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A New Search Extension for Firefox and Mozilla
SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for users of both Firefox and Mozilla, designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers. The toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.
For every site you visit using Firefox or Mozilla, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN - all in one place. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy.
The SearchStatus Mozilla/Mozilla Firefox extension appears unobtrusively at the bottom of the browser on the status bar. If you choose to view backward links for a particular page, they open in new tabs in the same browser window. Disable the automatic Google and Alexa queries and they fold away from view.
Download from here
http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
Deep Linking is Good Linking by Jakob Nielsen
Some Internet marketing managers just don't want hot leads to visit their website. I conclude this after hearing that website owners actually call search engine customer service departments complaining that users are daring to enter sites directly on pages they're most interested in. These callers would prefer search engines that link users only to the homepages and never to pages inside the site.
Ticketmaster even filed a lawsuit to get other websites to stop sending users directly to interior pages where users could buy tickets to specific shows. In contrast to these cases, most websites treasure such direct and deep links, and pay dearly for affiliate programs that encourage other sites to send them targeted traffic.
These sites understand what our study of e-commerce usability showed: Difficulties in getting from the homepage to the correct product page accounted for 27% of the failuresdouble an e-commerce site's sales, so preventing deep linking would eliminate about a quarter of the potential sales from visitors arriving from search engines. These visitors are the hottest leads because of their current, specific interest in your products; you really don't want to lose their business. (averaged across 20 sites). On average, better usability can
Deep linking enhances usability because it is more likely to satisfy users' needs. Generic links, such as links to a company's homepage, are less useful than specific links that take users to an individual article or product.
Now that we finally have effective Web-wide search engines, users will likely use them more often to locate deep links to a specific solution, rather than starting out at a company's homepage.
Supporting Deep-Link Users
A website is like a house with a million entrances: the front door is simply one among many ways to get in. A good website will accommodate visitors who choose alternate routes.
Here are three guidelines for enhancing usability for users who enter your site at interior pages:
- Tell users their arrival point, and how they can proceed to other parts of the site by including these three design elements on every single page:
- Company name or logo in upper left corner
- Direct, one-click link to the homepage
- Search (preferably in the upper right corner)
- Orient the user relative to the rest of the website. If the site has hierarchical information architecture, a breadcrumb trail is usually the best way to do this. Also, include links to other resources that are directly relevant to the current location. Don't bury the user in links to all site areas or to pages that are unrelated to their current location.
- Don't assume that users have followed a drill-down path to arrive at the current page. They may not have seen information that was contained on higher-level pages.
An example of the third point: I was recently researching a flat-panel monitor at a computer vendor's site. I got there by searching Google for the monitor model, after reading a positive review in a magazine. Once there, I could not find a link to the specs. Nowhere. Later in the session, I clicked the breadcrumb for the category page with all the monitors. There, I found the spec sheet, which was in an annoying PDF file that contained the specs for all the monitors scattered across a brochure. This was bad enough, let alone that this essential selling tool was only available on the category page, not the product pages.
When to Avoid Deep Links
In a few cases, deep links are counter-productive because certain pages cannot or should not be used before users have passed through higher-level pages.
An example from my own site: I have an exercise that asks readers of my homepage guidelines to evaluate the improvements in the recent redesign of the BBC's homepage. The exercise consists of two pages:
- an initial page that explains the problem
- a subsequent page that provides the solution
If these two pages are viewed in anything but the proper sequence, the entire exercise is spoiled. You can never look at a design with fresh eyes once you know where the usability problems are located. Thus, anybody who followed a deep link to the page with the solution would not benefit from the exercise.
It's easy to prevent search engines from deep linking to a specific page. Simply include the following meta-tag code in the HEAD part of the page:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex">
Well-behaved search engines will exclude any such page from their databases.
Deep linking from non-search sites and from misguided search engines can be prevented by some fancy server-side programming that checks whether a user has been to the appropriate higher-level page before entering the sensitive page. I don't recommend this, however, because of the high likelihood of getting it wrong and preventing access by legitimate users. If a third-party website is so stupid that it links to a useless destination, then it's probably such a bad site that it has very little traffic anyway.
Deep linking is your friend: It gets users to their preferred destination as quickly as possible. Thus, you should only use the "noindex" meta-tag for pages that users should never visit first.
