Search Engine Marketing Basics: Understanding How to Use Content to Your Advantage

June 16, 2010

Content is KING. I say it ALL THE TIME – ask anyone…really, go ahead…ask! It’s very simply one of THE most important aspects to growing your web presence. But there’s a trick – a trick to making content work for you that a lot of individuals in online marketing won’t talk about.

The so called ‘trick’ is simply to understand HOW it works and WHAT the search engines are looking for in content. Once you understand this, you can use it to your advantage and isn’t it nice to have an advantage in growing your business?

What You Need to Know About Search Ranking
How a page ranks in the search engines is determined by that particular page’s attributes such as the number and quality of inbound links (inbound links are links coming from other sites and resources on the web), along with on the page factors such as keyword placement in title tags, copy, headers, etc.
Google (the Big Daddy of all search engines) places the most importance on the type and quality of inbound links you have coming into your site and the meta title tag. Get really good at understanding and using these two aspects of content and you’ll have Google eating out of your hand in no time!

Making Content Work for You
On the other hand, adding content in the form of articles, blog postings, resources, buyer’s guides, etc. can boost up your search rank and ultimately your traffic. What you are doing is creating more indexable content for the search engines to crawl (as well as attracting more links).

Content that is informative and written as a resource (always with your key words and search phrases in mind) also gives your site weight and legitimacy in the ‘eyes’ of the search engines. It’s a winning combination that is simple to employ and so well worth the time and effort.

*A note to remember – pages with few inbound links tend to slip out of the search rankings so you want to make sure the content is good and that people will want to link TO that content.

Now, just as an aside…there ARE ways to update content on the page to direct the search engine spiders to that page and then plant links to pages you want the search engine spiders to discover and index. It does speed up the process of getting new pages listed quicker. It won’t impact your ranking but it will be indexed in the search engines quicker so the content is more available. Your best bet, though, is to get it right the first time.

Misconceptions About How to Use Content
Taking the content of the page and rewriting it on a regular basis will not boost your web site rankings. In fact, it will more than likely pull your ranking down.

*Another note to remember…content SHOULD absolutely be updated/rewritten if it doesn’t contain any of the search phrases you want that particular page to rank for. I happen to see this a lot. Your main search phrases and keywords should also be reflected in your title tag, description and keyword tags up in the meta info in the head section of your site. (Hopefully you know this already…if you don’t we should probably set up some time to have a little chat)

Same goes for streaming an rss feed onto one of your web site pages. It doesn’t impact your ranking. It’s a cool tool and can generate traffic to the feed source but again, does not impact your ranking in the search engines.

Sonya Klepper is an expert at mixing it up in the web development and web marketing arena with winning combinations each and every time. She is the owner of Truly Twisted Marketingwhich specializes in customized, out of the box, solutions to grow businesses with some seriously kickin’ modern design and mad marketing skills.

Written by Crystal · Filed Under Startup & Grow

3 Secrets to Measuring Success in Your Online Community

November 25, 2009

Ghenn Weeks Let’s say you’ve launched your blog and are ready to understand more about your audience. How do you determine the most important metrics for your community?

The old way of marketing said that visitors were all potential customers. It attached visitor actions to a definitive revenue goal, and conversion rates were based on this Point A to Point B method. Often, communication with these customers beyond the sale was not a strong consideration, if at all.

However, today we expect to have more understanding of how a product works in our life, possibly quite early in the buying cycle, and we need more than a large Buy Now button to get us interested. We want to know what others think about the product and what their experience has been. Thus, the value of blogs and online communities. If you’re now managing a community or planning one, understanding Return On Engagement metrics, as well as Return on Investment metrics will have notable impact on the longevity, activity, cohesion, and profitability of your community.

I’ve assembled a list of 3 tips that any blog owner or community manager can use to measure both definitive and qualitative impact.

Secret #1 : Analyze Community Dynamics

The first secret of analyzing your community is learning about the members. If your blog is targeted to say, moms in a specified geographical area whose husbands are airline pilots, don’t automatically assume that such tight targeting will mean they all have the same motivations – they won’t. Learn what they are. And focus on offering them what they want.

A good way to do this is to ask them, but everyone hates surveys, and you may not get enough information to make an informed decision about improving your community in specific ways. One of the easiest and most effective ways is to simply watch how members engage with each other. Who are your community influencers? How can they help create cohesion in the community? Which members are getting shut down and not heard? What ways can you reach out to them? Why do most people join your community? To build social links, or because the community brand appealed to them?

To ensure a robust community, really come to understand your member’s lives and how they relate to one another. This is important stuff.

Secret #2 : Analyze Community Cohesion

Closely related to Secret #1 is community cohesion. How does your community identify itself? Communities are social units chosen because an individual identifies with the members there and shares a sense of “we-ness” with them. Not all people will socially fit into your community. That being the case, look for opportunities to strengthen unity within your community, create a sense of contrast with other communities, and create camaraderie around a shared mission.

Example: PepsiWeInspire.com brought women of color together from all walks of life to share their beauty, wisdom and inspiration with each other, and in the process fight long entrenched industry ideals of beauty.

Secret #3: Analyze Your Community Traffic Data

Now that you’ve put the needs of people first in your community analysis and planning, consider the next step taking a more data-driven approach to help you develop and meet conversion metrics. Make sure to always think in terms of people before tools, and when it’s time to use tools, consider these analytics:

Search engine ranking
Social bookmarking activity
Video/podcast views/listens
Inbound links
Technorati rankings
Blog trackbacks
RSS subscriptions
Blog comments on your blog
Active commenting on complimentary blogs
Visitors (first-time and repeat)
Visitor paths
Referrers
Size of community – daily signups/logins

This is clearly just the tip of the iceberg of what it takes to effectively measure success in your community, but it’s a great starting point for the kind of attitude it takes to make your community truly worth spending time at. What’s important is that you focus on the member’s needs first because there are countless other networks where they can choose to spend their time.

Setting your analytics focus on putting members first pays off dividends in helping you learn how to win members over, develop a clear idea of the kinds of experiences you want to provide, and illustrate each day why your blog or community is the place to be.

Ghennipher Weeks is a Startup Princess Fairy Godmother and a principal at Cindikate, a consultancy that helps companies who market to women create effective lifestyle brand communities. Ghennipher’s background includes a decade of public speaking and consulting corporate clients in search marketing and online conversion, with 5 of those years focused specifically on online brand communities and corporate blogs. Her forthcoming community management book, to be released by Humans and Technology, gives tactical advice to companies seeking to create groups of ardent customers organized around a brand’s lifestyle.

Written by Nathan · Filed Under Startup & Grow