My girlfriend is not alone.  I receive dozens of emails each week from people wanting blogs and websites created for their “idea” and I can tell at least 75% have no clue what to do or where to start.  The classic signs of this state of confusion are the words “thinking” and “maybe” and “possibly” and of course the phrase “not sure”.  Let’s be realistic here and understand that thinking and maybe and possibly are all wishy washy and they do not equal a plan.  To make money on the internet you need a plan. Without it, you’re blog will struggle and you’ll lose interest and you will inevitably waste money.   I want to give you a blogging plan.

A quick check of Google search volumes shows that over 14,800 searches are done for “how to blog” each month.  That is a lot of people looking for a blogging plan of attack. That also means you have over 14,000 people thinking about or potentially starting a blog each month.  Lots and lots of competition.

My initial thought was to send her a quick how-to guide for blogging.  Then I realized that this should be a teaching lesson for more than one future blogger.   So I’m whipping my how-to guide into a blog post for the masses.

Let’s Walk Through the Process for Getting Started With Blogging

Pick a Topic – You’re blog needs to have focus and it needs to be focused on something you know and love.  If you’re going to right about something a lot, you need to love it with all your heart.  I love internet marketing, but I’m a geek.  My girlfriend is a better example of a real life, nongeek blogger.  Mary is going to have a travel focused blog which is perfect because Mary loves to travel.

Check Keyword Search Volumes – Before you finalize your blog’s focus, you need to make sure people will actually search on the topic.  You may love to talk about your bottle cap collection, but it won’t generate any revenue if no one actually searches for terms related to your bottle cap collection.  A quick visit to Google’s Adword Keyword Tool will provide an excellent source for keyword research and finding keywords and phrases people actually search for on the internet.

Register a Domain Name – You need to have a URL (www.something.com) so people can find your blog.  There are lot of extensions available, but I tend to stick with the .com group.  Few .com URLs are available because so many people are holding them hostage.  Be creative, be unique, and if needed use dashes.  I register my domains at GoDaddy.  Search the internet for GoDaddy deals and coupon codes, but remember not to host at GoDaddy.  They’re good for domain registration, but not so great at actual hosting.

Pick a Blogging Platform – If you’ve ever been to my website before, you already know I’m a WordPress girl through and through.  There are other blogging platforms available, but WordPress is by far the best.  You can go 100% free via WordPress.com, but you will be limited on your capabilities.  You can go down the path of WordPress.org and have a world of opportunities available to you.  You will have to self host your blog, but this is easy once you realize there are great hosting companies that do everything for you.

Pick a Hosting Company – Like my allegiance to WordPress.org, I am also a firm advocate of Blue Host.  They offer one click WordPress installs, have great performance, and their technical support team is top notch.  I have literally had to stop the technical team and explain I don’t need education on WordPress, because I’m a website designer.  But the gesture is appreciated and their response time and performance applauded.

Pick a Blog Theme – As with everything else in my life, I am very opinionated here too.  Do not be fooled into thinking free WordPress themes are all you need.  Not only are they generic, they can come with hidden code that links to nasty websites.  Invest in yourself and your blog by picking a solid WordPress theme.  These would be called premium themes.  My favorite (I stress favorite) premium theme provider is StudioPress.  Their Genesis framework is functionally robust and has great performance.  It is all we use at my firm when we create custom themes for websites and blogs.  Should you not find what you want at StudioPress, you can visit ThemeForest.net to find hundreds of WordPress themes from a slew of theme developers.  Be careful though, because not all ThemeForest designers will live up to the technical support provided by the StudioPress team.  Some are very good and others not so much.  Expect to pay at least $30 for a premium theme that is off the shelf and about $1,500 to $5,000 for a custom theme.

Remember Images Matter – A blog needs some eye candy and images are that eye candy.  Images help break up the text and they add depth to the posts.  I like to use BigStockPhoto.com and iStockPhoto.com.

Pick the Right WordPress Plugins – WordPress is awesome, but WordPress plugins extend this awesomeness exponentially.  Not all plugins are good and some are just stinky.  Once I find a good plugin, I tend to use it over and over again for client websites.  My favorite ones include:

• Akismet – The rock star of spam fighters.
• All in One SEO – Easy to use tool for search engine optimization.
• Contextual Related Posts – Provides a list of related blog posts based on content.
• Digg Digg – Easy to use share buttons for content distribution.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Produces a list of content for the search engines and updates them when new content is published.
• Gravity Forms – A premium plugin that makes form create simple.
• NextGEN Gallery – Easy to use image grouping and display.  Don’t forget to add a lightbox.
• Robot.txt – Protects your WordPress core files from search engine indexing.
• Subscribe to Comments – Great for user engagement.
• Taxonomy List Shortcode – Good plugin for creating a A-Z index of your blog topics.  You can see an example of this by clicking on the link in my sidebar.
• WP-DBManager – Back up and database optimization all in one.  Yes you do need to optimize your database.  It’s kind of like brushing your teeth WordPress style.
• SEO Smart Links – Creates automatic hyperlinks to your pages, posts, categories, and tags.
• Outbound Link Manager – Easy way to manage outbound (aka affiliate marketing) links in one page.

