SEO can be maddening for offline marketers such as myself transitioning to the online marketing world. In making this transition I just had an epiphany sparked by a discussion I just had with one of my Skype discussion groups. In offline marketing we are taught to use emotionally charged words depending on our targeted market. Words that evoke emotions such as greed, fear, love, hate, pride etc. are utilized throughout our marketing and is probably equivalent to keywords in online marketing.
When I sold Real Estate for buyers we focused a lot on pride, in my tax business fear was a dominating emotion especially fear of the IRS and fear of audits. In my tax business I specialized in Home Based Business owners and my two biggest client groups were Daycare Providers and Network Marketers. The most effective emotion in the Network Marketing industry was greed.
In offline marketing we send our advertising out through mediums that get us the best results. Newspapers and periodicals are sent to people's homes, flyers are put into people's hands or on their door our car, radio is broadcast to people listening to their radios. We learn how to get a response through our ads with these emotionally charged words.
Then we are taught how to write copy that not only uses these emotionally charged words but we are taught how to use tie downs like wouldn't it, couldn't it, shouldn't it. We are taught how to develop closing sequences that get lots of little yeses leading to the big yes.
Then we come to the online marketing arena and all the rules change. At first the changes are not obvious. We hear familiar terms like call to action and compelling headlines. But unlike in the offline marketing arena it appears that to play in this game you have to contend with this huge monster called Google. And this creates a huge paradigm shift in how one has to develop their marketing tactics. Offline we send our stuff out, online you have to be found. And you have to be found through Google. Bing does not really matter; Yahoo does not really matter only the Google search engine at this time really matters.
Sure there are advertising sites, Google AdWords, Craigslist and Facebook Classified ads and who knows what else is bound to pop up but none of these are true direct response marketing and function more like billboards and posters in high traffic areas. The closes thing to marketing material being sent directly to a person is email marketing which due to spam and individuals emails being overwhelmed with tons of stuff it is becoming increasingly ineffective unless you have a dedicated list looking forward to stuff you are sending them.
It seems that in order to market successfully on line you have to find out two things - what words or phrases that people are using to search for stuff on Google and what words and phrases that Google does not like. Online copywriters don't so much worry about closing sequences as they do Search Engine Optimization often called SEO. That means writing copy in such a way that Google spiders will find you and elevate you to the top of the heap on their clients searched words or phrases.
Besides such little things as meta tags, title tags, h1 tags and making sure your keywords and phrases are at the top of your copy, SEO is about two key elements. One is keywords, you know those words or phrases that people plug into Google to search for stuff and secondly Google perceived relevancy of your copy. Two websites being equal as far as keywords are concerned Google's perception of relevancy will determine who gets the top spots.
The precise keywords and phrases have to be strategically placed in your copy. But you have to be careful because certain words and phrases it seems Google has a hatred for and will band you. Keywords such as riches, wealth, success and money are among these words Google hates and could possibly even penalize you for using by forbidding your site from ever showing in their search results (I have a lot to say about such power being in the hands of one company but not today)
The density or the amount of times your selected keywords or phrases are placed in your copy becomes critical, too often and you will be penalized, not enough and you won't be recognized. Best rule of thumb is to use them were it makes sense in your copy. Trying to figure out percentages is simply not working with today's advanced algorithms. Best to focus on content with the understanding that if your key words or phrases are not in your copy then when people search for it you will not be found so where it makes sense you must use them.
Next is relevancy despite all the stuff we hear about backlinks there is far more to being determined as relevant by Google search engines than backlinks. Simple things such as being listed in the yellow pages can make your site more relevant than another site. Whereas backlinks are still very important you can have link spam that could make you irrelevant with Google. This topic is just too extensive a topic to cover here, besides this is about an epiphany concerning my transition from offline marketer to full time online marketing. But I will add this tidbit that I have learned about being perceived as relevant with Google. Avoid duplicate content. websites with identical pages, scraped content, heavily distributed articles and boiler plate pages/sites can hurt your relevancy perception with Google.
Even when you are the original author putting the exact same article into e-zines and blogs can hurt your relevancy if the same articles are posted on the websites you want to come up in the Google search engines. On the sites you want to rank in Google keep all content as original and unique as possible.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?SEO-Epiphany-of-an-Offline-Marketer-Turned-Online-Marketer&id=6713183
When I sold Real Estate for buyers we focused a lot on pride, in my tax business fear was a dominating emotion especially fear of the IRS and fear of audits. In my tax business I specialized in Home Based Business owners and my two biggest client groups were Daycare Providers and Network Marketers. The most effective emotion in the Network Marketing industry was greed.
In offline marketing we send our advertising out through mediums that get us the best results. Newspapers and periodicals are sent to people's homes, flyers are put into people's hands or on their door our car, radio is broadcast to people listening to their radios. We learn how to get a response through our ads with these emotionally charged words.
Then we are taught how to write copy that not only uses these emotionally charged words but we are taught how to use tie downs like wouldn't it, couldn't it, shouldn't it. We are taught how to develop closing sequences that get lots of little yeses leading to the big yes.
Then we come to the online marketing arena and all the rules change. At first the changes are not obvious. We hear familiar terms like call to action and compelling headlines. But unlike in the offline marketing arena it appears that to play in this game you have to contend with this huge monster called Google. And this creates a huge paradigm shift in how one has to develop their marketing tactics. Offline we send our stuff out, online you have to be found. And you have to be found through Google. Bing does not really matter; Yahoo does not really matter only the Google search engine at this time really matters.
Sure there are advertising sites, Google AdWords, Craigslist and Facebook Classified ads and who knows what else is bound to pop up but none of these are true direct response marketing and function more like billboards and posters in high traffic areas. The closes thing to marketing material being sent directly to a person is email marketing which due to spam and individuals emails being overwhelmed with tons of stuff it is becoming increasingly ineffective unless you have a dedicated list looking forward to stuff you are sending them.
It seems that in order to market successfully on line you have to find out two things - what words or phrases that people are using to search for stuff on Google and what words and phrases that Google does not like. Online copywriters don't so much worry about closing sequences as they do Search Engine Optimization often called SEO. That means writing copy in such a way that Google spiders will find you and elevate you to the top of the heap on their clients searched words or phrases.
Besides such little things as meta tags, title tags, h1 tags and making sure your keywords and phrases are at the top of your copy, SEO is about two key elements. One is keywords, you know those words or phrases that people plug into Google to search for stuff and secondly Google perceived relevancy of your copy. Two websites being equal as far as keywords are concerned Google's perception of relevancy will determine who gets the top spots.
The precise keywords and phrases have to be strategically placed in your copy. But you have to be careful because certain words and phrases it seems Google has a hatred for and will band you. Keywords such as riches, wealth, success and money are among these words Google hates and could possibly even penalize you for using by forbidding your site from ever showing in their search results (I have a lot to say about such power being in the hands of one company but not today)
The density or the amount of times your selected keywords or phrases are placed in your copy becomes critical, too often and you will be penalized, not enough and you won't be recognized. Best rule of thumb is to use them were it makes sense in your copy. Trying to figure out percentages is simply not working with today's advanced algorithms. Best to focus on content with the understanding that if your key words or phrases are not in your copy then when people search for it you will not be found so where it makes sense you must use them.
Next is relevancy despite all the stuff we hear about backlinks there is far more to being determined as relevant by Google search engines than backlinks. Simple things such as being listed in the yellow pages can make your site more relevant than another site. Whereas backlinks are still very important you can have link spam that could make you irrelevant with Google. This topic is just too extensive a topic to cover here, besides this is about an epiphany concerning my transition from offline marketer to full time online marketing. But I will add this tidbit that I have learned about being perceived as relevant with Google. Avoid duplicate content. websites with identical pages, scraped content, heavily distributed articles and boiler plate pages/sites can hurt your relevancy perception with Google.
Even when you are the original author putting the exact same article into e-zines and blogs can hurt your relevancy if the same articles are posted on the websites you want to come up in the Google search engines. On the sites you want to rank in Google keep all content as original and unique as possible.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?SEO-Epiphany-of-an-Offline-Marketer-Turned-Online-Marketer&id=6713183
