by Marty | Feb 17, 2011 | General Pearls of Wisdom
I admit, I have not spent a great deal of time wondering about the Attorney General of Utah, but the Salty Droid sure seems to think that Mark Shurtleff is Corrupt. He is offering a lot of often pointy words to talk about what is happening out there in Utah – and I would imagine people are getting a little upset about it. But the Salty Droid promises this category of posts will help you to better understand the man behind the media, as “it contains so much great information about Mark Shurtleff’s leg and his midlife crisis motorcycle accident”. Fake robots can be hard to argue with, so I would recommend checking it out.
As to why these references to Mark Shurtleff’s corruption are reaching outside of Utah (why should you care out there in Armchair America, right?), think of a roomful of very nice strangers, all of them on telephones meeting dialing quotas. Hammering on, pushing on new ways to erode people’s natural reluctance to pay for something that sounds too good to be true. Sweating and smoking. Dialing, and selling. Utopian dreams, cooed out soothingly, incessantly, looking for better ways to weasel into unsuspecting bank accounts. Now multiply that exponentially, and how long before they are calling your parents – your friends – and promising them Unicorns and Rainbows? Convincing them that for a low monthly rate, they can have their own Internet cash machines? Utah’s boiler rooms are at the root of some very bad businesses staying around longer than they should. And as the Salty Droid is pointing out, it is often through high-level corruption and protection that these systems stay in place.
I appreciate the Salty Droid’s willingness to point out things that often get him into trouble. He is a funny writer, and offers a truly unique style. Whether he’s talking about corrupt Attorney General Mark Shurleff, internet marketing scams, or the wispy sexlessness of Julian Assange, it’s usually a lot of fun over there.
If you’re like me, no matter what brought you, you stay for the pretty giraffes!
by Marty | Jan 12, 2011 | Freelance SEO Copywriting Tips, General Pearls of Wisdom
I was reading some favorite old posts today and came across this one, from all the way back in 2006 by Stuntdubl: http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/11/24/stunttrain/.
Mr. Malicoat offers a lot of good things in here, but the one that made me want to scribble was this:
9. Blackhat is lying to clients, customers, partners, or vendors.
Whitehat is proactively discussing risk tolerance, process, expectations, and contribution to a community instead of just bilking people into teaching you to think.
A lot of things have changed in search since he wrote that almost 5 years ago – but I think this point is more salient today than ever. Thankfully people aren’t talking about this as much as they used to…but some still insist on climbing on a soapbox, and pretending that there are altruistic means behind their sweeping statements and judgements.
Defining what you do by some broad-stroke term is limiting at best. But the argument between whitehat and blackhat SEO techniques has always been that – an ultimately limiting and self-defeating approach.
I should know:
Hi, my name is Marty. I am a recovering whitehat.
In my own case, my couple years of chest-thumping whitehattedness were eventually replaced by data, and logic. But while it had me, I really drank that kool-aid, hard.
Here are some of the many misconceptions it created:
- Buying links is bad, and will result in penalties. The truth is, buying links is commonplace and often results in success. Discretion.
- Automating is bad. Impersonal approaches to web development scared me I think, because I was building sites, and didn’t want to see it all go away. It did anyway – open source changed everything. And it only made me run faster to catch-up once I finally decided to get in the game.
- Google is going to reward the best content.{Bwa-ha-haaaaaa-ha-ha-ha}
- Link spam gets punished. Truth is, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve seen link spam work well, I’ve seen it (apparently) sink sites. Truth is, good sites get punished too.
- Good content is required to top the SERPs. Sigh. As much as I would love for this to be the case, no such luck.
Now, believing in whitehat came from a good place. I wanted to only do what my clients wanted – things I could be proud of later. But I was not taking Stuntdubl’s approach, and simply understanding risk tolerance better. I couldn’t communicate it to my clients, because I was too busy shunning things, because they seemed “shady.”
Flash forward a few years, and I don’t wear hats anymore – I now prefer scarves. Hardly gets cold enough in Atlanta for me to indulge, but I digress.
It may have taken me close to 5 years since I first read this post from Stuntdubl, but his last point is the one that now makes my bald head shine:
10. It’s all about the results
Yes it is…as long as those results are accompanied by the immaculately clear conscience that you are not screwing people over to get them. It is not by any means necessary – but it is by any reasonable means.
Bottom Line:
If you insist on actively defining yourself as either a blackhat or a whitehat SEO, chances are you are simply an asshat. Just do what is best to get the ranking you are after for you or your clients – and make it less about you. Remember what Stuntdubl said: It’s all about the results.
Late add: found another one, worth adding here. In the historical review of how this separation in the SEO industry devolves, I found another winner here: http://www.paydayloanaffiliate.com/blog/LateralVsTraditionalSEO.aspx and here: http://www.johnon.com/220/white-hat-sissies.html
by Marty | Dec 26, 2010 | General Pearls of Wisdom
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by creating splogs filled with spun content, wrapped shamelessly with AdSense until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch, surf the web and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life’s organic searches are made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second (and clicking thru her favorite ads), take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”
The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week from the strength of his organic reach. Now, when 2010 updates have all been tallied and the income was shrunk to $20, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only earned $1.87 from her direct match domains with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Google AdWords expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent letting Eric Schmidt tell her what is best in planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling (no doubt, from an affiliate link) –something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she opened up her spread sheet of most valuable keywords and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s exact match domain that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s keyword list. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her keyword list be read aloud by local ruffians just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have mentioned his exact match domain and niche potential every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful keyword list was printed, and stacked in front of her. It reached above her knees. And then she gathered them up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: “Mne. Sofronie. Keywords of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”
“Will you buy my keywords?” asked Della.
“I buy keywords,” said Madame. “Take yer spread sheets and let’s have a sight at the looks of ‘em.”
Down rippled the spread sheets’ bounty.
“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
“Give it to me quick,” said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a Content Management System (CMS) simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation–as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Exact Match. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value–the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that CMS on his domain Jim might be properly anxious about the opportunity in any niche. Grand as the exact match was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the FrontPage holding page that he used in place of a proper site.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her long tail keyphrases and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends–a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her AdWords account was covered with tiny longtail keyphrases that made it look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy had thrown it together. She looked at her ad copy in the ad groups, carefully, and critically.
“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at these long tail keyphrases, he’ll say I bid like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do–oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?”
At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della opened up the user interface on her laptop and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still shrewd enough to increase our potential earnings using inexpensive content development.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two–and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della’s new longtail keyphrases, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my keyword list cannibalized and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. I’ll grow it out again–you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My keyword research grows awfully fast. Say ‘Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice– what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”
“You’ve purged your keyword lists?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
“Cannibalized and sold them,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my keyword research, ain’t I?”
Jim looked about the room curiously.
“You say your keyword list is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you–sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the keywords proved profitable in my niche were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year–what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a manual penalty or a stuffed alt attribute or a spammy title tag that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Premium Content–the set of files, side and back, that Della had worshipped long on a Freelancer’s website. Beautiful content, pure link bait, with optimized meta data–just the way to benefit a researched list of keywords. They were expensive content pieces, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the keywords that should have benefitted from the coveted content were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My keyword research grows so fast, Jim!”
And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held out her laptop to him eagerly upon her open palm. The CMS’s functionality seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the niche potential a hundred times a day now. Give me your DNS for the exact match. I want to see how it looks on it.”
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the exact match to get the money to buy your premium content. And now suppose you put the chops on.”
The magi, as you know, were Page and Brin–wonderfully wise men–who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving non-Evil Christmas presents. Being wise and willing to sort the cesspool, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their online portfolios. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive profitable SERP positions, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
by Marty | Dec 18, 2010 | Freelance SEO Copywriting Tips, General Pearls of Wisdom
Ok, I’ll confess: I am writing this, simply so I can put up the fish pictures. Guilty.
