Following on from my recent post called “Guess What! Google Hates Your New Business Website And Will Never Rank It!” there have been some further developments to the story.

If you haven’t read it I expressed my dismay – no not dismay, disgust! – about a New Zealand web design company which approached me about the 2,000 plus websites they had developed for NZ businesses.

As a search engine optimization consultant I let them know what I thought about their pretty but useless for SEO  Flash based websites and their claim that for an extra $100 the business could have the top Google result for the keyword of their choice!

Totally dishonest claims and I let them know in a reply to their email.

Anyway I received a follow-up phone call a couple of days ago and I think you will be blown away by the sheer mind-boggling audacity of this company!

“Hi Mike, just checking to see if you had looked at our website designs and to see if you are interested in perhaps purchasing a new website…”

Wow!

I asked whether the caller had received my email reply and was told that the company director had probably got that one.

So I explained what I thought about a business which had built over 2,000 Flash based websites with the promise of being found in the top search results and how I considered this to be dishonest and misleading.

Flash websites look great to the human eye and have lots of cool audio and visual tricks but are invisible to the search engine robots which spider (visit and read) websites to decide whether to index them in the SERPs (search engine results pages). We have to remember that these are machines we are talking about here. Google is not hundreds of thousands of humans looking at websites to decide if they offer value or not. It is a highly evolved series of algorithms which dictate how the robot sees and ranks a particular website.

So a Flash website has a minimal amount of code or text for the search engines to read! The result? The site is judged to be poor quality and is ignored!

Of course the response from this guy was defensive to say the least. “We only sent you examples of our Flash sites because they are the most popular but we also build HTML/Flash sites as well.”

So, they mainly sell the invisible sites then?

I couldn’t resist asking about the “$100 will get your chosen keyword at the top of all the search engines including Google” claim. I said “You know we are an SEO company so how could you make such an outrageous claim? If you know anything about search engine optimization you will know that it is a complex strategic process that uses multiple platforms and formats to create hundreds of anchor text links to a carefully optimized website?”

I wasn’t ready for the answer.

“Are you near a computer?” (I am practically fused to one!)

“Type this keyword into your Google search bar. You will see that one of our websites is at number one for this keyword…”

I won’t give you the full keyword. If I was to optimize this post for the same keyword I would outrank the website they have built within 24 hours but the only people I would hurt is the poor business who had paid for these cowboys to create a site for them.

So lets just say “name of tiny provincial NZ town” diamonds or “name of tiny provincial NZ town” watches…

The first thing I did was put this keyword into the Google adwords keyword tool and…

Yes, you guessed it – the total number of monthly searches for this fabulous keyword is… zero!

So these lucky punters now have a fabulous invisible website which has the number one position in Google for a keyword that not a single person on the whole planet is searching for.

Wow! What a coup! Imagine the number of new customers they are getting for this piece of genius!

Talk about tapping into the immense power of the Internet!

And considering they are likely to be the only jewelry store in this tiny town – which you can see by the fact that they may be the top result but the rest of the results have nothing to do with jewelry retail.

I had a look at the website – cool! Wow! when you hover your cursor over the various pages it makes a tinkling noise – awesome! so clever!…

And the proprietor’s necklace glitters every few seconds - incredible!, and the music starts all by itself and keeps going in a loop… amazing! 

And it is TOTALLY USELESS for Internet presence!

Which is the main reason why a business buys a website isn’t it?

To gain the advantage that the huge numbers of people who use search to look for what your business sells.

This is not the first time I have come across snake oil salesmen like these ones. It seems there are an awful lot of businesses and individuals out there who suffer from a complete lack of integrity.

And it seems that there are an awful lot of smoke and mirrors operations out there when it comes to Internet related consultants.

I have identified a particularly dishonest website design company here but I have also seen search engine optimization companies and social media management companies who are also over promising and woefully under-delivering.

There seem to be an awful lot of “experts” out there – self-proclaimed of course!

Be careful!

Have you struck similar cowboys in your online travels?

Let us know in the comments (DoFollow links naturally! )

Great!

I get a phone call today from a telemarketer who asks me first if I am a representative of High Profile Enterprises!

This will be interesting I think…

“Do you have a website Sir?”

