Articles About: ‘SEO’
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Keyword cannibalization is an important topic with any website. It typically becomes a problem when over zealous website owners and designers decide they want to choose 1 primary search term that they want to rank for.
Definition of Keyword Cannibalization:
“The act of placing the same keywords or phrases on multiple pages of a website in titles and content in order improve ranking in the search engines… leading to confusion with search engines on which page to rank in the results.”
This is extremely important to the general health of websites. I see people so often trying to rank well for certain keyword phrases using this technique. But unfortunately, their efforts are misguided. Placing the same keyword in every title, every page, and every piece of content you create is a very bad idea. The common misguided notion goes something like this:
“Well… I really want to rank well for the keyword “Las Vegas Real Estate”, so I’m going to place that phrase in every title and every piece of content I create. After all, Google loves keywords, and the more I use it, the better chance I’ll have of ranking.”
Let’s explore why this doesn’t work:
Google ranks each page of a website independently of each other
You may have a home page, and 10 articles that all include the same keyword phrase in the title and body… but guess what? Only one (possibly 2) of those pages are ever going to rank in the search engines for that specific keyword phrase.
Using the same keyword doesn’t help gain extra relevance
Creating multiple pages with the exact same keyword phrase in the title and content does not force the search engine spider to interpret the site as being more relevant for that same keyword phrase. All it does is force the spider to choose which page is the best. One page will rank, and the others won’t show up at all.
The quality of your content will suffer
If you are using the keyword “Las Vegas Real Estate” in every title of every article, what are you readers going to think? Need I say more???
You are severely limiting your search engine traffic potential
Many of you probably understand the concept of the long tail by now. It works. Don’t get me wrong, “Las Vegas Real Estate” is a great keyword. But do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket when there are literally thousands of variations of that phrase that could do just as good or better? Why waste your time trying to get every page of your site ranking for the same term when there are so many others out there waiting to be ranked for? Think about it.
——
Meta tag titles are typically the biggest problem with keyword cannibalization. Not only on the home page, but on sub pages and article pages as well. Each page needs to have it’s own unique title. This will give you the most likelihood of ranking for many different keywords and give you the most traffic potential.
Probably the most common place for keyword cannibalization is in blogs. People will create blog post titles that are often very similar to each other, and this becomes a problem because most blogs are set up by default to make the article title the meta tag title. Thus creating the keyword cannibalization effect with multiple articles.
Tips on Avoiding Cannibalization
- Write unique Meta tag titles for your home page and sub pages. Use specific words that describe that page. If you can’t think of anything besides “Las Vegas Real Estate”… seek professional help. Or try this keyword suggestion tool.
- If you have a blog, make sure your article titles are unique to what you are writing about. Using variations of a keyword are fine: “Las Vegas Condos”, “Las Vegas Real Estate Agent”, but don’t over do it. Try to appeal to your readers first, and to the search engines second!
- Choose which pages are the best candidates for certain keywords, and send internal links with the anchor text of those keywords to that page.
- Start broad on your links, and build out. Your home page and top level pages probably have the most potential for ranking with more competitive broader terms. Make sure you target those tougher terms on your top level pages (shallow pages), and work on the more specific long tail keywords with articles, and blog posts (deep pages).
~ Secret Tip ~
If you are really struggling with how to title pages, and can’t think of any more good keyword phrases to use, try using a good keyword research tool. Google Keyword Suggestions, SEO Book’s Keyword Research Tool, or even Wordtracker or Nichebot. Start by searching for a broad term, and use the results to find the most relevant, and the most popular keywords for your page. You may just find that the keyword you wanted to use in the first place doesn’t get as many searches as you thought… and that there was a related phrase you should have been using all along. Hint: I do this every time I write a new article…
So go get to work! Remove all those duplicate Meta tag titles. Do some keyword research. I think you’ll find that with a little work, you’ll see a much bigger return on your investment with broader search traffic.
