If you’re bored by the idea already, don’t you worry your pretty little head. I’ll have some treats for you as well. Let’s face it…

SEO (search engine optimization) for most people is about as much fun as eating  sand. And, a series of articles reviewing SEO software isn’t going to win any literary awards for that matter, either.

But hey… one never knows. Someone may pick up on the idea and create a great horror flick featuring the Googlebot and his minions. I’ll try to make this at least marginally entertaining.

And with that, let’s talk strategy…

If you’re going to review anything, it’s best to have a checklist. If you’ve ever gone into a grocery store hungry, you know what happens. It’s the same with reviewing software, web sites, or someone else’s copy… without a checklist, our emotional brain takes over the whole evaluation process, and we end up missing the whole point.

It’s why pilots have a checklist, and surgeons are beginning to catch on to the concept.

For SEO Software, as with any software tool, the tool is only as good as your knowledge and use of the tool. SO, going into your review, it’s good to know that SEO software is designed to do one or more of the following:

1. Some provide your current optimization status…

Most tools do a decent job of telling you where you’re at SEO-wise. They’ll give you a long list of things you can or should do to improve your SEO. That’s good, but these tools often don’t help you to actually improve your ranking. They might offer suggestions, like “get more quality links back to your site”, but unless you have some idea how that works, you’ll be left hanging high and dry.

2. Some help improve your ranking…

These tools, as you’ll see, will help you to gain back links, build your “SEO backbone” and improve your search engine ranking. They are labor intensive, even for tools, but they can save a tremendous amount of time.

3. Others provide competitive and historical information.

Competitive information can be useful because you’ll discover ways to beat your competition at the SEO game, find back doors to more web traffic, and find ways to improve. They help you to get more traffic from long tail keywords and put less attention on the more competitive keywords.

As far as I know, no tool does all three. Some do #1 and #2, others #1 and #3, and a few just focus on helping you to improve your search engine ranking. (Those are the most complicated tools and require an advanced degree in Geekness).

I like to keep things simple, so here are the three areas in which I’ll be ranking the various tools:

1. Ease of Use.  I’ll rank each tool in terms of ease of use. How much do you have to know to use the tool?  How hard is it to use? How much time does it take to get what you need, whether it’s information, status, keyword research, or an update on your progress.  In the case of the tools that automate the process of ranking improvement (usually link-building tools), I’ll pay particular attention to the ease-of-use factor. I want to know if this is something that a novice can handle, or if it’s got to be performed by an SEO-literate, certified nerd.

2. Bottom line performance.  I don’t care if it has a zillion features. Will it help me to get ranked higher for my selected keyword phrases?

3. Cost-Value ratio.  Some of these tools have a hefty monthly subscription fee. Others are the “buy once, get updates forever” type of software.  I’ll look at the annual cost versus the value in terms of how well the product can help you increase your search engine ranking.

A tool that is easy to use, helps drive more traffic to the web site by giving me higher search engine ranking for a number of keywords, won’t cost me a fortune over time, and can be handed over to a subcontractor to run for me would be the ideal SEO software tool.

Does such a beast exist?

We shall see…

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He hadn’t really done much search engine optimization of his site. He wasn’t even near the top ten for his primary keyword phrase. And yet…

Sam discovered that he had top search engine ranking (number 1) for a keyword phrase he wasn’t using – ANYWHERE on his web site.

In fact, it gets even more mystifying. Sam had top search engine ranking for the phrase “universal folder gluers”, even though the word “universal” was nowhere to be found on his web site. Nada. Not on a single page, link, or even graphic image.

“How can this be?” Sam asked.

Solving The Puzzle of Top Search Engine Ranking

I decided to do a little investigating.

First, I did a quick review of Sam’s site (Folder Gluers). Yup. “Universal” wasn’t anywhere on the site.

His site was using frames (not the best of ideas), so the “Title” for each page was the same – just the URL. He was using his primary keyword phrase on his pages, so there wasn’t much to go by there.

Next, I used the SEOBOOK Firefox Toolbar to see if there might be some back links from other sites using the word “Universal” somewhere on the page.

Hmmm….

I found a very strange Spanish-language site: www.cosmos.com.mx/5/U__3.htm

Aha!

There it was:

Mystery Solved?

The mystery wasn’t quite solved…

My next stop was to Archive.org, where I did a search for folder-gluers.com.  Sure enough, there was the history. At one time Universal Equipment owned the rights to folder-gluers.com and had their own little web site there.

What This Goes To Show You

There’s are two HUGE lessons here, which I hope you get:

1.  The power of back links in search engine ranking

All it took was one simple back link from an obscure site and Google was able to associate “Universal folder gluers” to folder-gluers.com.