I tell him “We would be a pretty unusual search engine optimization and social media management company if we didn’t – don’t you think?”

Anyway this is not intended to knock telemarketers at all – we employ them to reach businesses that are not online.

Apparently the company he represents has built 2,000 websites for businesses…

“Cool, send me your portfolio – we are always looking for talented web designers to recommend”

Email arrives…

Damn I think! Flash based websites!

Reply:

Hi Sam,

Thanks for this information!

As I said we are a search engine optimization and social media management company and I was interested to see what your design work is like. I often get asked for web design referrals!

What I see are Flash based websites… tell me that isn’t so?

Flash is virtually invisible in the search engines – look at your page source – there is very little the search engine spiders can read!

I was also interested to read that you value keyword research and SEO to get your site to the top of 40 search engines including Google at $100.

I almost fell off my chair!

If you ever need any SEO advice don’t hesitate to contact me. Mind you we don’t promise to get flash based sites to the top of the search engines for your chosen keyword for $100!

All the best

Mike

……

So, in essence what we have here is a company which is selling fully search engine optimized websites for $799 promising top Google placement for a keyword of your choice, and they have lots of nice little audio touches and lots of cool visuals where things move and look amazing…

And the websites are almost invisible to the search engines!

Is this criminal?

No, but it should be!

I recently had an inquiry from a woman I met via a business group we are members of. She asked me to take a look at her website because there didn’t seem to be any growth in her online sales or interaction via her website.

I had a look and sure enough the readable code in the site was about four lines per page!

The images and funky effects were awesome to a human viewer but the actual visibility to the search engines was almost zero!

Here’s the thing…

Google is looking for quality websites to send their customers to.

Who are their customers?

Anyone who types a search into the searchbar on Google.

Why does the quality of the website matter?

Because Google’s sole reason for becoming the biggest search engine in the world is that it continually finds ways to improve the relevance of the results for any search – meaning that the better quality the website is and the more relevant information on the site the more likely the experience will be satisfactory.

Does anyone remember the early days of search where you almost always got completely irrelevant answers to any query?

Anyway what this all means is a website with very little information, with no page rank, with nothing of interest (in the Googlebot eyes) will be ignored! Join the zero search engine visibility club!

What you will need to compete in this fast-moving environment is first of all a website that is at least visible to the search engine spiders. And it needs to have a lot of content on it! But that is just the beginning.

You will also need to identify keywords that are realistically attainable but which have a good amount of quality, targeted traffic. This is the second big complaint from me about companies that tell their customers they have created for them fully search engine optimized websites…

Meta titles and descriptions which are loaded with general random industry related keywords hoping to garner search engine attention are a complete waste of time. And telling your client they will have front page results for a keyword with 250 million competing pages without a comprehensive SEO campaign is plain dishonest!

What does the SEO campaign involve?

Generating inbound keyword loaded anchor links over a consistent period from a multitude of various platforms and formats in a comprehensive campaign to establish authority in your website’s niche…

And gaining the respect of the most powerful sites online via interaction…

Plus a formidable social media presence!

And these guys are promising these results for $100 – as an add-on to a $799 website!

The truly scary thing is that there are many companies out there who are offering “too good to be true” deals to new clients who are expecting huge results based around the 2 billion Internet users promise. Thousands of visitors daily! Targeted buyers by the busload! Explode your sales with a fully optimized traffic magnet website!

Absolute bullshit!

If you are not thinking about your website and your social media campaign as being an intrinsic element of your marketing and advertising strategy then you are seriously misled.

What really annoys me is the number of people who are graduating with web design qualifications who are doomed to create cool looking, shockingly inept websites.

Am I being too harsh?

Why are you buying a new business website? What are you hoping to achieve with the new website?

Possibly new customers or clients, possibly business growth, possibly a better representation of your brand, probably all of the above!

Will you get any of these real benefits from these web design companies?

In a word NO!

Zero!

Be warned!

If you are about to sign up for a new website I am very happy to take a look at the websites your design company has created and give you a yes or no on whether you are going to have a website that at least has the potential to be found in the search results.

And I mean that!

There has been much wringing of hands and much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about the latest and greatest Google algorithm update.

