You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Online Copy & Content' category.
What’s the Most Important Thing You Need to Know About SEO?
What’s the Most Important Thing You Need to Know About SEO?
What’s the most important thing to You Need to Know About SEO?
First, What IS SEO?
You’ve got products and/or services to offer. You’ve got a Web site. You’re all set, right?
Wrong. You’ve got a problem.
Like any business, you need potential customers to visit you. That means they need to know about you.
There are two ways for this to happen:
1st) They already know about you, your products and/or services. They love you and your products and/or services, and when they need what you’re selling, they come to you, again, and again, and again. It goes without saying: this is the holy grail for any business.
2nd) People need the product and/or service you offer. However, they don’t have a preferred provider of that product and/or service (or if they do, they’re looking for better quality and/or lower price). So they go looking for what’s out there. They do this is by using search engines.
So how do people find you using a search engine? Well, they don’t look for you, specifically. They enter in “keywords” that describe what they need.
For example, let’s say I need bird food for my outdoor feeder. I’ll go to Google.com, for example, and I’ll type “bird food” into the search window. If I want a specific type of bird food, like “black oil sunflower,” then I’ll type in “bird food black oil sunflower.” If I’m cool with ordering it online, I’ll leave it at that and see what comes up. However, if I’m looking for a shop to go to in my area (and say I live in Brooklyn NY), I would type something like “Brooklyn NY bird food black oil sunflower.”
Technically, search engine optimization (or “SEO”) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to your web site from a search engine. The goal is also to get you to rank as high as possible on a search page, to be in the #1 position ideally. SEO is a critical internet marketing strategy. Someone who does” SEO” needs to understand how search engines work, and they need to understand how your potential customer searches for your site.
Now, of course, you’re probably not the only one offering your particular product or service. You have competitors. If I type into Google “black oil sunflower bird food,” I’ll get a lot of businesses that sell this type of bird food. The immediate question is: what determines who is on the first two or three search pages and who is on the 50th search page (a page that most people will never take the time to look at)?
It’s outside the scope of this article to get into the details of how someone gets into the top position on the first few search pages. Basically, it takes a ton of time and effort and/or a ton of money, probably more time, effort and money you have to spare. However, your goal, really, isn’t to rank #1 on a search page.
At this point, you might be thinking, “wait a second, come on, being #1 is the only goal! All I need is to come up with the ‘best keywords,’ SEO the hell out of my site and, more or less, force my site to be in the top 5 or 10 search results.”
Now, there are a LOT of SEO companies that you can pay (and you’ll pay a LOT) to do this for you, but let’s look at all of this from the perspective of a search engine provider. What are their goals as a “search engine” business?
First, Google and other search engines are aware that the inner workings of their search engines (i.e., their search algorithms) can be “hacked” by someone in order to figure how out to get a Web site to the top of their search rankings.
You might ask, well, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that the point of SEO?
Yes and no – there’s a right way and a wrong/stupid way to go about this.
What You Must Absolutely Understand | Smart SEO. Dumb SEO.
Think about it like this: you’re walking down the street, and you walk past a bunch of bird seed vendors, all screaming and yelling and waving their arms to get your attention. The one that probably gets your attention is the guy who screams the loudest, right? However, common sense tells you – so what? What is he really offering? Should I buy bird seed from this guy just because he’s out-screamed everyone else? No.
When you think about it, search engine businesses want to do just what you want them to do: find for you, the potential customer of some product or service, the best sites based on the search terms you’ve given them. They want to offer you a set of credible and valuable Web Sites you can use. If you’re looking for information about learning how to skydive, google wants to bring to you the best, most appropriate sites it can. That’s how search engines help you. That’s what they offer you. That’s their business. It’s as simple as that.
The last thing Google or any search engine business wants to do is to provide search engine results that have little or nothing to do with what you want. In fact, it’s their business to keep this from happening.
Yes, there are individuals and companies that can “hack” the system and “force” a Web site into a top position, but search engine business are constantly on the look out for such “tricks” and those site 1) won’t stay in the top position very long and 2) the search engine can penalize and even ban the Web site from their search pages.
OK, so what’s the right way to go about it? At this point, give your eyes a rest and listen to Stephanie Leffler, Senior Vice President of Network Solutions, explain the three most important things you can do, in non-technical terms, when it comes to SEO:
So, what did Ms. Leffler talk about? She talked about web content with substance — what’s substance? Substance is good authoritative quality content, well-written and SEO-ed following normal standard SEO principles (that I’ll outline later). When you have substance on your site, other Web site owners will recognize your value and link to your site (one way link). Search engines love that. It’s like a vote for your site.
Again, Google’s job is to find good quality web sites that potential customers want to see given the search words they’ve provided. That’s their business.
So – there’re no tricks with SEO. There is just planning and work. Here’s the basic plan:
- Have something real, of value, to offer.
