How do we choose the best keyword terms to use in our LeadsLander campaigns?  

Google has made a new tool available that make answering the questions a much easier task. Google Insights for Search provided relative search volume for up to five selected terms.  The results reported are relative search counts for search terms.  Entering a term you know to be highly relevant to you product you can give you a good idea of the relative search volume.

The results can be filtered to provide geographic, seasonal, and category information about the search volume. Further insights are given with the search volume of related terms. 

Start with your document in LeadsLander, once you have the terms displayed click the button

  to load the Google tool with your Green terms.

In Keyword selection, there are only three things that count. 

1. How relevant is your content to the term
2. Is your target audience searching for the term
3. The volume searches for the term

You can now add or edit your content to improve performance for you LeadsLander Web Pages. Using the LeadsLander built in editor you may want to use search and replace to produce another page that in essentially the same content with a term that has more search traffic.

You are often dealing with the company owner’s ego and that of their staff. The graphic presentation of the design is what gets most of the attention. You sold them on the aesthetics of the design now you are faced with extracting some textual content to support the graphics. I have talked with designers that have referred to this problem as content starvation.

The result is you have a happy client with a nice looking design that does not perform in search. You are lucky if they come back to you for advice on improving performance of the site. You are not too lucky if they find an SEO firm that disparages your design as not search engine friendly. You may have lost a client along with potential referrals.

The worst case for the client is that they adopt a scheme from an un-reputable SEO firm that sours them on the process. You want to keep your relationship with you client and lead them into the process. You may not be in the SEO business; however, it will pay dividends to collaborate with one when the client moves into the promotion phase.

Once you have published your client’s web site keep in touch with them. Provide them a path to grow the value of their online presence with SEO. The more attention their web site receives the more they will be willing to invest in upgrades.

Lets illustrate the how building a web page around a keyword or phrase that will never be used in a search, can rank well in SERPS (search engine result pages). The term NeverWillSearch a single word and for good measure, we will add another term NeverBeenSearched. Neither one of these words means anything out of this testing context. These terms will illustrate how search engines will index our sample page, and return it in a search for a single tern or both of the terms.

We will build our page in LeadsLander under the our LeadsLander account. We selected the term NeverWillSearch for our page optimization. Both terms have the same number of instances in the body of the page as seen here.

Here is a little tongue in cheek story regarding ranking for terms that have nothing to do with your product or service.

NeverWillSearch and NeverBeenSearched are running a land office business filling the Google index with pages that rank on the first page in search results.  When NeverWillSearch came to NeverBeenSearched with the idea it sounded great, everyone would be impressed with results they could achieve in the mysterious world of search engine rankings.

The page should be indexed in search engines in a week or so from our publish date. Here is an excerpt of the test page we published.

Now we can search for our terms NeverWillSearch and NeverBeenSearched and see how well we have done. Here is a nice description of how keywords are seen by search engines by Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide.

Here is great example where changing the message attracted a new audience to an existing product.

Panhandling is not new and the needs of the Panhandlers is no less compelling than before the change in the message.  This clip can be a good lesson to those of us who are trying to get our message across with the written word.

Build a link campaign like the Fortune 500 companies without the expense of the Fortune 500 consulting firm. The advise from “LinkExperts” is given for free here at WebProNews. You can take advantage of his best advise in building a link campaign with your “relevant content”. Watch the interview and then try a LeadsLander Demo account to see how easy it can be.

Video from WebProNews Video blog.

The test system case:

We introduced a new method that dramatically improved the process of testing printed circuit boards. Adoption of the new product was hampered by the high acquisition cost of the equipment, several hundred thousand dollars. We knew that the product would pay for itself over time, but it was a very hard sell.

As more attention was paid to testing in the trade press, awareness grew that the world had changed. Design of circuit boards became complicated and the advantage of testing circuit boards became more apparent.

Because the equipment was so expensive, we had to find a way to demonstrate it would pay, before a substantial investment could be justified. We began offering the process as a service to prospective buyers at a very attractive price. Customers were able to use the process without the demanding approval process of a capital acquisition.

We were able to demonstrate that the new process was very fast and simple to use. After customers became more familiar with the process, they learned to depend on it for their inspection.

Eventually customers of the service were able to justify purchase of the equipment for in-house use.

What parallels does this sales cycle have in common with landing SEM service contracts?

There are many as listed here:

• Contracting with a Search Marketing Firm is generally a substantially finical commitment, requiring approval of the highest level of management.

• Awareness is growing that Search Marketing performs.

• Having demonstrable results can lead to a larger finical commitment to SEM.

• Customers become more sophisticated in the process, making it more likely your program will meet their expectations.

• A Positive result builds confidence in your brand.

Building LeadsLander campaigns, customers will be mining their text documents developing a database identifying keywords and narratives related to their products. This data gives any agency a jump-start with a foundation for their Search Marketing Campaign. Your customer experiences real results without giving up your time. You can monitor your customer’s results looking for opportunities to advance to the next level.

The example Matt gave of the San Diego chiropractor is all too common in professionally designed websites. If only his recommendations were followed, most websites would perform well in less competitive businesses. The Amazon affiliate will not be helped, and they were not in the target audience.