First of all if you were not aware of what the Panda Update was and what it was meant to do, here is a quick summary.

The Panda update (sometimes called the Farmer Update) had a specific target in mind. When Matt Cutts (head of Google webspam) and his team of “spammer hunters and destroyers” formulated these changes they were going after some pretty common pests.

We know SEO has been packaged and sold to every online spammer and frantic marketing zealot out there -

“No wait, don’t leave this page! You can now get the front page of Google in 27 seconds for… no, not $697, not even $67, yes – you have just 14 seconds to buy at an amazing $27…

…oh, and a monthly fee of just $99… and in 14 seconds we will be taking down this offer foreeevvveeerrr!!!”

Yes, we have seen these so many times!

What this resulted in was huge quantities of spam masquerading as value-giving content. Marketers were writing a short, sub-standard piece then running it through an article spinner, then using submission software and Whammo! 1,000 back-link producing pieces of content at the press of a button! Or more! And front page results on Google! And traffic and sales!

As these practices became more and more prevalent it became increasingly obvious where this content was being published. The Google Webspam team identified what became known as “Content Farms”. For the most part these were low quality article and web 2.0 sites with thousands and thousands of pages. So they made a major change which saw these sites plunge from the front pages of Google to deep in the search results.

And this got the spammy content farms out of the picture… but the interesting part was who else was caught out by the change.

Ezine articles went from being seen as a highly respected, highly sought after article directory to being tagged a content farm overnight. Their traffic plunged by over 80% within 2 weeks – can you imagine what the drop in revenue from advertising must have been?

So they reacted – they vowed to remove all poor quality articles, to get rid of authors who didn’t reach a certain grade, to purge the site of articles with broken links, they even threatened to remove all link juice from the links in the resource boxes! (Not for long though – that would have been commercial suicide)

Other higher quality sites followed suit and tightened up submission rules and quality levels, I mean Google was supplying these sites with a massive amount of traffic and advertising revenue!

To be honest I have found indecipherable garbage on several of the main sites and I have seen multiple spun articles accepted by Ezine Articles as well, so they needed to pick up their game.

Now what does this all mean for article marketing? Is it gone as a marketing strategy?

Is article marketing pointless for search engine optimization companies?

Well, the answer is yes and no…

The days of identifying a low competition keyword then publishing an optimized article on the big article players and watching a couple of results for the same piece of content rank front page for different directories within days are gone! Leveraging the massive size of these sites will no longer give you the search engine positions you are looking for. You may place page 2 eventually if you are very lucky!

But the link power is still there. Correctly optimized articles can give you at least two anchor text links to your website. If these are great keywords and your site pages have been optimized correctly then this is still extremely valuable in SEO terms. The rules are still the same – steady, consistent, quality, structured and focused content publication strategies are still exactly what the search engines demand.

The change wasn’t anti-SEO, it was anti-SPAM!

And who benefits? The big winner on the day was quality blogs! Blogs which share expertise and quality information, analysis and opinions. Frequently updated and highly interactive blogs. Blogs by people with good authority scores on social media sites!

The truly gratifying thing is that the hordes of minimal effort, minimal training, minimal talent SEO cowboys have moved on to the next low effort – massive reward – get rich quick technique.

What do you think that might be?

Facebook marketing maybe?

Video marketing?

Visit High Profile Enterprises for more info on search engine optimization

We have all met them – male and female – at some stage in a social situation. They will be the one at the party who you can’t help but notice – not because they have a cool haircut, a great derriere or just that…. je ne sais quoi!

No, sadly the reason you have to notice them is because they are right there – in your face.  They demand the attention of everyone in the room from the minute they walk in talking loudly (about themselves), they are not interested in anything you might have to say, they are completely oblivious about social etiquette and don’t even have the slightest awareness of the art of conversation or that this involves listening as well as talking.

After ramming their views down your throat in a bullish forceful manner, they move on to the next victim leaving you exhausted and drained after only a few minutes in their company…

These social bores sure make an impression on us – but for all the wrong reasons.

These are the people we talk about the day after the party “OMG, did you see that guy at the party last night – all he did was brag about himself the whole night, not only was he completely boorish and vulgar – but he wasn’t smart, witty or interesting by any stretch of the imagination.