Imagine what you could do with hundreds, or even thousands of quality back links to your web site!

2.  Do your research

Do you have a previously-owned URL?  Especially if you are surprised by the fact that your chosen URL is available, it would be wise to do a little research. If your URL was previously owned, then do a little digging to see if your URL is already ranked for certain keyword phrases.

If so, it won’t take much to get even higher search engine rankings for those keyword phrases because, according to Google, you’ve got some “history.”

I think Mr. Holmes would have been proud…

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It’s a good report, and while the summary information is useful, it can be easily taken out of context to mean something other than what I believe it really means. If you actually read the report and examine the PowerPoint slides, you’ll come away feeling differently about the results than by reading a simple summary.

Here’s what they learned:

• Respondents appreciate the halo effect that a website or publication can have on their brand; 43% said that sponsoring a website, page or digital publication is the most effective digital tool when it comes to affecting brand perceptions.
• SEO and Email and e-newsletter marketing are by far the most popular method of digital marketing among respondents, used by three-quarters.
• Respondents were by far the least happy with ad networks, with half saying that the results did not meet expectations.
• The tools seen as most effective for generating conversions were SEO (48%), email and e-newsletter marketing (46%), and pay-per-click/search marketing (32%).
• In the coming six months, respondents expect that ad networks will see the biggest declines in allocation of marketing spend; viral marketing and SEO will likely see the biggest increases. Behavioral Targeting is the category that is least likely to see any changes in spend.

My Interpretation of the Forbes Survey

Before you jump to any conclusions,you have to look at who responded, their marketing budget, and how this might then apply to you.

These were folks with big budgets. 83% of the respondents were Director level (Chief Marketing Officer), and the AVERAGE budget for digital media (online stuff) was $4.7 million dollars.

Those with smaller budgets saw e-mail and e-newsletter as being more effective than PPC (because they used it more), and the reverse was true for those with larger budgets. Makes sense to me.

Also, you should understand that they measured “effectiveness” by the bottom line of whether or not the marketing dollars spent resulted in sales. They weren’t measuring leads, and they didn’t care one iota for touchy-feely relationship stuff.

Although these were a few big companies, I believe the results are applicable to every sized business, and here’s why:

Search Engine Optimization is Still a Requirement

Sure, Twitter is loads of fun. But, the quality of the leads you get from the search engines is higher than you’d get with advertising, PPC,and even the beloved Twitter. The reason for this is simple. People use search engines to look for information and get help with a problem.

They inherently trust the sites that come up first in the search engine.  Heck, if Google thinks these sites are worth ranking high, then they must be good.

These are more qualified and more highly targeted prospects because they are looking for something specific, which hopefully they find on the company web site.

E-Mail Marketing Still Works

Statistically, open rates are actually rising. As spam filters get more sophisticated, people are opening and reading more of their email, particularly if it is from a company with whom they’ve already done business. [Note: a recent study shows that Mondays are best for sending emails]

The study doesn’t say anything about how they do email marketing, but my best guess is that it’s a combination of “information” useful to the reader, special offers, and advance notice of new products or services.

PPC Works… If You’ve Got the Money

These big companies agree that PPC and CPM (banner ads) work pretty well. They’ve also got almost $5 million to spend on digital marketing. As a smaller company, you have to avoid competing with these bigger budget companies for your keyword phrases.

I’d advise either hiring a PPC specialist or getting some good training in PPC from people who do it full-time (internet marketers in particular). If you want some great training AND tools for doing PPC, my favorite is at PPC Kahuna. Funny name for a product/company, but they know their stuff and have “bomber” tools.

And Then There’s Social Media and Social Networking…

Remember, these are BIG companies with huge budgets. Social media and social networking is fairly new to them, so they haven’t quite got the metrics down to measure their results.

This doesn’t mean that they aren’t using Twitter, Facebook, viral video and other social tools. By this time, I suspect that most are in some capacity. As a CMO, though, they don’t see it if they don’t have the stats to prove that it works.

While you and I may know that the social web is here to stay, and that things like Twitter are highly useful marketing tools, they’re not sure because they don’t have the numbers to prove it works yet.

Wait… and see.  Next year will probably bring quite different results, although you’ll STILL see SEO at the top of the list. The difference will be that their SEO efforts are DRIVEN BY social networking and social media.

Just my opinion… What do you think?

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I read this last Friday

“In a new study on factors that affect search engine rankings of Web pages, marketing analytics company Covario reported that the number of inbound links from other Web sites is the single most important factor in a page showing up prominently in search results.”

Well, duh. Internet marketers have known this for years. Does this mean that we’re suddenly going to be deluged again with link farms and link exchange requests? Perhaps, but that’s not at all the point of the results of this study.

The importance of “back links” or “inbound links” for search engine optimization isn’t new. Somehow, though, it’s gotten lost in the flurry of activity over social networking. Social media has truly reshaped the search engine optimization landscape… but not by removing the importance of inbound links to your web site.

How Social Media Has Changed SEO

You have to look at SEO from the perspective of the search engines. If they provide the searcher with relevant listings, then the searcher will continue to use their search engine (and thereby click on ads, which generate revenue for the search engine company).

How do they know if a web page or web site is relevant to a search?  They use “spiders” (little programs) to “crawl” the web pages. They do their best to figure out what the web page is “about.” That’s where on-site search engine optimization comes in.

Then, they see if anyone else is talking about or referring to that web site. In times past, they just counted the number of links. Now, however, they look at the relative importance of the source of a link AND how the link to your web site is displayed.

In the past year or so, it tests indicate that the search engines are giving more credence to inbound links that come from social media sites and research sites, rather than from other web sites or blogs.

In Covario’s study, they found that external inbound links from educational (.edu) sites, the Delicious social bookmarking site, government (.gov) sites, the blog indexer Technorati.com and Wikipedia, in that order, as returning particularly high page rankings.

I suspect that in the coming months, we’ll see other social media sites (Digg, Social Median, etc.) start to play a much larger role in search engine rankings as well.

What These SEO Changes Mean For You

A few years ago the catch phrase for internet marketers was “Content is King.”  They said this partly because they were all selling PLR (Public Label Rights) articles or various programs to help you distribute your articles to article directories. The phrase was also true. The more content you created and syndicated to article directories and blogs, the higher your web site ranked for your selected search phrases.

Content is still king, but in a different way. The same folks still have their PLR programs, and many of them are still posting variations of their articles to humongous networks of blogs. These are members-only networks where the goal is to create massive numbers of blogs onto which you can share blog posts. It’s made to appear “natural” to the search engines. Obviously, it still works.

However… if you want to get ahead of the search engine optimization curve, you’ll turn your sights toward creating more inbound links from social media sites. Google is “onto” the blog network concept, and I suspect that their days are numbered.

Google doesn’t want to know that your web site (blog) is linked to from thousands of other blogs whose sole purpose is to sell affiliate products.

They want to know that others believe your web site contains value to the reader (and it should). They can no longer “know” this because a bunch of meaningless blogs point to you. They’ll know it because your blog article is “Clipped”, “Dugg” or “Bookmarked” by other users of social media and social networking sites.

The Bottom Line

By all means Twitter away. Get your Facebook fan page up and running. But if you want to get and stay at the top of the search engine listings, create valuable content. Then, find ways to get your valuable content talked about on the social media web sites. In the long run, most of your free web traffic will continue to come from the search engines.

Do what’s going to work tomorrow instead of what worked yesterday.

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The trick is something SEO guru Leslie Rohde talks about, and it is a concept called First Link Priority.

More than likely you aren’t following the rule of First Link Priority with your web site, and it is highly unlikely that you’re doing it with your blog.

What is First Link Priority and Why Should You Care?

Leslie explains it this way:

The first link that a search engine spider encounters in your web page’s code is the link to which the spider gives the MOST WEIGHT.

Another way of saying this is that when the search engine spider encounters your web page, it wants to learn what your web site is all about. When it says, “this site is about X” it pays particular attention to the first link in your HTML code.

And since most web sites do (and should) have the navigation bar at the top of the page (deemed best location according to recent eye tracking studies), the first link the spider will see is your link to “Home”.

Yikes!  The spider gives special weight to “Home”? That’s not so good.

How to Change Your First Link Priority

Your web folks should be able to make the change easily with most web sites. Ideally, what you’ll want is to change the “Anchor text” (the text that appears on the page) to include your primary keyword.

For example, for my personal business site, I want to emphasize that I am a “B2B Web Copywriter”.  If I were to change “Home” to “B2B Web Copywriter Home”, the HTML code would look like this:

<a href=”http://www.sidsmith.com/”>B2B Web Copywriter Home</a>

That seems fairly straightforward, doesn’t it?

But what about with a Blog?  Typically, you can’t change the anchor text for “Home” in your blog template in your Admin area. But, never fear. There is a way…

More than likely the navigation bar for your template is in a file called “header.php”.  You can edit it within your Wordpress Admin area as follows:

1.  Navigate to the php code editor:

You’ll click on “Appearance” and then “Editor”.

