by  R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

In recent years, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has experienced a slow, but steady transition from focusing on simply optimizing websites for search engines to the actual user experience. It's a good trend, honestly, because search engine rankings are certainly not everything. What good is a search engine ranking if people click through to your site and don't bother to read your content?

Of course, you're not only looking to get visitors to read content. You're hopefully looking to convert some into subscribers. This is why it's so important to have the very best searcher experience possible.


Understand How Your Audience Finds Your Website

The best way to know how to get visitors to your sites is by understanding the many different ways that potential readers and subscribers will find your website. These days, you have social media accounting for a great deal of website referral traffic. This is why it has become so paramount to have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter profile (at the very least) to get your message out there. 

By seeing what sort of people regularly follow your blog on Facebook and Twitter, you get more of an idea of what sort of content they are looking for. Knowing your audience is a key part of any SEO strategy. Ranking on the first page of Google search results for some high search volume keywords is great, but not if those aren’t the keywords that your target audience uses to find solutions to their problems.


The Importance of Having Your Own Domain for SEO and Brand Authority

Back when I started in SEO around 2010, many people, even small businesses, commonly used free Wordpress blogs. While it's okay to have your blog on a free platform, especially now in 2020, it's far better to put it on your own domain. Many web-hosts allow people to install Wordpress for free on their own websites, and it’s easy enough to import an existing free WordPress site - if you already had one.

There’s also Weebly who offers free to extremely reasonably priced web hosting with one of the best do-it-yourself website builders out there.  Wix and Squarespace also have free options which you can later upgrade. While you can certainly get organic traffic with a free website - thanks to the authority of the wordpress, weebly, wixsite, etc. domains -  it’s not often going to get you to rank for the same quality of keywords you really want to optimize for in the long run.

Having your own domain not only helps your authority with search engines, but it also makes you look better to users. If you have a company blog that’s not on your own domain, it might make people wonder why you couldn’t integrate it into your existing domain. 

In 2020, offering the best user experience means having your own domain, because literally anyone with an internet connection and an email account can create a free website! Showing that you’re willing to at least in a domain name is always a good idea.


What is Relevant Content for Both Your Users and Search Engines?

In the old days, all you had to do was post content regularly – at the very least once per week - around the keywords you wanted to be found for in search. But, it’s not just about writing and sharing content that people want. You want to make sure that your incoming search traffic – and social media traffic – is really getting what they’re looking for.

So, what do you post to your blog? You need to make your site more relevant in the eyes (or rather, to the spiders) of search engines. But you also need to make it more relevant in the eyes of those who may end up clicking on your website link in the search engine results pages.

The first part is easy: Do you answer their questions and/or do you fulfill their needs? Here's the part that isn't quite so easy: how do you make them feel? It's a proven fact that if you make people feel better by easing their concerns or solving a nagging problem that they may have, they're a lot more likely to remember you for that. Emotional value is everything for human beings. Since 99% of your readers will likely be human beings, that’s who you have to write for.


Keyword Strategies are Important, But They Are Only the Beginning

Obviously, keyword strategies are still incredibly important. But, you have to constantly build content on your website not only surrounding these keywords, but establishing a presence of authority and trust around them. You need to become a trustworthy personality who is knowledgeable about your site’s subjects. This is known as becoming a "thought leader."

You may not think of yourself as a thought leader in your chosen field, but you may be surprised how much you can be once you start answering the questions that you may get every day on your blog. It may sound simple, but if there's a need, and you fulfill that need, you might just find that a blog post a day keeps the searchers coming your way. Even if you can't blog every day, it's important to at least remain consistent, and keep an open dialogue with your audience.

Yes, it’s important to have a keyword strategy to fall back on. After all, that’s what helps you write a catchy title tag and meta description that’s also keyword-rich. But, when you get people to click through from Google, social media, or elsewhere, you want them to read all the way through AND get people to want to read more.


Being Consistent with Your Content is Key, But It's OK to Switch Things Up

While it’s important to be consistent in the type of content that you post to your website, if your strategy isn’t working, be sure to switch things up. You don’t want to look like a robot – even when things are working, switch things up for variety. People love surprises. 

Even a successful website will introduce a guest blogger or take a very new direction for a day or two just to offer some new perspective. Recycling old content by taking a completely different angle does this well. It’s fine to repurpose and recycle content, and people will appreciate your innovativeness often without really realizing it.

