Internet Marketing – Learning To Recognize And Explore Common User Behavior Search Patterns

April 4, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

Internet Marketing – Learning To Recognize And Explore Common User Behavior Search Patterns
By John Alexander

For years now, I have been fascinated with the concept of how people search for information on the Web. While it’s true that the Web has made searching for information easier, it is still interesting that search methods can vary widely depending on how the individual is thinking plus I still find that the ways they conduct a search still follow a much more limited number of identifiable patterns.

By examining certain factors that cause variables in user search behavior and taking into account those details, you’ll often discover variations to help identify common search behavior patterns and gather a sense of what is most important within the users life that causes them to search the way they do.

What type of behaviors are going on over the Web these days?

It’s most often that a person’s search behavior is influenced by the conditions that they are experiencing in their lives.

When it comes to understanding user behavior, for the purpose of keyword research and SEO, I have learned that too often, the keyword research defaults to logically guessing at what keywords might be used rather than exploring a much wider scope and researching all of the associated data.
What Factors affect user search behavior?

Search behavior is the result of several independent factors and influences that the user brings to the search operation.

1. Search experience – these days people are searching more intelligently:

Users who possess a better understanding of a search engine’s capabilities and options may have more ways
to go about finding fresh information. If you for example know how to use Boolean operators, exact strings,
filtering controls, and have proven strategies for exploiting search, then you have a much richer arsenal
at your disposal for research. But search experience alone, by no means is an absolute requirement for success.

I have seen that users who are short on possessing the technical skills and yet may be rich in there
exploration of even more common terms, that can often get by and find those nuggets of gold too. On the other
hand, there are others who tend to have great difficulty finding information in certain subject matter or an
unfamiliar body of knowledge.

2. What are the most common stumbling blocks that prevent people from discovering useful and
   interesting user search behaviors.

A. Many people tend to want to explore keyword phrases based on the most logical options. They often
will in fact, spend periods of time trying to guess at the phrases that make the “most sense.”
This type of research rarely reveals the trails of gold that exist. Most often the results only
reflect highly competitive terms and often only average search volumes that a huge number of people
seem to be limiting themselves to.

B. Often people are not exploring the data because they assume some of smaller, boring little words
could not possibly have any benefit. This is simply not the case. But the only way to determine
whether a root word may be part of a fuller, revealing, search phrase that is actually being used,
is to follow through the process to completion. I have found many examples where what started as a
random even slightly illogical sorting of data, ends up revealing very powerful and telling phrases.

By this, I am referring to those little phrase clusters, that actually tell a bigger story about the
conditions existing in the users life.

C. Sometimes a business will postpone the keyword research phase (thinking they’ll do it later
on after the Web site is finished being built.) This is putting the cart before the horse
and does not afford the SEO staff the ability to build content to match the timing and the
magnitude of the hottest searches that are happening in the now.

A far smarter approach is to get the keyword research done first so that you can take advantage
of the true search phrases that users are searching with. It’s wisdom to use fair to high
volume keyword phrases that also have lower or moderate competition.

In this fashion, you are publishing each new page with a strategy to attract the most correct
searching audience and in many cases, you’ll achieve much higher organic results within a much
shorter time frame simply because you are not competing with the masses.

3. Considering the users cognitive search style:
• Those with a broader thinking style usually first try to build a wider level of understanding
across several topics that are related in some way.

• The more logical or analytical style thinkers tend to dig right into a specific topic and
research it thoroughly to resolve a related specific problem.

Many people lie somewhere in between either of these extremes and occasionally using either cognitive style but often tending to use more of one than the other.

4. Understanding user search behavior with the end goal:

Search criteria will vary from one query to the next, and may be broadly classified into 3
different category types such as:

• Navigational type searches (which are usually conducted to find a specific location,)
- Looking for a site to convert world time zones
- A site that allows the look up of zip codes
- Etc.

• Informational searches (which are usually conducted to find specific and detailed information,)
- Statistical searches
- Historical information
- Instructional information
- Etc.

•Transactional searches occur (which usually is conducted to transaction related variables,)
- Buying tickets online
- Locating flight costs, travel times on an airline
- Etc.

5. Taking into Account the user’s reference of seeking information:

This can range from exploring information on known items or products, where people know exactly what they need and how to describe it, to much more exploratory searches, where they may only possess a loose concept what they want to find.