2. Open the “header.php” file:

3. Change the HTML code.

Scroll down until you find the Navigation bar code. It might look something like this:

You’ll note that in the above code, I added a “title”. This is the text that will appear if you hover over the link. It adds a little extra weight to the keywords I want to emphasize for the page.

Then, all I’d have to do is change the “Home”  to “B2B Web Copywriting Home”.

I’d save the file and be done with it.

Why not try this yourself. It’s not hard, and it just might give you that one little extra push that rolls your site onto the first page of Google for your primary keyword phrase.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes.

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The problem from a marketing (lead generation) standpoint is that it was obviously designed by a creative designer and not a marketer. The entire web site is built with Flash, a popular tool amongst designers, but useless as far as SEO and marketing are concerned.

There’s quite a bit I can say about the site, and will once I’ve completed my assessment. The one thing that stood out, though, is a topic that’s not often discussed, but is critical for a business like this.

Their business is localized to the Portland area, so why shouldn’t their web site also be localized?

What is Localized SEO?

Imagine that you are a graphic designer looking for a job in the Portland area. You’re thinking, “I want a job in Portland as a graphic designer.”  You’re not thinking any old graphic design job anywhere in the world, but here in beautiful Portland. You’re creative, not technically savvy, though. So, you do a search for “graphic design jobs”.  The result yields thousands of results, most of which are in the Bay Area, New York, or Los Angeles. Yuck.

You’re a smart person, so you refine your search to “graphic design jobs in Portland”.  Ahh…. there you go. Most of the top search results are agencies, which isn’t a bad thing, as you’re certainly not opposed to working through an agency.

Our “creative employment agency”?  Not to be found anywhere in the first 30 pages of Google… for ANY relevant search term.

That’s localized SEO: optimizing your web site for the kinds of searches your prospects actually perform.

Advantages of Localized Search Optimization

1. Less competition. Since few companies bother to optimize their web sites for localized searches, you’ll be more likely to come out on top if you do even just a few tweaks.
2. More targeted results. You won’t get folks from Southern California applying for your job openings, and the companies who hire your clients will know that you’re the exact company they want.
3. It helps your other search rankings.  In my experience, if the search engines find that your site provides value to the end user (they stay on the site longer, click on your links, and interact with you), they’ll give you a higher ranking for other related keywords. (Disclaimer: this is merely my observation and my theory has not been properly vetted).

Because this particular web site was created entirely with Flash, they’d have to re-design the site to fully optimize it for localized search.  If this is the case for your site, there is a viable option…

How to Optimize Without Changing Your Web Site

The company I’m reviewing also has a blog. They do about 1-2 new posts per month, again with no regards for the search engines. As far as I can tell, they get very little traffic to the blog and only created it because “we were told we needed a blog.”

What you can do is to create a blog that complements your web site, and that IS optimized for localized search. It’s much easier to optimize a blog because you can create categories for each of the major search phrases, and then add your localized phrase (“Portland”) to the blog posts. Trust me, the search engines will find you… AND if you take the time to write articles that are helpful to your target market, they WILL look you up.

How are you doing with your web site? Post your comments below.

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There are several tactical steps that you’ll take, as well as some strategic moves. Most bloggers won’t take the time to strategize, but are more than willing to do the few necessary tactical search engine optimization steps. In this article, I’ll cover only the tactical steps, leaving the all-important strategic piece for another time.

Tactical steps to optimizing your blog for the search engines.

1.  Optimize your main URL.

This is both strategic and tactical, but should be mentioned. Maybe your company name is ABC Widgets, and your main web site is www.abcwidgetco.com.  That URL doesn’t mean much to the search engines. However, you make and sell compact hair driers, amongst other things.

Ideally, you’ll create a separate blog for each specific niche market in which you sell or serve. So, you might purchase the domain name ‘www.compacthairdriers.com’ for your blog.

Key Takeaway: If and when possible, include your primary niche market in your URL.

2.  Optimize your Wordpress Permalink settings

Wordpress allows you to specify the look of your article URL’s.  The default is indecipherable by the search engines, so you’ll want to change this. Simply go to your Wordpress ‘Dashboard’, click on the “Settings” link, and then click on “Permalinks”.  The most common setting looks like this:

If the title of your blog post is “Compact Hair Driers For Less Than a Buck”, your URL will look like this:

http://www.compacthairdriers.com/compact-hair-driers-for-less-than-a-buck

Now, if someone searches for “compact hair driers”, there is a much better chance that they’ll find your article.

Key Takeaway: Include your primary keyword phrase in the post title

3.  Add a Search Engine Optimization Plugin

Wordpress is so amazing because there are thousands of “plugins” — community-created programs — that add all kinds of functionality to your blog.  There are a half dozen or so quality plugins that add search engine optimization functionality to your blog, but my favorite is called “Platinum SEO“.