The purpose of any website is to provide information, advice and assistance to those people who are interested in what you have to share. Every site should strive to eventually build a community. You want people from all walks of life and many different fields and industries who can share common interests and experiences around your content. 

Building community around your content, both on social media and in comments, makes it clear to searchers and social media surfers that you are doing your best to offer a great user experience. Content creation doesn't always have to be cut and dry, and most of the time, you simply can't be. You've got to be there for people. It's the only way to win the minds (and hopefully the hearts) of your potential fans. 

So, while throwing bait for the search engine spiders to crawl is great, in the end it’s all about serving up a great user experience. Google especially likes content that’s shared often on social media. But, most importantly, search engines most appreciate sites that don’t create quick bounces from search queries. Keep people on your website by providing a great user experience and you will be rewarded!

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner ofIntent-sive Nature & theBrand Shamans network

Many website owners are familiar with the Yoast SEO plugin for Wordpress, probably the best known SEO content analysis tool. Of course, any help you can get with improving your website’s SEO is important to getting your website to rank well and get organic traffic. Still, while it can be a helpful tool, not every website uses Wordpress, or wants to purchase the premium version of a SEO plugin. Fortunately, SEO content analysis isn’t all that complicated to learn. Here are a few steps on how to analyze your own content to optimize it for the best on-page SEO results.


How Do You Choose Focus Keywords for SEO?

While doing keyword research, you’ll likely come across some keyword phrases that seem like they would be easy to rank for in search. One great way to do this is to use Google Autocomplete tools such as ubersuggest.io or keywordtool.io to find phrases that are related to your industry, product or service. Once you find some low-competition search phrases with decent traffic, you can use these as focus keyword phrases to build your content around.

You don’t want these focus keywords to be too general, such as “marketing” or even “online marketing.” It’s far more difficult to rank your content for keyword phrases that are only one, two, or even three words long. Because these sorts of keyword phrases are so general, they are extremely competitive. Focus keyword phrases should be four or more words, although sometimes you’ll find phrases of three words that are fairly easy to rank for due to low competition. The more specific a query you focus on, the more likely searchers will find exactly what they are looking for from your content.



How Many Times Should I Use Focus Keywords in My Content?

How many times should I use my focus keyword or keywords? The conventional wisdom was to make sure that you used each focus keyword phrase in at least about 1 to 3 percent of your total content. But really, there is no exact amount of times to use a particular focus keyword in order to make your content rank. What you should instead focus on are what are called LSI keywords.

LSI keywords are phrases that are related and similar to your focus keyword. They are phrases that can naturally show up in content together. One great way to find these LSI Keywords was a free tool called LSIGraph -  which isn’t currently available as of this writing, so you will have to search for another LSI keyword tool. By using related keyword phrases to your focus keyword throughout your content, not only isn’t your content going to be keyword-stuffed and spammy-looking, but it will likely rank for more search terms than you might expect. Ranking for more terms means more traffic.


Can I Improve My Content for SEO Beyond Focus Keywords?

The creators of many SEO tools suggest that you keep your content easy to read, use plenty of subheaders and short paragraphs, and use as much active voice as possible. Generally, these are already good things to do in online content. How much weight that search engines actually give to these factors is unknown. However, subheaders in particular make sense as good SEO signals since they usually contain valuable keyword phrases. 

Pretty much everyone will tell you just to use your keyword phrases naturally and not be too conscious of how many times they are being used. It’s suggested to just keep those keywords in front of you as you’re writing content. However, when you are done, it’s good to go back and see how many times your focus keywords are being used. If you’re using your keyword phrases too obviously, try to change a few of them to related LSI keyword phrases if possible. If you’re using them too sparingly, it’s OK to work them in a bit more often.


What Can Help with SEO Content Analysis Do For My Business or Blog?

Now that you know the basics of content analysis for SEO, you might think it sounds pretty easy. Honestly, this advice is certainly enough to get you started. However, sometimes you’ll write a great blog post that doesn’t really focus on any keywords. Other times, you’ll write a web page that focuses mostly on keywords without truly being a valuable resource.

The idea is to find a balance between SEO and good content. You need to let the search engines know your content is relevant to keywords that people are actually searching. Then, you also need to be creating great content that is both valuable and good to convert visitors into subscribers, leads, or customers. While SEO content analysis seems simple, and there are free online content analysis tools out there, how do you know that the tools are actually giving you good advice?


