Bretts Marketing Bytes

Archive for September, 2009

A lot of customers who I first begin to work with get the idea that by hiring my company to do SEO work for them it is like flipping a switch and they will be ranking for highly searched keywords in a week or month or so.

Even after I make every attempt to tell them this is not the case. I don’t know how many different ways that I can say SEO doesn’t happen over night. I guess some customers just want to believe what they want to believe and they ignore what I repeat over and over. So I decided to write about it.

SEO is like growing a really nice lawn from scratch. Think about the process. First you lay the foundation soil, rake it smooth, seed it, cover with hay and water every day until it is fully grown.

This is similar to SEO. In the beginning you lay the foundation by creating the landing pages, fixing the technical issues with the site, optimize the page copy, submit  site-maps and finally link build every night.

Just like the first few weeks of watering your lawn it feels like nothing is happening. Link building is the same, you are germinating the links.  But then one day you wake up and you have a thin layer of grass or a sign that all your link building efforts are paying off.

Of course you can’t just stop watering your lawn at this point or your grass won’t grow to be full and lush. So you water it for the next few weeks, then cut it and then water it some more.

And if you want a really lush lawn you spend even more time fertilizing it and maintaining it for several months each year.

SEO is not much different. If you give up once you start seeing some results you will never have a really successful campaign. It takes time to see that first result but once you get some traction, you must nourish it and continue to build links to  help it become a healthy campaign.

In summary growing grass and SEO are really not all that different when it comes to patience, time and results. The more time and effort you put into it the better your results will be.  I hope this helps clarify the SEO process.

Keywords are at the heart of every SEO campaign. But what most people do not realize is how important their keywords choices are. Most people think that broad terms are the way to go, but niche targeted terms is where it’s at.

The idea is that niche targeted keywords will produce less traffic than broad terms, but will bring in more quality traffic, hence producing more conversions.  Below are a few examples that will help you identify niche targeted keywords.

Broad terms are for shoppers and niche terms are for buyers

1. Let’s say we have a company who makes Liquid Absorbers for Hazardous waste spills. The first broad keyword term that comes to mind is  Liquid Absorbers. This is a very broad term that could mean anything. Who knows what the searcher is looking for? A better term to target would be Hazardous waste liquid absorbers. This is a better term and will result in more conversions.
2. Let’s do another one. This time we will add a geo target. This website will help families find a nanny. The first keyword that comes to mind is the broadest term, find a nanny. But usually when someone is looking for a nanny they are in a geographic location. Let’s just say that our nanny searcher is in Boston. A better keyword to target would be find a nanny Boston. Pretty simple right?
3. Okay, one more. This time we have a website that caters to the tourist region of Niagara Falls USA.  Of course the broad term would be Niagara Falls, but a better and more niche term would be things to do in Niagara Falls. This  keyword is more relevant to the tourism industry and will produce more conversions on this site.

Summary: The whole idea is that broad keyword terms will produce a lot of traffic to your site, but niche keywords will bring in more conversions.  I hope this helps you identify the proper keywords to use in your SEO campaigns.