You can download and install the plugin directly from your Wordpress control panel (a feature of the latest version of Wordpress).  This plugin lets you:

1. Customize the HTML  ”Title Tag” for your home page. This is what shows up in the search engines.
2. Customize the home page description and keywords.
3. Customize the HTML Title tag for each post.  The Title tag is what actually shows up on the search engine results page as the title of the article, so you want this to match your post title. Set the “Post Title Format” to “%post_title%”.
4. Customize a whole host of other options. It’s best to leave it at the default settings unless you know what you’re doing. The default settings work perfectly well for most Wordpress installations.

4.  Optimize each blog post (see images below).

1. Add “Tags” with your key phrases.
2. Include the primary keyword phrase for your post in the post title.
3. Fill in the “Platinum SEO” fields with your title and a good “lead” in the description. The lead should contain your primary keyword phrase as well, and should be compelling enough for the user to read the article.
4. Never use a default “Category.” Create a new category or add the post to a category that means something to your web site visitor.
5. If it makes sense for the flow of your article, include your keyword phrase or related phrases in your article subtitles. In Wordpress, you can define these as “Header 1″, “Header 2″ or “Header 3″ formats. Take the time to define your headers and subheads. It helps the search engines to determine the subject matter (keyword phrases) of your article.

That’s it!  Now your blog posts will be optimized for the search engines.

Accompanying Images:

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B2B companies have marketing departments. They also have IT (information technology) departments. In some ways, this clear departmental distinction is a good thing, but in the world of internet marketing, having a clear separation of powers doesn’t work.

As I review and analyze different B2B web sites, this battle between marketing and the geeks over at IT is abundantly clear when it comes to search engine optimization.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. ” ~ Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride

The IT folks design the web site, focusing first on the cool factor. They push marketing for copy. Marketing hates IT, and would rather do brochures, ads, and other media about which they are more knowledgeable and comfortable. So, they write some terse, mostly meaningless language in words only they would use and send it over to IT to stuff into the web site.

This brings me to…

Reason for B2B SEO failure #1:  Keyword phrase mismatch

Your IT department in their infinite geekiness emphasize the “most obvious” keywords in their optimization efforts.  Since SEO is usually an afterthought, this means that they add a “keywords meta tag” to the web site that contains the most broad and general terms. There are two things wrong with this plan:

1. Google pretty much ignores the keywords meta tag (as far as I can tell).
2. These broad phrases have MILLIONS of competitors, which means your site will never see the light of day.

Plus, the copy marketing sends over isn’t at all written for the search engines. In fact, it often isn’t even good marketing copy.  Here’s an example from a web site I’m reviewing:

” Academic Network is your comprehensive source for the expertise and technology that can turn medical and nutrition issues into marketplace opportunities.”

Say what?

I have no idea what they mean. If I asked the marketing VP to explain this, he or she would probably tell me that they “provide healthcare-related call center and marketing support for companies who sell food, beverages, and healthcare-related products to consumers.”

Note two things about the way I rephrases their statement:

1. I used keyword phrases their prospects might actually use in a search, such as “healthcare call center”.
2. It makes more sense because I’m using words and phrases a normal (non-marketing) human might use.

If they have to explain to you what it means, then the copy should be rewritten. Period.

This brings me to…

Reason for B2B SEO failure #2:  Using “Marketing Speak”

Let’s look at the headline and lead (first couple of sentences) for Academic Network’s web site:

Welcome to Academic Network, a Stericycle company

Academic Network, a Stericycle company, specializes in communication services and strategies for our clients in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food and beverage, nutraceutical, and healthcare fields.

There are three things wrong with their headline and lead:

1.  It doesn’t give the search engines anything they can use to tie the web page to specific and relevant keywords.

2.  It is NOT compelling. Does it make you want to read further?

3.  It doesn’t tell me what I need to know.  I don’t know what you mean by “communication services and strategies.”  I can guess that they’re talking about an outsourced call center and marketing services for companies who sell healthcare, food and beverages to consumers.And what the heck is “a Stericycle Company”?

B2B companies shouldn’t necessarily follow the strict guidance of internet marketers, who will tell you to always put your primary keyword phrase in the headline.  Many B2B companies are like Academic Network – they offer a variety of services. They key to SEO for B2B is to narrow your focus. Focus your home page on your most important (profitable) service, and then focus sub-pages on each other service.

The reason for this is that most of the time the search engine visitor will land on your home page.  Once there, you can direct them to the appropriate pages for each other service or product you offer.

