Heres and example. “Pro Audio Speakers.” A quick look at the keyword tool and it will tell you that for a “broad match” search, you could expect a share of 22,000 searches – the higher your rank, the bigger share you’ll get. I have a site that ranks in the top ten for this “broad match” search and I get about 5 hits per day. Now it’s not a mature site. It has been built purely to attack that one key phrase in order to test the market before I put more work in. I also notice that I share the first page with a similar site – very immature and frankly, shite.

Why the discrepancy and why are two similarly crap sites appearing at the top of what should be a very competitive niche? Here’s why.

What does broad match mean? Look at Google’s own definition. It says Broad match = no punctuation. Phrase match = “keyword” and Exact match = [keyword]. You knew that already right? Look further. Simply typing ‘keyword 1 keyword 2′ without punctuation and appearing at page one does not mean that you have achieved page one for broad match. Broad match actually means “.. for searches on similar phrases and relevant variations”.

Phrase Match means “.. for searches that match the exact phrase”. Typing your keywords in inverted commas doesn’t give you you “phrase match” position.

Exact match means “.. for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively”. So when you type keyword 1 keyword 2 into google and you find you are at page 1, congratulate yourself on achieving that position for “exact match”

There are tools – Market Samurai is an example – that will give you you “broad match” ranking. How they can do this I have no idea because the ranking will vary widely depending on the exact variation of word used – an almost infinite number of combinations.

When Google tells me that 22,000 people searched on Pro Audio Speakers – they mean that 22,000 searched on this and similar phrases. 22,000 is the size of the niche, not the number of searches for that phrase. To be “Number 1″ in that niche, you need to own the keyword and all of the other similar keywords.

The SEO Lessons

Lesson 1 – When looking for an estimate of traffic for a keyword – use Googles keyword tool and examine [exact] match. Interpret the broad match results as an estimate of the size of a niche. To capture a share of that, you need to optimise for all similar words and phrases. No one said it would be easy.

Lesson 2 – Should you use tools like Market Samurai. Yes. But be very careful how you interpret the numbers and, importantly, heed the following final lesson.

The Final Lesson – Lesson 3 – When SEO gurus hype up the potential of internet marketing, take it with a pinch of salt. Lots of people make exactly the same misinterpretation that I made, that I could attack a valuable niche by targeting specific keyword  - but the gurus remain relatively silent on how exactly to interpret SEO research – that first glance at the data looks very compelling and it’s tempting to dive straight in. The good gurus (Ed Dale and Michelle MacPhearson are my personal favourites) will warn you about all the hard work that is required, but even they won’t feel obliged to give the full health warning. Look before you leap.

So is Google Keyword Tool Inaccurate? No. Not within reasonable margins of error. It is the interpretation that you put on the numbers that is inaccurate.

I am not going to bad mouth either Michael Roberts or Ed Dale, but … Traffic Bug?

(The background: Michael Roberts is behind Traffic Bug. It seemed like a nice idea – not great but OK, for newbies, at first glance. It claims to help get your site indexed quickly and it will create backlinks while you sleep. Ed Dale is behind the Thirty Day Challenge. I like Ed and I like the Thirty Day Challenge. Ed recommended the use of Traffic Bug during the 2009 Thirty Day Challenge. Traffic bug didn’t live up to the claims made. You can read about it on the many forums where its failing have been discussed.)

I gave Traffic Bug a try in 2009. I became suspicious early on. The site was down without adequate explanation for a while – some excuse about software upgrade. The support pages were full of spelling errors and poor grammar – it didn’t even feel like a beta program. Yet they  where asking for money! But I was patient and I gave it a proper trial. Afterall, a recommendation from Ed Dale has some credibility. But eventually I gave up and paid them nothing. It simply wasn’t adding any value.

Today I got an email from Michael. The email begins:

“Well there is no doubt that Traffic-Bug is working better than ever”

This is untrue. There is a great deal of doubt that Traffic Bug is working better than ever? It isn’t working. As Michael explains in his email:

“The bad news is Google visited our site …. and put a warning up on our site”

This warning says that Traffic Bug may harm your computer. It goes on:

“So this morning we have requested another review from Google to scan the site and remove the warning but they are taking their sweet time with it”

Like it’s Google’s fault? Their sweet time? Like they’ve got nothing better to do than try to dig Traffic Bug out of a hole?