The new Google more information thingy revealed and how to get it on your site
For quite a while now, observant Google users have noticed that the first search result in Google's organic listings have had some extra links attached to them. The links tend to lead to the most popular sub-pages of a site as a sort of short-cut for searchers. For example, a movie theatre might include quick links to showtimes and ticket sales and a business listing might include links to job postings and store locations. Despite the fact that these listings have been showing up for awhile now, Google has only officially given them a name today. Playing a hand from the "obvious" deck, they decided to dub them Sitelinks.
You can see an example of Sitelinks in action in the image below.
According to the team at Google, Sitelinks are assigned automatically.
We only show Sitelinks for results when we think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow our algorithms to find good Sitelinks, or we don't think that the Sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, we won't show them.
What's interesting to business owners is that it implies that there will be specific ways that you can build your site that will make it more likely that these types of advanced listings will appear for your site. There are obvious benefits to this type of listing, so it will certainly be a worthwhile thing for the industry to start digging into.
Local Search, Don’t Keep Putting it Off
If you are a small business owner serving a local market and you aren't already giving serious thoughts to your plans for local online marketing, you need to get cracking. New forecasts from research group Borrell Associates says that paid search will remain the fastest growing local online advertising category. Local online advertising is expected to grow another 32% to $7.7 billion by 2007, paid local search is expected to account for almost a quarter of spending, making up about $1.8 billion.
Other estimates from the research:
- Localized email advertising will climb 54% to $233 million
- Local banner ads will climb 18.5% to $5.6 billion
- Local search and e-mail will account for half the local advertising market by 2010
- Real estate and automotive ads make up one-third of local advertising
Will a ‘Soft Launch’ on your new website cause problems?
The search engines don't "get annoyed" nor do they "black-mark" websites that aren't attempting to deceive them in one way or another, so don't worry about that! Unless you have links to your new domain, the search engines are unlikely to ever index it under your soft launch. The clock basically starts ticking once they find links pointing to your site — then they start to index it. If they do index the soft-launch page it's no big deal; they'll reindex the new site when it's fully launched once they find a link to it and come crawling. Since the search engines base their rankings on whatever they find on the site at the time that they index it, you shouldn't have any problems.
Great Content Sources for Your Website which will improve SEO
As I travel through the Google search engine, there is one element that defines almost all of the top-ranking websites. It's great content. People come online for information and those that offer the best content reap the greatest rewards.
Unfortunately, this type of content is hard to come by. In most cases, you either have to spend hours in front of the keyboard or outsource the job to others. Both of these options are very costly. One requires your valuable time and the other requires an investment of around $10 - $20 per article.
That's why I have scoured the net in search of valuable free content sources. I'm still not quite sure why I'm revealing my treasured piles of free content, but I certainly hope you enjoy them.
One of my favorite sources of content is public domain. This comprises the body of knowledge without a copyright. Anyone can use this material for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
Below are some excellent sources for public domain material.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a library of 18,000 free ebooks whose copyright has expired. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "Pride and Prejudice", "The Time Machine", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and "The Canterbury Tales" have all passed into the public domain.
This means that you can put these on your website or even sale them in electronic or book format.
Explore a wealth of free content at http://www.gutenberg.org
Archive.org
At Archive.org you can find thousands of works that are currently in the public domain. Want to put some cartoons on your web site?
Check out the "Film Chest Vintage Cartoons", which is full of classic animated cartoons from the 1930's and 1940's. The collection includes Popeye, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, The Three Stooges and Betty Boop.
They also provide tons of other reproducable content including:
Brick Films: Commonly called "LEGO Movies". Brick films are dedicated to the art of stop motion animation.
SabuCat Movie Trailers: The world's largest collection of theatrical trailers.
Feature Films: A large number of classic feature films and shorts.
Universal Newsreels: Newsreels were shown before every feature film in the pre-tv era.
Computer Chronicles: Was the world's most popular television program on personal technology during the height of the computer revolution.
Net Cafe: Television series covering the revolution during the height of the dot com boom.
All of these content sources are available for you to put on your website. check them out at http://www.archive.org .
Another popular public domain destination is Wikipedia.org. Here you will find over 1 million articles ranging from Greek mythology and Egyptian history to business, health, and technology.
Go to http://www.wikipedia.org for a huge collection of articles you can reprint on your own website.
Creative Commons
Every creative work receives copyright protetion as soon as you put pen to paper, hit save, or press record. Because of this, no one can use that work without express permission from the author.