Connect With the Search Engines – Submit your XML sitemap (see plugin above) to Google and Bing.  They both have some version of Webmaster Tools available for this process.  Take the time to establish an account and then check back for errors or messages.  Google and Bing have lots of information available, so explore and return often.

Find a Revenue Stream – Your blog should make money.  If you’re good at blogging, you can make lots of money.  You need to sell a product, service, or have ads.  With the help of Google and the affiliate marketing network, getting advertisers is easier than you think.  You can use the Google Adsense program to have their network of advertisers matched up to your content or you can go the affiliate marketing route.  Affiliate marketing refers to placing ads on your blog and you are paid for each impression, click, or action resulting from your ad.  Google has an affiliate network and other popular ones are ClickBank and Share a Sale.  Pick one or more, but have a plan to generate revenue.

Use Email Communication – Stay in touch with your readers and give them a reason to come back to your blog by emailing them regularly.  You can use a free service like Google’s FeedBurner to automatically update subscribers when you publish a new blog post or you could create custom newsletters with email campaign software from Constant Contact or Bronto or Mail Chimp.

Become a Social Media Goddess – Social media does work and it is more than a buzzword.  These days everyone thinks they are great at social media although in all fairness, few really are.  Just remember the goal is to connect with people and engage them.  To succeed you just need to be honest, be open, and be present.  Use YouTube, Facebook Pages, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.  Every time you publish a new blog post, it should be shared via the social media websites.  Just don’t forget to read through some social media best practices and blunders before you start posting.

Analyze Your Traffic – Huh?  This simply means pay attention to how many people come to your blog and watch what they do once they get there.  Google Analytics is a free tool that has a ton of functionality, data points, and graphs.  It will show you how many people visit your blog, where they come from, what keywords they search one, how long they stay, and even what pages or posts make them leave.  Learn from the data and improve your blogging to improve your traffic and activity.

Give Yourself a Break – Blogging success does not happen overnight.  You need to find your blogging mojo, get yourself in a rhythm, and learn what works and what doesn’t work.  Don’t expect to see 1,000 hits a day in the first month.  Be patient and be thorough and you will succeed.

Will Mary Succeed at Blogging?

I’m about 99% confident my friend will do just fine.  Mary is smart, has an MBA, and is quick witted.  She is also determined.  I’ve known her for well over ten years and I know this – if Mary sets her mind to something she will succeed.  And darn it she better.  Mary has a living girlfriend’s guide to blogging in me and I won’t let her fail.

We All Make Mistakes

Very few clients have Scott’s thirst for knowledge.  They don’t understand it, or care, or have the time to listen to me ramble about SEO and website design.  Their confident my team will manage go-live and do so properly.  And we do, because we have a project plan that we walk through and I check off as the project progesses.  But not every web design firm or SEO consultant uses a checklist or project plan.  They miss things and these “things” become opportunities for their client’s competition because it is the little things that win in SEO and website design.

Three weeks ago I was researching competitors of a prospect and I discovered one of their local competitors had every page on their website blocked to search engines.  Only the home page was in Google’s index and the company was paying heavily for pay per click campaigns.  The company didn’t know their web designer or in-house webmaster left the noindex tag on all their pages.  It was everything I could do to stop myself from calling the firm to let them know.

The point I am trying to make here is that many consultants and marketing firms miss things.  We’re human and we make mistakes.  Not like a doctor leaving a medical device in a patient type of mistake, but pretty big mistakes nonetheless.  If you’re the client or the DIY web designer, you need to protect yourself.  You need to have some education and you should do a quick run through of your website before and after go-live.  And of course, well before you pay that final invoice.