Here is a recap of Matt’s recommendations:

Make sure that you have the terms you want to be found for on your page. The terms should be in your page title and in your description tag. The selected terms must be well supported in the body of the content. Leadslander pages build the title and description tags for you.

External Links to your site are what it’s all about with Google. Links to your site from pages that are on your topic improve your position in search.

You cannot buy your way into Google Search Results. Matt stated that one of the biggest misconceptions is that by running paid advertizing on Google your editorial (organic, free) search results will improve.

Google will find you, you do not need to pay for submission. Google provides many useful tools depending on your skill level: from ADD-a-URL to Webmaster tools.

Matt’s recommendations are a great place to start for anyone who has a website. Check your website for the basics; you’ll find the instructions you need on the Visibility blog.

LeadsLander will allow you to publish as much quality content about your business, its products, and your related field to capture search engine traffic. Your website is under construction or you have decided that along with Leadslander pages there is no need for a website. When the principal objective of your business is lead generation and presenting contact information, you have the LeadsLander plus Maps option.

This can be a very cost effective approach for your business. You publish high quality content that is responsive to search term queries. You can ad pages related to topical issues without the need for a webmaster or the associated expense.

You will need to create your Google Maps entry containing all the contact and location information for your business. Start at the Google Local Business Center and create your free account. In your description section of your business you can provide details of you product offering. Google also has a Coupon feature where you add special promotions to entice your visitors to convert.

Once you have created your listing look to the “Link to this Page” a box will drop down with the link highlighted ready to paste in your LeadsLander company home page input box. This will reinforce the weight of your listing.

Once you have established a suitable website that you believe outperform the Google listing you can change the target URL in your LeadsLander campaign. You may also add Landers with the new website URL to reinforce you campaign.

Google Maps Listing for AML view an example listing for AML

Here is an entertaining video presenting the Google Business Center entry.

Refer to this post for more information; Building Links to your website part 1.

Google Alerts is an email alert for the latest most relevant search result from the Google index, for any term you specify. You may specify any search string in a Google Alert that you would enter in Google Search.

You can get started in no time, just navigate to http://www.google.com/alerts then begin by adding the name of your company. Add and delete terms to you list of watch words until you see meaningful results. This service can give you a monitor for your search marketing efforts in Google. Monitoring your competitors websites along with your own keyword set.

Begin by selecting the comprehensive option to get alerts from any source that Google indexes. Set the frequency of the email alerts to the level you desire. At the very least, you can see the progress of any website promotion campaign you are running. You can compare the search terms you are monitoring with a direct search for that term in Google search. The alerts will only be recent additions or updates to the Google index.

This alert will not give you any indication of what is being indexed in the other search engines like Yahoo. Google has almost 70% of the search traffic, so you will have a good idea what the world will see if searching for your terms. There are a number of demonstration videos for Google alerts posted on YouTube so I have not added to the clutter. Here is one representative of the lot.

Search engines are in the business of building an index of published web pages so when a user searches for something it can deliver relevant results fast.  When a user submits a query to a search engine it’s the stored index that provided the results.  The better the results the search engine delivers, the more users it will have.  The more users it has, the more ads it can deliver, hence the more money it can make.  Having your sites’ pages in the search engine index is necessary for them to appear in the search results. 

Search engines are great prospectors; they have several ways to find your pages even if you do not submit them to any search engine.   One strategy they employ is collecting hyperlinks they find on any site they have indexed and schedule that linked site for indexing.  An example would be a listing in a trade show exhibitor’s online catalog containing your company info and a link to your website. 

Once found, your site will continue to be visited by a search engine looking for new content.  The rate the content is changed will contribute to the frequency of visits.  Remember that the search engines are in it for the money, so if you provide quality information frequently, they want to know about it.  You will not have to ask them to return, they will keep an eye on your site for fresh content without an invitation.

The ability of a search engine to index all your pages depends on your site navigation, how each page is linked to other pages.  Search Engines have adopted a standard XML format for a sitemap.  Adding one to your websites root directory will assure that the pages have a chance to be indexed.  You will find many sitemap generators online but you will still need your webmaster to upload it to your hosting site.  The path to your sitemap can also be added to a file called ‘robots.txt’ also placed in your root directory.  Search engines will still find your site and the pages that are interlinked with or without a sitemap.  Adding one makes their job easier.

What about the hundreds of search engines’ you will miss?  That’s another story worthy of an example.  The index is the place that stores and catalogues your webpage information; the search engine portal is where results are presented.  Yahoo and AllTheWeb are often listed in submission schemes in the list of search engines where your site is submitted.  The underlying index for both sites is the same one provided by Yahoo as stated on the http://www.alltheweb.com/info/about/index.  Google, Yahoo and MSN representing most of the known search world, maintain the three top indexes.  If you find that your site is somehow not indexed, by checking with the site: command (instructions here) you can add your site to the Google index free at http://www.google.com/addurl/ .

Adding your site to directories that you know prospects will use to find products in your category can be useful for traffic.  Sites like “ThomasRegister.com” will employ search engines to search their listings; however, they only search their paid inclusions.  Automated submissions to search portals and directories may just be a waste of money, and certainly do not boost your rankings in Google.

In summary, check to see if your site is in the major indices, if not use the free submission pages.  For added traffic make selected submissions to directories you know your prospects will use.  Constant resubmission to search engines will not serve any useful purpose.