Is Personalization Changing Your Game Plan?
The Web is changing. Big surprise, right? Well, it might be for those who aren’t prepared or fail to see what’s going on.
(Credit)
In recent months, Google has introduced social and real time results to its regular SERPs in addition to an increase in personalization. With more and more people out of work and bending under financial strain, new websites and competition are popping up everywhere. The big question is what are you doing about it?
In terms of basic SEO, there isn’t much besides keeping up with the changes and doing what you can. Social Media is definitely starting to play a much larger role in many marketing plans. In fact, the latest study suggests 66% of government agencies have even got onboard. But what about your marketing plans and the strategies you create for others? Are they changing with the introduction of personalization and an increase in competition?
The Internet Marketer’s Guide to Battling Personalization?
One thing is for sure, sites that don’t cater to the user are going to be left behind, if they haven’t been already. Site owners need to start considering how they’ll go the extra mile in order to make the user feel at home and become a favorite. On the other hand, webmasters also need to keep it profitable. No easy task, for sure.
Usability
Usability has become almost a trend word, but there really is something to it. After all, the more easily I can navigate your site and find what I want, the more money I’m likely to spend. You might be thinking your website is already quite user friendly, but like someone who smells his own body odor for too long, it can be hard to spot the obvious.
Having a usability expert is one way to fix this. And, if you choose a good one, you’ll find that he or she has the uncanny ability to spot things that most of us don’t think of until they’re fixed. If you can’t afford one, but would still like to make improvements, talk to a partially technologically-challenged person and have them test your site.
Sit down with them at the computer and watch as they go through your website completing various tasks. This could include purchasing an item, signing up to your RSS feeds, finding specific information, and many other seemingly simple actions. Take note of how long it takes them to complete each thing, where they look, and the items they click on. You’ll find that doing this with a few people will help identify trouble spots. (Bonus tip: When they first open the site, ask them what the site is about and what they see first. This can be extremely powerful information!)
Conversion Optimization
Often confused with usability, conversion optimization can be a long, drawn out process. Experts in this field use analytics, live tracking, and many other components and tools to figure out what types of visitors use your site, what they’re looking for, and where they’re going. From there, they will create defined paths customized to meet the needs of each type of (profitable) visitor in order to boost conversions.
While this is no easy feat, there are steps you can take on your own to improve conversions. Site testing, analyzing your own analytics by creating custom events, and using tracking codes to find out what your customers are up to, what they like, and what they don’t like. Then, you can make the appropriate changes and test it out.
Site Optimization
While this is technically part of usability, SEO, and conversion optimization, I think it’s important enough to deserve its own category. This covers the technical side of the website and makes it work more efficiently and more accurately. In my eyes, this breaks down into two areas:
Data Optimization — This is a big one for sites with large amounts of information that are accessed by the user (For example, online catalogs, complex structures with numerous departments). These techniques use various structures and code systems to organize this data, recall it faster, and more accurately.
Web Design Optimization — Techniques such as combining or separating images into PSDs, improving the focus on particular elements, and improving the loading of the CSS through Javascript make the site faster, improve usability, and boost conversions.
These things might not help you overcome the effects of personalization and an increase in competition, but they can certainly help. If nothing else, you’ll be able to make the most of the traffic you do get.
So, what are you doing to help counteract personalization and improve the performance of your site?
Marketing | 4 comments
The Modern Version of Customer Service: A Note to SEO Naysayers
The entire concept of people squabbling over the death or validity of SEO is absurd, completely ridiculous, and a waste of valuable time on all sides. If I hear someone tell me ‘they don’t use SEO because it’s evil and the Google gods will smite them and wipe them from existence if they use it’ one more time, I’m going to need one of these:
You know what? If you own a website, you’re already using SEO. It might not be using the most effective tactics on the planet or be one of the worst methods to ever hit the WWW, but it’s still SEO. Don’t believe me? Answer these questions and assign one point for each ‘yes’ answer:
- Does your website have a URL?
- Does your site contain text?
- How about images? (one point for each pic)
- Do you give visitors the option to explore your site via navigation?
- Does your site contain any links to any other internal or external page?
Here’s the deal, if you scored ‘1′ or more on this test, you’re using SEO. And if you own a website and you’ve called SEO evil, denounced its existence, or said it’s dead, you’re an idiot. Congratulations.
URLs, text, images, navigation, links and many other features are all part of SEO. They’re just done well, poorly, or disgustingly.
SEO isn’t about title tags, anchor text, or what color hat you wear. It’s not dead because, last time I checked, it isn’t breathing, it doesn’t grow, and doesn’t have life. SEO isn’t about how good your buddies think you are, or whether you made it onto some list somewhere as the biggest marketer on the planet. Let’s knock off the bullshit and just cut to the nitty gritty shall we?
SEO is about usability. Period. It’s about making your website, content, ad, or whatever easier to use for both crawlers and humans. It’s about getting found for the right things and providing ‘good customer service’ from the moment finds your site until they leave. It’s no different than keeping the isles of your store clean, the shelves and racks neat, and someone at the cash register.
