Queen Bee Marketing’s Blog About Marketing, SEO, and Design.

I was writing down a list of ingredients to make some mixed drinks for this holiday weekend, and my mind drifted over to SEO. What do you think is the optimal number of short-tail keywords you can optimize a Web page for? I went back and started thinking about my drinks for the weekend again, and realized the good ones all had about 2-4 main ingredients.

My wife likes a White Russian, which has Vodka, Cream, and Kahlua - 3 ingredients. I’m more of an Amaretto Stone Sour kind of guy. The main ingredients there are Amaretto, Sour Mix, and Orange Juice - again 3 ingredients.

You can try to optimize a page for any number of keywords, but to actually get effective rankings most businesses will need to keep things simple and focus on a few keywords per page. The Long Island Iced Tea or Hairy Buffalo is not for everybody. The inexperienced drinker, or someone celebrating their 21st birthday, won’t go far if they start their night with one of these elaborate drinks, containing many highly concentrated ingredients. Unless you’re a powerhouse, it’s best to keep your optimization efforts simple, straightforward, and focused.

For the lightweights (those new to SEO) it might be better to start with a simple light beer, wine cooler, or Shirley Temple. For example, target the low competition keywords that will give you a good feeling but not make you sick.

I hope everybody has a great holiday this weekend! I don’t know what caused me to think of the drink/SEO analogy, but if anyone has some other drink ideas, feel free to share!

When it comes to SEO, natural links are so important. Gaining those links is a lot easier for some Web sites than others. Some industries are just more interesting and link-worthy than other, more “boring,” industries. This doesn’t have to be the case. A little bit of creativity, and link-bait, can go a long way.

About a week ago, I saw this page on Reddit: Vanity Plate Pictures. Most visitors to that page probably thought, “Wow, these are funny pictures!” But my first thought was, “Wow, great linkbait!” After clicking through their blog, I noticed several other posts that I had seen on Digg/Reddit as well. It would have been easy enough for a company like theirs, that sells/rents limos, to put up a brochure-ware site and call it a day. Although I’m not certain, because I don’t know the owner of the site, I’d be willing to bet that their extra creativity has paid off. (They’ve already gained 2 links from me - one here and one on my Tumblelog.)

It’s important to learn from sites like these. Even something boring, like car rentals, can gain a ton of exposure and attract natural links. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, there is a way to get attention.

User generated content, or UGC, can be extremely helpful for a company website. This form of interactivity can have several benefits and are not always that difficult to implement.

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Lately we’ve been working on a Content Management System to offer to our clients who need to make regular changes. Our biggest concern is that our SEO efforts won’t be as effective if part of the Web site is changed. The top areas of concern, ranked in order, are:

1. Title Tag
2. H1/H2 Tags
3. Keyword Density
4. Keyword Meta Description
5. Typos
6. Excessive Images/No ALT Attributes

All of these areas can be easily edited with the CMS we’ve chosen to work with. Of course some of these aren’t as crucial as others, but they are all important in some way. Some of our clients’ sites are ranking well simply because of the on-page factors we’ve implemented. The only way to stop this from being an issue is by educating each client who chooses to use the CMS, before giving them control over the site. It’s easier to avoid the problems than it is to correct them after the fact. In the end it’s the client’s site and their choice as to what to put on the site. We’ll do our best to advise and educate clients, and will also recommend they consult us on any major changes.

When you look at a magazine there are certain aspects that you expect to be there - easy to read text, a table of contents, pictures, interesting stories, etc. Web design is quickly becoming similar in the fact that people expect a page to have certain elements. The three main areas I see that overlap in Web and Magazine design are content, navigation, and design.

Content in magazines and Web sites is the biggest similarity between the two. Catchy headlines on the cover draw you in to read more. Lists and “How-to’s” are commonly used formats to grab attention. Giving away “secrets” and being the first to publish a news story are also common tactics of magazines. Now go look at the front page of Digg or Reddit. You’ll see these same formats are popular through out the Web, too. Good content is good whether it’s published in a magazine or on a blog.

Navigation is another important feature of both magazines and Web. When you open a magazine you expect a table of contents to be the first thing you see. It’s usually clearly laid out and may have call-outs for major topics of interest. On a Web site, people expect the navigation to be near the top of the page and easy to find. Mystery Meat navigation is an easy way to turn away readers. If I picked up a magazine to find an article and the table of contents was in the middle of the magazine, or I needed a decoder ring to find what I was looking for, I would go to another source to find the information. The same goes for Web, don’t make people think too hard when navigating your site.

Finally, the design of magazines can teach you a lot about Web design. Fonts should be clear and easy to read. Pictures of people are often a good way to help your readers relate with you or your topic. And the most important design element from any good magazine is consistency through out. Moving the navigation around from page to page of a Web site or changing colors drastically confuses Web site visitors and may cause them to leave the site.