Even with a popular tool like Yoast, being told that your content’s readability needs improvement may not be useful feedback for you. Sometimes the content analysis tools won’t work properly, or not work at all. You may need to seek out someone to do your SEO copy editing for you. Fortunately, it’s usually a quick task. The tweaks not only could help your content rank better for important keyword phrases. Your content will also read better and be more valuable to your target audience as a result.

Questions, comments, concerns? Let us know in the comments!

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner ofIntent-sive Nature & theBrand Shamans network

Trying to get more traffic to your Amazon product listings or product pages on your eCommerce website? You’ve heard how important product keyword research is for building your pages’ SEO and getting the right traffic. But, when you look for help in product keyword research, you just find a mix of free keyword tools and expensive software packages.

Plenty of people online talk about how to find profitable niches. But, again, the advice leads to these same tools. While free keyword tools are great, you have to know what to do with the information. So, how do you find profitable niche keywords? Better yet, how do you find the best keywords for your product listings that help convert sales without wasting valuable time?


The Difference Between SEO Keyword Research and Product Keyword Research

While ordinary SEO keyword research focuses on keywords that have significant traffic volumes but low competition, product keyword research focuses on keyword phrases used by those who are closer to buying. What many people won’t tell you about product keyword research is how to actually find the keywords that lead to sales. There are some paid tools out there that can give you some insight. But,  chances are, you don’t want to spend that much money - likely hundreds of dollars a month - on all of these tools.

So, how do you gain this insight on your own?

One thing about SEO keyword research is finding keywords that are searched with different intentions. The vast majority of keyword searches are those who are just researching a particular topic, product, or service. Having content on your website that tries to capture the traffic from these more general searches can prove helpful. But, if you’re too general, it can also end up lost in the noise.


How SEO Keyword Search Volume Can Be Misleading When It Comes to Researching Product Keywords

This is where eCommerce has a place to succeed. People that are searching for a very specific product or service may not search terms that have high search volume. But, if someone wants “blue size 8 womens sneakers,” there is definitely some intent to buy there. Still, that searcher is not yet decided on a brand or a specific place to buy it. So, while that’s a great long-tail keyword phrase to use on a product page, it doesn’t mean that you’ll have your product page rank for it.

Shoes may not be the best example of a niche keyword, though, right? The online shoe sales business is extremely competitive. But, even then, there are going to be keywords that other big players may simply overlook.

For example, let’s put “womens size 8 sneakers” into a keyword tool like ubersuggest.io. This gives us a list of related keywords that are more specific. One that looks promising is “womens size 8 nike trainers.” It only gets an average of 10 Google searches per month in the US, but it’s specific. But when you do a Google search, you can see plenty of websites are already ranking very highly for that keyword phrase.

Interestingly enough, say you choose a phrase like “womens size 8 nike sneakers,” there are plenty of related results, but no one appears to have a listing specifically for women size 8 nike sneakers. But if you look for size 7, Famous Footwear has a product listing for size 7 womens Nikes! Same for size 11 and size 12. But other sizes lack their own product listing, as well.

Why does this matter? Whenever you visit a result that isn’t specific, it means that there must be more work to be done on the part of the searcher. Famous Footwear identified a couple of specific potential searches that their competitors didn’t. This means that the online user doesn’t have to do the extra work of checking if they have a certain shoe in a certain size. That listing will show if it’s in stock and doesn’t require the searcher to have to search again on another site..

While there are many keyword phrases that show a search volume may appear to be “0” in Google Keyword tools, this doesn’t mean that they actually get zero searches. That they show up at all in Google Autocomplete means that they get an average of between 0 and 9 searches a month. They are searched, in fact, and are often called “hidden keywords.” This means that low search volume is veryl misleading.


How You Can Use Misleading Search Volume Data to Your Advantage in Optimizing Your Product Listings

The truth is, even though Google Autocomplete and other keyword tools are helpful, they only scratch the surface when it comes to product keyword research. Most people aren’t going to search for something with the exact wording, word order, or even spelling as a keyword phrase you find interesting.

What product keyword research should be about is finding gaps that you can identify in your competitors’ keyword lists. In our above example, this could be size 8 womens sneakers! Even something more specific like size 8 Nike Air Max sneakers doesn’t yield a perfect result.