Go-Live Checklist for Web Design Projects

1. Test Your Website Against All Browsers – Just when you think everything is perfect, in walks someone using IE (Internet Explorer).  Older versions of IE have produced many of grey hairs for me over the last few years.  Things tend to break in IE, so double checking the new website in it right before go-live is critical.  While not as buggy as IE, other browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, and Safari should also be reviewed.  They are more robust, but older versions can also be problematic. My beloved iPhone and iPad are newer arrivals and they too should be checked.
2. Add a Favicon – A favicon is about branding.  It adds a little image to the tab or window of the user’s browser and it is saved with the bookmark in a favorites list. While this isn’t a critical element, it does provide a nice polished look to your website and I have many clients who get big smiles when they see their logo pop up as a favicon.
3. Create an HTML Sitemap for Visitors – Much to my disappointment; sitemaps are ignored by many developers.  I still create one and while I don’t put it proudly in the main navigation, I do try to make it available in the footer.  Most people don’t use sitemaps, but for those of us who are impatient (that would be me) they’re important.
4. Create an XML Sitemap for Search Engines – A sitemap.xml file should be created and placed in your root directory.  This simple little file allows major search engines to easily index your website.  In WordPress, generating this sitemap is as easy as adding a plugin and clicking the generate button.  WordPress will automatically update this file with every new page or post addition or content change.  It is a simple way of reaching out to search engines and letting them know you have fresh content available for their review.  While this is simple, it is many times forgotten.
5. Prepare a Redirect File – The redirect file is the bane of my existence.  It simply tells search engines and users that an old page or post is no longer available and it redirects them to the current page or post.  It is important for usability and SEO.  So why do I hate it so much?  It is time consuming and it is one of the last things we do before go-live.  Not only do we create the redirect file for the client, we generally have to audit their existing pages and provide a cross reference between old and new.  My clients don’t know what pages they have, so I end up becoming an internet detective in my efforts to locate a complete list.  Once you have the list of old and new matched up, you simply add the directory to the .htaccess file.  Or in my case, you use a WordPress plugin like Redirection.  I love the Redirection plugin because I can upload all the links right from a CSV file.
6. Create and Review a Robot.txt File – The robot.txt file blocks spiders or instructs the search engines to ignore certain file folders on your server.  For most clients this generally means keeping spiders out of the WordPress core and theme files.  For others it may identify a protected directory of white papers or files that are restricted.  Simple, yet important for protecting your website and your high value web assets.
7. Double Check Your Submission Forms Are Working – The simple checking of submission forms may seem like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised at the amount of problems that can result from a simple contact form.  Email and forms can work differently from server to server, so you absolutely need to recheck forms after a website is moved from a development server to a live server.  One woman told me her company had broken forms for an entire year after they launched their website because no one remembered to check them.  When inquiry forms are your lead source, this is disastrous.
8. Double Check Your Meta Titles and Descriptions – Yes I know I just blogged about this in my last post (Web Design Ain’t Over Until the SEO Sings) and we’ve really already done this twice, but it I still double-check high value pages after go-live.  I use the toolbar from SEOmoz to view the meta title and description outside of WordPress just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  And sometimes, the meta title or description that sounded great a week ago sounds incredibly stupid at launch.  So I go back and edit it just to make sure my pages are well represented in the SERPs.  This is where my OCD personality is highly visible and beneficial.
9. Double Check Your Index Settings – Didn’t I do that with my Robot.txt file above?  Well yes and no.  The robot.txt file looks at folders and is server based.  CMS packages like WordPress allow you to block search engines at a site or page and post level.  While we are in development, we have a site wide block of search engines so our clients do not run into issues with duplicate content.  Our go-live plan includes removing this setting.  That being said, not everyone has such as policy and I’ve noticed new websites blocking search engines more times than I have time to discuss in a blog post.
10. Check Your RSS Feed and Sign Up for FeedBurner – An RSS feed is a techie term for a page that lists your most recent blog posts.  You can use this feed to automatically populate other websites or profiles on the internet.  It is a must have for link building efforts.  Feedburner is a service that allows visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed via email.  It is offered by Google, it is 100% free, and it makes a great tool for building engagement.  Some people even show off the number of RSS subscribers they have as if it is a badge of honor.
11. Add Google Analytics – I virtually force Google Analytics on every client.  I set it up even if they don’t care, because I think some day they will care and I want them to have data available.  Google Analytics is a free application that tracks visits to your website and the corresponding activity.  It can tell you where people came from, what keyword they used, how long they stay, and when they left.  Good website design and SEO requires analytics.  Since GA is free and powerful, it makes a great tool.
12. Submit Your New Sitemap.xml File to Google, Yahoo, and Bing – Use Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yahoo Site Explorer.  Doing so will not only allow for very rapid indexing of the new website, it will provide very valuable tools down the road.  I use Google Webmaster Tools every week and find it a critical tool for evaluating website and SEO success.
13. Review Speed and Performance – After your website is live on your server, you need to review performance.  You’ll be able to verify speed immediately from viewing the website live on the internet and you’ll receive performance reports from Google via Webmaster Tools.  Remember that speed alters search results and conversion rates, so make sure your website performance is up to par.  If you’re live and you’re living with poor performance, don’t be fooled into thinking it is temporary.  Some hosting companies are just horrible, so get out as quick as you can.

DIY Designers Take Note

Winning (not the Charlie Sheen kind) isn’t easy.   Most people are not like my pal Scott and their minds do just magically sponge up SEO knowledge.

