I just released a free SMB SEO Guide.

I originally planned to sell it as an ebook, but changed my mind a few days ago and decided to just throw it out there for the masses. It’s a no-nonsense guide to getting your site well-optimized without worrying about theories or algorithms.

If you find it useful, please share it with others.

http://www.smbseoguide.com/

SMB SEO Guide is a post from: SEO Orlando

Implementing a long tail keyword strategy is one of the best ways to create sustainable SEO value for your website. But this requires dedication, patience and, of course, a lot of content at regular intervals.

That last part – “a lot of content at regular intervals” – is often a big pain point for small businesses. It’s not that they’re not dedicated; it’s not that they don’t want to create great content; it’s not that they don’t want to succeed – they just don’t know what to write about!

If you’re in a similar predicament, here’s an easy answer that should provide you with enough fodder to keep you generating new content for months (if not longer):

Answer your customers’ questions.

Sounds easy… and it is. Find out what questions they need answered and answer them. A single question can easily take an entire blog post to answer. Just be willing to go in depth and offer something of value.

Take this post as an example. I get this questions all the time:

I know I need to get more content on my site, and we have a blog, but I just don’t know what to write about!

This post is an answer to that question.

How Do I Find Out What Questions Need to be Answered?

What do people really want to know? Here are a few techniques and resources to build up your fodder file:

• Forums and Communities – Find the online water coolers for your industry and dive in. We’re social animals, and forums are a great place to rant and complain about our problems or beg and plead for help. Poke around and see what questions pop up.
• Yahoo! Answers – Type your main industry phrases in the search box and see what people are asking about.
• LinkedIn Answers – Type in a keyword or select a category.
• WordTracker Keyword Questions – This is a neat tool that looks at actual questions typed into search engines.
• Internal Search Queries – Hopefully you’re tracking what people type into the search box on your website. This info is a goldmine of relevant user inquiries.
• Just Ask! – If you have a way to reach your customers directly, just ask them what they’d like to know.

After going through all these steps, you should have a substantial list of questions to answer. No need to rush. Don’t make a one-line response to each one, slap them on an FAQ page and call it good.

Start with one question and provide a detailed, useful answer on a dedicated page (a blog is the easy way to do this, but not necessary). Then move on to the next one. Just keep going at it one question at a time every day or every week and eventually you’ll have a massive body of long tail goodness.

PS – If the content on your site is the answer to customer questions, then the products and services you provide are the solutions to their problems.

So, what are the biggest SEO questions on your mind?

Photo credit: Karen Eliot

Answer Your Customers’ Questions is a post from: SEO Orlando

Not everyone will go out of their way to link to your site, even when they cite you. Then again, they likely won’t go out of their way to remove any links from the text they copied from your site either. So why not make it as easy as possible to get links from them?

Link Building Pro is a simple but effective script that automatically inserts links to your site when someone copies text from your web pages (hat tip to Patrick @ Blogstorm).

So, for instance, if someone copied the paragraph above and pasted it into an email, a blog post or a Word document, the HTML links to Link Building Pro, Patrick’s Twitter page and Blogstorm would all be transferred over (as opposed to just plain text that would normally result from copy/paste).

Here’s what it looks like after a copy/paste:

Link Building Pro is a simple but effective script that automatically inserts links to your site when someone copies text from your web pages (hat tip to Patrick @ Blogstorm).

Read more about Link Building Pro: Automated Link Building Script » SEO Orlando by SEO Orlando

Easy links for you, and it doesn’t require the linker to actually do anything. In fact, they’d have to take the trouble of deleting links if they didn’t want to give you attribution.

You can also easily customize some of the functions without being a programmer. Just open up the script in notepad and look at the options at the top. Here’s an example from my file:

<// Options:
var useMetaKeyword = false; // Otherwise, page title
var minLength = 40; // Min selection chars
var useMetaAuthor = true; // Otherwise use domain
var addLinks = true; // Otherwise, just cite at end
var skip = new Array("home","link","click here","about","orlando","general","business"); // Don't link these (lowercase!)