Examples of telling search phrases:

- “crime rates in New York City” or “crime statistics NYC” (could possibly reflect a user interested in moving to New York)

- “Nikon vs Cannon”   (comparison shopping for digital camera prices and benefits)

- cost of living comparrisons in the US (Someone searching for where it might be more affordable to live.)

- franchise opportunities under 10k  (a business opportunity seeker looking for a lower cost franchise)

- dollarama versus walmart  (Dollar store shoppers trying to price comparrisons on less expensive products.)

- These are only just a few short samples of keywords that reveal search behavioural insights – There are thousands more.

In Summary:

User search behavior varies with technical skills, cognitive styles, search goals, and mode of seeking.

All of these factors will interact in complex ways to influence a user’s actions. The primary thing is that the SEO or business owner cannot select the search behavior that a user will follow
when conducting a search.

However, it is possible to research keyword phrases in a way that helps reveal user search behavior and give you the insights into what your ideal buying audience is actually searching for. With this comes the revelation of the user’s search intent which is still extremely valuable when building useful and engaging content that ties in very hot and in demand topics for the searching audience.

About Keyword Forensics Researcher John Alexander:

John Alexander is Founder and Director of Training for Search Engine Academy since January 2002.
John also offers consulting services and keyword forensics research services to SEO Professionals,
Internet Marketers, Web development professionals and business owners through
Http://KeywordForensics.com

Are you interested in attending an SEO Workshop?

Check out our upcoming SEO training locations and dates here.

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Free Website Traffic – 5 Advanced Keyword Research Tips

February 15, 2013 By + 6 Comments

Increasing web traffic is a common topic of conversation these days.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t start teaching keyword research and the basics of search engine optimization in high school.

Gold key on words - Keyword ResearchThe most traditional way to think about keyword research is to think about the words people use when they are searching.  We all know our own businesses and  the industry terminology;  we can talk in acronyms, jargon, and company-speak along with the best.

There may be situations in which your prospective customers are looking for those specific terms, but more often than not their search is behavioral in nature.

People go to Google with a question in mind or a problem they need to solve, sure sometimes people search just for the fun of it, but most of the time they are looking for detailed and relevant information.  They are searching with intent.

Back in the old days, searches tended to be on one or two words and searchers had to spend a lot of time sifting through the results to find the information they are looking for.

As both search engines and people have gotten more sophisticated search phrases are getting longer and more specific.  This makes blogging a powerful tool for driving traffic to your website.  It doesn’t make sense to add a page of content to your website for every long tail keyword phrase, but it does make sense to write a blog post that provides great information and is optimized for the phrase.

So when you’re getting ready to write that blog post, article, or fill out the content on your website, there are a few things you can do to take your keyword research to the next level and take advantage of the long tail phrases to drive more free traffic to your website.

5 Advanced Keyword Research Tips

  1. In addition to the root words for your industry, include behavioral terms as well.  People don’t want to find something generic, they want the ‘best,’ or the ‘warmest,’ or the most ‘affordable.’
  2. Think about whether the intent is to research or to buy, the words and the content you create may be completely different based on the searcher’s ‘intent.’
  3. Continue to use keyword tools to validate your phrases, but also include intelligence from social networks and the trends that relate to your niche.
  4. Research and use related topics – if you sell swimming pools, those buyers also need pool cleaning products, suntan oil, and other pool accessories.
  5. Use Google’s related search as as source for additional ideas and as a source of validation.

For example, the related searches for the phrase “inground swimming pool,” might generate an idea to write an article to help a prospective buyer understand various options and the long term and short term costs associated with putting a pool in.  This is the type of information someone would be looking for during the research phase.

inground swimming pool google related searches

When it comes to doing keyword research think about why a person is searching in addition to what they might be searching for.  Don’t forget to have fun and use your imagination.

What’s your favorite keyword research tip?

Until next time.

Cheers!

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Google AdWords: Profit from Pay Per Click – Part 3 (Market Discovery)

December 4, 2012 By + 2 Comments

You’re ready to jump into the pay per click arena and set up your first AdWords campaign or are you?

It’s tempting to click on the Create Your First Campaign button, assign it a name, select all of the settings, and write your headline and ad copy. But before you do, it’s important to do some keyword research and discovery work so you can set up an effective campaign and launch your first test ads.

You’ve come up with a great idea for a product or service, and you’re positive there’s a market for it.  But before you start spending money, spend some time to make sure your assumptions are correct.

