Hi, this is my first…

September 18th, 2008

Hi, this is my first try at posting to ListPipe from my Jott account. listen

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Appropriate Volume

September 16th, 2008

Blogging for search engine traffic requires skill and understanding in some areas, however one of the easier areas to accommodate is 'volume'. Many of our clients are intimidated at the prospect of blogging until they understand that you don't have to write an entire tome for each post; a couple paragraphs will do.

In fact, more often than not, a couple of paragraphs is all you need to get your point across clearly and effectively. No need to write more than is necessary, and in most cases filler will be detrimental rather than helpful.

How long should each post be? As a rule of thumb, 300 words is plenty. There is no specific penalty for writing more, although you may loose your customers after the first few hundred words. The search engines are happy with as little as a few paragraphs. 300 words is a good number because it is short enough to write quickly, and long enough to include some good human-readable content with lots of relevant keywords.

In a pinch, don't be afraid to write a few sentences. The SEO value of the content will, of course, not be as strong, however you will be keeping the search engines on their toes as far as being seen as 'fresh and active'. When it comes down to it, frequency is pretty important. If your choice is between being able to write something now, or having to wait until you have time to produce more; always write now.

By the way, this post has 261 words in it. Just about right.

New WordPress Training Videos Posted

September 11th, 2008

We recently posted an all new collection of WordPress training videos for WordPress bloggers. Learn how to do the basics in WordPress.

You can view our recommended top ten wordpress training videos here. Just click on the headline for each numbered item to go to the video page.

You can also dive straight into our ListPipe WordPress video library from this page.

Our how-to videos are presented in high quality Quicktime on the site, and are available on YouTube if you want to see them in a smaller version. When you get to YouTube, do a search for 'ListPipe' and 'Wordpress' to find all the videos. There are currently 13 of them, covering topics such as logging in, and inserting images.

Each video on our demo blog includes written instructions on how to complete the task in the latest WordPress version. Each video is designed to teach you a specific task in between two and three minutes. For those of you new to WordPress blogging, this is an excellent way to become familiar with the basics of your WordPress system.

Take a look and let us know what you think. Enjoy!

Google Narrows SEO Objectives with Chrome

September 4th, 2008

With the release of Google's new browser called Chrome comes a narrowing of SEO objectives; 'top ten' isn't good enough.

Google released a new Internet browser into the wild yesterday, and almost instantly created a sweeping hit. While I sit by and wait for the Mac version to come out, I couldn't help but notice some important chatter on the new browser interface, and what some of the features are doing for the SEO marketplace.

In particular, the new search feature in Chrome instantly returns the top five results for any search. What?!?

Yes, you heard correctly; the new browser will show a user the top five results for any search typed into the search field. This means that if your website is number six, you may not be immediately visible to a searcher. Talk about turning the market on it's head...

It has long been known that a 'top three' presence was almost critical. Statistically speaking, most of us select our sites from the top two or three slots on any given search results page. Even worse, we typically do this within 7-10 seconds of getting the results page, and we rarely go below the top three. Searchers almost never go to page two. Nevertheless, a presence on the top page, or the 'top ten' was seen as a holy grail of SEO, and generally considered good placement.

Chrome may change the way we look at placement, and will certainly make a top five placement the critical goal.

Check out what CNN had to say about it...

Writing Right

September 3rd, 2008

I was always frustrated in English class as we learned the myriad rules to stylized writing. It occurred to me that while there are rules to writing correctly, those rules are somewhat flexible.

Writing organic SEO copy is flexible to the extent that you can write just about anything you want, however there are points to be gained for technical correctness.

With search algorithms becoming more and more sophisticated by the minute, it is becoming ever more important to include proper sentence structure and punctuation to set yourself apart from the masses. Proper punctuation, in particular, will not only help your readers get through your ideas, but will show the search engines that you are writing something more important that a love note to a high school crush.

And as you can imagine, Google and the other search engines are interested in understanding the difference between a silly note and a serious article.

Take care to include punctuation in your content. Punctuation will help you get your point across in a meaningful manner, and will appeal to the search engines as they digest your sentences and organize the keywords. Take care, too, to add highlighting. Highlighting is also recognized by the search engines, and when used properly can provide a little extra credit to specific keywords and phrases.