—-
Related Articles:
Posted in SEO | 2 Comments »
Friday, August 15th, 2008
The opportunities for Internet business branding on search engines has really come as a revelation to me in the last couple of years. It’s such a simple concept, but one that many SEO practitioners and companies don’t understand. This concept of branding has brought me so much enlightenment in the area of search engine marketing, and helped me to understand my overall purpose as an internet marketer.
Here are a couple of brief definitions of branding just for reference:
“in marketing, the sum total of a company’s value, including products, services, people, advertising, positioning, and culture”
“in marketing, the use of logos, symbols, or product design to promote consumer awareness of goods and services”
We all know the classic branding examples: Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Etc…
But what about branding online? To some extent, we see the same branding efforts online from many of the big companies. This usually comes in the form of banners, text ads, video sponsorships, etc. That’s all fine and good. I don’t question the supreme wisdom of Madison Avenue in this regard. But what are companies doing to brand on the search engines?
This is obviously an important question as search engines command such a huge amount of traffic and eyeballs. It would seem like such an obvious place to build brand awareness through higher visibility in search results. But sadly, so many marketers skip this step and go straight towards the “SEO drug” that so many people are hooked on these days: higher ranking.
I’m full aware of the temptation of purely going after higher rankings, it looks good, it boosts your ego, it’s impressive to show to clients… but it doesn’t always translate into more success in the long run. SEO is so much more than simply achieving higher rankings. And I want to point out some of the reasons why that is the case.
Search Engine Branding With Meta Tags
This is talked about quite often in the SEO space, but it is hugely important, and I want to spend some time covering it. Meta titles and descriptions are very important here. When you include company names and even tag lines in your Meta tags, you are maximizing your branding potential because that is what people see on the search engines.
Here’s an example for a “Car Insurance” search on Google:
What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone on the page has branded properly in their meta titles and descriptions except for autoinsuranceremedy.com Have you ever heard of them? I haven’t. But I have heard of all the other companies on the page. Coincidence?… or just poor branding?
Let’s take another example for a local real estate search:
Imagine this as a scenario: a first time home buyer is considering a purchase 6 months down the road. They have no idea what to do, and they have been researching for properties in their price range, good real estate agents, and information about the local area. They happen to use Google on a regular basis, and are doing multiple real estate related searches. This is where branding can make all the difference in the world. Take a look at the above results. Who is branding and who isn’t… Just because a title says La Jolla Real Estate, (which was the search term) doesn’t mean people are going to click it… and even if they do are they ever going to remember who you are? Of course, you may get lucky, and they might like your site and bookmark it for later. But the more likely scenario is that they will go right back to Google the next time, and the sites that displayed their brands in the results through meta tags will gain the mind/brand share.
Meta tags play a huge role in this online branding process because that is what people see in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).
So what did we learn here? Place your name, company name, or site name in your titles and descriptions. Here are a couple of examples of good use:
You can see that placement tends to be different based on preference. I personally prefer to have the brand in the front of the title tags on my top level pages and money pages. And move it to the back on deeper level pages like articles, and product pages. The point is that you are building brand awareness with every search result that you appear in by placing the brand in the titles and descriptions.
Not Convinced Yet? Ok, here are a couple studies that prove my point:
A report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Nielsen NetRatings suggest that “27 percent (of survey respondents) were more likely to name a specific brand if it was in the top spot of the search results page.” (Sponsored Listings Effectiveness Study, July, 2004).
And again, a report by the Dieringer Resource Group, which surveyed 3,000 respondents regarding their online purchasing habits, found that 60% of the respondents’ brand opinions were changed or enhanced as a result of online research (American Interactive Consumer Survey, June, 2004).
The problem that I’ve found with many SEO consultants is that they don’t come from a marketing background, but from a technical background. Thus, they can fall into the trap of trying purely to acheive that higher ranking, but not pay as much attention to effective search marketing in terms of results.
I admit that I am still learning how to be a good marketer first, and an SEO second… but understanding how to brand in the search engines has definitely opened my eyes to see a deeper purpose in my SEO efforts.
