Why Content is King for Search Marketing

When talking about content, the first premise to consider is that for most companies, competing online via “new technology” has become more and more difficult. The truth is, regardless of company size, there can only be a select few winners in the contest to be the best “technology-driven” business online.

True, the technological lead sometimes changes hands, like it did away from AOL and MySpace to the current leaders in their respective fields. But those occurrences are becoming rare. Companies such as Google have gained so much mass, brand equity and momentum that it may be years before they are supplanted in any meaningful way. They won’t be handing off their lead in many categories anytime soon.

No, the way to compete today is by becoming a purveyor of content. Drive traffic to your website, platform or service by creating and sharing valuable information to your target audiences. Fill a niche market. Find a group or segment with unmet needs, and fulfill them.

And this is exactly what AOL and MySpace have done. AOL bought the blog network Weblogs, home to many popular blogs, such as Engadget and Joystiq; and they now employ over 3,000 freelance writers and more than 150 full-time journalists. And the AOL portal is still popular, and drives traffic to their many in-house publications.

MySpace decided to become a home for music and celebrity content. The platform is no longer about networking with friends, passing that baton to Facebook some time ago.

So, MySpace is now focused on a wide variety of entertainment channels, and features a huge supply of new music and music videos. Their plans to offer Facebook Connect functionality clearly show how refocused their business plan has become. They couldn’t beat Facebook in social networking technology, so shifted to becoming a content provider.

So becoming a “destination” is the key to competing online, for almost every small and mid-sized business, and even for most large corporations. It should also be noted that we’re obviously talking about a continual and ongoing process for creating content, not a singular campaign or event.

And when analyzing the examples above, it’s easy to understand why content must also be “fresh.” Ask yourself the question: Would you read the exact same newspaper two or more days in a row? Probably not. You need to view your web content in the same manner.

Without ongoing content being added to your website, readers have no incentive to return. And though your website may be highly-ranked today, without fresh content being added the search engines will (eventually) simply move on to sites with newer information.

Ideally, this means you’ll have new content every time the search engine crawler (for SEO newbies, an automated program used to review websites) visits. You need to show the engines that your site is being actively monitored and managed, obviously a good thing in their eyes. This ensures the crawler always has fresh content to index, and new links to explore. It won’t ever see your site as “stale”, and decide to drop it in the rankings.

So think about your web content as accomplishing two equally important goals:
- The first is to provide clear, compelling information about your brand, products and services, to influence the buying behavior of visitors.
- The second goal is to attract (and keep) the attention of the search engines, to build your potential audience and prospective business going forward.

Knowing exactly what keywords to focus on within your content is a conversation for another day, but SEO pros can analyze your business and let you know which words are the ones you should include in your content. But once these keywords have been established, where can you find source material that can assist you in writing your web copy?

There are a number of effective strategies that you can use to generate your content. First, look around your desk or office, and you’ll probably see some marketing materials or sales tools that you have used to educate and solicit new business. This is an excellent place to start. If you send an email newsletter, or print and distribute a traditional version, that information should be shared on your website as well. Writing and distributing press releases online is another good strategy.

After you have found source materials, how do you share your content? Creating standard web pages is obviously one possibility. Starting your own blog and either writing it yourself, or hiring a freelance writer to assist you, is another winning strategy. A well-written blog can establish you as an expert within your business category; a “trusted advisor” that readers will consult with before making purchasing decisions. And having your own blog provides you with an open forum to share new developments and news items, sales, discounts and special promotions with your readership.

A blog also allows you to receive comments from your readership, which creates a more collaborative and interactive environment. This type of feedback is vital to understanding the changing wants and needs of your customer base, and responding appropriately.

Of course, we cannot ignore the massive amounts of new content generated on social media, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These networks also allow for a back and forth conversation with your most loyal customers and biggest brand champions, as well as your prospects. Your content communicates directly with your network, providing the opportunity for feedback, and also the opportunity for current customers to spread the message about your business with their other connections.

Hopefully this post helps to explain the vital importance of your web content now, and going forward. In future posts, we will explore some winning tactics that you can use to successfully create and share what you have created.


Jim Haynes is the owner of Hat Trick Associates (HTA), a firm specializing in the creation of online content. HTA designs, writes and distributes completely custom email newsletters, writes professional blogs for companies, and also sets up and manages social networking accounts for businesses. His team can assist you with any writing or online content needs, and can be visited online at: www.hattrickassociates.com.