And so it is with Social Media Bores…

If you use social media on sites like Twitter and Facebook you surely would have encountered the same rudeness with “friends” or “followers” who constantly hurl themselves at you, pitching their business like a fanatical zealot – a behaviour you would reserve for your worst enemy, not your “friend” or “follower”.

Why do people use social media for businesses this way?

Don’t they get it?

Can’t they see that this behaviour is the same, irrespective of whether you are online or offline?   Either way it’s a social connection you are making.  You know how it works – the best form of advertising is word of mouth – for better or worse.

Think of it this way, you wouldn’t meet someone at a party and immediately thrust your business card into their hand demanding they see your products or services – would you?  Of course not.

You would engage them in conversation, ask them about themselves, seek out similar interests, show respect, talk about mutual interests or topical events and engage in the art of conversation, maybe even exchange phone numbers if you really get on well and would like to see them again.

But, never, never, never, would you force your business or products on them.

It reeks of the Amway of old when you were invited to a friend’s house for the evening on the premise they had something to show you.  Didn’t you just hate it when at the end of the evening you were introduced to Amway?

Why?  Because you had been tricked – and by your friend!

Trying to trick people or get your message through by deception is the worse way you could ever hope to gain someone’s friendship or interest, let alone their business.

And this is the big one…

People do business with people they like…

… memorize these words as they will be extremely valuable in your day to day dealings with potential clients, customers or collaborators for your business  and you will go a long way towards creating sustainable, enduring business relationships.

Do yourself a big favour and think about this next time you are tweeting or posting.

When you are using social media for businesses you must give value and build relationships if you wish to be successful with your social media efforts.

Remember what conversation is : A pleasant informal interchange of thoughts between people.

Everyone is on Facebook, right?

Now over half a billion users are on Facebook which means that if Facebook was a country it would be the third largest country in the world…

Impressive isn’t it!

And everyone knows that Facebook is an endless source of leads, traffic, and anything else you could possibly want.

This is the main problem – so many people throw themselves at Facebook with a frenzied “market at everything that moves” approach which is doomed to failure.

So here I have compiled 10 Facebook mistakes which will not only annoy many, many Facebook users but will no doubt get your butt kicked off the platform if you persist!

Facebook Mistake #One

When you accept a friend request follow up by posting a link to your “get rich quick” business opportunity on the new friend’s wall! This is a classic and it happens over and over again. Why would you even think someone would be happy to have you post a great big fat advertisement on a wall which most people try to make reflect who they are and what they do…

Facebook Mistake #Two

Comment on a thread where people are having a conversation by adding something that is completely unrelated followed by a link to your iPad giveaway, business opportunity or whatever. Now everyone will of course appreciate you doing this… Think of it like being at a party having a really interesting conversation with someone and a complete stranger walks up and interrupts with “I made $17,341 in just three days last week! Find out how you can too!” Hmmmm….

Facebook Mistake #Three

Link your Twitter account to your Facebook account. This will save posting on both, after all it’s all about leverage isn’t it? Wrong! What will happen is that your constant stream of tweets will appear on all your friends newsfeeds… over and over and over again. You know what happens next … Remove friend, remove friend, block etc.

#Four

Post your business link on the wall of every group you belong to – as many times as you can. Don’t be concerned that your mug shows up in the notifications of every other member of the groups you are spamming. You know what happens next…

#Five

Be abusive or inappropriate. I am astonished by some of the offensive garbage posted by some. The rule stands – Do not post anything on the Internet that you would not be comfortable to have printed in large letters on a billboard in the busiest street in your city with your face next to it.

#Six

Click on that post that appears from nowhere on your wall that says “Find out who stalks your profile” or “You look so funny in this video” or even “See the video uncut here of the killing of Osama Bin Laden”. Groan… no you can’t see who stalks your profile, why would someone you don’t know have a funny video of you? Get smart, these are all created by hackers and when your account starts spamming everyone’s walls you know what happens next…

#Seven

People really love it when you send them something from one of those cool applications… don’t they? You know the ones: I just answered a question about blah blah, or here is a birthday calendar they can be tagged in, or any number of other totally useless time-wasters. Yes your friends will love this… I don’t think so!

#Eight

If you look through the list of people online right now you can pop up and say Hi. They won’t mind if they are working because they really are interested in answering questions about their marital status and they really need the “Cash Explosion Forced Matrix Business Elite Pro Program” which has made you… nothing yet, but just wait!

#Nine

If you go to every one of your friends’ profiles you can send them a generic, copy and paste message about your business and what it will do to give them the lifestyle they deserve and you can give them a valuable affiliate link to get them started. You can get away with about 20 a day before Facebook gets mean… uh huh you know where this is leading.

And Facebook Mistake #Ten

When you get lots of friends all you have to do is post status updates saying how amazing your business is with a link to your landing/ squeeze page and the avalanche of traffic will be phenomenal. You will have to do this several times a day to make sure no one misses this vital message… no, sorry, same result as all of the above. Remove friend, block, report…ban!

Sounds like a bit of venting doesn’t it – and you may be right.

Facebook can be an incredible business resource when used correctly – give value, give value and communicate with other like-minded people – simple concepts really!

I am sure that if you are visiting the High Profile Enterprises blog you are probably not indulging in any of the irritating practices outlined above.

What is your experience?

Any major Facebook mistakes which I have omitted?

Share your pet disLikes by leaving a comment.

This blog is set as DoFollow.

Thanks and all the best!

Social Media for Businesses

Using Twitter Or Facebook For Business?

Well, they have been working on the concept of Social Search for some time now (they being both Google and Bing)!

And, now, finally it is here…

And the repercussions for online marketing are massive.

The advent of Social Search has blasted the importance of Facebook and Twitter into the stratosphere!

Take a look at this video from Google to see how this works: Google’s New Social Search Video Here

I have been banging on for a long time now about how important marketing with social media is for any business and I have also been quite clear on a couple of very important points.

Is your business ready?

Numbers in social media are important!

It is not all about ego either – the more potential people you can communicate with and send information to the more potential customers and business people you can build relationships with.

Let’s not forget though that social media marketing is not about pitching the whole time. It is about sharing quality content with in-depth analysis, opinions, researched articles as well as sharing things that interest you in order to build a full picture of who you are and what you are about.

It is about being grateful when some other social media user shares your content with their friends or followers.

And it is about knowing how often to speak – does the thought of following someone who has tweeted 60,000 times terrify you too? Unfollow quickly!

Anyway back to the numbers thing.

The more quality contacts you can have the better. It is realistic to believe that out of say 10,000 followers on Twitter or 5,000 friends on Facebook only a portion of these are going to be truly interested in what you are saying. And only a portion will interact with you on a regular basis.

The art here is to grow that engaged audience.

I have also said for a while now that the major search engines are figuring social media presence into allocating search results more and more. By becoming the authority in a specific area and by cultivating a large following you will be the authority Google, Bing and Yahoo are seeking to answer their customers’ questions…

Now here is where they are taking Facebook and Twitter business use to another level.

Bing started the concept and as they have a better relationship with Facebook and Twitter than Google they were able to implement Social Search based results into their algorithms first.

But Google saw the potential and trumped in quite a spectacular way.

I first spotted this a few days ago when a keyword I was checking came up with a couple of results at about position 5 and 6 on the front page. Under the results was my photo and shared by… me!

Looking further down the page was another new result which had the heading “Results from your social group”.
Under this heading was a result for someone who follows me on Twitter!

Interesting!

So a solitary tweet on Twitter or share on Facebook can now get seriously good page results!

If you are logged into gmail or your Google account and you search you will begin to see these results over time.

They seem to be in test phase at the moment and with all things Google they will be fully launched in the US first but I would guess this development will be full-time here very soon.

Think of the implications for a minute.

Anyone within your social network who types in a search for any keyword phrase you have optimized for and which has been shared via, blogs, social media or web 2.0 will have your material in front of them as a front page result.

And as a bonus they already know you so this adds to credibility and authenticity.

This is a brilliant opportunity and will effectively ensure that Facebook and Twitter business use will really take off.

Most businesses in New Zealand already understand that there are great advantages for a business using Twitter and Facebook but are not quite sure how or why to use these platforms.

This will change very quickly.

