Press Releases, Duplicate Content, & SEO

April 12, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

In my last post, Beyond the Optimized Press Release – What is the Media Looking for?, I described the key components of a News Room and shared some tips for making sure your website is media friendly. At the Search Engine Academy, we teach about the value of writing optimized press releases as part of a search engine optimization strategy.

One of the components that editors like to see on a website is a consolidated library of press releases, which is great except for the fact that it causes a duplicate content issue.  The original version of the press release was published through whatever service you use and if you post the exact same content on your website you are creating duplicate content and this could cause problems down the road because your site could end up being viewed as a duplicate content offender.

On a mission to find an answer that would enable my client to set up the best news room possible without creating a duplicate content issue, I turned to Google and my colleagues to find the best approach. I got pretty excited when I read about an option to use a syndication source tag as a way to cite the original content, but was deflated pretty quickly when I learned that it had been depreciated  and isn’t considered to be the best approach.

After exploring many options including:

Option 1: Create unique versions of the press release for each distribution channel: a wire version, website version, and a social media version.  Fresh content and different links.

Pros:

  • No duplicate content issue
  • Additional content that can help with SEO

Cons:

  • Resource intensive and time consuming to create multiple versions
  • It may be difficult to make them appreciably different depending on the scope of the announcement
Option 2: Update the robots.txt file to block the content in the news room from being indexed.

Pros:

  • No duplicate content issue
  • No need to invest in creating additional content

Cons:

  • Other content such as white papers and case studies that are stored in the same location as the press releases would not be indexed and they will lose the SEO value of this content.
Option 3:  Leave the copies of the press releases on their site add links to the original version of the news release.

Pros:

  • Easy to make minor changes to the exisiting press releases
  • No need to invest in creating additional content
  • The SEO value with other content in the newsroom remains in tact

Cons:

  • There is no real SEO benefit from it

By nature, presses releases will be syndicated, Google “knows” there will be copies of it all over the place, and it’s very common practice for companies to (including very large and savvy companies) to publish a copy of the release on their own domain.

If you’re concerned about duplicate content, and it’s not important to you to have a copy of the press release on your website, the cleanest approach is to publish the press release using a service such as PRWeb and include a link back to your website.   If you want to publish the press release on your site, you can evaluate the options here and make your decision based on how conservative you want to be.

In my client’s case (short term), we decided to go with option 3 in addition to writing a blog post in addition to the press release to expose the information to a different audience and get the SEO benefit.

What are your thoughts on the subject of press releases and duplicate content?

Until next time,

Cheers!

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: Content Marketing, Duplicate Content, PR Web, Press Releases Tagged With: , , ,

Beyond the Optimized Press Release – What is the Media Looking for?

April 9, 2013 By + 1 Comment

One of my clients recently engaged a PR firm to assist them with content distribution and to build relationships with media so that we can get more exposure for their great products and services.  As a part of their search engine optimization strategy, I’ve been writing optimized press releases, case studies, and blog posts for them for about six months. We’ve been seeing great traction and improved lead generation from the blog posts and case studies.  Given the success, the time was right to expand the reach by including a PR firm who has solid contacts and relationships with the media.

In spite of what some naysayers think, an optimized press release is still a valuable search engine optimization tool.

The new relationship is proving to be a great experience for all of us.  I’m learning how to do an even better job when it comes to writing press releases from the gals at the PR agency and I’m passing along valuable SEO tips to my client and the agency.

One of the very interesting things that I learned is that it’s important to have a News Room on your website if you want to get the most traction possible from your press releases.  When someone from the media is determining whether or not to pick up and promote a press release they often go to the website to evaluate the credibility of the source as well as the newsworthiness of the announcement.

The key components a News Room are:

  • Company background – a 10 sentence overview that describes how a company was formed and what they offer.  It’s important to avoid marketing lingo, exaggerated adjectives, and industry jargon.
  • Press Releases – html or .pdf versions of company press release, organized by product offering if appropriate (this introduces a duplicate content conundrum which I’ll discuss in my next post).
  • Press Mentions – post links to any news your company has been mentioned in.
  • Product Resources – a library of product literature such as, whitepapers, case studies, and data sheets – this is a great opportunity to produce some keyword rich and very valuable content for your visitors.  Also include product screen shots and videos (optimized for SEO) in your library.
  • Corporate management – team bios with downloadable head shots in high and low resolution formats.
  • FAQ’s – the top 8 – 10 questions the press would ask about the product.  Avoid marketing lingo, be honest, and be clear about how you describe your product.
  • PR Contacts – who should the media call if they want additional information.