Incredible and FREE Blog Pining Service - blogbuzzer.com

As I was working my way around the Web I stumbled one of the coolest free services I have seen in awhile. It is called blogbuzzer and it allows you to ping many different and unique services every time you update your blog.

The basic service is FREE (which is great), but they also offer a premium service that will automatically ping all their services every time you update your blog and also will weekly submit your posts (manually) to many social book marking and other services like Stumble Upon and Delicious (to name a few). They will do all this for 5 of your blogs for only $9 per year (yeah, I said $9 per year for all this for up to 5 blogs - pretty incredible).

Check it out today at - blogbuzzer

BEST OF THE WEB DISCOUNT COUPON - 20% OFF FOR JANUARY 2010!!!

It is that time again when my favorite web directory has a discount promotion. As always, I recommend that any site you care about be included in the Best of the Web Directory (BOTW) and I would recommend just doing the permanent listing at $299 (-20% until the end of January = $239). It is the best deal going. Below is the copy from the email they sent me for your reference:

Get Started today and Save 20% on new:

* Directory Submissions - Discount the annual or the one-time review fee and get listed in the Internet's Oldest Directory.
* Monthly Sponsorship Ads - Save on the monthly rate for all new sponsorship ads.
* Blog Directory Submissions - Feature your blog and save on the annual review fee.
* Blog Advertising - Discount on all new sponsorship ads in the Blog Directory.
* Premium Local Listings - Discount the monthly and annual rate for your Local Business Profile listing.
* Bundled Marketing Package - Get your US Business listed in BOTH the Web Directory and BOTW Local for a fraction of the cost. Save 20% on the yearly fee!

Use Code - NEWYR

Click Here For Discount Link - BOTW Discount Link

How to do a Linking Campaign

There are many reasons for engaging in a link campaign. In Google, links are one of the most important factors in determining a sites rank in the search engine results page (SERPs).

Since this is such a crucial factor in Google's algorithm (as well as the other search engines), a link campaign should be part of your search engine marketing efforts.

First, let's define the different types of links that a site can have:

Reciprocal link - this is where two sites exchange links to each other's sites.

One-way (In-Bound) link - where one site links to another site without receiving a link back.

Reciprocal linking is a very time consuming task when done correctly. During this process, a webmaster will scour the Internet looking for relevant sites that he or she can trade links with.

Once they have obtained a list of suitable sites, a personalized email is sent to the respective webmasters and a request for an exchange takes place. A typical letter would read as follows:

Dear Webmaster:

While researching quality sites to request link exchanges from, I found your site. I would like to offer an exchange of links from my site to yours. Below is our site's information:

Title: Google Search Engine Optimization
URL: http://www.seoforgoogle.com
Description: Get the Google search engine optimization guide that shows you in precise detail how to get your site top rankings in Google for your keywords.

If you are interested, please reply with your site's information and where our link was placed.

If you're not interested, your lack of response will indicate your desired action.

Thank you for your time,

Your name
your email


If and when you receive some repsonses, you should add their sites as soon as you can, and send them an email telling them that their link has been added, and include the url where they can see their site.

You will have to routinely check your partners to make sure they are still linking to your site in order to continue the partnership. Most webmasters are honest and will keep you linked, but there are a few rotten apples out there.

In-Bound (One-way) Links are the best type of links if you can get them. It's not all that difficult to do so, but as in anything worth while, there will be an amount of effort involved.

The easiest way to get In bound links to your site is to do directory submissions. There are many great free directories to submit to, and it's worth the time and effort to get listed in as many as you possibly can.

There are also fee-based directories which you submit to, and as your budget allows, you should try to get listed in all directories that are relevant to your site's topic.

The next way to get one-way links to your site is to do a press release. With sites such as prwire, you can submit a press release to them for free, and that will not only get your site exposure, but it will also get you some in-bound links.

If you have the ability to compose articles or columns, there are many sites that can get your site exposure by you allowing them to re-print your content. While some may argue that this procedure may penalize you in the search engines for duplicate content, as long as you have posted your article to your site first, you shouldn't get hit by a duplicate content penalty.

Depending on how many sites you allow for your information to be published wil also create in-bound links to your site. So the question you have to consider is control of your content versus web exposure.

If you have an online business, you should always include your site's url in your email signature. Many people use either Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail which are all web-based systems, so they read the urls contained in the email and thus add to your back-link totals.

One piece of consideration: When you submit your site information to be linked from, make sure your anchor text (the clickable part) is one of the keywords you are trying to get your site ranked for. What you are telling the search engines is that the destination of the url is about whatever the text link was. So, if your text link says "eggs", the search engine would expect that page to be about eggs.


-To your online success!

Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com

10 Best FREE Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research is always a daunting task. Many people use one or more keyword research tools (free or paid) to help. What I thought might be helpful is to provide a list of the top 10 best free keyword research tools for your enjoyment.

7 search Keyword Research Tool (free)
Good Keywords (free download)
Google AdWords Keyword Tool (free)
KeywordIndex (free)
Keyword Country (free online version)
Keyword Discovery (free online version)
Spacky (free)
Wordpot (free online version)
Word Stream (free online version)
Word Tracker (free online version)

Good luck!

Google Caffeine And The New Ranking Factors

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's "Next Generation" search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages on the wonderful world wide web. According to all indications, this is not just another one of Google's infamous Updates, but a major "Overhaul" of its index and algorithm, the complex formula and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages, including yours.

If that doesn't sound ominous enough, according to Matt Cutts (Google Spokesperson) one database is already showing Google Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the holidays. The reasoning behind this, Google doesn't want to upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come around this time of the year, most notably the "Florida Update" which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.

Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how it indexes its pages. This time around, webmasters were even given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released last summer ('09) where webmasters could check to see how well their keywords and site would fare in this new search index. This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down by Google.

Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google's new search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have observed, but please be aware it is often very foolish to draw conclusions and make predictions from your own small sampling of results. You can end up with egg on your face very quickly, especially when you consider Google is probably still making adjustments and refinements on Caffeine as it analyzes the results.

However, there are certain ranking factors that even Google is telling us about, mainly "Site Speed" or how fast your site loads will play a part in how it's ranked. We have also heard a lot about "Broken Links" and if your page or site has them, then it will probably be ranked lower. Of course, linking out to "Bad Neighborhoods" will probably still not be a good practice if you want higher rankings within Google.

It should not come as a shock or a surprise, that "Over-All Page Quality" will play a greater role in how well your page ranks. Keep in mind, Google is like any other company putting out a product, if that product doesn't have a high standard of quality, it reflects badly back on everyone concerned. Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is the key to all their online revenue, they must do everything in their power to keep that product fast, relevant, current and above all, something of high quality.

Therefore, expect "OnPage Factors" to play a much greater role in Google Caffeine. Quality unique content, page design, good navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. A perfectly optimized keyworded page, with the keyword in the title, description, meta tags, alt tags, on the page... will probably get you ranked higher in Caffeine, as well as most search engines on the web.

This may be pure speculation on my part, but one of the areas Caffeine will be addressing or incorporating is "Social BookMarking", that is the number of social bookmarks a page receives will determine how high it is ranked. I also believe one of the major reasons these bookmarks will become much more important has to do with the whole nasty issue of link buying.

Now, the integrity of Google's index is not in question, but any savvy marketer or webmaster knows any individual or company with deep pockets and huge resources can buy their way into the top spot. Despite Google's attempt to stop it, link buying and keyword positioning is a thriving industry on the web. Rightly or wrongly, money and unlimited resources will get you or your company to the top in organic search, regardless of which search engine you're targeting.

All moral and ethnical issues aside, the small webmaster and/or online marketer is stuck right in the middle, with Google on one side and these major multinational competitors on the other. Looming on the horizon is Google Caffeine, a new sheriff in town!

What new rules will this sheriff bring?

The major question here is this: has the importance of backlinking been downplayed in this new index in favor of the keyworded domain and onsite content and optimization? Has there been a major shift to listing more quality content rather than relying on the number of backlinks a site is receiving, even from important related themed sites? The major problem and question to Google is this: if links can be bought, how do you keep your organic results democratic and fair, which was the original intention of Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they started Google in 1998.

One possible solution is social bookmarking.

Will we see an ever growing importance of social bookmarks and links in this new index. It is quite easy to buy 1000 links, but getting 1000 or 10,000 "re-tweets" is a little more difficult, similarly getting two or three thousand "diggs" may be a little harder to pull off. Same goes for Del.icio.us bookmarks, Facebook fans... well you get the picture. Will Google's use of these new social sites make Caffeine faster, more relevant, more current and most importantly of all, can it bring some democracy back into their index?

Of course, nothing in Google's new index will be that cut and dry, that black and white. Other ranking factors such as age of site, past history and reputation, traffic numbers, authority branding... will all play a role in whether your site gets listed on that all important first page. However, on page factors may play a greater role - title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. Website speed or how fast your site loads may also be a new ranking factor.