Social Media is going to be even more powerful than it already is.

And when you tie a social media marketing strategy with search engine optimization and content publication the results can be astonishing.

If you do not already have an effective social media campaign for your business this is something you must consider if you are to stay ahead of your competitors. Using social media for companies as well as for small businesses has to be managed in a strategic manner and you must be up with how social media can be enhanced to drive serious results.

Find out more about how these strategies work at this link: Social media for businesses

Also leave a comment and let us know what your thoughts are on Social Search or Social Media !

In the virtual world of online marketing we all experience the impact that small adjustments in the programming of the major platforms has on the way we conduct business on the Internet.

SEO tips for Google are always welcome I know – I spend a lot of time researching and implementing the constant changes that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or any of the multitude of other platforms throw at us…

…normally unannounced!

For NZ SEO consultants we also have to take into account a graduated global roll-out of any algorithm changes and have to anticipate the new alterations and adjust strategies accordingly.

Let’s look at the newest changes from Google and how they will affect your small business Internet marketing campaign.

The major change is something that Google has been working on for about a year now and implemented in February

…and this is big!

What are the newest changes to Google search?

Google has put into place adjustments to ensure the top Google spots are dominated by high quality sites.

What they are looking for is original content – showing research, in-depth analysis, opinions – and which delivers the relevance to the keyword phrase which the customer has typed in.

Historically Google has been the best at supplying these results but has been frustrated by the marked increase in marketers using Black Hat techniques and duplication on a major scale to “hack” the search engine results pages.

Many high priced Internet marketing programs out there teach these SEO techniques to create pop-up sites in the hundreds to sell affiliate products or large “content farms” of copied content which has in the past gained good page rank purely by the amount of material and inbound links to the site.

Well, this is no more and it is great to see.

Just like the Google slap and banning which took place a couple of years ago in the paid advertising arena (pay per click), this will get rid of a lot of the noise from the search results. It’s goodbye to low quality, duplicated, low value sites in the top Google spots.

What this means for your business:

What this means is that you are fortunate if you are one of the many marketers who have focused on creating high quality articles, blogs, press releases, videos and so on. Your results will be much more visible as much of the clutter of straight hard-sell marketing disappears onto irrelevant pages further down the results.

Or if your business employs a search engine optimization company which uses ethical techniques based around relevant keywords and quality content then you will see a marked improvement in your search positions.

These changes are already in effect in the US so you may have noticed the changes already if you are based there. Over the next few months it will be rolled out around the world so we will keep track of the changes here in New Zealand.

If you are marketing a range of affiliate products using masses of duplicated content with banners to capture sales I am sorry you have probably wasted a lot of time and money.

If you have purchased huge quantities of poor quality PLR (private label rights) material,again you will not be able to get the sales you were told would be easy with your “turn-key, easy, money making system that absolutely anyone can succeed with”!

Quality and value…

I’ll say it again – quality and value.

Keep these two words in mind every time you publish anything online and you can not go wrong.

If you are looking to learn the skills necessary to really get traction with your marketing it is essential that you are taught by marketers who embrace these concepts.

The reason why the video series we offer for free at this website is still relevant after a year (and this is a long time in this business) is because it is based on these fundamentals.

…plus a good work ethic.

You see if anyone has ever told you this business is easy and you can make a massive amount of money without any effort or investment then you are listening to the wrong people.

Short term gains are there, sure, but I have seen many throw cash at a get-rich quick scheme and make money for a short period of time until the rules are changed then – nothing!

No skills to fall back on, just a trick or a loophole which was being exploited.

And a big hole in their bank account!

Education is the key here, and it has to be approached as you would a University degree. There is a heck of a lot to learn and keeping up with the changes takes perseverance and focus.

Start with the free Google video series we are giving away at the top of this page and you will also get information on the educational platform we choose to use.

Or if you would like to find out more about our SEO and Social Media consultancy click on the following link:

SEO New Zealand

Thanks for taking the time to read this post – leave a comment to let us know your thoughts.

Keyword research!

The art of finding keyword phrases that will convert to sales when used correctly in search engine optimization still eludes many.

What I will explain in this post is the keyword research concept basics as I see and implement them.

Becoming very good at the skill of finding keywords is a prowess which all marketers should understand.