For B2B companies, my recommendation is to focus the headline strictly on benefits, and add the primary keyword phrase in the lead sentences.  In ALL cases, the headline and lead should be primarily about and for the prospect or customer, and ONLY mention your company when you talk about the solution to their problem.  Here’s an example of a benefit-based headline:

“Get Every Question About Your Product Answered In Half The Time… And At One-Third The Cost”

The idea is to narrow your focus to the TOP problem or issue your clients face. Think about the services or products you provide that solve this problem. Then figure out the top benefit they receive by using your service or product. THAT is what you write about in the headline.

The lead should contain the primary keyword phrase for your site.  To determine the primary keyword phrase, first determine where you make most of your money. What clients make up 80% of your revenue.  What do you do for them?  What keyword phrase would THEY use if they were to search for help on the internet ? Don’t be afraid to ask.

Now, this brings me to…

Reason for B2B SEO failure #3:  Forgetting to ask…

I’m amazed by how few B2B companies fail to ask the web site visitor to take action. Few B2B sites have a call to action.

The call to action is also a common missed opportunity when it comes to search engine optimization. The best calls to action tell the visitor what to do and adds WHY they should do it.

Most B2B web sites simply have a link to a “Contact” page with an 800 number and an “info@” email address.

Their first (non-SEO) step would be to personalize this contact info. “Please call Kathy, or VP of client services, directly at….“.   They would see their response rate double from this one simple change.

Next, they make the call to action something that benefits the prospective customer. This could be “Download our FREE report on…” or “Watch this video, which tells you how…“.  That is, you provide something of value TO your prospect in exchange for his or her contact information.

Now, we come to the SEO portion of the call to action.  When you tell the visitor WHY he or she should download the report or watch the video, you simultaneously multiply your conversion rate (number of people who respond) AND help your search engine optimization.

For example:  ”Download our FREE report on ‘The Ten Things You Should Never Say to a Consumer’ and discover the 5 closely guarded secrets of the world’s top healthcare call centers.”

See how I added a keyword phrase (healthcare call centers) and also added a reason why they should download the report?

Yes, Martha. This works.  Happy search engine optimizing.

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I really love what they’re doing… except for how they’re putting their web site together.  Like most B2B companies, they are in love with their vision, as they rightly should be. While their’s is not a product (they find hot eco-technologies, then help them fund and market the technology), the principles are the same. They need to locate customers – in their case the technology inventors and investors – and woo those prospective clients until they have signed and sealed contracts.

And of course they want to optimize their site so that people can find them on the search engines (in particular, potential investors).

What They Did That Was Bad SEO Optimization

My friend sent me an email yesterday that asked if there was a tool that could scan their web site, look for keywords, and add those keywords to their meta tags for them. They wanted to save some time in their SEO optimization practice.

Can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

I could have pointed him to a dozen different tools that will scan a site and come up with a list of keywords, but that wouldn’t have been a helpful answer. Having seen the copy they wrote for their brochure, I’m pretty certain that the web copy is filled with college-level poetic phrases that include combinations of words nobody in their right minds would use as a search phrase.

My guess is that when they scan the site, whatever tool they used would come up with a hodge-podge of words and phrases that are anything but focused on their primary industry – eco-technology. Then what?

What To Do For SEO Optimization Instead

I only had a few minutes to respond last night, so my short answer was this:

1. Don’t worry about the <keywords> meta tag.
2. Focus on the <title> tag, <h1> and <h2> tags, and image tags
3. Make sure the primary keyword(s) are in each URL

I admit that this terse answer wasn’t entirely helpful, so this morning I took a few minutes to write a longer explanation. Here’s what I told him:

You’re going about it kind of backwards. First, your web copywriter should have done the keyword research, and not by using the standard keyword tools (although they do help). Instead, do this:

1. Go to user forums, activeblog sites and even Yahoo Answers. Scan for headlines, questions, and topics related to the kind of business you do. See the actual phrases people in your target market are using to describe their problems and questions. You can bet that these phrases are what they’ll type in to the search engines when they’re looking for a solution to their problems.
2. Then, create an a Google Adwords account because their keyword tool will give you traffic volume estimates, as well as hundreds of other, related phrases. Copy all these related phrases because you’ll use them in your copy.
3. Focus on the keyword phrases with decent volume. There are other tools you can use that will tell you which of these higher-volume keyword phrases have relatively little competition for ranking in Google [ask and I'll point you to my favorite tool, which is free]. This will give you your primary keyword phrases for the pages on your web site. You’re directly addressing the issues/problems/questions your prospects have, and you’re using the same words they’d use.
4. Now that you’ve got your list of primary keyword phrases and related phrases, write the copy for the web site. This is where you had the cart before the horse, and it is a common mistake B2B and B2C companies make – they write the copy first, and THEN try to do SEO optimization on the site.
5. Write the copy so that each page is filled with industry-related words, and the title tag of each page includes the keyword phrase that is the focus of that page. That page should also include an <h1> tag with the same keyword phrase.
6. Create a separate page for each primary keyword phrase using the above technique. The URL, <title> and <h1> should all have the primarykeyword phrase, and there should be at least 450-600 words on the pagefilled with industry-related words.
7. Finally, make sure that you build an XML sitemap for Google (many tools to dothis, but it’s why I love blogs – it’s all automatic).

