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What SEO Looks Like in 2012: SEO Presentation

Sure, you could say this post is late to the party since we’re well into 2012 by now (April 3 to be exact).

But for those of you who aren’t heavily involved in the SEO industry or who don’t keep up with optimization news on a daily or weekly basis, you still might not understand the extent to which SEO has evolved over the past few years.

Last month I had the great privilege of speaking to the Atlanta Bloggers Meetup on this very topic.

If you’re interested in viewing the presentation, check it out here: SEO presentation – Atl bloggers meetup.

Here are a few takeaways:

SEO is not dead. The traditional SEO from a few years ago is dead, but many people are now lumping SEO practices into terms such as inbound marketing, content marketing, or Internet Marketing.
SEO used to be about onpage optimization and links, which, if your keywords are very competitive, isn’t enough to cut it in 2012
SEO has grown beyond simply building links, writing comments and optimizing tags.
In 2012, a successful social marketing plan will have a significant impact on search engine rankings, traffic and online profitability.
SEO is not the end-all-be-all of your marketing strategy; conversion is the goal of your SEO efforts. You can’t talk about SEO without talking about conversions

Again, the full “SEO in 2012″ presentation is here.

Enjoy!

Have You Over Optimized Your Site? There’s a Penalty for That

Good news fellow small business owners: Google is continuing to level the playing field for us.

While this really isn’t anything completely new (quality content has always been critical for SEO), the fact that Google is coming out to verify this new penalty is pretty newsworthy.

As I tell my small business owners during my SEO Atlanta training and DIY SEO talks, all of Google’s changes – while understandable frustrating and difficult to keep up with – are actually good for ethical business owners who have a quality website. Google’s frequent algorithm changes are actually intended to penalize sites that have overinflated high search results and reduce their high rankings. In other words, the spammers, scammers, and those trying to take the easy way out.

Another Google Penalty to “Level the Playing Field” for Small Business Owners

Now, according to Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, Google is working on a new penalty for sites that are “over-optimized” and “over SEO’ed.” Want to see an example of over optimized copy? And yes, this example is a little extreme but scary enough I’ve seen copy that’s just as bad:

Thanks to the good folks at Search Engine Land, here is a brief transcription of the talk Matt gave where he provided a rare “heads up” about this new penalty coming down in the next month or so:

“What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.”

Will your site move up in rankings? Or down? If you’ve over optimized (aka keyword stuffed your pages), I’d say right now is juuuussssttt about the best time to go and cut back on some of your on page keyword usage.

Bottom line: if you’re putting out quality content and sprinkling in your keywords judiciously like I always recommend, you have nothing to worry about. Carry on.

**I wanted to add an aside, because I know there are many Google haters out there who say that Google is just doing what’s in Google’s best interest to get more advertising dollars. Yes, Google does have to look out for #1, but I do believe that their changes are designed to give the searcher a better experience and to give quality websites a fair chance.

What do you think?

Stop Being a Scaredy Cat When it Comes to Keyword Research: Get Off Your Badonkadonk and Select Keywords that Convert

keyword research for small business owners

Courtesy of Mokra

Before I begin, I wanted to tell you that the original title for this blog post was “Keyword Research Basics: Select Keywords That Will Convert.” Kind of boring though, right? I thought I’d rev it up a notch and used the title that you now see. I’d love to know which you prefer (let me know in the comments). Okay, on to the post…

I love speaking to people about keyword research. It’s a challenging topic to perfect to a science because every business is so different and keyword research is often subjective. BUT, keyword research is also a lot of fun (in my nerdy opinion).

Keyword research is the foundation of your SEO efforts. Pick the wrong keyword, and you’ll be led along on an SEO strategy that will never bring you any rewards. It’s critical you pick the right keyowrds to optimize on your web pages and blog posts.

Keyword Tip: Get Specific

So many people choose 1-2 word keywords, to their peril. 1-2 word keyword phrases are most of the time just too darn general, and extremely competitive for most small business owners with a limited SEO budget. Let’s take my business, for example. What would be a good keyword?

