Keyword Research 103 – Long Tail Keywords

Sorry for the missed post yesterday.  We have been insanely busy lately and now we’re dealing with computer issues.  Should be perfect next week.

This is part 3 of a 4 part series on keyword research for SEO.  Check back every Friday for the next installment.

Part 1 – Keyword Basics & a tool

Part 2 – Competitor Keywords

Two weeks ago we discussed keyword research for SEO and some keywording basics.  Last week we analyzed the keywords our competitors are using to see which are useful and make sure we’re optimized for the best keywords in our niche.  This week we’re moving onto long tail keywords and which you should target.

What are long tail keywords?

Long tail keywords are the keywords and phrases you get search engine traffic from but don’t account for a large portion of your traffic (or target) intentionally.  Let’s take my old market as an example.  I used do wedding photography in Syracuse NY.  My main keywords would have been: 

syracuse wedding photographers
syracuse wedding photographer
syracuse wedding photography
wedding photographer syracuse
wedding photographers syracuse
wedding photography syracuse
photographers in syracuse ny

Google said those were the main keywords so that was our focus (target).  We also had many visitors come via those keywords so we knew that was a large percentage of our traffic as well.

What many marketers forget – big AND small business – is the long tail – the percentage of searches that are not your main keywords that result in great traffic.  

How do you find long tail keywords?

Statcounter > Click your project, click Keyword Analysis.

Google Analytics > Standard Reporting > Traffic Sources > SEO > Queries (must link your Webmasters account)

What I often found was vendor names came up as part of our traffic.  If we’d shot a wedding at Greystone Castle, in the next year we’d get 15-25 hits for it. Same with our other wedding vendors.   What we also noticed was wedding-related terms.  ”Summer wedding syracuse” and “fall wedding syracuse” were big referrers.  

By using Statcounter you can see the percentage of actual visitors who have searched those keywords and found you.  I usually prefer Statcounter but because of the data in Webmaster Tools, this is one area Google wins BIGTIME.  You can see how many impressions the search had (how many times you showed up on a search page) and your average position on that search.  

How does that translate into visitors and conversions?  

If your main keywords account for 50% of your traffic, the other 50% is untargeted “stuff” you’re just picking up.   If you can enhance those visits, you’ll be capturing even more traffic.  Figure out what people are really searching for and use that to your advantage.  

Unintentional SEO keywords

Our SEO blog shows up on page one for almost every search related to “what page of __________ am I on?”

• What page of Google am I on?
• What page of search am I on?
• What page of Bing am I on?
• What Google page am I on?

and so on…

Why?

One of my first posts on this blog was about a great tool called (ironically) What Page of Search Am I On?

Nearly 20% of my search traffic comes from this keyphrase.   Do you understand how it would be beneficial to a) optimize this page and b) try to find other great searches like it that potential SEO clients may be using?  

Keyword Research 102 – Competitor Keywords

This is part 2 of a 4 part series on keyword research for SEO.  Check back every Friday for the next installment.

Part 1 – Keyword Basics & a tool

One week ago today we started discussing keyword research for SEO and some keywording basics.  This week we’re going to analyze the keywords our competitors are using to see which are useful and make sure we’re optimized for the best keywords in our niche.

Researching your competitor’s keywords manually

You can research your competitor manually – click their links in the search results and in your browser toolbar push view/source or Ctrl+U in most browsers.  Now you can look for the keywords they’re using.  

The top result for “seo” keywords is an Inc article on selecting keywords.  Let’s check theirs.  

http://www.inc.com/guide/2010/06/picking-effective-seo-keywords.html

The code says:

<title>5 Secrets to Selecting Highly-Effective SEO Keywords | Inc.com</title>  
<meta name=”keywords” content=”search engine optimization, SEO keywords, Google Wonder Wheel, search engine marketing” />
<meta name=”description” content=”Keyword selection is fundamental to success in search engine marketing and search engine optimization, including paid search (PPC) and organic website rankings. It is also instructive in how to most effectively market your products and services to your target audience.” />

Let’s pull from that which keywords and keyphrases they’re giving us:

• seo
• keywords
• seo keywords
• keyword secrets
• highly effective seo keywords
• search engine optimization
• SEO keywords
• Google Wonder Wheel
• search engine marketing
• keyword selection
• search engine 
• search engine marketing
• search engine optimization
• paid search
• ppc
• organic website rankings
• market your products
• target audience

That’s instructive.  Using about 50 words total, keywords account for nearly half of the words they use.   That was fun – let’s do it to a photographer.

The top result for “Chicago wedding photographer” from here is http://www.weddingology.com   Let’s see if he’s giving us anything.

<META NAME=”TITLE” content=”Chicago Wedding Photographer | weddingology | the science of wedding photography”>
<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” content=”Fusion wedding photography blending photojournalistic, documentary, artistic, and fashion.”>
<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” content=”Chicago, wedding, photography, photographer, photographers, Columbus, Cleveland, Dublin, Ohio, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Toronto, photojournalistic, artistic, documentary, reportage, bride, bridal, groom, fiance, fiancee, marriage, reception, ceremony, planning, engagement, portrait, black and white, black-and-white, color, 35mm, medium format, digital, candid, studio, midwest, fashion, style, creative, album, artistic”>

TONS!  I’m not going to separate out every keyword but you have to wonder when you see keywords like this – is it worth doing what he’s done?   

 One of his meta keywords is “35mm” so if he ranks #1 for Chicago wedding photographer he would have the SEO juice to rank for anything on his site, right?  

Here’s a quick snapshot of his actual ranks.

So what happened?  Well, Google doesn’t pay attention to Meta Keywords – in fact, if it sees a long list like this, it discounts most of the keywords and may penalize the site.  Obviously this site shows up for some results but it is in no way going to show up for all of its keywords.  All “Meta keywords” tell us is what you’d like to rank for.  Thanks for the list. 

Maybe if you’re in Chicago you now decide to start marketing other cities.  Where would you start?  Well, someone who’s successful is targeting Milwaukee, Columbus, Toronto, Cleveland and Dublin … I’d start there.  Don’t forget all iterations of photographer, photographers, photography, photos … and if you weren’t planning to include “wedding planning” in your keywords, this site has told us maybe we should.  Just not in the meta tag because we’ll use it on-site and get ranked for that phrase.

Researching your competitor’s keywords automatically

Remember my Google adwords keywording tool?  

Login to your adwords account.  Click Tools & Analysis then Keyword Tool.   Type in a localized search, say “wedding photographer YOURCITY.”   Do no refining and just hit search.   (Obviously replace your city with your … city.  Gosh, if I have to explain that, go play on Facebook or something.)

Now, for Melbourne I see 10 categories of keywords.  I’m going to open “wedding photos” and show you what I see (on super-wide images the Share button gets in the way.  Just click the Share title to hide it):

So Google is willing to give us 24 keywords, our competition and local monthly searches.  This is similar to the information we give our SEO clients when they order keyword research.  It’s absolutely necessary information.  Why?

Let’s compare two keywords:

• wedding photos gallery – low competition/ 1,220,000 global monthly searches / 301K local searches
• wedding photojournalism – high competition / 5400 global monthly searches / 2400 local searches

Which keyword do you want to rank for?  The one with low competition and 1.2 million monthly searches or the one with high competition and a number of searches that barely register data at all? 

So many photographers want to win “wedding photojournalism” when all they really need are eyeballs.  Even if you could get ranked #1 for both (and it’s harder for pj), you’d get less than 2% of the website visitors on the trendy keyword.  Avoid it.  Optimize for what gets results.  Middle of page 3 for wedding photo gallery beats #1 on page 1 for wedding photojournalism in traffic.  By a lot.  

Are we having fun yet? 

I hope you enjoyed this week’s series of posts.  Please join us Monday for our take on “Negative SEO” and don’t forget next Friday to come back for more keyword help when I give you more great SEO tools to make keyword research easier.  

If you enjoyed or learned from this post, please share it so others can, too.  Thanks! 

How many clients do you have to book to pay for SEO?

Mistakenly, many small businesses will say to themselves this year “we can’t afford SEO.”

Here’s a hint: you probably can’t afford NOT to do SEO for your small business.

How many clients will it take?

The first and most basic question is when does SEO become profitable?   

You’re in business to make money, right?  If you sell a wedding package, you profit.  If you sell an album, more profit.  If you are hired to do family portraits by the same family three times, how much was that SEO worth to you?

As a business owner you should know the profit per sale.  If you sold Package A today, how much real profit is that worth to you after ALL expenses are paid, including your salary? (If your business is not making you profit per sale, you’re doing it wrong. )

Let’s say your answer is $250 per wedding package, $500 per album and $400 in family portraits after the wedding.  That’s $1150 profit per sale.

If I tell you your entire SEO budget for the next 3 years is $2800 ($650 up front, $60 per month for 3 years) how many weddings would you have to book?  3.  One wedding per year.  

Now, let’s say you’re only a portrait photographer.  Your average portrait profit may be $400 and so your answer is 8, or ust under 3 portrait sessions per year.  (It’s not 7 because you’d earn $2800… no reason to do the extra 7 sessions without making more than $2800.)

So the first question is how much is one client worth in profit?  

Will I make those sales?

I have no idea.

That’s the truth. I’m not familiar enough with your business to know your real numbers.  Do you book 10% of your inquiries or 100%?  If you book 100% of your inquiries and you’re on page 6 of Google, you must believe that if people search for you and find you now, you’ll book more on page 1.  If you book 10% at  half the profit above, you’re going to need WAY more inquiries.

So the next question is how many inquiries do you need per sale? 

If you’ve talked to 25 couples and booked 20 weddings, you book 80%.   To book 3 extra weddings, your SEO would have to get you 4 client inquiries.  You’d book 80% (3.2) and you’d make profit on that.  It would seem incredibly unbelievable to think going from page 6 to page 1 wouldn’t bring you another 4 inquiries over 3 years, right?

Now let’s return to the portrait business – they need 8 new customers.  Portrait clients flake, cancel sessions and generally are more unpredictable than wedding clients.  Let’s say you book 25% of inquiries.  You would need search to bring you 32 more inquiries over the next 3 years or roughly 1 new job per month over the life of your SEO plan.

How much traffic can I expect then?

We don’t want to rehash stuff that’s already been said so take a minute to go check these numbers: traffic per position on Google.  Just don’t forget to come back.

Most organic traffic comes from the first 3 pages of Google.  Sure, you’ll occasionally find your Statcounter says “#58 – random keyword” but generally, the higher you rank the more traffic you see.

Google has a Traffic Estimator that should help you as well.

The standalone Traffic Estimator will be retired soon. To get traffic estimates, sign in to your AdWords account and choose Traffic Estimator from the Tools and Analysis tab.

What does it all mean?!  Is SEO worth it?

Let’s look at one keyword for my site.

There are 320 local searches per month for this keyword.  If you can get to rank #1 on page 1, you’re looking at around 35% of those hits or around 100 hits per month.  If you can convert one of those per year, you’ve accomplished your goal.  Everything else is profit above SEO cost.

Now take your top 20 keywords (after doing some keyword research) and run them through the traffic estimator.  Let’s say being last on page 1 guarantees you an extra 50 hits per month, 600 hits for the year and 1800 hits over 3 years.  Is that worth it?   Again, it goes back to your demographics but if you sell something people want, yes, it’s going to be worth it. 

Only you can make SEO decisions for your business but consider this: nearly every big business employs an in-house SEO or consults with a major SEO company every day of every year.  They’ve decided that whether they sell $25,000 cars or $5 ebooks, it’s worth having SEO done on an ongoing basis.  Is it worth it for your business?  

When is SEO not worth it?

If your business doesn’t make money, SEO isn’t going to suddenly turn you into a revenue churning juggernaut.

If you don’t book inquiries on a consistent basis, SEO isn’t going to make your product or service better.  Just more visible.

If you don’t make enough money per sale now, you’re not going to make more with a higher ranking.

Add all that up – SEO is NOT worth it when your business isn’t a revenue generating business.  SEO will enhance your sales.  If you don’t know how to sell, it won’t magically make you Zig Zigler.

Google’s newest algorithm change – reducing black hat SEO

What Google algorithm update?

Google yesterday announced the complete release of a long-awaited over-optimization SEO penalty and algorithm update.  

The main goal of this update is “to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs.”  These updates are relevant to our last post: Spams & Scams in SEO.  Whenever Google updates, if you read their information, it’s always to create better sites with better content for end users.  If you remember this mantra, you’ll understand SEO better:  

Webmasters are not the consumers, they’re the product Google sells.