• The first variable will randomly select one of your meta keywords to use in the attribution if set to “true.” I think it’s sub-optimal for my site, so I set it to “false,” which uses the <title> tag instead.
• The second variable sets how many characters need to be copied in order to activate the script. No point forcing attribution for someone who’s just trying to copy/paste one word.
• If you set the third variable as “true,” the last link will be whatever you specify in your <meta name="author">. Otherwise it will use your domain URL.
• The “skip” variable lets you define words that shouldn’t turn into links based on other links on your page.

Just download the file, upload it to your server and call it out from the <head> of your pages like this:

<script src="http://www.seoorlando.com/link-building-pro-min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>

Bonus tip for easy WordPress integration:

If you’re using a custom WordPress theme that gets updated regularly like Thesis and you don’t want to hack the core theme files, just add something like this to your custom_functions.php (and remember to change the URL to your own website):

function copy_paste_link() {
echo '<script src="http://www.example.com/link-building-pro-min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>';
}
add_action('wp_head', 'copy_paste_link');

I briefly used Search and Share (made by the same company – Latent Motion), which is more feature-rich and gives options for sharing. But I actually prefer Link Building Pro because it’s simple, effective and unobtrusive.

Photo credit: Andrew94

Link Building Pro: an Automated Script for Easy Back Links is a post from: SEO Orlando

RSS is by far my favorite way to keep track of all the blogs I read. But I also recognize that it’s not for everyone. Email is still the biggest online communication tool, and many others like Twitter and Facebook gain new devout followers every day. So in the spirit of choice, I decided to give you a few options to subscribe to my blog.

However, I didn’t want to clutter up my sidebar with badges and more forms, so I decided to just create a separate Subscribe page where I could add new subscription methods whenever they become available.

The default Thesis layout puts a “Subscribe” link with an RSS icon on the right side of the top navigation menu. It also makes it quite easy to change the link in case you’re using FeedBurner or some other RSS management tool to serve your feed – just open up your Thesis Options page in your WordPress admin interface and drop in your feed URL. This will not only change the feed URL in the Subscribe link, but will also change the meta data in your <head> so browsers will get the right feed for that little orange RSS icon in your URL bar.

While this is great functionality for people who just want to use their feed URL for the subscription link, it doesn’t solve my problem. To change the URL in the subscription link while keeping the correct meta information for the browser, we’ll need to use a custom function.

All you need to do is put this function in your custom_functions.php file:

function subscribe_link() {
echo '<li class="rss"><a href="http://www.seoorlando.com/subscribe/" title="Subscribe to SEO Orlando Blog">Subscribe</a></li>';
}
add_action('thesis_hook_last_nav_item', 'subscribe_link');

Just replace http://www.seoorlando.com/subscribe/ with your own subscribe page URL and change the title and you’re good to go.

How to Change Your Thesis Subscribe Link is a post from: SEO Orlando

You know it’s important to have an SEO-friendly content management system, and WordPress is my favorite CMS for most small business websites. Recently I’ve been using the Thesis theme for WordPress for most web design projects, and I’d be hard-pressed to launch a new site with anything else. In fact, this site is built on Thesis.

Thesis is well-optimized out-of-the-box and you can easily customize your blog design with just a few clicks of the mouse. It’s a no-brainer purchase if you’re looking to redesign or start a new website. That being said, there are times when you want to make some customizations outside the scope of the Thesis design interface. In these cases, you’ll need to use the custom_functions.php file. Sounds scary, I know, but it’s not so bad once you’ve used it a few times.

One function not provided out-of-the-box (yet) is easy integration of your PPC conversion code. But this can be easily fixed using a custom function.