Market Discovery

Before you dive into keyword research, take a few minutes to validate your basic assumptions about the size of your opportunity. Start the process at www.google.com and enter one of the keywords you think someone searching for your business or organization would use. Google personalizes results base on individual search behavior, so it’s a good idea to turn off personalization settings in your search profile to get a better idea of what the landscape looks like.

You’re looking for three things:

  •  Is anyone advertising for your keywords? – Make sure there are at least three relevant (and real) competitive ads. If there are no paid ads, chances are great that no one has found a way to make this keyword profitable in a ppc campaign.
  • Are there related organic results for your product or service? – Let’s say you sell paper tablets. If you do a search on the word tablet; the search results are dominated by Nooks, Kindles, iPads, and other electronic devices. You quickly know that “tablet” would not be a good keyword for you to include in a campaign and you won’t waste any time or money on something that would bring you no results.
  • What sort of keyword does Google think it is? – Are the results local listings, reference sites (like Wikapedia), or shopping results? Google keeps track of the type of content that people most often interact with for a search term and serve it up first.

I’m still hoping to go on a Caribbean vacation someday, so I’ll use this as an opportunity to do a little research and dreaming. I turned off the personal settings in Google and searched on “affordable Caribbean vacations.” It’s a good example of a keyword that would be worth doing further research if I owned a travel agency instead of spending my time reading about search engine optimization.

Search Engine Results Page - Keyword Validation

 

Now that you’ve validated your basic assumptions, it’s time to start your keyword research using the free Google keyword tool within your AdWords account.  You’ll access the tool from the drop down menu under “Tools and Analysis.”

AdWords Menu_Keyword Tool

First we’re going to use the tool to identify search terms you may want to bid on. Enter one of more keyword phrases into the “word or phrase” box and click search.  You’ll want to start with general or broad keywords to get an initial take on the landscape.

AdWords Keyword Box_Keyword Research

 

Google displays a list of the top keywords that include the keywords you entered.  They’re sorted by relevance and include useful information about trends for each term.  For now let’s focus on creating a list of keywords.  Go through the list with one question in mind, “Would a person searching on this term be a potential customer?”  and make a “yes” or potential keyword list and a “no” or negative keyword list. How to use “negative keywords” will be discussed in a later post.

An example of a negative keyword from my Caribbean vacation research is the phrase “Cruises Royal Caribbean.”  If my company doesn’t sell Royal Caribbean cruise packages, the answer to the question – “Would a person searching on this term be a potential customer?” is no and I’d jot the term down on my negative keyword list

Google Adwords Broad Match Results_Keyword Research

One thing to keep in mind is that the results in this example are broad match and useful for understanding the size of the entire market. There are strategies behind when to use an exact-match or a broad-match which will be reviewed in a future post.

In addition to the keyword research tool within your AdWords account there are other good resources such as Google Trends, Google Insights for Search, and don’t forget about Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  You may also want to check out Google Trends to understand general and seasonal trends for a keyword and to identify fads.

AdWords is a great tool for running quick and inexpensive tests to determine how to make the most of your pay per click campaign. Whether your internet marketing strategy is intended to generate leads or to sell products directly from your website, you can use AdWords to answer the following questions:

  1. Is there enough search interest in my products?
  2. How should I structure my AdWords campaign?
  3. Does my website have content that is relevant and engaging?
  4. Is my website easy to navigate?
  5. Can AdWords be profitable for me?

Up next – Establishing Keyword Buckets and jumping in with both feet!

What is your favorite tool for conducting keyword research?  Share tips and advice on what works and what doesn’t.

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Internet Marketing For Profit – How You Can Create A Successful EBook

November 29, 2012 By + 2 Comments

Internet Marketing For Profit – How You Can Create A Successful EBook
By John Alexander

Taking a little break from the topic of SEO Training, I was thinking back to 9 years ago when a friend of mine, Michael Campbell, encouraged me to write my first e-book. Never having written one before, I guess I thought to myself, but who would want to read my e-book?

I had just shown Michael some recent keyword research and that’s how it all got started. I took his advice and he provided me with some great insights on everything from how it needed to be written, the language and even the graphics and pricing. My first e-book was created in 2003 and I called it “Wordtracker Magic.”

Basically, it contained my personal methodology of using the tool called Wordtracker, to research user search behavior. How to save literally hundreds of hours of time and quickly tap into pure gold. Last year, I finally took the book off the market, since Wordtracker had changed their metrics.