If you act as if Google will make changes FOR YOU, you’re wrong and will always be wrong.  When you realize that Google makes changes to ensure the best possible end-user (site visitor) experience, you’ve got it.

How does this affect my SEO through HighonSEO?

Fortunately, High on SEO shares the belief with Google that the best content should win.  Yes, you have to tell Google what’s on the page.  That will never change.    Our link building techniques and on-page SEO fixes are done correctly and for good reasons, however.  We believe, as Google does, that the best sites should show up first.  

Today I analyzed data from over 20 clients, past and present.  I have determined that none of our sites were massively hit by the algorithm change.  We saw only typical slight movements in SERPs, as we always would after a month or two of not checking results.   The fact that not one site we’ve been working on for over 2 months has taken a dive shows us that we’re doing it “right” at High on SEO.

This is one client’s results, all updated this afternoon, post-algorithm change.  She lost one page 1 and gained five page 1 results.  I’ll take that for my clients any day.

What will Google do next to their search rankings?

We don’t know.  Not really, anyways.   The best way to keep up with Google algo changes and ensure your site is ranking well after using an SEO service is monthly SEO updates.   

What we do know about the future is that Google’s customers (search users) want the best, most relevant searches at the top of the SERPs.  Create pages that are worth visiting.  Stop webspamming because it’s going to be virtually worthless anyways.  SEO is here to stay – the question is how we’re going to do it “right” now and in the future.  White hat SEO works.  Use it properly and remember Google’s own mantra “don’t be evil.”

Why do we focus on SEO for photographers?

One of the more common questions I get at High on SEO is this: why do you focus almost exclusively on photographer’s seo?

This is a good place to note that I don’t *only* do SEO for photographers.  Many techniques are similar across other niches and I have begun finding as many small business and niche directories and listing services as we can.  We have done SEO for real estate businesses, chartered tours and a small clothing store.  They are all very successful.  Small business SEO is definitely a big part of our future at High on SEO.  

While I don’t exclusively perform SEO services for photographers, they do make up 95% of my clientele.  Three reasons explain this:

1) I focus on SEO for photographers because I am a photographer and most of the people I know are photographers

The people I know are photographers.  The ones they know are also sometimes photographers.  On Twitter, I follow and am followed by 1000s of photographers.  I have 2500 Facebook friends and over 2000 are photographers. I do SEO for photographers because, quite simply, in the first 12 months of my SEO business, they knew about me first.

2) I focus on SEO for photographers because I know where to go for great SEO already in our industry.

A large part of SEO is knowing about listing sites, directories and other niche sites that are relevant to the industry your SEO client works in.  For me, it’s WAY more valuable to know about WeDJ.com than it is to know how to find directories on Google.  While I do have a large list of directories and websites for creating SEO backlinks, the photography-specific links give me a huge advantage when competing against a general SEO service.   If your competitor chooses Generalist SEO and you choose me, you’ll definitely be listed on more niche sites that relate to photography.  There is simply no good way to find all those listing sites for every niche.  Knowing your business helps, period.

3) I focus on SEO for photographers because I know photography is competitive and the smartest business people I know outsource as much as they can so they can focus on the photography.  

Outsourcing the things you don’t want to do: taxes, album design, search engine optimization, advertising and marketing, etc. gives you more time to grow your business.  You only have so many hours in a day and doing mundane SEO tasks such as signing up for directories, checking your Google Webmaster’s Tools or submitting another photo to WedGawker is probably the last thing on your mind.  We know what needs to be done to grow your successful photography business.  

High on SEO focuses on SEO for wedding photographers, professional photography studios, portrait photographers and search engine optimization for photographers.

Spams & scams: SEO companies calling you? Unsolicited email?

How do you identify a spam or scam seo company?  We’re going to talk about why seo has a bad name in some circles, why you get spammy “we’ll get you to the top of Google” emails and how to really choose a reputable SEO company for your small business.

Why do I get spammy SEO emails?  Is that company that called me legit?

Your parents taught you  if it seems to good to be true, it is, right?  Believe them. 

Whether you’re a photographer or a plumber, if you have your contact information listed anywhere, you’ve had an email or phone call about “getting you to the top of Google.”    In fact, here are a few things scammers say: “I can get you to the top of page 1 this week.”  ”Page 1 of Google Guaranteed.”  ”Our clients include Microsoft and Facebook.”

They want you to hear: “we can do amazing things nobody else can do” and “we’re so great, we’re so great.”   What you should hear is:  ”I’m lying to you right now” and “If we really did work for MS and FB, we are either terrible and they fired us or we’re lying because nobody goes from Microsoft to Joe Blow’s Corner Photography,” sorry.

The truth about SEO companies is simple: there are great companies, good seo companies and spammers/scammers who do the majority of their work black hat (using spam to quickly promote you before your site is removed from Google).  I would say there are very few seo companies who are just not very good but try to do the right thing.  SEO is understandable once you have applied enough effort and thought so the majority of seo companies are either good, great, or scammers.  

As an SEO company, High on SEO has been in business for about 15 months.  We never have sent an email asking for work, especially unsolicited.  We haven’t had to!  We had a waiting list until early this year and continue to maintain an ongoing list of prospective clients who want us.  If you’re doing well and you’re good at your job, you’ll get referrals and you’ll get more work.  We get almost all of our work from photographers who know of us or who were referred by a friend who we did work for.  If we’re staying full-time busy after just a few months, you know that any seo company who feels it necessary to out-of-the-blue call or email you about their services is desperate for work, usually leading to the conclusion that they’re not very good or they’re scammy & spammy in the first place.  

How do I choose a search engine optimization company for my small business website?

We believe the best way to choose an SEO company is based on results and reputation.  Great companies have great results and great reputations.  Good companies also will have good results and good reputation.  We post seo success posts to this blog often specifically to show you our results. We show you testimonials at the bottom of the page to let you know what our clients think of us.  

Professional SEO companies also share information, usually via their SEO blog.  They want you to get results and they want to educate you.  Truly professional SEO companies won’t worry as much about you not hiring them if they teach you a little about the business and the science behind search engine optimization.  They want you to hire them to do the work, not because you don’t understand SEO.  One of the reasons we give you so many tips is because honestly, not everyone wants to hire a search engine optimization company.  However, for those who do, we want to provide your seo services.

As always, we hope this is informative and helps you make a better decision when it comes time to hire an SEO company for your small business.   We, of course, hope it’s High on SEO! 

SEO Top 10s by Client & a little rant

Our Facebook page was defiled yesterday.  

I deleted the offending post before realizing I could use their comment.  Sadly, it was already gone.  It said (basically): “I used this seo company and it didn’t do anything to my ranking. If anything, it made it worse.  SEO is a joke.”   Now let’s be clear: it wasn’t a name I recognized.  So it could be a fake account or someone just generally trolling.  I deleted it because it contained several profanities that I left out above which I didn’t feel needed to be on our Facebook account.

After steaming about the post for a bit, I realized what a great opportunity it was and regretted deleting it.  So, in the interest of disclosure, reply and honesty, I want to address our record. 

High on SEO has done search engine optimization for over 40 websites in the last 15 months.  We had exactly ONE site that didn’t move the right way within just a couple months.  The photographer in question had spent a lot of money with us so I worked way, way beyond the seo purchased.  They bought 8 hours of SEO and I believe I spent over 30 hours working on his site to make things right.  We had a couple of sites not respond at first and then FLY up the Google rankings.   In one case, a photographer’s host ended up screwing up their entire site.  We redid the work we’d done for free to ensure they quickly reclaimed their rankings.  In the end, though, we’re happy with what we’ve done for our clients.

Not all seo packages are created equal.  If you spend $250 with us and expect $750 results you may have been disappointed.  I hope not, but it’s possible.  I have priced SEO in our industry and it usually costs several thousand dollars.  I will state here & now for the record that EVERY single SEO client has gotten their money’s worth from High on SEO.  There are things we don’t control: what searches people do, whether those who click on you buy from you, and how much your average sale is now compared to before.  These things are beyond our control.  

When we realized clients had trouble choosing their own keywords, we introduced a very inexpensive keyword research service.  Because most of our clients blog frequently, we also introduced Popularity Contest to ensure that future SEO results would keep moving up the rankings and improving our clients’ position long after they’d stopped using us.  Then we realized some clients wanted and needed ongoing SEO support so we introduced our monthly plans, which several of you have started taking advantage of already.

