Are your visitors the kind that just look through your “medicine cabinet”? Maybe you are inviting the wrong guests to your website?

By: Cade Lee

All too often I hear feedback from website owners and business owners about getting the “wrong kind of lead” from their website. In otherwords, the visitors they are getting to the site are not their “ideal” prospect or customer. I would take this a step further and probably guess that their conversion rate is very low and that they are getting the “shoppers” that are browsing every site known to man for their particular search. While “shoppers” are important to every business it is definitely not the ideal customer any business longs for. So how do you bring the kind of visitors that you want?

Although things are changing in the search algorithms and the major search engines are providing more relevant results than ever before, there are still irrelevant results on the 1st page of search engine results for thousands of searches. This is not because Google, Bing or Yahoo do not have excellent algorithms or fantastic results for the searches being performed through their search engines. This is simply because they cannot read the thoughts or intentions of those inputting the keywords into their search engines. So, for that person who is looking for a local plumber in Denver, if they were to search for “plumber” odds are pretty good that the only relevant sites they will find will be in the pay per click or “sp

onsored links” section. They will not find too many “local” results in the search engine results or the organic listings. The searcher will find national companies or even a Wikipedia article, but they will not find a local company for their plumbing needs.

Google is already attempting to change this by providing results according to IP or the searchers location, but you can imagine what a chore it is to have to differentiate those search terms that would be more likely to engage with local business versus those that do not.

So in the meantime, what will you do with your internet marketing campaign? How can you attract those visitors that are looking for your services and products? The answer  is to go for more specific key word phrases in your search engine optimization campaign. So for example, let’s take a printing business in Denver. This printer is putting together an internet marketing campaign in Denver as this is their primary target audience for business. Since I am using a real life example, I can tell you that this specific company wanted to first go for the search term “printing”. Since they had a limited budget (like any other company) and finite resources, this term did not make too much sense. Granted,

Are you focusing on the right kind of traffic

if they could obtain organic results in a very short time frame (which would not be likely) they could compete with the likes of Vista Print and other major companies who are getting tons of business from their efforts I am sure. The thing is, they have a limited budget and time is of the essence. The local printing company in Denver would like to secure  more leads online, and most importantly get in front of prospects that are ready to buy now!

So with that being said, some of the more effective keywords for this Denver Internet Marketing campaign that they might approach would be “Rush Print Job Denver” or “Fast print turnaround denver”, maybe even “24 hour printing in Denver”. These are terms that potential customers might actually use and the good news is that they are not as competitive as many other search terms within that industry. Now, I am not saying that this customer did not benefit from showing up for other more generic terms like “Denver Printing Company” or “Brochure Printing Denver”. It is important to obtain some other local keywords as well; however the customers that were ready to order definitely used more specific keyword phrases than the average “shopping” prospect who was researching their choices online.

As you are wandering through your analytics, and researching your keywords, don’t forget to pay attention to those keyword phrases at the bottom of the list. Make certain to look for the keywords in your internet marketing campaign that have attracted visitors with a low bounce rate. Your chances of conversion are higher with those individuals. If we take a look at our Denver Printer example and their Denver Internet Marketing Campaign, we have well over 12 months of analytics to review. Within those results, in the keywords used to get on their site, if we review the less used search terms that have a low bounce rate and good “length of time” for their visit, we will wind up with some keywords that we may have not considered previously.

By all means, you want to focus on major search terms and long tail keywords, but while you are doing this in your campaign, you will come across “odd” terms used by some of your visitors. Make certain to leverage this information and get in front of those searchers that have already proven a low bounce rate. These visitors usually spend more time on your site and even better yet, they are more inclined to convert into business!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Writing Internet Articles

Written by: Nick Hantge

Do you consider yourself a talented writer, but you’re not sure how to go about it?  If you enjoy writing and you want to be able to make money off your skill, consider writing articles to help with other’s internet marketing campaigns.  There is probably an SEO company in your area who would be willing to pay for niche related articles.  Article writing is a great skill to develop and market yourself. Writing is in high demand so take advantage of your writing skills and make some extra cash. Well-written articles on any topic are always in high demand. 

Get to the Point

Internet articles are written slightly differently to the conventional articles you read in the daily newspapers or magazines. Your style should be simple. The contents of the article should be pitched in a brief but informative manner to hold the person’s interest. Internet searchers are impatient and want to find information quickly as possible.  This being said, keep your articles quick and to the point.  Often times online articles are written with numbers or bullet points to guide readers through quickly.

Catchy Article Titles

Think about what will grab the attention of your audience, start with an attractive title.  It will be the first chance you have to gain interest of searchers to your article and also help you begin your introduction.  Writing a catchy title will separate your article from the others around it.  A nice title may be the key to attracting searchers to your articles and getting them to click on your links driving more traffic to your site which is obviously the main point of any internet marketing campaign.

The introduction of your article should summarize the focal point of what you’re going to write about.  This will draw your reader in and they’ll want to continue reading.  Start with the main point of your artilce and defend it or describe it in the rest of your article. If the reader finds your point interesting they will read the rest of your article and hopefully click on the links to the website you are promoting.  When it comes to writing, remember that ‘less is more’.  Don’t make your articles too long.  Most internet articles vary between 300-500 words. 

Avoid getting technical. Don’t get wrapped up in impressing your reader. They care more about your points and topics, not your vocabulary.  Your intention is to share information in a friendly, efficient manner. The ideal internet article should be clearly communicated, easily understood, and looked at as a resource. Remember if further information is required, the person will pursue the matter by themselves.

All internet articles should be submitted in Word. Once you’re finished writing, make sure you proofread the article and put it through a grammar and spelling check.  Did you communicate your ideas clearly? Are you happy with the end result?  If so, you are going to want to start finding places to submit your articles or sites that buy articles.  Often times you can contact a local SEO company near you and ask them what types of articles they could use.  Work out a deal with an internet marketing firm and start making money with your writing skills.

Finally, don’t be disheartened if your first article is not accepted. Stick with it, and success will soon come your way. You will be sure to find a SEO company who is willing to buy articles for their clients.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

While you are waiting for results, here are some basic SEO tips that you can follow which should help you cut down your time waiting.

Make certain to select a keyword theme for each page of your website.

Many sites that we have evaluated and reviewed do not have enough diversity within the pages or the subordinate pages to obtain the wide range of keywords that they would like to achieve. So identify a group of keywords for every page that you publish, a group of keywords that fit well into your SEO plan.

If the website you are building and promoting does not have enough content to tip the scales of the search engines to your favor as “The Resource” for the keywords you are approaching, or if your site does not contain enough significant or important internal links, how will you possibly be able to surpass your competitors that are using large amounts of content and links?

So, plan each page with plenty of content and key words with internal links throughout your website. Make certain that you do not stuff your site with too many keywords as you will want to make the site readable and interesting for your human visitors as well.

Identify the keyword theme to each page using the Meta tag keywords. Since Google and some of the other major search engines do not utilize the keyword Meta tag, we have made it useful by indentifying the “keyword theme” to each of our pages.

Internal links from pages and to other pages using the keyword that you want the target page to rank for.

This is probably one of the most difficult aspects of search engine optimization to keep track of. For our projects we have literally drawn out a diagram or flow chart of the pages within the site that we are marketing and labeled each with the keyword theme for each page. Once we have identified the pages and the keyword themes for each page, it is much easier to take the keyword phrases throughout your website and link those phrases to the page that matches that theme.

This tactic is very similar to that of Wikipedia. You are simply identifying the “resource page” for the designated keyword by consistently using keyword-rich anchor text throughout your website.  By doing this you will also be able to achieve double indexing in some cases for your website.

We believe that this step for onsite optimization is critical to outperforming your online competition. If you are working with a SEO company, than it is imperative that you bring this approach to their attention and that they explain to you their internal linking strategy.

Optimize the page for many variations of the keyword that you are targeting.

If you are going to optimize a page for a certain keyword, you might as well go for as many variations or extrapolations of that keyword that you can. So, using an example here, let’s go with the keyword “SEO Company”. Variations that you might want to use would be, “SEO Company’s”, “SEO Companies”, “Internet Marketing Company”, “Internet Marketing Companies” and “Search Engine Optimization Company”. You can see from the example that I have used, I have pluralized the keyword, misspelled the keyword and even brought in a synonymous keyword phrase.

By following these three steps you should be able to really shore up your website so that as Google or any other indexing robots devour your website, you will obtain an advantage over your online competitors that have not followed these same simple techniques. Any worthwhile SEO campaign takes a great amount of time and dedication, so as you are working on link building strategies and submitting your site to different directories, make certain to work these strategies and you will start to see a major difference in the way your site is ranked in the search engines.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Can alt text really help your SEO campaign?

Often times as I read through all of the resources online for internet marketing, I read about the importance of “on-site” optimization. We have discussed it ourselves in the past (onsite optimization). Something I don’t think we had discussed was the importance of keyword use in the alt text or title tags. Granted many have disagreed with the importance of alt text or title text in the SEO community. It is important to understand that there is not a SEO professional that I have met who knows the algorithms intimately. So while there are many opinions that using alt text or title tags does not provide a benefit to your search engine campaign, I would respectfully disagree as I will prove with an example.

We should probably begin with the explanation of “alt text“. The entire purpose of alt text was to give a description of the image if the image could not be loaded properly as well as a resource for the handicapped (especially the blind) so that as their “text reading” program described and read the page, they would be provided with a description of the image. The attribute can be applied to many different forms of media including video, but is primarily used for images.

So, why bother with alt text on images? As previously stated, alt text will provide screen readers and text readers with a description of the image, this also applies for the spiders that index the content of your website. By labeling images and media with alt text you are giving the search engines a description of media that they could not otherwise relate to your media. Surely by now you know that Google or any other search engine for that matter cannot see or comprehend what your image is without some kind of description from you the webmaster. So, they (the search engines) actually need you to tell them what an image represents. This is an awesome opportunity for you to influence the position in the search engines.

In the case of a project that we managed for a pet related business, we took the opportunity to label all pictures of the dogs with the name and breed of the dog. We resubmitted the sitemap to all the major search engines as well as created links to the pages as usual. Over the next several weeks we started to see a huge increase in the amount of traffic that we were obtaining for this account. The images were actually bringing in traffic themselves as they had been indexed and those searchers that were looking for images of the dogs that we had described were visiting our customer’s site after they had located the images!

Over the next several weeks, we noticed yet another increase in traffic as other sites were linking to our images and the pages containing the images from their sites. This brought in another wave of traffic. This project realized over 100% increase in organic traffic by simply utilizing alt text and title tags throughout the pages of our customer’s website.

I am not suggesting that alt text on all of the images of your site will increase traffic by 100%. At the end of the day, most of us are not in the pet industry or any industry for that matter where customers are looking for pictures of our product or services regularly. For example, if I labeled everyone of the images on our site with the keywords “Denver SEO“, it is very unlikely that I will obtain that many visitors from the images of my site; however, if I could get one of my images to show up in the organic rankings then perhaps my listing would stick out among all of my competitors as I would be one of the only results that had an image next to my title.

In conclusion, there is absolutely no way that completing alt text could hurt your campaign. Sure it is an additional step while completing your onsite optimization, but the time invested seems like it would be worthwhile considering that it is a small investment. I do want to emphasize that I do not believe that alt text will make or break your search engine optimization campaign, but I do believe it is worthwhile to add this element to your site. Making your site more useful to your users is what we all want to accomplish, so make certain that you are not keyword stuffing the tags and using legitimate short descriptions as this could definitely help your rankings for long tail keywords as well. At the end of the day, if nothing else, alt text will at least make your site more accessible to the search engines and those that access your site with screen readers, etc. If you are working with a seo company you would definitely want to check your images and make sure that they have been optimized with alt text or title tags.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can serve as the linchpin to your overall marketing plan for your business.  Gone are the days when all you needed was an ad in the local phone book.  The most efficient way to drive leads to your business is through Internet marketing.  You need more than just a website, though.

A website that has not been optimized for search engine results pages (SERPs) will only serve as a digital business card.  Nobody will find it unless they know about it and where to look.  Your competition will quickly surpass such an outmoded approach.  You need to hire a Denver SEO consultant to help get your website seen by those searching for the products and/or services that your business offers.

A competent SEO company will offer a full-service approach to Internet marketing, in order to ensure that your SEO campaign is in fact successful.  You will need to start out by looking for a Denver SEO company on the Internet.  Here’s a good tip: if you search for SEO company, SEO consultant, SEO, Internet marketing, etc. the company you end up choosing should appear near the top of the SERPs.  The reason:  if a particular Denver Internet marketing company can’t get their own site near the top of the SERPs, they probably can’t do it for you, either.

Once you have chosen a particular SEO company, carefully examine the SEO consultant with whom you are to be partnered.  Do they act in a professional manner?  How much experience with Internet marketing do they have?  Can they provide examples and references to demonstrate that they have a track record of success?  Do they have as many questions for you as you do for them?  A good SEO consultant will begin by trying to understand your business and the goals you have for it.  This will aid them in one of the early steps in SEO, keyword research.

Do not settle for a mediocre SEO company.  Don’t shop by price alone.  Remember, you get what you pay for.  The success of your business depends on you choosing the best Internet marketing company possible.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

denver internet marketing,denver SEO,denver web development

Denver Web Development is absolutely key in helping to produce awareness, traffic, and sales for your company or product.  Just like traditional marketing campaigns, there are many specific skills required to be effective in your Denver Internet Marketing plan.  These skills include but are not limited to link building, web design, Denver search-engine-optimization, HTML writing, blogging, and social networking.  Techniques and trends are constantly changing as well, and it is important to utilize the experience and knowledge of a Denver SEO Firm or Internet Marketing Company.

It is important to set goals, and plan a complete strategy for building a valuable website and increasing the traffic to that website.  In addition to a clear website with substantial, valid content, you need to drive the site to towards the top of search engine results for targeted keywords.  This intricate, time-consuming process is called search-engine-optimization, or SEO.  A good internet marketing company will also handle Denver SEO for your business.  It is best to let experts execute SEO for you, because the ranking algorithms and industry trends are constantly evolving and changing.  A Denver SEO Company will keep up with the pulse of the industry, staying on top of all the new tips and tricks.

Denver Internet Marketing is paramount to staying on the cutting edge of any industry.  Create a strong, reliable Internet presence while at the same time being highly visible on local and global search engines.  Customize your plan to cater to your target audience, increasing your chances for sales, leads, and referrals.  The days of Yellow Pages are over, and you need to keep your business ahead of the curve by working with a Denver Internet Marketing Firm.  No matter what your industry, help yourself and take the right step towards a successful future.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Your Search Engine Optimization plan needs to be written down with attainable goals. Most companies that we speak with about search engine optimization in Denver do not have actual SEO plans written down. Many companies get online and have the best of intentions; all they know is that they want to get on the 1^st page. They don’t know what getting on the 1^st page of Google would do for them, but they know they want it. No matter what, they want to get on the 1^st page. The problem with this is, they have not defined why they want to get on the 1^st page, the keywords that they want to get on the 1^st page for and often times they even lack the initial keyword research to make certain that the keywords they have selected are even worth focusing on.

Here are a couple of tips in developing an SEO plan that will produce results:

#1.) Set a Mission Statement: This is not huge and this plan should not take days, let’s make certain that we have a purpose though. Let’s start off with what you want to accomplish by bringing your website, blog or other property to the 1^st page of Google.

#2.) Set attainable Milestones: Set attainable goals, such as “obtain a page 3 ranking for Denver SEO by week 8 of campaign” and “Obtain a page one ranking for main site www.thisisiniquitous.com for keyword Denver Internet Marketing by week 12″.

#3.) Set up a base of checklists that will help accomplish the milestones: Now you want to start planning your campaign, what steps are you going to complete in order to start advancing on the milestones you had set in the beginning. Make certain that define each action that you are to take with great detail so that there is no question what you should be working on every day, every week and month.

#4.) Actually execute the plan: A plan is a fantastic attempt in getting started and you are already ahead of 98% of your competition with a written plan. Execution is the next biggest obstacle to actually achieving the milestones set which then get you to the overall completion of your mission. We always recommend “an hour a day”, so when writing your checklist try and accommodate an hour per day for your search engine marketing campaign.

This SEO plan should only take you 2 hours maximum if you utilize the tools that we have explained in our previous posts. Once you have your SEO plan written down, the only thing left is execution. With this road map to success you are certain to actually make monumental changes to your presence online!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It is almost impossible to not throw yourself into the design of your new website. When we were designing our brand-new website, we made some of the very same mistakes that we see clients make on an ongoing basis. We included aspects or features to the website that we really liked, and we forgot for a moment that our demographic or audience is business owners and business professionals. For us we are going to have to go back to the drawing board and redesign a completely brand-new website that focuses strictly on professionals, and their pain or needs for Internet marketing versus making it more fun and personal for us. I think it’s very easy to forget who you are designing a website for.

The same goes for search engine optimization, it is so often that we see customers suggest key phrases and keywords that definitely apply to their business; however, “John Q. Public” will probably not use the key phrases and keywords originally selected by the business owner. For example let’s take my industry, I am a professional search engine optimization expert in Denver, and I think that probably one of the most used search terms for customers that are looking for our services would be “Denver SEO“. When we talk with customers about how they found us online, we find that they very rarely come to us using that exact search term. For us the search term Denver SEO makes the most sense as we are in the business, and search engine optimization is most often referred to as “SEO”, so would that make the most sense that companies and marketing professionals in the Denver area would type in “Denver SEO”?

The fact is that most of these companies or individuals that are searching for search engine optimization and Denver do not use the keyword “Denver SEO”. When I look at the analytics for our project, most of the searchers that do come to our website are finding us through the search term “Denver SEO”, yet when I speak with customers that have found our website online and called us they have usually used a different key term or keyword phrase. Perhaps “Denver SEO” is so popular because it is our competitors that use this term, or maybe it is industry professionals that are involved in internet marketing. My point here is that the customers that are calling usually type in something much different like “Denver Interent Marketing Companies“. So although we are getting much traffic from obtaining a first page ranking for the keyword “Denver SEO”, we also have to consider other extrapolations of that keyword such as “Denver Seo company, Denver Seo firm, Denver Seo professional, Denver search engine Optimization Company, search engine optimization Denver, etc.”

The extrapolations or longer keyword phrases are usually much easier to obtain a page-one ranking than a one-word or two word key phrase. Using these variations of search terms in setting up your website will help you to avoid stuffing your pages with the same keywords and give you the ability to produce more content that is actually “useful”. Ultimately at the end of the day you are not producing the website for yourself or for Google, you are producing the website for the end-user. By developing content that is useful and has relevant keywords sprinkled throughout the content piece, you will obtain a lower bounce rate and a higher conversion rate from the website.

The video that I’ve included in this post is a short example of how to use keywords and keyword phrases throughout your blogging campaign that will complement your search engine optimization campaign.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) entails a maelstrom of techniques and tactics with the end goal being to improve the ranking of a particular website in the search results of major search engines. SEO can be broken down into two main categories, on site SEO and off site SEO.

On site SEO relies upon excellent content first and foremost. Content must be on topic, relevant, and contain a 5% – 7% keyword (words or phrases) density. This means that for every 100 words of content, five to eight keywords should be used. The keywords that will be used must be carefully researched using tools such as the free Google AdWords keyword tool. When choosing keywords, it is important to remember to think like the customer. What will they be searching for? These same keywords should also be embedded into the website source code via Meta, Title and Heading tags. This will help ensure a high page ranking for these search terms.

Also, the website should be organized with a clear hierarchical structure. Creating a site map will significantly enhance site structure and ability to be scanned by search engines. This will allow search engines to more efficiently scan the target website. The most important information on a given website should be placed at or near the top of the page. This will make it easier for search engines to find the content that you want them to find. Use text instead of images; search engines can only scan text, so all important information must be included in text. This should be done even if the message(s) being conveyed are duplicated in images, banners, etc.

Of even greater importance is off site SEO. This includes back linking to highly ranked sites. For example, you can submit articles to free online repositories with links to your target website embedded in the text. The Google search engine will interpret a page with many back links to highly ranked pages as being of greater importance, and will therefore increase its page ranking. Another tactic is to submit entries to a highly ranked online blog, with excellent content, important keywords and back links where possible. Furthermore, you can join appropriate, and highly ranked, online forums and post useful content with a signature containing a back link to the target website. You should submit your website to the major search engines’ web indices. This will speed up and enhance the optimization process greatly.

SEO, or internet marketing is a multifaceted endeavor, and requires ongoing maintenance and tuning. There are many competent companies that are dedicated to carrying out SEO campaigns. If page ranking is extremely important to you, consider outsourcing the project to a professional Denver SEO company.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites