Justifying Search Engine Optimization

Have a feeling that your website content or design is not as good as it could be? Not getting the traffic or sales that you hoped for? Search engine rankings are as not as high as they could be. (Unless you are #1, you probably feel that way.)

The solution you think is reworking your website with SEO in mind or maybe a good online marketing campaign. But you don't know how to justify it? This article is the first of several which will give some suggestions about how to go about justifying the work.

Prove Your Point

If you want to get a budget for reworking your website you are going to need to convince whoever allocates budgets. To do this you need do the following:

1. Demonstrate that there is a problem.
2. Provide a solution to the problem
3. Explain expected benefits the fix.
4. Prove that the benefits can be measured.

Houston We Have a Problem

Showing that there is a problem is easy. You can show how your site compares to the competition.

Site Traffic
While you can not find out the exact traffic for competitors you can find out how their traffic compares to yours using Alexa.com. This service allows searches by entering a website addresses or entering search terms to see traffic rankings of websites. You can even compare up to four other sites to yours. For example search for nbc.com then click on the link for NBC and you should see a screen like this.

Fill out the form with other domains, such as abc.com, cbs.com then click on the "Compare" button. You will see a graph that shows how the other sites traffic compares to NBC's.

Using Alexa, you can demonstrate that your site's traffic is not as high as competitor.

Search Results
Unfortunately there is no similar free service for comparing how your site ranks with others for keyword search result pages. Keyrow.com tries, but they only let you compare two domains against one keyword at a time.And they don't explain where they are getting their data from. I  think it is from Google search results.

That leaves you with using a paid service or program, such as WebPosition to monitor your and competitor's sites.Or doing it the old fashion way by spending time searching Google yourself and tracking results on a spreadsheet.

Social Media
You can spend a few minutes a day or so checking out social media and seeing how you are doing versus your competition.

1. Use TweetDeck or Twitter Search to monitor what people are saying about your company's and competitor's products.
2. Set up Google Alerts for products, brand terms and even your company executives names.
3. Check for Facebook fan pages.

If you have the time try to track information over  2 - 3 months, especially social media.

 Next week we will talk about solutions and benefits.

SEO Long Tail of the Snake or Chasing Your Own Tail?

What is the long tail?
If you are just getting started with SEO and trying to market your small business website, you might have run across the term "long tail of the snake". It is an expression that refers to the terms that people interested in purchasing your product or service might use in a search, that are not the obvious and most popular terms (those are the head of the snake). It is a successful strategy for driving traffic and dollars to a website, but many people have problems figuring out what terms belong to the tail. This article will give some suggestions on how to find those search words.

There is nothing new about long tail SEO optimization, people have been doing it for years, at least since 2004 that I am aware of.

Finding Long Tail Terms

1. Hire an SEO consultant. That will work, but be prepared to spend several thousand dollars.
2. Look at paid keyword database and services such as wordtracker, keyworddiscovery or wordstream. Costs will be around $50 - $100 / month, and are usually cheaper if you purchase an annual contract. 
3. Use In House Expertise. If you know your product and market, odds are you know what terms clients use when talking about your product. Cost Free.

I have nothing against consultants, some of my  friends are SEO consultants. If you are a small business owner like me, you do not have the marketing budget to hire an SEO consultant.

I would suggest a combination of 2 and 3. Check out a couple of the services, they have free trials of varying lengths. Read reviews about the services (wordtracker review, keyworddiscovery review, wordstream review) and see which work for you.

Create a spread sheet of words used to describe your product or service. Include items that your product is used to build. Do you manufacture latex tubes? Are your tubes used in surgical equipment, or to make exercise equipment. If so, then add terms such as "surgical tubing" , "medical grade tubing" or "black rubber tubing".

Free Tool

Google's Keyword Tool is a great free tool to find related keywords. If you enter a list of keywords, it will show you how many times those words were searched for last month, in the US and globally. Sometimes it will display "Not enough data". Don't let that throw you. If you know your industry and that is a term used to describe your product, then your term is still a valid long tail word.

Take a look at this blog about picking and using keywords from December of 2009. It will help you prioritize which keywords to target first.

Is it worth going after long tail search terms?
Yes, but justifying it can be difficult, especially if the website does not sell product. Next week I'll talk about some simple business practices that can be implemented to help justify all this work.

Using Google Local Business Center

What Is Local Business Center?
Have you ever done a search on Google for something such as "bike repair" and at the top of the results page is a map that shows businesses on a map. Those companies have listed themselves with Local Business Center (LBC) a free service from Google to help promote your company.

LBC does more that just display your company's information.

• People can leave reviews about how good (or bad) your service was.
• They can get directions to your location.
• You can create online (and mobile) coupons.
• LCB Provides a report about how often your business has been viewed and how people interacted with your listing.
• What search terms were used to find your business.
• How Many went to your website.
• Viewed a coupon.
• Asked for directions (and from where).

If you are a small size business, then it is well worth creating an account with Google LBC. (Yahoo and Bing also have their own versions of LBC.)

You Can Build A Better Website

Your Website Should Not Be About You
Website content should highlight how you can help customers, not about what your company does. We will go over a checklist of five items to help you transform your site into one all about you and your company into one about your customers.

As a business owner you are proud of your product, their features or services you offer. It is what sets you apart from your competition. Unfortunately customers won't buy something because it has the biggest or fastest widget.

People buy benefits (to them) not features. If you are familiar with basic marketing this is not new to you, marketers are always talking about the difference between features and benefits.

Some might claim that there are some people who buy products because of features. Sports car advertisements talk about horse power and computer ads talk about RAM and CPU speed. While that is true, they are still selling benefits to the customer.... More Horse Power = You can go faster  / You can brag to your neighbor that your car has more HP than his. CPU and RAM = You don't need to wait for your computer.

Checking Your Website

Let's take a look at your website and see if it is touting benefits or features.

Open your website in your browser and look at the home page.

1. A larger portion of the home page content is devoted to lists of services / features that your company offers: (Database programming, Flash Animations, Printing on Canvas, File Backup ...)
2. Many sentences include the word "we" or "our".
   Do you talk about how skilled, experienced and knowledgeable your employees are?
3. Few or no sentences contain the words "you" or "your".
4. Quotes or news on your home page from your president or about your company.
5. The first navigation link on your site is "About Us" , or it is the second link, because "Home" is the first link.

How Did You Do?

Did you only answer yes to one or none question? Congratulations, your website probably does a great job explaining why clients should use your product or service.


How many of these questions can you say yes to? Was it more than half? Your website is not doing enough to explain how you can help your clients.

Improving Your Site

Improving your website is simple, but not easy. Change your content to target new or existing clients, by telling them the benefits of your products or services.

1. Instead of listing features list the benefits.
   Database programming = You can change content or add pages yourself without paying a developer.
   Printing on Canvas = Turn your image into a work of art that will last 100 years.
   File Backup = Never worry about loosing files if your computer crashes.
2. Change your content so the words "you" or "your" occur more often then "we" or "our".
   Whenever you have a sentence that has the word "we" ask yourself what is in it for the customer. Try to write content that shows how it affects your clients.
3. Use quotes (Testimonials) from your customers. Include news about how you are helping clients.
4. Change your navigation order.
   Put the links that are important to your customers first.

Another area to look at is product or service detail pages. These pages usually tout features, not benefits. But I'm not going to address that topic. Plenty of people have written about features vs benefits. If you want to read about that topic Google marketing features vs benefits.