Long-tail keywords refer to the combination of terms into a phrase that represents your site, your products and services, etc.  Think of them as the words that people might use when searching for your website, company or products on Google.  Much like any marketing strategy in general, choosing the right long-tail keywords has strategic implications much like choosing the right target market, niche, or micro niche.  The more focused you are, the more relevant you are to that audience.

On-page optimization refers to the activities to incorporate on your website to drive search performance.  This may include proper coding, the content itself, a site index, the frequency with with new content is published, etc.

Off-page optimization is the collection of activities you execute outside the scope of your site to improve indexing and drive traffic.  This may include submitting your site to search engines and other directories, submitting your RSS feed to 3rd party sites for syndication, commenting on other blog posts with high PageRank to drive inbound links.  The list goes on.

What do you think?  Are your SEO tactics driving more, higher targeted visitors to your site?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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2. Deep Links for Search Engine Optimization
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via Selling SEO Projects Against PPC Campaigns – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

Of course, this really depends heaviy on your business model and sales funnel.  For some businesses that sell directly online, PPC is a fantastic option, since you have the ability to track ROI to the penny and can quickly coorelate keyword performance with sales to tweak your PPC strategy.

For more traditional selling models, PPC is great to get initial traffic coming in, but it’s SEO that will drive long-term organic rankings and search traffic.

Furthermore, SEO tactics, such as developing great content with RSS feeds, gives you the ability to increase inbound links, where PPC is a one-shot deal with no long term impact.  Once you stop paying the traffic stops.

Take an hour today to revisit your traffic generation plan.  Consider PPC and SEO among other strategies, specifically thinking about the short and long-term goals you hope to achieve with each.

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3. Local Search 101, Part 1 – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

It’s still shocking that many newbies don’t understand links. You don’t need to link to a lot of Web sites. You need a lot of good Web sites to link to you. And, it’s best if you can manage to get some of those links to include — in some fashion — the keywords that describe the page they’re linking to.

For example, if I’m linking to Search Engine Watch, I would want to link using the words “Search Engine Optimization News” within the anchor text of the link. If I wanted to “deep link” (that is to say, link deeper within the Search Engine Watch Web site), I would link to the Promotion & Link Building page using the words “Link Building Resources.”

via Top Signs Your Site Isn’t Ready for Prime Time, Part 2 – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

This strategy is so critical.  I would also add that not only do you want to use your keywords in this deep linking strategy, but you should also link from sites that have a high PageRank.

For example, you could generate dozens of inbound links from sites with a Google PageRank of zero and your efforts would yield very little in-terms of SEO.  Whereas one link from a .gov or .edu site with high PageRank could significantly improve your rank.

To lean more about PageRank, check out Wikipedia on PageRank

To check the PageRank of any site, check out prchecker.

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2. How to generate inbound links with videos for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
3. Search Engine Optimization: Back to Basics

As the largest online video sharing site, YouTube is home to everything from Obama’s weekly radio address to corporate sponsored infomercials and people showcasing their musical talent. The list goes on and anything you can imagine can be found on YouTube. It’s free to sign up, free to upload videos, and free to view videos. Honestly, there’s nothing stopping you from taking advantage of this great medium to communicate and engage with your market.

The fact is most people do not understand how to properly optimize their videos for search engines and thus most video get very little attention.

[ Open this video to study the following optimization techniques. ]

Keywords

As with any search engine optimization strategy, keywords are critical. Think of them as the combination of words or phrases that people search for on the Internet. Since YouTube videos are frequently indexed by major search engines, it’s important to understand some simple steps to make your videos more search engine friendly.

It so happens that you can also call out these keywords in a special Keywords section with every new video you upload. Here’s your chance to thoroughly differentiate your video from the pack.

Titles

The title of your video needs to include two things: 1) your keywords and 2) something to hook viewers as they scan through a list of titles. If you fail to include the right keywords, search engines will ignore your video and if you fail to use a catchy title viewers will ignore your video.