Now that your pages are built, you’ll want to get the search engines’ attention. A good way to do this is to “syndicate” several of the pages through social media – Digg, Delicious, Social Median are all great. [Again, ask, and I'll tell you about my favorite system to do this]

The reason for all of this is that the search engines love relevancy. Relevancy is determined by how well each page relates to the topic of the page and site (this is why you fill it with industry-related phrases); by the depth of the site (number of pages related to the industry); age of the site (make sure that you register the domain name for more than 2 years); and the links back to the site from other industry-related sites.

Nobody knows the exact formula Google uses, and I’ve seen a well-written article out-rank an established web site because the article is deemed “more relevant” to the searcher by the Google algorithm. That’s why I emphasize taking the time with each page as you write it.  And… that’s just the SEO part of the puzzle. You still have to write copy that gets your visitor to take your desired action once they find the site.

Once you get the site built, go to:  http://grader.com to see how well you did with the site.

I have’t heard back from my friend yet, but my guess is that he’ll say, “maybe we’ll get to that later.”

And B2B businesses wonder why they don’t do well in the search engines…

Happy searching.

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I’ve proposed the use of some of these tools to my clients. What I’ve found is that the solo entrepreneur who wants to be a big-time internet marketer will use anything and everything that promises “instant” search engine success. The B2B or B2C company with the in-house web development team on the other hand won’t touch them with a ten foot pole.

In this article, I decompose a few myths about automated SEO tools and programs, identify the key areas where tools are useful, and provide links to my favorite tools.

Do these tools work? You betcha. Are they applicable to the B2B business who doesn’t give a hoot about internet marketing and thinks internet marketers are a bunch of sleazy con artists?  Absolutely.

But pay attention… some of these tools aren’t for the faint of heart. At the end of the article, I tell you my absolute favorite tool for the B2B or B2C business…

Decomposing Three Myths of Using Automated SEO Tools

Myth: using these automated tools will get you blacklisted.

Fact: some might, but the good ones won’t.

Myth: Automated tools guarantee success.

Fact: In spite of the claims of some tool makers, there’s never a guarantee of success. It depends on your market, what the competition is doing, and the amount of time and energy you spend building what Peter Drew calls your “SEO backbone.”

Myth: Getting to #1 in Google is the ultimate goal

Fact:  If your landing page or web site sucks, being number one in Google may work against you. The ultimate goal is to create satisfied customers or clients who gladly buy whatever you offer for many years.

What Tools Do You Need?

SEO is a funny game. I’ve seen a single article posted to Ezine Articles out-rank well-established web sites with hundreds or thousands of back links. And the writing web site I created to test some of these tools easily out-ranked popular web sites with ten times the traffic for my focused keyword phrases.

One person will tell you that “relevant back links” are the key. Another will calmly explain that on-page optimization is more important than back links. A third guru will chime in that social media trumps all of that.

The truth is that nobody really knows for sure… and that all of the above is important.

My assumption here is that you want your primary web site to get ranked high in the search engines. While a single article posted to an article directory or a single press release might get ranked high for a short period of time, over the long haul, you want your main “money” web site to get all the kudos.

The “Un-Tools”

Your first tool isn’t really a tool at all. It’s your web site or blog. The more hyper-focused you are to a specific niche market, the higher your web site will be ranked for the primary keywords relevant to that market.

What this means is that you’re going to create a quality site with a large number of pages (informational pages or articles) that are directly related to your primary niche market. While there are tools that can provide content to your site, I don’t recommend using these until you’re well-established… and even then, the outside content has to be closely monitored.

Your second tool also isn’t a tool.  Having a lot of content on your site is extremely important (read my strong bias below). While I mention tools you can use to automate content creation, the best way for a B2B/B2C company to add relevant outside-created content is to subscribe to other blogs in related markets.

Most blog owners love it when you reference their blog posts in your blog. Find sites who specifically state that you can re-post the articles on your blog (with appropriate references).

The second way you can find relevant articles to post on your blog is to periodically do a search in Ezine Articles. If you find an article you like, post it. That’s what they’re there for.

I recommend a ratio of 5 of your posts to 1 external post. That ratio has worked well for me in the past. You can hire freelance writers for not a lot of money on a contractual basis to write your articles. Hire them as you would an employee, and avoid companies who provide article writing. [Elance is a good source]

Here’s my strong bias: Create a blog.  Even if you want to keep your 1990’s web site (because your marketing/web team will throw a fit), create and nurture a blog. Nearly all the tools I’ll mention are for blogs.

And my caveat: The majority of these tools were created for the internet marketer who might have HUNDREDS of blogs for hundreds of niche markets.  I’ve listed the tools which I feel would be most appropriate and useful for the B2B or B2C company.

Content Generation Tools

Syndicate Kahuna:  These guys have a whole range of products that help the blog owner. The free tool is Syndicate Kahuna, where you can add your blog to a long list of other blogs. Members of the “Pro” version (currently $67/month) can post their articles to the network.

Special software inside Syndicate Kahuna ensure that every article that gets posted is unique, so that the article that is posted on your blog won’t be seen anywhere else on the net.  Personally, I think the articles you’ll get will devalue your blog in the eyes of your visitor. You have to be very careful about what you use or don’t use.

I do recommend the Pro version when you are first building your blog because you can generate a large number of links back to your blog very quickly.  The Pro version allows you to post your content to hundreds of blog sites WITH up to three unique links back to your blog in every post.

MyArticleNetwork –  - This is a brand new tool that, as far as I can tell, does essentially the same thing as Syndicate Kahuna. You can post your article to the network, and their system posts variations of your article to the other blogs in the network.

You can also accept articles for your blog from the network. This is fine for the internet marketer who just wants traffic of any kind so that they can sell advertising or other people’s products, but it’s probably not a great idea for a viable B2B or B2C company.

[Sidenote: The folks at Syndicate Kahuna also have a great FREE keyword-finding tool. It is mainly used for finding the best keywords to use for Google Adwords PPC advertising, but can be used for other purpose as well.  It’s called Adwords Digger.

Tools for SEO AND Web Traffic Generation

Like it or not, the search engines seem to like a site that is linked to by other sites. My uneducated guess is that this will change in the coming months, as social networking gains ground and the search engines tire of link-generation tools.

Back links serve two purposes:

1. Back links help your search engine ranking (it tells the search engines that your side is considered to be relevant by other web sites or blogs)
2. Back links drive traffic to your web site. People read the article and click on the link(s) to get back to your site.

Syndicate Kahuna (Pro) and MyArticleNetwork both provide lots of links back to your site via the articles you have posted.

Basically, there are six  ways to generate back links to your site:

1. Submit your articles to article directories.
2. Put your articles on other blogs (Syndicate Kahuna)
3. Post articles to “free” sites where you can create blogs and pages
4. Your blog has an RSS feed. The Free sites (#4) also have RSS feeds. You can syndicate (list in RSS feed directories) these RSS feeds, which increases the links back to your site. I’ve seen some of these feed sites get higher ranking than the primary web site!
5. Syndicate your blog content to social media sites.
6. Syndicate your videos by posting your video to all major video sites with a link back to your site and relevant keyword phrases.

Here are four tools available to do automate these tasks:

Article Announcer:  Clean, slick, easy-to-use.  I’ve used this program for years, and it works great. It automates the process of submitting your article to the dozens of article directories. I do highly recommend ALWAYS submitting your article to Ezine Articles.

Brute Force SEO:  This one is challenging to use, but it is powerful. The documentation and training assume that you are a certified web geek. I’m pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, and I couldn’t figure out 1/3 of what they talked about. But once you get the hang of the software, it completely automates the tasks of creating lots of “free” web sites, and then syndicates all your RSS feeds for you.  It does a ton of other stuff, but in reality few B2B companies will bother with this software. I think that the are not currently accepting new members, but this always changes.

Social Media Syndication (Syndd):  OMG. This is one powerful system, and it is only going to get better. The entry and monthly price is MORE than reasonable. What they provide is a system to quickly “syndicate” your blog posts to a variety of social media sites like Digg, Delicious, Social Median, and others. The list of sites grows monthly, as do the members. They are getting great results, and if you go to the link above, you can get a free report that explains how social media syndication works.

Video Syndication:  There are a number of tools available for this task. The most popular of these tools is Traffic Geyser, which does a pretty good job (I’ve heard raves and pans), and costs $97/month. If you use it a lot, it might be worth it.  An new tool that is even better (and cheaper at $12/month) is Video Submit Wizard. It submits your video to more sites, and as far as I’m concerned, has more options geared toward driving traffic to your web site with video.

Please comment and let me know about YOUR favorite tools!

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