Spider Traps

Ryan    Uncategorized     Infographic, SEO, Spider Traps

After looking around from some cool infographics, I came across this uncanny representation of spider traps that can often lead your search engine optimization astray. Although Elliance.com created this in 2008, for some reason, I feel there are a lot of sites today that still face some of these issues:

Fun times right?

SEO Content Writing

Ryan    Uncategorized     Marketing Integration, Organic Search, SEO, Social Media

I recently attended a conference here in Phoenix, that covered topics ranging from SEO, social media, link building, content marketing, and a few other things. Although I usually enjoy these kinds of events, I have to say that I was a little less than thrilled with what was actually offered in the end. Sure it is good to get an updated summary on what is current in SEO, but if you already have a general idea of what is important, sometimes, these sessions just aren’t for you. Especially once you realize that some of the information they are pushing is actually not correct.

Needless to say, there was a central theme that somehow made itself heard throughout all of the mumbo jumbo. With the divide between social and SEO becoming more and more blurry, the actual digital content/assets on the webpages themselves are beginning to take central stage in where everyone wants to lay high importance towards. Without universal understandings of what and how you actually want to optimize a piece of content, you are sometimes better off not putting the content up in the first place. Without a general integration strategy, or even simple plan of attack, the marketing and promotion efforts you have put so much money into, can sometime turn sour! So what do I do?

If you’re marketing yourself personally, this can be a really enlightening experience. You don’t always take a step back and analyze just who you are personally. Whereas if you are marketing or promoting a business or separate entity, this experience can also be very rewarding in that you can take it upon yourself to ultimately understand without a doubt just what it is you are optimizing or selling. Sure you can pick and choose those high trafficked keywords that YOU think will work, but are they relevant to your product… Are they relevant to your product in 6 months?… or even, are they relevant to you business as a whole? As an individual who specializes in SEO, one should take it upon themselves to reach out, talk, and work with everyone in the company who are willing to help grow your understanding. In addition, work on planning press releases, articles, social campaigns, and whatever else around your SEO strategy as well. If you can communicate and optimize your plan, your keywords, and your vision with your company, people will more likely want to jump on board, and help you help them in the long run. Because that is what you are doing right?

Although there are tons more issues revolving around the simple concept of optimizing content for SEO, a good first step in any plan is to INTEGRATE. Sure your body parts can all have separate jobs, but if you want to learn how to dance, you’re gunna need some coordination.

Peace

Back at Work – Realization of Search Saturation

Ryan    Uncategorized     Organic Search, SEO

After the long break from work and some much needed time with my family, I’m back in the office (with a new coffee pot, thanks to my father and mother-in-law) and I’m shifting gears and starting to look deeper and harder into organic search. That crazy thing. I’m not cutting off all ties with paid search, it just is taking a back seat for a while… we’ll see.

To start the year off right, I thought it best to really dive into some of my employer’s more important search terms. Those terms you might be asking?… generic. Highly searched, highly competitive, yet highly profitable. Why do you think you see so many ads for insurance, or online schools, or investing? Those are the people who see the biggest bang for their buck for paying the most for your click. So why is this a problem.

Just as these vertical’s paid search and display campaigns might be gigantic, the affiliate marketers and content creators backing them up are just as big. Are you looking for car insurance or an online degree? Don’t type in ‘car insurance’ or ‘online degree’ in your search browser unless you want a site that will sell your information to the highest paying provider. It’s a system that works, but quite honestly, from a 50 thousand foot level, a lot of discredit goes to those searchers like you and me out there. Are we getting the service that best matches what we want? Probably.. damn, but maybe not. I guess that depends on if you know how to search for the product or service you’re looking for.

So what does this mean for me and my ongoing endeavor for search engine optimization?

Some friends and partners of mine over at KEO Marketing in Tempe, AZ have really pushed an interesting aspect of SEO on to me. “How do we get through all of the mumbo jumbo of content pushers, and affiliate aggregators in our space?” Focus your efforts along side theirs. Better yet, expand our efforts by leaps and bounds.

These affiliate websites have tons and tons of other websites networked together performing single, high output, actions at a time… and with those actions, money goes right to them. But their network of sites do all the heavy lifting.

If, as a business, we can focus our efforts as expansively as they can, shouldn’t we be able to start edging back into the 2nd or 1st pages of some long tailed keyword search results? People are typing huge search terms in these days… because they see that crap! Those are the searchers we want to see come to our site directly.

So what’s the process in doing this? You should know by now… most likely, you’re into search (why else would you even consider reading this far down into my post?).

Peace