Keyword tools can help you research these gaps within minutes. All you have to do is think of a product you sell and how someone that’s looking to buy something you offer might search it. If you find keyword phrases with no real pay-per-click results and without exact organic search result matches, you may have found something interesting to target in your SEO and content efforts.

Once you’ve found enough of these keyword phrases that are fairly easy to rank for and could be great cheap PPC advertising opportunities, you’ve begun to carve out a niche with your eCommerce product keyword research. Doing a little bit of keyword research every day can help you to find new good traffic to underperforming product pages. It can even find cheap new ways to get traffic to your most profitable products or services.


Is Amazon Product Keyword Research the Same as Regular Product Keyword Research?

You may not know this, but many people are fooled into thinking that Amazon keyword research can be done the same way as SEO product research. Amazon is its own search engine with very different results. While search volume isn’t publically available for Amazon searches, there are free autocomplete tools for Amazon. One popular one is keywordtool.io which has many different autocomplete tools - including ones for App Store, Bing, eBay, Google, and YouTube, as well. This one is always free.

There’s another autocomplete tool called Keyword Tool Dominator. It only lets you do 3 searches a day, but also offers you a sort of Ranking for the keyword suggestions. While this isn’t the same as search volume, it does show how Amazon’s autocomplete ranks the suggestions - which is sort of a proxy for volume. Using these tools together, you can come up with keyword phrases that you’d never find on Google.

With Amazon, the higher a suggestion is ranked, however, means that it’s likely a good keyword phrase to focus on. This is because people on Amazon have a far higher likelihood of actually purchasing a product than those searching on Google - which would make sense. Perhaps, you could find phrases on Amazon that you could also use on your website’s product pages. Finding these niche keyword phrases may help you find more profitable niches in your industry you may not have considered before.

Whether you list your products on Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Shopify, Weebly, Wordpress, or in plain old HTML, product keyword research is a valuable tool in letting search engines send you the best, most qualified search traffic to your listings. You can just spend a few minutes a day using these tools. Then, find ways to naturally weave these niche product keyword phrases into your website and product pages, and watch your sales grow!

If you have any questions about Amazon keyword research or product page keyword research, feel free to leave them in the comments below!

If you need help integrating the information from product keyword research into your website and listings, we can help with that, too!

by R.A. Rowell; Co-owner of Brand Shamans & Write W.A.V.E. Media

Search marketing experts love to mention "chasing the long tail" as one of the most cost-effective ways to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). "Chasing the long tail" just means finding keyword phrases that are specific enough to be relevant to your specific product or service. Still, you also want them to be just broad enough to get enough of an audience to get your voice heard. This is, obviously, much more easily said than done.

Longer keyword phrases are going to be often much less expensive to bid on when it comes to advertising, as they come with lower search volume, too. But, it's just as important in organic search to chase the long tail keyword phrases. While you may get less traffic from them, that traffic will be a lot more valuable to you. Let's learn why "chasing the long tail" keywords is a good idea.


Why Are Long-Tail Keywords Useful in SEO?
 
One of the most common examples used to illustrate chasing "long-tail keywords" is by adding a color to a certain phrase. For example, if you sell linens, "blankets" is a ridiculously broad term that gets hundreds of thousands, if not millions of searches a day. "Baby blankets" is obviously a lot more specific and has considerably more refined search traffic. But to "chase the long tail" so to speak, you need to find three or four word keyword phrases (or perhaps longer) that are more specific to what your customers are looking for.
 
For example, think of "blue baby blankets." That's a fairly common color for baby blankets. So it's not surprising that it's a search phrase that actually gets about 900 searches a month on Google alone. So, you might want to write some content about "Why Are Blue Baby Blankets So Popular?" 
 
Now, why would you limit yourself to a specific color in your content? Preferably, you would have content around red or green baby blankets, as well. The concept of chasing the long-tail is more about zoning in on the types of people that are closer to ready to buying a product.
 
However, chasing the long-tail keywords must also consider the variations on a keyword phrase. I have mentioned "red baby blankets" and "green baby blankets" as possible options for content surrounding "baby blanket" searches. However, per Google's Keyword Planner, "green baby blankets" get about only 400 monthly searches, less than half of "blue baby blankets." On the other hand, "red baby blankets" , gets about 500 monthly searches, which is very close to "blue baby blankets" at about 900.
 
