Optimization

This time around we’re going to dive into the art and science of keyword research. Yes, that’s right, by the time you’re done with this 3 part article you will be a Keyword Research Ninja… OK maybe not quite a ninja, but you’ll be a lot closer to ninja status by the time we’re done.

So what does it take to master keyword research? It’s simple… research. Well… research and management. These are the two main factors that comprise any keyword strategy for targeting the search terms you desire to rank for in the search engines. While it’s true, the majority of keyword research you do will be up front; you still shouldn’t think of it as something that you’ll only do once. There are numerous scenarios where it it will be beneficial to do keyword research. e.g. Optimizing blog posts to maximize exposure, determining optimal keywords for new products or solutions pages for higher traffic, or perhaps even targeting a more niche or specific demographic.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we’ll just take some time to review the basics of keywords in this post.

Match Types

Whether you’re doing research for SEO or for Paid Search; you need to be able to make the distinction between the different types of keyword match types that are out there and what they mean for search volume.

Exact Match – represents the search volume for your exact keyword, as well as close variants of your keyword, but does not include search volume for any other terms within a search.

Broad Match – is the search volume for any search term that contains any order of your keyword as well as terms that are synonyms, related search terms, or some other relevant variation of your keyword.

Phrase Match – is similar to exact match, however, in this case phrase match shows search volume for your exact keyword with additional words before or after it, as well as, close variants of the keyword with additional words before or after it.

When performing keyword research exact match is going to be your best bet to determine whether the keyword is any good. However, don’t forget to check out phrase and broad as well, as these will still give you an idea of what the additional potential could be in targeting that word.

Long Tail vs the Short Tail

Two terms you need to become familiar with are “long tail” and “short tail” keywords. Short tail keywords refer to a short phrase of one or two words. e.g. “shoes” or “running shoes”. Long tail keywords on the other hand refer to longer phrases of words e.g. “nike running shoes”, “women’s running shoes”, “running shoes for over-pronated feet”. In this example you can see that short tail keywords are very general, and as a result they have a lot of traffic volume. But if you’re looking to optimize a women’s running shoes page to try to rank for “shoes” you’re probably not going to be too successful in ranking well for it. This is because “shoes” is a very popular term that large retailers who offer a larger variety of shoes will most likely rank better for. And even if you do rank well; you’ll probably wind up having a bigger bounce rate because the people looking for” shoes”, may not be looking for “women’s running shoes”. Relevancy is always important in picking your keywords for a page.

Tip: Sometimes you can capture and optimize for both the short and long tail keywords if the short tail version is contained within the long tail. e.g. If you’re a shoe store that carries running shoes, you’ll still be able to capture some of the “shoes” traffic if you optimize for “running shoes” on your page, because “shoes” is contained within “running shoes”.

Optimizing for your Brand

The reason for this is it’s a great way to help with branded SEO, if you include your brand name at the end of your title tag. The same is true for a branded product. If people know your product by name, you want to make certain that it’s going to show up in the search result. New websites, companies, and new products are all critical places where including your branded terms could definitely pay off. Including your brand in your title is a sure way to ensure that your page starts showing up for branded searches.

ahead of the pack

As the world wide web continues to evolve, so does search engine optimization. Techniques learned and employed over several years can be made obsolete by a single update to Google’s ranking algorithm. It pays to stay ahead of the trend so that your hard work isn’t destroyed by unexpected penalties.

Here are seven ideas that will help you ensure your SEO skills are ahead of the pack.

1. You’ll Need to Diversify Your Content

Content is still the purest and safest way of getting your website ranked and noticed, but content isn’t just about articles. Naturally, text content is great, but if you’re really serious about SEO, you’ll need to pair articles with other types of content to keep ahead of the competition.

Have you thought about launching a YouTube channel and publishing video content, or creating a podcast? Your regular visitors will enjoy the diversification of content, as long as you keep it relevant, engaging and fresh. At some point in the last couple of years, a very smart SEO marketer figured out that Groupon could be a way to publish fresh content and benefit from tremendously valuable backlinks; are you thinking outside the box?

2. You’ll Need to Invest in Links

Link building has matured, but it’s still alive and well in 2013. Don’t think of link building as an uphill struggle; use it as an opportunity to build your reputation and brand.

Google still allows backlinking providing the source is reputable. That means publishing content of a sufficient quality, and – crucially – not paying money for the link you get. Don’t be tempted to pay the site that’s giving you the link; instead, invest money in good articles, and spend time finding great homes for those articles. To Google, content is the best currency you can spend.

3. You’ll Need to Focus on Trends

When we speak about trends in SEO, we sometimes mean social trends – trending topics, in other words. But the trends we’re focusing on here are in the social industry itself. Just as SEO is maturing, so is social media, and this affects both user behavior and brand activity.

Instagram and Vine have built massive user bases around free content sharing apps, and smart brands are getting involved in those social streams already. Conversely, Facebook is starting to charge brands for certain features, making its contribution to social signals more complex and controversial.

4. Local Businesses Still Need Local SEO

Google has been placing more and more emphasis on local search over the last 12 months, and it’s clear that business owners need to get involved as soon as possible if they are to capitalize on this trend. Local SEO is particularly vital for brick and mortar businesses that want to increase foot traffic through improved search engine visibility.

Local SEO is really straightforward, and the tools Google provides are a goldmine of valuable links, keyword reinforcement and the chance to reinforce a brand. In particular, look at David Mihm’s concept of ‘barnacle reviews’ – local reviews of other brands that can help you harness passing trade.

5. You’ll Need to Focus on Community

The web is becoming more and more social, and this presents fantastic opportunities for virtual networking and SEO. Community interaction is an enjoyable way to spread your brand reputation and garner additional SEO benefits on the side.

Community can mean everything from starting your own LinkedIn group to signing up with a local business forum. The idea is to offer free, no-strings advice while passively promoting your brand. If you can score any followed links along the way, even better.

6. You’ll Need to Improve Your Mobile Presence

Smartphone and tablet use is exploding, and the best SEO professionals are already optimizing for mobile. If you’re not, you’ll need to start as soon as possible. An increasing number of people are searching and spending using their mobile device, and the truly smart companies are taking full advantage of that already.

So how can you do this? Consider responsive design and the length of your page titles to ensure mobile users will find them useful and attractive. Also, be careful of the challenge presented by duplicate content penalties. Test any redirects thoroughly to ensure you won’t be penalized for mistakes.

7. You’ll Need to Measure Results

The only way you’ll know your SEO is working is to measure the impact it’s having on your search engine visibility. From free tools to paid analytics packages, there are many ways to keep an eye on your progress.

Many marketers have lost faith in display advertising. The detractors say it is “branding” that folks no longer pay any attention to. I am here to tell you to that it is very much still viable form of advertising that every business should consider regardless of if they are B2C or B2B. Below are 5 reasons why display is here and here to stay.

1. It is an Opportunity for a Good First Impression (pun intended)   These days your brand often gets its “first look” from prospective customers or clients online.
2. Consciously or subconsciously when your brand is in front of people, it builds trust. Eventually, when that person forms a need after seeing your brand repeatedly, it is more likely to be considered than one they have never heard of or seen.
3. It is a Powerful Overall Branding Tool
   As long as you take into account basic best practices for display advertising it can not only send traffic, but send traffic that is targeted and relevant to your marketing plan. It is important to consider your target audience, publisher’s site, your messaging, optimization efforts and overall strategy to bring them back after the initial visit.
4. It is Retargeting’s Best Friend
   That initial traffic that is sent is just the first step (or first touch) with your brand and messaging. Once on-site, marketers can utilize tools like retargeting through services like Adroll. It allows a business to not only stay in front of it’s audience off-site, but also segment down based on the site-map from where the bounce occurs. This allows the messaging to be very granularly targeted based on last seen site content, making the opportunity for a return visit much higher.
5. It is Cost Effective and a Solid ROI
   As long as the publisher sites, potential network runs, and retargeting vendors are researched diligently; display can be one of the best deals out there for marketers; even for businesses on a tight budget. A well thought out set of direct buys with a deep retargeting effort can fill all parts of the funnel and keep your web-site order forms and/or sales people busy.
6. It Touches on All Points of Attribution
   Display is not only a branding effort, but an important marketing channel that can hit on many point along the path of attribution. What other channel can be the first, middle and last touch for a company/brand? Depending on your campaigns goals, display can play an integral role in getting both conversions (sales leads) and direct sales (ecommerce).

Display advertising allows for flexibility regardless of the goals of the spend, whether they are focused around “wide net” network media buys or “laser beam” focused retargeting efforts. It has been and remains a viable form of digital marketing, both for driving traffic and direct conversions. What types of display have you tried? What worked, what flopped?

Like many other people, you might feel inclined to answer this question with a “yes” or a “no”. But what you might be surprised to learn is that when it comes to creative problem solving, everyone is capable of it.

Creative problem solving isn’t a trait; it’s a process.

Clarifying – In order to solve a problem, you first need to define what the problem is. Clarifying is the part of the creative process where you spend time “clarifying” what the problem is and getting all the facts and parameters you need in order to solve that problem.

Ideating – This is where you begin to brainstorm potential ideas or solutions that will solve the problem. The ideas generated are what you use to design the solution to the problem.

Developing – Developing is the part of the process where you’ll refine and perfect your idea/design and form it into the best workable solution.

Implementing – This is the final stage, and it’s where you deliver or execute on the solution you’ve developed. e.g. launching a new business, delivering a presentation, etc.

Right Hand vs. Left Hand

The best analogy for this is writing with your right or left hand. The majority of us are right or left handed. The hand that we write the most with is considered our dominant hand. That’s not to say we can’t write with our non-dominant hand, however, to do so takes additional focus and energy. The same holds true in the creative process. We all have our preferred part(s) of the process that we like to focus our energy and spend our time in, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a conscious effort to spend time and work at focusing on the others.

People can have peak preferences in one or multiple parts of the process.  There are also people that don’t have any peak preferences, but instead show moderate energy for all 4 stages. These people are called “integrators”.  Now while it’s a good thing that integrators spend time in all 4 parts of the process, the main watch out is that they don’t carry as much energy in each of those stages. In fact because they spend time in all of the stages, you’ll sometimes also find that they are running low on energy when it comes time to implement.

Therefore knowing which peak preferences you or your team has is valuable in identifying where potential blind spots may be.

Someone that has peak preferences in ideation and implementation is likely to spend the majority of their time coming up with a lot of ideas, however thry may not address the problem correctly, and then they may go on to implement those ideas without ever having fully developed them.

The same holds true in a team or organizational dynamic. If a team is lacking any person with a particular preference they may find themselves overlooking a critical stage in the process.  Knowing your preferences and being aware of where other’s preferences lie will improve both communication and productivity within the team and ensure that the right amount of time is being spent in each area.

Content is one generic word. And yet, there is not a day that goes by where I don’t read about how you need “quality content,” but in all cases the blog, article, etc. never says how this is achieved or what quality content is.

I am of the mind that if you write or design long enough, you will eventually create content that becomes must read/ must share (my definition of quality content). The trick is to make quality a process so that instead of coming up with something great once in a while, you will come up with something great every time you publish.

This is going to be a rather long series and to kick it off right we are going to talk about the tools you need to create quality content.

First, the Hardware

You need two tools to create quality content: your primary editing software and analytical tools.

It goes without saying that you need some sort of software to create your piece in the first place. Word processing software, design software, photo editing, etc. whatever it is – you need something. And that’s pretty much all I have for this one. I use Notepad for writing, Photoshop for design and photo editing, InDesign for page layout, and Textpad for programming and html code. Please, don’t spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect tool, they don’t exist. Instead, find a tool you are comfortable with and master it.

Analytical tools are absolutely necessary for creating a process of quality. Google Analytics is a good place to start as any because it is free and very powerful. Analytical tools tell you what content is popular, what topics people really want to read, and what content no one cares about. As you start rolling out content, it’s imperative you keep tabs on what is popular and what isn’t. Also, if you are using content to generate actions (such as leads or sales), you can use the data from your analytical tool to find which forms of content are converting and which are not. I can write for pages on this, so we will come back to using analytics in a future blog. For now just know, it is necessary.

Now, the Software

When it comes to the softer side of things you require two key ingredients: people and material.

More than any other tool you can have the best one is a group of people you can bounce ideas off of. Brainstorming with friends, colleagues, coworkers, peers, what have you gives you a wealth of benefits. They can give you a variety of perspectives and angles you probably didn’t think of. People are not just good for bouncing ideas off of; having an editor is paramount for high level creation.

If you want to produce quality every time you need to cultivate a group of people willing to help you from planning to finish. If you don’t have any peers, friends, family, etc. that can help, You should also look for an editor. Editors not only check grammar, but also check for content. They can see if you present a weak argument, lose focus, and a lot more. Again if you can’t find someone who can do this from the groups of people you normally associate with, find yourself a work group.

Great writers read a lot. Great designers analyze and deconstruct the designs of others. Directors and camera crew look at the work of others and try to incorporate new techniques. To create anything you need material to draw from. Personally, I read trade magazines, blogs, technical papers, and also play with product demos for two hours each day. If you are going to write on a topic you need to do your research. However, if you already thoroughly understand the topic you can research deeper and can therefore create a more meaningful piece.

With the nature of the Internet being what it is, anyone can write at a certain level. For comparison purposes we will call this level 1 writing. With level 1 content, you see regurgitated information based on a few key articles. You probably also have noticed that the vast majority of content on the Internet is level 1. In the table to the right, quality content begins around Level 3. As you can see, the material you use GREATLY affects the quality of what you create.

In order to create pieces from primary sources it is essential that you read and consume information. However, you must be active in what you consume. One of the things I do is I jot down favorite authors, experts that are quoted in pieces, and then find them on social networks and try to interact with them. By increasing your network you create a well of material for your own writing and, as a bonus, you can possibly collaborate with others.
Read more at http://www.singlehop.com/blog/content-is-a-four-letter-word/#D6K4eQ0xWX3IQCj6.99

up with the industry’s changes in order to remain

relevant

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as the means of doing something over and over again but expecting different results. In a vast technology industry with a rapidly growing company, it only makes sense that we take Einstein’s words to heart. We cannot expect that doing the same things over and over again will allow our company to continue its upward trajectory and heed greater results. In this industry, the only constant is that nothing is constant. It’s important to have an understanding of how to keep up with the industry’s changes in order to remain relevant.

One of the most valuable assets to any company is a group of employees with the desire to learn and help each other grow. And one of the many great parts about our company is all of the employees’ willingness to assist each other in broadening their knowledge base of how things work and different techniques we may not have previously thought of. On the sales floor alone, being able to bounce ideas off each other and put together the best solutions for our clients is a great resource to have. We also have an outstanding support team that’s always willing to teach everyone new tactics or ways to find answers to any questions we might have. With constant changes taking place and everyone working together, it’s less likely that we’ll think of each other as co-workers and more like teammates with the same goal in mind. A winning team results in a winning company, which is the best combination for our clients.

So, how do we achieve greatness among a team of employees in this ever-changing industry? It comes from the top! We start with a core of valuable senior management executives who possess the drive and dedication to watch the company grow and their employees thrive. The management team works around the clock to ensure our teams have the most up-to-date knowledge on products and procedures. Communication from the top to the team of employees helps us ensure our clients are taken care of in the best way possible. For this to happen, we obviously need to maintain training programs for everyone.

Trainings can be one of the most beneficial ways to spread knowledge to the masses. With sales trainings on techniques, training with companies we’ve partnered with on products, and customer service etiquette trainings, our fearless leaders have stepped up to the plate to ensure we have a plethora of resources to keep our team up-to-date and ready for action. These trainings provide great opportunities for us to learn about our new product offerings and various ways to present these materials to our clients to ensure they have the most successful tenure with SingleHop. It definitely helps give our team a platform to base their understanding on, so we can grow from there. Trainings also help us learn these new techniques to thrive in this competitive industry.

 
Read more at http://www.singlehop.com/blog/how-to-keep-up-in-an-ever-changing-industry/#uvLdRAdYWjetPfI1.99

How many cloud and infrastructure providers tout technical support as the main and only reason to sign up with them? You’ve read it a hundred times and a hundred different ways. They all say the same thing: “we offer great support.” And I’m sure many of them do, but that’s not really my point.

Recently, I was in a management meeting and our team was discussing this very concept. It really surprises us how much focus support gets in the marketplace, when it’s only one part of the experience. A meaningful part, but only part nonetheless.
See providing quality tech support is not easy. But once you’ve hired the right people, given them the right tools, and empowered them to help customers, it’s not that hard. As long as you can give the right answers, solve the technical problems, and be empathetic, you can offer good quality technical support.

But what about service? How does that support experience jive with the overall experience your company gives customers? When does a customer stop getting support and start getting service?

Many folks don’t realize this, but Support and Service are two different things. For us, Service starts BEFORE you are a customer – it starts when we first speak for the very first time.

What does this mean? It means being transparent, being upfront; a no-BS approach to the sales process. It means never underselling just to meet your budget or overselling just because we can – finding the best fit is important.
And while we’re talking about best fit, some companies seem to think that a “Best Fit” is all about infrastructure choices. It’s not. It’s about a best organizational fit, the best service fit, the best experience fit.

Ever wonder why some customers are happy with one level of service that others are not? It’s the same infrastructure; it’s just not a good fit for other reasons. That’s important if you think about it. At a high level, service fit is the real definition of a best fit. Best fit is the overall experience matches what the customer wants, not what the provider wants to provide.