Tactical Execution

There’s a lot of talk these days about how to attract more people to your website.  Heck, I spend a lot of time talking about that myself.  I even host the hugely popular Internet Traffic Carnival every Tuesday!  But the conversation often leaves out an important part of the equation.  It leaves out all the structural elements you can add to your website to make it more search engine friendly.

The first thing you want to make sure of is the URL format you’re using on your site.  Take a look at the permalink of this post.  It includes all the words in my post title.  This is such a simple detail but is incredibly important.  It even motivated me to move my entire website over from Joomla to WordPress back in March 2008.  The words you use in your title are powerful keywords and you want them to be included in your URL.

Next, you need to identify the keywords you’d like to target.  Once you’ve decided on a few phrases, you need to start building your site around those phrases.  As an example, I wanted to target the phrase ‘Internet Marketing Services’ so I built 68 new pages on my website, all about Internet Marketing Services.  I did that by creating separate landing pages for every local municipality along with that phrase.  I also created a similar landing page for every single state, again including the keyword phrase in the title.

Having all these pages caters directly to the search engines.  They see all these URLs and index my site accordingly.  It also dramatically increases the odds that my page will pop up when someone searches for that particular phrase.  Will my site come up for every single state?  Of course not.  But it will come up for a bunch of them and I expect it will measurably increase my traffic once the search engines have cached all my changes.

The last thing I did was include a paragraph at the bottom of each page stating that Tactical Execution is located in Walnut Creek, California, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.  This text, along with all the links pointing to those pages, also increases the density of keywords while magnifying the exposure of my most valuable keyword phrases – the ones in my own location.

You will also notice that each page has unique content and the images also have keyword-rich names.  In fact, I even optimized the ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags for each image.  The end results is a series of nicely optimized pages that push my site higher on the search engines for the exact keyword phrase I’m targeting.

It’s important to realize that anyone can do these sorts of things.  Yes, it’s a lot of work.  It takes a lot of time.  But it’s an opportunity open to everyone.  And it works particularly well for businesses where you can add a locality to the keyword phrase.  By doing this, you dramatically reduce the competition you’ll be facing, making it a lot easier to get to the top.  These are all structural elements that play an important role in internet marketing.  Give it a try and see how your Google ranking changes.

Google and the other search engines have all updated their algorithyms to increase the value attributed to video content.  Already, an estimated 40% of internet bandwidth is used to accommodate video content and that’s expected to grow over the coming years.  And although many of us probably believe that YouTube is already overrun with competition, the fact is that there just aren’t that many people doing it right yet.

There’s a huge opportunity for people to use video as a way to build their following and push value to their audience.  You can use the medium to demonstrate your expertise and give people a sample of your approach.  Heck, they’ll even know what you look like!  People don’t trust governments.  People don’t trust companies.  People often don’t even trust websites.  What do they trust?  People trust other people, and video is a great way to put a human face on your business.

Let’s start with some groundwork.  First, don’t think your video has to be super slick.  Absolutely not.  In fact, studies have shows that super slick videos are trusted far less than lower quality amateur-looking clips.  The more “real”, the better.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money on this.  Just get yourself a video camera with a microphone jack and then get a directional microphone that will deliver good voice quality.  Between the two, you’re probably looking at about $350 worth of equipment.

Another thing: people love lists.  The top 10 of this.  The bottom 10 of that.  The 7 biggest mistakes people make.  The 5 things you need to remember.  Whatever it is, structure your content into a list.  It injects automatic structure to your presentation and makes your content easier to understand.

When uploading your video, make sure to include your URL and/or business name in the description.  That will help your business name get indexed higher on the search engines.  Also make sure you include your keywords in the description as well as the tags.  Both will help your video come up higher and faster on the search engines.

Don’t make just ONE video.  A single video will quickly get buried amongst thousands of other videos, never to be seen again.  Instead, make a series.  Make these videos on a regular basis.  YouTube and all the other video platforms allow you to create a profile and then attach all your videos to that profile.  When someone finishes the video they’re watching, the platform will display thumbnails of all the other videos you’ve produced.

That’s where the opportunity lies.  If you have a series of videos up on YouTube, people will find one or another depending on what they’re searching for.  But after that, they’ll quickly see the breadth of topics you cover and will likely browse a while longer, getting to know you and your expertise.  Before long, their trust level has grown dramatically and they’re ready to do business.

You might be reading this and thinking that this is just one more thing you’re supposed to be doing.  One more thing piled on top of all the other things sitting on your desk.  You’re too busy already!  How could you possibly do this also?  Well, if you’re blogging, your job is done.  Every single blog post is perfect content for a video and you won’t get knocked for duplicate content because one is in text format while the other is in video format.

I recommend writing your blog post first.  Write it out, structure it into a list and publish it on your website.  Then turn on your video camera with your computer right beside you and relay the same information into the camera.  Don’t even worry about memorizing it.  You can reference back and forth.  Nobody will mind.  It will be mor casual and more “real”, making your audience feel at ease.

Every day, there are more and more video platforms on the internet.  Rather than uploading your video a dozen times, each at different platforms, I recommend using a distribution service like TubeMogul.  There, you can upload your video once and automatically distribute it to all the major platforms in one step.  And it’s well worth the effort because different platforms feed different communities.  Also, some get indexed quicker than others and the search engines LOVE fresh new content.

Most people think YouTube has nothing more than rock bands in concert, Britney Spears getting out of a car, amateur fights and people falling off bicycles.  It’s true that these topics are well covered on YouTube but there’s far more out there than you might think.  You can learn how to play guitar on YouTube.  You can learn how to speak German.  You can learn how to install WordPress or record a podcast.  You can learn just about anything on YouTube.

That represents an enormous opportunity for all of us.  Think about your expertise.  Think about the value you could push to your audience.  Think about the lists of juicy nuggets you could deliver on video to a waiting and appreciative audience.  Take some time to write down the different topics you could cover and if you find that you have a lot, go out and buy a video camera.  It might be the best investment you’ll ever make!

Search engines like Google look at a variety of different factors when evaluating your website.  Although the specifics of these algorithyms are difficult to nail down, the major factors include the following:

1. The amount of unique relevant content on your site.
2. The newness or freshness of the content on your site.
3. The number of inbound links pointing to your site.
4. The number of links to the sites that are linking to you.

These 4 factors are the primary contributors to a strong search engine ranking, but there are others as well.  One under-utilized contributor is anchor text.  And what’s that?  Well, it’s the words used as the ‘anchor’ for a link.  So, if I used the words free articles to click to the 70+ free articles on this website, the anchor text for the link is “free articles”.

Let’s think about this.  By using the words “free articles”, I am saying that the place to find free articles is the location the link points to.  Or if I used sports news to link to ESPN.com, I am saying the best place on the internet for sports news is ESPN.com.  I am defining my endorsement.  Any link I put into my blog or website is an endorsement for the website I’m pointing to.  And when I put the link on certain words, I’m adding clarification to my endorsement.  The search engines know that.

Turns out, the words used to link to YOUR website play a significant role in the ranking your website gets for those specific words.  We all have specific keyword phrases that we’d love to ranking high for on the search engines.  For me, I’d love to rank high for phrases like “internet marketing”, “small business marketing” and “entrepreneur resources” among others.  And article marketing is one of the easiest ways to create those inbound links all by yourself.

Article marketing is the process of writing 500+ word articles (demonstrating your expertise) and then publishing them on the internet.  There are dozens of article distribution services that will distribute your article to hundreds or even thousands of article directories and online publishers for cheap or even free.  The beauty is that you can talk about yourself in an area called the author resource box and in that area, you can include a link to your website.

Most article authors go through the process and put the link on the name of their website address.  So for me, the link would be put on Tactical Execution.  That’s a major missed opportunity!  Instead, these authors should select one of their ideal keyword phrases and put the link on those words.  For me, I could put the link on a phrase like small business marketing.  By doing so, I am creating an inbound link to my website with the anchor text directly aligned with my marketing objectives.

As you may know, the hallmark of my business success is that I test everything I preach.  And in that effort, I did an experiment in the fall of 2007 where I targeted the phrase “growth marketing” and published a number of articles with the inbound link anchored on that phrase.  Within just 17 days, I already had my Tactical Execution listed on page 2 of a Google search for that phrase.  And today, my site usually comes up first or second.  You can see where I come up today by clicking here.

The primary strength of article marketing is the ability to target specific keyword phrases by using them as the anchor text for your link in your author resource box.  Personally, I use iSnare to distribute my articles and today, they show up on literally thousands of different websites.  Best of all, the service only costs me about $1 per article.  Take advantage of the opportunity and start targeting specific keyword phrases today.

This is what everybody always asks me.  Well, it’s a process.  It’s a series of things you need to do on a regular basis and the most important part is to produce more and more relevant content on a regular basis.  That’s the first question I ask clients.  Do you have a content generation mechanism?  If you don’t, we have a problem.  If you do, the sky’s the limit.

The problem is that most people want to buy results, not a process.  They don’t want to do anything.  They just want it to happen.  I hate to say it but that just won’t work.  You see, the evolving blogosphere is full of intelligent people generating fresh new relevant unique content on a daily basis.  These blogs have hundreds or even thousands of pages, all about one particular topic.  How can a well-optimized but static website compete?  It can’t.

