SEO How To Guides

As an SEO consultant I am frequently asked about blogging as a business venture. Whether adding a blog to a website will increase search traffic, help convert sales, or improve search engine rankings.

To answer succinctly – yes: but only if you are committed. There is nothing worse than finding a website with good design and layout, keyword rich and engaging content only to look at their blog to find their last entry was six months ago about their new website launch and nothing else.

The idea of a blog is not just to create it and be done with it – Google does not award points to websites for simply having a blog. The reason blogs are known for helping websites gain rankings is because they produce fresh and unique content.

It is SEO best practise to frequently update your website, as Google sees this as you ensuring your content is relevant and up to date with the market. A simple and easy way to do this, without having to change content around on your product pages and risk losing traffic from words currently converting, is by writing blog posts. In turn you can be rewarded with higher page authority and therefore better rankings.

Continually adding blog posts also means you are continually adding pages to your website. Each new page you add can be seen as a sales person and the more sales people you send out, the more likely you are to get a return.

When Google recognises that you have updated your website frequently they send out crawlers more often to index pages on in your website. This means there are more of your websites’ pages to be found within Google search results.

You can increase the chances of your content being found further by choosing keyword rich titles and including these keywords throughout your text. You can determine which keywords are being searched upon by your customers in Australia as well as globally by using Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tools allows you to research keywords and determine how often people are searching for those words.

For example if you are wanting to blog about the importance of using a harness when training puppies, you could title your blog “Puppy Training”.  However, while this keyword may gain thousands of searches, it is very vague. Increase your chances of being found and converting traffic (either into sales, to register for a newsletter, or simply to leave their details) by choosing titles that have a mixture of different search volumes (people that are actually looking for this phrase) and relevance to your topic – ‘Training Puppies with Harnesses’.

Another important factor to consider is where you will host your blog. It can be created on your website, as a subdomain, or on a separate website altogether. It is strongly recommended that you create your blog within your current navigation and not as a subdomain or on a separate website. This would make the url YourPageDomain.com/Blog (Puppy.com/Blog).

The url to a subdomain blog page would be Blog.YourPageDomain.com (Blog.Puppy.com) which is essentially a completely separate site. The third option is to host your blog on another site such as tumblr which would make the link YourBlogName.Tumblr.com (BrisbanePuppyTraining.Tumblr.com). Either of the second two options will signal to Google not to count the traffic from your blog in the total traffic for the rest of your website. By sending your traffic to a separate website you are diluting your traffic and therefore your authority.

To summarise, a blog can definitely help increase your search engine rankings, increase traffic to your website, and convert visitors – but you have to be committed. Updating your blog frequently is key; but it is also vital to write engaging, unique, and keyword rich content.

Venturing into the vast and opportunistic world of social media generally elicits excitement from most marketing and communications experts. But have we chosen the most efficient platform? And are we really making the most from our social media efforts?

Facebook is a great way to take advantage of social media for both personal and business purposes. It is one of the largest social media applications and has a vast reach with over 800 million active users, 50 % of which log on to their accounts on a daily basis. 350 million of these users do not just access Facebook from their PC’s – they log in via their mobile phones.

So Facebook has an excellent user base with good reach but which is type of account is best for you? Facebook groups? Pages? Profiles? Or business accounts?

It actually entirely depends on your purpose, requirement, and intentions for social media as they each have different functions. However, Facebook themselves have branded profiles as purely for personal use. If you are an individual looking to connect with friends, keep up with events, and engage with brands and interests then you need a Facebook profile.

Business accounts are as their name suggests – an account for individuals representing a business or celebrity (authors, models, actors and etc) used to manage Facebook groups and pages. As their main purpose is actually simply to manage other accounts they do not have the same functionality as a personal profile, group or page.

As for creating a social media presence for a business or person, you have two options – Facebook page or Facebook group. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each,

Facebook Username

Username URLs

Only Facebook pages (and personal profiles) can apply to have a username URL. This is a short link that redirects to your Facebook page.  The purpose of username URLs is for promotion so a person or business can say ‘Find me at Facebook dot com slash company or person name’.  Facebook groups do not have this ability.

Mass messages

Facebook groups have excellent messaging capabilities – this is one of the most beneficial aspects of groups. Groups are able to send out mass emails direct to their members’ inboxes; however this is capped at 5 000 friends. Pages allow you to send messages to unlimited followers, but only page notifications, not inbox messages. Messages sent direct to inboxes are proven to be more effective in engaging conversation, but this feature becomes less useful if you are targeting an audience larger than 5 000 friends.

