Use Press Releases and Syndication

10. Use Press Releases and Syndication

Press Releases are a fantastic way to get natural one-way links, and also attract fresh traffic. If they are done correctly they can be the main source for building traffic, gaining ranking positions and building trust with the search engines. But don’t just write them, send them to the right places.

In the United States I use PRWeb, and in the UK and Europe I use SourceWire to syndicate articles. Both originally started as PR companies before the web came around so they have excellent connections with real syndicated sources. The websites that they send the articles to, will re-syndicate them to even more websites. You will pay between £20-£40/$20-$60 depending on the amount that you send them.

The articles that you syndicate should be authoritative or about something that will attract people to it, like Top 12 SEO Tips for 2007, or Ten Reasons Why ______________. You should quote trusted authorities and always reference the source when possible. I use Wikipedia or news sources like Google News, BBC, or CNN. I believe this actually adds trust to an article and in 3-6 months when Google pushes out Page Rank, the probation period for giving you full value is reduced.

Valuable content will be a natural link bait and you will also get real traffic from it.

Pull a unique phrase from the article (mine is GaryTheScubaGuy) and add a Google Alert to it (#9 above). Choose to be alerted “as it happens”. When you get an alert (typically within 6-12 hours), go to the page and place a Social Bookmark on the page. (I will talk more about this technique in the next tip.)

Test and Retest Your Site Navigation and Usability with Real People

6. Test and Retest Your Site Navigation and Usability with Real People

Navigation and usability is a fundamental element to search engine optimisation. It is also one of the first things I look at when a potential client comes to Stickyeyes for a consultation.

Unfortunately in most situations there is a Director, Manager or Webmaster that is married to the current design. If we see a need for complete redesign, hopefully we are lucky enough to be given the “nod”, but in most cases that does not happen, so we are forced to change bits and pieces.

Before I touch on some really good tips, let me just say this to the site owners, webmasters and upper-management people out there, if you are not ranking well, not getting a good click-through rate, experiencing high bounce rates or cart abandonment, or you get a myriad of traffic without a minimum of 3% conversion, then you probably have usability issues. Let the marketing people do the marketing.

You have more than one choice;

1. You can let us redesign your website and almost guarantee every element I mention above will be resolved.

2. You can let us create microsites in subdomains with full access to tinker around, test and improve. This way your “top-secret” back-end won’t be exposed (or cause any infrastructure or complicated matrix/server issues), or even allow access to a staging server.

3. You can let us change elements within your current site and test them with the knowledge that we really know what we are doing.

At the end of the day what I am getting at here is that this is a serious fundamental element in a successful website. We typically sit down with 10 or 12 of our best people when looking at the websites functionality. This is about the best focus group you could ever wish to have looking at the website because we also know end-user behavior. Keep an open mind to these types of suggestions because they are usually one of the major problematic issues that most websites have.

So on to the more tips.

Be sure you have definitive CTA’s (Call to Actions) throughout your site, preferably in the navigation bars. These can be Call Us, Contact Us, Get a Quote, Add to Cart, Sign Up, Request Information or whatever. These CTA’s should be in an abridged form that has as few fields as possible. (‘path of least resistance’ – keep it very short.)

I recently looked at a website (a major name that you would recognize) that sells insurance online. Being an ex-insurance agent I know the information that they need to give a quote is certainly not 15 pages long. We actually timed it at close to 16 minutes to complete.

Checkout procedures, whether for an ecommerce site selling widgets, or an insurance company trying to give a quote, should only be information that is required to give a price, and kept to a bare minimum (Don’t ask how or where they found you, if they also want information on something else, or are interested in receiving additional offers…they aren’t and it will hurt your conversion if the user thinks that you may resell their information or bombard them with emails each day) Human nature is the “path of least resistance” and you can scare them off with a daunting list of required fields when all they were looking for was a quick price. People don’t want to have to give this personal information away in the first place and doing it online is an even scarier scenario, but now you want it all!?!?

Another thing, don’t worry about data-captures. You can’t use them anymore for follow-up email offers unless you run them through ‘Can-Spam compliance’. This means the extra step that will cost you 15% of your potential conversions and was designed by some ‘brilliant’ coder to build your email database is worthless without a ‘double-opt-in’ so keep it simple. Give them what they want.

If you absolutely need the information, then using javascript/ajax style forms are great. With these you only show a few fields at a time and if the appropriate radio button is selected, it opens additional fields to be filled in. The entire form is preloaded and will also integrate with a mobile version if you do it right. The idea is that if you get them mentally committed by filling out a few fields, they are more likely to fill out the remaining fields. These menus load quickly and are non-daunting.

Also, add an outgoing link to Wikipedia’s listing on CanSpam compliance. This may help gain you more of the trust element with Google since Google looks at your outgoing links and not just their relevance to the page it is linking out of, but also the trust factor of the website that it is linking to. To them it appears as if you are providing good content using this method. Read more about this in Tip #21.

Placements of “information request” forms are important as well. If you carry 100’s of products, don’t put a “request more information” button or form in your side navigation bar. Put one below each product and add script that will pre-fill the request form out so that all the end user need do is to add minimal personal information. (Tip: If you are in the UK, the post office can provide you with an API that will pull addresses based on post codes. When the end-user enters his/her post code, their address can be pre-populated which will increase your conversions while minimizing the number of fields needed to complete the lead/sale. If you are in a sector like auto insurance you can get access to the DVLA database that will pre-populate vehicle information. There are many of these types of databases out there. Some free, some will cost)

For those that are eTailers, or those who have actual physical products that they sell (not necessarily affiliate marketers) and are competitive with their competition and their pricing, put a Low Price Guarantee CTA (call to action) like the one that you see here. You’ll be surprised at the increase in sales opportunities that you will see. I’ve been doing this for 7 years and not only does it lend itself to keeping tabs on competitors that are violating a fixed-pricing structures, but it gives me an additional opportunity to cut the profit to earn a new customer for my client, and grow the lifetime value of that customer. “A little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing”

Here is something to think about; what would you pay me to become a regular visitor or customer of your website? This offer includes a bookmark, a few recommendations to fellow users and I will eventually spend a few bucks because I’m ‘getting to know ya’.

My Answer: An amount equal to, or maybe a little more, than the amount that I estimated each visitors LTV (Lifetime Value) is. So whatever I calculate a converting customer’s total average purchases are worth to me. If my average customer makes 3 purchases for an average net profit of £/$25, their LTV is £/$75.

This is great information to have because if you get into paying for online customers, you will use this LTV to set CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) campaigns that sell you customers such as Google Adwords, Affiliate programs, or any of the various avenues for lead/sale aggregation.

As long as I can afford it, I’ll pay you my estimated LTV (Lifetime Value) because I know what a guy/gal like you are worth. You are better than ANY advertisement I could buy. How can I find 10 more of you? How about I pay you to tell your friends I like guys/gals like you? I’ll pay them just like you!

Figure out the value, or what you spend for each customer acquisition and figure out ways to spend it and get more of them buying from you before your competition does.

You will find that earning the trust of an online customer will be much more substantial than any other customer you ever have, or have ever had, or will ever get in the long-term future.

Especially in this new and upcoming age of social media and information exchange, these types of tactics are your number one priority, and this tip is, although not the best one here, another task you need to add to your daily arsenal.

Video and Podcast Marketing, Presentation and Optimisation

3. Video and Podcast Marketing, Presentation and Optimisation

I am developing SEO podcasts, and I have clients that are developing different content for video such as gambling tips, tweaking motorbikes and walk-through tours. This is fixin’ to be huge folks…like cell/mobile phone huge.

Mobile video is the new television, and will continue to grow quickly. Yahoo and YouTube average visits were between 13 to 15 minutes per visitor. Imagine getting people to watch an ad on television that long. Or what you would have to pay for that audience.

If you mess around with YouTube or any video resource you will find ‘share with a friend’ and ’add to favorites’ on both sites. You will also find many social bookmarking tools. (Pay attention now, I’ll show you how to syndicate these podcasts and get a serious boost a little later!)The important point here is that you need to get into mobile web applications, whether it is podcasts, web browser compliance, or your own personal usage of mobile web. This is the way things will transition in just the next 12-24 months.

All it takes is a video camera or good webcam, some basic editing software, and you’re ready to go. Be sure to keep the video short, something that people want to learn about or that will keep them watching, and place your URL somewhere in the video. At the end of the video include a “call to action”. If you are creating streaming video for your website try this tool. It will automated the process and makes it quick and easy. You can even add a YouTube or MySpace type script to your site to drive viral marketing and promote backlinks.

Submit your instructional video (or whatever you choose to do) to free video publishing sites such as YouTube, Shorkle, Veoh, Furl, Bolt, MovieMasher, Zango, Badongo, MyUseNet and many others.