——
Related Articles:
Posted in Business Branding & Marketing, SEO, Searching Solutions | 1 Comment »
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
If you have ever done any searches for SEO related terms, you have probably seen seobook.com at one time or another. It is a great website with volumes of information on search engine marketing and optimization. One of things Aaron has spent so much time on, and one of the most popular features of the site are his SEO tools. If you’ve never been introduced to these tools, you’re missing out…
Here is a brief rundown.
http://tools.seobook.com
First, visit the above address to check out some of what he has to offer. Currently, the best tools are the Keyword Suggestion Tool, SEO For Firefox, and Rank Checker.
Keyword Suggestion Tool
There is no other place on the internet that pools the data like Aaron’s tool does. And that is why I like it so much. Sure, I have a wordtracker and keyword discovery account, and they are helpful in their own ways, but I always use this tool first when doing preliminary searches. Make sure to check it out!
SEO Firefox
This 2nd tool called SEO for Firefox is one of my favorite tools of all time. It is super easy to use, and provides great data.
As you can see from the example, it integrates data directly into your results. Most notably, it shows how many links are coming in to the page, and some other valuable data like domain age, PR, DMOZ links, and more. If you use Firefox as your primary browser, I highly suggest this tool.
Rank Checker
This last tool is the latest invention from seobook. It’s another Firefox add-on that checks the ranking for certain URLs and keeps track of historical data. I haven’t had alot of experience with it yet as it didn’t work at all on one of my computers (Google ranking always refused to show up), but overall it’s worked great. For whatever reason, I have never found a great ranking tool that gives historical data, and is easy to use. There are many out there, and this tool comes pretty close, but I remain on my quest to find that perfect rank checking tool.
So, I hope you’re able to check out some of these great tools. You don’t have to be an expert to get your feet wet in SEO, and some of these tools from http://tools.seobook.com can definitely help. Have Fun!
——
Related Articles:
Posted in SEO, Search Marketing Tools | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
Enjoy…
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
Monday, May 19th, 2008
It seems like there has been alot of talk about link building lately… maybe it’s just me, but most SEO’s know that quality link building is a pretty important part of offsite optimization.
So, I thought I’d share something that has helped me quite a bit. There is a great seo link building tool put out by SoloSEO (of which I’m a happy customer). It was built a while back based on a post by my hero: Rand Fishkin.
I highly suggest you try it out if you are looking for some link building help. I’ll also post some of the queries that it uses here for your reference. Just take any of these examples to Google, and it should really help you to find some good quality links.
Thanks again SoloSEO for a great tool!!!
Add/Submit
your keyword “add url”
your keyword “add site”
your keyword “add website”
your keyword “add your site”
your keyword “add a url”
your keyword “add * url”
your keyword “add * site”
your keyword “add * website”
your keyword “submit url”
your keyword “submit site”
your keyword “submit website”
your keyword “submit your site”
your keyword “submit a url”
your keyword “submit * url”
your keyword “submit * site”
your keyword “submit * website”
your keyword “suggest url”
your keyword “suggest site”
your keyword “suggest website”
your keyword “suggest your site”
your keyword “suggest a url”
your keyword “suggest * url”
your keyword “suggest * site”
your keyword “suggest * website”
Advanced
allintitle:your keyword
allinanchor:your keyword
allinurl:your keyword
allintext:your keyword
Directories
your keyword directory
your keyword * directory
directory * your keyword
intitle:directory “your keyword”
inurl:directory “your keyword”
“list of your keyword sites”
“list * your keyword sites”
“list * your keyword * sites”
“recommended links” your keyword”
“recommended sites” your keyword”
“favorite links” your keyword”
“favorite sites” your keyword”
Blogs & Forums
your keyword forum
“your keyword forum”
intitle:your keyword forum
inurl:your keyword forum
your keyword blog
“your keyword blog”
intitle:your keyword blog
inurl:your keyword blog
“add comment” your keyword
“post comment” your keyword
your keyword members
your keyword join
your keyword tag
intitle:tag your keyword
intitle:post your keyword
I’ll also add a couple of my own to this list:
- site:.edu inurl:your keyword
- site:.edu inurl:blog “your keyword”
- site:.edu inurl:forum “your keyword”
- site:.edu intitle:blog “post a comment”
You can also replace “.edu” with “.gov” to find those types of links, or replace “inurl:”, with “intitle:”
Have fun. Let me know if there are any other special operators that you use to find links!
