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Social networking media has become the latest buzz in e-marketing. Every entrepreneur who is aware of the trends is eager to capitalize on the dramatic public relations coup which results from effective use of such media as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. According to the latest news, the most effective of all of these systems may be – Pinterest? What in the world is Pinterest? Have you even heard of it?

Here is the breaking news....

There IS a “new kid on the block”. Pinterest has been in development for a number of months, is currently in Beta testing – and already, it rivals, even beats Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ in some cases. Actually, it overlaps / interacts with them, but Pinterest takes a bit different approach. Rather than posting conversation, users create “pinboards” on their preferred topics, then pin pictures, videos, and screenshots on the appropriate board. (A “board” is, in reality, a collection of “pins” on a common topic.)

Pinterest allows members to follow other members, or to follow topics. Pinterest, unlike competing social media venues, allows you to “filter” the “stuff” from your contacts, ignoring that which is not of interest to you, yet noticing everything which meets your chosen criteria.

In designing your pinboard, you find ways to showcase your products in action, rather than trying to turn the board into an online catalog. For example, if your company rents formal-wear, your pinboard might show elegantly dressed people dancing, dining, etc. If your product line consists of Motorcycle Accessories, you’ll want to show still and action photos – maybe even videos – of bikes some of which prominently display your products. It is up to the individual marketer to find ways of showcasing their products without blatantly commercialized marketing.

The stated goal of Pinterest is to “connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting”. A well designed pinboard will cause viewers to fall in love with the lifestyle in which your products function – and by extension, they will fall in love with your wares.

In a nutshell, Pinterest can’t be utilized directly to market your product, but thoughtfully designed pinboards will whet visitors’ appetites, and they will come looking for you. Add a few friends whose sites, tweets, Facebook “likes”, etc. offer your links, and they will find you.

Where does Pinterest fit with Inbound and Outbound Marketing?

We explored the topic of Inbound vs. Outbound marketing in a recent blog post. In that article, we commented, “There is actually still a need for some “Outbound” promotional work, as that is often what prompts those inbound searches.” Reference: Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing - What's the Difference?

Pinterest offers a new and better way to do some outbound marketing – right in the midst of an inbound market. In a very real sense, websites with several pinboards are much like a business with several physical billboards. Viewers, though, will “find” your board because they are interested in the topic – so they are not just bored “passers by”, but rather enthusiastic, inbound visitors! And what a billboard you can offer! It will be far more effective than some metal and plastic, painted object in front of a physical store.

In a sense, you could say that Pinterest offers a forest of signboards, but they are welcome, and the passers by are there “on purpose”. You are, in essence, assisting inbound viewers in finding what they really love. Rather than creating a clutter of competing (and often offensive) billboards, junk mail, or e-mailed spam, Pinterest offers an opportunity to interact with others who share a common interest – anywhere on earth – and to readily cross link to “share the love”.
The result is well informed, enthusiastic shoppers who are eagerly searching for your site.

In addition to interesting items that you post, other members have the option of pinning items to your boards, and of linking your boards to their site. They can even embed individual “pins” from your site in their blogs or websites. Pins can be shared through email, Facebook, or Twitter, as well.

Rather than creating unsolicited and unwanted outbound advertising, the Pinterest system enables you to transform your advertising “poster” into a community project. Like minded enthusiasts will actually help you to build your pinboard. Your site will benefit from the efforts of others, many of whom you don’t even know – and from their enthusiasm for a shared common interest.

An extra benefit of this delightful tool is the cost – or rather, the lack of cost. You pay nothing to set up a pinboard. There are some rules, but no fees. Any costs that you may incur are strictly at your discretion. Pinterest could very well prove to be your best marketing tool, and at the same time, it may well be the least expensive.

Visitors will actually help you to build your board!

Yes, it seems almost too good to be true – but visitors will WANT to visit your board – and they will want to help you to make it better. If you do a good job of presenting the joys and pleasures of life with your products – and especially when you attract “pins” from other participants – visitors will also want to visit your store! At that point, “Voila!” curious tourists will have been transformed into inbound customers – just be certain that you are prepared to deal with the traffic.