Let’s start right at the beginning.

Keywords : keyword phrases are the groups of words which Internet users type into the search bar – almost always Google – when they are looking for an answer, a solution, a product or a service online.

We all do it – all the time. If we are reasonably good at it we will normally get the answer we are looking for on the front page of the search results.

We are all time poor so we do not often read beyond the first page of Google results and we need to remember this when we are using any search engine marketing techniques.

So the aim, as marketers, is to get in front of as many searchers, who are looking for what we are selling, as possible.

Now the key point here and one that is very often missed is the ability to get inside the mind of your potential customer. It doesn’t matter what you are selling you will have to really think about what that person who is ready to buy would type in.

This is where long-tail keywords come into play.

If someone typed in ‘home business‘ how serious are they?

Whereas if they were to type in ‘find the best internet home business’ you are probably getting closer to a buyer rather than a browser. Of course you then have to answer the question in a compelling way with the page you send them to in order to convert.

But, let’s stick to the topic of keywords for now.

We have an idea of a keyword which we think is a buyer keyword… what next?

We now need to find out the search traffic volume to see whether anyone is typing this in.

There are many tools which are great for analyzing the search engine traffic.

We use several in our research – here are a few good ones – Wordtracker, Hexatrack, Market Samurai, Keyword Discovery and there are plenty more out there.

But if you want to start with a simple free tool the Google keyword tool will do the job to start with and it’s free.

Here it is Google Keyword Tool

Start by typing in a phrase which you feel will work for your business. This tool will suggest many variations of the phrase and will give you the local and global number of searches for the various keywords.

More is more here!

Go for a relatively high number of searches but bear in mind that the really large search amounts will be hopelessly competitive unless you get lucky and dig up a diamond!

Check each keyword by putting it into the search bar in quotes to see what the competition is. If it is under 100,000 competing pages you are in the game.

Now you need to look at who is on the front page.

If it is dominated by authority sites – government, massive online sites such as Amazon or Wikipedia, or large directories it will be difficult to get ahead of them – try again.

If there are no PPC (adwords) ads on the right side of the page, there is probably no money in the phrase – try again.

If the front page is taken by the top trainers in SEO – try again!

If it looks like you have covered all of these points you are now ready to optimize your content or sites for the primary keyword you have found (ie use it in your title/description/tags and in the content).

Here is a little SEO hint to finish with.

When you begin to type your phrase into the search bar – Google will suggest several different variations as part of the Google Instant application – use these wherever you can as related terms in your content.

If Google suggests these phrases it makes sense that the Google spiders will be looking for them in your content

Finding keywords is a lot of fun and endlessly fascinating.

If you found the information here helpful do yourself a favour and leave a comment .

This will give your website a healthy backlink!

Find out more about some of our free strategies we use to get the top Google spots in our video series which is available by filling in your details on this page.

Or if you would like to talk with us about how we can do all of the hard work for you visit High Profile Enterprises and we can give you a free consultation to evaluate your SEO and online marketing needs.
Click here to visit our site SEO NZ Consultants

SEO hints 101 we might call this page or maybe search engine submission tips 101.

Whatever works!

First up a bit of background: Most people use lousy, badly optimized titles for their content!

Result? Page what?

If you are going to go to the trouble and time to find an awesome buyer oriented keyword why would you want to throw away your great tactical advantage by blowing the most important segment of your post/ article/ press release or whatever?

How much weight does Google give to your title?

A lot!

More than a lot!

So if you are planning on putting out content without your keyword in the title then stop right now…

think again… or wake up!

But there are also ways and means to getting the title working for you in a way that the search engine spiders will hunt down your content and push it all the way to the top Google spots.

This is what it is all about.

Get indexed, get ranked, get traffic, get massive growth in sales.

Simple concepts really.

OK now for the SEO hints or search engine submission tips.

If you look at the title of this post I have used the keyword “search engine submission tips” right at the start of the title. To make it all make sense I have used the “pipe” and then an explanation why a customer should click on the search engine result “How to optimize titles for maximum page rank”.

This is exactly how it will appear in the results page.

Search Engine Submission Tips | How To Optimize Titles For Maximum Page Rank!