Here’s an example. Let’s say I want to track how many people sign up for my free Small Business SEO lessons via AdWords. I would put the following code in my custom_functions.php file:

function insert_tracking_code() { ?>
<?php if (is_page('Thank You for Subscribing')) { ?>
<!-- Google Code for SEO-O Small Biz Lessons Conversion Page -->
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
var google_conversion_id = xxxxxxxxxx;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "2";
var google_conversion_color = "ffffff";
var google_conversion_label = "yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy";
var google_conversion_value = 0;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt="" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/xxxxxxxxxx/?label=yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy&amp;guid=ON&amp;script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>
<?php } ?>
<?php }
add_action('thesis_hook_after_html', 'insert_tracking_code');

So let’s break this down into a generic code snippet you can use on your own website:

function insert_tracking_code() { ?>
<?php if (is_page('The Name of Your Conversion Page')) { ?>
<!-- Insert Google Code for Your Website Conversion Page Here -->
<?php } ?>
<?php }
add_action('thesis_hook_after_html', 'insert_tracking_code');

First, we defined what we wanted to do by making a function called insert_tracking_code. We said that if someone was on a page called [whatever you named your conversion page], then go ahead and execute the Google AdWords conversion code (you could also throw in Yahoo! and MSN conversion codes if you’d like).

Next, we used add_action to tell our server where to execute that function

1. The first part of the add_action directive is the where (thesis_hook_after_html is a Thesis-specific hook that tells the server to place the code just before the </body>)
2. The second part of add_action is the what – execute the insert_tracking_code function, which we just defined above

So there you have it. Now you can easily implement conversion code on your site without hacking the WordPress core.

AdWords Conversion Tracking with Thesis is a post from: SEO Orlando

In my last post about the psychology of persuasion, I illustrated many ways to influence your audience to respond favorably toward your business.

These tactics work in any social situation, not just in business, and the legal community is a prime example. Think about any of the great legal thrillers you’ve watched or read, full of fiery speeches and passionate appeals.

However, passion on the part of the lawyers alone rarely wins a case. And when overwhelming evidence isn’t available, jurors face a tough decision. Lawyers know this; they know that character and presentation play a big part in how the jurors assess the case and whether or not they believe or empathize with those who take the stand. So lawyers often coach defendants and witnesses on how to dress, how to act and how to speak in the courtroom.

But the persuasion techniques emerge well before the court drama starts. In this case, it started with the jury selection.

Real Life Example

I recently got selected for jury duty. A man was accused with aggravated assault with a machete after discovering his wife was having an affair. A few dozen of us were taken from the jury pool up to the courtroom to get vetted by the lawyers.

The prosecuting attorney and defense attorney did their thing trying to assess potential jurors and occasionally objecting to each other after the opposing party pushed the boundaries in their line of questioning.

The defense lawyer – a shrewd questioner – explained the concept of the assumption of innocent until proven guilty. Then she proposed an imaginary situation where a person was accused of doing something but there was no proof. She then asked the question, “given these circumstances, and according to the law, would you have to find this person guilty or innocent?” The only answer, of course, was “innocent.”

Then, she proceeded to ask the exact same question to every juror in the room, one at a time. It was a leading question, and every person found themselves saying the word “innocent.”

I don’t know if anyone else in the jury noticed what she was doing, but it was obvious to me that she was trying to use psychological persuasion to influence our perception of the defendant. She committed all the potential jurors to repeating the word “innocent” while the defendant sat right in front of us. It was repeated consistently throughout the room. Commitment and consistency: one of the pillars of Cialdini’s psychology of persuasion. Unnoticed by most, but easily detected if you’re looking for it.

To be honest, I don’t know what the verdict of that trial was. I wasn’t selected as a juror (maybe because of her question about my experience using machetes? I’m not sure why that would affect my judgment, since machetes are pretty common weapons tools). But that tactic was likely only one of many used throughout the trial, and the purpose wasn’t to trick us into giving a false verdict, but to influence our perception of the defendant in a positive manner.

Market Like a Lawyer

Your prospects have to make decisions. Probably not as cut-and-dry as “guilty” or “innocent”. They may have multiple possible verdicts – like which of several vendors to hire or which product will be the best solution to their problems.

So here’s the lesson from the lawyer: Position your customers’ problems so that they can conceive of (and must commit to!) only one solution to fix them – and then make sure your product provides that solution.

Photo credit: Clearly Ambiguous

What a Defense Attorney Can Teach You About Marketing: Real Life Example is a post from: SEO Orlando

Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is one of the greatest marketing books of all time. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. If you have, then now’s a good time for a review.

Cialdini lays out six factors that influence the way people interact with one another: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking and scarcity. Your ability to adopt these persuasive techniques in your marketing plan can have a big impact on your bottom line.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Reciprocity

To give is to receive

1. Offer a free report, white paper or email instruction. Many prospects will eventually become customers because you’ve given them so much value for free.

2. Offer pro bono consulting via email (privately) or via your blog (publicly)… and make sure they know there are more answers available if a more comprehensive assessment is requested (for a price). An additional benefit of the public consultation is that the client gets it for free, but other visitors to your site can see what good work you do and may also be interested in a paid consultation.

3. After a visitor to your website takes a converting action (e.g. signs up for a free newsletter, buys a product, etc.), use the “thank you” page or email to ask for a link, referral or other favor.

4. Want more LinkedIn recommendations? Don’t ask for them, just give recommendations to employees, bosses, co-workers and vendors first. You’ll find that many will return the favor without asking. THEN you can ask the rest for recommendations.

5. This works for linking too! Don’t be afraid to link to other websites and blogs if you think it will benefit your audience. Eventually, other webmasters will notice and send some links your way too.

6. Make insightful and useful comments on other relevant blogs in or related to your industry. By engaging them first, you open communication lines and increase the chance that they’ll respond favorably to you in the future (e.g. should you want a link to your site or a JV partner for a new project, etc.).

Commitment and Consistency

7. Upsell products after your customers have committed to purchase something but just before they pay you.

8. Start an email newsletter so you can get people conditioned to hearing from you regularly. Provide lots of value and don’t hard sell too often. That way, when you do toss them a call to action, they’ll be more likely to buy.

9. Ask leading questions in your copy to get readers to agree with what you’re saying at the beginning. You can leverage this compliance later on when you need to influence a purchase decision based on following through with the commitments they made by answering those questions.

10. Once customers have purchased, they don’t want to suffer from buyer’s remorse. So make sure to use post-purchase activity to reinforce that they made the right decision (i.e. the commitment of believing your product was the right thing to buy) and use their desire for consistency to request referrals and testimonials. The stronger their belief that they made the right choice, the more likely they are to refer others to you – not just because they want to share a good thing with their friends, but also because they want to continue to justify their purchases to themselves.

11. Use multiple smaller, more affordable products/services to get customers into the sales cycle and create a recurring purchasing trend. Then you can upsell them to more comprehensive (and more expensive) options later on.

Social Proof

12. Flaunt your testimonials. Other people think you’re great, so let their own words convince their peers. This is especially effective if the reader knows (or knows of) the person giving the testimonial.

13. Get the conversation going on your blog. If lots of people comment on your blog, then lots of people must think it’s worth reading.

14. Start a forum on your website – make it the industry’s water cooler.

15. Prove you’re popularity by cultivating a massive Twitter following or a large contingent of Facebook friends and fans.

16. Make news and display big media mentions prominently on your website and outbound marketing.

17. Start your own CafePress shop to sell items related to your business. Send out some free gear to your loudest fans and let them spread the word of how great you are.

Authority

Respect my authoritah!

18. Speak at conferences and seminars. Exhibiting might get you some sales leads, but it leaves you on the same level as your potential customers (lower, actually). But those who speak and sit on panels get recognized as industry experts.

19. Get in the news or other relevant Big Media. PR is one of the best investments you can make increase your status as an authority.

20. Become a “professor” (teach a course at an institute of higher learning). You don’t necessarily have to be a Ph.D. – adjunct professor will do. Just associating yourself with academia makes you more legit.

21. Do intensive research in your field and get it published in industry publications.

22. Join authoritative institutions (Chambers of Commerce, industry associations, etc.) and volunteer for leadership positions.

23. Use your blog to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and then promote it heavily.

24. Guest post on other authority blogs (i.e. become authoritative by association).

25. Get others to guest post on your blog. You get free content and it makes you look like the Big Dog who’s helping the little guys get some exposure.

Liking

26. Keep your copy writing positive and encouraging. Most people are attracted to those who make them feel good about themselves and optimistic about their future.

27. Keep your blog comments positive, both on your own blog as well as other peoples’ blogs… or, at least, positive for your target audience (see #28).

28. Win the favor of your target audience by attacking (or defending against) a common enemy. In other words, make sure your peeps know you got their backs.

29. Be good to your audience: praise them; encourage them; empathize with them.

30. Physical attractiveness counts. You may think this is totally superficial, but it’s also totally true. Invest $$$ on good web design and include photos of beautiful people where appropriate. If you’re a supermodel (lucky you!), plaster your mug all over the place.

31. Most people like those who have something in common with them. Find subtle ways to point out your similarities.

32. Similarly, associate yourself with things your audience likes – trends, philosophies, social objects, etc. Even before they get to know you, they’ll like you because you care about similar topics.

33. Share enough about yourself that your audience feels like they know you. For safety reasons, you might decide to limit how much personal information you share, like stuff about your family. But sharing emotions, musings and personality will go a long ways to increasing their sense of familiarity and ultimately liking you.

Scarcity

34. Announce discounts for a limited time (e.g. during product launch or holidays), then bring the price back up to normal so they know it wasn’t just a scarcity gimmick.

35. Give a bonus to the first x number of people to transact. If the bonus is really any good, then you should have people racing to be first in line so they don’t miss out.

36. Offer limited-run products – when they’re gone, they’re gone. Special Editions and autographed copies are good examples of how to do this.

37. Sponsor a contest with a deadline. Require participants to submit their written entry on their own website with a link back to your contest page and then leave a comment letting you know where to find it.

38. Create a limited “elite” or “mastermind” membership group that you provide service to. They get a lot more access to you and the benefit of networking with a few of their more successful peers and you get premium pricing for your services.

39. Create an exclusivity clause for your services. Limit one customer or client per category (e.g. if you have a consulting service, you won’t offer your services to their competitors). You could charge more for exclusivity or make this a default policy in order to attract clients.

Like any other tool, knowledge of persuasion techniques can be used for good or ill. The purpose of this information is not to teach you how to manipulate customers into doing something that’s not good for them, but to influence them to act more favorably toward you.

I trust you’re building a business based on offering great value and benefit to your customers, and a solid understanding of the psychology of persuasion will help it all run smoother.

Photo credits: Print North East, Seattle Municipal Archives, dskciado, and YXO

39 Ways to Win Online Using Persuasive Psychology is a post from: SEO Orlando

Learn 5 Steps to Make Your Small Business Successful in the Search Engines

If you own a small business, you know how hard it is to juggle all of your responsibilities. Chances are good that you’re wearing multiple hats – CEO, CMO, VP of Sales, Executive Secretary and maybe even Janitorial Services.

And you’re probably also responsible for getting value out of your website; for transforming it from a stale brochure to a revenue generator. Not an easy task for someone who has to do everything but doesn’t have enough time in a day to get it all done.

And thus it is with great empathy that I offer this email lesson series: Small Biz SEO: 5 Steps to Make Your Small Business Successful in the Search Engines.

The purpose of this instruction is not to make you an SEO guru overnight or bog you down with algorithmic theories. You probably don’t care how everything works, you just want to know what works and how to do it. These lessons will give you actionable steps you can take to drastically increase search engine traffic to your website.

This 5-part series will introduce the following topics:

1. Keyword Research – find out what people are searching for
2. Keyword Selection – how to figure out which keywords are worth pursuing
3. On-Page Optimization – now that you have your keywords, what should you do with them?
4. Content Strategy – what kind of content you should produce
5. Link Building – why you need links and where to find them

To get these lessons delivered to your Inbox, just fill out and submit the form below:

Photo credit: extranoise

Small Biz SEO – Free Lessons Via Email is a post from: SEO Orlando

This post doesn’t really have anything to do with SEO, but I thought it would be useful to you nonetheless.

If you’re reading my website, chances are you’re the type of person who spends a little time each week trying to learn more about Internet marketing. I do it too. In fact, I do it a lot.

And since video seems to be a really popular way to deliver content these days, that means devoting a lot of precious time to slow talkers and pointless tangents that inevitably creep into their presentations. The nice thing about text is that I can scan and ignore the pointless stuff. With video, it’s not that easy.