What does this research show exactly? If you have a section of your business devoted to baby blankets, this is rather important information to consider. It means that your blue and red baby blankets have twice the Google search audience as your green blankets. This is pretty powerful information.


Watch the Monthly Trends of Long-Tail Keywords to Optimize Your Online Marketing Efforts

If you are actually selling baby blankets, or any product or service, you want to be sure you know about the monthly search volume. But, don't just pay attention to the average search volume. You also want to know the trends for those keywords. Plug in these keyword phrases into a keyword tool like Ubersuggest, and you'll see that those averages can sometimes be misleading.

For example, "blue baby blankets" peaks at about 1,000 monthly searches in June-July, then December through early February. But from March to late May, those numbers drop to between 600-700 monthly searches. Meanwhile "red baby blankets" drop close to 200 monthly searches in April and May. Green baby blankets dip only in April and June, but are up in May.

These trends are important for a couple of reasons. On one hand, these trends tell you the relative search demand for particular colors of blankets. It also means that you should aim to be more aggressive with marketing certain colors of blankets when search volume is up. On the other hand, when traffic is down, it's likely more competitive, meaning content and product pages based around those keywords will be harder to rank. That's because your competitors are fighting for more of the searches. This is important to keep in mind so that you have other keywords to make up for those that decline during certain times of the year.


Why Not Just Optimize for "Baby Blankets?"
 
If you were to optimize for simply "baby blankets," which is a term that gets 40,000 monthly searches, you're going to be lost in the noise of all the other companies out there trying to rank on Page One of Google for that product. Focus in on the specific products people are looking to purchase, especially in a particular color. As the longer keyword phrases often don't have the same amount of competition, you can rank much more easily for the long-tail phrases. Then, you're much more likely to get someone's attention.
 
Think of some basic ways you can help focus your content on specific permutations of your product or service. WIth products, it can be basic as color, size, or model. For services, it can be services tailored to specific industries, niches, or needs. Just make sure that people are searching for that specific thing on a regular basis. It can be just a few hundred searches per month, if it's specific enough.

No matter what product or service you have to offer, there are still certain ways that people interested in what you have to offer will search for it that you can also rank well for and be found. The free Google Adwords Keyword Planner (with sign-up for a free Adwords account) is great for doing this sort of research. It can also give you other keyword ideas for content you should be producing surrounding your content.
 
Keep in mind that search traffic alone isn't everything. You need to be getting the right traffic, too. By focusing on the power of specific keywords, you get more targeted, more relevant traffic. Keyword research really can be your best friend,. While it takes some time, the basic info that you need is free to get and can lead to powerful results.

Need some long-tail keyword phrase suggestions for your own site? Leave a comment below, so we can check it out and give you some quick suggestions!

Why do content marketers and web design experts constantly have to fix the mistakes of supposedly professional marketing firms? Not that we mind. It’s more business for us! Still, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen businesses pay marketing firms that clearly didn’t know what they were doing.

This is definitely not to disparage those that are trying to earn an honest living doing good SEO and content work for businesses. Anyone can make honest mistakes. Who gives us all a bad name are those that call themselves "experts" and do such a deplorable job - even under contract. Then, others have to come in just to fix those mistakes. Sometimes, it's at a fraction of the original cost, since the marketing budget was blown on low-quality work. Learn how to spot poor marketing firms, so you can save your hard earned money for quality work instead!



Beware of Marketing Firms Who Promise Too Much!

Before I was self-employed, one of my employer’s affiliate companies brought in a marketing firm to overhaul their website. The website, as it was, actually was not ranking too badly in the search engines. The SEO was good enough that it was bringing a fair amount of local organic traffic. But the director of the affiliate wanted more leads from online traffic.

So, a company came in and overhauled the website design to the point that it looked nice, at first. But then, most of the important text was stuck in images or in weird I-frames that the search engines had difficulty reading. The search engines were puzzled and started looking away. There was nothing to keep the creepy-crawly search spiders interested. Then, the site's existing SEO was ruined and content that might have been OK if properly optimized simply wasn't doing its job.

Previously, I had done considerable SEO work on this website. The original design had been clean and simple. The logo was crisp and well-designed – also made in-house. This company threw everything out, and even changed all the page names from .htm to .html. Changing page name extensions in this way without proper redirects is a major no-no in SEO. As you might expect, traffic plummeted. The website dropped off the front page of search results across the board. My boss was furious.