 

 

 

 

Let’s talk about how you can create a successful e-book of your own.

Your e-book deserves to be seen by everyone in your niche, but unless you have an effective internet marketing strategy no one will ever know about it. The difference between your e-book being great and being successful is your ability to get it in front of the people. Once you have the e-book completed and to your high expectations the battle is only half over.

The rest of your work now is finding how to market it online.

The most important thing that you can do is make sure that your e-book is the best that it can be. Make sure that your ideas are crisp and clear, that it is error free grammatically and everything is spelled correctly.
Also ensure that all illustrations help emphasize the points you are making, and that it is pleasing to the eye.

It is easy for bad illustrations to become a distraction, so make sure they are done well. If you need to, get people to review and critique it for you and you take their advice seriously. The better your product is, the more
excitement will be created around it.

Between 2003 and 2005 that little e-book called “Wordtracker Magic” had earned over $50,000.00 and it sold for just $29.95.

Around the year 2005, I decided to re-write my original book and I added more examples and more methods for instantly finding the hottest phrases in Wordtracker’s keyword tool.  I renamed it “Keyword Forensics 2.0 for SEO” and nearly everyone that had bought the first version, came back to get the second version and it continued to make money every day, whether I was in the office or whether I was away teaching an SEO Workshop somewhere.

A couple of important points here:

1. Wordtracker, the tool had very few instructions back in 2003 and in speaking with others, I had learned that many people were spending hours just trying to find good keywords. I learned that not too many people used my methodology to quickly find search behavior.

When you write your e-book, it needs to be an eye opener. If it is instructional, then whatever strategy you are writing about must really help the reader in some useful way.

Ask yourself:

  • Will your book help save people time?
  • Will it help them make money?
  • Will it help them improve results somehow?
  • Will it help improve their performance in some way?
  • Will it somehow fill in a missing gap in a product?

Give it some thought, because this is crucial to building the readers desire to read it. It must be something truly useful. Strive for excellence and people will strive to get what you offer them.

2. Make sure your sales letter is well written and that it spells out all the benefits in the book. I was fortunate to have the very skilled help of Michael Campbell to watch over my shoulder. He actually helped write the original sales letter and that’s where I learned a lot about how people think when they are reading a Web page.

Once everything is published online, you can let your subscribers know that you have a new e-book. But also use word of mouth to spread the word about your e-book. It would be best to supply your customers with a form that they can recommend it to their friends and associates.

If it becomes hot enough, remember to put a “buy now” link right at the top of the sales letter so people can buy right away if they’re hearing good things.

Another marketing strategy that is going to be incredibly helpful is providing short articles full of good information to e-zines.

The internet is full of these type of sites and used by a wide range of people to seek out this kind of information. What this can accomplish is you make yourself known on a wider audience as an authority or expert on the subject you are dealing with. This will only help you, though, if you provide a link to your site or your e-book.

Don’t let them know everything that you know. Leave them with only part of the answers or snippets of information that you want them to know and that to get the rest of it they are going to have to pay for it. If you do this part right, they are going to buy.

A key strategy is to create a group of customers who will keep coming back and buying what you offer in the future. Offer free incentives for them to buy your e-books like an e-zine, newsletter, or even an e-book that you have written earlier or one that you have rights to.

The benefits of the e-zine or newsletter is that you are seen as a constantly good source of information and you stay on their radar. When you have your next e-book, you will have your first group of customers ready to go.

These ideas are only the tip of the iceberg but enough to get you going. If you have something excellent to offer people on the internet with your e-book, then have a marketing strategy that will bring it the attention it deserves.

 

 

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If You Need Web Traffic – Internet Marketing Provides A Realm Of Endless Possibilites

November 27, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

The internet itself is a realm of endless possibility, anyone can go out and start up their
own web based business and be successful. Thousands upon thousands of people have
already done this, and there is nothing stopping you from experiencing that same success.

The only thing that can often stop you is, well, you.

The single greatest pitfall potential business owners face is they simply give up.  They do
not see any returns and think it does not work, so they lose hope and abandon it. But if
you stick it out, you can join the statistics of successful internet business owners.

But to do that you Need Web Traffic to easily to your site.

Learning how to drive traffic is the most important aspect of owning an online business.
The more traffic you get, the better odds you have of selling your product and making money.

It’s like they always say, even if you make the best business in the world, if nobody knows it
exists then you still will not make any money.

Internet Marketing provides a realm with no limits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are some methods you can use to get people to visit your website that I
will share with you.

1. Take time to learn SEO first, not later.

2: If you don’t want to use SEO then you can pay for ads. But this method requires
money, and so if you are working under a tight budget this may not be an option.
But if you can afford it, then purchasing ads with search engines like Google or
Yahoo! are a great ways to increase awareness of your site’s existence.
Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, after all.

3: Strategically disperse links. If you Need Web Traffic, then back linking is something
you are going to have to do, and likely will have to do a lot. Back linking is where
you have another website carry a link to your site. More often than not this is done
by submitting to search directories that will carry your link. Another good way is by
Blogging. But whatever you do, be sure to find topic specific pages that fit with
your type of business.

3: Viral marketing. I am sure you have heard of this before, viral marketing is where you
get other people to market for you in a natural way. For example, if you have a youtube
video that involves your business and it gets a ton of hits because it is popular, that
is all marketing for your website. It can be difficult to pull off, but when it works
you will have very noticeable results and there is no telling how great an impact it
will have.

4: The importance of Keywords. Like back linking, keywords are of prime importance for
internet marketing. Keywords are the words or phrases people type into google to find
what they are looking for. You want to make sure your website is using keywords properly
so that the search engines can find your website and put it into the results when people
search for that specific keyword. If you are found for a topic that is unrelated to your
audience’s needs, you won’t see any organic traffic. Performing good Keyword research
must not be neglected.

If you Need Web Traffic then following these tips can help you get it. These are by no means
all there is when it comes to internet marketing and there are a lot of finer points you can
learn and master in order to maximize your search visibility as well as your profits.

But once you get the hang of it and get your business going, it is an easy and secure source
of income.

If you need to speed up the learning process, one of the easiest and fastest ways to grow
very competent in your skills, is to “learn by doing.” You can attend attend a hands-on
Workshop where you bring your laptop and actually work one-on-one with a certified
Master Instructor. You’ll get a very thorough training with great attention to detail. And
if  you attend any one of Search Engine Academy schools, you’ll also get a free 6 month
Mentoring Program at no extra charge.

For a listing of 2 Day Basic SEO class, or a 3 Day Advanced SEO class or a 5 Day Complete
SEO Mastery workshop in many communities around the globe, see workshop dates and locations
here.

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How To SEO A Site Before It’s Built: 3 Factors #SEO

November 20, 2012 By + 6 Comments

Let’s talk about how to SEO a site before you build it…and make costly mistakes.

Here at Search Engine Academy, we see all manner of websites – good, bad, ugly and beyond words. It hurts my heart when I am asked to critique a website that I can tell is homemade and while I know it was done with the best intentions, it makes the stitching together of Frankenstein look like a work of art. No joke.

On rare occasions, I catch someone before they’ve plunked down money, effort or time to get a website rolling. Here are a few things of the many, many things to consider before you commit to a course of action on getting a website up and running. Or, how to SEO a site before you ever pick a template, web hosting or write the first words and verbs for a web page. These three things may not be the first tasks to do, but they are a good start. Keep in mind there are many, many more SEO strategies you can consider before you ever eyeball a web design.

Here’s the first thing I would do:

Analyze the Online Competition

If you’re starting a business, do you know who your competition is? It can’t hurt, and it sure would help! If you’re not sure who your competition online is, here are some things to complete before you begin building the website of your dreams:

If you’re a business that depends upon actual humans to visit you in a physical location, type in some of the keyword terms they would use and throw in some local terms like:

  • City
  • County
  • Zip Code
  • State
  • Region
  • Neighborhood name

See who’s on page one for the phrases. Do you see a pattern? Are one or two sites always popping up? Well, there’s who you need to overcome. Look at their site from a prospect’s point of view. Do you like it? Is it easy to navigate? Is it horrible to move around in? Do you have a benefit to offer that they’re not pointing out? Think about these questions and more as you navigate their site. If you’re not restricted to local areas, just plug in the keywords, leave off the geo-qualifiers and see who bubbles to the top.

Now that you know who you have to beat, let’s talk about you can:

Find Some High Performing Keywords

The first thing a website needs are the right keywords. What makes the right keywords? Consider these points:

  • High number of searches (demand)
  • Lower number of competing web pages (supply)
  • Seasonal variations, if any
  • Applies specifically to your business offering – not too generic, doesn’t have multiple meanings

There are ton of keyword research tools out there. Here are a few you can try:

  • Keyword Discovery
  • Google Trends
  • Word Tracker

Sort your keywords according to the number of searches, the number of competing web pages and how relevant each phrase is to your business offerings. Let’s say I want to offer business website design services.

While creating this post, I took ten minutes and found these keywords. They all have a very high number of searches, but a low number of competing web pages:

  • how to design a website
  • how to create a website
  • how to start a website
  • website for business
  • business to business website
  • how to make your own website
  • business to business websites
  • website for small business
  • create a business website
  • make a business website
  • how to make a business website
  • create business website
  • start a business website
  • build business website
  • how to build a business website
  • how to start a business website
  • creating business website
  • creating a business website
  • best business websites
  • making a business website
  • small business website designer
  • starting your own website
  • business websites design
  • setting up a business website

Here are 24 keyword phrases that have potential. Since you like these, and you came up with a large number, do this:

Visually Map One Keyword Phrase To A Web Page

Now, take your keywords and make a visual map, mapping one keyword phrase to a web page, like this:

 

how to seo a site - map keyword phrase to a url

The diagram isn’t beautiful, but use whatever works for you to get the big picture in your head to make a layout that is easy  to use and guides your prospect to the desired action you want them to take.

These are just three things that relate either directly or indirectly to SEO. Like I said at the beginning, there are tons more things to consider on how to SEO a site. I’ll try to cover more in future blog posts.

In the meantime, if you know someone who’s brainstorming a new website, why not share this information with them? You might just save that person a lot of heartache and grief. And as I always say…until next time, keep it between the ditches, umkay?

All the best to you,

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5 Tips for Internet Marketing Success

October 16, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. As someone
who has been making a full time living online for several
years, it always saddens me to see people get taken advantage
of and not fulfilling their dreams of making money online.

The sad thing is, it is partly their own fault. The truth is
that internet marketing success can be had by anyone, as long
as they avoid some rather basic mistakes.

What are some of these basic, common sense mistakes?

It’s pretty easy to set aside your normal common sense when you
are desperate, (and to tell you the truth,) that is what many
companies are counting on. They thrive on taking advantage of
desperate and (/or) greedy people.

If you keep your common sense intact and let it guide you, you
can achieve internet marketing success much more quickly and
with a lot less stress than you may first imagine.

Internet Marketing Success

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the main points is to get focused and stay focused. Here
is what I mean (oh, and by the way, I think many of us make all
or at least some of these mistakes ourselves when starting out,
so I know what I’m talking about):

1. Before you start to build your online business, make sure
your head is in the right place. If you have a car payment
or a house payment due in a few weeks and you think you are
going to make enough money with your new online business in
that time to pay it, you better think again.

If that is where you are at you would be better off trying to
find another job. You see, building a business online is faster,
cheaper and easier than most anything you could do offline. But,
that does not mean it is fast, cheap or easy. Like most things
in life of any value, it will take time, effort and a little
money too. Are you being driven to make money fast? Better stop
and give yourself a reality check.

If you go into it in the wrong mindset (the idea you can get
something for nothing) the only thing you will accomplish is to
make someone else rich. You will end up buying a ton of products
that make trumped up wild claims about how much you can make and
you won’t make any money, you will only spend money.

2. Next time you read one of those sales letters offering you a
foolproof way to make a ton of money at the push of a button or
using some “lazy man’s way to wealth” take that convincing
sounding dialog and compare it with the message in the fine
print or read the page which is hidden in a link called “the
disclaimer” which usually promises that there are no guarantees
that you will earn any income at all.

3. You must also accept the idea that you will need to learn some
basic skills to be successful online. It’s not hard, but you can’t
go in totally blind with no idea of how it all works and expect to
build a working, profitable business. Life is just not that way.
You would never do that with an offline business, would you?
of course you would not.

4. You have to be willing to allow it to take time. I know, we live
in a world where we expect everything to happen quickly but it will
take time.

How much time?

I can’t tell you, it will depend on how much time you can devote to
your business and how quickly you grasp some basic skills.

I would say, though, that if you take some time to learn some basic
skills, allow about a month at the very least, and you take the time
to actually fine tune those skills and put them to work, say at least
another month or two. You should be able to be making some consistent
money at that point.