Creative Commons provides a new content license that allows you to share your work with others. If you want, you can even allow other people to expand upon your existing work. This allows for creative co-authorship.
The Creative Commons license has made piles of content available for use on your web site. Whether you are looking for audio, images, video, or text, you can find an abundance of reusable information within the creative commons.
To search for content to put on your own web site, go to http://www.creativecommons.org
Government Web Sites
Works produced by the U.S. Federal government are not copyrighted. If you obtain a government document from the net, you are free to copy and distribute the document. I have found plenty of great content about finance, retirement, health, business, and traveling on government websites.
To search for content offered by the United States government, go to http://www.google.com/unclesam .
Article Directories
There are thousands of writers on the internet and many of them would love for you to reprint their articles on your website. You can find thousands of free web articles at the following article directories.
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
Interviews
I consider interviews to be one of the best sources of quality content for your site. Simply interview industry professionals and post the recording and transcript on your website. This allows you to create original content very quickly.
Don't be afraid to ask for an interview, most experts would be delighted to talk with you. Remember, this is probably one of their greatest passions. If you ask them politely, they will probably be delighted to speak with you.
You can conduct an interview in person, over the phone, or even through an e-mailed questionaire.
RSS Feeds
RSS is changing the way we consume information online. In addition, it has also provided thousands of new content sources for the online publisher. RSS is simply a file format similar to XML that is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be easily understood by web publishing software and content aggregators.
By using RSS feeds, you can enhance the content on your site without ever writing a single word. And remember, on the Internet, content is King.
Want to put Amazon products on your site, updated news from the New York Times, financial advice from Motley Fool, or press releases from PRWeb?
This is all possible with RSS. No matter what type of information you are looking for, RSS can provide you with a constant stream of updated content for your web site.
To search for an RSS feed to enhance your own website, go to http://www.syndic8.com . You can even mix and match a variety of rss feeds at http://www.rssmix.com/ .
Facts & Statistics
Looking for facts or figures to put on your website? Take a look at some of the sources below. You'll likely be surprised how many facts, figures, and defenitions are available in the public domain.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html : The CIA World Factbook provides a number of statistics on countries, territories, and dependencies. Each profile tracks such demographics as population, ethnicity, and literacy rates, as well as political, geographical and economic data.
http://www.census.gov/ : One of the largest repositories for data and statistics related to the U.S.
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page : One of the best encyclopedia's ever written was published over 90 years ago.
Search over 40,000 articles, all of which are available for publication on your own site.
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/3/257/frameset.html : A searchable interface of the 1913 public domain Webster's dictionary
Private Label Articles
Private label articles can be bought for pennies per article.
They do this by selling them in bulk.
Many people criticize these articles and have declared them as worthless. However, I am here to tell you that private label articles can be very powerful when used appropriately.
Unless you have hours of free time every day, it is very unlikely that you are going to be able to create the amount of quality content that your web site deserves. This is where private label content enters the picture.
You can use private label articles to:
- Add content to your web site.
- Acquire hundreds of inbound links by syndicating the articles to article directories.
- Create a free report for your visitors and other website publishers.
- Create an information-packed RSS feed.
However, the key to using private label articles effectively is to optimize them. Straight out of the box, these articles are near worthless. To give them value, you must add your own touch.
Inject your personality into the article. Combine multiple articles and do some additional touch-ups to ensure that the article is in top shape for your readers.
Once you are finished you can add your resource box and send it off to article directories and website publishers.
If you are looking for one of the top private label article providers, go to http://www.infogoround.com
Images
Quality images can make your content much more inviting and keep people at your site for longer periods of time. Fortunately, there is a site that offers thousands of pictures completely free of charge.
Check it out at http://www.sxc.hu
Quotes
Quotes can give your website a special touch. Quotes provide interesting content in addition to an element of credibility. I often like to add related quotes to my web site simply to engage the reader's attention.
To find some quotes for your website, go to http://www.quoteland.com
In the end, you always want your content to be unique. Not for the search engines, but for your visitors. With quality content comes quality links. Once you have built up a reputation for delivering unique content, you will never have to worry about having an audience eager to visit your website.
Source: searchengineguide.com
Blogs Play Strong Role in Influencing Buyers
MarketingVox shares the results of a new study conducted by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann that focuses on the role of blog content in influencing purchasing decisions of IT professionals. While it should come as no surprise that IT professionals are turning to blogs on a more regular basis to help them keep up with the latest news and trends, the extent to which they place trust in the content of those blogs tells a lot about the direction that blogging is headed.