In a nutshell, it’s important to make your press room as easy to find and use as possible.  Don’t make editors jump through hoops to find the information they’re looking for.

Although it’s great to have the information in one tidy location for the media, it’s important to remember that if you’re posting exact copies of your press releases on your website, it’s likely that you’re causing a duplicate content headache.  In my next post, I’ll review options and solutions that will enable you to get the word out without having adverse affects.

Cheers!
Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: Content Marketing, PR Web, Press Releases Tagged With: , , , ,

Website Development – Let the Buyer be Aware

January 11, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

Are you considering building or redesigning a website for your business?  Is SEO part of the process?

This morning I was doing some preliminary website reviews for the students in my upcoming workshop and my head started to explode. Nearly every one of them was missing multiple factors that are critical to search engine optimization and should have been addressed when the website was designed.

Unfortunately most people don’t understand how critical the design of a website is as it relates to being found by the search engines.  It’s of no value to have a pretty website if no one can find it or use it.  Search Engine Optimization, the process of optimizing websites so they are found on Google, is critical to the success of any website and shouldn’t be an afterthought.

My colleague and fellow instructor, Sue Cooper, wrote a post that I had to revisit:  Web Development – you get what you pay for.  I think it’s become too easy for anyone to call themselves a web designer.  With all of the tools and workshops available almost anyone can learn how to build a website and position themselves as a designer.  What’s missing is a working knowledge of how to do search engine optimization among both business owners and web designers.

Not only that, it’s getting easier and easier to build a website yourself.  I did a search on “how to build a website” and got over 700,000 results in exactly .37 seconds.  Many people are drawn to the “simplicity” and “low cost” that are perceived to come along with a do it yourself website.  A search on “web design agency” yielded over 100,000,000 choices.  Holy buckets – how does one even know where to begin?

Top 6 SEO Website Design Mistakes:

  1. Poorly structured navigation – category structure is either missing or too complicated for a visitor to easily find what they are looking for.
  2. Over use of images – pictures are nice and add an aspect of visual interest, but without content the search engines won’t wind the page.
  3. Use of flash to display important content like menus and service listings – search engines can’t read flash, all of that great content gone to waste.
  4. Unoptimized page content – missing keywords in page titles, meta descriptions, heading tags, and sometimes even body copy.
  5.  No Analytics or Web Master tools installed – if you cant’ measure it, how do you know if it’s working?
  6. Duplicate content, particularly in title tags and meta descriptions – each page should have it’s own unique content.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Web Designers who make these mistakes are doing it intentionally, I truly believe that they don’t know that they should be taking SEO into consideration.  SEO has also changed a lot over the past few years, so websites that might have been ok a few years ago have fallen behind and it’s time for an update.

The search engine marketing workshops offered at the Search Engine Academy equip business owners with the knowledge needed to choose a direction for designing or redesigning a website.  If you’re a Web Designer, the knowledge will enable you to create a great experience for your clients.

What may seem like a simple and affordable solution, may end up costing you more than you bargained for in the long run. A website designed with SEO in mind is a website that is designed for success.

Check out the upcoming courses and make sure your website is everything you want it to be.

Until next time.

Cheers!

 

 

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: Rant 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.

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: Duplicate Content, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Insights for Search, Pay Per Click Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Considerations for Hiring A Professional Internet Marketing Company

September 7, 2012 By + 1 Comment

When it comes to promoting your company online, you might have considered hiring
an Internet marketing and advertising company.  Because of the importance of
marketing and time and effort it takes, hiring someone to do it for you can be a
good idea. Not only will it allow you more time to work on your business instead of
worrying about marketing, you’ll also benefit from having an Internet marketing
and advertising company working on your campaign.

Unless a person spends a great deal of time keeping up with Internet marketing
techniques, it’s very difficult to stay abreast of new ideas and methods of marketing.
An Internet marketing and advertising company however, makes this their business,
so they always have the latest and best information when it comes to marketing a
business online.

A long-term campaign with a professional internet marketing  company will probably
be a considerable expense.  But before you discount it based on cost, consider the value
of what you’ll receive rather than the dollar amount you’re putting out initially.

What you should look for in a professional Internet marketing firm?