Each week I receive calls from a lot of DIY website owners.  Virtually every time my heart goes out to them, because they’re really trying.  But trying and succeeding are two different things.  Website design and SEO is hard work.  Competing on the internet is difficult and there are reasons why most websites get virtually no traffic.

If you are considered the average Joe and you’ve undertaken at DIY website project, take a moment and reread the above list.  If you’ve reviewed my thirteen items and you only “get” about five of them, you’re setting yourself up for failure.  Take the time to research them further and postpone your website launch until you’ve made sure you’ve thoroughly covered your to do list.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the list, then seek out a professional.  The few hundred dollars you spend for the last minute help will be well worth it in the end.

Whether you’re the DIY website designer, a marketing manager, or a small business owner – double check your website and efforts at go-live and make sure you and/or your website design firm have everything in working order.

But keyword research doesn’t have to be some big crazy formula.  I read a lot of SEO articles and blog posts and the internet is full of great content and advice for performing elaborate keyword research.  While this works, the activity of keyword research doesn’t have to be so convoluted that the average person can’t do it. It just needs to be a methodical.

I’ve worked with or developed both large and small websites.  Some have 20 keywords and some have 2,000 keywords.  Regardless of the volume of keywords or web pages, my process remains the same because it is scalable.  More importantly, it is a process that the average person can perform.

Fifteen Steps to Developing a Targeted List of Keywords

1. Write down keywords and/or phrases you would use to search the internet for your products or services.
2. Now go to Google and input those terms into the search box.  Look at the bottom of the page of search results and review what Google is suggesting as “related” search terms.  Write down those words too.  You can also look to your left on the page to see if Google is suggesting “something different”.
3. Your next step should be a visit to Google’s Insights for Search, which shows related terms and trends for a given search term or word.  Input your top keywords and document anything of interest.
4. Now consider your existing website.  Go to your Google Analytics account (if you have it) and review your keyword traffic for the last year.  Don’t just look at high volume traffic, but also consider the lower volume traffic that you’re not doing very well on from a search standpoint.  Document any keywords that you would like to score well on in search.
5. Next you should head over to Google Webmaster Tools and look at your Search Queries.  Similar to that of the Analytics data, don’t just look at keywords your performing well on.  Look at everything and document any words or phrases that you should score on.
6. Now visit your competitors’ websites and write down any keywords and/or phrases your competitors are targeting.  If you’re not sure what these are, look at their page titles, sitemap, and actual page URLs.  Note this will only work if your competitors have a good SEO strategy.
7. By now you have a fairly long list of keywords.  We need to see how these fit into the real world of search.  If I’ve learned anything over the last nine years of SEO work, it’s that I don’t know what people search on.  I can only make assumptions and then validate my thoughts against actual search volumes.  I validate my suspected keyword list in Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.  To do this, all you have to do is input your list of potential keywords into the box and let it rip.  You can either go broad with results or narrow it down to exact.  Just make sure you stay consistent.
8. As I pull my keyword volumes, I put them into an Excel spreadsheet and I create one very large list.  I don’t pay much attention to volume at this point, because I don’t want to get distracted.  I just keep loading up the list with keywords, volumes, and competitiveness.
9. Now that I have my list of potential keywords and volumes, I set is aside.  I walk away and move onto something else, because at this point I’m fairly burned out on keyword research.  When my mind has cleared, I return to revisit my list.  If the list is really long, I remove any keywords on the list that are below a certain level of volume.  If I have thousands of keywords, my pain threshold may by 500 searches per month.  If it is a small list, this may be reduced to 50.  It is very relative and based on the industry and target market.
10. The next step is to score each word for relevance.  You need to look at each work and think about it’s relevance to your actual products or services.  You can give this a high, medium, and low or you can use a number scale.  Whatever works is fine, just make sure it clearly shows which words are important and which words are irrelevant or less important.
11. Once I’ve scored my list of relevance, I create a weighted score for each keyword.  I typically take the relevance score and multiply this by the actual volume.  You don’t have to get overly fancy; you just need to be able to see a combination of relevance and traffic volumes.
12. Now I start ditching keywords.  I’d like to say I don’t, but I do.  I’ve been going this for so many years, I can just “see” issues or anomalies.  I see trends and I can see if something is just not right.  Maybe the keyword has other unrelated meanings (you can check this my Googling it) and the traffic volumes are distorted.  In other cases, it could be it is so broad it just doesn’t work.  This is where I start overriding my client’s wishes and I do so because my instincts tell me to do it and they’ve hired me because of my experience.  So far no one has fired me for this practice.
13. Now I take a step back and I look at the list.  What keywords have strong volumes, are closely matched to the client’s offering, and are not polluted with excessive targeting by competitors.  I view this as “picking your battles”, which is similar to what I do with my kids.  You can only win in so many places, so you have to target what is important.  This comes back to my gut.
14. Now I pick three really competitive words with good volumes that I believe we can win on with effort.  Long-term effort and not overnight effort.  These are our big boys and the words we will hammer until we win. Note that the number of three could be 100 if your website is much larger.  Again, this process is varied based on industry, geography, and target market.
15. Next I pick about seventeen secondary keywords.  These are long tail or less competitive words that are still good, but not necessarily the biggies.  These phrases we’ll be able to win on quicker, but they won’t have as high of volumes as the three we just picked.  Just as I mentioned above, this number varies.  It may be seventeen or it may be 2,000.
16. Finally I go through the list to see what is left.  I try and assign these to blog posts, tags, or categories.  Wherever possible, I provide clients with suggestions on possible titles for blog posts so we are capturing the keywords.