The Website Had to Be Fixed In-House!

So guess what? We tore down the site in-house and rebuilt it from the old version we had. Within a few months, the rankings were back to where they had been before. Of course, the traffic still wasn’t enough for our affiliate. So, they brought in a pair of online marketing “experts.” I was there for the interview with them and found that I knew more than they did. I made the suggestion to not hire them. I could do everything they could already. But, my suggestion went unheard.

I had been absolutely correct. We had no intention of giving them direct access to the site, and it’s a good thing they didn’t get it. They sent me “fixed” HTML pages in emails. Sadly, they were a mess. I would continuously fix the stupid mistakes they had made in both the HTML and the title tags. It seemed as if we were paying them just to annoy me.

The final straw came when they asked me to go out and research inbound links. As the “webmaster,” it was apparently my duty to go and ask for links. Wasn’t that supposed to be part of their job? They didn’t make any good suggestions, either, except for spammy directories which would have actually hurt the rankings rather than helped them. They just told me to go and do it as if I were working for them. I told my boss about this, and fortunately, I was heard this time. They were subsequently fired. Unfortunately, it was only after they were already paid too much to begin with.


The Poor Quality SEO Marketing Firm Still Got Paid Upfront!

In the end, they were paid rather well for such lousy “work.” I ended up undoing everything they did, anyway, besides a couple of useful keyword phrases I was able to use. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses get duped all the time by people acting like they know what they’re doing. Then they simply turn to in-house staff, who are often making a fraction of what they had just paid out, to fix the mistakes.

Businesses need to stop doing this and actually make those doing outside work for them prove their mettle before paying them the big bucks. Otherwise, pay your in-house staff better. You’ll attract much better content writers and web designers into your fold. Then you'll better motivate those that you already have.

Just some friendly advice from someone who's been there and done that as an SEO Consultant!

If you're looking for quality copywriting and SEO services, see what the Brand Shamans can do for you!

For many years, SEO experts would tell you that the Yahoo! Web Directory was one of the best backlinks you can possibly have for your business. For a $299 a year, it was yours. Well, that will be no longer. Yahoo! announced in late September 2014 that the very directory that founded the company’s very existence will be closing after 20 years. Search Engine Land had a great piece about the Yahoo! Directory's closing.

For years, a backlink from Yahoo for $299 a year was worth the investment. It was something you could write off as a business expense on your tax return. It could also get a stray click-through or two here and there. Also, because of the fact that the directory had existed since 1994, it continued to be a fairly valuable link depending on the category that you chose - especially if you were in a particular niche. There was a time that it may have well been worth the money if you could afford to have it as a part of your SEO budget. Those times have now ended.

Is the Alive Web Directory Worth It for SEO?

There are still other directories out there, of course. For example, there is the Alive Web Directory. They have several listing options, most of which are far less expensive on a per-year basis. However, they also have an option that costs $299.95 for a permanent featured listing, which can get you visibility with 5 additional deep links. Another option is $209.95 for a permanent regular listing that will get somewhat less visibility (be listed under the Featured Listings) with only 3 additional deep links.

Alive Web Directory also has several more listing options. For example, you can get a permanent featured listing without the additional deep links for $224.95 and a regular permanent listing for only $149.95. I would suggest, however, that those additional deep links could help depending on the situation and what you're trying to get those particular links to rank for. In any case, it cost a lot less than Yahoo Web Directory did. It will be interesting to see how the pricing structure changes now that the “king” of directories is gone.

Best of the Web and SEO

Another option is Best of the Web. This one is a little more familiar to me than Alive Web Directory, as I've personally used it to post free business listings for past employers on their local directory side. It costs a one-time fee of $149.95 to submit your site for the directory, and $199.95 to submit for their directory plus a local listing. They also now have a lifetime listing for a one-time fee of $299.95. This directory gets a lot more traffic, as far as I know, than either the Yahoo or Alive Web Directory because their directory listings have popped up all over Google and Bing.

The only thing that is a bit scary about Best of the Web (BOTW) is that the submission fee is non-refundable. If for whatever reason the moderator doesn't feel that your site is worthy of being listed (unusual, but possible) that money is gone. Just keep that in mind. But, most likely as long as your site looks good and is useful to visitors, you should be fine. It’s obviously to cut down on spam submissions and deter people whose sites aren’t top quality which would waste the time of their editors.