I have be reading an excellent book titled Eats Shoots and Leaves. This hilarious book is a great introduction to punctuation and proper use of language. Give it a try, and make sure to include punctuation in your organic content.

Natural Language

July 15th, 2008

Natural language is, of course, engaging. It's the way that we talk, in a natural flow with relevant thoughts bubbling in and descriptive sentences playing out in rhythm.

Writing web content in a natural tone is a good idea for a number of reasons. For starters, human readers want to engage with content that creates emotional interest. It is hard to create emotional interest with bullet points and lists (although these tools do have their place).

Natural language is what search engines are looking for when they read through your content for indexing. Search algorithms look for sentence structure and patterns that indicate natural language. Why? Because this is a good way to measure the integrity of a site, and to find keywords in context.

What is Natural Language?

Natural language includes extensive vocabulary, as well as commonly understood syntax. It is expressive, and rich with descriptive terms and added insight. Most importantly, natural language includes structure.

Building structure into content is where the trick is, and it can be intimidating for inexperienced writers. However, it isn't that hard once you establish a method for getting your ideas onto paper.

The opposite of natural language is when you use extensive lists, bullet points, and 'word clouds'. As I mentioned, these tools do have their place, but they are not considered 'natural language' tools, and are not considered good practice in an organic content writing campaign.

Good examples of natural writing for marketing content can be found in our ListPipe blogs.

The Amazing Power of Simple Words

July 11th, 2008


In SEO copywriting, saying the right thing can make a world of difference.

This is true in all forms of writing, but is most critical when writing your marketing content. It is especially critical when writing for the web, because you are working to appeal to human readership as well as search engines.

I was treated to a wonderful video on the web that illustrates the powerful meaning of words. The video at the following link is five minutes long. I don't think you will find the time wasted; check it out.


HISTORIA DE UN LETRERO (THE STORY OF A SIGN)

The Story of a Sign

Geotargeting; What Does It Mean?

July 3rd, 2008


Geotargeting is an SEO strategy used to focus keyword optimization for a specific geographic location. If you have a geographically centric business such as a real estate office, insurance company, or a local car lot, you should be putting some effort into creating geocentric content for your website or blog.

The basics of geotargeting are relatively easy; you are selling to a specific area, so market to that area with specific keyword modifiers. For example, instead of discussing your new 'hair style shop', make sure you modify your keywords with your local city, or nearest large city. Here is my comparison using this example...

Don't use: 'We just opened our new hair style shop, and we invite you to come to our open house.'

Do use: 'We just opened our new Detroit hair style shop, and we invite you to come to our open house.'

By including the location in your copywriting, you are helping your local customers find you more easily, and filtering out all those people who are searching for a style shop in another part of the country.

Additionally, you are reducing the amount of competition you have for the keyword term. There may be several million sites vying for 'style shop', but only a relative handful competing for 'detroit style shop'.

You can combine geotargeting with specialty modifiers to reduce competition even further. For instance if you are a style shop that specialized in hair coloring, you might pitch yourself as a 'detroit style shop for hair coloring'. In this way, you reduce the number of people who compete with you for the key phrase.

Note that by getting so specific, you are also reducing the number of people who will be searching for you to a specific set of customers who may search for a hair color style shop in Detroit. Don't worry; what you have done is target your optimal customer, which means you have increased your rate of conversion because you have attracted a very specific search to an exact match.

The more general your terms, the more people you may attract, however you will also have to weed through a lot more searchers to get a single conversion. The more specific you can be, the fewer hits you will get, however the hits you do get will be more valuable.

Geotargeting is an important tool in web marketing, especially when you are a geocentric product or service.

Beehive Credit Union Blogs Discovered

July 2nd, 2008

Beehive Credit Union is getting some big attention on the web this week. We are pretty excited about it.

NetBanker, a leading online finance and banking blog dedicated to reporting news about banking innovations, branding, financing and analysis found our Beehive Credit Union blogs and gave them a pretty exciting writeup. You can read the article HERE.

Of particular note, they mention the Beehive Credit Union blogs as evidence of two particular trends:

  • Developing a full Web presence from a blogging template
  • Creating custom websites for geographic areas or individual branches

We couldn't agree more; we are seeing more and more customers turning to blog websites as their one and only presence on the web. Blog technology has come a long way and lends itself well to customization. As you have heard us tout many times: blog software such as WordPress makes it easy to conduct organic marketing on the web with Powerful Custom Content™.

Secondly; creating custom websites for each geographic area of your business is becoming an essential tool as marketers realize that consumers search the web specifically for local services.

An example I will expand on in a future blog is my 'haircut' scenario. In a nutshell: you wouldn't go to a search engine and type in 'haircut' because you know it would return every style shop from New York to L.A. Most people know to perform a search including geographic location so that you get only places that offer a 'haircut' in 'yourtown'. This is how consumers search, and how smart marketers are found.

Beehive Credit Union is going at their marketing in a smart way: they have created individual blogs for each of their geographic locations, and customize their content for each location. This will ultimately raise their appeal for geographically localized searches. As a banking service, Beehive knows that their service appeals to a geographically oriented customer. Their personalized hometown approach makes this even more important for them. Delivering content in this way helps them get localized attention; the kind they want.

The NetBanker article about Beehive Credit Union is a great example of how a blog can garner attention for your business. In a case like this, blogs give news outlets something to talk about, and thereby spread the word. Our thanks to NetBanker for running a great story.

Notice, too, that NetBanker gives credit to Jeffry Pilcher at The Financial Brand.com for actually finding the Beehive Credit Union blogs. The Financial Brand found the blogs and posted a link on their Branding Briefs for June 26th.

Take a look at the article by NetBanker. You can find the article here: http://www.netbanker.com

Check out the link from The Financial Brand.com here: http://thefinancialbrand.com

You can see the blogs we are talking about by visiting our previous posting about them, here.

Ready to start your own web marketing campaign? Give us a call at ListPipe.

Frequency Rules

June 29th, 2008

Changing content on your website often is one of the most important things you can do in order to maintain a high search rank. Why? Simply put: Search engines are constantly on the lookout for new content to provide to their customers.

The appropriate rate of change depends on your goals. In a moment, I will offer a guideline for change frequency. But first, let me explain why frequency is so important...

Imagine that your website is like a bulletin board at the local coffee shop. As people come in and out of the coffee shop, they browse a look at the bulletin board and scan for something new. If this is their first visit to the coffee shop, they may consider everything to be new, and will be pretty excited about all the information.

On their next visit, the coffee shop customer will be eager to browse the board again. This time, they will recognize a few items, take note of some they missed last time, and notice anything newly posted.

On their third visit, they might notice that nothing has changed. If this is the case, you can bet that on thier fourth visit they will hardly take notice of the bulletin board at all. On subsequent visits, they will learn to ignore it all together. 'Nothing new to see over there' they might say.

Your web site is very much like the bulletin board. Search engines look at your site for the first time and get excited about new content. They quickly come back in a week or so to look for new material. If new material exists, they will come more and more frequently so as not to miss anything.

If your site appears stagnant, search engines will visit less and less frequently, reducing visits to as long as six months or more. This is a troublesome spot to be in because you might one day post something to your site that doesn't get indexed for several months. Bummer; your valuable new announcement will be hidden from the search engines for most of its effective time.

The answer: change (add) content often. Here are some guidelines based on three marketing goals...

1. Subscription or traffic-driven marketing goals. You want to attract users to your site in order to get them to subscribe and return often. You should be posting new content every day. This is a tough thing to do, and only works well in areas where you have a lot to write about. News sites, political blogs, how-to sites, and advice columns are perfect for this high level of frequency.

2. Product sales marketing goals. You have a product that you want to sell, and need to assure that the search engines are keeping you in a good position. Post 2-3 times a week. Make sure your content is relevant, and that you do not stray from your keywords. New content 2-3 times a week will give the search engines something to chew on, and assures that when they do come by, there is something fresh to bring them back soon.

3. Steady organic growth to build credibility. You have a corporate site, or a small business, and want to maintain good search engine credibility without becoming a professional blogger. Post once per week, and never less than twice a month. This will let the search engines know that, while you are not a power house, you have enough going on to maintain interest. Next time you issue an important press release, you will get into the search indexes in a week or two, instead of months.

In every case, make sure your posts are about 300 words, and chock full of relevant keywords. More than 300 words will start to seem like work, and fewer than 300 words will not be enough to convince the search engines that you are really saying something worth while.