We should emphasize that Pinterest does not replace the other social interactive networking media. Rather, it capitalizes on them, blends them, and utilizes their strengths – while offering a scope which has been lacking in the others. While you are adding social networking media to your repertoire, DO NOT NEGLECT Pinterest!

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There has been a lot of buzz over the past few months about the terms “Inbound Marketing” and “Outbound Marketing”. What's the big deal? Marketing is marketing, isn't it?

If you think this is just another set of overused buzzwords, maybe you need to have the meaning of the terms clarified. Both forms of marketing have been used from the dawn of marketing, itself. In simplest terms, “Inbound Marketing” is a customer looking for a something to buy. From the perspective of the merchant, when a customer comes to the marketplace looking for his product, that customer is “Inbound”. In contrast, Outbound Marketing may be illustrated by a vendor walking through the marketplace, shouting catchy slogans to attract customers – who in many cases aren't actually seeking to buy his wares – yet, if his efforts are successful, some of them will purchase his product.

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Everyone who has a website wants it to be visible. Isn't that why we have websites? In most cases, being visible on the World Wide Web means ranking high in Google searches. Just to define this problem, a recent Google search for the key word phrase “cellular phone” produced nearly instantaneous results – of 788,000,000 items! That's right. Searching for that single keyword phrase delivered Seven Hundred Eighty Eight Million hits! What are the odds that a potential buyer is going to click on a link to the one that ranked (for example) 245,999,991? We must be realistic: Landing on the first page of a Google search is a major victory – and appearing on page 100, or on page 597, or on page 788,000 are all equally worthless results.

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Agricultural sharecroppers often devoted years of intense labor – the efforts of entire families – to improving the land and buildings which they called home.  Still, they held no legal claim to the property, and the owner was free to sell the land or evict the tenants and replace them with others.  In such cases, any improvements which they had made to land and buildings were fully owned by the landlord.  The sharecroppers had no claim to, and no reward for those efforts.  Their primary reward for all of that work was just survival.

What does agriculture have to do with e-marketing?

This terminology has been in use for several years, going back at least as far as an article by Nicolas Carr in 2006.   The ’06 piece was updated and re-released in August, 2011.  It’s a theme which has been treated by numerous other writers – yet recent developments in e-marketing just keep emphasizing the relevance of the issue.

Whether the author is a well known expert or someone you never heard of before, the topic is well worth your careful consideration.  The issue is rooted in the question:  “Are you realizing the maximum value of your labors, or are you setting yourself up for an uncaring “landlord” to confiscate most of the value from your efforts?  The truth is that an uncomfortably high percentage of people who contribute value to the online community are exploited / rewarded much like the proverbial sharecroppers of earlier years.

It is important that you realize:  any intellectual property which you post on Facebook (or any similar venue) instantly becomes the property of the “Landlord”.  Although it may serve to provide you with some temporary gain, it is no longer yours.  If you inadvertently offend the owner, you can be instantly, irrevocably “kicked out” – even without explanation – but anything which you ever posted there remains the property of the landlord.  If you doubt the veracity of this statement, read the fine print of your service agreement!

The latest rage – social media marketing…

To illustrate the significance of this medium:  In the Montgomery, Alabama region, alone, in early 2011, Facebook reported that they had over 200,000 subscribers, of whom over half spent more than an hour per day online.  No other approach to marketing currently reaches anything nearly that size of audience – and it’s comparatively cheap!

Clearly, this field of marketing must not be neglected – yet we all know that anything which is ever posted to Facebook (or similar sites) is their property.  This means that whatever time and money you invest into advertising there belongs to the landlord.  He is free to use, distribute, or dispose of it at his discretion. 

You are likely to reach a much larger audience at a very economical price – but once you have posted it, you no longer own it.  In other words, you are sharecropping.  You gain a small reward, but most of the value of your post belongs to someone else.

Is it possible to utilize “state of the art” without being a sharecropper?

Yes!  You can do it – and it’s not even all that difficult.  The key is to have a URL which really is your own.  It’s registered to you, and whatever you post on it belongs to you.  In effect, it is your own farm!  Don’t avoid the social networking systems – but utilize them discretely.  The key is that your “valuables” are stored on your own site.  Your postings on Facebook, YouTube, or the latest incarnation of social networking – all point readers to your own site.

