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Longtail keyword effects in Search Engine Optimisation SEO

Monday, December 10, 2007
Often when you optimise your website for a given keyword, you are inadvertently optimising your content for more than one keyword. You may find that for the keyword you optimise for, you receive 100 unique visitors a day, yet for 200 other keyword strings you receive one visitors a day. This is the longtail effect of SEO and is something well worth remembering when copywriting for the web. Chris Anderson from Wired Magazine first coined the term Longtail in an October 2004 article. He was referring to the effects where products in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. In his Wired article, Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. The same thing is true of keywords, and the effects on traffic to your site can be significant, particularly on a content-oriented site, such as a News network. An Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday." Bookmark and Share


Give it away, now - Free content for everyone!

Monday, December 10, 2007
It seems to be completely mad when you look at it from the perspective of cash generation, but there is a very effective trend evolving on the internet - Give your content away for free.

Some of the internet industrys' top Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Gurus are strong proponents of this philosophy.

In 2004, John Reese, a web entrepreneur and online marketing specialist made internet history - he made over $1mn in 24 hours.

On his website, milliondollarday.com, he outlines how he achieved it.

The main points that he outlines are:

1. ABUNDANCE - giving away lots of free content, often
2. ALWAYS OVERDELIVER - always give more than is expected
3. ANTICIPATION - anticipation increases response
4. GENEROSITY - give something above and beyond what is expected
5. SOCIAL PROOF - give customers feedback channels for the product - this encourages confidence in other consumers
6. FAITH - believe in yourself, and what you are doing

Take what you will from these six key motivators.

Bear in mind though, that it made John Reese a millionaire in 24 hours!

The systematic dissemination of free content builds credibility and makes people think "If they're giving this great content away for free, then what is the product I'm buying? It MUST be good!"

Try it, and follow up with some paid products.

Another SEM guru, Ben Mac, suggests always thinking two products ahead. But that's another article! Bookmark and Share


What is Open Source Software?

Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Open Source software is software which has been developed outside of the commercial realm, and is generally freely available to use as you please. Open Source software is one of the very pleasant things about the internet, and has encouraged growth and creativity in the sofware and internet realm since the very early days of the internet. Bookmark and Share


What is a Content Management System?

Tuesday, May 29, 2007
A Content Management System (CMS) , is an easy way of managing content (ie. the words) on your website. One of the key reasons for using a Content Management System is that it keeps design and content separate, which means that a user with little or no knowledge of HTML can log into a website using their browser, and update the content of their website. A CMS will allow you to control the content you deliver to your website. Using a CMS, you can edit pages easily, and add new pages as you need to. Bookmark and Share


Writing Content for the Web -- Think like a Search Engine, Part 1

Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Search engines play a key role in bringing traffic to your site.

For this reason, it is a key consideration to take into account how a search engine views your page when it crawls your site.

Some helpful hints include:

  • Use varying style.
  • Lose the corporate speak. 
  • Be yourself. 
  • Make it a conversation. 
  • Make your point up front. 
  • Don't use jargon. 
  • Use shorter text, or, as E.B. White would say, 'omit needless words'. 
  • Break up text using headers, sub headers, bulleted lists, and other text breaking devices. 
  • Stress benefits before features (unless it is a tech-heavy product).

On the tech side, ensure keywords have pride of place in your articles. Do this by:

  1. Ensuring that you have keywords in your page title
  2. Ensuring that you have keywords in your h1 tags
  3. Ensuring that you have keywords in the first paragraph of your article
  4. Ensuring that you have keywords peppered throughout the article
  5. Small sentences and paragraphs with common words make writing flow easily.
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RSS Feeds - What are they, and how can they help your site

Tuesday, May 29, 2007
An RSS feed is essentially a newsfeed of the latest articles on your site. Many people now use RSS Readers to stay abreast of news on a large number of sites.  In this way, they can browse all the headlines of their favourite sites from one page, and simply click on an article headline to launch the article they're interested in. Bookmark and Share


The Whitehouse Flickr Feed

Tuesday, November 30, 1999
Flickr is an underrated social media tool when it comes to social media campaigns. Barack Obama is no stranger to Social Media - he used it to great effect in his Presidential campaign. It is one of the most successful - and most expensive - to date. World-class photographers follow Barack Obama around daily and load photos onto Flickr, providing a glimpse into the world of the President of the USA Check out the White House Flickr stream Bookmark and Share


Media buying

Tuesday, November 30, 1999
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