But I did come up with a decent enough running metaphor about this fishing trip. Let’s call it an online marketing plan. Just substitute it.
Work with me, here. 🙂
Step One: Find a Seasoned Guide
The first thing about catching a fish like this, is to have a seasoned guide know where they are, and how to catch them. There are million fish out there, and lots of ways to catch different types.
This guy is a wonderfully healthy Goliath Grouper or “Jewfish” if you are working blue. (They are catch and release too, so I let him go soon after this picture, in case you’re worried.)
But I wanted to catch big fish, so I connected with my friend Darin. Darin fishes around Sanibel Island and the waters off Ft. Myers all the time, so he knows where to find fish, and how to catch them. He is an experienced guide, someone I can trust.
We were targeting big grouper – so this picture shows Darin is a good friend to know when seeking this kind of thing.
You can catch plenty of different kinds of fish with or without help, but if you want the really big ones on purpose, you usually need help from someone who does it regularly.
Step Two: Use the Right Bait, Even When It Is Unconventional
I am going to give away a secret bait: Ballyhoo. These little cigar-like fish are th
e best bait I have fished with, I think. Everything hits them, in the same way that everything hits a shrimp-however, the types of fish, and potential for big ones is infinitely better with Ballyhoo, in my experience. Could be where we are fishing. But I have caught so many different species using them, I am convinced they are a great hidden secret.
Darin told me, he started using them because he was finding them consistently in the stomachs of big fish he cleaned. Most guides and captains will use baitfish like shiners and pinfish, but Ballyhoo are unique. Why? Because they are not the easiest baits to find and catch.
Darin came up with a unique system, where he stands on the front of the boat with a dip net he made (“All the store-bought ones kept breaking,” he explained). I shine the light on the water’s surface, and he scoops the baits. We do it slowly like this, by hand, and it can take a long time sometimes depending on the conditions.
Sometimes, we chase the bait around trying to find them. Sometimes, they seem to be everywhere. And different fish mean different baits. If we were going after Tarpon (more on this later), we’d have been catching Ladyfish. Ladyfish are munched by really big Tarpons, so it makes sense. Ballyhoo are munched by Grouper – so we went after them with the dip net. It was painstaking – but with purpose.
The key to successful saltwater fishing, is to know what the fish you want to catch will eat. Using that as bait only makes sense, even when you need to figure out a unique way to capture the baits that work.
Step Three: Fish In the Right Place
Not to be coy, but the Gulf of Mexico is a big body of water. Knowing where to fish in it to actually catch something on purpose takes a long time, and lots of effort (see qualified guide, above). However, with the help of a qualified guide, finding fish is not so difficult. And once you know where the bigger ones are, you can become selective in which ones you go after.
A guy like Darin knows where structure is under the waves, and other common water markers both above and below the water’s surface. He also knows how the tides move, how fish behave, and even the general layout of what look to me like repetitive, nondescript clumpings of mangrove trees.
Darin takes us to the right place, quickly, and with purpose. We don’t mess around when we go out – usually on the bait within 30 minutes of hitting the water, and fishing about 30 minutes after collecting them.
But once we have bait, we don’t throw it indiscriminately wherever we end up, and hope a big fish happens by. Sure it could happen, and sometimes does – but there are better ways to target when you allow experience to guide it.
We were after big Grouper here, so we went to a place where they hung out, armed with plenty of delicious Ballyhoo. We increased our odds exponentially – based purely on Darin’s experience in the area, and my willingness to trust it.
Step Four: Be Patient, Persistent and Determined
Landing this guy took a long time. He hit, and then ran and wrapped under a bridge piling (they are smart like that). I fought him for a long time, and then was convinced he was not coming up. I never let go, though – I never let slack get 
in the line, so he could flip off.
I handed the pole to Darin, to see if he could pull him out from the snag. He did, and we landed him a little while later. The old guy was tired, and reeling him up became pretty easy, once we moved him back into open water.
When we pulled him up, Darin stopped, and got out a pliers. He found a couple leaders and hooks tangled-up in this guy’s mouth – so Darin cut and pulled it all out of his way, to make it easier for him to swim, and to breathe.
We laughed at how many times the old codger had bested attempts to catch him…we saw the proof. He was a grizzled, gilled, salty old pro – but he surely bit, again, for us.
And we didn’t give-up on catching him – we kept on him no matter what, and we got him in the boat.
Step Five: Know There are Always Bigger Fish to Catch, So Learn How
One of the types of fish we go after down there, are Tarpon. Tarpon are really beautiful fish that grow incredibly huge. The first thing a Tarpon does when he is hooked, is jump straight out of the water – so they are very exciting fish to catch for sure.
The night Darin and I were fishing for the big Grouper, there were about five or six big Tarpon rolling under a light. We actually intentionally fished around them – because we were after the Grouper.
At the end of the evening, it became clear the spot we were in was not productive. So Darin asked if I wanted to try one last spot, or catch a big Tarpon. I said, “Big Tarpon, please.”
Darin took one of our Ballyhoo rigs, removed the weights, and pitched it on the other side of the boat, where we could hear Ladyfish splashing. He quickly landed a Ladyfish – took the hook from its mouth, and put it behind the back fin. He cast it back out, heaving the Ladyfish (about 16 inches long) into the waves.
Literally 3 minutes later, a HUGE Tarpon burst through the top of the water. Darin handed me the pole, and it was on.
He jumped a few more times, and I fought him for about an hour, I think. Strongest fish I have ever had on a pole – a simply awesome feeling for a fisherman. He was about 7-8 feet long (gets longer every time I remember him), and about 200 pounds.
At one point during the fight, I had him on the surface of the water. We pulled up anchor, and this Tarpon pulled the boat around for about 10 minutes. I was standing on the bow, and the pole was doubled over with this massive, beautiful creature just swimming slowly, about 6 inches below the surface, trying to get me off his back.
He surprised us more than once by playing possum and then taking off again, starting the fight all over. I almost knocked Darin into the gulf a couple times, almost crushed him when the fish ran under the boat and he was too close, and got really really sore after a little while fighting this fish.
We finally tired him out, and got him alongside the boat. He was amazingly beautiful. Darin gaffed him in the mouth, and we pulled him halfway out of the water – it was about all that was easy to do. We wanted to get a picture, but he was simply too big to get into the boat safely…so I was holding him by a gaff, over the side.
Darin got the camera off the console, and the fish suddenly wiggled with this full body shimmy – almost pulling me into the drink. His mouth came off the gaff in slow motion, and he slipped back down – vertically, and ever so slowly, fading down into the dark green waters of the gulf. Gone. But oh my – what a ride.
The point is, I could have stopped with the Goliath Grouper that night, and had an amazing story to share. But Darin gave me a fishing memory that trumped it – no less than an hour later. I went from huge, to huger. And huger still is out there – waiting for another day.
Since I didn’t get a picture of this guy, I modified one I swiped from online, so you can see what I mean by big fish…Tarpon are amazing creatures – I highly recommend catching them, at least once. Nothing like it.
So Recapping:
- Find a seasoned guide you can trust – someone who knows the waters
- Choose the right bait, and be willing to take the time to discover what actually works best and how to get it
- Allow your guide to bring you to the right place, and listen as they tell you how to cast and retrieve
- Be persistent and don’t allow a snag to make you stop – there could be a goliath at the other end of that line!
- Know that bigger fish are always there, and you can catch them too, with a slightly different approach and some experience
- Take Marty fishing more often…
I hope I have made it perfectly clear how an online marketing plan is exactly like fishing with my friend Darin for Goliath Grouper off Sanibel Island in Florida. Exactly, in every possible way.