Turning to a proven medium, like magazines, is a good way to see which direction newer technologies, like the Web, are headed. Following the tactics learned from magazines is a good way to keep people interested and coming back to your site.

I heard recently that most of marketing can be considered science because it is normally a matter of trial and error until you find the formula that works. I agree with the basic idea, but would emphasize that there is normally a strong theory behind the original trials that result in error. Thomas Edison’s quote : “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work” is the best example of what I mean.

We recently ran a branding experiment using PPC ads. Knowing that click through rates are statistically very low, we decided to design the ads more towards branding than to achieve actual clicks (granted we weren’t against click through). We identified keywords where INTX Microbials wasn’t ranking as strong as we would like and then designed PPC ads with the company name in all the ad variations. We also targeted keywords in which they had front page SERPS and used the same PPC ads.

The results? A 10% higher click though rate on ads where INTX had natural front page placement. What does this tell us? Not much really, but you can make some assumptions (or theories). Double placement solidified users interest and trust in the company and while click through rates on PPC ads are normally low, there can be arguments made that they can be a powerful branding tool if designed correctly.

I was reading Bruce Clay’s blog and Lisa Barone had an article about Promoting Yourself Using Other Brands which was very interesting. I agree with Lisa that using PPC ads to market your business on competitor brand names is not likely the best tactic available, but it is a clear example of using PPC as branding.

I’ve done my share of PPC advertising and haven’t been a big fan in the past mainly due to cost, but using the ad placement to obtain exposure and increase company branding has warmed my heart towards PPC advertising in recent years.

When writing copy for a print piece, most people will focus entirely on their message. Keyword density isn’t much of an issue. Writing good content and getting the point across becomes the main goal. Obviously, this is a good strategy. But when writing for the Web, too many people become obsessed with their keyword density.

Focusing more on keywords will most likely help with search engine rankings, but what happens when someone finds the site through the search engines? Will the copy make the visitors want to convert? Many visitors may turn away from the site after not finding what they’re looking for if the copy is poor. If this is the case, rewriting the copy as if it were for a print piece might help. Once the copy is solid, go back and revise it, adding keywords where appropriate. Analyzing the copy to include keywords after it has been written for human visitors will produce much better results - not only with conversion but also in the search engines.

Now go back to the print piece. Using the same strategy, analyze the copy and include more keywords. This will improve clarity and focus on your topic. Including keywords in your print materials will also reinforce the association between you and your subject/product/service/etc, which will help build your overall brand.

Welcome to the second installment of my internet buzz word recap. In part one I talked about Web 2.0, blogs, RSS feeds, and weather or not they are worthwhile tools for your online business strategies. In this continuation I will be talking about AJAX.

AJAX (not the dish soap)
At this time, AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) is one of the hottest buzz words on the web. What is it exactly? Well that’s hard to say. Many developers are still debating what AJAX is and isn’t, but most will say that it relates to the ability to access new information without having to refresh the web page. One of the most famous examples of

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So you’ve heard about SEO (search engine optimization) and have decided it is a good fit for your business model. The question now is: “Where do I begin?”. The answer is simple: Keyword research. SEO practices without proper keyword research is a little like fishing without any bait. If they’re really hungry you may get lucky, but odds are you won’t catch anything worth keeping.

I recently met with a business owner that sells manufactured homes (better known as mobile homes). The company is established and has decent branding, but lacks a Web site (thus the reason I was there). Preliminary meetings with our prospective clients normally involve quite a bit of investigation into the business, their primary target audience, and brainstorming about potential keywords. During the meeting I learned about his industry, clients, and the challenges his business encounters. He explained very clearly that they despise the term “Mobile Home” and preferred the terms “Manufactured Housing” or “Modular Homes.” I am also a Real Estate Broker and have seen this marketing shift in the last several years and was not surprised.

After the meeting was over and I got back to the office to begin the research, it quickly became obvious that the business owner was not going to like what I was going to tell him. The term “mobile home” was searched approximately 5x’s more than “modular home.” If he wants to build an effective Web site for his company, he would need to optimize for the term “mobile home” - the term he despises.

This story is a prime example of what keyword research is all about. SEO is not just about making the site rank high in the search engines, it’s about doing market research and then targeting the desired traffic. Please don’t misunderstand, just because one keyword has more traffic than another, it doesn’t mean it is better for your business to optimize for that keyword. For example: As a Real Estate Broker would it be smarter to optimize for “homes for sale” (A) or “Real Estate Agent” (B)? Even though (A) may have 10x’s the amount of traffic; an individual that searches for (B) is likely a better target market. Some people can browse for homes for years without actually buying, while someone searching for the services of a Real Estate Agent is more likely to convert.

Keyword research and analysis is the basic foundation of SEO work. It can mean the difference of success and failure for your online marketing strategy. I have been fortunate enough to be involved in campaigns that actually increased specific keyword traffic via integration of Offline and Online marketing techniques. In most cases though, the end human user is the driving factor which determines the direction of your SEO efforts and Web design.