There is, however, a useful little tool I’ve been using a lot lately called Enounce MySpeed. It costs $30, but it’s one of the best productivity investments I’ve ever made. Plain and simple, it let’s you modify the playback speed of any flash videos you watch online (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, etc.). You can go as slow as 0.3x or as fast as 5x.

I’ve found anywhere between 1.5x and 2.5x to be comfortable speeds where I can hear words clearly and process the information. Sometimes I bump it up to 3x. Any faster than that and I start losing it. Getting through videos 2x-3x faster than normal will make you feel super-productive. I don’t use the slower-than-normal settings, but I suppose you might find it useful if you were trying to follow someone talking about a complicated subject.

The only downside is that now I tend to talk a little faster and get bored quicker while watching videos at normal speed. Other than that, Enounce MySpeed is a no-brainer purchase.

Photo credit: Roozbeh Rokni

Speed Up Your Learning Curve is a post from: SEO Orlando

Given the current economic climate, most businesses are searching for ways to cut back on costs. Sadly, this is often the total opposite of what you should be doing. Assuming you can keep yourself afloat long enough, recessions are a great time to invest in your business. Costs for advertising, products and labor are cheaper. Everyone is dropping prices in order to attract new customers and keep the old ones. I smell opportunity. Play your cards right, and you can come out of this recession much stronger than your competitors.

But even though you should be investing, economic pressures are nothing to sneeze at, which is why it’s so important that you’re making the best use of your budget. When it comes to SEO, optimizing for the wrong keywords could eat up a lot of your budget while offering little in return in terms of qualified traffic. The following strategy will help you make sure you focus on the right keywords at the right time so you can maximize your SEO budget for profitability:

1. Start with the long tail
2. Become a brand
3. Aim for the head

Long Tail Keyword Optimization

As we all know, it is generally much easier and cheaper to optimize for long tail keywords than the shorter, broader terms found at the head of the curve. From a budgetary standpoint, it’s nice to start out paying less. But there is another important benefit to taking this approach: the rising tide lifts all boats.

The Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

As you optimize your content and acquire links to get ranked for targeted long tail keywords, you will also start to rank for other keywords and increase the overall TrustRank of your entire website.

Another way to make good use of your budget early on is to make sure you’re focusing on the profitable keywords. The long tail is immense, so you may as well invest in the cream of the crop. There are many ways to determine which keywords will be profitable, but the quickest, easiest method is to use pay-per-click.

Even on a small budget, PPC can give you valuable, immediate feedback on which keywords convert into sales or paying customers. Identify your money words with PPC and then focus your SEO efforts on ranking for them. That way the increase in search engine traffic will coincide with an increase in profit.

Big Brands Rule the SERPs

Google loves brands. There is a good chance that your long-term success (in the search engines) depends on you becoming a brand name in your industry or local market. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you have to become a huge conglomerate. You can still be a small business and have a chance at ranking well. But let’s not beat around the bush – this will take significant effort in most industries.

The process of becoming a brand should start as soon as possible. Today, in fact. It takes time and the sooner you start, the better.

You don’t have the endless coffers of truly big, multinational brands, so you can’t expect to advertise your way into brandhood (yeah, I made that word up).

To become a brand, your company needs to become an authority and/or thought leader in your industry.

Easier said than done. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Make news. Do something newsworthy and make sure it gets picked up by the media. Then don’t be afraid to tout the fact that you were featured in those programs and publications. A solid Public Relations strategy will take you very far.
• Blog. I know, I know, you don’t have time to write, you’re too busy running a business. Wrong! If you’re serious about branding as a small business, you need to have something important to say about your industry and a blog is a great way to do it. Focus on providing value and insight to your customers and you’ll do just fine (hint, hint – blogs are a great way to create all that long tail content we talked about earlier).
• Write content for others. Syndicate articles, guest post on relevant blogs, write a column for a local newspaper – get your ideas out to a broader audience and your reputation will grow significantly.
• Speak at conferences. When you speak at a conference, people just assume you’re someone important and that you know what you’re talking about (hopefully you do!).