Okay I had 16 steps.  I tried really hard to stay at fifteen, but it didn’t quite work.

Now What?

So you have your list of keywords.  Now what?  Now you have to take a step back and look at that list and decide if you can create web pages to support the keywords.  If you compete in any level of ca ompetitive environment, you’ll need to have only one or two keywords focused per page.  In other words, for every keyword you need a page of content.  And not only do you need web content, you need to be able to weave those pages (aka keywords) into a sitemap that makes logical sense.

If this is your first go around at this process, you probably don’t have a list that can easily be whipped into a logical sitemap.  That is okay.  Just revisit the last three steps and adjust.

This is Your Plan of Attack

You have a list, which means you have the start of a plan.  This list and your future sitemap should be the basis for all internet marketing activity.  From your company or personal profiles on social networks to your inbound links on press releases, you need to consult this list.

And remember, you need to revisit your list and this process, because people change and search traffic trends shift.  Remember Web 2.0?  Well no one talks about it anymore and it has morphed into social media.  If you browse my website you’ll see references to Web 2.0 have gone away and social media is all over my website.

The important point is that you have a list of keywords and the start of a real plan. Congratulations!  You’re off to a great start.

Who’s Taking Care of Fido?

In my house I take care of the family dog. I’m not a big fan of our English Lab, but I’m still the one who makes sure he is fed, watered, and let in and out four hundred times a day. I am the caregiver even if I’m far from a dog lover.

I much prefer my three cats, which pretty much take care of themselves. Fill up the food bowls and call it good. Not only do my cats bath themselves, I can leave them home alone for an extended period of time. The dog, well, not so much. He is work and he needs maintenance and attention every day.

I’ve heard the more love you give your dog, the better relationship you’ll have with the animal and the more benefit you’ll obtain. I’ve yet to practice this advice myself, but I do believe it is true and I absolutely believe your website is the similar. Just like the family dog, someone has to take care of your website, nurture it, and love it. If you don’t love and nurture your website, no one else will either.

A lot of my web design clients tend to believe the websites I build will continue to improve over time. Well that’s true, but only if they are nurtured. No website, or dog for that matter, can flourish without care. Go-live is just the beginning.

Loving Your Website After Go-live

On Friday’s call I started whipping out objectives or to do items for the client. They were overwhelmed a bit, but this will pass. We’ll get a plan together and we’ll give their website the continued love it’s been missing.

Today I reflected on that conversation and I thought the list I gave the client would make a good blog post and learning opportunity for other companies. Below is a sampling of my laundry list of to do items.

1. Bounce Rates – After 30 days of activity you have enough traffic to provide insight on visitor trends. Once you’ve reach that milestone you should review your website’s bounce rate (bounce rate refers to people leaving your website immediately upon entry) to see if you are retaining visitors. Don’t just look at the overall bounce rate, look at individual pages. Start with the pages that have the highest bounce rates and work down. Consider the keyword traffic and the content. Is the content to dry, boring, is it text heavy, is it vague? Fix whatever you deem to be the problem.
2. Keywords – How are you doing on keyword ranking and actual traffic from these keywords? Review Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to see what is happening. Webmaster Tools will show you what searches you show up on and Analytics will show you want happens when someone clicks through to your website from those keywords. Set a priority of action items based on your most coveted keywords down to nice to have keywords.
3. Link Building – Search engines look at inbound links as authority and reputation. You need inbound links to a variety of your pages to be able to score ranking on competitive keywords. No inbound links means no SEO love from Google. Most people forget about this requirement. I encourage people to create a keyword to page sitemap and use this for their long-term link building efforts.
4. Fresh Content – Search engines and visitors want to see fresh content. It gives both a reason to return to your website. Fresh content means adding and/or updating existing pages and adding new blog posts on a regular basis. How often will depend on your niche and your internal resources. Whether it is three times a week or once every three weeks, make sure you continue to add something fresh.
5. Comment Moderation – Monitor comments and respond promptly to anything left by your visitors. Clean out the spam, approve real comments, and provide a thoughtful reply. If you don’t care enough to moderate, your visitors won’t care enough to comment or even read your posts.

Who’s to Blame for the Stinky Dog?

My dog is hyper, stinky, and I literally have to segregate him if new people arrive for fear he will pee all over them. I suspect some of this would change if I spent more time loving him and making a real effort to improve his behavior. As much as I hate to admit it, I give my website more love then the family dog. While my website traffic grows, my dog just grows more and more annoying to me. Yes my dear readers, that was more painful for me to write than it was for you to read. The truth does hurt sometimes and it is obvious that I need to give my dog more love and attention.

The point is this – it is my fault. Without love and attention, my dog isn’t going to change anymore than your website traffic and conversions will skyrocket.

Both my dog and your new website need nurturing, love, and ongoing attention.

This weekend I looked back at SEO related statistics for a B2B website I launched in November of 2009. A full year has passed and I wanted to see the progress this company made over a twelve-month period. After launching the new WordPress website, the client retained me to work on their internet marketing efforts. It helped free up time for the client, it gave their internet marketing a cohesiveness it would not have had otherwise, and it gave me time to nurture my new baby. I believe it was a good year for SEO and Google Analytics agrees with me.

The Data Doesn’t Lie

I decided to dig into Google Analytics and pull data for December 1st, 2009 through November 30th, 2010. What fun to review your work and reflect. Okay I have to qualify that, as it was partially my work. The client did a tremendous job following my suggestions and coming up with some of their own. They were a content machine, which helped facilitated my SEO consulting efforts. Without the collaboration, the growth you will see would not be possible.

The data shows there was substantial growth across organic search engine traffic, referrals, and direct traffic. I’d want to see a growth in all three areas because it shows we built branding along with organic search traffic from Google. What I love most is there was no pay per click activity after December. Since organic SEO traffic grew rapidly, I was able to talk the client into ditching his PPC campaign.

The Formula for SEO Magic

At this point you’re probably wondering how we did it. It wasn’t magic or SEO voodoo. We didn’t participate in any link schemes or comment spamming or even paid links or advertising banners. We simply focused on providing quality content, while also letting organic SEO and visitor personas lead the way. We tried to consider what our visitors would perceive as valuable content and we tried to make sure we looked at all personas (or visitor types) that came to the website.

While this list won’t cover everything we did, it will hit the SEO highlights:

• We performed a complete keyword discovery prior to website launch
• We selected three critical keywords, ten high additional high traffic keywords, and a bunch of long-tail keywords
• The website and blog were mapped based on visitor personas and keywords
• New WordPress website design and blog
• We focused on one keyword per page
• Each page had a unique and optimized title and meta description
• We included deep internal links through pages and blog posts
• We included keyword rich links that pointed outside the website and kept them to no more than three or so per page or post
• We performed an inbound linking campaign with very targeted pages and keywords

From a content perspective, we made sure we had a diverse set of “things” being added to the website each week. Due to this Google went from spidering the website occasionally to indexing new blog posts and pages within an hour.

Our keyword rich content included the following types of distribution:

• Two to three blog posts per week
• Monthly press releases
• Bi-weekly webinars
• Polls
• YouTube videos
• Industry reports
• White papers
• Podcasts
• An industry directory with rating system
• Weekly newsletters

A Plug for Social Media

The interesting point to our efforts was the use of social media, which is not always embraced by B2B companies. Of the top five sources of website referrals, four were social media websites. And even more interesting is that Facebook was third on the list.

Neither Facebook nor Twitter had a huge number of “likes” or “followers”, yet both drove a substantial amount of traffic over the year. I’ve previously blogged about social media being conflicting and that you cannot judge your social media success through simple metrics such as likes and followers. This client is a perfect example of why this is the case.

What About Conversions and Revenue?

Now if I were reading this blog post, I’d be asking about conversions, new customers, and revenue. So let me qualify the growth by stating the client had a great year in 2010. The company added significant headcount and came close to doubling revenue.

Whenever we would have our monthly call, we’d talk about traffic and then I would ask about leads, new customers, and sales. I wanted to make sure the client was getting the right traffic. Although I will admit, as an SEO consultant, your first instinct is to get caught up in traffic numbers. You have to deflate your head long enough to ask the client if the traffic is producing value.

The Take Away for Marketers

I want to clearly state that this SEO case study is a best-case scenario. The client and I were in complete sync, we knew each other going in, and there was a strong level of trust. I had worked in his industry and I could run on my own without supervision. This type of freedom in SEO is not the norm. An SEO consultant needs monitoring and the client needs to be involved.

