The Maine SEO Blog

Create ad and keywords: Keywords

Even though it seems a little out of order to me, you’ve created your ad – so now it’s time to choose the keywords you want to bid on for that ad.

Select Keywords

Based on your ad copy, Google will give you suggestions for keywords. Even with this list, as always, I would recommend getting a keyword analysis. You might be missing opportunities with paid search, just as with organic.

You can enter as many keywords as you like; just remember – you’re going to pay every time someone searches for one and clicks on your ad. Choose wisely.

As you input keywords, Google will estimate the search traffic. Notice that this estimate is for the entire list of keywords – not on an individual basis. What do these numbers mean, do you ask?

• CPC (Cost Per Click): How much you pay per click. In this instance, Google is estimating “pet gifts” will cost me anywhere between $.62 and $1.31
• Clicks/day: The estimated number of clicks (not impressions) Google estimates I’ll receive from this keyword per day.
• Cost/day: The estimated amount 60-76 clicks will cost.

While just estimates, the traffic summary will give you an idea how much the keyword costs – as well as how relevant it might be.

Match Types

Match types are, without a doubt, critical. In order to get traffic – the right traffic – and acquire accurate impressions data, make sure you root out any keywords that don’t apply to your product, service, and ad.

Broad match will match your phrase, including any other (relevant) variations. “Phrase match” will match the phrase, but still pick up searchers who add for long tail searches. [Exact match] will match only that phrase or term. - Negative match will ensure your ad does not show up for that query.

Negative match is one of the most powerful in the group – rooting out those queries that don’t apply. You may be thinking “when someone searches for my term, they’re looking for me”. Not so. Trying Googling your keyword(s). Look for results that both a) don’t exactly relate to your industry and b) don’t relate to this particular ad.

Congratulations!

You’ve just added your first set of keywords to the campaign! Next time, we’ll delve into ad placements.

Nicki Hicks
Keyword-holic

Create ad and keywords: Create an ad

Now that you’ve got your advanced settings all in order, it’s finally time to create your first ad!

First things first: you can create a variety of ads in AdWords: text, image, video, or mobile. Each has a variety of techniques, and I’m only going to go over the text ad, as it’s the most popular.

You’ll see five lines of text in the ad manager:

1. Headline: The blue hyperlink to your landing page; total of 25 characters.
2. Description Line 1: 1st line of black text; total of 35 characters.
3. Description Line 2: 2nd line of black text; total of 35 characters.
4. Display URL: The green text displaying your landing page; total of 35 characters.
5. Destination URL: The actual destination landing page (that must match the display URL domain); total of 1024 characters.

The wrong way to write an ad

Below is an example of how not to write an ad. It’s vague, not overly enticing, and most importantly: there’s no call to action!

The right way to write ad

Here are some of the pointers Google AdWords Help gives for optimizing your ads:

• Make your ad simple and enticing.
• Have a sale or promotion? Include it! Free shipping – add it! Price, as we all know, is a huge differentiator.
• Call-to-action. Have one. ‘Nuff said.
• Include the keywords you’re bidding on in the text.
• Choose the best destination URL – more often than not, it won’t be the homepage.
• Test multiple ads. You might be surprised about which one performs better.

With a purpose in mind, I set out to try again:

Remember: you’ll want to have tested the keywords you use in the ad beforehand (which I haven’t with this example), but you get the idea.

Congratulations!

You’ve created your first ad! Tomorrow, we start on keywords.

Nicki Hicks
Puppy Presents on the Brain

When’s the last time you revamped the copy on your website?

The leaves are in the midst of falling, and now might be the perfect time to rework your website a little.

It’s about the title

It’ll be the first place any SEO suggests adding your best keywords, the title is the easiest way to increase your search engine visibility. If you don’t want to (or need to) do a lot of copyediting, this might be the perfect place to start. For some ideas, you might want to head over to Google Insights or Trends for what’s hot right now.

Content

When it comes to the copy on your pages, you know your business far better than anyone else could imagine to. However, the point is to see your company through the eyes of your customers. Optimize for the keywords they’re searching for. Do you come up in a Google search for the right queries? Move through the site like they do. Is it easy to navigate? Think like your customer.

‘Tis the season

You might need a change simply due to the nature of your business. Do you notice your customer flow changes seasonally? If you run a lodging or hotel business, the answer is obvious; but for other companies it might be more subtle. Update your copy accordingly.

Blogging makes it easy

This is where a blog comes in handy. Even if you do have a blog, you should still spice up your copy and titles every so often. But with a hot topic or news, you won’t have to as often. Just blog about it! That post has the ability to rank (just make sure you funnel people from your blog to your website).