Ask for a list of the staff’s training certification to find out if they have ever been
trained in SEO, Social Media or in writing for the Web?

Do you see evidence that the staff are attending training on a yearly basis or at least
every other year.

Remember, much of Internet marketing relies on precision skills and experience.
Don’t ever assume because someone has studied and trained in traditional marketing,
that they will automatically understand online marketing because there are quite a few
differences.

When dealing with search engine optimizers, you should ask for a list of clients that you
could possibly speak with to discuss the results of the firms efforts in terms of increase
in business (perhaps by percentage.)

A professional SEO is not usually overly secretive about their work if they alway engage
in above board Internet marketing practices.

You may purposely not want to call anyone in a business competing in your specific niche,
because if you are retailing coffee (for example) someone else retailing coffee may not
wish you to compete. But be sure to get some examples of clients that have a competitive
landscape.

A good internet marketing campaign can offer returns far and beyond what you spend of
course, it wouldn’t be worth it otherwise.  But the returns you’ll receive from expert advice
and promotion from an internet marketing company won’t start and then stop, but they
should continue consistantly for some time. The reason why, is that it takes new work each
month to compete in a marketplace that is loaded with competition. Everyone is working
hard to improve, so if you decide to take a break 6 months, you can be sure your
competition won’t be snoozing.

If you’re already in an established business and your numbers need a boost, hiring experts
shouldn’t be too much of a hardship.  You already know that the money you put into
advertising and promotion flows back to you many times over, and you probably have more
capital available to enter into such an agreement.

However if you’re just starting out in business, consider the money you spend on good
promotion and advertising now a very vital expense. If you can get started out on the right
foot getting your brand recognized in with top exposure to the most correct searching
audience and do it in the right way, you’ll have overcome one of the hurdles everyone
starting an online business has to face.

Working with an internet marketing company doesn’t take you out of the promotion
equation.  Usually it’s more of a partnership than a simple delegation of promotional
tasks.  Once you together decide which direction to move in, then the company may
handle many of the day-to-day promotional activities like blog posts, social networking
and social bookmarking, for instance. But not before you have decided which aspects
of your business to focus on, and which market to target.

Working with the experts, especially in the beginning, can also be a learning tool should
you ever want to get more involved with your business’ internet marketing and promotional
efforts.

Or another option is you can have your staff professionally trained with the skills and work
with them closely and learn the many techniques that they use to best market your company.

Another thing to keep in mind with in-house Internet marketing skills is that your people
will be handling everything under the control of yourself and regardless of how great some
Internet marketing firms are, there is never anyone out there, who will handle things with
the same carrying attention to detail that you will (as you will as the business owner.)

Are you interested in a hands-on Internet Marketing Workshop being done
in-house with certifuication of skills and a 6 Month Mentoring program?

Click here to get a Quote from any one of these Master Trainers for the Complete Course conducted In-house at your facility.

 

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: Events, Mobile Marketing, SEO, Workshops Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

SEO Content Writing: Blogging Priorities 1 and 2

August 21, 2012 By + 3 Comments

SEO Content creation: it ain’t literature, that’s for sure.

(By the way, when I use the acronym “SEO” with content, you should probably read it like this: “Search Engine Optimized Content.”)

During our SEO workshops one of the reliable moments of moaning and groaning comes when I mention blogging.  I think people combine the collective disgust at the culture of narcissism (hey everyone, listen to me) with post-traumatic flashbacks to high school and college, and those memories of realizing that the due date for that long put-off 2,000 word essay was now only one sleepless, caffeinated, exhausting night away.

First let’s make sure we do a reality check.  Using a blog for SEO content writing is certainly not the same as writing literature.  My 16-year-old son, Nick, is a brilliant writer.   His heroes are Kerouak, Kafka, Steinbeck, Milton and the like.  But when it comes to blogging, his creative juices suddenly dry up.  I’ve tried to interest him in blogging for my business, and his eyes glaze over.  To him, blogging is simply not “writing.”

In order to succeed in the world of blogging, you first need to deal with it as a world separate and apart from traditional writing.  One of the reasons for this is the ephemeral nature of the medium.  I think deep down Milton knew he was writing for future generations.  A blog, like journalism, is rooted in the here and now.  In fact, from a business perspective, that’s the whole point.  The immediacy of blogs is the very thing that makes them desirable.