Go After the Big Keywords

Now you have a decent amount of long tail traffic flowing to your website. You’ve also begun to establish a brand in your market. Now it’s time to tackle the head of the curve.

All the work you’ve been doing has laid the foundation to make this possible. You’ve obtained a lot of inbound links to your website and optimized (and got ranked for!) a lot of long tail keywords. You’ve put a lot of effort into becoming a brand, and now the search engines trust you. They see that you’re an authority and are worthy of high rankings.

Had you pushed for the big keywords when your business was still nascent (in the eyes of the search engines), you would have been throwing money out the window. But now that your foundation is secure, ranking for these terms will be much, much easier – and cheaper. Now you can do some industrial strength link building and really focus on the high-traffic keywords that define your industry.

Photo credit: slack12

How to Rank Well with a Small Budget is a post from: SEO Orlando

The long tail was originally offered as a model for describing how the Internet opened up a flood in the entertainment industry for sales of niche titles.

Beyonce would be in head of the curve with all the other big name artists who sell a lot of records, get their songs played on the radio once per hour and have albums for purchase at every music store. Lesser known artists, like Andrew Bird, would be found further down in the curve – the long tail.

What are Long Tail Keywords?

Of course, the long tail concept isn’t limited to just entertainment. It applies to many industries, even search engine marketing, which is why you’ll often hear SEOs talking about long tail keywords.

Long Tail Keywords

The keyword phrases at the head of the graph are those that individually get a lot of searches. These are usually categorically broad in nature and consist of only one or two words. As you move to the right, the keyword phrases become more specific and tend to be longer (three or more words).

For example, let’s say your business sells dog training products. “Dog training” would be a top-searched keyword phrase at the head of the curve, while “the best way to train my dog” would be part of the tail.

Why are Long Tail Keywords Important?

While there may only be a handful of keyword phrases at the head of the curve, there are likely thousands (or more!) of them in the long tail.

Even though the keywords at the head offer more potential search traffic individually, long tail keywords tend to offer more potential search traffic cumulatively.

The fact of the matter is, long tail keywords offer boatloads of potential search engine traffic and are also a lot easier to rank for than head keywords. And, as I’m about to illustrate, easier = cheaper.

How Do Long Tail Keywords Affect Your SEO Budget?

Since keywords at the head of the curve can potentially provide oodles of traffic, these tend to be the most competitive – i.e. everyone else in your industry who is aware of SEO will be trying to rank for those terms.

More competition = harder to get ranked for = more expensive to get ranked for.

Optimizing for Long Tail Keywords Costs Less

Why more expensive? Because it takes a lot more resources to get a good ranking for those terms. You’ll need better, more relevant content that attracts natural links. You’ll need more content to prove that you are the top authority on that subject. You’ll need to devote more time to PR or link building or deal-making or whatever else. Or you’ll need to pay your SEO provider more than usual to do all that for you.

The long tail keywords, on the other hand, are generally much easier to rank for and, naturally, much less expensive to rank for. And this is why you need to make long tail keywords an integral part of your SEO strategy.

Long Tail Keywords and How They Affect Your SEO Budget is a post from: SEO Orlando

When kicking off SEO services, I often ask the client for a list of potential keywords to get things started. Why would I do that? Aren’t I the professional SEO?

Indeed, I am. However, you know your business much better than any SEO professional. By providing an initial list of keywords, you can steer your SEO provider in the right direction to conduct further keyword research.

Here’s where you can look to create the initial keyword list:

• Look at competitor web sites and online advertising. What language do they use to attract customers? What keywords are they willing to spend money on to sponsor?
• Talk to your customers. How did they find you? How would they describe what your company does? (hint: these may be prime keyword phrases)
• Spend some time with your web analytics (you do have that, don’t you?). This will give you an idea of what keywords bring people to your site and how many searches each keyword produces per month.
• Dig into your on-site searches. What are people typing into the search bar on your site? What are they trying to find? And are they finding it?
• Look at your PPC ad stats. Again, you can see which ads get searched and clicked on most frequently. Most importantly, you can see which keywords have the best conversion rates (you have conversion tracking enabled, right?) This is vital information that your SEO provider doesn’t have access to unless you give it.

Simple methods like these will go a long way to finding the best language to use on your web site.

There are a lot of other methods to find good keywords. What are your favorites?

How to Choose Your Keywords is a post from: SEO Orlando

Since one of the companies I work with manages several web sites, the number of which is growing monthly, they finally decided to make the move to using a content management system (CMS) to make everyone’s job a little easier. Since they’re building the CMS in-house, I made sure to address the issue of SEO before the developers began designing.

If implemented incorrectly, a CMS could potentially cripple your web site’s ability to rank highly in search engines. If done correctly, however, your CMS can be SEO-friendly as well as make content management much simpler.

Here are five important characteristics of an SEO-friendly content management system:

• If an image is inserted, it should force the user to include the alt text
• Customizable meta tags for every page (title, description, keywords)
• Customizable h1, h2 and h3 tags
• Use of CSS to separate style from framework
• Ability to name URLs, support static pages and organize the folder structure

Whether building a custom CMS or choosing an existing CMS package (I favor WordPress for most of my website development), make sure it can accommodate a good foundation of SEO. It will make a difference in the long run.

Feel free to add to this list in the comments…

Photo credit: teddY-riseD

How to Choose an SEO-Friendly Content Management System is a post from: SEO Orlando

Are you designing a new web site? Refreshing an old one? When should you bring in the SEO Professional?

1. Optimizing from the ground up is easier than undoing mistakes. The earlier you introduce SEO into the equation, the better.
2. If possible, get your SEO provider into the loop before you make any decisions. They will likely have important advice for you given your specific circumstances – remember, that’s what you’re paying them for.
3. Evaluate your organizational goals – don’t let SEO take precedence over your customers. Remember, SEO is a tool to increase your visibility (and ultimately your profits!). If you’re ready to launch a site, and your current customers need it, don’t keep them waiting.

Photo credit: m-c

Web Design Process: When to Bring the SEO is a post from: SEO Orlando

Nick at performancing.com writes about 3 ways to immediately increase search engine traffic. He specifically addresses blogs, but these same concepts can also apply to your company web site:

1. copywriting
2. links
3. networking

Sure, each step takes a lot of work and dedication, but it really can have a substantial impact on your traffic. Write good content that converts visitors to customers. Give other people a reason to link to your web site. Participate in your business community – with other companies as well as clients.

Photo credit: mll

SEO – as Easy as 1-2-3 is a post from: SEO Orlando

Can your employees handle SEO internally? Here’s a list of some of the responsibilities you might have to perform in-house, even though you’ve hired an outside SEO firm to optimize your web site (depends on the types of SEO services you purchase):

1. provide an initial list of keywords
2. select and approve the final list of keywords
3. insert keywords into content so that it still reads naturally and gives value to your customers
4. develop and write content
5. upload optimized pages to the server (tif your company has strict security policies)
6. approve code and content to make sure it is consistent with company branding
7. coordinate PPC campaigns (e.g. AdWords, Yahoo! Search) with your optimized terms in order to capitalize on SERP real estate
8. stay abreast of the latest changes in search marketing so you can continue to make good decisions

Several SEO vendors I’ve spoken with have shared similar concerns with me – a lot of work was done on their end to optimize a client’s site, but the client was slow to do their part. They missed important deadlines and in many cases didn’t institute many of the suggestions made by the vendor. Then, when the client didn’t get the rankings they wanted, they blamed the vendor for doing a poor job.

The important thing to realize is that even with an outside SEO provider, you will still have some amount of work to do, especially if your company has multiple web sites. But even if you only have one site to optimize, make sure you sit down and have an open and honest talk with your SEO provider to determine how much of your employees’ time and resources will be required in order to optimize quickly and efficiently.

If your Webmaster and marketing people already have their hands full, throwing another job on top of them will only make both their current work and the SEO work suffer. And if your people are required to participate, but you’re looking to the vendor for accountability, don’t expect your employees to put their best effort into SEO. Make SEO a part of someone’s job description (or their entire job description) so they can be accountable for it, just like they’re accountable for their current duties.

Your Part of the SEO Process is a post from: SEO Orlando