Google Plus has had a shaky start but G+ is quickly gaining adoption. Google’s deep resources and a number of additional factors are contributing the first real challenger to Facebook. Propeller’s President & Director of Online Marketing, Dave Gibson, reveals why Google + what is contributing to the growth and what this means for brands.
SEO Content Writing Guide
15 03 2011Writing effective copy for both search engines (SEO) and flesh and blood visitors is crucial for overall site performance.
Rather than hire a pro, many clients prefer to take the DIY approach. Typically, this is considered to be a cost-saving method, however experience reveals that this path more oftent delays projects and reduces the site’s performance on multiple levels. The reality is that the cost for SEO copywriting aren’t high in the first place, and the ROI will absolutely outpace any savings hoped for.
In many cases, I recommend a hybrid approach where a professional SEO writer is used for a limited number of “priority-one pages”, and the rest is written in-house. It’s unlikely that everyone on the in-house team will consider themselves as either marketing copywriters or SEO experts, so I’ve put together this guide for clients writing their own copy.
SEO Wrting Guide for DIY Clients
My first bit of advice is to write first for humans and second for search engine. It will do no good to attract the visitor to bad content.
Writing for Humans
Writing for the web is unique. First assume that nobody reads. They scan. So keep sentences and paragraphs short and easily digestible. As any good copywriter knows, maintain a consistent tone and voice, while making sure the content is relevant. Use bullet lists for key points high in your pages. Link bullet points to content on the page.
- People scan versus read
- Short clean sentences and paragraphs
- Bulleted summary points
SEO Writing for Search Engines
The general guidance is that you’re goal is to provide the search engine with an accurate and clear “theme” for the page – so for each page, you want to select a small group of terms to focus on. Each page should focus on a different list. SEO gold is found when these terms are applied to the url address (file name), html page title, heading tags (h1, h2, h3), body copy, image alt tags, and link anchor text and alt tags from in-bound links – and the more links to the page the better. All of that isn’t your job as a writer, but incase you’re looking to earn extra credit I thought you should know.
The short list of things you need to consider is:
- Segmented keyword list for each page
- Up to 10 keywords per page
- Singular and plural terms are considered different (by Google)
- Bolding and Headlines (H1, H2, H3 heading tags) indicate prominence
- Cluster your terms at the top of the page
- Keyword density – don’t over do it.
- If you business has geographic focus, use appropriate city and state terms.
Keyword Development: If a list is not provided, you will want to create your own of up to 10 phrases, with only 2-3 terms of primary focus. To build that list, you should first consider the page’s focus and write down terms that apply. Reference any existing keyword research that already exists. If you want to check for related terms and to find out how many people actually search for your terms, you can reference Google’s keyword tool. You can also study at sites that Google returns for those core terms. Check their page title tag at the top of your browser especially, as well as page headings and content.
Remember to consider plurals as separate terms from singulars (Google considers them different). Just remember to use terms that your audience uses. This may be very different than the language used internally.
Keyword Development
- Existing content (assuming you’re optimizing existing copy)
- Terms the audience commonly uses
- Existing keyword research
- Google keyword tool
- Competitor sites that rank high for your term
Keyword Density: I’m often asked how often to repeat terms, and keyword density is the percent that a term is used compared to the total words on a page. It’s generally understood that density is no longer relevant because its too easy for marketers to manipulate – so don’t focus on this. You’re looking for a balance that doesn’t make the page to appear spammy to the search engines, which you can be penalized for. If you’re curious anyhow, this keyword density tool will show you which terms are prominent on your page, and their density percent:
Prominence: Headlines or “heading tags” both break up the page for easy scanning, and provide an important way to give prominence to your terms. If you look at the code, you’ll see these expressed with “heading tags” such as H1, H2, or H3. You typically use an H1 heading at the top of your page, and subsequent H2/H3 within your content. Bolded terms may get more weight. Terms at the top of the page will also.
Remember that overall, you simply want to establish a “theme” for he page. Identify the terms that your audience will search for (versus insider terms you may use). Write your content to be relevant to that audience and carefully work your top keywords into your headlines and content in a way that will read effectively for human visitors first.
Oh… and les is more.
Resources
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Tags: copywriting, seo guide
Categories : Educational Guides, SEO
Mountain Resort Marketing: Leveraging “Spa Resort”
6 03 2011To gauge that market demand, I use a very simple tool: Google. The following the comparative results for people searching for “ski resort”, “golf resort”, and “spa resort”, are quite eye opening.
“Ski Resort” = 120,000 searches per month (Google)
“Golf Resort” = 160,000 searches per month (Google)
“Spa Resort” = 4,000,000 searches per month (Google)
Over 4 million people went to Google and typed in “spa resort”. Not just “spa”, but “spa resort”. If you’re a resort marketer with a spa, this is very good news for you, because this is the same demographic that every ski area is targeting: the female head of household. If you can reach that spa resort customer, there’s a great opportunity there to pull them also into skiing and deepen the yield.
Curious to see how other resorts are presenting their spa services online, I checked out a number of the bigger ski resort’s sites. To generalize, I rarely found little more than a section of a site with a page or two that offered contact info and a service menu. That’s like having a ski resort site with ticket prices and directions. A few spas took it upon themselves to create their own site. Fewer had the resources to do it well, and even fewer keep it up to date.
So how can we attract spa-specific customers to the resort?
1. Create a separate site for the spa that is specifically tailored to reflect the unique experience offered.
2. Cross promote from the primary site to the spa site. Make sure to have a well optimized section on the main site to capture the SEO value.
3. Online Marketing. Don’t pinch here. Get a professional to thoroughly optimize the site for organic search and consider paid advertising channels (remember what the lifetime value of that customer is to help determine your spend limits)
4. Social Word of Mouth: Provide incentives for spa guests to share their experiences
5. Create content – video content – that tell the story, and which users can share via social. Remember, Youtube videos get high ranks for SEO because Google likes what people like. People like to watch TV.
Resort spas in particular also have an opportunity to capture customers outside their typical sweet-spot (females north of 30), to include more men. All those (aging) skiers and riders banging themselves up on the mountain may need more than ibuprofen and a cocktail. The industry has long been challenged by cracking the male market. My suggestion: do something about these white robes – its really impossible to not feel like a dork in one.
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Tags: mountain resort, search marketing, spa resort
Categories : Mountain Resorts, Search Engine Marketing
Video influence growing in search: will auto-captioning influence SEO?
22 04 2010Apr 22 2010 | Dave Gibson : President | Overhead
The second I heard of YouTubes program to automatically translate and add closed captioning to all video content, my SEO ears went on high alert. Already we’ve been seeing videos gaining organic ranking – often above topic websites, and I’ve been preaching video to all our clients. After all, it does make sense since given the choice, what user wouldn’t prefer consuming via video rather than reading – so give both visitors and search engines what they want!
YouTube opened the program back in August 2008 to enable users to upload their own captions, but went a few steps further when they began a limited rollout of an auto-captioning using their GoogleVoice technology to auto translate the audio and synch with the video. Now YouTube has announced broad expansion plans to aggressively auto-captioning their entire video base. Here is how it works:
While great for the hearing-impaired, it has us SEO geeks salivating. Will the captions be indexed and at what weight? While I’ve yet to find conclusive evidence that answers the question, the word on the street is that the content will be indexible and will therefore impact SEO. This makes sense in Google’s emphasis on content on web pages and elimination of any focus on meta.
So for those creating videos with SEO in mind, you’ll want to get your script writer together with your SEO specialist for organic search guidance.
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Tags: Search, seo, Video, youtube
Categories : SEO, Video