But you probably won’t be rich and you may not even be making enough to
quit your day job, yet, but you should be able to see that the method
works and it is within reach. Even a few hundred extra dollars will
help most people out.

5. Don’t make a habit of buying every single new product that comes along.
It sounds crazy, but there are people that are constantly buying the next
new thing that sounds great, but they never use or stay focused long enough
to make anything successful. Remember to choose a business that you feel that
is the right one for you, then stay focused on it, until it becomes
successful. In many respects, Internet Marketing online is no different
than creating an offline business. It’s built on establishing your reputation
and building long lasting client and customer relationships.

These simple tips will help you achieve internet marketing success much
quicker and with less pain and stress.

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Filed Under: Content Marketing, SEO Tagged With: , , , ,

Top Keyword Research That Earns You More Income

September 13, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

Trellian Keyword Discovery is a feature-loaded keyword research resource. You likely have already realized that manually looking for the best keywords can be a rather tedious task. That’s why there are tools out there to help you save hundreds of hours of time doing effective and systematic keyword research.

If you are seriously looking for help to optimize your site on the search engines then you should look at the Trellian Keyword Discovery tool. It is a paid subscription keyword tool that offers quite a bit of data that will help with search engine optimization.

Much of the information they give you far outdistances the competition. They give you information on, not only, alternatives to the keyword you start with and the calculations on how much the keyword or keyword phrase gets searched for, this tool also will estimate for you how many other sites are using this exact keyword or keyword phrase and how many times the keyword or keyword phrase is searched for on a daily basis.

Ok, fine, but how do they justify the cost if this is all they do?

The short answer is, this is not all they do.

Another cool feature of Trellian Keyword Discovery is for SEO practioners, who like to optimize pages in various different languages. Many keyword tools, as good as some are tend to be strictly limited only to English. But not Keyword Discovery by Trellion.

Using their tool, you can do keyword research using data in  English, Australian, Canadian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and data from the United Kingdom.

Other cool features that tip the advantages your way:

What sets this keyword tool apart from the rest of the pack is the fact that they offer the subscriber the option of studying keyword trends and market shares of all the search engines at once by creating charts. You can see what is going on with all the search engines at a glance by looking at the charts.

Trending is important because it gives companies good information on when to offer up new products,

spend more on advertising and search spending, and up the original content their sites. Timed right this can mean a huge increase in sales and their bottom line.

Being able to see the market share data in chart form is another option offered by this keyword tool. You can click on the market share icon next to the each item of data and the charts for each keyword or keyword phrase will pop up so you can see how much the keyword or keyword phrase is being searched for among the leading search engines.

This is a great way to help calculate where to put your money for your pay-per-click campaigns too. More of your budget should go to the bigger search engines that get the most searches every month.

Makes sense, right?

If more people are searching these keywords and keyword phrases on the bigger search engines that is where you want a lot of visibility so you get the conversions and make lots of money.

So, if you want to figure out just exactly what it is that people are searching for these days, which keywords are the best for your traffic generation, and those keywords you should be targeting to get the most sales you should definitely get this tool as soon as you can.

If this looks good to you the Trellian Keyword Discovery tool will let you try the free trial version so you can see how beneficial it can be to you getting the most return for your investment by customizing your search engine marketing options.

Give Trellion Keyword Discovery a Free Test Drive.

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Filed Under: Duplicate Content, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Insights for Search, Pay Per Click Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Web Analysis and That Popular “Not Provided” Keyword – One Partial Workaround

June 29, 2012 By + 4 Comments

Sometimes I feel like I’m having a stroke.

OK, so Website analysis perhaps doesn’t deserve that kind of melodrama.  After all, I can’t really know what it feels like to have a stroke, since I have never had one (wait…I don’t think I’ve had one…).   What pushes me into the realm of hyperbole is my experience with Google Analytics (GA) and my cursory knowledge of one of the early symptoms of stroke: a blind spot in your vision.

It’s probably no surprise to any of you who have taken a Search Engine Academy SEO workshop recently or have been regularly following the progress of your website story on that channel known as GA that one choice at least in the GA constellation of features is becoming increasingly fractured and hard to see with clarity, namely visits prompted by specific search queries.  For example, when you log into Google Analytics one of the common, and tantalizing, navigational destinations is traffic that originates with specific keyword searches on Google, as you can see in the following screen shot:

Google Analytics screenshot 1

(Click on the image to see it full size)

Promise and Disappointment

To someone who has just a cursory acquaintance with Google web analysis and its many mysteries, to first see this is an exciting moment.  How wonderful to actually know what keywords people are using.  And until fairly recently, at least in terms of geologic time, this indeed was a fair measure of the success of your website in Google search results.  In fact, checking on traffic from keyword searches had the promise of being the best method of determining the success of SEO, since the worth of checking rankings has been called into question because of the increasing impact of personalization of search.