I would definitely click on it – would you?

Now let’s take this another step deeper down the SEO rabbit-hole!

If you are using a self-hosted WordPress website for your blog you should definitely be using the All in One SEO Pack plugin for your site. This allows you to add title/ description and tags for search engine optimization – absolutely brilliant.

This allows you to use a different title as your main title tag. So you could call this one SEO NZ | How To Get Maximum Conversions From Titles or something else keyword loaded and relevant.

Now what if your site doesn’t allow the use of wordpress plugins (shame really – WordPress really rules)

Here is the code you can use and you can use this at the start or end of the body as it won’t show up (except in the search engine results) If you want to use the example I have quoted above it would look like this:

<title>SEO NZ | How To Get Maximum Conversions From Titles</title>

Bam!

Done!

How easy is that?

What you have now is two separate and powerful keyword loaded titles getting ranked in the major search engines

…for the same piece of content!

The thing is Google actually likes us to know what we are doing and rewards us for getting it right.

Try this out at home kids – it works!

And while you are here leave a comment so you can get another healthy back-link to your website and benefit from our website ranking.

How do we know all this stuff and why are we prepared to give it away?

Because we have been trained by the very best in the world and we are coached by the biggest names in Internet Marketing on an ongoing basis.

Oh…and we make money doing it!

Enter your details on this page (no spam, no sharing of emails, just good value) and you will receive our six free videos which give an introduction to search engine marketing and you can find out about the online marketing education we use and recommend.

Or if you would like to take your online business to another level check out our SEO consultancy where we use our expertise to give your business multiple front page Google results (we do all the hard work).

Simply click here : High Profile Enterprises

Identifying keywords to get your business top Google placement which in turn will get you a whole lot more web traffic is your objective and you are wasting your time if your content is not correctly optimized for the search engines.

Getting your website on Pages 2 or 3 just won’t cut it…. Page 1 is where you want to be to get any return on your investment.

Before you enrol the services of a search engine marketing agency it would be a good idea to understand for yourself how keywords work. After all, you know better than anyone what your business is all about and what your customers want from you.

What are your potential customers typing into the search bar when they are looking for a product or service you are offering?

This is a really important factor when using search engine optimization techniques to get more web traffic.

To help you to develop an understanding of how to find the best keywords for your business you need to think laterally about what your customers are thinking when they are looking online to buy your products or services.

Relevance is the key here!

If for example, your business is selling comfortable shoes for women with wide feet, you wouldn’t choose a keyword such as ‘womens sexy high heels’. The people who are searching for a specialized type of footwear for wide feet are not looking for high heels.

So be sure to have your keywords totally relevant to your products.

You want people coming to your website ready to buy – credit card in hand – and by selecting your keywords carefully you will attract only those people who want what you have got to offer. This is called targeted web traffic.

Another point to remember when you are thinking about keywords is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes (high heels or otherwise!). Think laterally here and approach your content knowing that when your potential customer types something in the search bar they are looking for a solution to their problem.

So your headline needs to give them a solution by answering their question enough for them to be enticed tofollow through to your landing page or website and get all the answers.

Search engine marketing companies charge big money to find appropriate keywords as keyword research takes time and practice, but once your keywords are identified and you can think like your customer, you are well on your way to getting much more web traffic to your site.

You have a real opportunity here to attract buyers to your website who are READY TO BUY!!

Another keyword technique you can use to your advantage to attract targeted traffic is geographic modifiers- a very handy tool. These are simply location-based modifiers that will convert your keywords for your local audience.

This can really work to your advantage when your business caters primarily for local customers, eg. if you are a mechanic and want to target a specific make of cars. You would use geographical modifiers in this instance as you wouldn’t want to travel across the world to fix someone’s car – get the picture?

Keyword research is probably the first and most important of the many search engine optimization techniques we use at High Profile Enterprises.

But it must be used in conjunction with a large quantity of published content, frequent submissions, correctly optimized content and a range of sites and platforms to be truly effective.

The search engine marketing agency you choose to market your business must have this particular skill down to a fine art and be able to give you the data to prove this ability.

To find out if we can assist in getting you more web traffic to your site and we mean targeted web traffic  just click on this link More Web Traffic