Industry experience aside, the real take away is the content. Without the content, I could not have spun my SEO magic. I had to have content to market and without it, the project would have flopped. I would have had to write the blog posts, which would have distracted me from other tasks and it would have stifled the creativity and momentum.

What’s Your Magic Formula?

I believe in organic SEO and while I don’t consider it voodoo, I absolutely believe it can do magic when you have good content and the SEO project is executed properly. This client is a perfect example of that magic.

If you’re an SEO consultant, I’d love to hear your thoughts on my formula.  SEO is a moving target and I know there is always something new to learn.  Leave a comment below with your thoughts or send me a tweet on Twitter at @WebSavvyMrkting.

Social media is about engaging with your audience, increasing brand awareness, and providing value to the visitors who land upon your Facebook page or Twitter profile. Notice I started with the concept of engagement, because at the core of social media is communication. Social media is about communicating with your audience in a two-way dialogue and utilizing that communication to help meet your marketing objectives.

When I hear people or companies brag about their high number of Facebook likes or Twitter followers my mind wonders back to high school homecoming and the quest to be crowned the queen. While I had no interest in becoming homecoming queen, becoming the reining queen of Facebook would be kind of cool. But I digress. We are grown ups and this isn’t about counting votes and proving to the world that you are the most popular Facebook page within your niche. It is about good old fashion marketing delivered over the world wide web.

I am on my social media soapbox because I am tired of witnessing consultants trick companies into thinking a growth in Facebook likes or Twitter followers is success. I am annoyed because the unsuspecting small business owner will believe it and will pay money for little value and virtual no return. I am on my soapbox, because I want to help small businesses and provide tangible value.  I am angry because uneducated consultants are not just providing minimal value to small businesses, they are giving the rest of us a bad name and turning some small business owners away from social media.

I’m upset because it boils down to some simple math and a look at a few real world Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Sample Facebook Metrics for B2B and B2C Pages

One might look at website #6 and believe this brand is doing an exceptional job in their Facebook effort. After all, they have the most page likes, so they must be doing something right. Ah, no. Compare the percentages for B2B website # 1 and B2C website #6. The B2B brand is a lot more social media savvy than the B2C brand. While the number of likes for the B2C website is highest amongst the sample, the active Facebook page users and inbound website traffic from Facebook is very low. The B2B website has a much lower number of Facebook likes, yet has a much higher level of engagement both on Facebook and in traffic to their actual website.  Website # 1 is doing a better job because the page provides value or actual content.  Website # 6 just seeks out people to like it, but never actually puts anything on the page itself.

Sample Twitter Metrics for B2B and B2C Pages

Now look at the same two websites on Twitter. Both websites have a respectable number of Twitter followers, yet neither have an exceptionally high amount of traffic migrating from Twitter over to their actual website. I could go further into this data by providing mentions, tweet volume, and such, but I think I’m making my point and I don’t want to bore anyone to death.

What Do All the Social Media Numbers Really Mean?

This data can be diced and sliced in a variety of ways, but knowing these accounts like I do, I can conclude a lot just from the basic data I assembled above.

1. First and foremost, the number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers does not equal success.
2. Real social media success is more about engagement and less about the popularity contest.
3. If you don’t provide content in your social media efforts, you’re going to struggle providing value.  If someone visits a Facebook page that looks exactly like it did five months ago, the chances are they won’t come back and they won’t look further at you or your brand.
4. Look beyond the numbers within your actual social media account. Look at tangible conversions to new leads, new clients, and repeat customer purchases or interactions.
5. Before you engage in a social media campaign or with an internet marketing consultant, know what equates success. Don’t go by their promise to increase your followers of fans, because it means little if no one engages with your brand.
6. Use tools like Google Analytics to provide tangible metrics on website referrals, duration or depth of visit, goals, and conversions to see if your social media activity is making a difference and providing value.
7. You your own financials to see if social media is helping or hurting your bottom line.
8. Don’t listen to or accept promises that seem to good to be true. They probably are much better in theory than in real life. I can increase your Facebook likes by 1,000 by giving someone on Fivver.com $5. This won’t mean anything unless it converts to something tangible for your brand.
9. Don’t just focus on the short-term high of a promotion, event, or download.  I believe the B2C sector does this in many cases.  The B2C sector needs to take notice of their B2B counterparts who pay more attention to getting the audience back to their website to provide more value than just the one snippet in their status update or tweet.
10. Social media is an upward battle that doesn’t just materialize into ultimate success overnight. An audience capable of delivering ROI will take time to build.
11. If you’ve hired a social media consultant, validate their success yourself and don’t just take their canned reports or updates as success.
12. Review your new social media audience to validate it against your target demographics. Facebook has excellent reports for viewing geography, age, etc. If you sell medical products to the geriatric set in Michigan, 20,000 teenagers in India are not really going to bring social media ROI.
13. Not everyone is good at social media.  If you are concerned about your ability, hire an expert.  Just do so wisely.
14. You can’t ignore social media.  As much as I’m tired of hearing about the likes of Groupon, I know the company and their deals are here to stay.  Twitter and Facebook are also here to stay, so get used to it and embrace it.
15. Integrate social media with your website to both connect long-term with your visitors and to allow them to share your promote your content to their own network.  Good content will bring likes and followers.