Michael says in his email, by way of explanation:

“On Sunday morning a hacker attacked our server trying to shut us down. Well they failed miserably and no damage was done”

Are you kidding? No damage was done? Traffic Bug is Toast! The hackers seem to have achieved their objective perfectly.

The SEO Lesson

The 3 worst internet marketing mistakes you can make.

• Don’t Respect your customers. Issue “software” with support pages that look like an early draft of a pre beta project that doesn’t work.
• Host your software in a vunerable place so that disgruntled customers can piss on it.
• While explaining/apologising for faults, tell lies to your customers.

Seriously, you have to respect your customers. If you are expecting them to part company with their money, do them the service of working for it. And if you are unlucky enough to suffer the ultimate humiliation – admit defeat. Accept you screwed up. You failed. Give up.

But start again – Immediately. This time, do it properly.

Remember – failure is temporary. Giving up is permanent.

Good luck.

There is speculation that the reported removal of Google Search from the iPhone OS 4 heralds what could be one of the biggest upsets in internet search. Yahoo and Bing already close to Microsoft, are hardly great bedfellows for Apple to consider as an alternative and without Google, what will Apple do? Develop their own search capability?

For years now, search engine optimization has focused around Google. Yahoo has been important and Bing is becoming more important, but with Google off the iPhone and increasing use of mobile devices for search, the future of SEO is looking less certain everyday.

The SEO Lesson

Always look to see how the rules evolve and develop SEO strategies that are agile to embrace change and adopt new methods. Take great care not to invest too heavily in a single approach

As they say, adapt or die.

This seems terribly primitive today but that was in the day. Much of the content we use today was simply impossible in 1994. YouTube wasn’t so much invented in the 21st century – it became possible in the 21st century. Bandwidth used to be actually rationed in order to prevent it being swallowed up by what was seen as excessive multimedia usage.

So when I see that Google now officially scores web page speed (in the great Weblinx as well as many other places) it is no surprise – indeed it is a surprise to see it has taken so long. The search engines add value by filtering and prioritizing according to relevance. And user experience is rlevant to just about everybody. If there are two equally relevant pages for my search, I am pleased that Google now prioritizes the one that will load more quickly.

But is this news to the Web Designers? Should this be something we attend to urgently?

Answer: No!

Putting it simply, if you had to be told that user experience was important, you have some more fundamental things to learn. Whatever your website aims to achieve it will achieve it better if your users don’t have to wait for it. This is more fundamental than ranking – it is the most basic of very basic usability.

The SEO Lesson

There are somethings that will make an incremental change to your ranking and, as we all know, incremental changes to ranking can make a huge difference. But don’t be blinded to the obvious. Good content, good layout and good performance are absolutely critical.

Enhancing your site for speed to get a better ranking is like filling your gas tank and calling it fine tuning.

Duh!

Don’t be fooled into thinking that successful SEO is easy. It isn’t. It takes commitment and hard work. This is probably the single biggest mistake that people make – believing that it is easy. But most people that do fall away and those of us that are left know it’s not easy. So what – apart from thinking it’s easy – are the most common SEO mistakes that we make and how can we avoid them?

These are some of the top issues that are most often overlooked. We all make mistakes but if we learn from them they’re not mistakes, they’re lessons.

1. SEO Optimized Domain Name

Just because Google, Apple and WalMart have quirky brand names – it doesn’t mean that your idea for a funky brand will be any use. Incorporating keywords into your domain name is a highly valuable  SEO technique. It’s much easier to rank highly with pizzadelivery.com than it is PapaPizza.com. Papa Pizza might sound like a great name for a Pizza business but it won’t help to get you orders online.

And get your domain suffix right. .com is best if you have a global market, but if your focus on Canada for example, .ca will outrank .com. And don’t be too dismissive of other suffixes either. pizzadeliver.biz is likely to outrank new-pizza-delivery-online.net

Consider the domain name carefully balancing the pros and cons of the keyword you are target, the use of hyphens and the suffix.

2. Content Quality

Sites copied from others, bought content, poorly presented content and non expert content are irrelevant to the reader and the search engines know this. You risk losing rank severely if you adopt these approaches to producing content. There is no substitute for good quality content and no short cuts. It’s best to stick to a niche that you have some expertise in or enthusiasm for. Read SEO Lesson4: Face Up to it. Some People Just Don’t Like You and SEO Lesson 3: Never Mind the Quality – Feel the Width

3. Quality of Backlinks

Backlinks are important but rather than concentrating time and effort on posting in every forum and commenting on as many blog posts as you can find, spend some time being selective and make sure you get links from quality, highly ranked sites. Post in very poor quality sights and you’ll be seen as spammy.

