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Spam vs Marketing Archives - Search Engine Marketing & Optimization
A blog for truly small businesses

Spam vs Marketing

Keyword rich content – do the right things and win the search engine optimization game

When you are adding words to your website, whether in a blog post, an article, your home page, product descriptions etc, you are creating “content”. You will often hear me talk about “keyword rich content” – what I mean is, use the keywords you want to get listed in the search engines for as many times as appropriate – but don’t use them so much that your readers will be irritated.

If you use this as a guide you will insure long term success. Here are some basics about letting the search engines know what keywords are important on the particular article (product description, blog post etc):

  • Use your keyword phrase in the title
  • Use your keyword phrase at least once in the first 100 words
  • Highlight the keyword phrase at least once using bold and/or italics and, if you know how, make sure your keywords are used in <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags.
  • If appropriate, use the keywords to link to another relative article or product on your website

Use Title Tags and Alt Tags on your images and links – include your keywords (if it makes sense) but don’t use the same title and alt tags over and over again on the same page. (I’ll talk more about title and alt tags in a future post)

As the search engine computers get programmed for more and more accurate analysis of the millions of pages they are indexing and listing, it will become more and more important to “do the right thing” on your website and not just use your keywords a gazillion times.

Inbound links from relative, authoritative (meaning the search engines see those sites as consistently offering valued information) are becoming critical. The way to get these inbound links is to provide content on your website that makes people that have relevant (complimentary) websites (blogs, review sites etc) want to link to you.

Another way to get these quality inbound links is to provide the tools for people to share them on “authoritative” websites. My earlier post about the Facebook “like” button is one way to do this, but there are others I will discuss in future posts.

Social Media to market your website – Hype or Value?

One of my clients called today because his “boss” just got back from a Search Engine Marketing seminar and this prompted a lot of questions – of course – I LOVE these phone calls because part of my goal with my business is to empower each client (all small business owners, most like me struggling to make a living doing something they love). We did a quick review of his website and I gave him some instant homework that, if he does it will make an immediate impact on his “search rankings” – basically I walked him through the points I list on my Search Engine Dominance article on my website.

But what prompted me to write this post was his question – “are there any books you can recommend to help me understand this?”. My answer was, yes there are thousands. Then I followed up with an email stating the following:

As you read the books and articles or even websites you will find on this subject, keep in mind that 9 out of 10 sites that are telling you how important Search Engine Marketing and Social Media have become are really “selling” their services. I guess in a way I am too but I have a different take on the whole thing – my perspective is that the only thing a site owner can be 100% sure of is that the search ranking criteria WILL CHANGE – so the “quick fix”  that works today may not work in 6 months or a year  – therefore, the most important thing any website owner can do is make sure their site says what it does and does what it says.

Today it’s “social media” – the concept of using online communities to hype your website,  filling your profile and fan pages with “key word links” and tons of borderline useless content and links back to your website. But bottom the reality if you tell the search engines your site is about Purple Widgets and you put enough key words in your page titles etc to come up number one for Purple Widgets but then Purple Widget shoppers get to your site and find out  you really offer only Green Widgets – you’re going to lose in the long run.

Moral to the story – do the right thing, provide the information that people that you want to be your customers are looking for, edit that content to include the phrases, page titles and key word links (to pages within your site as well as quality complimentary sites)  that they will search for and you will have success.

If it’s unsolicited – it’s SPAM

This is a friendly reminder to my friends and followers that Web Marketing does not give us a license to intrude on the very busy lives of our customers. Please review the guidelines established in the Can SPAM act of 2003 and make sure that your company is never accused of being a “spammer”. Please share this with anyone you know that likes to do “email marketing”. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm.

Being an internet marketing pro – I am in full support of email marketing. However, I provide my clients the tools to comply and help them navigate these verysensitive waters with care. My company pays almost $400.00 per month to “filter spam”. Wouldn’t it be great if that wasn’t a necessary expense? Play nice – there are lots of people that do want to hear from you – manage your lists and make it EASY for people to opt out any time without a hassle.

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