Archive for June, 2007
Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 30th, 2007
You’re either sick of hearing about the iPhone or you eat up anything said about it. I have gadgetitis, and so does Aaron, so we’ll be getting iPhones next week. If you’re a Mac user, the iPhone is a heaven sent, despite what others are saying. I’ve tried the Sidekick, Blackberry, and the Treo, all of which either didn’t sync or really had a lame attempt at syncing with my Mac. Plus, the interface for the phones has been clunky and 1990s at best.
First off, if you’re interested in iPhone visitors you may want to consider creating an application. I created my first iPhone application that so far I have called iPhone Scriptures (yes, I’m religious :)). I read from the scriptures every day and I like to have them with me when I have a spare moment to read. Since the iPhone doesn’t allow for 3rd party applications (you know, when you load those on your Treo et al then it starts crashing) except through the browser, I figured I had better just build my own. I found a database of the scriptures and made a quick and simple AJAX interface. It’s not perfect, but it will improve over time (and especially after I get my iPhone!). You can see what it might look like on an iPhone simulation.
iPhone Visitors in Google Analytics
From initial Google Analytics data from my iPhone app, it looks like the only way to distinguish the iPhone from other Macs is through the screen resolution, which is 320 x 396. You would think there would be some further distinguishing, but not so far. I looked at the browsers, OS, hostnames, and network locations but could not distinguish the group of iPhone visitors through any of those.
So to check for iPhone visitors, open up Google Analytics, go to Visitors, then to Browser Capabilities, then to Screen Resolution. Look for 320 x 396. You may be asking (if you are a crazy iPhone maniac like me) why not 320 x 480? The viewable area of the browser goes down to 396 in height with the address bar area, etc.
Google Analytics is always a bit delayed, so I haven’t seen a bunch of traffic yet. Plus, I’m sure reading the New Testament on your new iPhone probably isn’t on the top of most people’s lists for discovering its cool features. For anyone with a new iPhone, I found this cool application (well designed, much better than mine) that works as a home page for accessing all the different iPhone apps.
Visited 3447 times
June 30th, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 26th, 2007
Stuffed animals have been around as far back as Ancient Egypt. Undoubtedly if you have kids you have a collection of them. Although stuffed animals are no longer stuffed with straw or beans, they haven’t really changed much at all over the years, until now. A new company has created the transformer of stuffed animals, Zoobie Pets. Not only is it a cute, cuddly, soft stuffed animal, but it can also become a pillow or a blanket. So simple, but so neat!
Transform your SEO Business
This got me thinking, what other things around us, as ordinary as stuffed animals, could be “transformed” into an even better product and compete with the original? Can we do that with an “ordinary blog” or “ordinary service” like SEO? Yes!
Do you just do run of the mill SEO? Or do you go beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary? Do you offer specialization in services such as local search, link building, ecommerce sites, jewelry retailers, link bait, etc.? Do you have certain skills that set you apart from the rest, like programming, design, PR, etc.? Do you offer services that not not only include SEO but also web hosting, programming, site design, logo design, radio ads, print ads, etc.? Even if you don’t do it all yourself, if you surround yourself with a team that works together, even across business lines, you can offer your customers a product that is extraordinary and brings them the results that WILL make them talk about it at other conferences and business meetings.
The Zoobie Pets are so adorable, that I want to tell other people about them. My kids like them so much, they have been telling everyone they meet about their new Zoobie Pet. Having a product that is extraordinary, that can make a passionate user (think Apple, Google) gives you a huge advantage in word-of-mouth marketing.
A few good links about being “passionate”:
Creating Passionate Users blog is an excellent one I subscribe to
A post by Aaron Wall (SEObook) about being passionate in what you do
Disclaimer: My little sister runs LittleAngelBaby.com that sells the Zoobie Pets, and I don’t get any compensation for the referral. If you have a kid in your life, I think they’ll like this, mine sure have!
Visited 902 times
June 26th, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 25th, 2007
Link Building is an essential aspect of SEO because of the weight that search engines, particularly Google, place on the democratic nature of links and the web. The anchor text of a link is a very important aspect of backlinks (anchor text write-up). Getting backlinks is always a challenge, especially backlinks that have helpful anchor text (instead of “click here” and “good article”). But never fear, Michael Jensen is here to give you one more strategy up your sleeve.
Optimize Existing Backlinks
So you’ve got a bunch of backlinks already, but they use your name or “click here” as the anchor text. With this technique, all you’ve got to do is follow these simple steps:
STEP 1: Identify your backlinks
You can use Technorati to find who links to your blog, or use Yahoo! Site Explorer to see your backlinks from anywhere. Blog backlinks are a lot easier to modify, so that’s a good place to start. For Technorati, just search for your domain (like this for soloseo.com). For Yahoo! Site Explorer (might need a Yahoo User ID first) just type in the URL to your domain or page that you’re interested in (like this for soloseo.com). You’ll want to view “Inlinks” and choose “Show Inlinks except from this domain to entire site”.
STEP 2: Identify candidate links
Identify links that could potentially have the anchor text changed. Start with sites that you already have a relationship with (you know the site owner, blogger, etc.).
STEP 3: Assess URL and anchor text
Look at the page and see what the anchor text is and what page the link points to. If it just points to your domain, you can request just to have the anchor text updated to a keyword in one of your top 5 keywords for your site, or see if there is another page that may be better fitting their link, along with anchor text specific for that page. If the page links to a subpage, identify a keyword that fits the page.
STEP 4: Make the request
Figure out how to contact the site owner (About us page, contact us page, search googe for @thesitedomain.com, etc.) and draft a personalized email. You may consider offering some incentive, like a cash amount, a donation to charity of their choice, or some cool give-a-way you have.
STEP 5: Keep Track and Follow-up
Keep track of your link update requests by recording them somewhere. SoloSEO has a way to manage your link building so that might be a good fit. If you get a response, or notice the link changed, be sure to follow up with a nice “Thank you!!”.
Update: I noticed a link today to an article I wrote from 10e20.com about the Search Marketing faceoff between Presidential candidates that mentioned my post about the 2008 Presidential Candidates and SEO but it referenced the WebProNews.com syndication of my blog post instead of mine. This would seem like another good place to see if they would point it to the original article instead. How about it Jake? 
Visited 1551 times
June 25th, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 21st, 2007
Many of us in the Internet Marketing world may not use mass physical mailings very often, but they are a very traditional form of marketing. Note the back of this mailing I received the other day. You might first notice it has a rip in it. Yes, that was my first instinct after seeing what you may not notice with this small image. Yes, the envelope flap is actually PRINTED onto the envelope to make it look like an envelope with a flap.
Was there something important inside? I will never know. I don’t know who it was from or what the contents were, but once I saw the fake envelope flap I knew it was worthless.
We can easily scare people away from becoming a customer, or even potentially being a customer (i.e. me reading the document inside this letter), in many different ways. Here are a few to think about:
1) Not delivering the expected content. Example: A PPC ad that says “Dining Room Furniture” but after you click you go to a super furniture warehouse, where you then have to find the dining room furniture. Another example, your ad says you have a certain product but you don’t at all.
2) Worthless content. Having content that doesn’t even make sense, or just as worse has poor grammar/spelling, or is scraped from some other website and claimed to be your own.
3) A long ad page for what appears to be a decent product but that uses lame marketing gimmicks to attempt to convince me that my money is worth it, all the while making me shake my head in disgust that people actually believe and buy this kind of stuff.
Seth Godin wrote a book called All Marketers Are Liars that is a fantastic read for anyone who owns their own company, runs a business, or is working on branding themself or their blog. He talks about telling authentic stories, even if they end up making the customer tell themselves a lie. I highly suggest you read the book, or get the audio book. This mass mailing was not authentic from the start, it was a total fake. At least make me open it to find out it is a scam.
What are some other things that scare you away immediately? What is something you are doing on your sites that scares your customers away?
Visited 1327 times
June 21st, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 19th, 2007
I’ve always enjoyed LinkedIn, but I’m not sure about this new feature. They want me to Accept or Deny Jesus?
I felt like Peter (in the Bible) for just a moment!
Anyone involved in building software and applications knows text cropping is always a tough part. Obviously I was invited to be friends with someone named “Christopher” but LinkedIn cuts off after 6 characters. I just loved the wording on the buttons and how they seemed to fit just perfectly.
I love LinkedIn, and I’m enjoying Facebook too. LinkedIn has made it much easier for me to add and connect with friends though, anyone else feel that way? Well if you know me, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn:
If you don’t know me, share a comment or drop me an email and get to know me! If you want to find me on facebook, then try searching for my name. There’s already a good sized network of SEOs on there (not as big as LinkedIn from what I can tell), and I’ve found some students I taught in a class before. Facebook has put themselves in a great position for being a huge leader in the social network world with their new API.
Visited 1519 times
June 19th, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 18th, 2007
We all remember TV, radio, and even print ads back in the AOL era that left us with an AOL Keyword for finding their site. Over time, and as AOL became less important, TV/radio/print ads gave you a domain name instead. Today on the radio I heard a commercial from Honda Certified Used Cars that sounded eerily similar to “type in the AOL Keyword”. The radio ad said to visit Google or Yahoo! and type in the keyword “Honda Certified Used Cars”. Searching for this in Google brings up Honda’s Certified Used Cars site (http://automobiles.honda.com/certified/) as the first listing in the results. Obviously telling us to search for the keyword in Google/Yahoo! is much easier than telling us to go to “automobiles dot honda dot com forward slash certified”.
Plus, they can always control the PPC page. Their PPC page appears to go to the same place, but it actually goes to a page hosted on googlepages.com, so they must be doing some landing page testing.
As I was pondering this, my mind brought me back to last year’s PubCon when John Battelle talked about Google (et al.) as “the new interface to technology”. It literally is our yellow pages, our 411 service, our encyclopedia, our calculator, etc.
Some cautions are in order
1) Obviously if you’re buying radio and TV spots, you need to give out a keyword that you can realistically be in the top for a long time. It should probably include your company name. But if your company name is weird, hard to spell, hard to remember, or just plain dumb, you’re probably a good fit.
2) You’ll need to make sure your SEO is in tip top shape. Honda isn’t going anywhere ranking for that term, but you’re not Honda. Content alone is not going to do it, you’re going to need to build and/or buy some links.
3) You must also realize that you are setting yourself to lose some advertising dollars from your consumers finding alternatives on just their first look into that search space. Hopefully you control more than just 1 listing in the organic results, because otherwise the search results page has 9 other results just on that front page alone, and probably 9 more advertisers running ads on that page.
Is it a Good Idea?
I think we may see it be more common, especially for advertisements about specific products from a company. Honda sells new cars too, but this commercial is to boost their used cars product, and because it takes two clicks (on small text even) from their home page to get to the same place, it makes a lot of sense just to direct them to Google.
Another advantage is that in Honda’s case, they have local dealers selling Honda Certified Used Cars and the ads are geo-targeted. So I can not only find Honda’s site, but I can also find my local Honda dealer and search their inventory from their site (hopefully).
Visited 1547 times
June 18th, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 18th, 2007
Over at WMW there is a fun thread started by Habtom covering the Top 100 Ecommerce Tips. It’s kind of hard to read in a forum list, so I’ve put it together here for you (and fixed some spelling and capitalization). This has relevance to all sorts of aspects of Internet Marketing.
Before I give the whole list, here are some of my top picks:
99. Let the customer see the shipping charge without registering! Preferably on the basket or a easy-to-find ’shipping charges’ page.
94. Make your site incredibly easy to buy from - no registration if possible, live chat, 800 # - make it friendly and easy to buy from.
59. Have a “best sellers” or “most popular” listing. The boost from this has been noticeable.
49. Drop the “Create account” language. People don’t come to our sites to create accounts, they come there to buy things. I try to make the account creation process appear like the normal checkout process. If they enter an email that is already in the system, THEN I ask them to request their password to login.
35. Have a list of “recommended products” and “other customers also bought” with each item. This can be simply done in your database where you just connect products together and base it on what customers have actually bought. (okay, I admit, this was my contribution)
3. Test. Everything. A lot.
I really like #1 too, but I’m going to make you scroll all the way down to read it! Remember these are just random tips added one after another, so the advice is not always good in all circumstances. I do think there are some gems here, so go on and read through them!
Top 100 E-Commerce Tips
100. Never leave unanswered emails for more than 48 hours, or your customer is gone.
99. Let the customer see the shipping charge without registering! Preferably on the basket or a easy-to-find ’shipping charges’ page.
98. Make sure your forms use common names for fields so that they’re recognized by toolbars that have an autofill function.
97. Sites (mainly US!) that have address or phone fields that assume only a US citizen is going to purchase e.g. State fields that only allow a few characters entry.
96. (following on from 97) If you’ve got a country drop-down box, please list it in alphabetical order, and don’t put United States at the top!
95. Don’t just accept payment through PayPal. Many people have had bad experiences with PayPal and prefer to use alternative, simpler payment methods.
94. Make your site incredibly easy to buy from - no registration if possible, live chat, 800 # - make it friendly and easy to buy from.
93. Take a picture of your office and add it to your contact us page with your company FAX number on it.
92. Don’t bury your products in several pages of clickthroughs, implement a working search mechanism so the user can get to what they seek in two clicks, three maximum. Insure there are redundant methods of getting around and no point on your site is more than two clicks away . . . from ANYWHERE.
91. Keep your initial products pages light and clean, with links to product details if they actually want to read.
90. Build your site for the end user, not the search engines. This means leave off all the serp-y text on the initial products pages.
89. Give the user a sense of who you are. The web is a cold, anonymous place. Anything you can do to bring a sense of personality and assurance to your website will help.
88. if you use a site search, make sure it works better than expected. It should search more than product names. Make sure it can find products by SKU, Model Number, and even misspellings if possible.
87. Be sure to include links to your privacy, shipping, returns & exchange policies right out where the customer can easily find them. Tell them the truth.
86. Keep the customer informed about the status of their order before they ask
85. Re: Navigation - Use the same visual theme for every action required of the customer
84. Re: Product options - Make them clear and comprehensive. Answer every possible question on the product detail page
83. Make sure your site search can also search by size and color. If I’m considering a green skirt or blue towels, make it easy to find other items that would match.
82. Don’t use those standard drop down country forms containing places like North Korea or Bouvet Island (an inhabited speck in the South Atlantic. For heavens sake, don’t list known scam destinations as a ship-to.
81. Don’t start huge lists like this that require people to read every previous post thoroughly
80. If you only ship to USA (or wherever) say that right off and several times.
79. Drives me crazy when the “About Us” section says nothing specific about the seller and just has some obviously canned verbiage.
78. Mission Statements: Yuck! Luckily they seem to be dying out. No one gives a ****, anyway.
77. Goes without saying that spelling must be perfect. On slow days, have employees proof read old pages.
76. Bragging about yourself is ok if you have something to brag about. But better to not mention things like “Since 2005″ or “here’s a picture of our new puppy.”
75. If you’re new to ecommerce NEVER mention that. Invitation to scammers to hit you.
74. Get a real 800# (or 888), not a 866 or such.
73. Get the most web un-savvy person you know to test your site.
72. Customize product descriptions. Eschew text provided by suppliers which everyone else uses.
71. Listen to customers, invite their comments and criticism and act on what you learn
70. Answer emails in 8 hours max (certainly not 48)
69. Give street address but never “we’re in Puppyland Center, between Tony’s Pizza and the Shoe repair shop.”
68. Show good sharp graphics. Learn to use basic photo editing software.
67. Worth saying again, and again. Make everything fast and simple. Do you really need a wish list or tell-a-friend or even customer registration? Don’t just add to your site. Sometimes remove clutter.
66. (Follow on from 67) remove all non essential navigation elements from the checkout process. Have a single page checkout if possible.
65. Calling your customer to thank them and confirm their order instills immediate trust.
64. Make entering credit card numbers easy.
63. Install a really good stats system to track where your visitors bailed out of the purchasing process.
62. Pay good money for a proper interactive graphic designer (not a coder, web ‘developer’, or print designer doing a bit of moonlighting). If your web site looks professional, people will trust it and buy stuff.
61. Accessibility and usability - those 5% of ‘non-standard’ user groups all add up.
60. Add your 800# to every step of the checkout process with something to the tune of “questions or problems completing your order, call 800#)
59. Have a “best sellers” or “most popular” listing. The boost from this has been noticeable.
58. If your site ranks best in your niche, and If you sell something that is sold on many other websites (something drop shipped for you, for example), very slightly change the name — Tarenta to Tarento, Classica to Classico, for example. This helps deter people price shopping for the ‘product name’ elsewhere and in the shopping engines.
57. List your prices for every item clearly and upfront. There’s no space for a ‘price on application’ model online, none at all.
56. When using thumbnails to link to larger images give your customers larger images.
55. Pick the right product to sell. Something people actually want to buy. Preferably something lots of people want to buy.
54. If your target audience is concentrated in one country, host your website on a server and ip located in that country.
53. Promotional Offers: I believe offers are v imp. Now they need to be planned for first timers, repeat buyers and special offers for top customers.
52. Referral Program: Refer 2 friends and get x% additional/ discount always helps.
51. Actually have contact info - many sites hide their identity and location. Try to put the contact number somewhere on every page, it instills confidence.
50. Keep the 3 P’s above the fold on a product page. Product name, Price and Purchase link should all be visible without having to scroll.
49. Drop the “Create account” language. People don’t come to our sites to create accounts, they come there to buy things. I try to make the account creation process appear like the normal checkout process. If they enter an email that is already in the system, THEN I ask them to request their password to login.
48. Know your visitors - if significantly more people are first-time-buyers, don’t hit them with a login screen with a small link to register to the site - reverse the process.
47. Keep your cart on your domain - if for nothing else, it keeps your reporting homogenous.
46. Don’t use the “simple” methods of gateway processing where the visitor is redirected to the gateway site. It seems that on almost every implementation of these setups the webmaster fails to bring the most current site layout over to the gateway site and the visitor gets a whole new layout for cc errors.
45. Never tell the visitor to “Hit your ‘back’ button to correct”. I haven’t found a valid reason to do this yet - any issue should be able to be handled within the system.
44. Have a “Help” link very prominently displayed so they have somewhere to go if there is an issue.
43. For telephone purposes use a short and easy to spell domain name like … dot tld depending on locations or products use more than one, which redirect to a product or location page.
42. Get the credit card number first, ask questions later!
41. If you show a picture of the product and next to it a link that says ‘enlarge’ actually ENLARGE the photo rather than have it open in a new window exactly the same size as on the main page!
40. Ship fast. Preferably the same day and you are sure to get mails for appreciation.
39. Have points of re-assurance near the buy/add to cart button (bbb, bizrate, other ratings)
38. Use a proper ssl certificate.
37. If using paid advertising, don’t send them to your home page; send them to the relevant product page (or custom landing page) that is tied to the keyword you advertised!
36. If you sell software, allow immediate access to the full version and allow unlimited upgrades
35. Have a list of “recommended products” and “other customers also bought” with each item. This can be simply done in your database where you just connect products together and base it on what customers have actually bought.
34. Have a newsletter sign up and send out newsletters.
33. Don’t make the customer fill in the CC billing & shipping address fields when they’re the same, drives me nuts!
32. Vat number & Company Registration Number should be visible on the site in the UK to comply with UK Companies Act (updated Jan 2007).
31. If the product ships via a carrier, send an email to the customer with the tracking number with a link to the carrier to check status.
30. Use an XML Sitemap generator to create a sitemap to get a “big picture” of your site. Submit it to Google et al. and they’ll help you find dead pages, etc.
29. On category pages don’t just list product names, but include some unique content about the category for indexing.
28. Use a product rating feed or create your own system (if you have a sizable user base). A place for user-generated comments can be great, but it can also be a hassle (monitoring, lots of fake entries, etc).
27. If you sell the same object in different colours, offer them pictures of each colour.
telling a customer that you “also do this in blue” isn’t all that helpful because there are about fifty billion shades of blue.
26. Use a larger font (14+) for titles and product names to make them stand out and possibly increase conversions.
25. Stay away from dynamic URLs when possible.
24. Sign up for Hackersafe, Verisign and your related trade associations and display their logos to improve credibility.
23. Have a person answer the phone, not a recording.
22. If you cannot exceed the expectations created by your site, rewrite your copy. Underpromise and over-deliver.
21. Hang in there with the difficult customers-they become the most loyal.
20. Know when a customer needs to be given to your competition.
19. Consistency. Everyone has a different flavor, color, even brand. Key is to be consistant — have 1 text size and color for descriptions, one for links, one for category headers, perhaps another for main category links. At least theres a tone or vibe that your site is a statement vs a hodgepodge of stuff made by someone in their basement Be serious about what you are doing, and people will be serious about considering buying from you
18. If you use sessions, store them in a database, don’t append them to the URL, as people like the look of clean URL’s and often snip them to mail to friends to refer them to a particular product to purchase.
17. On checkout gather a name and phone number as the first 2 fields, store them before proceeding and ring all the customers that drop out before completing the checkout. (This alone turned a $1M business into a $5M business)
16. Make the font on your product copy readable. 12pt at least. NO funky fonts.
15. Make sure your buy button pops off the page and is big enough to be seen and clicked on.
14. Make sure the title tag on each product page is unique and reflects what is on the page. (It never ceases to amaze me how many companies in this day and age still have just the company name in the title tag of product pages). Oh, and product name first in the title tag. Not your company name.
13. Superstition does not work well with Business. What you may feel [to be] unlucky may be lucky for customers ranging from keeping Price Tag, Products, Colors, Day / Time of Shipping etc. [this one was weird]
12. Offer a strong guarantee. Don’t jast say this widget is guaranteed x days. Try for something like this: Try this widget risk-free for 30 days — if you don’t see an improvement in widget results — if this is not the best widget you have ever owned — return it to us for a full refund.
11. Add “District of Columbia -DC” to the list of drop down states, you be suprised how many sites are missing it…
10. And don’t forget PR, GU, VI and all the other US commonwealth and protectorates, that the Postal Service can ship to, at cheap postal rates.
9. Don’t forget US Servicemen/women abroad. Include APO/FPO state codes.
8 1/2. Add a 360 degree product view before the rest of the pack.
8. Play with the wording of your add-to-cart buttons. “Add to cart” is a nice non-threatening way to encourage adding items as some feel “order” or “buy” is too much of a commitment.
7. Be careful making a coupon field too prominent in checkout, especially in markets that are based on commodity goods such as electronics. Seeing the field may convince a shopper that was ready to purchase to exit and spend more time hunting for coupons. Consider relabeling as promotion code or something less descriptive (unless you are linking to a promo page with coupon codes to encourage larger sales).
6. Mine referral data of orders for search engine keyword queries encoded in the urls and further optimize for these terms for organic search or consider adding to your PPC campaigns.
5. Encourage impulse buys says a tip I read somewhere on the net, people don’t mind being asked “Do you want fries with that?”
4. If you’re going to ask customers to sign up for your newsletter during checkout, do it AFTER the payment is processed. Before the payment is taken, the customer is far more interested in ordering your product - but once you’ve taken their payment and they’re looking at your “Thank you for your order” screen it’s the ideal moment to get them to sign up…
3. Test. Everything. A lot.
2. Don’t assume the main goal of every commerce site is to make a profit. Publicly owned sites are often more concerned with selling stock and hitting wall street’s quarterly sales goals. That was true in the ’90s and somewhat true even now.
1. Amid all the costly free shipping gimmicks, 365 day guarantees, free return pickups, insanely low prices…don’t forget to actually turn a profit.
Visited 4712 times
June 18th, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 15th, 2007
Anyone who has ever done link building knows there is a lot that goes into link building. One of the most challenging parts is getting your request noticed from the site owner that you want a link from. We’ve all received the standard, run of the mill request that we just delete instantly. But today I got a good one, and it almost made me give out a link (almost).
(name withheld) Here,
We recently started our blog here (site address hyperlink) and linked to your website hoping you would notice us and maybe link back. To be honest we don’t know what the (expletive) we are doing and are desperate (profanity) help us we arn’t even ranking for anything in msn , yahoo or google and need your help. And link would be of great help thanks again, (name withheld).
Sincerely,
(name withheld) CEO
(company name withheld)
(company address withheld)
The email is short and to the point and it has a very personable tone (felt hand written). The subject line was “HI”, which gives it zero points, but it’s better than “Link to our site!” which would automatically make me hit delete without reading it. The email definitely caught my attention and captured me for just enough time to pay attention to what he was saying. I don’t swear (nor do I like hearing or reading it) so the expletive and profanity was a turn off. His spelling and grammar could use some help, but in some ways that helped the tone be more personable. He ends with asking for a link and gives some confidence that he is a real person by giving the company name and address. Obviously if you had something to give (like $ or a decent link) in return you would end with that.
So now to summarize the elements to a good link request email:
1) Short and direct
2) Personable
3) Subject line to not scare away
4) Capture attention by being different
5) Don’t swear (ever, really )
6) Ask for what you want (and offer something in return if you can)
7) Be somewhat specific, such as with a URL and a keyword, for the link
7) Give some confidence you’re real (name, address)
Some other great posts on the topic of link requests and link building:
Link Building and Emails - Humans do it Better. also by Jim Boykin (link expert)
131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies (SearchEngineWatch.com)
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Visited 1857 times
June 15th, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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Posted by Aaron R Stewart on June 14th, 2007
In keeping with the theme of Michael’s earlier post called Links vs Content and Long Tail vs Short Tail Keywords, Michael discusses the differences between long tail and short tail keywords, as well as links versus content. I have had a few people ask me how to best attempt to capture long tail searchers, and it is an excellent question, here is what we know. Obviously creating content to match the possible long tail searches is probably the best way to go to accomplish long-term organic results. This is done by creating new web pages, using the long tail search term as the topic of the page, the page title, but then considerable content needs to be placed on that page to support the phrase or concept to rank well. It can be challenging, especially when you are a small business person and have so many other responsibilities to juggle. Creating content isn’t as easy as some of the other strategies we implement in a SEO campaign, using many great tools which simplify the other steps. But content takes times, some research and brain power to create, so we see some avoid it, even though it can have potentially drastic positive results if done well. In fact, due to our own challenges of creating new content, Michael and I actually created a pretty good business called Applied Content which has trained writers research and create unique content for site owners, because we figured others would struggle as we did. We were right.
So here we are, we need content to rank well for these search terms, but if we don’t want to spend money to create content, and we don’t have the time to research each long tail search topic and then write good content on our own, do we have any other options? I am happy to say yes, and we have seen some pretty good results with it.
We have noticed that some of the long tail terms we focus on and include in an occasional blog post, actually have begun to perform quite well. Much of it is based on the competition for these terms, but if we find good long tail terms, which aren’t too popular, yet relevant to us, we can do quite well fairly quickly. And we have seen this work for both long tail and short tail search terms. We are actually doing very well for some terms just by accident, which has taught us to be more focused in our blogging strategy.
Just a quick example, back in March I was in Japan meeting with various partners in hopes of eventually launching SoloSEO in Japan. SEO in Japan would obviously be a good move for us, and we felt finding the right Japanese SEO partner would be imperative if we were going to be successful. I blogged about my experience in Japan, and the current situation of SEO in Japan. Well it didn’t take long until we were ranking 4th for the search phrase “SEO in Japan.” In fact it took less than a week. And now, if you will look above in the previous sentences, you will see I have already slipped in the term “SEO in Japan” in there again on purpose, but in the flow of the post. I have also used “SEO in Japan” as the Anchor Text for the link back to my previous post, which is good for internal linking structure. Just these little tactics alone should keep us doing well with this search term, as we already sit 4th, and this is now fresh content, some 3 months later. Also notice I have also used the term “Japanese SEO” in this post, because I want to start doing better with that search term in the future, as we don’t rank well for it now. But I was able to fit these terms into the post somewhat naturally.
So once you have used SoloSEO’s keyword tool to figure out which long tail, or even short tail phrases you are interested in ranking for, write them down, keep them handy as you blog, and where appropriate use those exact terms in your blog posts. As your pages get indexed and the search engines begin recognizing your site as an authority for your industry, you will start ranking better for those terms, and your site will gain long term search credibility. Best thing is you won’t have to pay Applied Content (although you are welcome to) to create content for you, or sit down and create a couple of paragraphs about each search phrase. These important search phrases will just naturally become part of your blogging practice/strategy, and if wisely included in posts, will improve the performance of your site for those terms.
Visited 1456 times
June 14th, 2007
Aaron R Stewart
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Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 14th, 2007
Opposition in All Things, Links vs Content
Everything in life has its opposites. There is light and dark, hot and cold, black and white, and of course links and content. Even years after the debate began, the debate still continues. Before I uncover some insight into the answer to links versus content, let me give some background.
When search engines came into being, it was all about content. We still see a lot of companies going off of 1990s philosophies of search engine optimization, focusing solely on meta tags (keywords and description), page titles, header tags, and even using hidden text and links. Google came into being (and was actually named BackRub first) and changed the face of search forever by giving weight to “citations” or links. So now instead of a top 10 results page full of pages that had lots of the keyword you used listed, the top 10 would be full of pages that others linked to using the keyword you just used.
Over time Google has evolved and has hundreds of factors that contribute to its algorithm. The top 2 factors, according to search marketing experts, are (1) Keyword use in Title Tag and (2) Anchor Text of Inbound Link. Obviously there are other important factors, such as who is doing the linking, and the context of the link, and so on. But obviously the title of the page still has importance too.
The Keywords Hold the Answer
So, is it content or is it links? The answer lies in the keyword. Is your keyword in the short tail or the long tail? Now before I explain, let me cover short and long tail keywords, to make sure everyone is up to speed.
Long tail keyword is by far a more common term versus short tail keywords, mainly because “short tail keywords” really just means “keywords”. Look at the graph below, you’ll see the left hand side is where the more common keywords are. They are more popular, more used, and also more competitive in most niches. As an example, short tail keywords would be like “home mortgage”, “home loan”, or “loan rates”. Short tail keywords are typically one, two, or three word keyphrases. The right hand side, the “tail”, contains lots of keywords with less popularity, less traffic, and the landscape is typically less competitive. As an example, long tail keywords would be like “home mortgage provo utah”, “30 year fixed home loan”, or “credit union loan rates”. Long tail keywords are usually three, four, five, even six keywords long.
Finding out if your keyword is long or short-tail is pretty simple. Most you can just look at, count the words, or ask a friend. For others, if you really want to be more certain, you can consult a keyword research tool (SoloSEO happens to have a pretty good keyword research tool!)
Putting It All Together, and Doing Something About It
Back to links vs content, as promised. Hopefully I’m not oversimplifying here, but long-tail keywords can get top rankings (yes, even top 10) based on content alone. Contributions from internal linking structure, title tags, header tags, and so forth are all bundled into “content”. On the links side, links help you rank for short-tail keywords, the more popular and competitive keywords. The better your linking strategy, the better your ranking. I recently posted about anchor text of inbound links, and this gives several examples of sites that have very few if any instances of a keyword that they rank in the top 3 for.
Practically speaking, a good place to start is to organize your keyword list into short and long-tail keywords. For your long-tail keywords, order unique content or write articles for your site/blog. For your short-tail keywords, identify the top 5 keywords you want to rank for and analyze your competitors in that search field. Then pursue a link building/buying strategy that will get you there.
This article appeared originally in our June Newsletter, SEO For the Rest of Us. Subscribe to the SoloSEO Newsletter!
Visited 3560 times
June 14th, 2007
Michael D Jensen
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