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Search engine marketing news and information you can use to grow your business. 03/08/2010 02:10 PM by Mike Moran
Social media is free, but what's the catch? Time. We only have so much time to spend putting our message out there, but we don't want to limit how many people can hear what we have to say. This problem comes up in many ways, but the simplest is the dichotomy between Facebook and Twitter. Many folks decide to spend the bulk of their social time on one or the other, with relatively few people using both. If Google Buzz catches fire, this fragmentation might only increase. What's a marketer to do?  Image by luc legay via Flickr Let's face it. There's no real difference between "friends" and "followers," nor between ""status updates" and "tweets." And why would you decide to spend all your precious social media time updating one venue and not the other, if your customers use both of them? But how can you double the amount of time you spend in social media updating both? You don't have to. I decided that I prefer Twitter to Facebook so I have every tweet I send out mirrored as my Facebook status. And I do the same thing on LinkedIn. I haven't taken the plunge on Google Buzz yet, but I'll probably do the same thing there, also. If someone wants to see what I am up to, they can use their favorite method to keep up and I only have to update once. I know people using FriendFeed to accomplish the same thing. In each of your social media lives, you can set up these mirrors to make sure that your customers can keep up no matter what network they are in, while you only need to update once. Now, I find even though I update in only one place, that I still have trouble making time for more than a few tweets a day, but there isn't anything I can do to help with that. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=95522c66-21ea-44ce-bd85-e97151a11f09)
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03/08/2010 11:04 AM by Sage Lewis
Search Engine Roundtable has reported on a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools. You can now update your Sidewiki profile in your tools section. Learn what Sidewiki is and how you can use it to your benefit.
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03/08/2010 10:59 AM by Sage Lewis
Marketing Pilgrim reports that B2B Marketers will see a 490% Increase in Social Media Spend by 2014. But there are other really interesting stats to be found in this report as well.
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03/08/2010 10:16 AM by Sage Lewis
Matt Cutts has recently put out a post calling for us all to turn in link spam. Learn what he and Google are up to. This has interesting implications for you to consider.
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03/04/2010 06:37 PM by Scott Buresh
The Value of Integrating Different Internet Marketing Methods The point here is not to boast - these results are due to the collective efforts of my expert team, not solely my own expertise. The point is to back up my contention that we practice what we preach and that the vast majority of our leads come from the internet marketing methods we apply to our own site. However, there has been much debate over the years in the search engine marketing community about whether it is proper or even hypocritical for a search engine marketing company to use other forms of advertising unrelated to internet marketing. The naysayers generally have a common argument: a quality search engine marketing company "shouldn't need" to engage in any forms of offline marketing. Depending on the goals one has for their search engine marketing company, this may actually be true for some. A smaller boutique firm or an independent consultant may have all the leads they ever want from their internet marketing methods. They may even be turning business away while they make blog posts about how companies such as mine shouldn't need to look offline for additional business opportunities. However, this again relates directly to goals. If a search engine marketing company has capacity even after they maximize their online leads, and their business plan calls for maximum growth, what is the issue with engaging in other forms of marketing? As long as other marketing channels provide an acceptable ROI, I do not buy the argument that you "shouldn't need it," no matter what your situation. The metrics are obviously what are important. It has been our experience that our own internet marketing methods provide us with, by far, the highest ROI of any of our other marketing efforts. However, this does not mean that the ROI from our online marketing efforts constitutes the baseline for what is ACCEPTABLE in terms of a return. In fact, we have done the math, and we know that we can afford to pay much more per lead. Or, to look at this another way, we often work with companies that are embarking upon online marketing for the first time. These companies almost always already have successful offline marketing campaigns in place (after all, they are successful businesses). They are obviously delighted when they discover that their cost per lead or cost per sale with internet marketing is much lower than their other marketing efforts - but does this mean that they decide to shut those other successful channels down? Of course not. And do we, as a responsible search engine marketing company, advise them that they should shut down those channels and put all of their eggs in the online basket? Of course not. We just enjoy the fact that our internet marketing methods provide the best bang for their buck. Nobody can deny that the advent of various internet marketing methods has been a game-changer. Some forms of traditional advertising may even be on their last legs. Trade show attendance is down. Magazines and newspapers are in decline. I can't remember the last time a door-to-door salesperson came up to my house* (except those selling a particular religion - but that's a different story). However, some channels, in our experience, still can provide exceptional returns. Direct mail, done properly, still works for us. Channel partnerships with offline marketing businesses can be profitable. Offline PR, when done properly, provides our search engine marketing company with exceptional exposure and returns. As long as we are achieving acceptable margins on these endeavors, we will continue to use them. And I will continue to stand incredulous when I hear from those who tell me that we shouldn't. *Unless you count Girl Scouts peddling cookies.