We’ve documented our blog posts being indexed and showing up in search results, sometimes for pretty highly trafficked terms, in as short as 5 minutes.  I kid you not.   That tells us that Google has a high sense of urgency about getting blog results in front of searchers.  Therefore…

Blog Writing Priority 1: Urgency is Job 1

I’m not talking about the sense of urgency you need to have about writing for the blog (although that is pretty important as well).  I’m referring to the nature of what you write about.  The way Google treats blogs, namely as Internet content that must be indexed quickly, helps inform our blog writing.  If you’re writing about some great feature of your best selling widget, and it’s a feature that’s been around for a number of years, you’ve chosen the wrong subject.

What if you have nothing urgent to write about?  Create something.  If your site is ecommerce, it could be a price reduction or new inventory.  If your site is informational, it could be the latest developments, however minor, in the area that your blog covers.  If it’s a company information site, it could be developments at your company.

Plan your marketing with this urgency in view, and with the idea that you will be integrating marketing with your blog content creation.

Leave Perfectionism for Your Novel

During a recent training one of my students asked me for a list of the stupid things that bloggers do to defeat their blog.  I fished around for a moment, and it wasn’t until later that I thought of one of the key mistakes: being a perfectionist.  Many blog authors are hindered by a desire to find the perfect subject, the perfect voice, the perfect timing, and the perfect prose.  In this case the perfect becomes the enemy of the good: they are so busy thinking about perfect that they end up frozen.  Creating a good blog post never happens.

I believe that often the perfectionism has another component as well: as long as we insist on doing things exactly write, it gives us an unassailable excuse to do nothing.

“Whew!”  This unconscious mindset exclaims, “Not enough time to write a ‘proper’ blog post (as the English might say), better put it off a bit longer.  Certainly I’ll have enough time to do it ‘right’ next week.”

Urgency requires a “good enough” approach to this whole exercise.

After all, this week’s blog post will be lining digital birdcages next week.  (And if you don’t understand that analogy, read a newspaper once in a while, will ya’?).

 

 

… more insightful thoughts should be imagined here …

At the Search Engine Academy, teaching you how to make your business blog useful to your website is part of what we do.  Check out our SEO Course Catalog for more information on our workshops and how you can attend.

 

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: SEO, SEO Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

5 Tips for Writing Great Blogging Content

June 8, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

Writing great blogging content is often the antidote for increasing visitors on a consistant basis. Any online entrepreneur knows the struggles and complexities of developing their website, let alone the ongoing process of writing blogging content that achieves goals.

From the initial process of creating a user-friendly website (Nancy has written an excellent series on Information Architecture starting here), to updating the platform with great content, online ventures entail a sometimes stressful yet vital position for business owners. The responsibility plays a key role when handling and facilitating an online site.

Live Blogging at Woolfcamp

Whether your goals are to gain an increase in qualified traffic, improved sales conversion rates or extend your business exposure and brand awareness in drastic proportions, the website content that your visitors find could mean the difference between success and failure of your endeavour. If you are a novice in this particular field, here are five tips when writing and posting articles:

  1. Begin your content with the conclusion.
    Think of your site and its elements like an inverted pyramid. The meat of your article should be placed and easily found above the fold.  It is a proven fact that Internet users do not like going through large chunks of data and long paragraphs just to be able to get the main element or essence of a page. If you place the most vital aspects at the end of your page, a lot of potential customers will probably leave too soon and go in search for other results.
  2. Make use of lists, and lots of them too.
    Internet users favour list-type or bullet-type content since they are easier to read and digest without missing any vital components. Lists are a lot simpler to understand without the requirement of reading each and every word in the content.
  3. Make the tone of the conversation friendly.
    It is essential to write in this manner to be well presentable to people, and make them read your content as if they were just talking to someone they know. While using a friendly tone in your writing, it is still important to observe proper capitalisation and the use of punctuation at all times for professionalism.
  4. Make the paragraphs short.
    No one wants to read page-long paragraphs, especially if they are looking for a simple and short answer. Even relatively dense paragraphs composing of 100 words may also be irritating to the eyes like various texts on a computer screen.
  5. Make sure to include alluring and detailed headlines, titles and subheadings.
    This is very important because you want to really get your readers attention and draw their eye to the important pieces of information.
Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: SEO Blogging Tagged With: , , ,

Blogging for Business: The Why and How of Setting Up A Blog

May 15, 2012 By + 1 Comment

Although creating an effective blog is one of the best forms of Internet marketing for small business, most people neglect to set one up for their company. Blogging for business is an effective way to get exposure for your product or service, and failing to create a blog for your business could be costing you potential sales and profits.

