blog
Lana’s articles on marketing, copywriting, and technology.
3 Things You Are Already Doing For SEO (And Quick Ways To Step It Up)
Much of SEO is about leveraging what you are already doing into a cohesive strategy.
As part of my mission to Demystify SEO, today I want to show you the SEO work you are already doing, whether or not you call it SEO.
It’s like being told by your personal trainer that taking the stairs instead of the elevator counts toward your daily exercise goal!
I am also including quick tips you can “step up” your SEO so you maximize the payofffor the work you are already doing.
1) Blogging: if you publish a blog on your site and/or contribute to other blogs, this counts as SEO! Make sure every blog entry includes at least one link back to your site.
Even better if the link is to a specific page of your site. For example, if your blog is about wild bird seed, try linking to www.yourwebsite.com/wild_birdseed.
2) Press Releases: online PR, when optimized with the right keywords, is an SEO goldmine. Not only does a press release add valuable content to your site, it also gets distributed (hopefully) to tens if not hundreds “authority sites.” This makes Google happy!
3) Craigslist Ads: whether you love it or hate it, Craiglist is basically one giant Google listing. With its text-based design, Craigslist makes it extremely easy for Google to find and index the content.. including your ad! Disclaimer: please review Craigslist policies before flooding the site with your ads.
So next time you are creating a piece of content for online consumption, “step it up” with the right keywords and links! Your Google ranking will thank you!
3 SEO Tips for Online Retailers
In the great debate of product- vs. service-based businesses, I was asked last week whether one was easier than the other to optimize for SEO. To begin addressing this question, I bring you my Top 3 SEO tips for Online Retailers.
As always, I start by focusing on the low-hanging fruit, to save you time and avoid overwhelming you with too many to do’s.
- Products=keywords! Remember, there are thousands of people searching for what you sell every day. It’s your obligation to make it easy for these customers to find and buy your products. So your SEO strategy begins with thinking of each product as an SEO keyword. If you are staring a catalog of thousands of products, begin with your top-selling and/or most profitable products. Be sure each product/keyword has a unique page a keyword-rich description on your site. For example, “basket #G123JF” means nothing to Google (and your future customers). How about “graduation gift basket with truffles” instead?
- A picture is worth a thousand (key)words: as retailers, one of the most overlooked SEO areas is image names. Sure, you may know what “img_12345.jpg” means, but Google doesn’t. You will make Google’s job a lot easier if your image is named “birthday_card_mom_3.jpg”
- Catalog: every category is a keyword, too. So “caps for women,” “caps for girls,” “caps for golf,” and “visors for tennis” should each be a link in your online catalog. Remember, search engines tend to read our websites literally, so be sure to spell out that it’s “gifts for kids,” not just “kids.”
Now, renaming your images or rebuilding your catalog may sound like an overwhelming(and not very exciting) task. But my goal is to support you with low-hanging (andinexpensive) fruit, so I’d like to offer a few suggestions:
1) Ask your programmer or webmaster to do their magic. It may only take a couple hours of their time to finally make your catalog VISIBLE to your customers. Consider your average order size and how many new orders it would take to cover the investment.
2) Begin by focusing on your top sellers. I am a big believer in testing, so you may want to begin with just one category. Let’s say you start with “visors for tennis,” and after you begin to see more visitors to those pages, you can tackle the rest.
3) Find a source of inexpensive help, such as a virtual assistant or an intern. Be very specific with your instructions, so they are crystal-clear on your process and goals.
We will be covering these and many more SEO strategies for retailers – as well as service-based businesses – in my SEO-to-Profits Bootcamp, which begins Wednesday 5/12.
How Many Customers Are Looking For You?
If you have a business plan or have tried to write one, you probably know that market sizing is one of business plan musts. What is the total universe of potential customers for your product?
If you invent a new type of baby bottle, you probably want to know how many babies are born every year. A small business consultant I recently met knew his target market size cold: 18 Million small businesses in the U.S. alone!
If you plan to market yourself online, I have a nifty little market size shortcut for you. I call it your Total Search Universe. It indicates the number of people who are actively looking online for what you offer.
While speaking with a fellow Savor member, I was able to quickly learn that over 300,000 people searched for “cold sore” on Google last month. And if you add “how to get rid of cold sores,” “chronic cold sores,” and about 20 other ways people ask in Google, the numbers add up to over 500,000.
That’s half a million people who are most likely in pain or extreme discomfort ready to pay good money to make that discomfort go away. So while Total Search Universe is not the same as your market size (some people with cold sores may be running to the pharmacy instead of Googling), it gives you an idea of how many people could potentially see your website.
If, of the 500,000 people who search on Google, your site received just 1% of the visitors, that would equal 5,000 new potential customers!
Ready to calculate your Total Search Universe? Here is how:
- Go to the Google Keyword tool:https://adwords.google.com.au/select/KeywordToolExternal
- Type in your top keyword(s) and hit Search
- Review the list of results and remove any that don’t make sense
- Choose the Export option to download the list into Excel
- Voila! – you now have your Total Demand Universe in the Global Monthly Search Volume column.
How can you use this information?
- As a sanity-check for your business goals.
- To plan your marketing strategy and set benchmarks
- To actually write that business plan or prepare for a conversation with a potential investor
Happy market sizing to you!
Recent Projects