Give it a facelift

There’s no need to update every page on your website, but maybe a facelift here and there – starting with the homepage – could really do some good! Search engines love fresh, unique content. Then again, maybe your copy is perfect the way it is. Either way, pay it a visit every once and again and just read it through. Make sure everything is still accurate and up-to-date.

Nicki Hicks
Content is the Spice of Life

Photo Credit

A few months ago, one of the folks I follow on Twitter posted a link to Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions, a great little tool that gives you insight into the world of long tail search. Or, as Wordtracker puts it: “find the questions people are asking in your market”.

It uses questions people have actually searched for and – bonus! – how many times within the past year they’ve been searched for. But don’t let the low number scare you – 1. we are talking about long tail here and 2. this is the number of people who used this exact wording.

Here are the questions about keywords:

And here are some about SEO:

The questions on social media were particularly interesting:

It just goes to show you…it might be worth taking a look at the keywords before you write your next blogpost, article, and especially webpage in order to target the long tail. Interestingly enough, as I was writing this, Jill Whalen posed a question to the Twitterverse about this very topic. Here are some of the responses.

Nicki Hicks
Long Tail Searcher

In a matter of days, I will be able to changes my Facebook URL from www.facebook.com/people/Nicki-Hicks/172700110 to quite possibly www.facebook.com/nickihicks (Update: I snagged www.facebook.com/nickihicks) or even www.facebook.com/nicki if I get really lucky! My company will be able to change its URL from www.facebook.com/pages/Portland-ME/flyte-new-media/26696935640 to www.facebook.com/flytenewmedia.

So…what’s the big deal?

The biggest bonus: sharing your URL with friends and family. Up until now, a random number code has been a difficult and not-so-easy-way to remember profiles. With vanity URLs, Facebook simply says “people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you”; the official blog also says:

We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.

Facebook, you tease us.

No, seriously. What’s the big deal? (Nerd Version)

I think it brings up a long-lived argument about the importance of keywords in URLs.

When clients ask if they should get a keyword rich domain, I always say yes. If you already have one, however, it isn’t worth porting and redirecting your current site over. However, if you’re picking a new one, then why not make it keyword rich?

As far as the URL goes, same story. If you’ve got a page with an old, not very keyword rich URL, stick with it. It’s probably built up enough equity that there’s really no reason to change it. But, if you’re working on a new page, make sure that one would make the keyword gods sing! What’s more, if you use a great CMS, your URLS are auto-generated and therefore auto-awesome.

The thing is…as a searcher, seeing a keyword rich URL (notice I did not say keyword stuffed) gives me a little more confidence in clicking than one full of random characters (!@#$%^&*).

For search engines, SEOs still go back and forth whether keyword rich domains do better than non-keyword rich domains. As far as I’m concerned, whatever difference there may be, it isn’t a significant one. So pick one if you can, but don’t worry if you can’t.

Bringing things full circle (or back to Facebook, at least)

Securing vanity URLs may not do more than be cool and help your family avoid carpal tunnel by typing less keystrokes, but then again…it will most definitely help search visibility for your name – or even better – your company’s. The clock is ticking, you’d better grab your username.

Nicki Hicks
And here, I thought we were friends!

I don’t expect clients to entirely understand search engine optimization when they come to us – or really even know what it is at all. And in all honesty, that’s fine, because that’s why I have a job. (Thanks for that.) 

But, after reading this perhaps you’ll know a lot more and be that much the wiser when you talk to your Search Marketer.

1. How bad is it to use white on white and write in a bunch of keywords?

Umm really bad. Probably as bad as you can get actually. In the olden days (probably all of 10 – 12 years ago), you could possibly get away with stuffing keywords. Today? Not so much.

2. I know SEO is important, so I’m going to do it this once and get it done with It’s a one-step process, right?

Sorry, no such luck. We’ll talk about it a little more later, but with search moving toward other venues like social media, local reviews, RSS, blogging, and other modern forms of web marketing, there’s no way you can do it once and be done. SEO requires constant massaging and experimentation.

3. What are these meta-keywords I keep hearing about? Can you make me a huge list of them?

Well I could. But it probably wouldn’t do a whole lot.

The thing with meta-keywords is 1) only Yahoo uses them and 2) if you use too many, they’ll hurt you. So, what do I suggest? Using a small group of focused keywords for each page if you’re intent on using them. And remember – even though Yahoo uses them, they don’t have much weight at all.

4. I just don’t have time for social media. Plus, I can get away without doing it.

Again, it’s really not an option any more. Soon, folks who haven’t hopped on the social media bandwagon are going to be struggling to catch up with the rest of the crowd.

So…create a LinkedIn account, get yourself on Facebook, and – if you’re feeling really socially frisky - join Twitter!