The rest of this post is going to be filled with graphics of our clients’ SEO results.  You can click the first and use your arrow keys to navigate the rest.  We have included a “top 10″ SEO results for nearly every client we have the new charts for.  Not all of the results are perfect.  Some still could use some SEO work on a monthly basis and I understand that.  Some spent less than others and thus we were able to help them a bit less.  Some are just very competitive keywords and we’re happy to have pushed them along the way.  

SEO Service Explanation: Monthly Plans

This is the eighth and final update in a series of posts that will explain what we do and what it all means for your small business SEO. We’ll publish one new post per day at 9 am EST all this week.

SEO Service Explanation Posts

1. On page optimization
2. Off site link building, directories, listing services, etc.
3. Keyword research assistance with KEI values
4. Custom 404 error page directory
5. Internal link building
6. Competitors Analysis + Attack
7. “Popularity Contest”
8. Monthly Plans

The SEO equation

Search engine optimization is very simple. Ranking higher on Google is only: On site SEO + Off site SEO.  Monthly plans maintain the work you’ve done both on and off-site.

Monthly SEO Plans

We have now explained every aspect of our services – we will audit and plan your on-site SEO changes, make those changes, build your off-site SEO profile, link building, list you on niche service directories, help you with your keyword analysis before any of that if you want, build you custom pillar posts and error pages, make sure your internal link structure is strong and your rss feeds are syndicated everywhere.  We’ll find out how your top keyword competitors rank and use that information to build your SEO.  

SEO is an ongoing process.  You will never rank #1 forever on any keyword without ongoing search engine optimization and maintenance.

With out monthly plans, we will check your site for changes, help guide you down the right path with your blogging if you need it, make sure your WordPress plugins function, etc.  We’ll also do x hours of link building for you to ensure your continuing SEO efforts are successful. 

How much is monthly SEO maintenance?

High on SEO charges $40 per month for SEO maintenance.  For most small businesses, this is affordable, for most SEO companies, it’s extremely low-priced.  We want to do our best to ensure your SEO sticks.   The last thing you want is to pay someone (High On SEO, we hope) to do a great site audit, update your on site optimization, build you some links and then watch as your competitors pass you one by one. 

You can take our help, jump higher in the rankings and try to stay there yourself.  This is similar to fasting to lose weight.  Sure, your rankings will improve, you’ll lose some weight, and if you do a great job yourself then you can maintain those successes.  Having High on SEO do your monthly maintenance is like having a personal trainer.  We’re going to be there to crack the whip, tell you what needs doing and help you with hours of support.   We know you want to protect your investment.

Thank you for reading this series of posts.  Links to all of the series can be found at the top of each post.  We will resume regular SEO tips posting now.  

SEO Service Explanation: Internal Link Building

This is the fifth in a series of posts that will explain what we do and what it all means for your small business SEO.  We’ll publish one new post per day at 9 am EST all this week.

SEO Service Explanation Posts

1. On page optimization
2. Off site link building, directories, listing services, etc.
3. Keyword research assistance with KEI values
4. Custom 404 error page directory
5. Internal link building
6. Competitors Analysis + Attack. (Saturday Feb. 18th)
7. “Popularity Contest.” (Sunday Feb. 19th)
8. Monthly Plans (Monday Feb 20th)

The SEO equation

Search engine optimization is very simple.  Ranking higher on Google is only: On site SEO + Off site SEO.  Internal links are helpful for on-site SEO.

Internal Link Building – what and why?

When you create a link to another page you’ve built an external link.  As we’ve talked about before, you want to accumulate as many external links from other sites as you can without being spammy.

See what I did there?  That’s called an “internal link” – it’s a link to our own content at High on SEO.

SEOMoz has a great article on internal links and why they’re so valuable at http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-link

See what I did there?  That’s an external link to their site.   Now you see the difference. 

Best ways to link to your own content

When doing SEO for small business, this often means referring to similar topics.  A business I’m optimizing for real estate may have posted “last year’s numbers” – which I can link on this year’s report.  You want t create as much value on the page as possible for readers.  If a real estate client wants to know how last year’s figures compared to this, now it’s a simple click.  They don’t have to go search your whole site or worse, leave to find them on a search engine. 

