Internet Marketing Information and Resources

There are plenty of ‘how to’ guides to Search Engine Optimisation out there, so what’s so special about this one? Here’s a quick run-down…

• It’s easy to understand:
  This intro is written for beginners
• It covers everything:
  Even though it’s aimed at beginners, it covers SEO from start to finish
• It’s convenient:
  Everything you need is contained on a single page
• You save time:
  It links directly to the best SEO resources on the web
• You save money:
  It’s totally free, and so are the sites/resources it links to

Do you want an easy (and free) guide to search engine optimisation? Are you overwhelmed by all the options out there? Have you found yourself bamboozled by highly technical information?

Perhaps all you need is a gentle introduction that brings together the various pieces of SEO, and puts them in content. It then links directly to more in-depth information should you need it.

In short, this is an excellent way to discover the power of SEO Optimisation.

The scientific method is a systematic approach to knowledge. It’s designed to overcome a very human tendency to make up reality to suit our preconceptions.* The scientific method relies on measurement, repeatability and falsification.**

Its purpose is to get ever closer to the truth.

While certain people*** with an axe to grind may well criticise the scientific method, nobody with working grey matter denies that everything useful we know about the world (including the device you’re using to read this blog) is a gift of science.

Marketing is not a Science. Marketing isn’t concerned with understanding the truth about something, and has other objectives. However, there is a branch of marketing that is concerned with measurement, repeatability and falsification.

Direct marketing attempts to borrow those aspects of Science that help it get closer to the truth about certain things. In particular…

• Who is more likely to buy a particular product?
• Which ad headline delivers the most visitors to a website?
• Which offer produces the most sales?
• Which price produces the most sales?

And any other question a business owner might ask. Such testing is sometimes called split testing, or A/B testing. It works like this…

• Create 2 versions of something and put them in front of a statistically significant number of people (usually at least 500 unique individuals)
• Make sure you know specifically what you’re testing. For example, if you’re testing one headline against another, everything else must be identical
• It is possible to test more than one thing, but you must be able to show a statistically significant sample for each thing. For example, if you’re testing one headline against another, and one free gift against another in the same sales copy, you’re actually running 4 tests…

1. Headline A – Offer 1
2. Headline A – Offer 2
3. Headline B – Offer 1
4. Headline B – Offer 2

• Measurement is the key to finding out what works. In the above example, you’d need to know the number of sales for each of the 4 categories. You can then report on which of the 4 combinations delivered the most sales.

This approach to marketing gets close to Science. In theory, anybody could rerun the above test and will generate the same result as you. In practise, that probably won’t happen because there is always a random variable beyond our control – the audience. This is especially so for web marketing.

I might test 2 headlines and 2 offers on one of my websites. You might do the same on yours. As your site gets different visitors to my site, there’s no guarantee our results will match. And in fact, if I run the same headline/offer combination several times throughout the year, I’ll be reaching different people each time.

We can never really know whether one headline is always more powerful than another. What we can do, is get closer and closer to a powerful ad. Or a wildly successful offer. That’s still more reliable than somebody’s intuition, or their experience (i.e. their preconceptions).

* If my simplified definition bothers you, please don’t take the time to let me know.

** Yes, and other things too. But this article has a point to make about marketing.

*** People who fall into 2 camps: Those with a financial incentive (e.g. floggers of ‘alternative’ medicine), and those with a tenuous grip on reality.

There are times when you need to find out which sites are linking back to yours (e.g. during SEO). Both Yahoo and Google offer a way to do this…

• Google: The link command
• Yahoo: Site explorer

In this case, Yahoo’s tool is vastly superior to Google’s.

The Google tool requires that you enter the following into its search engine: link:yourdomain. For example, to see a list of the sites that link to the site google.com, you’d enter link:google.com into Google’s search engine.

You’ll then see a list of all the sites that link to Google. All? Well, no actually. And that’s why Yahoo’s Site Explorer tool is superior.

With Site Explorer (click the above link to visit), you enter the URL of the site into a search box. Then click the “Explore URL” button. You’ll be presented with a list of pages Yahoo has indexed from that site.

Near the top of the page you’ll find 2 buttons. The first is currently selected, and titled “Pages”. The second is titled “In links”. Click the “In links” button to see all the pages that link to the site of your choice.

As you’ll quickly find, the list is far more extensive than Google’s link command. You get more information, and more useful information. This tool provides additional features, allowing you to find out much more about the people linking to you.

From an SEO perspective, Site Explorer is more useful as a way of finding out the the kinds of website that tend to link to you. This makes it easier to find new sites that are likely to want to link to you.

Want more free SEO tools?

Want more free SEO tools to help you with your search engine optimization? Check out my favourite free SEO tools, and download your own copy of The DIY Guide to SEO (DIY SEO).