If you haven’t yet engaged in social media, now is the time.  Just remember not every internet marketing consultant is legit, honest, or even educated enough to provide social media marketing. If you are outsourcing your social media, then make sure you pick someone who truly understands traditional marketing efforts, your messaging, your industry, and what you consider to be social media success.

Article Resources:

• Web Savvy Marketing on Facebook
• Web Savvy Marketing on Twitter

If you’re the average small business owner, you know enough about organic search engine optimization to make you dangerous. You know a little about SEO (search engine optimization) and you periodically check your keyword rankings to make sure you are still sitting on page one. Did you know these results are not necessarily the real results Google shares with the average visitor?

Google is now using what is called Personalized Search. Their new algorithms change search results based on what websites you have previously visited. While this is great in some cases, it proves very misleading in other cases.

I was on the phone with a prospect the other day and he mentioned he was sitting on page one for his top three keywords. Well, not so much. He was sitting on page two or three, but he thought he was on page one, because he visits his website more than other websites within the results. Thus his view of his website and his search rankings are a bit skewed and not nearly as accurate as some may believe.

As an SEO consultant it drives me crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I love Google and I all the new functionality and gadgets they offer. That being said, their little feature called Personalized Search distorts reality for many who have no idea Google is morphing results based on a user’s search history.

So how do you really know where you stand? Google’s Webmaster Tools gives you a list of your top search results and where you stand for a particular period of time. I also pay close attention to actual visitor traffic through you guessed it, Google Analytics. Did I mention I like Google? Between the two you will have a much clearer image of your current rank than what your own search can provide. There are also a variety of tools you can purchase to help keep you informed, although since I work with a lot of smaller companies with limited marketing budget, I tend to steer towards free open source packages.

The take away here is to not jump to conclusions on your keyword ranking before you’ve done a little research beyond that of Google’s search box. I start each day with a review of client keyword rank and traffic in Google’s Webmaster Tools and Analytics. Between the two I have a good idea of where we stand or what we need to work on for improving traffic and conversions. It is part of my morning coffee and a ritual I do even on the weekends.

Still confused about Google’s Personalized Search? You can learn more at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html.

October 2010 Update: Google now allows you to turn this feature off.  Thank heavens!  Just visit Google’s help article titled Personalized Search: Turning Off Personalization.

When I originally accepted this project, I could see Google had indexed about 1,000 pages within his domain.  While it would take some time to migrate and optimize this many pages, I was up for the challenge.  The goal is to give him a more SEO friendly site that he can maintain himself in WordPress. If that meant throwing in some plugins and optimizing 1,000 pages, so be it.

Last week I reviewed his Google Analytics reports, dug deeper into his content pages, and investigated his existing website’s structure.  Through Google Analytics I could see he didn’t have 1,000 pages, he had about 10,000 pages.  Why were they not showing up in Google’s index?  Well I figured this out a bit later as I reviewed page by page content on his existing website.  Of these 10,000 pages, about 3,000 or so are the exact same pages.  Okay, three different pages, but applied to 1,000 different products.  You may be asking yourself so what and thinking I am a drama queen.  To me, the drama queen, all I saw was a big red flag waving with a large Google logo hovering overheard.  This was trouble with a capital T.

These 3,000 plus pages represent duplicate content to Google.  Why would Google cloud their index with 3,000 pages of the exact same content?  Google won’t do it.  It would simply corrode the overall search results, which would frustrate Google users, so Google is not going to do it.  Google will also most likely penalize the overall site for this mass amount of duplicated content.

I have already told my client I will not migrate this duplicate content.  The SEO consultant in me cannot do it, because I know it is wrong.  The website designer in me won’t do it, because I know it will degrade the user experience as well.  So I get to now explain this to my client and hope he understands that my intentions are good.

Now I will return to his website, his Google Analytics reports, and to the broken sitemaps to see what else lurks beneath the covers of this existing website.  I believe my 3,000 pages of duplicate content is only the tip of the iceberg and I am afraid the Titanic is getting ready to go down.

I already subscribe to Avinash’s very popular blog Occam’s Razor, which provides insightful discussion on Google Analytics and the software’s newest functionality.  I enjoy his blog entries and cannot wait to immerse myself in an entire book of his Internet intelligence.

You can learn more about Avinash and his new book at www.webanalytics20.com.