So it sounds like a great idea: instead of checking where we place in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), we track the effectiveness of our SEO efforts by monitoring the amount of traffic we get as a result of keywords used in organic search.  But there’s a flaw in this model as well. That flaw was blown into large proportion earlier this year when Google announced its expansion of secure search.  The net effect of this is that the keyword phrases visitors use to find your site are not passed along to Google Analytics if a user is logged into their Gmail or Plus account (which of course amounts to almost one and the same nowadays).

When this change came down the pipeline Google was quoted as saying this would affect at most about 5% of search results.  Well, of course no one believed that. And the skeptics were justified.  Here is a screen shot from that same GA account that I showed above, expanded a bit to show the keyword searches registered in Analytics:

screenshot of Google Analytics data

(click on the image to see it larger)

So, as we can see, the hidden “not provided” search terms are suddenly a large enough chunk of our analytics report that our data is becoming useless, at least for this metric.

So, how do we compensate?

Landing Page Visits to the Rescue

Now that we’ve been effectively deprived of consistent and clean SERP ranking data (due to personalization of search) and hit  with a massive “not provided” blindspot in our Google Analytics data (due to personalization of search), what sort of website analysis can we do to measure the effectiveness of our SEO efforts?  There is no magical answer, but there is a pretty good workaround, depending on how you handle the creation of your website pages.  That answer is to track the performance of landing pages.

Typically, if we are building landing pages to target specific search engine terms, and if the focus of those landing pages is pretty tight, and if our link building efforts are also focused on those keyword-specific landing pages (yes, I know, lots of “if’s”), then the traffic that those SEO engineered pages receive is a very good indication of how well or poorly our SEO efforts are holding up.

To track the performance of your landing pages using Google Analytics, you will be drilling down into the content section of your GA account (see the screen shot below):

screen shot of landing pages data in Google Analytics

(click on the image to see it larger)

Yes, this is a class “b” solution to the blind spot in your SEO efforts, but just like a stroke victim, we need to do the best with what we have.  And hope for a cure, of course.

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Filed Under: Google Analytics, SEO Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to SEO Your Business Blog…Continued

June 12, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

“How to SEO Your Business Blog” was the topic of our Webinar Wednesday just about a month ago (May 9, 2012 to be exact).  Thomas Petty and Nancy Wigal of the Search Engine Academy interviewed Tom Williams, Founder of Innogage, an SEO-centric, collaborative blogging platform.  That webinar was a great discussion of ideas around the value of a business blog, generating blog content, the power of cross-linking, some of the challenges teams face when they work on a shared blog, and how Innoblogs, a powerful Innogage tool, could help in that type of environment.

Illustration representing blogging conceptsOur upcoming Webinar Wednesday builds on that start and will examine some down-and-dirty specifics of what you need to do to get the most SEO juice out of your own blog.  Innoblogs, which we use heavily at the Search Engine Academy, is terrific for automating the process and providing consistent quality control, particularly for teams.  However you may be in a small business situation where you’re maintaining a blog largely on your own, and don’t have access to high-powered tools such as Innoblogs.  In that case this webinar will be perfect for you, because it will focus on what you need to do even if you are not using an automated tool to ease the process.

Basic Blogging SEO

Some of the factors that are crucial in this process (and which we’ll cover in greater detail in the webinar), are

  • Taking your audience into account before you write your blog post
  • Making sure you are keyword aware both in determining the subjects you write about, as well as how you write about those subjects
  • Writing according to your particular area of expertise, and what to do if you are NOT the expert on the topic
  • Attention to details like title tag, Meta description tag, headlines, keyword prominence, internal and external linking, and more
Join SEO Master Instructor Ross Barefoot for a quick, action-oriented – and Free – webinar that will help you get the most out of your business blog.  Sign up today.  The Webinar will be held live this coming Wednesday, June 13th at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time, 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time.  And if you’re reading this post after the fact, the recorded version of the webinar should be available from our Webinar Wednesday page.
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Filed Under: SEO, SEO Blogging, WordPress Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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