Continue to work on this and master your editing skills. Be sure to name the file with your keywords. You would be surprised how many of these video ads are showing up on the first page in normal Google searches. This will give you a great advantage over your competition if videos (or what I like to call free advertising) can be applied to your niche market.

Plus with Google’s new Universal Search, this optimisation technique could very well put you into the top 10.

For those of you on the Agency or Freelance side of things, here is a great template to work off of when trying to motivate your prospect to invest in Podcasting.

Your Website Podcast Test Proposal

A Podcast is like a radio show or webcast with a difference; they can be syndicated and listened to whenever the listener wants. Podcast’s have become increasingly popular since their creation around 2004 with the BBC now running most of their radio and some TV programming as podcasts. Other traditional media such as newspapers and other TV channels such as The Sun, The Independent, ITV and Channel4 all have a collection of Podcasts.

My Company has in-depth knowledge of all forms of podcast creation, with vast experience in creating, running and promoting highly popular Podcasts. A Podcast brings several advantages to a website or brand

o New Way of reaching customers – A Podcast is another way of reaching out to Your Website customers, using sound and/or video to give communication a new dimension.

o Enjoy the Podcast at their own leisure – A Podcast produces a message that can be heard/seen at the customers’ leisure, meaning Your Website’s message can be heard/seen while walking, running or driving, in addition to when customers are at home or in a bingo club, also giving Your Website increased brand exposure

o Distribution – A Podcast can be distributed instantly (pinged) to hundreds of directories and submission services (depending on the software).

o Viral Effect – A Podcast can become a viral message passed between friends, co-workers and relatives, depending on the contents. An example includes the BlendTec Will It Blend videos (Will It Blend iPods - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8H29jU8Wrs - 4,051,828 views)

Initial Podcast Implementation

The implementation of the Podcast within the Your Website website should be based on Wordpress due to its flexibility and integration with RSS aggregators and automatic feed creation. This will both reduce implementation time and give us advanced features such as download statistics and directory pings which would take time to produce in-house. A Wordpress installation can easily be integrated into the theme of the Your Website site.

Due to previous issues with Wordpress installation, if direct implementation is not possible, an alternative route is to use iframes, showing Wordpress from My Company servers, but having all Podcasts and content on your servers. This is a way of getting around issues with the multi-tier server environment and should not compromise SEO.

As far as timescales are concerned with implementation, installation and configuration of the podcasting system these are broken down into the following estimations (Please note this is highly dependent on technical restraints with the installation time varying greatly);

· 3 hours – Initial installation and configuration of Wordpress.

· 8 hours – Your Website theme implementation.

· 3 hours – feed configuration and submission.

Writing of Podcast Script

With Your Website supplying the content for the podcast, My Company will refine this and produce a script for a show lasting around half an hour. This will not be a script in the usual sense but rather an overview of the topics and the main points to discuss.

This section of the podcast creation should take around 3 hours for the initial episodes but once a routine has been established, productivity should increase. After creation, the script will then be sent to you for recording. If needed, My Company can also do the recording.

Podcast Submission & Syndication

After receiving the audio, My Company will then produce show notes which are optimised for SEO and link back to specific parts of the Your Website website. The show notes should also include a promotional code specific to the podcast which will allow for tracking.

The audio file and show notes will be uploaded to the wordpress installation and automatically syndicated on many websites. Manual submission and link building on a per episode basis should here also be included.

· 1 ½ hours – Show note production and SEO optimisation

· 1 hour – Audio upload and syndication

· 5 hours – Episode link building on social media, bingo forums and other bingo related sites.

Podcast Content Plan

The purpose of this content plan is to provide a framework from which to build the content on the new Your Website Podcast.

The tables below denote the required steps to complete the individual features of the Your Website Podcast. Responsibilities of My Company are denoted in blue, Your Website in orange.

Initial Content and Script
Overview:	Your Website to provide initial content for Podcast, e.g.; Last Week’s Winners/Comments/Articles This Week’s Promotions Your Website News Your Website Chat Moderator Interview Answers Podcast Promotion Page Address Information About a Featured Club My Company will optimise the content and add in other content such as Featured articles and Top lists ______Jokes ______ News Best of ______ Buzz A Tutorial on one aspect of ______ Pick of the weeks emails The above content will be produced into a script by My Company and returned to Your Website
		Frequency
Responsibilities:	Your Website to supply above content	Each Podcast
	My Company to add additional content and optimise into script	Each Podcast
	My Company to return script to Your Website	Each Podcast
Due Date:	TBC

Audio Production
Overview:	Your Website to produce audio from supplied script
		Frequency
Responsibilities:	Your Website to produce audio from script and send to My Company	Each Podcast
Due Date:	TBC

Podcast Syndication
Overview:	My Company, after receiving the audio files from Your Website, will write detailed and optimised show notes based on the script and audio. My Company will then upload these onto the Podcast area of the Your Website and use social media, podcast aggregators and feed readers to distribute the podcasts and instantly let subscribers listen to the latest episode.
		Frequency
Responsibilities:	My Company to write optimised show notes on each episode	Each Podcast
	My Company to upload podcast and ping / submit to the above listed services.	Each Podcast
Due Date:	TBC

Menu Pricing

As this is an initial test, costs will be lower than usual in order to prove the worth of the concept.

Description	Price
Podcast Initial Implementation Initial installation and configuration of Wordpress. Your Website theme implementation. Feed configuration and submission.	£840 Per Site
Podcast Script Writing Write script for the half hour show, using content by Your Company and My Company.	£180 Per Podcast
Podcast Submission & Syndication Show note production and SEO optimisation Audio upload and syndication Episode link building on social media, forums and other related sites.	£450 Per Podcast
Total cost for setup & test	£1,470

Next Steps

We are confident the Podcast is a good next step for Your Website in order to stay ahead of the competition. My Company can start the implementation as soon as scope for the Podcast test has been agreed.

Top 21 SEO Tips For 2007 - Tip #1

1. Use Unique Long Tail Titles + Content on Every Page (drop the site title!)

In highly competitive markets, generic title tags just don’t get it done anymore. Title tags are the most important element that the Search Engines look at to identify and categorize your page, thereby determining your competition and your position in the search engines.

Get rid of these types of titles: “My Company – Buy Blue Widgets at My Company Cheap”

There are several problems with this;

1. Using ‘My Company’ over and over again on every page may have been what someone told you was the best way, or best practices, but when it comes to search engines it looks like duplicate content. In these days when search engines are not really putting much weight on Meta tags and descriptions, the title is the first thing that they look at and is critically important to ranking.

2. Second, the title is loaded with too many words. It washes down the primary keywords.

3. Lastly, it targets too many keywords, unless you have built enough pages on the website to also create a single page for ‘cheap blue widgets’. (Which, on a side note, I highly recommend) But in your initial SEO rework of your site and its structure, start small and build your way forward. Later I’ll tell you about keyword research and its importance in this technique, and you will have a roadmap to follow using both. Too many keywords will dilute the benefits of the important ones.

The way this title should be structured is like this; Buy Blue Widgets

Add a ‘buffer-word’ before your keyword set.

Now let’s talk about the reasoning behind why this is the preferred method for search engines.

End-users are becoming more and more educated about how search engines work; the more descriptive words they use, the more likely they are to get the results that they are looking for. What this means is that last year the key phrase for My Company was Debt Help. This year their top key phrase is Get Debt Free. I don’t know why, maybe there is a major company out there doing massive debt consolidation ad campaigns that have “coined” this phrase to make it more memorable than debt help. Who knows? The point is that they are using a completely different search phrase, and the phrase is 3 words rather than 2 words in length. This makes the need to build individual pages for your primary keywords, then your niche keyword phrases, and then finally for your long-tail phrases. Generally speaking, the lower number of words the better, has been the overall suggested recommendation to target because human nature is the path of least resistance. To a point it still is, but the people using longer phrases (based on extensive analytics), know what they are looking for, because they convert at a significantly higher rate.

Once I have identified these phrases I start building additional pages, or even microsites (for purposes of A/B, funnel, and conversion testing) and I target the 3, 4, 5 or even 6 word long-tail phrases.

Use these longer keyword phrases within your content as well. If possible, replace enough of the current keywords on good ranking pages with the niche and longtail version of the keyword string. So if you are ranking well for ‘blue widgets’, add ‘cheap’ to each instance of ‘blue widgets’, both on-page and in the code. This method can be used on several plains. Use it to transfer page rank or boost a niche phrase, while the original rank for blue widgets remains. (You may see a temporary slip in your rankings, but this is only temporary)

If you are in a highly competitive market, this could be the answer that you are looking for to attract the middle 40-80% target audience, plus get great conversion rates.

Tomorrow - #2 Learn and Utilise Advanced Keyword Selection