For example, instead of using a title such as “Great House on 1.3 Acres!”, you might get better results with “4581 Morgan Creek – House for Sale in Roseville, CA”. The first example would be fine if the video was for a specific client, but the second video will ultimately draw more viewers since it names the city and uses the keyword phrases “house for sale” and “Roseville, CA”.

Descriptions

The second most overlooked section of posting a video on YouTube is the description field. When search engines index your video, the description field is a key element.

First and foremost, if you have a URL that you want visitors to visit, put that as the first item in your description. By default, only the first few lines of the description are displayed above the fold, so you want your URL to be right there at the top in the most obvious position so viewers click on it. Be sure to format the link correctly so it’s an active link using “html://www.mysite.com”.

The description field is also a great place to pack in your keywords and keyword phrases. Take care not to overdo it – strive for something that makes sense and gets the point across, but still incorporates the keywords where possible. An extra bonus is that YouTube cross-references related videos and people are more likely to find your video if you follow these general guidelines.

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3. How to generate inbound links with videos for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Having done a session at Search Engine Strategies New York this week on Twitter (Beyond Googling: Where Will We Be Searching in 5 Years) and written “Should Google Buy Twitter?” I’ve started to see a shift in the search world.

I’m sure Google will always be a major presence on the Web and the place to go for certain types of information. But not for all types of search. The search engines are a database of information and always will be. The factors on how information is pulled from the source is up to the individual companies at this stage, but who knows how that may change in the future.

Google has given us tools to rank the listings for ourselves for our personal results pages. In the future, this methodology could be a big play, but for now it hasn’t taken off.

Twitter’s rapid growth and pervasive presence — mentioned in newspapers, on TV and just about everywhere you look — has opened a new information source. “Real-time search,” “social search,” or whatever you want to call it offers an alternative.

There are no databases (not yet anyway) except those in each user’s brain. We share what we know and that accumulated knowledge tops the search engine databases.

If we could get total numbers of searches for the top three engines, I’m certain there will soon be a noticeable drop. Social media is having an impact and Twitter seems to be leading the way. When once we looked to the engines for all quick finds of needed information, we’re now getting some of that from “the global village” of social media.

For all the inanities passed around on Twitter, there are as many links to new current information. Mahalo Answers has jumped on the medium with its @questions and @answers. It’s early yet, but we can see the movement to this search source.

It seems to be the natural order of things. When search engines first started, people would make two-word searches, then three and four, and then more. We’ve become more educated searchers. Using Twitter as a source for finding information seems a natural progression.

Twitter could also adapt to take advantage of this change. There has been mention of them pushing information to users on an alerts basis — the ability is there now for being alerted when someone is discussing any topic you want to follow. Add alerts for local emergencies and other important local-specific information that you couldn’t think of in advance, and you have a situation where search is sitting there delivering your future needs.

Google’s desire to “give people access to the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it” is a good one, but it seems Twitter is becoming the major player in one of those spaces.

Chris Boggs Fires Back

Searching Twitter has one fundamental problem, at least in my experience with search.twitter.com: the only return sort order is by date, with the most recent post listed first. Google, Technorati, and other blog search choices out there also offer a “Sort by Relevance,” with Technorati taking it to the next level with multiple “classes” of blogs to search within, based on their Technorati-granted authority status. Until Twitter has a larger sample of users to choose from, it will be hard for them to provide another way of sorting search returns.

Speaking of Twitter, Lisa Barone’s scathing post describes the feedback I got from many attendees since Tuesday morning’s keynote by Guy Kawasaki: he kind of blew it. Kawasaki advocates the use of Twitter for marketing purposes, and I certainly feel that has great potential.

One tactic Kawasaki discussed was getting as many followers as possible. This would be a good precursor to becoming a power-user that may be considered if Twitter begins to try to group/associate users to specific subjects. In short, that could be leveraged like Teoma (now Ask.com) uses “authorities” to guide which links have more value pointed to pages around specific relevant areas.

Twitter’s adoption rate will continue to grow, but in order for them to become a valuable search tool on their own, they’ll have to augment their capabilities and really build a trustable algorithm. The best way to search Twitter is through something paid like Radian6.

Listening to what people are saying about your brand is important, but only better technology makes it a manageable process, especially for very large well-known brands. I’m interested, Frank, to see what 2009 holds for Twitter. Hopefully, we’ll continue to see additional search functionality added, without the need for Twitter “organizers” like Tweetdeck and others.

via Does Twitter Reflect a Change in How We Search? – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

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This increase in professional content has created a higher expectation by the typical user. This evolution does not mean that individually produced videos will not still make their way to social media sites especially, if they are out-of-the-box creatively. But it does set the bar much higher for businesses that want to remain competitive in their online marketing programs. Although a large percentage of the professionally produced videos online are derived from longer format TV shows, the growth rate for high quality videos last year was close to twenty-five percent.

YouTube will continue to be a valuable venue to help support for your business’s Internet marketing program, but it will become increasingly more important to provide production values that surpass the user-generated content that proliferates. A good starting point can be TV spots that have been custom produced for your company. Since they can be viewed from anywhere, custom spots are preferable to “donut” spots that have your name and phone number added for your market but also air elsewhere.

By working with an online media company that specializes in internet marketing, videos with high production values can be produced for your firm’s web site and for use on the social media platforms. It is also important that your partner provide complete SEO services so that your videos can be optimized for the web. Producing great video content may be key, but it is equally important to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible.

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The tools for leveraging social networks are improving daily and with the right strategy it is possible to create a substantial community within several weeks.  Imagine having several hundred, even thousands of customers at your fingertips to discuss market trends, customer needs, and new product releases.  It’s happening right now.  LL Bean, for example, has 857 followers on Twitter as of today and can communicate with them 24/7.

Michelle MacPhearson offers a great free eBook on the trends and myths surrounding Social Media – The Social Media Myth.

If you would like to learn more about Social Marketing please contact me @ 434-806-3272.

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As the economy opens the door of opportunity for many people who have lost their jobs, more small businesses are on the rise — and so is the demand for local search. Are you looking to venture beyond the printed yellow pages? You should be.

According to a SBI+M article, 54 percent of Americans have substituted the Internet and local search for phone books. Ninety percent of online commercial searches result in a local offline purchase and 61 percent of all local searches results in a transaction. Do I have your attention?

via Local Search 101, Part 1 – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

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Google Reader is a great to tool to help track information on the Internet, identify stories of interest, and quickly link to relavent content.

First, get a Google account and sign up for Google Reader.  Next, visit the sites and blogs you normally visit and if they have an RSS feed add it to Google Reader.  I like to label my feeds and categorize them based on topics.

Next, swith to the List view.  Now when you load up Google Reader you have a simple window within which to scan new posts from your favorite sites.  Once you find something of particular interest you can either visit the site and leave a comment, tag the posts and choose to make your tag list public, or quote the post in one of your own posts.

All three option have great implications for linking to your site and enable you to easily follow a topic or story as it unfolds.

Try Google Reader and discover one of the Internet’s best kept secrets!

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The goal of SEO is to have search engines index or spider a site so that when people search in the search engines they can find the site.  This is important for most sites, since more traffic equates to more business or raised awareness for a cause.

Some sites however have no need for SEO depending on their purpose.  For example, a site may be established simply to serve as a landing page or URL devoted to a particular audience driven to the site through other means.  The site may in fact be password protected.

Our focus in this discussion is on sites that do wish to draw visitors from search engine use and there are several key factors both on the website itself (on-page) and off the site (off-page) that influence how sites are indexed and for which key search terms sites are identified.

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