- Add good quality SEO copy to your site.
- Do good basic SEO.
Do all that, and you’ll be fine.
Finally, in case you’re convinced that’s there’s got to be more to it than this, some magical formula I have not acknowledged, give an ear to Lisa of How To Create a Web Site. She gives the basic philosophy, attitude and approach you need to have when trying to SEO your site. If you “get” what she’s talking about, you’re on the quickest path to success with your web site.
Resources for Do-It-Yourself SEO
First: when trying to do SEO yourself, the first step is to find the right keywords. What are “keywords,” exactly, and how do you find them? Start with this excellent article by Stephen Mahaney, The Ultimate Keyword Primer.
Second: once you’ve got a set of keywords, you need to put them into the text of your web page. How exactly do you do that? This excellent article by Ken McGaffin is really all you need: Using Keywords In Website Copywriting.
Third: finally, for a good non-technical SEO overview article for small business owners, check out SEO Explained for Small Business Owners.
OK, OK. If you’re still convinced that there’s got to be a secret to SEO, to getting ranked high – alright, Lisa does have a secret, and she reveals all here:
Polonius
What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet
Words, words, words.
~ Hamlet
You are smart, educated, experienced — and you want to write your own copy . . .
No, no, nooooo! Don’t do it! While you’re highly knowledgeable and you know your area of expertise inside, outside, and upside down, without knowing the principles for writing good copy, your efforts can produce laden, dense, and even impenetrable writing.
Nevertheless, YOU writing out what YOU want to say is a great first step. This is because it gives the professional copywriter something to work with — and you’re ahead of the game when it comes to getting great copy within a tight time frame.
A while ago, a highly knowledgeable hedge fund manager send me some “About Us” online copy he had written to promote his new business. He makes a terrific start because he “got it” that problem solving is 99% of what all business products and services are about. Your visitors want to know if you can solve their problems, and they want to find this out as quickly as possible. Biographical information, no matter how impressive, is secondary. Below are 3 of his original paragraphs (the company name has been changed):
“XYZ is unique from all other hedge fund resources because it is completely unbiased. Unlike other hedge fund web sites, XYZ is not aligned or associated with any investment manager or consulting firm. As such, it can rigorously pursue its goal of providing objective, professional information and evaluation of relevant issues unfettered by commercial or political issues. Such a posture allows it to publish the highest quality content with one goal in mind: transparency.”
“Transparency is not easily attained in the world of hedge fund investing. Traditionally, the hedge fund industry has been a closed one. Information on hedge funds is not easy to come by. Managers have been slow to provide investors with pertinent information. What is made available is often put forth in obscure, technical language, making interpretation and evaluation problematic. Consulting firms that have collected data on hedge funds levy a heavy access toll. XYZ was initiated as a remedy to these conditions.”
“XYZ will provide interested parties with direct access to relevant information. It will explain the theoretical, operational, and commercial issues related to hedge funds and hedge fund investing in coherent terms so members can develop an understanding of the intricacies of this industry. It will provide members with the tools necessary to make meaningful evaluations and well informed decisions about hedge funds. These tools will allow members to become educated and prudent investors–ones who will demand to be treated as true partners with money managers with whom they choose to invest.”
This was great first attempt because while my knowledge of hedge fund management is vanishingly close to zero, his original copy gave me more than enough to work with. Below is my literal 20 minute re-working of his three paragraphs:
Unbiased, independent, and transparent — XYZ is unique from all other hedge funds. Because XYZ is not partnered with any investment manager or consulting firm, it rigorously pursues its goal of providing objective, professional information, analysis, and evaluation unfettered by commercial or political issues.
Open doors, big windows, lots of light — XYZ’s managers put transparency and open access first by providing quick and easy access to investors questions. We talk to YOU, as an investor, simply, clearly, directly without the usual obscure, technical gobblygook that makes interpretation and evaluation problematic, if not impossible.
Confused? Need to develop an understanding of the intricacies of this industry? XYZ will explain the theoretical, operational, and commercial issues related to hedge funds and hedge fund investing in a way that’s easily understandable. XYZ will provide members with the tools necessary to make meaningful evaluations and well informed decisions about hedge funds.
Become an educated and prudent investor. Become a partner with XYZ’s expert, knowledgeable, reliable, friendly money managers today!
Writing great copy is Art & Science, but in 20 minutes, I managed to craft modifications that contained the top four critical features of any persuasive online copy: it gains attention, it focus on the customer, it stresses benefits, and it differentiate XYZ from it’s competition . . . and I didn’t need to know a damn thing about hedge fund management. His starting copy was a great first step, and it give me all I needed to know.
When you work with clients in a highly technical field, try guiding them in writing their own first draft: tell them what the copy should contain (e.g., tell them ‘tell your customers how you can solve their problems,’) and then take it from there.
Recent Comments