Got it? Good! So, now that we’ve got that sorted, let’s look at the two basic ‘rules’ of SEO.
If something makes your website more user friendly, easier to explore, and more effective, do it. If it makes the site impossible to identify, difficult to use, complicated, and just plain nasty, or if it clutters up the Web and becomes a pain in the Equus Asinus, it’s a bad thing. Don’t do it. No! Don’t! That’s enough of that silliness.
Now, I know this has been harsh, but it’s for your own good.
If I can’t use your site or have to fight with you to sell me something, I’m just going to go elsewhere and so will everyone else who might happen to stumble across your site while searching for ‘pink and purple polka dotted squirrels with eating disorders, bald tails, and bad attitudes’. (If your site provides information on pink with purple polka dotted squirrels with eating disorders, bald tails, and bad attitudes, you’re in luck.)
Whether you like it or not, you have to cater to your customer regardless of whether it’s a human customer or a bot.
I think most would agree that SEO is constantly evolving and changing. It needs to in order to continue to serve visitors of all kinds effectively. But, so long as websites exist, it will always be there in some way, shape, or form.
Done deal. Can we get on with it now?
SEO | No comments
Wordpress SEO Basics – Optimize The Entire Blog Post
In yesterday’s post, Wordpress SEO – How To Make Money With A Blog By Driving Traffic, I mentioned that you need to optimize several areas of a post. If you want to get the most Google power out of every post, you will need to focus on the four main areas of a post.
Optimizing Post Content
The content of the actual post always comes first. After all, the entire point of a blog is to provide searchers with the needed information. Your job is to use this basic concept to attract attention. Put yourself into the searcher’s computer chair to find the keywords you need for your post.
Imagine you are a searcher or customer. What words would you use? What questions would you have? Once you know what these questions are, answer them! To optimize the post, pick out the keywords and use them throughout your post as frequently as you can without sounding like a robot. Many times, optimizing a blog post requires nothing more than replacing some of the pronouns and verbs.
Provide SEO Optimized Subheadings
Subheadings are as beneficial to blog post SEO as they are for your readers. Visitors want information, and they want it yesterday. As a result, they skim rather than read every word on a page. Subheadings break up the blog post into smaller sections.
These titles attract the visitors wandering eye, so they find the information they need faster. Once they find this, they stick around for a bit. Every second they spend on your blog, the more they will look around, and the more likely you are to have them return later on.
Subtitles have additional weight with the search engines for this same reason. Use this to your advantage! Add the keywords for the post into these subheadings, and use the settings in Wordpress to change the formatting. You can find these settings by clicking the button called the ‘kitchen sink.’ This option is found on the second row under ‘format.’
Improve The SEO Power Of Post Titles
Google may like subtitles, but it loves post titles. When you publish a post, you’ll notice that the main post title also appears on the browser tab and at the top of the browser window. To optimize this, you have two choices: Make sure your keywords are included in the title, or use a plug in that allows you to change this.
In addition to your keywords, ensure your title entices your reader while still matching the content of the post. You can’t always get the best of both worlds, but it should definitely be your main goal.
Make Use Of Post Slugs And Permalinks
Think of the slug for your post as its filename. This seemingly unimportant feature can make a big difference in Google’s search results. In Wordpress, your post title automatically becomes the slug, and this becomes the rest of its permalink.
Set up your blog so you can edit this slug, and improve the SEO power of your permalink. As Michael says, they become ‘pretty permalinks.’ The idea is to take out all of the useless words (as far as Google is concerned) until all that remains are your main keywords.
It really isn’t as difficult as it sounds at first. With the additional hints and tips that Michael provides in his study course ‘Wordpress SEO Secrets: Search Optimization Magic for Wordpress Blogs,’ these concepts become even easier to put into practice. His program makes it virtually impossible to goof up. It includes an ebook to read and refer back to, audio that builds on the book, and video to show you exactly how to go through the process step-by-step. He doesn’t just read the ebook to you. Instead, he explains why one way of doing things is better than another, why you are doing what you’re doing, and exactly how to go through the process from start to finish.
‘Wordpress SEO Secrets: Search Optimization Magic for Wordpress Blogs’ launches tomorrow! You definitely don’t want to miss out on this product launch. The information you learn here will certainly set your writing apart from others. To make sure you don’t miss this, or my full review of the product tomorrow, make sure to subscribe to the Angie’s Copywriting RSS Feed. If feed readers aren’t your forte, you can receive Angie’s Copywriting updates by email.
For the Writer | 1 comment
Wordpress SEO – How To Make Money With A Blog By Driving Traffic
Online Writing Coach - Google Search Results
You can write the best blog the Internet has ever seen, and if no one ever visits, your blog won’t be very fulfilling. While marketing you site can bring in some traffic, Google will bring far more traffic that you will generate using any other method. If you want to attract lots of attraction through search, you need to get onto the front of search engine results.
What Is SEO?
If you type ‘freelance writing advice’ into the Google search bar, you will see there is 589,000 results. If your blog falls in spot #588,999, no one will ever find it. Your blog needs to fall on the first few pages. The farther back in the results, the less hits it will receive on any given day.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, means using various techniques to get your site to the front of the search results. I did mention some basic SEO for writing in ‘Get The Most Out Of Keywords And Write Faster – Friday’s Q&A’ and in ‘Freelance Writing — 5 Things I Learned With The First $5000.’ These tips work will help get your blog noticed, but it isn’t enough.
True SEO involves the optimization of posts, pages, and the inner workings of the blog in order to reach your goals. They need to represent your keywords, and everything needs to work together seamlessly. If you do this incorrectly, your blog will leak Google juice (power) like a sieve holding your site back from its true potential. This means lost visitors, and lost income.
What Kind Of A Difference Can SEO Have On A Blog?
Freedom Freelance is my fourth attempt at blogging. If the first two months of its existence are any indication, it will also be my most successful. I don’t just mean financially, but visits and links. What I post means something to someone other than me.
I spent a year or more on some of my other blogs. One in particular, has more than 100 posts after a year, and it sits just lower than where Freedom Freelance sits now. This is huge.
If you look at the picture at the start of this post, you’ll see my site occupies four out of ten spots on Google’s first page for my main keyword. Other keywords are not as great, but it will (insert evil laughter and Internet domination here).
The Problem With SEO For Blogs
The biggest reason my first three blogs waded in the Google abyss, and millions more do, is because getting started is difficult. Wordpress SEO, a self-hosted blog, and blogging is nothing short of a nightmare since no one has any good guides for beginners. This translates into lots of us (me included) trying, failing, and tweaking. If you’re like me, you don’t have a clue where to start.
The hints and tips available for Wordpress blogs are poor at best. Some focus on experts, and require nothing short of a tech degree to understand. Others spread out the good information in a million posts, and force you to uncover the jewels. Even worse are those who regurgitate the same information over, and over, and over, and over. Until now.
The Wordpress Miracle
When I purchased Online Business School to learn how to diversify my income, I received a free sample product from Michael Martine. It was only a short piece of audio, but what I learned from that was enough to propel Freedom Freelance towards the front of the search results.
It wasn’t an official training program, but it was so easy! I followed through the steps, and my blog did all the work for me. I was so excited when I discovered Michael was using it as part of an actual course for beginners! In fact, he will unleash his study course on January 7th.
In the meantime, I will give you more information on SEO for the next few days. Subscribe to the blog via RSS or Email to make sure you don’t miss a single tidbit!
For the Writer | 5 comments
Get The Most Out Of Keywords And Write Faster
Keywords and SEO
Yesterday, a new writer contacted me and asked about keywords and SEO. The problem was that she was spending more time playing with the keywords and keyword density than she was actually writing the piece. My suggestion is to use Google and Live Keyword Analysis to cut that time in half. Let’s use ‘writing coach’ and ‘online writing coach’ as the example.
Before I ever start writing, I gather my keywords and head to the Google search bar. Once there, I use the ‘~’ key (mine is above the tab key) and type in a keyword after it. When you press the search button, write down the synonyms it gives for the given keyword. For my keywords, this would be things such as writing consultant (which is a little different, but often done by the same person), writing adviser, online writing help, and writing advice just to name a few.
These alternatives benefit your customer and boost the Google power of the article as well. How? It will help bring up your article when someone searches for any of those alternatives. In fact, I will often run a list of alternatives through Google’s Adwords tool to find the best alternatives to use.
The number of alternatives you need depends on how many words you have to work with. Since I often write 500 word pieces, I keep three alternatives and two extras for tough sentences. Then, I set up the article on the page.
Write the title and any other additional items at the top of the page and make my sub-headings. In a 500 word piece, I design the page to have five paragraphs. This gives me an intro and a conclusion paragraph as well as three paragraphs to back them up. Next, I plug my given keyword (the one originally requested) in the start of the introductory paragraph and once into each paragraph after. The only thing left after that is to write out the piece using the alternative keywords elsewhere in the piece when needed.
I found this not only eliminates a large amount of time playing with keywords, but it also makes the writing faster. When I’m finished, I run the piece through Live Keyword Analysis and do any fine tuning before I press the save button.
Just a few quick tips for working with Live Keyword Analysis:
- This tool doesn’t recognize two letter words. To solve this, I use the ‘find and replace’ option to add an X onto the two letter words used in the keyword phrase. Once I copy it in the tool, I use the undo button to take them out of the word document instantly.
- It doesn’t like punctuation. I use the find and replace function to remove the apostrophes and the undo button to replace them after it has been copied into the tool.
- If you have singular and plural keywords such as writing coach and writing coaches, I still enter both into the tool. Then, I subtract the density of the plural from the singular word’s density to get the real density.
I hope this helps! What kind of tricks do you use? How do you make your work faster and easier?
(Image byDoBeRaGi)
Copywriting | 2 comments