What is Blogging?

Blog, short for “web log”, is an online record that gives more information about a topic, product or service. Think of your blog as an online journal. Unlike static web pages, blog owners update their content on a regular basis, creating a newsletter-type of forum that attracts return visitors. Blogging on a regular basis will keep your customers updated on events, news and new product or service releases by your company.

How Does Blogging Benefit a Company?

The biggest benefit of blogging for a small business is that the search engines love blogs. By their very nature, they feature fresh content which helps them rank higher with engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Secondly, they deliver relevant information, which also makes them more likely to be picked up in a search. Blogs can be used to sell a product, but they are most effective when their main focus is to share information as a majority of Internet users go online to find information.

By having a blog, you can deliver the information readers are seeking while also drawing them to your site. Blogging is an excellent way to gain new readers who will turn into new clients.

How to Get Started in Blogging

Getting started with blogging is easy. You can add a blog to your existing site or start one that is its own site. There are many free blog platforms such as WordPress and Blogger that allow you to configure your blog entirely for free. These platforms offer user-friendly tools that will make keeping your blog updated a cinch.

Your blog should feature up-to-date information and media such as videos, podcasts, photos and relevant links. Make sure to keep your blog updated on a regular basis to attract new visitors and keep old ones. You should also use your blog to link your reader to your product or service- think of your blog as a sales representative for your company.

Setting up a blog for your business is essential in today’s competitive marketplace. By using this simple tool, you can increase your site’s visibility, gain new customers and enjoy greater profitability.

Blogging is just one of the many useful techniques covered in our 5-day hands-on SEO training workshop.  With classes throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and Asia, it’s easy to take your website visibility to a whole new level.

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: SEO Blogging Tagged With: , ,

10 Tips for Empowering A Technical Mind to Creative Keyword Research

January 2, 2012 By + 10 Comments

Creativity can bolster results in keyword research as well as with search engine optimization and help with with blogging too. But the first thing to realize is that whether you are more analytical or more creative, that both thinking styles are important. However, the best results will never be achieved only by coming up with brand new innovations, unless there are the analytical logical thinkers who can take the ideas and find ways to make them a reality. In other words, you want to test all of your original SEO ideas.

Historically, that’s the way Walt Disney viewed it back in the early days. His creative right brained thinkers were all brought together in a room and  encourage to just go wild with their ideas. Eventually, he called them “Imagineers” and rightly so.

Disney believed that there was a valid place for both creative and the analytical thinkers and the only difference was that the Imagineers  were in one room being creative, coming up with cartoon movie plots, ideas for adventure stories, or adapting established stories over for the screen for maximum entertainment value while the more left brained, analytical, logical types were also engineers but of a different type.

They were the builders who’s job it was to make the Imagineer’s visions into a reality by creating and building a production and bringing it to reality. The same is true today at companies that try to get a mix of creative help along with a mix of balanced, logical thinkers. But for the sake of this article, I want to focus on the area of creativity and offer you a few tips that can help you become more creative.

10 Creativity Tips:

1. Stop  stressing or stop putting yourself  under pressure
Most experts agree that it is far easier to be creative when you are  doing something that is fun to do. Some of our best ideas for Search Engine Workshops were stimulated for example by going for a walk in one of the parks at Disney world. Even though you are having fun, you can still think about new ideas and the ideas will come easier to you while you are relaxed. Children often come up with new ideas when they are  playing a game. Adults are no different. If you are stressing to come  up with some new creative idea, stop stressing or stop putting yourself  under pressure. Instead, go out and do something you enjoy.

2. Take a Break from the Regular Routine
Some of the most creative business minds understand the importance of playing and some companies will equip their employee’s work place with things like a gym, a pool table or perhaps a ping pong table, so employees can take a break and relax once in a while.

3. Flesh out new creative ideas as drawings
You may not feel like you are much of an artist, but try giving yourself the opportunity to sketch your ideas on paper or even just doodling can bring about some creative aspects to life sometimes.

4. Is there Opportunity to Do Things Differently?
I know of one company that has employees feel free to bring their pet to work maybe one day a week. As strange as it sounds, this also can put people in a more relaxed state.