4. Meta Description

You may have heard that the meta tags on your site will have little or no effect on your ranking. You might want to put some keywords there anyway just in case because it can’t do any harm – Right?

Wrong. The meta description of your site is the text that appear in Google Search results. If you don’t have a meta description, Google will present an extract from your page. If you have a well written and compelling meta description, you won’t improve your ranking but you will certainly improve your CTR from the Google.

Page 1 on Google is only useful if people then click on your site. Ranking is of no use if your click through rate (CTR) is poor.

5. Image Tags

Images are grea to enhance content but the search engines can’t read them. Alway ensure that description and alt tags are included that use keyword appropriately.

6. Wrong Anchor Text on Internal Links

“Click Here” is a wasted opportunity. Always use keyword anchor text when linking internally

7. Keyword Ambiguity

This is subtle, but take some time to consider keywords and phrases to understand how they might be used by search engine users. You may want a keyword or phrase that is search very regulalry but be careful in case it is being search for different reasons than you think.

For example: you want to set up a company offering to organize office parties – a kind of mobile DJ set up. You think that “dance in the office” might be a good keyword phrase. Your research tells you that that phrase is used quite often. Perhaps there’s lots of demand for office party DJs. Stop and think about it. Try putting “dance in the office” into Google. When you see Ricky Gervais staring back at you, you realize that, while people often use that phrase in Google, it’s not for what you were thinking.

8. Spend Too Much Time Checking Your Ranking?

Measure your tomato plants every day and feed them once a week and watch them die. Water them once a day and measure them once a week – they’ll thrive. Read SEO Lesson 2: Don’t Count Things That Happen – Make Things Happen That Count

9. Respect the Guidelines

Don’t buy into Black Hat techniques. A Black Hat career will be short lived. You may not be stupid, but compared to the might of Google, Yahoo Bing and the honest internet community – you are. Read SEO Lesson 5: Google is Your Friend

10. Over Ambitious Keyword Choice

Always check the competition for a keyword and never believe that because there are lots of searches on a keyword that you can get a piece of it. You can’t – not unless you have real money to invest. Read Fundamentals of SEO Lesson3: Choose Your Fish and Pond Size

Google is and will remain for the foreseeable future the dominant player in search by a long way. There are big players whose lifespan as the most dominant is terminated a rapidly as their growth (myspace is an example and facebook will be another) but Google has successfully diversified into so many important areas of the internet that they are very likely to be around for a long time to come. And if you want to be serious about SEO and Web Marketing you need to stay on the right side of Google.

Google from its inception fully bought into many of the internet ethics that had become established in the 1990s and now, concepts like freedom of expression without censorship and of a sharing community are now to a large extent policed by Google. Use unethical or underhand tactics to promote your site via search and Google will drop you like a stone. Publish high quality content that is genuinely relevant to the web community and Google will reward you with high ranking.

So staying on Google’s side is important. A Black Hat SEO career will be short lived.

It’s the same for Adsense. Fall foul of Google’s ad policies and your account will be cancelled. Always remember that Google is a business and if you use Adsense ads on your sight then you are in business too. You need to behave in a business like fashion. Google’s policies are Google’s. Infringe them and suffer the consequences. If your adsense account is cancelled, 99% of the time you know exactly why. The forums are full of complaints from “innocent” victims of Google’s adsense policy. It’s business. If Google don’t want to deal with your they don’t have to. But they don’t canel compliant accounts. That would not make good business sense.

I recently received a warning from Google. I was displaying their ads on a sight that promotes lingerie. As you would expect, there are images on the sight of women in underwear. The target audience is mature females and it was no more lewd than the Victoria’s Secret Catalogue. Google decided that it was in breach of policy quoting “content containing lewd or provocative poses, or close-ups of breasts, butts, or crotches” as the breach. In my judgement, there was no breach and I was concerned about who might have made this judgement. A 20 year old male in India might have an entirely different view of what is lewd compared to a 45 year old female in France for example. But I was reminded by the experience that it is not my judgment that counts – they are not my ads. They are Google’s. Don’t complain. Comply.

The SEO Lesson

Always remember that Google is a business and it’s best interests are served by maintaining the principles it has worked to develop and support since it’s inception. The only way to rank highly within a Google search is to publish high quality content with relevant quality back links. Obey the rules for Adsense and adopt only White Hat SEO strategies.

They say keep your friend close and your enemies closer. Forget it. Just stay friends with Google.

SEO Lessons

It’s true: it’s like facing up to alcoholism by starting to recognise that you have a problem – successful marketing starts with recognising that not everybody is going to buy your message – and you’ll discover this in spades if you’ve selected a niche that you are not truly aligned to.

Think of it in terms of an example. Suppose you identify a potentially lucrative market niche to provide support for breast feeding new moms. All of the market research suggests that there’s money to be made in this niche. If you’re an experienced mother with experience of overcoming challenges to successfully nurse a couple of kids this could be a great niche for you.

If on the other hand, you’re a single man in your late 20s with an obsession for rock music and wrestling, how easy do you think it would be to develop this niche? You could invest lots of time reading and studying and develop some knowledge and expertise but you’ll never match the knowledge of your audience – you just won’t. Think about it. Could you successfully engage with potential customers in this niche in a real world face to face situation? Could you attend  a support group of nursing mothers and make any kind of impact impact? You wouldn’t fit in. You would feel uncomfortable. So why would you do this on the internet?

People make this mistake all the time. Just google “Six Sigma” and, scattered amongst the experts, you find evidence aplenty of people still at college that think they can read the blurb on a a book about Lean Business and all of a sudden they’re Jack Welch.

I’ve done it myself. My wife thought of lingerie as a niche when I first started my SEO journey. Too big I thought. How about a sub-niche like corsets? A good niche to develop. Not too much competition, potentially lucrative and certainly good to cut my internet marketing teeth on. But I’m a man for goodness sake. My audience are women, many of whom have devoted significant parts of their life in corset training their waist down to wasp like proportions. They know corsets. Reading a few wiki articles is not going make me an expert and, when I think about it, I have no desire to become an expert. I learned that you need to be an expert and have empathy before you can tackle a niche successfully.

The SEO Lesson

When selecting a niche, stay within your comfort zone. Only attempt to develop a niche that you will be credible in, that you are an expert in or you have the enthusiasm and commitment to become an expert in. If you are struggling to make an impact in a niche, be honest with yourself and ask yourself if you’re in the right place. It’s not really that people don’t like you – it could be that you’re just in the wrong market. Get out and start again. Don’t beat yourself up. You will find somebody that loves you eventually.

SEO Lessons on a Smart Phone

They say there’s an app for everything – now you can eveb get SEO Lessons on your iPhone – or your Blackberry – or any smart phone.

It’s not quite an app but seo-lesson.net is now optimised for smart phones. That means you can read updates news, lessons and fundamentals on your phone without powering up your computer.

It looks just like an app – just navigate to http://seo-lessons.net on your phone and try it out

The quality of presentation around the web is about as varied as the quality of its content. There are some superb websites out there that are content free and some appalling deliver of very good content. Where are you on the quality spectrum? Where do you want to be? Where should you be?

This is not an easy set of questions to answer and the ideal approach is certainly not as simple as aiming for the best possible quality in both content and presentation. If that’s your answer you don’t understand the question. There’s much more to it.

Consider a few examples. First, an example of very high quality content matched with very high quality presentation: Apple

Apple’s iconic brand is one of the most recognised and trusted in the world. Their products fly off the shelves. Their websites are gorgeous and their content flawless. Apple are the pinnacle of web style. They need to be. As a bleeding edge technology company to have anything less would be unthinkable. Should you aim for that level of content and quality of presentation? It is a worthy aim but you’d need a healthy bank balance. The best websites in the world don’t just happen – there’s good money behind them. You need a lot of money to support a web site of that quality and, lets face it, if you’ve got that kind of money you can just as easily buy your traffic. For most web marketers we have to accept that the quality of our presentation will be a compromise of some sort and our challenge is to work out how far we compromise.

Consider a second example: Ed Dale and the thirty day challenge.

The thirty day challenge is a web marketing course distributed on the internet via podcasts and YouTube videos. Ed himself is a successful, affable, Australian web marketer and he presents much of the 30DC course. He’s a great bloke and his presentation quality is about as bad as it comes. I don’t know how it could be worse. His co-presenters are no better – filming training videos in the car – while driving – if the camera falls off the dash board – no problem – no need to re-film – just put it out as it is. The worst example – Ed himself giving a lesson in the principles of marketing. No Powerpoint from Ed. Instead a scrap of paper – not even a fresh scrap. It looks like he got it out of the waste basket. He draws diagram on this scrap of paper as he talks about marketing – even his diagrams are badly drawn scrawl.

But the content. The content is superb. It is awesome. It is about as good as it gets. Seriously, if you’ve never seen the thirty day challenge – go and dig it out. And this illustrates an important principle. If your content is strong, you don’t need whizzy websites and fancy graphics. The content will speak for it self. Lauren Luke has become famous all over the world for her makeup tips. Filming lessons from her bedroom on a cheap camera, the quality of the movies aren’t exactly professional but her content was spot on and hit the target. In fact, the homemade quality of her lessons added a level of authenticity that helped her to connect with her teenage audience.

So quality of presentation matters less than quality of content. But does that mean it’s OK to cut corners on presentation quality? No. Not even nearly yes. And this is a mistake that many people make. Ed Dale and Laura Luke are among the best in the world as what they do. They can get away with it. Eric Clapton could probable get a tune out of an elastic band and a cardboard box. He’s Eric Clapton. Face it – you’re not.

The SEO Lesson

World class presentation is time consuming, costly and requires highly specialist skills. It is out of reach for most of us and it won’t compensate for poor quality or even mediocre content. (You can’t polish a turd as they say.)

Really good quality content can shine through with lesser quality presentation but don’t make the mistake of thinking that your potential customers will be impressed if you’re sloppy – that’s disrespectful to your readers and they repay you by never returning. Don’t insult their intelligence by pretending that your “mistales are deliferate” or that they don’t matter. Only the best quality content – and I mean the world class best – can survive poor presentation.

Don’t worry that your website doesn’t look like Apple’s but do the best you can with the equipment, software and skills that you have. Show some respect for your audience and demonstrate that you’ve made an effort and above all – ensure that your content quality is as good as it can possibly be.

P.S.

Just in case Eric Clapton is reading this – sorry, you are Eric Clapton

Think about this as a daily routine and see if you recognize it.

Get up early.

Get a coffee and turn the computer on. Go straight to your adsense account and get a quick check to see how many ad impressions and clicks you’ve got. See what’s of interest then go to google analytics to drill down into detail of who been looking at your site and why. What search queries are being used and how close are they to the keywords your concentrating on? Where is the traffic coming from? Go to your affiliate account pages and see what activity there’s been. Express silent disapointment. Look at twitter and check out your facebook messages.

Get another coffee

Now that the trivial meaningless stuff is over, get down to the serious business of internet marketing and check your ranking in Market Samurai. Go to Google Reader and see what’s being said in your niche. Read it all. Get distracted by amusing rants about how Macs are great and PCs are shit.

It’s time for another coffee and probably a bite to eat. You could really do with a break to refresh the brain cells and reflect on achievements so far today.

So what have you achieved so far today? Answer: Nothing!

How long have you been “working”? A couple of hours? And you’ve done zip. What’s more, if your numbers are the same as yesterday, you’ve spent 2 hour confirming your miserable failure and you’ve set yourself up for a non-productive day. If your numbers are great, you’re going to spend the rest of the day congratulating yourself on becoming a complete genius in your sleep. You’ve done the equivalent of spending two hours at the water cooler with the company soothsayers sharing meaningless company gossip. Frankly, you’re an idiot!

But don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re in good company. This is a very natural way to behave. It’s a symptom of enthusiasm and commitment. But daily and thorough scrutiny of your business numbers is worse than pointless.

Suppose you grew a tomato plant from seed. Each day, when it’s a seedling, you’d water it once, maybe twice a day. Then, when you plant it outside, you again water it everyday, feed it once a week perhaps and two or three times a week you’d prick out unproductive stems. If you do this, you are likeley to get a strong healthy plant that will grow a few inches each week and eventiually produce some delicious fruit. You could measure it each week to see that it’s growing healthily and get satisfaction from your efforts.

Now, suppose you did this the other way round. Instead of watering the plant every day and measuring it once a week, you measured it once per day and watered it once a week. What would you see? You’d see no change most days (the daily growth isn’t easily measurable) and over the course of a week you’d see some growth. But not for long because you’d eventually see it whither and die because you hadn’t fed and watered it enough.

The Lesson

Instead of counting things that happen, make things happen that count. Feed and water your websites daily. Measure them weekly.

Changes don’t happen daily, they happen weekly or even monthly. Of course you are going to look at some  things daily, it’s important that you do (see SEO Lesson 1)  but don’t do it at the expense of producing quality content and backlinks. That is the food and water that your websites need to grow.