Underlying this whole issue is the fact which many experienced webmasters/marketers already know, Google's SERPs is not a one-trick pony anymore. For very lucrative (monetized) keyword phrases, Google's results are broken up into Five categories... Info listings, Video listings, News Listings, Shopping Listings and Corporate Listings. Forget Caffeine, this is probably the fairest move Google has made in the last few years to make its SERPs more democratic.

Another even more puzzling issue for me concerning Google Caffeine is how much emphasis or ranking power will it place on "Keyworded Domains", domain names which have your keyword or keyword phrase in them. Will these domains be ranked higher? Webmasters and marketers for years have been telling us we should always pick domain names which have our major keywords in them. Just common sense really, someone searching for "brown widgets" will more likely than not find that item at a domain called brownwidgets(dot)com or brownwidget(dot)com. The major SEO reasoning, all your backlinks will inherently have your searched keyword in the URL, thus bringing it up in the rankings.

Against this whole backdrop, everyone has to realize the web itself is evolving, new sites like Twitter, FaceBook... have changed the whole cyber landscape. Likewise, the web user is also changing and becoming more web savvy in how they use the web. Will search engines, not only Google, take a back-seat role in how we find stuff on the web? As major sites are branded into the web user's psyche, will these users go directly to these sites, by-passing the search engines altogether?

As the web evolves, keyworded domains will become more valuable and this value will be reflected in the quality of the site. If you're making thousands or even millions from your keyworded domain, you can afford to invest in quality content and design. Cream rises to the top. Gradually, as these domains become more valuable, they will probably be snapped up by marketers and companies who know just how to exploit them. Thousands upon thousands of keyworded domains will probably be bought up by multi-billion dollar corporations who finally realize what the web has to offer. This new evolved web will probably be much more narrower in scope and very topic specific.

In the "next generation" web the re-direct shall be king!

Will the role of the search engines, whether it be Google or Bing/Yahoo, become less and less important, as savvy web searchers go directly to a site by typing in the keyworded domain to find what they're looking for on the web? Cutting out the middleman may just become a world wide passion as big multinational and fully funded corporations snap up all these valuable and lucrative keyworded domains, will we see these domains grow in importance and the search engines take more of a back-up role? Human nature dictates we always take the fastest route to our destination, and the web will be no exception to this rule.

Have all the smart people at Google figured this out already, and designed the new Google Caffeine to reflect the growing importance of the keyworded domain? Of course, we can only speculate when it comes to just what Google is planning and doing with its next generation search engine, but will onsite factors and your domain name play a greater role in their organic SERPs?

Regardless of what the new sheriff actually does, when the dust finally settles on all these latest developments, the keyworded domain will probably be standing tall, watching the sun rise on a brand new day.

About the Author: Titus Hoskins is a full time online affiliate marketer. His livelihood is derived from & depended upon search engine marketing & daily monitoring of targeted keywords, mainly within Google. He runs numerous sites, including: Free Marketing Tools & Internet Marketing Tools.

Every Backlink (link to your website) Matters!!!

Many times when webmaster embark on a link campaign, they obsess on the vaunted Google PageRank that the linking page has.

What a waste of time.

Today's site with a PageRank of 0 could have a PageRank of 6 tomorrow. I've seen this myself on 2 separate sites - as they come out of the gate, they are graced with a PageRank of 6. Now, prior to that, any webmaster who was obsessed with PageRank would never link to that site.

While the above mentioned scenario is probably not very common, the point is that while a site may be ranking low today, unless you know the webmaster personally, you don't know what other efforts that person is putting in to get that site ranked.

Furthermore, a site may have little or no PageRank but still receive tons of traffic. So, would you pass up a page that was getting 11k visitors a day just because it has a Google PageRank of 0?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Another key element in consideration is that every unique link you get from a site counts. Whether it's from Joe's Pizza shop, or Pizza hut directly, to the search engine, they still count as two "votes" for your site.

Now, each link would carry different levels of weight in regards to relevancy, but if you can't get a link from Pizza Hut, you could get about 1,200 links from the various Joe's Pizza Shops located on the web to make up for it.

There is a current backlash of directory bashing. True, there are many directories that exist for the sole purpose of making money off of Google AdSense, and those directories should be punished accordingly.

But, there are many directory owners who are dedicated to having highly targeted and specific category related listings to provide for their visitors. These directories are a great resource for search engines as they help categorize the Internet - that's why directories will always be important on the Web.

So, always get a link from any relevant site whenever you can - regardless of Google PageRank or any other factor. Even Google was an unknown when they first appeared on the Internet.

-To your online success!