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03/02/2010 09:48 AM by Mike Moran
When my friend called me, there was a little panic in his voice. He owned a successful, customer-friendly small business, and was generally an easygoing person. But he didn't know what to do. A long-time and loyal customer alerted him to a savage review of his business on an Internet Yellow Pages site. And so now he was turning to me to find out what he could do about it. I asked him for the details and he ruefully related the story. When he read the review, he immediately knew who the unhappy client was, recognizing some details in the story. He told me that this client had been impossible, constantly changing her mind about what she wanted with no notice, and although he did his best to satisfy her, at the end he had to tell her that he had done all he could for what he had been paid.  Image via CrunchBase
So, what's a small business to do? First, treat your customers well, remembering that they have more power than you think. Encourage your happy customers to post reviews online, so that the wisdom of your crowd is in evidence--that will dilute the power of any one negative review. (Yesterday, I posted some small business social media success stories that you can emulate.) When someone posts a bad review, consider engaging that person online to try to make amends. Unfortunately, it might require that you develop a thicker skin, because the rudeness of some online reviews might be more than you can bear. One San Francisco bookstore owner was arrested for battery after responding to a Yelp reviewer. But that's no reason to accept outright lies. When it clearly goes beyond a difference of opinion, and you can prove you've been wronged, go to the review site and plead your case. Show them that it's a lie and ask them to remove it. That's what my friend did, and Yahoo! Yellow Pages, to their credit, did remove the dishonest review. But my friend learned form the situation. Now, he solicits good reviews and he works harder to satisfy even the nut jobs. It's a different world out there, so make sure you know how to make your way through it. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1a1974b0-6688-4620-bf29-2f8a1fb51b73)
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02/28/2010 07:23 PM by Manoj Jasra
JESS3, a creative agency specializing in data visualization, has put together an amazing video which shows the current state of the Internet. We have highlighted some of the data below, but please also watch the video for yourself (it rivals the Social Media Revolution).
JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.
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02/25/2010 10:48 AM by Stoney deGeyter
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries. Core Term Qualifiers
Optimizing your website for core terms is only part of the optimization process. The vast majority of searches are performed using longer, more specific phrases. When it comes to keyword research, these phrases are really nothing more than your core terms with key qualifiers added to them. Using your keyword research tools you can find dozens or even hundreds of qualifiers for just about every core term. Each of these new phrases must be carefully analyzed for appropriateness for your site, whether it targets what you offer and fits with the page's content for which that core term has been applied. Those that don't can either be discarded or set aside for optimization to other pages. Some qualifiers are merely the same core term in different form such as plurals, past tense, active tense, etc. (run, ran, running, etc.) Other qualifiers qualifiers provide additional context for the core term but don't do anything to affect the meaning of the phrase. Other qualifiers will change the meaning of the phrase and may not be appropriate for optimization with the primary core term or page. If adding the word "discount" doesn't apply to you then that's a qualifier you don't want. If most of what you offer is not discount but you do have a section where you list certain discounted items, then that is a phrase that is better optimized on a different page from the actual core term. Every qualifier added to the core term must be carefully considered to ensure it belongs with that core term or not. Some qualifiers will also come in direct contradiction with each other. When speaking of Jewelry you don't want to use "cheap" and "vintage" on the same page. There are many considerations like this that must be accounted for before just throwing a bunch of related core term qualifiers on the page. Segmenting Keywords
There are four distinct keyword segments each representing a different phase of the searcher's buying cycle. After going through the process above you should be left with one or more groups of keyword that can be optimized into a page or several pages. The next step is to take each group and segment them even further based on those keyword segments. Research: Researchers are at the very beginning of the buying cycle and generally don't know what it is they want. They go to the search engines to find very general information to help them narrow down their options. These are generally the core terms with no or very basic qualifiers. These terms will be optimized into higher level category pages. Shop: Shoppers have moved to the next phase of the buying cycle having narrowed down their query to the product category level. Searchers are looking at different features and variances between products and deciding on which features they want. These keywords can easily be optimized on product category and comparison pages. Buy: Searchers who are ready to buy have at this point figured out exactly what they want and now they are just looking for the right place to buy it from. They are looking for the store that meets all the right criteria for a purchase such as brand trust, price, warranties, shipping policies, refund policies, customer service, etc. These keywords can be optimized into product pages. Info: Info queries are generally the "how to" search terms. These are people not looking to buy but looking for information and education for themselves. These queries are best optimized on blog and article pages. They don't bring in direct customers but they do help you build a strong resource website that draws links and a loyal audience.