While 8 in 10 IT professionals read blogs, only half are reading them at least once a week. What that in mind, more than half (53%) claim that what they read in blogs has an impact on work-related buying decisions. That's a pretty hefty number, showing that blog writers are not only being recognized as a source of information, but also as a trusted source of advice.
The news is good on the viral front as well. The study says that 70% of IT professionals will go to the effort of passing blog content along to colleagues at least once a month.
Just goes to show that even if you aren't taking the time to be a blogger yourself, you need to consider how you can approach blogs to gain coverage of your products and services.
Treating Your Customers Right Online and Off
One of my ongoing mantras when it comes to online reputation management is that you've got to rely heavily on that good old-fashioned business idea about treating your customers right. The basic idea is to show them respect, meet their needs and come up with creative new ways to make them feel valued. It's refreshing to see that I'm not the only one pointing out the benefits of this approach…Pamela Slim has a great post about her personal experience with this very topic over at the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog.
First, she talks about her experience shopping for a new iPod at a local Apple store…
I just want someone to listen carefully to what my intended use of the product will be, use their vast technical expertise to recommend what I should buy, and stick out their hand to accept my credit card.
And that is exactly what happened at the store. This cute, cool techno sales kid got me the exact product that I wanted, put it in my hands in less than 5 minutes, rang my sale with a handheld remote credit card processor so that I didn't have to stand in line to pay for it, and did nothing to hype me into an extended warranty plan.
The good service doesn't end there though…take note of what else was going on in the background…
…while I was being taken care of in the aisle, my husband and baby son were sitting on comfortable, kid-sized beanbag chairs at a low table and playing educational games on Macintosh computers. My husband was so enchanted by the whole thing that he was ready to buy my son a new Mac right then and there. I had to remind him that our son just barely started to walk and talk and that perhaps we should wait until he doesn't try to eat the mouse before buying him a computer.
That's smart marketing on Apple's part and is a powerful example of why Apple is doing such a booming business these days despite selling higher priced items that really aren't THAT much better than their competitors. It's an experiential sale and it works quite well.
But Pamela's got even me to share when it comes to companies that really "get it" in the realm of making customers feel special.
Peet's is not just a place to get coffee, it is a community center. Their coffee is like diesel fuel, just my style. They have good pastries. Their servers are genuine, nice people and they look you in the eye and ask how you are doing. I was voted "customer of the week" by the staff two months after moving to Lake Merritt based on the following wonderfully subjective criteria: "You have to come in a lot and we have to like you." They took a Polaroid snapshot of me and placed it on the counter, gave me unlimited free drinks all week and generally made me feel like a cherished celebrity. It wasn't forced, and I didn't have to punch out 250 boxes of a "frequent buyer card" to attain the honor.
The idea of having a customer of the week rather than an employee of the week is a fairly unique one, but it demonstrates a deeper understanding of the value that a business must place on their customers. The reality is that one woman can only drink so much "free" coffee in a week…and the value of that woman sharing her experience with friends and family is likely to pay off several times over in new and more dedicated customers. We've practiced a similar theory at the Small Business Ideas forums where we sometimes select a poster or discussion thread that sparks our fancy and award them with their choice of some free puppy gear.
It's not just trendy companies and online companies that operate on these principles though. Throughout the world there are small businesses that still get the value of treating customers like they did in the 'good old days.' In fact, a great example of a company that really gets customer service is right here in central Ohio. The aptly named Yum-Ee Donuts located on the square in my little village serves up a hefty dose of old fashioned customer service. My husband, daughter and I head down there every Saturday morning for breakfast before wandering through the local farmer's market. Not only do the shop owners know our names and what we order, but they also set aside my husband's donut each morning since his favorite variety tends to sell out early. Just this last week I made mention of the fact that if I go into labor over the weekend, I may have to send my husband down to pick our donuts up for us. Their response? No need! If we just call and let them know that we've had the baby, they'll drive our donuts up to the house for us. They weren't joking either. It's another example of why we'll be customers there for a long, long time to come.
So this is where you need to ask yourself…what creative idea can you come up with to better meet the needs of your customers? In what way can you offer up thanks or appreciation to your regulars to show them that you appreciate their business? It's not about spending money or running huge marketing campaigns, sometimes it's just about taking the time to say thanks and build a relationship.
Tales of Pogo Sticks, Bouncy SERPs and Sticky Pages
Much of what little strategy exists in search marketing is aimed towards the first click from a results page (also called a SERP). The position, the messaging and the landing page experience all assume that we've captured that all important first click. But what about the subsequent clicks?. In the search business, this is called pogo sticking, the bouncing back and forth from the search page, clicking on a number of sites in sequence in an effort to find what we're looking for.
Desperately Seeking Pogo Stats
We know pogo sticking exists, but when I tried to quantify how common it was, I quickly ran into a lot of closed doors. I tried all the major engines and was told that they don't divulge that type of information; even in aggregate form. I also tried the monitoring services (comScore, Nielsen, Hitwise) but again came up empty.
So, failing anything more quantitative, we had to turn to our own limited data set. The stats below come from the combination of eye tracking sessions, where we've been able to look for pogo sticking. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it's the best we've got, so I present it with a whackload of caveats.
We saw pogo sticking occur in 49% of the sessions we looked at. We suspect the occurrence of this type of behavior would be even higher in real world settings. So at least one out of every two searches results in a return visit to the results page. In our sessions, 21.5% of them results in two clicks from the SERP, 10.4% in three clicks, 4.9% in four clicks, and 5.5% in five clicks. The remainder (6.8%) clicked six times or more.
Google has the fewest pogo sticking sessions, with only 36.4% of them resulting in a round trip to the SERP. MSN had the highest percentage, with 59.4%. Even if you question the numbers (and you have every right to do so) I believe it's a pretty safe bet that pogo sticking is a pretty common occurrence.
The Power of the Pogo
Why is this important? Because a return visit looks significantly different than the first visit. And if it happens at least half the time, it's a factor we'd do well to consider as we lay down our search strategies.
We strongly recommend that all search strategies take into consideration the mind set of your target customer, within the context of what else appears on the page. This exercise can help you forecast the receptiveness of your target to your position on the page, the messaging you present, and the landing page experience you provide.
Let's walk through a typical scenario. Our target customer searches for "hybrid SUV's”. Because we've done our market segmentation homework, we know our target is early in the buying cycle, and is looking for alternatives for fuel efficient SUVs. They're building their consideration set.
Our eye tracking studies have shown there's relatively little variance in the scanning activity with most searchers at the beginning. They tend to start at the top and work their way down, with a strong bias towards the number one organic spot. Therefore, in this scenario, we have to look at how enticing these top listings are. In walking through this on a search engine, GM and Lexus had purchased the top sponsored spots, where the majority of searchers start their scanning. The first organic spot belongs to the site hybridcars.com, a comparison of available hybrid SUVs. Given our target and their intent, it's very likely that this site will capture the majority of first clicks from the page.
Beyond the First Click
If we're playing in this real estate, we have to look beyond the first click to what might happen on the second and subsequent clicks. Scan patterns spread around more evenly on the page on return visits, without the very strong upper left bias that tends to create the so-called "Golden Triangle” (so called because we called it that). People tend to fixate on where the last listing clicked, and then can head out in multiple directions from there, either continuing down the listings, skipping up to take another look at the top sponsored, or even a quick glance across to the side sponsored ads. Where ever they choose, their interactions will now be colored by what happened in that first click.
Our strategy now has to account for the influence of that likely first click. We have to know how it will alter or reinforce the intent of our user. We also need to know how sticky the landing page behind that first click is. Is it the type of page that will hold them, and possibly send them off in another direction, or is it a quick bounce back to the SERP because it isn't well aligned to our target's intent? Does it reinforce our brand, or our competitors? What appears above the fold, and what appears below the fold? Again, we know from our eye tracking studies that this is the critical divide of the page in terms of scanning activity.
When one realizes the impact of pogo sticking, it suddenly means that our search strategy doesn't play out in a vacuum. It's intimately dependent on what else appears on the results page, and the most likely paths our target will take from that page. It increases the complexity of our strategy exponentially. The only way to successfully navigate it is to have a clear view of the intent of our target. Sure, it makes search marketing more difficult, but it also makes it infinitely more interesting!
SEO Holy Trinity Holy Grail Wholly Textbook
If there was a Holy Trinity of SEO I would say it would have to be copywriting, usability and links. These three things make up the bulk of any SEO campaign and also hold the most influence as to how a site will rank. But there is one important part of SEO that is actually more important than this Trinity, and that is Keyword Research. Without this, any SEO campaign, even "Textbook SEO," is basically a game of pin the tail on the online donkey!
The Holy Trinity of SEO
Copywriting: Content is king, right? Or at least it used to be. And perhaps still is. Actually it's not sheer content that's so important as the quality of that content. Search engines could care less about how many pages your site has, what they do care about is the quality of the content on your site, and what others think of your content as well.
From a user perspective, the quality of the content is important because that is what is used to convert your visitors from searchers to customers. But from a search engine perspective, the content needs to convey a message regarding what your page is about. The focus or theme of your page is based on specific keywords that you are targeting. I suppose 'wandering' content can still be good, but it rarely is and is often not focused enough to convert. Content for SEO purposes needs to stay on topic, and more importantly it needs to stay on focus for predetermined keywords and phrases.
Usability: For some SEOs, usability is a fairly new concept. Probably because it has more to do with marketing than it does with getting top search engine rankings. But now search engines, in their endless effort to become more human-like (and therefore provide results that more humans find accurate) have begun taking usability into consideration.
Obviously the search engines don't know what colors your site uses or whether you use calls to action–both important usability elements. What search engines do know is when your site has broken internal or external links, has coding errors that prevent them from "reading" your page properly, uses contextual linking between your pages, is quick to download, and links out to other authoritative resources on related topics. Search engines are also able to determine if users click to your site and quickly return to search again, but the accuracy of this type of data is suspect.
Regardless, the more usable your site is, and the more relevant and informative and helpful the content is, the better your site will be able to attract natural links, which may be the most important of the three in terms of search engines, but not necessarily in conversions.
Links: Links tell the search engines what others think about your site or specific pages in your site. Much like content, sheer numbers of links are not what matters, but the quality of those links. Where are the links coming from, how authoritative are the links and what are they telling the visitor and the search engine that the linked-to page is about?
If you think you have the absolute best site online for your industry, but no links, then what you think may not have any bearing on reality. Your site is only as good as others think it to be. If a tree falls in the woods and there is not one there to here it… The same principle applies with links. If you've got great content, but there is no other sites linking to it, do you really have that great of a site? You won't know until you get exposure, get people to discover your site and therefore, if it is really good, many will link to it as well. That discovery process can take time, but nothing worthwhile never really happens overnight.
The Holy Grail of SEO
Keyword Research: Keyword research is the map to a strong performing optimization campaign. You may have the best website and even the ability to convert a great number of your visitors who arrive, but in terms of natural search engine placement, keyword research is what drives the campaign in the right direction.
You may know what keywords you want to rank for, but do you know what keywords your target audience uses? Those can often be two different things. Not only do you need to know what keywords your target audience is using but you also need to have an understanding of what keywords are actually achievable in the short, mid, and long-term. This will help you to plan your optimization campaign accordingly without getting any unrealistic expectations.
Bottom line is even if you have good copy, excellent usability and lots of links, going after the wrong keywords will not only waste precious time and financial resources, but it will simply prevent your site, and therefore your business, from performing as well as it should.
The Wholly Textbook of SEO
On-Page Optimization: How important is on-page optimization? Well, it certainly has its purpose and its place in the total optimization campaign but many are debating the value of textbook SEOwithin the big picture.
In some cases on-page optimization is just as important as links and copy. In other cases it's largely insignificant. It just depends on what part of the page we're talking about. Title tags and page headings and optimized content are of greatest importance. Clean code is also good to have. "Optimizing" meta tags and alt attributes are of significantly less importance.
Some might argue that the lesser aspects of on-page SEO add up to "baby steps" toward the goal. Others might make the point that the time involved is not worth the minimal boost they otherwise might provide. But the real question, for me at least, is how much tweaking can you do to a page to get it "just right?" Assuming you go through the on-page optimization process in the beginning, can you continue to tweak it forever or at some point are you just running in circles and taking time away from other things that will provide a bigger return, such as links?
In the big picture, on-page optimization is very important, but probably not as important as we would want it to be. With all the other factors that search engines consider, and assuming you start with a well optimized page, I think the ongoing effort into tweaking a page should encompass only a small fraction of the total time spent working on the things that can make a difference, if not in search rankings, but in improving conversions as well.
Source: Search Engine Guide .com