Having said that, let’s spend a little time talking about the primary SEO factors that do, in fact, help your cause.  Again, keep in mind that a static website with no new fresh content will almost certainly come in second place.  But the following tips will definitely put you in a better position to show up high on a Google search.  And if you do these things AND produce fresh relevant content, you’re in great shape to rise to the top for dozens or even hundreds of relevant keywords and phrases.

Keywords in Title Tags.

This is one of the most important things you can do.  Every page has a title tag and you should limit it to about 65 characters.  Make sure you put a title tag on every page and stack it full of relevant keywords.

Keywords in H1 Tags.

Your H1 tag is the title of your page.  It’s what comes up at the very top.  The search engines look at the words in your title as an indication of what your page is about.  So … get those keywords in there!

Keywords in the Text Copy

If you have a particular keyword or keyword phrase in your title tag and in your H1 tag, make sure you put it into your copy as well.  Keep in mind that Google likes sentences and paragraphs.  So write your content in that format and include the same keywords throughout your copy.

Keywords in Your URLs.

The nice thing about most modern websites is that the title of your page becomes part of the permalink for that post.  That’s good news because it puts the same keywords into the actual URL for that page.  Whenever possible, include keywords into the URL because it’ll help your cause from an SEO perspective.

Keywords in Your Domain.

Yes, it matters.  If Google finds the same string of characters in your search query and the domain for your website, it will give you some additional credit for it.  So if someone searches for “health insurance” and your domain name is health-insurance.com, you’ll benefit as a result.

Last but not least, pick a narrow topic and focus on that.  Don’t try to go too wide.  Pick 3 or 4 keyword phrases and focus your entire website around that.  It will make it easier for Google to understand what your website is all about and present it when people search for that topic.

I’ll finish with the same thing as I started with.  The most important thing is to produce new fresh content on a regular basis.  Google likes fresh content.  And – surprise, surprise – blogs are the best way to do it.  If you want to make a splash on today’s internet, I highly recommend putting a blog together and start feeding it with regular content additions.

Today, I taught another course at the Pleasant Hill Adult Education center.  I teach courses like this often and always enjoy meeting the people who register for the courses I offer.  Today’s program was entitled “Modern Marketing in Action” and we took a broad top-level look at some of the exciting marketing options in our increasingly internet-driven world.  My group was full of entrepreneurs trying to grow their respective businesses.

I always spend a good deal of time discussing the differences between yesterday’s “interruption marketing” environment (a phrase coined by Seth Godin) and today’s “permission marketing” alternative.  In particular, I always like to point out how differently the young people view the internet when compared with older people.  Their respective perspectives are near opposite.  But after that, we looked at some of the tools available on today’s internet and there was one they really got excited about.

Many of you may know about the publicly accessible Google keyword tool on the Adwords platform.  If you’re not, you need only click on Resources above and then Useful Links and Keyword Research Tools to find it (or you can just click here).  On that platform, you can enter any keyword you’re interested in and the platform will spit out a long list of related keywords along with the PPC competition and the average search volume for each keyword.  This is an incredibly powerful utility we’re all well advised to take advantage of.

Before I explain the best way to use this platform, let me first explain how it functions.  When you enter a keyword into the input field, Google looks into its database to see what other words people used when searching for the keywords you entered.  In other words, the output is entirely dynamic and determined by the millions of people who use Google every day.  The words they use in their search queries give Google a ready supply of words related to the ones you’re interested in.

Anyway, once you have the output, you can sort the results by the PPC competition or the average search volume.  If you think about it, sorting the results by the average search volume tells you precisely what Google users are looking for most often.  For example, you can put “products” in and see that after “office products”, there are 5 or 6 keyword phrases that all have to do with skin care and beauty supplies – shows you what people are looking for.  Likewise, if you put “services” in, you’ll see that a lot of the searches have to do with dating services, phone services and internet services.  Lastly, if you put “free” (one of the most heavily searched terms on the internet) in, you’ll see that the top results are for free games and free downloads.

For an entrepreneur, this is an incredibly powerful utility.  You can simply put your keywords into the Google tool and immediately find out precisely what your audience is searching for.  Then, armed with that information, you can build out your website with sections that cater specifically to that subject.  Not only will that cater to those who stumble upon your website but it will likely increase the number of people find your site through the search engines.

Never before have we had such access.  Never before have we had a platform where you can immediately see what your audience is looking for.  And if you’re looking to refine your business and grow your revenue, I highly recommend looking here first.  Let your audience tell you where to go and then build exactly what it is that they’re looking for.  It saves time.  It saves money.