Using the same process of elimination from above you can segment all the keywords into three distinct groups. Broad Topics: People looking for general information have a general topic that they want to learn more about. You must start them with the most general information as these searchers typically are not looking for a lot of detailed specifics. Specific Desires: These searchers are looking for a answers to questions that they might have. They may be looking for a solution to a problem or the best way to get a desired result. Immediate Concerns: These searchers are looking for solutions that meet a very specific set of criteria. It's not enough to provide broad, all-encompassing answers, they are looking for something that much more specifically can be applied to their situation. Keyword ROI
When deciding which keywords ultimately get optimized into your site, you want to keep ROI foremost in your mind. The chart above shows a very general rule when it comes to determining which keywords produce the best ROI. Phrases with one or two words can often produce a lot of traffic but the conversions from those keywords is often pretty low. That can be made up for with the mass quantities of traffic the keyword brings, but more traffic also means more resources consumed, including answering calls and emails. On the lower end of the spectrum are five and six word phrases. The convertability of these phrases is very good, but there isn't a lot of traffic so total conversions is very low. These are keywords you want to optimize for but not spend a lot of time on, otherwise you lose any value from the sales they bring. The happy ROI zone is with the three and four word phrases. These bring in good traffic and have good conversion rates. Focusing the bulk of your efforts here is where you're going to get the most value. Keep in mind, though, keyword length isn't the only factor that matters in keyword selection. You want to make sure you select terms that are targeted for your audience produce the most profitable sales.
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02/23/2010 08:28 PM by Jennifer Laycock
While millions of people and tens of thousands of businesses have flocked to Twitter over the past few years, many companies are still standing in the doorway wondering if they should step inside. Their biggest concern? How much time will they spend and how much benefit will they reap. After all, if you talk to anyone who has invested heavily in Twitter, they'll tell you just how much time it can take. It's easy to get sucked into the conversation and it's not uncommon to log in, then glance at the clock a few moments later only to learn hours have passed. With that in mind, it's important to establish a realistic timeline for yourself to make sure you're only spending the time you need. If you're just getting started, here's a quick five step timeline to give you something to work with. The idea here is to spend a bit of time at each stage before moving on to the next. Keep in mind, the minutes per day is total, not per activity. This timeline is designed for your average do-it-yourself small business owner who is looking to put a bit of extra effort into social media to see if there are any returns. Ultimately, you shouldn't be spending more than an hour a day on Twitter, unless it's one of your primary marketing channels or you've got a staff dedicated to your outreach efforts there. 
Breaking Down the Timelines If you're just starting out, you'll want to spend more time in the earlier stages of the scale before you move ahead. If you've been using Twitter for awhile and are simply looking to get your timelines under control, then consider moving quickly through the early stages and focusing on breaking your Twitter time into more manageable chunks with specific goals attached. Stage One: 15 Minutes per day In the early stages, you don't need to spend more than 15 minutes a day on Twitter. Run some searches based on keywords and geographical searches and find a few new people to follow. Many of these will follow you back, giving you a starting point of followers to work from. Stage Two: 20 Minutes per day Once you've found a few hundred people to follow, increase your time to about 20 minutes per day, most of which you should spend scanning the postings of the people you follow and running keyword specific searches for topics related to your business. The idea here is to find out what people are saying so you can begin to prepare a strategy that appeals to them. Stage Two: 30 Minutes per day After a week or two, you should have a feel for Twitter and what your followers and the community are interested in. This is when it's time to start investing a half an hour in the morning or afternoon. You should still spend most of this time listening, but you can also start to share links to blog posts you're reading or resources you're finding. Aim to start by sharing a handful of links with your followers each day. For a stronger impact, make use of a Twitter scheduler like the one built into HootSuite to share your links over the course of the day instead of one solid chunk. Stage Two: 45 Minutes per day After another week or so has passed, kick it up to 45 minutes. At this point, you may want to break it into three 15 minute chunks a day instead of trying to invest all your time at once. Check for direct replies at least twice a day and respond to any of them that require attention. Keep finding people to follow, running your searches and sharing resources, but kick it up a notch and start offering more thoughts and opinions on things or news about your business as well. Continue to make use of a Twitter scheduler to allow your thoughts to be broadcast throughout the day instead of in one solid chunk. This will allow you to reach more followers by targeting different times of the day. Stage Two: 60 Minutes per day Unless Twitter is the absolute core of your marketing strategy, you're likely going to top out at a maximum of around an hour a day. At this point, you're going to do everything you've already been doing, but you're going to add in the goal of being more engaging. This is where you want to start communicating directly to other Twitter members. Offer feedback on their thoughts; thank them for their links...whatever it takes to get them engaged. Consider checking in for around twenty minutes in the morning, afternoon and evening and make use of the Twitter schedulers to sprinkle your posts throughout the day when you're feeling kind of wordy or have a lot of links to share. Keep in mind, it's likely not realistic for you to spend an hour per day on Twitter unless Twitter becomes a core part of your marketing strategy. That's ok. Think of these stages as a guideline to expanding your presence and track the results of your effort to determine how much time you can justify spending on the site.