Just wait until I get all amped up talking about sharks…
by Marty | Nov 27, 2010 | General Pearls of Wisdom
I want to write a simple little post here, so forgive me if I verbally drool a bit in my zeal to say the right thing.
I am a little amped, because I am getting tired of idiots telling other people – idiots in training if you will – that it is easy to make money online.
Wait – calling the victims (suckers? customers?) idiots is not fair. Good people get caught in bad people plans all the time. Sorry good people.
Many good people get horn-swaggled by the shiny things: simply believing they are buying something that propels them in some miraculous way that makes effort unnecessary.
It’s not easy, and there are no magic products that make it so. None.
Trust me on this – I have been building stuff online for about ten years. I work regularly with some of the most respected people on the internet, and believe me, there is no magic formula, there is no secret, there is no hidden tactic that will unlock anything, beyond access to bank accounts.
The people I know who are successful got there because they are shrewd, work hard, and are willing to take a CHANCE.
Are you? (Taking a chance does not mean throwing money at something, and praying it works).
Stop it. Easy is a Dream.
Stop believing in internet unicorns, money for nothing and marketing fairy tales. Stop believing there is a way you just start cashing checks, simply because you want to. Just stop it, and start doing stuff.
Realize that drive and desire alone do not supplant experience, creative ability, and an honest network of niche-specific, seasoned professionals. Be willing to sweat, or lose some sleep for a while to build something better than everything.
Shut up, and keep your head down. I believe in this a lot more than i practice it, BTW.
Keep selling and buying – or whatever makes sense to understand the nuances of your marketplace, but just keep learning. Trust in your own experiences. Grow them exponentially. Emulate those you admire, but carve your own way. Make a splash, use your voice.
But above all, be a good person, and work hard. Because then, and only then, does the rest come easy.
by Marty | Nov 5, 2010 | Freelance SEO Copywriting Tips, General Pearls of Wisdom
How To SEO Blogposts
Got a great question in an email from a guy named John, asking:
Do you have a resource that can actually spell out (or at least provide guidelines) for how often to use a keyword in an article, and a little bit about placement for someone who is really green, but keen to get started?
SoapBox Answer: The problem with looking for a reliable keyword-to-content ratio or set of guidelines, is there is none. Different niches and scenarios will bring similarly different results. One size cannot possibly fit all.
Keyphrase strength becomes an individually evaluated thing that flexes wildly. More importantly, this is only one thing (among so many) used to evaluate a site or page’s value. Concentrating on keywords and keyphrases alone is more likely to hurt you in other aspects, most commonly in general usability and coherence.
You also run a very real risk of a search engine filtering for over-optimizing, should you get too happy with repeating a keyword in a page or a link campaign.
When the keywords are the most important things, you lose track of why you are creating the web page to begin with, which is to engage readers. Step back a bit: it’s time to see the forest, too.
It’s true, the right keywords will work wonders, but it is infinitely easier for most people to figure out something that makes them special. Subject matter expertise is going to trump most keyword-driven shenanigans. Certainly, if you are in it for the long haul, this is going to prove true…give it time.
The Sad Truth: The Right Keyphrases Are Not Magic Pills
Ultimately for most people, keyphrases themselves just won’t help you like you think they will. You can’t plug them into your idea later on – normally, they should’ve been a part of your idea from the start. Pasting them on later is very difficult, and rarely effective – unless you are paying for it to happen, or guided by professionals. Better to chuck the idea of keywords at that point, and simply create better and deeper content for your readers, based on subject matter.
And don’t think there is a magic ratio, or keyword density or anything like that that matters. I promise you, there isn’t and it doesn’t. Anyone selling you a recipe including keyword density optimizing, is full of shit. There is no blanket approach that will work for you in every situation, there is no formula to attach to it.
Keywords are nuanced by niche activity.
No Ancient Chinese Secrets Here
You must only write things that connect to your audience for it to be effective. The emphasis on keywords is really displaced, because you need to focus a lot more on each page having a specific meaning to your visitors. But meaning is an esoteric thing, and hard to evaluate, or measure, or pay for. Yet it works – quite often, better than many keyword-originated strategies will.
Google is drastically changing what it is doing and how it is ranking things – so creating the assumed value around a keyword or keyphrase is as important as the words themselves, if that makes sense. Build meaning.
OK. But How Do I Optimize a Webpage for Simple Keyphrases?
That babbling disclaimery stuff all said, making sure you are amply covered for a specific keyphrase/keyword is easy.
- Include your keyword in your page title {This tells the search engines what the page is about}. Titles have been important for years. They continue to be…though, I personally have reason to believe a focus on page content over titles is a smarter move for staying power. I completely optimize every page title of important sites with a ton of care and time. Even on lesser sites, I make sure each one is unique at a minimum to make them work effectively. Aim for titles of about 70 characters, but don’t worry about counting your characters. Just write a decent title, and use your keywords in a realistically strategic way – nothing earth shattering needs to happen. The placement of keywords might be important, so value the left side as strongest, and create your titles with your main keywords coming up more immediately in the flow. There doesn’t seem to be one separator preferred over another (dashes, commas, colons etc.). Using less or more characters in a title does not seem to tip it either way on its own merit, though I admit never isolating it to fully verify this. Just a good hunch, here.
- Include your keyword thru your body copy{Use it both verbatim, and in various forms for greatest effect}. There is no set rule on where, and how much to use keyphrases – I veryloosely aim for the opening sentence, the middle of the page, and the conclusion if possible, at a minimum. Why? Because then the keyphrase occurs naturally thru the entire page. Emphasis here on “natural” appearance.
- Add a meta description that is meant for enticing readers, that is about two sentences, and includes the keyword again, naturally in the flow of describing the page contents. No big whoop. 30 seconds per page.
- Use various forms of the keyword to build a link campaign {Using the keyword and variations, create internal and external links to build power to the page you wrote-variations will help you deflect or minimize over-optimizing filters}. In your own site’s content, blog comments, article sites, or wherever you are building links, try to use the keyword and its various forms as anchor text. Mixing it up but staying on topic is a great strategy.
That’s it – rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. Never ends, but what a ride.
Final Ideas:
Don’t feel the need to buy anything. Products and memberships might come later, when you understand more. There is plenty to learn for free, on your own, before you start paying for a boost or joining a club. Test more, on the cheap – join less. Read tons.
Read – learn, and start websites. See if it -this work- really makes a good fit for you. Take in everything, but let experience guide you. Not every message is true or honest out there – and if you are trying to learn, getting swept-up believing in “easy” can cost you a fortune. Build sites, and test things. Be skeptical. Empirical data rules.
I’ll repeat: there is no easy. There are smart, hard workers that certainly succeed and emerge every day – but none of it comes easy. It is hard work, and smart moves. Pony-up, and roll up those sleeves. Unless of course, following those 4 steps above comes very easy for you – in which case, you should be both pleased, and insanely busy. More power to you. Milk it hombre, and you’re buying next time we meet.
There is never going to be a single product that makes web marketing easy. I think I gave you here, all you need to know to get started, provided you have something worth starting. The latter is the key point to chomp here: have something worth saying before you decide to start talking. {NOTE: talking to a friend, he said he disagrees here. He believes more in the get started, and let experience provide you something to say – which I thought was a good point. My own point, is geared more toward the folks I am seeing learning techniques in search engine loop-holes without having a deeper foundation in a business direction first. I am old, though, and cantankerous.}
I think you should have an airtight business plan before you plan on spending profits, or outsourcing anything. Start with a product to promote, not the process to promote.
No one cares about another Internet Marketer one way or another. Make them care about something you believe in personally, and you are on your way. No reason to shill: find a calling that suits you, and work into it slowly. Plenty for everybody out there, and you don’t have to scam to succeed.
Good luck – and I hope you forever avoid squishing into the unicorn poop of Internet Marketing.
