.com or Tumblr.com any more.

What to Write About

The next question is what to write about and how often. You should write something new and post it to your blog at least once a month, or more ideally, once a week.

You can write an article for your blog of anywhere between 300 and 1500 words. I’ve heard people say that you should not write anything over 700 words for a blog post but I can’t see any reason for that. Pick some topic related to your industry that has helpful information in it, i.e. it is not just a pitch for people to buy something.

In addition to writing an article, you can also write a short comment about some other content on the web, with a link to that content. You can also post a video from YouTube so that it displays right in the blog. So you can see that you do not have to write a full blown article to be able to post something.

It’s a good idea to include some high traffic keywords in your blog posts, because once that post gets included in the blog search engines, more people will find it due to searching for those keywords.

Good luck with blogging.

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Selecting Keywords Today

Selecting Keywords Today
by John Eberhard

The ways in which keywords are selected has changed a lot over the years. Just in looking back on the articles I have written over the last five years, I was shocked at how much it has changed.

The first thing to do today is to determine how you will be using the keywords. Will it be for pay per click advertising? Will it be for search engine optimization (SEO)? And if for SEO, are you doing SEO for a strictly local business?

SEO Keywords

Let’s say you are selecting keywords for SEO, and first let’s take the scenario that yours is a national business, meaning you have customers all over.

At the beginning of the search cycle, people type in more general keywords, either single words or phrases that describe the whole category of thing they are searching for, such as “MP3 player.” Then after they have done some initial searches and learned a bit about the category, they will then enter more specific phrases, such as “ipod mp3 player.” Then as they are getting ready to buy, they will enter even more specific phrases describing the specific product they want to buy, such as “ipod nano 4GB.” Note that this final, third phase is the time when the person is most likely to BUY. At that point he is usually looking for places where he can buy the product and comparing prices.

Keywords that are from this third phase of the searching cycle, are most descriptive and which tend to be 2-4 words or more are called “long tail” keywords. These keywords are not only usually easier to have your site rank for them, they tend to be the phrases the person types in when he is closest to being ready to buy.

Most people who I talk to who are not trained in these facts tend to think that they want to target keywords that describe the overall category, usually single word keywords, like “golf,” “consulting,” “dentist,” “chiropractor,” “marketing,” “computers,” etc. Although these single word keywords tend to have lots of searches, people typing them in are not usually at the buying point in the whole search cycle, and because of another factor which I’ll describe next, you won’t usually ever be able to rank well for them.

Competition and Number of Searches

When selecting keywords for SEO, one of, if not the primary consideration, is the number of sites that are competing for that keyword. The other primary consideration is the number of people searching for that keyword. The key is to find keywords that have low competing sites, and high search traffic.

When I am doing keyword research, I compile a spreadsheet with the keywords, and then I put the keywords into a software package I use called Market Samurai. This software finds the number of searches for each keyword, and the number of sites that are competing for that keyword. I used to use Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, both online services where you pay monthly. One advantage to Market Samurai is that you pay once, and it’s a good program.

Once I have the search and competition data, I export the data into a new spreadsheet. Then I sort the list by the competition data, and put the keywords into groups according to the number of competing sites. The reason for this is that if you have a keyword that has 1 million competing sites, you are just not going to be able to rank well for that keyword – period. At least not for a fairly long period of time.

As mentioned above, the key is to find keywords that have low competing sites, and high search traffic.

When I am sorting through the keywords I try to select from my first group, which has the lowest number of competing sites, but select keywords within that group that have high search traffic. And you have to consider the 3 levels of keyword searching and select keywords that are more likely to be used by people who are closest to the buying part of the sales cycle.

Once you select your keywords, the next job is to write titles and descriptions for each of your pages that use those keywords.

Local SEO

When we are talking specifically about local SEO, we are talking about setting up your site to rank well for local keywords. So what’s a local keyword?

By “local keyword” I mean a keyword that mentions your topic and also includes the name of a city or town in your area. Like “dentist Glendale” or “computer repair Los Angeles” or “pizza Sylmar.”

Local keywords tend to be much easier to start ranking well for. But a caution which I have mentioned before: I see a number of supposed SEO experts selling people on how they will get them to rank on page one of Google for their local oriented keywords. And they can. But the point is, how many people are entering those keywords? If you rank on page one of Google for a keyword that has 2 searches per month, what good does it do? I’ll remove any uncertainty and answer – None!

So getting your site to rank well for local keywords is a great idea. But before you spend any money on such a plan, make sure the person tells you, for each of the keywords, how much search traffic they are getting. That way you’ll know if you are investing in something that is worthwhile.

Keywords for Pay Per Click (PPC)

With pay per click advertising on Google AdWords and MSN Ad Center, the rules for selecting keywords are very different.

With pay per click you want keywords that have as many searches as possible. You don’t care as much how many competing sites there are. The number of people that enter your keywords in pay per click is called the number of impressions, and you want high impressions because that will give you more people clicking on your ads.

So in PPC you DO want to use more general keywords, because they will get you more impressions and more clicks.

But, you have to also consider conversions. In PPC a “conversion” is definied as some who came to your site from your PPC advertising and then responded, either by filling out a form or calling you and becoming a lead, or by buying something if you are selling something directly online.

With Google AdWords and MSN Ad Center, there is something called “conversion code” which you put on a certain page of your site, and that sends a message back to the interface telling it that a conversion has occurred.

It is vital in PPC to set up this conversion code on your site. One of the advantages is that your Google or MSN interface will then show which keywords people typed in, that resulted in a conversion. This is important because although it is OK to use general, one word keywords in PPC, you might find after a month or two that you are getting lots of clicks on those general keywords, but no conversions (remember earlier about keywords and the buying cycle). Since the name of the game with PPC is to get lots of conversions, for as little money as possible, in such a case you might want to pause the general keywords and stick with the ones that got you the conversions.

Good luck with keyword selection.

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Social Media Targeting

by John Eberhard

It’s all well and good to teach somebody how to set up social media accounts and all that, but a vital step in the whole process is to also teach them how to reach their specific target public with social media marketing.

Every business has what is known as a “target public.” This means a specific type of person or business that will buy that type of product or service.

For consumer products, there are likely demographic factors that would tend to identify the target public, such as age, sex, income level, interests, or hobbies. Like for a dance studio, the target public would most likely be young girls, ages 4-21, with an interest in dance. For a pet store, obviously it’s pet owners.

For business to business marketing, often you are trying to reach owners or executives of a specific type of business, i.e. dentists, home improvement companies, software companies, or whatever. Or you might be targeting businesses of a certain size, i.e. 20-100 employees, or a certain level of company income per year.

So the key with social media is to connect with people who would most likely be prospects for your product or service. You want to add those people to your friend, follower or connections list, on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, which are the big three social media sites.

So how do you target them? That varies by site.

Twitter

Twitter is probably the easiest site to target specific publics. With Twitter you locate people that are your target public and then follow them, and then a certain percentage will follow you back. The idea is to build up the number of people following you, because those are the ones that will potentially see your messages.

Using a software program called Tweet Adder, or a site called www.tweepi.com:

• You can target people according to geography (within a certain number of miles from a specific city). This is important for local businesses who only do only business in a finite geographical area.
• You can target people who have certain keywords in their Twitter bio. So let’s say you are targeting dentists, well you just search for people who have the word “dentist” in their bio. Or you can target CEOs and Presidents of companies, writers, IT guys, etc.
• You can target people who have certain keywords in their status updates, also known as “tweets” (I hate that word, but what can you do?).
• You can follow people who are followers of another user, or that another user is following.

Using the above you can get creative and figure out how to target people who would be your prospects. Then follow them and get them to follow you back.

It is also important to send out messages (tweets) yourself, about what your business is doing, as other people will search for keywords that you are using, and will follow you.

Facebook

With Facebook one technique we use to target specific publics is to have the client join several Facebook groups that pertain to his particular industry and where the members of the group would be potential prospects. Then start friending those people.

For example, we have a client who does tax consulting for people buying airplanes. So for him we have had him join aviation type groups and befriend people who are members of those groups.

After a while you will build up enough friends that the “friend finder” will show people who have a lot of friends in common with you, and likely those people will be potential prospects too.

LinkedIn

Similar to Facebook, there are many groups you can join on LinkedIn. Then you can start proposing connection with people who are members of those groups.

Ping.fm

Ping.fm is a site that allows you to create an account and then hook up all your other social media accounts to it. Then you can send out a message or status update using Ping.fm, and it will go out on all your social media accounts. It allows you to type in something with a max of 140 characters, just like Twitter. This is a handy way of saving time in sending out your status updates, since you only have to log in to one site, not three or more.

Good luck targeting your public on social media sites.

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How to Decide Which Website Marketing Actions to Do, Part 2: Examples

by John Eberhard

In my last article I described all the major methods of website marketing for a company, and explained how to choose which ones are right for your company.

In this article I am going to give examples of different types of companies, and how I would evaluate each one for what marketing actions they should do online.

Home Improvement Company (Local, high ticket item)

• Pay per click advertising
• Google Maps/Places
• Local search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing targeted at the local geographical area
• Video marketing, showing products
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects

Health Care Practice (Local, high ticket item)

• Pay per click advertising
• Google Maps/Places
• Local search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing geared to the local geographical area
• Video marketing, showing practice owner and happy patients
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects

Consulting Company (National, high ticket item)

• Pay per click advertising
• Search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing geared to the target public
• Video marketing, showing owner and happy clients
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects
• Blogging

Book Author (National, low ticket item)

• Social media marketing targeted at people interested in the topic
• Blogging
• Video marketing, showing author
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects

Beauty Products Manufacturer (National, low ticket item)

• Search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing geared to women in target age group
• Video marketing, showing products, happy customers, experts
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects
• Blogging

Dance Studio (Local, low ticket item)

• Google Maps/Places
• Local search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing geared to the target public in local geographical area
• Video marketing, showing performances
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects
• Blogging

Insurance Agency (Local, relatively low ticket)

• Google Maps/Places
• Local search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing geared to the local geographical area
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects

Software Company (National, high ticket)

• Pay per click advertising
• Search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing geared to the target public
• Video marketing, showing product, developers, customers
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects
• Blogging

Tax Consulting Company (Regional, high ticket)

• Pay per click advertising
• Search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing geared to the target public
• Video marketing, showing consultant, happy clients
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects
• Blogging

Private School (Local, high ticket item)

• Pay per click advertising
• Google Maps/Places
• Local search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing targeted at parents in the local geographical area
• Video marketing, showing facilities, faculty and students
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects
• Blogging

Real Estate Agent (Local, high ticket)

• Pay per click advertising
• Google Maps/Places
• Local search engine optimization (SEO) and link building
• Social media marketing geared to the local geographical area
• Email marketing, once you build up a list of prospects

Good luck with marketing your company online.

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