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02/23/2010 08:14 PM by Sage Lewis
Google is doing a test in the Houston market that is allowing small businesses to affordably stand out from their competition. Watch this video to learn how you could benefit from this.
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02/23/2010 08:00 PM by Sage Lewis
Marketing Pilgrim reported on a Conductor study that basically said that most Fortune 500 companies are not ranking in the natural search results. I talk about why that is and why this is a huge opportunity for you.
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02/23/2010 07:50 PM by Sage Lewis
Marketing Pilgrim reported on a study dealing with the effectiveness of Facebook fan pages. The study makes a pretty strong case for the power of Facebook.
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02/23/2010 06:39 AM by Stoney deGeyter
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries. Research Takes Time
The process of researching your keywords isn't something that should be rushed. Each phase of the research process needs to be performed deliberately, ensuring that you take the time to find all relevant terms and discard the irrelevant. Any attempts to rush through the keyword research process will likely lead you down the wrong paths at best and at worst cause you to have to rethink your entire keyword targeting strategy. Unfortunately the research process isn't always linear. You can often be working on several phases of the research process at a time depending on what your focus is on at a given moment. There is a lot of overlap and moving backward and forward through the processes but care needs to be taken that you don't skip over or leave any of the phases out. Brainstorming Keywords
You can start the keyword research process anywhere, but I like to start with a clean slate. What keywords do you start the research process with? Do some brainstorming. Brainstorming allows you to get a list of keywords from an unbiased perspective. The brainstorming process doesn't mean just sitting around and thinking up phrases, though can be a part of it. Good brainstorming starts with asking questions that can then lead to answers. More times than not, those answers will also be your keywords. First, think of what questions are relevant for you. Don't try to answer them, you have time for that later, but compile your list of quetions that will help you find the keywords you are looking for. Once you have a good list of questions do whatever research is needed to find the answers. Those answers give you a base of keywords you can then take to the online research tools to look for related phrases. These related phrases produce a wide-range of variations in how your topic is searched. Some relevant, others not so much. Find Core Terms First
Undoubtedly in the brainstorming and research process you'll amass a list of hundreds of phrases. You want to keep the process as simplified as possible so we'll start by eliminating everything that is not a core term. A core term is a keyword phrase boiled down to the essentials. It's specific enough to produce a relevant result but broad enough to cover a wide range of much more targeted phrases. Generally a good core term is two, maybe three words. On rare occasions a core term can be a single word, but only when there is no room for alternate interpretations. Only use qualifiers on a core term when it is necessary to ensure that the searcher will be led to a relevant page. For example the word "bag" could mean anything from a garbage bag to a sleeping bag to a travel bag. This is a core term that needs a qualifier in order to be relevant to the searcher. If it's not relevant it's not a core term. Each page of your website should have a single core term associated with it. You may find several pages on your site that are a good fit for a single term. That's fine during this research process but later you'll want to make sure you select only the most appropriate page for any single core term. The others will have to find their own core terms. Don't stop your core term research until you are certain there are no more possible variations that produce measurable traffic. Using the keyword suggestion tools available in most keyword research programs, find all relevant variations on each of your core terms. For example a "travel bag" can also be a "back pack", "luggage" (a rare case of a one-word core term) and a "duffel bag." Each of these can be searched to find even more possible core term variants. In almost every industry I have worked with I have been able to find different ways searchers think of the same product that the site owner hadn't. Sometimes these variations don't get searched much while other times they are more popular than the terms that the site owner said were the most important. Knowing these options in advance can make a dramatic difference in the direction you go with your optimization campaign. Core Term Site Mapping
After you have put together an exhaustive list of core terms and before you start performing deeper research into finding specific phrases, you want to map out where your core terms will be integrated into your site. For some industries it's as easy as looking at the content and assigning core terms to pages. For others, where there are a lot of core term variations that mean the exact same thing, it can be more difficult. Assigning core terms to pages must be done very carefully. You need to ensure that the content of each page is either a 100% natural fit or the content can easily be adapted to fit that core term. A good example is "cost segregation" versus "cost segmentation". Both essentially mean the same thing but both are frequently searched (though one more than the other.) The content of a page about "cost segregation" can easily be adapted for "cost segmentation" without altering the meaning or focus of the page. If you can't make a keyword fit without significantly altering the message of a page, then you find another core term, or another page for the core term. I recommend prioritizing your core terms before assigning pages to them. Figure out which terms get more search volume, are most relevant, bring in targeted audience and which produce the best sales. These are all important factors of determining which core terms are more important than others. By prioritizing your core terms you can research and optimize those that are most important first before moving on to lower priority terms. The optimization of your high priority terms can take some time so leaving the secondary terms for later is good optimization strategy. Before you move into the next phase of the keyword research process you have enough information to start optimizing your website. With the core terms and the map of where each core term will be implemented, you can begin to perform a very broad and quick optimization of the website. Going a page at a time, optimize title tags, meta description tags, headings and even a bit of content. I wouldn't spend a lot of time on each page as you can go do a more indepth optimization later, once you have more keywords to work with. Missed a part of this series?
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02/23/2010 06:23 AM by Mike Moran
As a small business, you probably pride yourself on being customer friendly. Even though you might work with large companies as your suppliers and partners, you go the extra mile for your customers when something goes wrong. You make your site search friendly. You put the information on it that customers need. And you stand behind what you sell. Except when that big company partner makes it impossible.  Image via CrunchBase All this was brought to mind from a purchase we made not long ago, buying a refurbished Microsoft Xbox 360 from a small business online. Now, you might say to yourself--there's your mistake, buying some crappy refurbished model instead of a new one--but we frequently buy refurbished technology and have never had a problem. The site we purchased from was well done, clearly explained everything, provided a manufacturer's warranty, and seemed entirely reputable. I still think that small business is entirely reputable, so I am not naming them in what might appear to be a negative story. The problem wasn't the small business. We searched for Xbox 360s and that site came up near the top of the list. We checked them out several different ways and they came up clean. The site looked good and the purchase experience was easy and we received the console quickly. Everything worked. We had a minor problem that we called Microsoft about and they cheerfully verified our warranty was in force and sent us a replacement part for free. My son is happily playing with his Xbox and it's another happy story about a small business that helps out consumers by selling refurbished units and a large business that services its customers. But you know the story doesn't end there, because that would be the most boring blog post of all time. Instead, the Xbox suddenly starts throwing the dreaded E73 and E74 errors, so we followed the troubleshooting procedures and were informed by the Microsoft support site that we needed to get the unit repaired, and we could do that online. Except we couldn't. We dutifully followed the instructions to register with Xbox Live to report our "Xbox dead." We put in the serial number and pressed the "Request a repair" button, but it always provided an error message telling me that the service is temporarily unavailable. (It's been temprarily unavailable for over a week now, which makes you wonder what a permanent outage would look like.) So, I got on the phone and requested the repair and the technician verified that we were covered and promised to send us an empty box (and Xbox box, I guess) for us to return the unit to be fixed, which takes four business days. After five business days went by with no box, I called back and was told that we were ineligible for service (the technician actually said we were "illegible" for service, but I decided not to squawk about how neat my handwriting can be) because we had viloated the terms and conditions. I won't take you through the literally hours of phone calls with technicians and supervisors that ensued. There was a multitude of times that I was told that they had no record or only a partial record of my last call, that the person I talked to the last time was mistaken--all the usual big company support crap. But the bottom line is that Microsoft had banned our console from service, voided the warranty, because they claimed that we violated their terms of service. They refused to say how or when we had done this, and claimed that it could have been something the previous owner did. I know, I know, none of this makes any sense. If the previous owner had done it, you'd think they would have known about when we had the minor repair done months ago, but they were unmoved by such logic. They even have a page posted on their Web site that explains that there is no appeal process for console bans. So, even if they make a mistake, you're screwed. That is really their official policy. The support technicians won't talk to you about it and their online forums have a policy that any posts about console bans are deleted without response. So, at this point, I thought that this must be some weird situation that rarely happens. Hardly. I found similar stories of people banned here and here. Now, for all I know, Microsoft has never made an error in banning someone before they banned us. But because they won't