The same goes for SEO for photographers.  You can create what are called “pillar posts.”  Pillar posts are the posts you write that clients (and search engines) come back to time & time again.  These are the posts that you create as “index page” much like for a book.  Ideas for a photographers pillar post may include: 2011 Weddings (link to all your weddings with descriptive links and tags), Favorite Vendors (links, locations), Engagement Sessions, Photo Locations in Denver or anything else that lets you re-use content.

On this SEO blog, we’ve decided to link content when it seems relevant.  The most obvious example of a pillar post for us was our 1 Year of Blogging last week.  We linked to many old posts, refreshing our readers minds about some of the topics we discussed this past year.  End of year / new website posts are great for this type of content organization.  

Our SEO pricing page also creates many internal links.  

How much does internal link building cost?

Internal pages are $25 per page.  While you can do much of this work on your own, maybe you want to save time or use some of our better ideas to create pillar posts and worthwhile site pages.  Many we haven’t talked about here but have previously, like sitemaps.   This cost covers our time in coming up with an idea, writing the post, organizing your content with links and if you’re really lucky, we’ll show you how to easily build internal links with WordPress.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss my favorite topic for this series – Competitor’s Analysis and Attack.  Imagine if you had a way to take the best of what all your competitors were doing right for SEO, apply it to your own site and then go beyond what they’re doing.  Yep, see you tomorrow. 

SEO Service Explanation: Custom 404 Error Page Directory

This is the fourth in a series of posts that will explain what we do and what it all means for your small business SEO.  We’ll publish one new post per day at 9 am EST all this week.

SEO Service Explanation Posts

1. On page optimization
2. Off site link building, directories, listing services, etc.
3. Keyword research assistance with KEI values
4. Custom 404 error page directory
5. Internal link building. (Friday Feb. 17th)
6. Competitors Analysis + Attack. (Saturday Feb. 18th)
7. “Popularity Contest.” (Sunday Feb. 19th)
8. Monthly Plans (Monday Feb 20th)

The SEO equation

Search engine optimization is very simple.  Ranking higher on Google is only: On site SEO + Off site SEO.  

What is a 404 Error Page?  Why do you want one?

Pages get broken or stop working for many reasons.  A 404 Error Page tells Google what to do if it happens onto one of these broken links.

Maybe content you linked to has been removed (ie. slideshows after 90 days, posts you removed from sales, etc.)  You write a great sale, post it for 30 days, remove the post at the end and forget that you had linked it in the next 5 posts.  Guess what?  Broken links.  These broken links just “sort of show up” after you’ve had your site for a long time.

We already discussed fixing broken links so why are we talking further about this?  You can’t fix a broken link until you know it’s broken.  Google may know it’s broken a long time before you do.  Once Google sees the broken link they may never check back to see that you fixed it.   

Don’t believe me?   

I haven’t worked at the first studio in 2 years.  I swapped my own SEO to Melbourne around July 2011 – so 7 months ago.  These two results show what Google thinks it knows.  If you notice, my name does not appear on the PI record at all.  The meta info has been updated on my Melbourne page for Best Day Photo but it holds onto some of the old location information.

Google has a long memory, even when information has been changed or removed.

What’s a “custom” 404 page and how does that work? 

Test a broken link for me.   Come back when you’ve seen it.

Anything, really.  Oh, this one is broken!  http://www.highonseo.com/thisisntreallyalink

That is the current custom error page for High on SEO.  What happens is anytime this site sees an error it tells you AND it gives you places to continue on your navigation.  Instead of Google bouncing off a static, useless 404, they see that we have, basically, a sitemap.  Recent posts, archives, categories and pages are what makes up the site.  This works for both Google AND your user experience.  If I can’t get a visitor back on track with a search, our fan page (sidebar), posts, pages or categories, then they probably really are on the wrong site.  This is almost all of the info we have presented all at once.  

I have currently removed the Best Day Photo 404 page after finding and eliminating ALL broken links so I could show you this:

http://bestdayphoto.com.au/whatever

This is what most 404 pages look like, if your theme has one at all.

For $50, High on SEO will create you a useful, custom 404 error page that will enhance your crawlability, SEO and ultimately the user experience.  Customer experience is a big deal and we think having a custom error page is one easy, inexpensive way to guarantee you’ve helped at least some potential clients find their way back.

Tomorrow we’ll focus on internal link building, some of which we just explained above.  Linking to your own content is not only useful but nearly necessary.