Overall Benefits of Online Directories for SEO

If you’re going to use directories, you definitely want to first go for the permanent listings rather than the yearly recurring listings. The permanent directory listings are far less expensive now than they were, but of course, even Alive Web Directory and Best of the Web aren't ever going to have the same SEO value as Yahoo!

Of course, there are many other more niche-related directories out there. Some are even free. Whenever you are submitting your website link to an online directory, be sure they are reputable directories that you think people would actually use. There are plenty of spammy ones out there happy to take your money with little return value.

If a directory doesn’t look like a site you would use yourself to find something, then don’t think about getting a listing there. The click-throughs from any directories are gravy. But the backlinks themselves from more trusted directories, no matter how many clicks you get from there, can provide you with authority in the search engines for those categories.

Of course, there are a lot of places where you can get a free link just by sending an email or submitting to a free directory. While these are often “no-follow” links that don’t really provide direct engine optimization value, they’re still worth at least submitting in order to get your website more mentions, which can help you indirectly.

The major issue with online directories is the question of how much longer they will actually remain relevant in the eyes of search engine relevance. If you have a brick-and-mortar business, they do give a sense of permanence to your brand related to certain keywords that the search engines still appreciate. If you have a blog, then it’s perhaps better to focus on being listed on authority sites in your niches than to bother investing in a directory listing. But if you have the budget to do so, it’s something to consider, especially if that listing is found among other highly relevant links to your niche or field.

If there are any online directories you are currently listed in, or are thinking of being listed in, feel free to contact our online marketing experts about them. We can check them out and can let you know our thoughts on how useful those directories are for your SEO efforts and if they’re worth your hard-earned money.

A better option for you and your website may be a sponsored guest post. With a quality article written about a topic you're passionate about and quality backlinks for much less than the cost of a directory listing, you can reap far greater SEO benefits than a basic directory listing. If you're interested, contact the SEO experts at Brand Shamans today!

Photo credit: Pixabay, Public Domain

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner ofIntent-sive Nature & theBrand Shamans network

We've all heard about how you can over-optimize for the almighty search engines in the name of SEO. How much SEO is enough? Some people have said that you really can't optimize too much for search engines. As it turns out, too much SEO is bad for your SEO.

Many people won't even touch optimizing for search engines. Oftentimes, this is from a fear of putting a bunch of content out there which doesn't get a lot of traffic or any leads that convert. Some people feel it’s too stressful to consistently put out useful content. Many people start and give up after a bit if it goes nowhere. So, you want to have some SEO. But, it is possible to go too far.

Believe it or not, you have to consider the possibility of taking on far too much traffic or leads. In fact, it's possible to over-commit to a content strategy. Even if the leads flow in like honey, that new traffic doesn’t always actually help your business.  How can that be? Consider the following example.


Biting Off More Than You Can Chew!

One of the worst case scenarios of biting off more than one can chew in SEO is something that a LinkedIn connection of mine once shared. It's an interesting story of how one CEO cut ties with an SEO firm and decided to do the SEO himself instead. Interestingly enough, he did wonderfully on his own and website traffic boomed. So did the amount of incoming leads. However, he became so addicted to his success that the rest of his business suffered as a result.

His company’s customer service badly declined because of the lack of ability to handle all of the incoming traffic. In response, he took down about 150 pages off of his website. This action cut the amount of incoming leads in half. After rededicating himself and his company to customer service, so they could actually focus more effectively on the leads they received, they righted the ship.

So, you have to put customer service before bringing in new business. You need to pick your clients carefully, and you’re your leads are potential and actual customers, and not to be treated as commodities. These are all fantastic points, and so you should not let this article discourage you from doing SEO at all. You should just take into consideration the fact that you can go way overboard.

So, I decided to create the ABC's of How to Avoid SEO Over-Optimization: Authenticity, Being Ready, and Customer Service.


Authenticity

The number one thing to consider about Search Engine Optimization is being authentic. Don't simply post a ton of content to make you sound like the best thing in the whole world. It's important to be personal and aim to make one-on-one connections with people is far more effective.

You don't want to go out there with an SEO campaign that makes you sound like you're just trying to rank for keywords and come up number one on Google. Chances are with this strategy that you'll turn off some of the people you're looking for. Most of the leads you may end up with could be mostly unqualified and are just pinging your site out of simple curiosity. Not all organic search traffic is created equal.