5. I’ve heard about this nofollow thing. Do I need to do that to all of my outgoing links?

Nofollowing links is sometimes a good strategy. But that doesn’t mean you should do it to every single outgoing link. 

Nor is it PageRank sculpting. To demonstrate that point, I like this short, sweet description by @Halfdeck.

(more…)

Allow me to preface this by saying: SEO is an art, not a science. So my recipe for title perfection needs to be experimented with – you will have different results with every industry. That said, titles are important. It can be argued they are the most important.

As always, start by figuring out what your customers are searching for. If you don’t optimize for the right words, then you really don’t have a shot at even being a choice on a search results page.

Keeping in mind what the page is about, here’s a hand-to-the-forehead thought: you’ll want to incorporate those keywords in the title. Now you sit down to write that fabulous title tag and wonder how long should it be? SEOs disagree about this, but: there is no correct length to a good title. Google allows for 65 characters to be shown in the SERPs and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not a big deal if the title is 65+ characters. My rule of thumb? The same as copy writing: as long as it takes to get the job done.

That said, don’t create such a long title that expands past the width of my browser (in a wide screened Mac, to boot). Along the same lines, please please PLEASE don’t stuff the title full of every synonym for your keywords that you can think of.

Alright, so what have we got now? A bunch of really great keywords. Now, put them together in a way that makes sense – something that accurately describes the page.

This next part is your choice: your company name. The thing is, as long as you have a fairly unique name, you’ll rank well for someone searching for your name. I tend to put it in every title just for good measure.

Finally, I put in the location. Obviously this would only apply for local businesses. The thing to remember is that local search is dependent on more than just the title; but having it here is absolutely helpful.

Last but not least, is the way it looks – and most people quite honestly may not think about it, but would you click on a ReSuLt tHaT LoOkEd lIkE ThIs? My personal preference is to capitalize the first letter of words that make sense – much as you would for a blog post title. Then separate major “sections” (in this case: keywords, company name, and location) with a mixture of colons, semicolons, hyphens, and vertical lines: whichever you prefer.

So, in the end we have something that looks like this:

Really Great Stupendous Clickable Exactly What I’m Looking For Phrase: My Company – Where I Am, USA

Nicki Hicks
Page Title Extraordinaire

You’ll have to excuse me, I have a little Paula Cole stuck in my head…

I feel like I’m constantly talking about the art of keywords and keyword research, but never about where keywords should actually go.  So, put your keywords in the…

Page

• Title – put the best of the best here. Changing the title is the easiest way to increase your on-page search visibility.  It’s both at the top of the page (up near your maximize/minimize/close buttons) and the link to the page on the Search Engine Results.  Include your location if your business is local.
• Header – synonyms/alternative words used in the title – you really don’t want to use the term “cheap hotel” over and over on a page.  You could mix it up with “Affordable Inns” (if that’s what people are searching for, that is).
• Copy – duh. I can not emphasize enough that copy should both incorporate keywords, while also balancing your company’s tone and making the page informative.
• Navigation – make the links in the nav short, sweet, and keyword rich!
• Links – “Click here” really isn’t going to cut it. Incorporate keywords in the anchor text – as those words have a little more search power than regular words on the page.

Code

• Meta-description – or the “search engine description”.  It should be a good synopsis of the page, incorporating those keywords, as well as your location and contact information.
• Meta-keywords – Yahoo is the only one that pays attention to these, and it doesn’t hurt to use them.  Just be sure to keep it to 10 or 15 keywords and phrases, all specific to that particular page.
• Alt Tags - image descriptions can be a great way to acquire traffic from image searchers.

Web Marketing

• Blogging and Article Marketing – As every blogpost and article is a new page, it’s a great way to focus on a niche audience or a hot topic.  You can further optimize with categories and tags too.
• Video – Optimizing for video is becoming more important with universal search – YouTube offers great options for optimizing your videos.

Nicki Hicks
Maine SEO

Twilight of Stroudwater by Charles Frederick Kimball

I think one of the most difficult parts of doing keyword research is selling the client on it.  You start with the most scientific of processes: down and dirty keyword research, where you quite literally “figure out what people are searching for”.  Seems logical enough.

Then comes the tough part: How can I use “Brangelina” in a sentence? (Just kidding, but if you notice, I totally just did it.)

In all seriousness, the hard part – the artistic part – is the writing.  SEOs can do all sorts of techy (read: geeky) and Google-approved code work and link building  to make your website rank well for specific keywords.  But at the end of the day, it’s the content that is king!

It’s the content that’s the art form: using the words people are looking for and magically interweaving them into copy in a way that makes sense to bots and, now here’s the tricky part, human beings.  No wonder copywriters make so much money.

Nicki Hicks
Wish I Could Paint Like That