5. Remember that Google’s first server was built out of Lego toys.
It’s hard for some people to realize why the shell of the first computer server ever made at Google by founders, Larry Page and Sergey  Brin was actually built from toy Lego blocks.

6. Study Other Examples from Creative Masters
The original legendary animators at Disney, were encouraged to create whatever characters they were bringing to life, by studying the actual animal’s behavior. For example for Bambi, the artists had the opportunity to study a real dear’s movements. For some characters they used their creativity to soften certain features to make them look Disney cute. The first drawings of Jiminy Cricket were a little too realistic and creepy, animator in Ward Kimbal worked on Jiminy until he was the character we all recognize today.

7. Try starting with the vision as you see it finished – and the work backwards.
Sometimes, you want to be the originator of something new, but it can seem so hard to know where to get started. If you have an image of what the finished creation might be, sometimes it’s possible to start by visualizing the finished result and then work backwards in incremental steps. This works for story writing and can help with formulating interesting plot twists.

8. Creativity is extremely helpful in various aspects of content creation and SEO research.
Creativity is extremely helpful when mixed with other types of technical skills such as programming or even doing effective keyword research for search engine optimization. Some of the most powerful keyword observations I’ve made are not in just taking the logical approach or going after the most obvious keywords that first pop into your mind.
Read:
“The benefits of taking an Illogical approach to Keyword Research”

9. Coming up with original ideas  is great – but don’t forget to test them too.
When you do have new ideas or come up with something that no one else is doing, be sure to take the all important step of testing your ideas. There are some people that continually come up with innovative ideas, but that’s where they stop. Test all your ideas to see how they work out.

10. Stop obsessing over the competition and instead, focus on building something new
Try not to fall into the trap of continually trying to examine and copy the competition. So many times you will experience much greater benefit, by developing something new. You become the trail blazer and establish new foothold through your own creativity and innovations. The obvious benefit here, is that it puts you ahead of the competition because you created it first.

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: Insights for Search, SEO Tagged With: , , ,

Get To The Top of Google With Well-Written Titles and Descriptions

December 28, 2011 By + 28 Comments

Why indeed…let’s talk about that a little bit today.

Descriptive, persuasive titles and descriptions start with – you guessed it – keyword research. Yep, that’s always going to be the case. Let’s assume you’ve done that and you’re ready to start optimizing a web page. Why not begin with the meta tags?  And keep in mind, compelling titles and descriptions also apply to blogging and optimized press releases, so don’t just limit your writing and optimizing skills to static web pages!

What’s most important for you to absorb is you’re writing them to get people to come to your website. It’s that simple. For the most part, the search engines use your web page/site title and description in their results. But first you have to figure out a great keyword phrase to use, that makes sense, AND accurately sets the theme of the page you’re optimizing.

So, for lack of a better term, it doesn’t hurt to get in the mindset of “come hither, my dear” when you’re writing these. I mean, think about yourself for a minute…

You do a  keyword search for your favorite running shoes that the local store doesn’t carry anymore, how dare them! Ugh! And you need those darn things NOW, because you have a big race in a month. So, you plug in a keyword term that makes sense to you, and…

You scan the results on page 1. About halfway down, you read something that grabs you by the throat and eyeballs. There it is – a site that has your very favorite running shoes, and shipping’s free! Whoo hoo!

See what I mean? Somebody wrote a rather compelling (to you, anyways) description and threw in something none of us can resist – free shipping!

Titles and descriptions are meant to encourage the web searcher to click to your site, to get valuable, useful information to solve the problem she has. If you can’t convince her in search engine listings, you’re not going to make money. It’s that simple.

And not only do you need to creatively write these things, but you also need to optimize them with the chosen keyword phrase for the page. And… much like Twitter, there are character counts and limits for what search engines will show in the snippet. So every word has to count, you need to grab her attention, and most importantly, when she lands on your page, you need to convince her with the very first words and verbs that she should stay for awhile on your site, browse your pages, and heed your call to action!

It’s a tall order, but it can be done. So brainstorm, think big and really write good titles and descriptions that convince your reader to visit your site, not your competitions. By the way, Search Engine Academy can show you how to write butt-kicking, compelling, descriptive and very accurate titles and descriptions, so let us know when you’re ready to learn!

Until next time…go forth and SEO!

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!
Filed Under: Insights for Search, Local Search, Meta Tags, Misc, SEO, SEO Blogging, WordPress Tagged With: , ,
« Older Posts