Facebook Insights

Measurability

Facebook pages have ‘insights’ which is data collated by Facebook allowing you to analyse your social media use and determine your traction and engagement levels with your audience. They also allow you to see which form of media is being consumed most frequently – audio, posts, video, as well as many other features. This allows businesses to report on social media use, effectiveness and ROI to an extent. The group feature does not have insights.

Widgets

Facebook pages are able to deliver promotional devices such as the ‘Find us on Facebook’ friends or a likes counter. This is basically an image displaying profile pictures of current likes that links to Facebook, allowing people to easily ‘like’ your page. This feature is also not available for Facebook groups.

Facebook Widgets

Friend Restrictions

Facebook groups have the ability to restrict access to certain individuals although it also depends on the type of group – there are three: open, closed, and secret. Open groups and Facebook pages work similarly – anyone can join and are automatically accepted. Any Facebook user can request to join a closed group; however, they must be approved by an administrator before being added. Secret groups cannot be found in searches, and the only way to join is to be invited.

Facebook Location Targeting

Location Targeted Posts

Facebook pages offer the ability to target the location of your post to a language, country, state or province, and even city. Allowing you to send specifically targeted messages based on language and location. This is an incredibly valuable tool for marketers, as they can create social media campaigns that use one page to focus on several locations and languages, while still sending specific information to each segment.

SEO

Both Facebook pages and groups are indexed by Google and generally receive good rankings. Although for SEO best practise Facebook pages allow for more opportunity to optimise their content.

For example including keyword rich text in the ‘About Us’ box is beneficial as it is high up in the html code and is one of the first and only places accessible to search engines.

Also Facebook usernames (which are available to pages, but not groups) allow you to enter keyword rich URLs which Google ranks as quite important.

Facebook Default Tab

You are also able to change your default tab with Facebook pages, but not groups. It is recommended that a keyword rich page such as your wall or info page is chosen above a welcome page.

One SEO practise available for both pages and groups is creating a relevant link neighbourhood. If you are a pet store, linking out to dog groomers, vets, and dog obedience pages creates a good link network. You should also attempt to receive links back to your Facebook page as this is a very effective way to gain rankings.

Overall your objectives and goals for social media will drive your decision in choosing which method to display your communications. However if you are an individual looking at keeping a circle of friends, hosting and attending events, and engaging with groups of interest and brands a Facebook profile is the most suitable option.

Facebook groups are an excellent way for people to congregate and discuss issues pertaining to a particular topic or issue. They are also an excellent means of creating and organising small to medium events.

As for a business or company that wishes to have a social media presence to connect and communication with their customers a Facebook page will allow you more flexibility in discussion, distribution, analytics, optimisation, and promotion.

Reference: http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-page-or-group-2010-07

KeywordIntent currently supports keyword research data from popular tools Google Keyword Tool, KeywordDiscovery.com and keywords from your own website analytics application such as Google Analytics.  Over time, KeywordIntent will support other tools and extend functionality of existing tools as requested by our users.

This “how to” guide shows you how to export research data from these tools to ensure that all your keywords are added to KeywordIntent as smoothly as possible and without breakages along the way. (more…)

Keyword research is a critical component of search engine optimization.  It provides insight into the way people search for products and services just like the ones you offer.

The reason why you need keyword research is to provide direction of what words you need to place into your titles, meta descriptions and content of your pages.

You may be surprised to learn that people don’t always type in your business name exactly, but rather use a myriad of word combinations that describe the product or service they are looking for. (more…)

A Keyword Strategy is the culmination of comprehensive keyword research, selection and prioritization.  It is an important document as it forms the basis of your website content, landing pages and overall search strategy.

There are 5 steps to creating a Keyword Strategy with KeywordIntent. (more…)

What are keyword markets?

The web is made up of many thousands of keyword markets.  It is a collection of related keywords in which customers use within their search queries in order to browse, research, compare and buy products and services on the Internet and offline.

For example, the online industry “travel” is made up of many vertical keyword markets.  Some keyword markets that make up part of the online travel industry are “holiday ideas”, “travel destinations”, “accommodation”, “car rental”, “flights” and “boat cruises”.  Plus there are many more. (more…)