When it comes to SEO over-optimization, Google and other search engines could penalize your website quite harshly for overusing keyword phrases that don't flow naturally. You need to create authentic content, first and foremost, before anything else. You also want to show personality and style in your writing, on top of giving some useful tidbits of information.

Good SEO might help you get visitors. But people are far more willing to actually engage with your content and contact you if you offered them some piece of useful information. Searchers really like when they can find an answer to a question that they were researching the answer for and found you. They also want to feel like it was a real person giving them that information in a friendly and straightforward manner.


Being Ready

This goes back to the point of leads being customers, not commodities. While obviously you want that conversion rate to be high, it's very, very possible to become overzealous and take on far more than you can chew. It's easy to become too focused on the raw number of leads from SEO versus the number of visitors to a given page. If you find yourself getting a ton of leads, you have to be sure you can qualify them and convert them into sales without taking away too much from your current customers.

While being aggressive with content can be OK if you know you're ready to take on the new business, you have to be 100% certain that you're ready for a potential barrage of leads. In some cases, you may be able to grow with it. But you may not be ready to nurture 1,000 incoming leads. It takes time to be able to serve the 5 or 10 percent or so of those that are qualified, while also serving your existing customer base as well as you have in the past.

Take it slowly and be sure you're only getting the most qualified leads that you possibly can. In any case, be ready to take on new business at all times. You never know just what piece of content will serve you hundreds or even thousands of potential new customers.

It's also important to understand that with ranking highly on search engines through SEO, you'll get noticeably more spam. You need to be ready to accept that just because you have a high conversion rate on the web stat side of things, that it's the real customers that you get giving you the real value. In the end it's who you connect with that matters. Good content marketers and SEO specialists will tell you that, not just that you're all set ranking 1st, 2nd, or 3rd on Google for high-volume searches.


Customer Service

Every business is in the customer service business, and it is true today more than ever. This actually works hand-in-hand with Being Ready. If you spend all of your time chasing down new leads, chances are that could alienate some of your existing customers if they feel that their loyalty to you is less important than your incoming traffic. That's what happened to that law firm in the article mentioned earlier. If customer service begins to suffer, you have to consider why that is.

You have to be ready and able to handle what leads you get while still giving your current customer base the same attention that they expect and deserve. Of course, there are considerations that you can make to hire extra help if the need arises. But as with anything, you can get carried away. I'm glad that CEO learned from his mistakes, even if it was unfortunately the hard way.

The best kind of content to create is content that is not only aimed at new prospects, but also created for your current customer base. Your current customers are quite a valuable resource for content. It's actually a great idea to ask your customers what questions they would like answered. Chances are people looking for your services will want those same answers, and you'll possibly get more sales out of your current customers, or generate referrals from offering those answers.

Providing offers at the end of blog posts is fine, as long as you don't make them only for new customers. It's fine to have offers on your website, but also make an offer that can work for anyone. This way if an offer is being used, it means those using it had to find out about it on your website, meaning your content is being read and is effective.


Takeaways

It's important to put out great content on a regular basis, but be authentic and be wary of going overboard. If you're careful with your keyword strategy and focus only on your ideal customers and what they're looking for, chances are you'll be okay. Just don't go looking for exposure simply for the sake of exposure. You may get it, and it might be overwhelming in a good way.

As with anything, moderate your content and schedule it out. Definitely don't overdo your SEO, either. While this might spike your website traffic in the short term, it will hurt you more than it will help your future lead generation from your site.

While spikes in growth do happen, if you're going to encourage it, be authentic. If you get a barrage of leads and you can't provide top-notch customer service, then take a step back for a moment and consider your options. The worst thing is to get lots of growth and then panic and cut out a huge chunk of your content. While it can help you rebound, if you were getting all that traffic, you need to consider simply how to manage that great content better.

Here's something for CEO’s and marketing managers out there to consider: it's not often a bad idea to let someone else handle your SEO work for you. Focus on your customers first. After all, that's the whole point of search engine optimization, making new and loyal customers. Make sure you're ready for them. Whatever you do, make sure whoever helps you understands the difference between creating great SEO content and simply doing SEO just for the hope of high search rankings.



If you need copywriting for SEO and/or SEO editing for your blog or website, see what the Brand Shamans can do for you today!

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