Enter “Internet Marketing” into Google and what do you see? The same sites you saw last week. And the week before that. And the week before that. Repeat Ad nauseam.

And what is it about Wikipedia that Google finds so fascinating? Between you and I, if Google doesn’t ask Wikipedia’s to marry it, people are going to start snickering behind its back. I’m surprised Britannica hasn’t walked out, and taken the kids with her.

Such is life when you’re the #1 search engine, and everybody wants a piece of you. Google tries oh-so-hard to stop those nasty SEO boys from pushing their way onto page one. And this obsession has resulted in an algorithm that renders it’s results next-to-useless.

No matter what you type in, you’re damn lucky if you find anything new in Google. I suppose that’s why those in know don’t actually use it any more. As in all things, the future of search is specialisation. And Google ain’t specialised.

A highly focussed search engine that returns sites in its particular category is one form of specialisation. For example, Blinkx is dedicated to video.

Another form of specialisation is in the way a search engine works. Google rewards sites that have existed for a long time, contains a lot of content, and that receive many inbound one-way links from other sites. That’s not the only way to run a search engine. If you want a search engine that delivers hot new content, you get better results from the search tool in Twitter.

Now Twitter isn’t a search engine, as you know. Yet its search tool returns the very latest posts that contain whatever keyword you enter. In that respect, it can serve as a search engine that doesn’t inject paid ads into its results.

Facebook can be used in much the same way, and returns even more specialised results (e.g. Facebook groups).

The big social media sites aren’t currently exploiting the potential of their search tools. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if they did.

The letters S.E.O. stand for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is the reworking of a website’s content so it performs well in search engines for specific keywords.

Prospective clients often say “get me to the top of Google”. The questions I must then ask are…

• The top of Google for what?
• How much do you want to invest?

These can be frustrating questions from the client’s perspective. Most people don’t know what keyword phrase best serves their interest, and haven’t given serious thought to the amount they’re prepared to invest to get there.

This article takes a look at what’s involved in the SEO process, and so make it easier to understand what set of compromises will work best for the website owner.

SEO has 3 parts

There are 3 separate parts to search engine optimisation. They are…

1. Research
2. Content optimisation
3. Backlinks

These 3 parts must be done in the correct order (i.e. 1-3 in the above list). Search Engine Optimisation always starts with research.

Research

It’s not possible to optimise a client’s content until I know what keywords I need to optimise for. For most clients, that means…

• Looking at how search engines currently see their site (keyword density reports on the main pages)
• Looking at where the site currently sits in search engines
• If the site is doing especially poorly, find out why
• Build a short-list of useful keywords for this site…
  • Number of searches per month
  • Amount of competition for each word
  • Quality of competition for each word
• Create a plan of action and a proposal for the client

The research step can take anything from 2 through 8 hours. The time involved depends largely on the complexity of the client’s site and nature of the industry they’re competing in.

For example, the research phase for London Security Guards was short because it was a brand new site, and there was no complexity to worry about.

It was an entirely different matter when it came to Perspex Furniture. In this case, the client had specific requirements that were counter-productive to SEO. There is also quality competition that required additional effort. As a result, it took longer to work out an SEO plan likely to work.

Content Optimisation

As soon as the client agrees to the SEO plan, content optimisation can begin. Its main function is to ensure the search engines index the site for the selected keywords.  This involves the following…

• Make sure the homepage is focussed on the 1-3 most important keyword phrases
• Make sure internal pages support the homepage
• Make sure the navigation includes all pages we need Google to find
• Register with my Google webmaster account
• Build and submit a Google sitemap (XML document)

This can be a quick process, because the hard work is done during the research phase. Of course, there are exceptions. This corporate entertainment client also serves the wedding reception, private party and charity function market. The 4 different markets have incompatible keyword phrases, making it very difficult to optimise effectively. That’s where experience really pays off.

Backlinks

For all but the least contested keyword phrases, content optimisation isn’t enough to get a site into Google’s top 3.

If a keyword phrase has any competition at all, it won’t be enough to merely optimise content. Backlinks will also be required. Here’s why…

Google looks at who is linking to a site. It records the context present in those links, and attempts to match them to the main keywords it finds on the page being linked to.

It’s not enough to generate a lot of links. To be successful for specific keyword phrases, it’s useful if those links are…

• Contextual
• From sites with good PageRank
• Directed to optimised page(s) within a site
• Appear over a period of several months (i.e. not all at once)

Backlink generation is the final component that pushes a site up Google’s results pages. The number and quality of backlinks required depends entirely on the keyword phrases the site is competing for.

The more searches per month there are for a particular keyword phrase, the greater the number and quality of backlinks must be. The amount of time required to generate those links increases too (i.e. one hour per week for 6 months will deliver a better result than 6 hours per week for one month).