Writer?
Copywriter?
Atlanta Copywriter?
Atlanta SEO Copywriter?

The first two are just way too general, the third – even though it’s only two words – is better because it targets a geographic location (“Atlanta Copywriter” is actually my primary keyword for my homepage) but the fourth keyword is my best converting keyword.

And right there is the reason we’re in this whole SEO thing to begin with. CONVERSION. Which keyword is going to bring you the most conversions? Not the most traffic per se, but the most conversions. For this blog post “conversion” means people who will type in a keyword, land on your site, and take your desired action. If you choose too general of a keyword, good chances are the person who lands on your site will hit the back button and find the more specific information they were looking for.

Keyword Phrases for Blog Posts vs. Website Pages

Most experts agree that long-tail keywords (5+ keyword phrases) convert very well. A few examples of long-tail keywords I pulled from my Google Analytics account include:

“best book on becoming a better storyteller in business”
“workshop in Atlanta for small business 2012”
“how to create a freelance copywriter website with WordPress”
“how to promote a service on LinkedIn”

But keep 2 factors in mind: long-tail keywords aren’t always appropriate for your website pages, and you can’t use more than 1 or 2 on a page because they will sound unnatural when used in the copy.

General vs. Specific Keywords: Where to Use Them

A good keyword research rule of thumb: you can be general on your homepage and about page (meaning general but PRACTICAL about which words you can realistically compete for to get to page 1 on Google), and more specific on your interior pages and blog posts.

Takeaways?

Evaluate keywords based on more than traffic volume
Strongly consider which words will bring you conversions
Understand that “Babies,” “Bananas,” “Weight Loss” and “Writer” will never be your keywords

Do you have any questions about keyword research? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll get back to you.

Teaching SEO for Small Business Owners at WordCamp Atlanta 2012 (AKA My Nerd Nirvana)

SEO for small business owners - WordCamp presentation

Photo courtesy of javajoba

WordCamp Atlanta 2012, which took place the first weekend of February, seriously rocked. Not that I’d expect anything less from a conference designed exclusively to bring together WordPress enthusiasts.

I had the privilege of leading two back-to-back sessions on search engine optimization for small business owners. My talk was formally titled, “SEO & WordPress: Do this, not that for the small business owner or solopreneur.” Two hours of talking about SEO and WordPress + meeting other cool business owners = a slice of nerd heaven.

As always, the audience was fabulous and there were lots of great questions and interaction. If you missed the presentation, here are a few links:

Atlanta social media consultant Charity Hisle gives a presentation recap on her website
The SlideShare link to my SEO for small business owners presentation
WordPress.tv recorded most of the talks from WordCamp Atlanta, so the video of my talk should be available soon (although as of publishing this post it’s not there yet)

For anyone that attended the presentation (or even if you didn’t attend but are trying to learn about search engine optimization), if you have any questions about SEO’ing your website, don’t hesitate to reach out!

search engine optimization for small business owners

Photo courtesy of Brandy Nagel

Announcing My Ebook Launch – Coming January 2012

I’m truly excited about something that’s about to happen in the next week: the launch of my first ebook, How to SEO Your Site: DIY Techniques for Small Business Owners.

In August 2011 I quietly decided to start writing my first “how to SEO” ebook for small business owners, solopreneurs and consultants who couldn’t afford expensive SEO services. I fielded questions frequently from SBOs who were frustrated by the technical jargon. Plus, a lot of people come to me wanting to know how I rank on the first page of Google for my keyword, “Atlanta Copywriter.”

Day by day SEO is becoming more small business friendly, and I certainly wanted to do what I could to be part of that.

The idea formulation, research, outlining, and drafting took a solid 4 months. Because my day job (client copywriting project work) has kept me very busy, I restricted myself to working on my ebook only during weekend, evening, and early morning hours. And finally, it’s ready! A few weeks ago I sent it to a proofreader and graphics layout person, and it is finally ready. I’m thrilled with how it turned out! I just uploaded the ebook to E-Junkie and I’m drafting my sales page now.

Here’s a sneak peak at the cover and table of contents: