The Importance of ‘Long Tail Phrases’ or ‘Deep Keywords’ In Search Marketing

I was shopping in Sainsbury’s the other evening, when I encountered a young man looking for Water Biscuits. He was in the middle of asking an appropriately orange uniformed and rather spotty youth where he could locate them. The spotty youth was equally perplexed and was considering reinforcements prior to my intervention.

This incident, however, did get me thinking of one of the main issues I find myself discussing with clients. Just like the young man and the spotty Sainsbury’s employee, we are conditioned into categorising items, products or services. Lumping a group of similar things together to make it easier to locate them. Fine for most but when you don’t actually know that a water biscuit is a savoury cracker usually eaten with cheese, it can be problematic.

Categorisation Conditioning
Similarly, most advertisers are used to categorisation, particularly in relation to directories, which has been principle advertising medium for many years. The Water Biscuit Manufacturer would thus seek to get to the top of the directory listings for crackers or savoury biscuits or at least make his advertisement the biggest and boldest.

User Defined Categorisation
The fundamental difference with search engines and one reason why they are so popular, is that the listings are not pre-categorised, the user invents their own categorisation each time they search.

In fact, if they tried to search by categorisation they would be so swamped by responses they would naturally refine their search. Thus if our water biscuit searcher typed in crackers he would find entries for Christmas crackers, Chinese crackers, animal crackers, nut crackers, mental illness, psychological detective series, ballet performances and so on.

Power to the Searcher
Search engines should allow the perplexed man to be able to find exactly what he wants, however he describes it, whether it be water biscuits, posh biscuits for cheese, small round thin crackers, table biscuits or whatever. The challenge for the search marketer therefore, is to understand all the words and thought processes that the prospective buyer or user may employ, match the response to those and ensure their entry is significantly placed, though not necessarily, top of those particular listings (see How Important is Search Engine Ranking?).

The Refinement of Search into Deep Keyword Phrases
It is the advancement of the user search, the refining and refining of terms until they describe exactly what they want, that makes search engine marketing so efficient. The proficient searcher will refine their terms increasingly until they have found a set of words which describes their requirements. They may use terms like “calorific content of water biscuits“, “how much salt is in water biscuits“,”buy cheapest water biscuits online“, “water biscuits for next day delivery” and so on. Each of these distinct phrases (“Long tail phrases” or “deep keywords” to use the terminology), describes a precise requirement for that particular person. The volume of searches on all of these will be considerably less than a general term like “crackers” but are they more valuable? Almost certainly, yes. Furthermore, because you are not competing with as many people for those terms, the price you will have to bid for these phrases will normally be significantly less. In addition, because there are less competing sites in that particular space, the chances of your ad being seen and clicked through to are much higher. Moreover, and most importantly, provided your landing page accurately meets the need of the search requirement that was stated, your conversion rate, the likelihood that the visitor will actually buy your proposition, is much, much higher.

Does Broad Matching Allow You To Cheat?
Now, the broad search term “water biscuits” would potentially pick up all these searches but is the marketeer looking for all of these enquiries? Whatsmore the term will also pick up queries like “allergic reaction to water biscuits“, “competition in the water biscuits market“, “water biscuits flood“,” dunking water biscuits” and so on. Are these target enquiries? Even if they were, would one advert and landing page suit all of these particular requirements?

The Significance of Ad Copy
Which leads us to the importance of ad copy. This is the creative bit that is sorely neglected by many. Admittedly there are limitations to potential creativity with less than 100 characters (including spaces!), that’s about 20 words max, however your copy still needs to impress. Conversely it needs to be descriptive and informational and succinctly tell the user exactly why they need to visit your site and what they can expect. It also needs to filter non-target traffic and discourage visitors who will not convert, so there are limits to the creativity that can be used. Suffice to say there is a lot to do in those 100 characters and a particular style that works and a great many that don’t.

The Landing Page
This then leads us to the most important bit. Having got the visitor to describe what they are looking for, described your offer in a distilled 20 word piece and taken them to your website, you then have to tell them in greater (but precise) detail your exact offer, how what you have particularly serves the wants and needs of your visitor and then tell them exactly and simply what to do next. Why is it the most important bit? Well, it’s arguable really but, having paid to get your prospective customer this far and knowing that every visitor costs you money, its vital you convert them from casual browsers, or worse, disinterested or disenfranchised visitors, to paying customers or hot leads.

Should You Still Bid on Generic or Category Terms?
Another chief discussion I have with many clients is whether they should still advertise within broad categories. Should a water biscuit manufacturer bid on the term “crackers” or a manufacturer of speciality ultra lightweight high tensile IM42 carbon blank fishing rods advertise under the term “fishing rod”? The short answer is it depends. It depends upon the market, the research cycle, buying cycle, the lead time from research to buying decision, the target customer, the purchase price, the financing options, the relative bid prices of the terms, the vanity of the advertiser and so on. In many cases it is important simply as a brand awareness exercise, though I’m not convinced that search is the best medium for raising brand awareness. In my experience, however (and key to me) conversion rates for categorised terms are dramatically lower than precise “deep” phrases.

Conclusion
Search is about giving control back to the user (albeit Google & Yahoo have a significant say). It is allowing the user to define exactly what they want rather than Yellow Pages telling them what they should be looking for. This creates tremendous opportunities for people to market specific products to specific users without incurring tremendous advertising costs, as well as allowing the large volume marketing of mass market items cost effectively by only marketing directly to those people who wish to buy them.

To do this effectively requires a lot of effort, however, and understanding of your customers, target customers, offering, proposition, competitors and so on. You then have to use that understanding to communicate your precise offer, to your precise customers with pin point precision!

For help on how to use search marketing most effectively to develop your business optimally and profitably visit Specialist Online Marketing now.

Peter van Zelst is the Principle of SpecialistOnlineMarketing.com , a practical online marketing company. If you want practical help to make your business or e-commerce venture fly visit http://www.specialistonlinemarketing.com/

10 ‘Secrets’ You Really Should Know About Search Engine Marketing

Beverly Sills, the opera singer who died earlier this year, is famously quoted as saying “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going“.

As a specialist online marketing professional, I spend a lot of time reading about the latest developments in search engine marketing and how this or that tweak, ploy or shortcut will suddenly change your life and lead to huge amounts of traffic; riches beyond your wildest desires and everlasting happiness. At the risk of sounding something of a cynic (I suppose 8 years in online marketing gives me a right to be!), if not a downright party pooper, I have to say I’m with Beverly Sills on this one. Yes, there are some things that you can do that might give you an edge, but if you are lucky it will only give you an edge for a very short time (before you’re found out). At best you could have just wasted your time, at worst you could be set back significantly and lose far more than you gained.

Background

Before I elaborate, it’s important, in my opinion, to understand, the history and culture of the net and of a lot of the people that have been involved with it. The Internet’s early success was largely promoted by a group of altruistic, non-commercial, caring, sharing and fair minded people, who wanted something to develop that was free and good. After all, this is a community that gave their time and knowledge free to develop Open Source software, in response to what it saw as the commercial dominance of software by certain companies.

The Internet’s now most mighty company, Google, grew up with this altruistic ideology, even having a corporate motto of “Don’t be evil”. It embraced these principles to provide a free search engine that allowed people to find what they were looking for on the internet. It continued to develop this engine to become better and better and provide its users with a better and better experience, even though those users didn’t pay a penny for its services. Eventually, it developed so much trust that it was able to start generating revenue by offering paid advertising alongside its free results, however it has continued to invest in making its free service ever better, based on honest, fair & good, “Don’t be evil” principles.

Admittedly Google has had one or two blips along the way but it has developed, generally, a trust amongst its users by delivering what they want and being fair about it. Search Engine optimisation whizzes and website owners who ignore ‘Don’t be evil’, do so at their peril.

The Accidental Search Engine Marketeer

So, if there are no shortcuts and you have to play fair and by the rules, then why “10 ‘secrets’ you really should know about search engine marketing“?

Well, let me tell you another secret, I discovered search engine marketing almost by accident! Ten years ago, when I started out online, search engines were very much in their infancy. In fact, to me, when you typed anything into a search engine, the results reflected what seemed to be the web’s main purpose and preoccupation, sex and pornography!

Back in those days’ people had lots of other ideas how they were going to get visitors to their website, many of them a lot more glamorous than using search engines. Anyway, let’s face it, there were a lot less websites back then.

Being in possession of very few resources (in comparison to the huge amounts of money being thrown about by other start ups in those dot com boom days) and at the time a relatively limited understanding of the internet, I concentrated on simple and, what seemed to me, common sense ideas and business principles to drive visitors to my website.

By employing these, more and more people found my website but not only as a result of all my hard work and efforts, they were also finding the site through search engines because, unwittingly, these same tactics were improving the search engine ranking of the site.

Amazingly today, despite the huge cultural, technological, social and environmental changes (and by that I’m only talking about the search engines!) the same principles still apply, despite the huge volume of different techniques, systems and tricks that have been peddled in the meantime. So what are these ‘secrets’?

The 10 ‘Secrets’ You Should Know About Search Engine Marketing

1. Focus

The internet is a huge ocean. No matter how big a fish you are, you’ll be lost in it. Find yourself a pond. The smaller a fish you are, the smaller a pond you need, but don’t try to be all things to all people: a) it’ll never work, b) you’ll never be found.

2. Differentiate

You need to have a reason why someone visits your website and buys into your product or service. In the offline world it’s often OK to be as good as everyone else and rely on the fact that people like you as the reason they want to buy from you. In the online world, where there is so much competition and, generally, people don’t know you, you need to have sound reasons and differentiating factors.

By all means try to get people to like you (see 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10) but remember they have a lot more choice in a search engine than on a high street, you need to communicate why they should choose you simply, effectively and fast!

If you’re selling motor insurance for disabled lady drivers, yes you have a niche and you’ve completed step 1, but you need to establish the benefits that your customers will enjoy by buying from you and that they will value more than the 237,000 other links they could choose. You then need to communicate these on your web pages and in your Meta Description of your content or Search Advertising Copy, to make it easy for your visitors/customers to establish quickly why they should visit your site when scanning a search page.

3. Build Your Site and Its Contents for Your Customers Not You

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), there is a concept that people are led either by their visual senses (what they see), their auditory senses (what they hear) or their kinaesthetic senses (what they feel). When you watch any great auditor speak (Bill Clinton for instance) you’ll see him trying to appeal to all of these senses, so that he communicates with his entire audience – not just a part of it. Your website must do this too.

Search engines like words but don’t fill your pages purely with text, a lot of your visitors will also like to see images. Likewise don’t fill your pages with images because you like them and you think your visitors should too. A lot of your visitors also want to hear what you have to say and feel comfortable with your site.

Search engines like words because they tell them what your site is all about, so you need to write clearly on your pages just this. But it’s important to write these words with your customers in mind, not what you think the search engines want. Your customers have got to understand them and they need to be written in their language.

If you are selling bling jewellery you need to use a whole different vocabulary to that if your offering savings and investment advice to the over 65’s. The reason for this is twofold:-
a) If you do get them to your page but they don’t relate to the content when they get there or it doesn’t make sense, they’ll just click off.
b) The same language your customers want to read is that they’ll use when searching

Search engines now also have clever robots that can read English and will penalise your site if it thinks you’re trying to trick them by writing keyword intense nonsense. In any case, what’s the point of getting people to your site if you lose them immediately because you haven’t written content they can understand or relate to?

4. Write Well Structured Content

I’ve already said it but I’ll say it again, make your pages easy for your visitors and/or customers to understand. Just like you learnt at school, structure your content to make it easy for people to follow. Write a good page title that explains what your page is about, use headings to explain what each section is about, use sub-headings where appropriate, use the words that are important to your visitors and/or customers in the content (though not repeatedly) and stress the important bits either by using headings or putting those words in bold. That’s just common sense writing.

Remember that people read web pages differently to printed pages (they tend to skim read) so write bulleted points, in sharp, concise text with links to greater detail and further information, if the reader requires.

Search engines like a minimum of around 300 words per page (about the quantity of this number 4 section) so that they can accurately gauge the contents of the page. You’ll also find this just about nicely fills a web page with an illustration or two, without going below the fold, i.e. forcing the reader to scroll down the page.

Add a Meta Content Description to explain to the search engine (or rather your visitor/customer who is looking for your page on a search engine) and lo and behold you’ve got a search engine friendly page! Yes, search engines, just like your valued visitors, analyse your pages by the Page Titles, Descriptions, Headings (H1, H2 and H3 in order) the use of Bold or Strong tags and by analysing the content of the page to understand the keywords and what the page is talking about.

5. Update Your Content Regularly

Just like a good shopkeeper changes his shop window and the layout of his store on a regular basis, then so should you change the content and look of your site. Firstly, in most cases, you want repeat visitors and they need to see you’re alive and care about the website (and them). Secondly, the more frequently you update, you’ll find the search engines will more frequently visit or crawl your website.

6. Give Your Users/Customers What They Want

I know this one is a bit radical but it really is one of the most important lessons you can learn. If you give your visitors what they want, when they want it and provide them with more value than they can get from other people/sites, not only will they be happy (and happy users or customers is surely the chief goal of any website or business) but they will return and what’s more they’ll tell their friends!

7. Delight Your Users/Customers and Make Them Your Evangelists

One thing I learnt early on is that going the extra mile to delight your customers really pays off on the internet. Word spreads really fast online and if you give a really good service and/or deliver an exceptional product, not only will your customers keep on returning (which saves you the marketing cost of getting new customers) but they tell their friends (who go on to buy from you and saves you even more marketing cost). The unexpected bonus is that they spread the word about your product or service through forums, blogs, web pages, etc., which talk about your great website and service and put links to your site, which drives more traffic to your site …… and improves your search rankings because of all these relevant (and not paid for) links.

8. Keep Your Website Simple and Working

Just like most processes, you need to build your website for the lowest common denominator. Make it as simple and easy as you possibly can. Rigorously check everything so that your users have no chance of having a bad experience. Always sacrifice sophistication for simplicity, if simple works.

Badly built, over complicated, unfriendly or broken sites not only turn off your potential visitors and/or customers, making them click off straight away (and what’s the point of going to all the trouble of getting visitors if your lose them immediately) but high bounce rates (people clicking off your site quickly because what they saw wasn’t what they wanted) is a big part in the Quality Score used by Google & Yahoo in their paid search algorithm. Furthermore, badly built sites, poor or obsolete code and broken links is something search engines definitely don’t like and you will be penalised for it in your search engine rankings.

9. Build Links with Relevant Sites

As I said earlier, before search engines became such a dominant driver of traffic, you tended to look all over for sources of traffic. Having no money meant paying for advertising listings was out of the question but if you could find relevant sites where a link to your site would benefit visitors and drive traffic, for instance if your site sold beds and you got a link from a site that sold bedding, then it was win-win. Similarly if you did stuff or created news stories that other sites may want to cover, then you could gain coverage and links.

What I wanted was traffic (which I got) but into the bargain I got what were essentially big votes from credible sites about my pages which boosted my search rankings. If you focus on being really good and giving value, you do develop these links and these are what search engines really want, so that they can establish you are a respected and credible site. Search Engines see links as votes of a websites value. If they see lots of paid or traded links these are not really saying the website is any good. What they want is impartial endorsements of your site and it will accord these links much higher value.

Do not trade links, willy-nilly or engage in reciprocal linking as it is sometimes called. In my opinion, the first and only question you should ask is, will this (incoming) link generate traffic/add value. If the site/page is relevant and/or related then the answer is that it probably will. If you are a management consultant and get a link from an adult dating website the chances are it probably won’t. The search engines see it similarly (though they’re not interested in the traffic). If they see a link to a horse race betting site from a site/page that is discussing racing form then they will see it as a credible endorsement or vote for the site and enhance the ranking of the linked to page. They will see the adult dating rank as being of no relevance to the management consultant with the result that the latter’s ranking could actually be negatively affected because the search engine thinks you’re trying to trick it.

10. Communicate With Your Users/Customers

Having got people to your site in the first place and even got them to buy something from you don’t then just ignore them. Work at keeping them on board and getting them to keep coming back. Communicate with your users/customers by giving them advice, information, offers, support, help – not junk but things they will value. Communicate with them in whatever means they prefer (obviously making sure you get their permission to do so), whether it be by email, text, blog, podcast, special pages on your site or whatever is their preferred choice. An established user will use you again more readily, as they (should!) trust you and this will be a lot less costly than trying to find new users. Once again, if your users value this (which if done right they will) you’ll find links appearing which add more weight to your pages and your search rankings.

Summing Up

Well, I told you there were no shortcuts and I also told you these were “10 ‘secrets’ you really should know about search engine marketing“. You certainly should know them because they all make common sense. Search engines employ legions of highly intelligent boffins to develop extremely complicated algorithms which are designed to make sure the search engine user gets the best result from their experience with the search engine. How they do that? Remarkably, they follow common sense rules to ensure that this is achieved and try to stop “evil” people from coming up with shortcuts.

If you really want to succeed online you should be doing all of these as a matter of course without evening thinking about search engines and that, remarkably, is what the search engines want you to do. Give your users the best experience you possibly can and you will be rewarded but remember “Don’t be evil”!

Peter van Zelst is the Founder of SpecialistOnlineMarketing.com , a practical online marketing agency. If you want practical help to make your business, website or e-commerce venture fly visit or call http://www.specialistonlinemarketing.com

How to Avoid the Cardinal Sin of Online Marketing – 12 Tried and Tested Golden Rules for Converting Your Internet Traffic into Customers

12 Tried and Tested Golden Rules for Converting Your Internet Traffic into Customers
Imagine that thing you’ve most wanted to buy……

You’ve seen the adverts, read the reviews and write ups, talked to all your friends about it and heard loads of stuff that’s got you so excited.

You’ve seen it in the window and now you’re there, seeing, feeling, touching and trying it. You’re all ready to part with your money and it’s yours. But then….. the Sales Person scare you off, or you can’t find any sales people to take your order, or they close the checkout, or the queue is around half an hour, or they make you complete a three page form before you’re even considered worthy of becoming a customer, or …. Well I’m sure you’ve got your own examples.

We’ve all been there – we’re sold, we want to buy, all we need is….. And the stupid retailer puts a barrier before us.

How frustrated do we feel? How annoyed do we get? Will we ever go back there again? And what about the retailer? What a chump? To get that close? And to have wasted all that effort and expense on a customer who will NEVER come back?

This happens every day in shops throughout the world but it also happens all the time online and, in my opinion, is the cardinal sin of online marketing.

Companies make great efforts to get people to their website and lose them before they even get past the landing page, because they don’t properly engage them and convert them from browsers to visitors?

Website owners set an objective like getting people to sign up for something or request an appointment and then don’t properly consider how it works and what they are actually asking people to do.

So here are our 12, tried and tested, golden rules for converting internet traffic into customers:-

1. Set Clear Objectives, i.e. Conversion Targets.

Sounds simple but you’d be surprised how many site owners just want to get people to visit their website and think everything else will follow. What do you want people to do:-

• Buy Something?
• Request a telephone call?
• Book an appointment?
• View a specific information page
• Download something?
• Sign up for newsletter, mailing list, subscription, etc?

2. Design Your Site/Page Around Those Objectives

If you want people to book a follow up call or visit, make sure your visitors understand that and are clearly requested to do that. My old uncle (who was professional salesman) used to tell me that the biggest mistake most salespeople made was not to ask for the order. And this is the same with a lot of websites. You’ve got a visitor who has found the site, wants what you’ve got, has read all about your company and wants to do business but they don’t know what to do next because it hasn’t been spelled out.

3. Make It As Easy As Possible For Your Visitors To Complete Your Objective

If you want someone to sign up to a newsletter all you need is their name and email address, you don’t need them to complete a 10 item form. If you want someone to buy something don’t put obstacles in the way. Ask for the minimum amount of information you need to complete their request and make it as simple and easy to complete as possible.

4. Keep It Short, Sweet And Simple

Minimise the content on each and every conversion page. Do not fill your page with words and complications; just keep it very simple with straightforward bullet points telling them what they need to know and what they need to do next

5. Finish Every Page With A Strong Call To Action

Whether you want them to submit a form, send a payment, give you their email address or just view another page, issue a strong, compelling call to action, telling them what you want them to do and how it will benefit them when they do it.

6. Make Everything As Simple, Straightforward And Obvious As Possible

Look at your website with your customers eyes. Understand how they think and try to imagine every conceivable scenario that may make them confused or unsure. Don’t use jargon, acronyms or long words where simple English is possible. Try to keep everything to a minimum of clicks, think of Amazon & Apple’s 1-click shopping.

7. Test Everything… Repeatedly

Think of every possible scenario and test it. Get your friends and staff to test it in every conceivable way. Once your site or pages are live, monitor it! If you can see issues which you think may be hindering conversions, test out different alternatives and monitor them closely.

8. Know Your Site & Conversion Process Inside Out

I’m often staggered when I find companies that don’t regularly test their check out process, sign up form, or other conversion processes. When we take on a client we get to know the conversion processes backwards and test them out from all different scenarios;- using different types of internet user, different browsers, different operating systems and computers, different internet connections, different network locations, different times of day and so on. Then we monitor the process closely using analytics to see if there are common drop out points that we haven’t spotted. Then we try to replicate and get the site developer to fix the issues.

9. Build Trust And Establish Empathy

You want your visitors/customers to empathise and bond with you, you also need them to trust you. If you want them to give you their email address tell them all about how you protect their data and privacy, how you will not sell their information and how much you hate spam. If you want their credit card details, make sure you have top notch security procedures and SSLs in place and you back it up with security & privacy policies. Lack of trust is one of the biggest causes of conversion failure and customers bailing out of a transaction

10. Don’t Sting Them With Extras

A Great Headline Price, a Free Offer or Subscription can often bring people in and get them so far, but if you then sting them with extra charges or additional requirements expect your conversion rates to plummet. Extra charges, conditions and the like have traditionally been the number 1 obstacle to converting a transaction.

11. Make Sure Your Site And Pages Are Quick To Load

Your pages need to load quickly, if not instantly. People are impatient and will not hang around for your tardy site when there are plenty of others who do what you do. Research shows that anything up to 60% of your visitors will exit your page if it takes more than 6 to 8 seconds to load (and you can bet your bottom dollar they will NEVER return).

12. Did I Mention Testing?

Yes I know it’s boring but you need to test everything. Retail is detail as the saying goes and online it’s just as, if not more important. If you website crashes, page fails to load, if your SSL is out of date, if there’s a spelling mistake, or a broken link, your visitors will find it and they’ll leave, never to return! Make sure everything works and then test it again.

And the bonus rule, Don’t spend time and money marketing your website until you have fully understood and implemented the above. If you do, not only will you be wasting your time and money but you’ll be alienating your potential new customers in the process!

Peter van Zelst is the Founder of SpecialistOnlineMarketing.com , a practical online marketing agency, providing practical online marketing help and support to businesses. If you want practical help to make your business, website or e-commerce venture fly visit or call http://www.specialistonlinemarketing.com/

Hello World, yes I’m New to WordPress!

So I’ve switched to WordPress for my Outpost for comments on Online Marketing, E-Commerce and Business in General. I’d welcome comments and views so please contribute, however contrary your opinions are. I, honestly, don’t mind, much….