——
Related Articles:
Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
LOL… this is yet another post that was first a comment on another blog, but got so long that I decided to write a post instead.
Mary wrote an interesting post on why she believes that the long tail does not work well for real estate bloggers. I found it to be an interesting read… but like so many of the “how to” real estate marketing blogs out there, I found it to be too one sided and unbalanced. It reminds me of the argument that has become classic in the real estate blogosphere: should you write for the search engines or write for readers? The answer is BOTH!!
By the way, Mary: you know I love ya, and I’m not trying to start an argument here, just wanted to share my opinion on the subject.
I strongly believe in the concept of the long tail. It is a sound principal, and it works for many different industries including real estate. By the way, if you don’t know what the long tail is, try this link. Does this mean that everyone should be going after the long tail keywords? Not necessarily… let me explain:
The Problem With Targeting Long Tail Keywords
An example of a long tail keyword for a real estate blog would be something like this: “Seven Meadows community pool hours Katy Texas”. As you can see, it’s very long and specific, and it is probably only searched for a handful of times per month (if at all). I’ve seen many people that will write posts like this thinking somehow that they will really get some great targeted traffic from it. That may be… but there are a few simple problems with that idea. First of all, there are very few people searching for this phrase on the search engines. Even if you get top positioning, you may only get 1-2 visitors per month. Secondly, is this search phrase related to real estate? The answer is no, which means that chances are extremely slim that any traffic coming to the site will convert. I’ve seen many well intentioned RE bloggers try to target phrases like this, and I’m sorry to break it to them, but they will probably never convert into a customer. There is nothing wrong with posting helpful community information, but with the relatively low number of search queries for that phrase you will likely never see anything out of it.
The Problem With Targeting Short Tail Keywords
Targeting the short tail keywords is what Mary is suggesting as the best way to target customers with your real estate blog. As I see it, there are a couple problems with that view. An example of a short tail keyword would be something like: “Katy Texas real estate“. The first problem is that everyone and their mother in the Katy market is trying to target this same keyword phrase. The competition is fierce, and you need to have an authoritative well written, and well optimized site to rank well. It’s not necessarily a problem if you know how to get a site to rank well and have the time to spend on it, but many people have a difficult time achieving this.
The 2nd problem is that the phrase: “Katy Texas Real Estate” is extremely generic. Just because it receives many search queries per month does not necessarily mean that everyone searching for that phrase is looking to buy/sell real estate. Many studies have shown that the short tail phrases do not provide the best ROI (Return On Investment). This is because of the fact that many of them are too broad and do not convert well.
Thirdly, as a blogger, it’s simply not practical to keep targeting the same 5-10 keyword phrases over and over and over… Can you imagine if you used one of your top 5-10 keyword phrases in the title of every single blog post? You’d be arrested by the spam police! LOL (that may not happen, but it will really turn your readers off, and it won’t help your ranking)
So, as you can see, there is a problem with both views. Which is why I present the third view…
The Money Tail
Ok, I know it’s a corny name, but it was better than “medium tail”. Here’s why you should be targeting the “Money Tail”:
These would be keywords like: “katy texas condos for sale” or “real estate listings in Katy Texas”. The benefit of targeting keywords like these is that they are searched fairly often, but are specific enough to not have a high level of competition.
The side benefit of targeting the Money Tail is that the keywords usually have a very high ROI. They are specific phrases targeting real real estate consumers, and they convert extremely well. “real estate listings in Katy Texas”, will always convert better than “katy real estate”. The Money Tail Keywords aren’t too generic like our short tale example, and they aren’t too obscure like our long tale example.
So, in my opinion… a balance must be struck. Target those money tail keywords, and you will see a higher ROI, better rankings, and a higher conversion rate.
Posted in Blogging, SEO | 14 Comments »