If you have already ventured into this field, carefully evaluate what you have done.  Never use your site to point customers to one which you can’t control – rather, use your exposure on those “sharecropped” sites to point readers to the site that you own.  Do this discretely, though – “by the rules” – or you may offend the landlord and find that you have been evicted!

Never forget that “the Panda is watching”—

But don’t obsess over it Make your website the best that you possibly can.  Get rid of any low quality articles, or upgrade them.  Eliminate any plagiarized or otherwise copied content, and focus on providing truly valuable information to your readers.  .  A refined site which offers quality content will be rewarded – and if you really offer good “stuff”, satisfied customers will return, bringing their friends with them.

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In this series, we have looked at various aspects of SEO and successful web marketing, yet we have hardly scratched the surface. We noted the ugly side of SEO (low quality, digital spam), and Google’s assault on low grade “content farms”. In examining the Panda algorithm, we’ve touched on ways to improve your articles in order to avoid “a Panda attack”. We have discussed 'Writing for Search Engine Optimization: the ABC’s of SEO', and we’ve talked about SEO for human consumption…

Have you noticed? Thus far, everything which we have discussed has been primarily about text. Interesting, informative text is essential. Without it, SEO does not exist. Well written text is the reason that people even DO internet searches. The “bait” which keeps readers coming back is information, well presented through thoughtful, informative, properly written articles.

Writing for dummies?

The truth is that your readers are no dummies! Figuratively speaking, you might succeed in selling them a box of sawdust dressed up as breakfast cereal – but if you do, you may be certain that most of them won’t be back for seconds! Reading dry, “unflavored” text, with no value added can be somewhat like munching down on a bowl of sawdust! Choosing the best wording is helpful, adding good sub-headings improves it further, but text can only go so far.

To reiterate this concept: Useful, informative text is absolutely essential to success in 21st century internet marketing, but if you have the best of written articles – unembellished – you will quickly discover that good text is not good enough!

This IS the 21st century!

We have previously noted this, but it bears repeating: in order to be successful in SEO / internet marketing, you must remember that you are writing for human consumption. Oh, yes, we should further define that – make it for 21st century human consumption!

In case you haven’t noticed, children are growing up – even in the developing countries – with a steady diet of colorful images. Such images are presented in print, TV, movies, video games, and computer / internet interactions. Your developing audience grew up with it, they expect it, and they quickly become bored without it.

For that matter, even “old fogies” such as this author find pictures, slideshows, and videos much more interesting – even more informative – than plain text. Although I consider myself something of an intellectual, I’ll admit that an informative article which is enhanced with good illustrations, still photos and videos definitely grabs my attention.

Since we have been discussing Google’s “Panda”, I should tell you that the Panda likes pictures, too! That’s right; Google’s algorithms seem to be designed to give your articles a better ranking when they include pictures, slideshows, and videos (or links leading to such). Either that, or pictures cause folks to linger a bit longer, resulting in better ranking.  While we’re on that subject, links, in general, are useful in raising your search ranking.  (We should note that Google isn't publishing details on their algorithms.  If they did, "Black Hat" operators would immediately compromise the search / ranking process.)

Panda likes pictures!

Two brief notes:

1. Links are not universally good.
2. Google updates the algorithm every few weeks, so you have to scramble to really stay on top – but those topics are too complex for this article. We should reserve them for another time.

Tags: spam, content farms, search engine optimization, SEO, links, algorithm, panda

We previously examined “The ABC’s of SEO”. As stated in that article, we considered only the most basic of the building blocks on which articles can be built for effective Search Engine Optimization.

When you write for SEO, you must – of necessity – give primary attention to the process of having your article “found” by Google and other search engines. Even though Google has done a fantastic job of teaching computers to mimic the thought processes of human beings, the computers are not yet fully human. For example, they can scan this article in a millisecond, and they won’t get bored if they have to view several thousand words of ordinary looking text. The same is not true of the human audience!

Identify your target audience

The reality is that you must first please the search engines. Failure to do so will land your article somewhere deep in the middle of the pack – and it may as well be at the bottom of the Mariana Trench (the deepest part of the ocean). An article which is hidden somewhere in the midst of thousands of others is essentially invisible to your desired audience.

To prevent your article landing “in the depths”, you need the assistance of a good keyword tracking tool, such as Wordtracker. This will enable you to select the primary and secondary keywords which actually work. (It’s not enough just to have keywords – you need the keywords which will assist you in achieving top rankings.)

Who is it that you want to reach? Most SEO articles are intended to accomplish some form of marketing – and the last time I checked, search engines weren’t buying much! You must first write for the search engines, but once they have directed the searchers to your site, it’s your job to hold their interest. If human beings are your intended audience, then you need to understand a little bit of human nature.

It is an accepted fact that “white space” is an important factor in successful writing. When the eye falls on a page full of nothing but text, the tendency is to back out and seek something less overwhelming / more attractive. Text may not intimidate search engines, but too much of it does intimidate the average reader!

Break the page up with meaningful captions

If you break the page into subject categories, with captions which lead the reader to items of interest, they are much more likely to stay with you. Remember: no matter how well you write the SEO text, unless the reader stays with you and actually buys your product, your fantastic mastery of search engine optimization won’t put a penny in your bank account!

Divide your article up into reasonably short paragraphs – no more than 5 or 6 lines – and keep the paragraphs which relate to a single aspect of the topic together. Then devise a short, compelling caption which draws the reader’s eye to their chosen topic. Even if they don’t read the entire article, they will pick up on the part which is of particular interest to them, and they are likely to follow through with the balance of the article.

Include a call to action!

Be sure that you know what your goal is – and don’t hesitate to urge the reader toward that goal. If you are hoping that most of your readers will order a case of widgets, tell them so! Impress them with the quality of your widgets, and the wonderful price which you are offering. Be sure to actually urge them to order, and make it easy to follow through. Maybe you don’t care about sales – perhaps you are just a nice guy who wants to entertain – but if you actually want sales, remember the goal, and urge the reader to buy your widgets!

In short, write a quality article which will appeal to real people. Then come back and edit it to make sure that the search engines will “like” it. The desired audience is “the folks”, but the path to the audience is SEO. In order to succeed in this game, you must write for both.

Tags: theming, lsi, keyword tracking, tracking tool, wordtracker, secondary keywords, primary keywords, keyword density, keywords, keyword, search engine optimization, SEO, keyword tracking tool, lsi and theming

This is not all you need to know – but the ABC’s of SEO is a good place to start!

Be advised from the beginning: The title of this article IS NOT “Everything you need to know about…” – it is only “The ABC’s of SEO”. ABC’s implies that we are discussing only the basic building blocks on which a fuller understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be built. Can you remember – ‘way back when you were just learning to read – having to first learn the letters, and their related phonetic sounds? That’s similar to what we are doing with SEO!

Just as a child who is learning the names and sounds of letters is not expected to fully understand advanced literature, so you will not achieve complete understanding of SEO by reading this document. You must start somewhere, though, and if you hope to be successful in writing for a search engine driven market, you must master the ABC’s of SEO.

The ABC’s of SEO? – What’s SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a basic process which enables Google (and other search engines) to quickly and efficiently locate articles which deal with topics designated in a web search. A primary ingredient of the SEO search process is the selection of the best keyword (or words). The term “keyword” refers to the words and phrases with which users are likely to search for their chosen topic. Although the term keyword is singular, in practice, it often refers to a combination of two or more words, such as the phrase “search engine optimization”.

What do the search engines want?

Look back at what you have already read, and at the beginning, you will see “A” and “B”. The first rule of SEO (A) is that the keyword is to be included in the title. In this case, our primary keyword is SEO. OK, there it is; the last word of the title. The second rule (B) is that the Primary Keyword is to be repeated in the first sentence of text. Yes, there it is – the very last word of the first sentence. (And it’s also in the subtitle.)

When SEO is done right, there are subsidiary keywords, as well. Let’s say that the last phrase of the title of this article is a secondary keyword. There it is, right in the title. Yes, it’s in the first sentence, as well. It’s important that the primary keyword be repeated in the last sentence of an article, too. Keep this in mind, check to see if it’s there!

Another important detail is “keyword density”. That means how frequently a given keyword appears within the article. There was a time when greater density automatically meant better page ranking – (definition: Ranking = How close to the first listed is your article?) – But the simple process of stuffing an article with keywords quickly rendered the entire process ludicrous. Some articles were so inflated with keywords that the articles themselves were useless, nearly unreadable.

Is that all there is to SEO? NO WAY!

It didn’t take long for Google to improve on the search algorithms. There has been an ongoing improvement process, as search engines became more sophisticated. They have “learned” to actually evaluate content, as opposed to just seeking concentrations of search terms. The latest Google incarnation (Panda) is literally designed to think like a human. Under the newest algorithms, inflated, keyword laden, fluffed articles are automatically degraded, buried in “the middle of the pack” – or lower!

If you want to completely understand the process, you need to go far beyond the ABC’s of SEO, but in a nutshell, try for high quality, meaningful articles which actually provide useful information. Then go back over them, make sure that the primary keyword (or phrase) is in there, at a concentration of at least 1-1/2% - 4%.

This means that any given word or phrase should occur somewhere between 1-1/2 – 4 times per hundred words. An article of 750 words, for example, should contain the chosen keyword somewhere between 12 – 30 times. This article has 802 (Count ‘em!). This means we need to see “SEO” in this article at least 12 times, not more than 32 times. Want to count? (I found 19.) Now, be sure there are some good secondary keywords, as well.

To fully evaluate primary and secondary keywords, you will need to obtain a good keyword tool, such as Wordtracker. Before you are ready for Wordtracker, though, you must master the ABC’s of SEO.

There is much more to learn, such as effective internet marketing using LSI and theming, but you’ve got to start somewhere. If you hope to succeed in ecommerce and online marketing, you must learn effective search engine optimization. The ABC’s of SEO is a good place to begin.

Tags: lsi and theming, theming, lsi, keyword tracking, tracking tool, wordtracker, secondary keywords, primary keywords, keyword density, keywords, keyword, search engine optimization, SEO

Effective Internet Marketing, using LSI and Theming

The traditional approach to writing articles for internet marketing has been to identify one prevailing search term, then write an article of several hundred words, the main purpose of which is to utilize that chosen phrase to the point of absurdity. Never mind that the resulting article is virtually useless, the whole point was to get the attention of search engines.

Google to the rescue!

Fortunately, the Google Search Quality Group has taken steps to eliminate this ridiculous abuse of the net. Their revised search algorithms are designed to evaluate the content, rather than simply match keywords. (See our related article, “Content Farms and Google”). By developing software which utilizes a process called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), they have enabled computers to emulate human thought processes. The resulting algorithms are used to downgrade articles which utilize excessive repetition of keywords and to upgrade those which contain useful information. In simple terms, Google now recognizes multiple synonyms* for the primary search term. For example, a search for “Laptop” may also trigger recognition of “Notebook”, “Computer”, and even several of the dominant brand names of such devices. In other words, Google is no longer searching just for keywords, but is instead seeking themes.

How do I write with themes?

In order to write for the latest algorithm, an author really needs access to current trends. Several software options exist, each of which evaluates current search results, then provides information on what words are being linked with a specified keyword. It doesn’t matter that an article offers accurate and useful information, if it doesn’t include words which potential customers – and search engines – actually use in searching.

To identify current search trends, it is necessary to have access to information on recent searches. No static list can accomplish this. Even a perfect and complete list of keywords used in searching for a laptop computer in January of 2001, for example, would have very limited value in January 2011. Marketing in 2011 must use words actually in common use in 2011. In the same manner, 2011 keywords will likely be of only limited value in 2015.

Even a well built website with excellent, instructive articles will benefit neither the owner nor potential customers – unless they find one another. “Finding” is usually a function of searching, and searching always uses keywords. The latest Google algorithms do a marvelous job of matching search terms to content, but writers still need to use words which make the connection. That connection now goes beyond the user’s choices, and includes theme words which Google has determined are related. How can machines which think, literally, only in 1’s and 0’s possibly go beyond the traditionally expected counting of keywords? How could such machines actually recognize useful content? To avoid redundancy, we will assume that you can understand the system when you read the next few paragraphs. In a nutshell, though, the system takes an average of several top rated articles, and counts recurring words. Any words which occur frequently are assumed to be a part of a relevant theme. This includes words which might never occur to you and me as search terms. The other side of that same function is that articles which contain redundant use of three or four word phrases are automatically downgraded. Include your title phrase every hundred words or so, and you will see your rating drop.

Identify the best words

OK, so how do writers identify the best words? If you are serious about your articles being “above average”, it is absolutely necessary to identify current search trends. This means that you must have an active source of live, current information, such as that offered by “Wordtracker”. There are several good (and some not-so-good) clones, as well. Understandably, this sort of service costs money to develop and maintain. You can find free trial versions, but for long term access to current trends, you’ll probably find it necessary to subscribe to a quality tracking service.

In greatly simplified terms, these programs take an average of several top performing web pages which use your chosen keyword, then count occurrences of related terms. A report is generated, showing actual counts of specific words in those articles. More sophisticated programs allow you to specify how many pages to use in setting the standard. More pages = more accurate predictions, but also more time to process.

LSI Keywords

For a good introduction to the concept and process take a look at “LSIKeywords.com”. Enter the term “Laptop”, and give it time to process. On the date of this research, the top 5 responses were as follows:

Single Word		Two Word Phrases		Three Word Phrases
Laptop	310	Hard Drive	55	drive bare drive	42
Laptops	262	Return Policy	43	Notebook Hard Drive	38
Drive	122	Drive Bare	42	Hard Drive Bare	36
Hard	89	Bare Drive	42	Internal Notebook Hard	32
RPM	87	Notebook Hard	41	Delivery Collect Store	30

Brand names do count in these processes, but you may be surprised at which brand names are most effective. The above search revealed the following names / counts:

Single Word		Single Word		Single Word
Acer	42	Toshiba	40	Macbook	38
Samsung	31	Asus	24	Dell	23

Who would have guessed those ratings?

Synonyms*? Well – not exactly!

Early in this article, we used the term synonyms*. That term is not accurate, in the literal sense. Words which may be treated as synonyms under the Google search algorithm would not likely occur to the average person as such! This is where the term “theming” comes in. The new Google algorithm (announced in February, 2011) responds to the theme of the search term, rather than just the literal meaning of the word. In effect, when Google sees “Laptop”, it now thinks “Computer”.

In the above search, it was clear that “Laptop” and “Laptops” were desirable keywords. Far less obvious would be “Drive”, “Hard”, and “RPM”, yet use of those terms seems to be a definite positive factor in elevating the rating of an article. Most people would guess that “Dell” might be the highest rated brand, but from this investigation it appears that in a Google search, “Acer” may be the most valuable!

It’s crucial that you remember, though. Commonly used search terms constitute moving targets. These figures are true as of the date of this research, but “commonly used” is not a static term. The same search process, done a year later, will no doubt produce different results. If you were to try an identical search now, you would not likely see an identical outcome.

Write for the Panda!

If you really want to succeed under the latest Google (Panda) standards, start with a well written, informative article which does not make excessive use of keywords. Then download a current word list on your chosen topic. This process will reveal which words are most valuable now. Evaluate your article for use of the highest rated words. If they aren’t in there, try to fit them in without disrupting the flow and value of the “piece”. In effect, you may use keywords 100 or more times, yet without redundancy. Your readers will benefit from truly useful content, and neither the readers nor Google will be offended by excessive repetition.

To pull all of this together: Don’t rely on your own intuition; don’t assume that logic or your own experience will be enough to fully maximize your use of the net. Don’t try to utilize somebody else’s list from a previous date, either. There is no adequate substitute for knowledge, and even you don’t know it all! Use the best tools to stay current, or watch your site disappear into the middle of the pack.

 

Tags: lsi and theming, theming, lsi, keyword tracking, tracking tool, wordtracker, secondary keywords, primary keywords, keyword density, keywords, keyword, search engine optimization, SEO