tell us why we were banned, I have no trust in their process. They know why they banned us, but they just won't tell us. And they won't tell us why they won't tell us. The moral of the story for small businesses is that you must choose your partners carefully. The small business did everything right, but Microsoft ruined the customer experience. I know enough about business to place the blame where it is due, so I am not running around online giving this poor small business bad reviews. But someone else might. And I can totally understand why. Microsoft threw the small business under the bus, intimating that it was because we purchased a refurbished console that all of this happened. But that isn't so. What's really true is that Microsoft has a set of policies designed to protect Microsoft, rather than its customers. The refurbished story is just a ruse trotted out in this situation. The truth is that Microsoft does not tell people why they were banned, what they did, or when it happened. And they don't have any process to appeal if Microsoft makes an error. That is a set of policies that no small business can live with, if they want to safeguard their reputation of caring for customers. And sad to say, I won't ever buy a refurbished Microsoft product again. We're going to buy a brand-spanking-new Xbox 360 because we don't want to punish our son by throwing away his Christmas present. It kills me to do this, because I am giving more money to Microsoft, precisely the company that is at fault in this entire mess. I'd rather say I'll never buy a Microsoft product again, but I know I will. I am hoping that if enough people speak out, that Microsoft will change its ridiculously secretive policies and enter the age of open information. If Microsoft has such iron-clad evidence that something was done to void the warranty, they could present that evidence, but they refuse. So, small businesses get hurt because their sales drop off and their reputations are endangered, all because they are working with a big company that has policies they'd never adopt with their own customers. Beware the partners you keep, because they will end up reflecting on you in ways that you can't control. Being in the refurbishing business is perfectly fine, as long as you can count on your partners to stand behind the products that you sell. If you can't, then it's your business that will likely take the fall. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b5c7bf02-8633-4519-8ea2-42a62efba0d9)
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02/11/2010 07:00 AM by Mike Moran
You probably use many sources to brainstorm your search keywords, but how do you know if your customers are starting to change the way they search for your products? Have you listened to what your customers are saying? Time was that listening to customers demanded expensive focus groups and surveys, but that time has passed. Nowadays, you can listen to social media conversations and analyze them for any number of purposes, including search keywords.  Image by ~~Jo~~ via Flickr Then you take those words and use a keyword research tool to help you see which words are searched for frequently enough to be valuable, and then you let those tools show you other popular variations. And while all of that is very smart, you know that over time your customers start to shift what they are looking for. The language around your product might change, due to technology changes (cell phone becomes smart phone), changes in customer needs (low cost becomes total cost of ownership), or simple shifts in the language (energy efficient becomes green). When it does, you need some way of picking up on what's happening so you can adjust your keyword mix in response. For large businesses, you can use social media listening services to help you find new words that your regular keyword research might not have uncovered. The listening companies will do the work for you and find those nuggets that you might have missed. [Full disclosure: I serve as Chief Strategist at Converseon, one of those companies happy to listen to your conversation and help you with search marketing also.] But for small businesses with limited (no?) budgets, what can they do to listen to their customers' conversations? Google Alerts to the rescue. You probably already use Google Alerts to monitor mentions about yourself and your company, but you can also use it for keyword research. You can load up Google Alerts with a bunch of your keywords and start reading the stories that come your way for new keywords. But, gee, that seems like a lot of work, doesn't it? To take the drudgery out of it, use a word cloud (as pictured above), which visualizes the words being used so that you can see which ones seem to be occurring more than others. To automatically generate a word cloud from your Google Alerts, set up an RSS feed for your Google Alerts, rather than e-mail notification. Then, enter the URL for that RSS feed into Wordle, which creates a word cloud from any RSS feed. Just point your RSS feed at this tool every once in a while, and immediately see what you are missing. When you listen to what your customers tell you, it's amazing how smart you can look. (Only you and I know the truth...) ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4943efa9-7036-42cc-a23d-909056c59fb5)
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Keyword segmenting for information only sites and blogs is a bit different than sites selling products or services. In informational sites all keywords can be used to develop content so it's a matter of determining what kind of keyword content you can produce and what keywords can be targeted together.
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Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing
