Do you write your website content to rank on page 1 of Google or do you write it to drive sales from your visitors? Don’t worry. I’m here to tell you that you can have your cake, and get your fork, because you can eat it too.

It is absolutely possible to write website content that ranks well in search engines and sells like a dream. The key is planning and achieving a perfect balance between the two objectives.

Let’s start with how to write for search engines.

If you’ve done any research into SEO, you’ve learned that in order to rank high in Google, you need good content. But what does that mean? It means volume, quality and lots of juicy keywords.

Start at the Beginning: Listing Your Keywords

Before you do anything else, create your list of keywords. A “keyword” is a word or term that customers are likely to use in a search when looking for your business. Don’t go crazy. Choose your “Big 5”, the top five terms you’d love to rank for.

For example, I want Amalgam Design’s Search Engine Optimization landing page to rank when business owners are looking to optimize their company websites. The keywords I want to rank for might be: Search Engine Optimization Toronto, SEO company, SEO firm, Search Engine Optimization agency Canada, and Google ranking.

Don’t forget to include location keywords (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, etc.) because customers search on location. If I’m looking for a plumber, if I don’t put “Toronto” in my search terms, the #1 result could be from Texas. Google has recently updated its search to always provide location based results (it knows where you live), but users still put cities and countries in their search terms so you should include them in your content.

When I’m writing content for a website, I put my keywords in a list and keep them at the top of my draft as I’m writing. This reminds me of what terms to lace into the copy. I write as naturally as possible, writing what I want to say about the product or service and I periodically reread my keyword terms. Where possible, I’ll use a full keyword phrase in the copy, and if I can’t do that, I’ll add an extra word into the content to achieve better ranking.

For example, if I’ve written the sentence, “Amalgam Design offers SEO as part of our web design services,” I might edit it to say, “Amalgam Design offers search engine optimization for Google as part of our SEO web design services.” In this case, it didn’t break the flow of the sentence too much and I was able to insert 2 more keywords into my copy.

Try to keep keyword terms together whenever possible but consider splitting them into single words where you can because Google looks at your entire page of content. That is, if I can’t fit “Toronto SEO company” naturally into my copy, it’s okay to just say “Toronto” as long as “SEO” and “company” are also somewhere else on the page.

Don’t forget that questions can be keywords. Many users treat Google like an oracle and may enter “How do I make my website rank in Google?” as their search terms. Consider making questions part of your content but remember that questions don’t communicate the solution which is what you are trying to sell, so use them sparingly.

Where to Use Your Keywords

Google puts more emphasis on headings and links than on body text. Consider working your keywords into your headings and menu links where you can as well as your meta titles. I don’t just say “Services” when I can say “SEO Services”.

Don’t bother filling your keywords meta tags with your favourites because all major search engines ignore this meta tag as a result of abuse. Similarly, search engines don’t care what you put in your meta description but users sure do (this is the blurb that shows up in your Google listing) so make it as sales driven as possible! The only meta tag that Google cares about is the meta title (the title that shows up at the top of your browser window).

Don’t Stuff It, Sell It

Yes, you are writing your content with search engines in mind, but you must always write your content for users, not for bots. Why? Because you could drive an army of users to your site through SEO but you’ve accomplished nothing if they don’t buy anything.

This is why you should never use keyword stuffing to rank. Keyword stuffing is a popular SEO tactic where you use as many of your keywords as many times as possible in a paragraph. This copy is clearly not written for users and can be confusing to potential customers.

Using our Toronto SEO company example, here’s what bad keyword stuffed content reads like: Toronto SEO company, Amalgam Design is an affordable Toronto SEO (search engine optimization) company that will get your website ranking in Google and other major search engines. A Toronto SEO company since 1999, Amalgam Design makes your website search engine optimized.

This kind of keyword spamming (or stuffing) works sometimes to achieve rank but certainly doesn’t sell anything to anybody and leaves your visitors wondering why you’re talking to them like they are an idiot.

Writing To Sell

Identifying your unique selling point is Marketing 101. So when you are writing sales copy for a website, you must keep that in the forefront.

With our Amalgam Design SEO company example, our unique selling point is that we are marketers, and can write killer sales copy and create beautiful designs that achieve awesome ranking in Google. So that has to drive my message.

Here is a rewrite of the previous example, this time using sales driven good keyword content: Amalgam Design is a Toronto based company that loves ethical SEO. We create stunning search engine optimized designs and use proven sales driven content to get you ranking in Google and other major search engines.

While, technically, the first example uses the keywords more often, Google finds keyword stuffing fishy and my primary goal is to convince potential customers that they should hire us.

Know Where To Draw the Line

Customers always win. If it becomes clear that I have to choose between writing for a customer and writing for Google, I’ll always err on the side of sales. I’ll choose a pithy heading over a keyword laden one any day. Why? Because clients like it. There are many marketing channels driving users to our website. While search may be the biggest, it hurts our overall revenue if in the end we’re nothing more than Google groupies.

Search engines update themselves all the time, changing what they look for in a good site. If you create your site for users, you’ll never be left holding a bag of useless, outdated tricks.

I got no love for Yellow Pages. Anyone who knows me knows not to get me started. The Yellow Pages print book serves its purpose, on some level or another, or at least my dad likes it. I must admit, even I crack it open once every year or two but that’s only because so many of my local businesses haven’t clued into how awesome Google Maps is and have yet to list themselves on it.

The noise in the other room

The noise in the other room is the sound of print dying. Don’t mind him. He’s been dying for years. We all saw it coming but he wouldn’t listen. He kept insisting he was still relevant while we warned him to devise a back up plan. And now he’s in his final death rattle and when he comes a-callin’ asking for my advertising money, I always ask him the same question, “What have you got for me online?”

Too many print organizations are trying to transfer their print business models to the web and are dismayed when they don’t succeed. Yellowpages.ca is guilty of this in 3 major ways.

1. One year contract? Exsqueeze me? It’s not permanently “out there” the way the print book is. If your online service is any good, prove it by letting me try it for 3-6 months before I commit.
2. Showing my print ad as my online listing. Online is not print. A print ad scanned and put on a web page is illegible and uncrawlable to search engines.
3. Charging me by location. They over complicate their model and their rates are anything but competitive when I need to pay separately for each neighbourhood I want to be listed in.

My bone to pick

Most of our clients find the Internet a little bit overwhelming and all its opportunities more than a little confusing. As a result, I feel that the people who work in the industry have an obligation to be as clear and up front about their offering as possible. My contention with YellowPages.ca is that they obfuscate the facts, taking advantage of the lay person. I realize that’s a bold thing to say, but as I mentioned, I got no love.

Of all the things on the Internet, nothing seems to confuse people more than SEO (search engine optimization). It’s a magic word. If you use it, you can convince people of anything because they know they want it but aren’t entirely sure how to get it. So when Yellowpages.ca claims to be partners with Google and says that paying for a listing with their online directory increases your SEO, it seems like a win-win.

Organizations claiming to be “partners” with Google make my head blow up

When the sales package I was faxed (yes, FAXED) from Yellowpages.ca had a Google logo in it and claimed they were partners, I asked the sales representative to clarify.

He stuttered a little and when I followed up by asking if I would see the Yellow Pages logo on a Google.ca page he flat out didn’t know what to say. That’s because web stuff can be confusing. And he didn’t know his own product because the people in charge had made it more confusing than it needed to be.

The vague wording in the sales package implied that Yellow Pages had a special relationship with Google which enabled your Yellow Pages ad to be advertised in Google’s sponsored listings for a small additional fee. On top of that, your Yellow Pages ad would rank organically better in Google.

Sigh.

How Yellow Pages uses Google’s sponsored listings

Here’s a quote from Google’s Philosophy page on the Google website: Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank.

The truth is, if you pay them extra, Yellow Pages will run a sponsored listings campaign in Google on your behalf driving traffic to your Yellow Pages ad.

The Pros: If you don’t have the first clue how to run a sponsored listings campaign and can’t afford someone who can, this is a great way to get presence in Google’s Adwords for a reasonable amount of money.

The Cons: Yellow Pages is using your money to advertise themselves. Notice how they aren’t driving traffic to your website, but to their ad? What’s more, if you haven’t paid for a live link to your website, your advertising money is flapping in the wind. And the part that really cheeses me, if Google users are interested in your ad and click on the sponsored listing, you still pay for the click but it’s Yellow Pages’ page ranking which increases.

How your Yellow Pages listing impacts your page ranking

Does listing in Yellowpages.ca improve your SEO? Yes. But so does listing in Canpages.ca and Toronto.com and any other high ranking business directory. Google collects information about your website from everywhere. The more times it sees your business listed the more credibility you have. Especially if your listing is surrounded by lots of juicy keywords. In other words, directories where you get to submit a description of your business and your website link are ideal.

The Pros: Yellowpages.ca has a good page rank so being listed with them is one more notch in your SEO belt.

The Cons: The link to your website is indirect so it doesn’t count as one of your high ranking backlinks (which is kind of the point). Yellowpages.ca shows the image of your ad online (if you bought one) which is useless to search engines. All those relevant keywords are no where to be found and the only thing Google learns from Yellowpages.ca about your business is your address. This would explain why the SEO for yellowpages.ca itself sucks. Type any business category into Google (example “accountant Toronto”) and see if yellowpages.ca shows up on the first page. It doesn’t because the Yellow Pages site contains no relevant content.

My advice on choosing a directory

Most industries have online directories specific to them that rank well in organic searches. Try anything once. Track your results. Review your analytics (your web traffic sources) and make sure to always ask how customers heard about you. Pay close attention to your traffic on the day a print ad runs and assume any increase is from that.

For every marketing channel, take the number of click throughs and divide it by the money you spent on the channel. If a product is good, it delivers good results: solid traffic for a reasonable cost. What’s a reasonable cost? We like anything around $2 per click but it differs from business to business. If the click is highly targeted and likely to convert (result in a sale), you can pay significantly more. If you are in the double digits (or, God help you, triple digits) for a channel, you can certainly do better.

YouTube is much more than a video site. Google enjoys 63% of the search engine market and of that, YouTube (owned by Google) accounts for 25%. With Yahoo at 11% and Bing at 9%, YouTube is the second largest search engine. It has over 300,000,000 user accounts and is the second largest social media website after Facebook.

YouTube’s search algorithm includes: title, description, tags, number of views, user rating and incoming links. All of these elements can be influenced by either the video producer or the viewer, and will determine the placement in YouTube and Google’s search listings. YouTube and Google absolutely influence each other. The higher your video ranks in Google, the more views it will receive, and the better it will rank on YouTube. The better your video ranks on YouTube, the higher it will rank in Google.

Optimization with Keywords and Meta Data

Google cannot read the content within videos, so you must include as much supportive content as possible. You describe the content by the use of incoming link text (if you link to your video from your website), title tags, description, and any words found on the pages surrounding it. The correct use of keywords is the most important influencer to getting more views on YouTube. Optimize the YouTube page of your video in the same way you would for a regular web page. Make sure that the keywords and text that you use to describe your YouTube videos match the keywords which you want to be ranked on in YouTube’s and Google’s search results.

The title of the video needs to describe the video in as few words as possible. For maximum SEO, place keywords to the left. Treat the tags on your video like you would the meta keywords on your html page. Make sure you repeat the keywords from your title in your description. Include a clickable URL to your website in the first line of the description tag. For each video you post, create unique titles, descriptions and tags, even with similar videos, as this will create “unique” content for the search engines to crawl.

Embed the Video on Your Website

Embed the videos that you host on YouTube onto your own website to optimize ranking. Google’s algorithms takes into account how many times a video has been viewed, and any views from your website will be added to the views on YouTube. Create a separate text-optimized page for each video on your site as the content provided by the text on those pages will help the search engines determine the information contained in your video. If possible, don’t embed multiple videos on one page. This is viewed as duplicate content and hurts the individual ranking of each video. Surround your videos with a descriptions and link to your YouTube page using your keywords.

To Google, the number of links describes popularity and link text describes what the video is really about. One way Google can measure the accuracy of your content claims is by evaluate the link text used to describe your video. Not only the number of links but the quality of theses links matter to Google. Websites with high page ranking that link to your video will positively impact your ranking.

Thumbnails, Branding and Call to Action

Make sure to consider the thumbnails of your video. YouTube pulls thumbnails from the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks of your video. Having a strong, attractive thumbnail will motivate the user to choose your video over the others. Remember first impressions count. Open your video with a title, logo and URL. Also consider using constant in-video branding and a call to action throughout the entire video. Keep in mind that YouTube watermarks the bottom right corner with their logo don’t use that area for branding. Close with a slide 10 seconds long with the same information that you used at the opening of your video to  remind the viewer of your brand and URL.

Use Subtitles and Captioning on Videos

Captions and subtitles make videos accessible to a wider audience. It’s optional but strongly encouraged to make your videos available to as many people as possible. “Google believes that the world of information must be accessible to all,” said vice-president of Google, Vint Cerf, 66, who has used a hearing aid since age 13. Captions are in the same language as the video’s audio track, and subtitles are in a different language. Also utilize the annotation feature to highlight certain areas of your video.

Social Networking and Video

After your video has been posted, embedded, and optimized, you need to place it where people will see it, and hopefully circulate it through their networks. Encourage participation by enabling all the features on YouTube. Ratings and comments will help with search ranking so be sure to enable these features. Another way to increase traffic to your video is by using the share link underneath the video. You can post to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, and StumbleUpon. You can also copy the link to share on IM or email.

If you have more than one video, create a channel. It is a public page on YouTube that you can brand with your colours and a background image containing your logo, URL and other information. Here you can create playlists, favourite videos, and subscribe to other channels. This will help to create a community around your videos, where people can subscribe, comment, and view your subscriptions and favourites.

As with any other social media on the web, you need to get involved by commenting on others videos, replying back to comments, and posting video replies to popular videos. If people like what you have to say they will follow your link back to your video channel.

YouTube has a enormous presence on the Internet and is very closely tied to Google. Make sure you put as much attention into optimizing your video content as you would any other online content. The proper optimization will make sure your video is accessible to the largest audience possible.

It’s a fact: consumers use search engines to research on and offline purchases.

Approximately 87% of online Canadians use search and 13% of North American Internet users report frequently clicking on sponsored listings.

Search engine marketing is hands down the most successful method of online advertising. For one simple reason: you are advertising your product or service to people who are actively looking for your product or service. Display ads, online sponsorship, or email campaigns simply do not have the same targeted consumer synergy.

What are sponsored listings?

Sponsored listings are keyword driven cost per click ads that run down the right hand side of search engine results. You can also find them at the very top of the search page. These listing have been paid for by organizations seeking click throughs. Ads are displayed based on the keywords entered into the search engine and the position of the ad is determined by the “bid” made for the ad. Organizations determine how much they want to spend per day on ads and their sponsored listing is displayed until the click throughs spend the daily budget. Then the ads stop until the next day.

We know from experience using search engine marketing for our clients that, even with a small budget, website traffic increases of 25% or more can be obtained as a direct result of sponsored listings.

Why sponsored listings work

I often hear clients say that they never click on sponsored listings because they think of them as spam. I say one person’s spam is another person’s treasure.

Sponsored listings work because you are providing a relevant link to a relevant site directly to the people searching for it. I want to buy a widget and look, ABC company is advertising widgets for sale! What organizations need to realize is that often the search results in the sponsored listings are more relevant to the user than the organic search results.

For example, let’s say I’m looking to buy a how to book on Photoshop. I type “photoshop book” into Google. The organic results are very specific – they list titles of books about Photoshop. In the sponsored listings, however, I see a link to the “Computer Books” section of Chapters/Indigo. I suddenly consider that I’d like to see a listing of all the books on the topic from a reputable source and I don’t want to click through the Google results one by one. I decide to check out the Chapters page. See how it got me?

SEM for SEO – 2 birds, really effective stone.

But wait, there’s more. Running a sponsored listings campaign can improve your organic results (SEO). What’s that, you say?

That’s right. Google tracks everything. If, for example, the majority of users looking for “photoshop book” click on the Chapters ad instead of anything in the page 1 organic listings, Google will start ranking the computer book page for Chapters higher in the organic listings, maybe eventually even on page 1. Why? Remember that Google’s mission is to provide the best search results. Period. And if users are telling Google that the Chapters page is more useful to them than the other results, Google will pay attention.

Google also tracks how long users stay on the clicked through sites, so it’s not enough to send users to your site – it needs to be engaging when they get there or Google won’t increase your ranking!

Avoid the Fire and Forget

The biggest mistake people make with their search engine marketing is they set their keywords, write their ad and let it run as is for months.

The key to successful search campaigns is optimization. Write multiple ads for one campaign and check back to see which one is outperforming the rest. Once identified, test variations of it to figure out what messaging specifically is making it successful. See if similar messaging works for your other campaigns.

Tie your ads to an action and make sure to send them to a page that offers that action, like Start Search Today!

SEM is a marketing priority

Search engine marketing is so effective, it’s the one piece of advertising we insist on for our clients. We simply don’t allow them to make the investment into a new website without the commitment to drive sales through it using a search campaign.

It’s just that good.

@WSJ WTF?

Dear Rupert Murdoch,

Just in case the public outcry hasn’t been unanimous enough, I join my voice in with the deluge to say that blocking Google from indexing your news sites is virtual suicide. Charging subscriptions on top of that is lunacy.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Mashable Says Don’t Do It

Mashable.com (to social media what the Wall Street Journal is to conservative news) calls Murdoch’s plan to block Google “imprecise” and “confusing”. Staff writer Stan Schroeder concludes, “I honestly can’t understand what’s his plan here. If he plans to charge for websites, why hide them from the search engines?”

Hitwise Says Don’t Do It

Online research analyst Bill Tancer of Hitwise shows that 25% percent of the Wall Street Journal’s traffic currently comes from Google, of which up to 45% are new visitors. Between the loss of readers from Google and the loss of current readers who won’t want to pay, it’s anyone’s guess how much the WSJ stands to loose.

Built To Last Says Don’t Do It

Bestselling business author Jim Collins argues that a relentless drive for progress that impels change and forward movement is the central concept to his revolutionary book Built to Last.  ”Preserve the core and stimulate progress” is the essence of the 18 visionary companies that have thrived for over a 60 years. Collins cites IBM CEO, Thomas J. Watson Jr. who wrote, “If an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself.”

Jeff Jarvis Says Don’t Do It

And, finally, Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? (which has an entire chapter dedicated to mapping out a survival plan for newspapers)  says of the decision to block Google, “Murdoch – who doesn’t use the internet – does not see how distribution works today. He does not understand that being open to the link economy brings him free distribution, free marketing, great benefit.”

Experts Go Unheeded

And just this week, despite consistent opinions from all online experts, James Harding, editor of the London Times announced that he is jumping on Murdoch’s sinking ship. He argues that quality journalism costs money and should be valued. He plans to, “Rewrite the economics of the newspaper.” Ya? You and what army?

“We keep investing in journalism, we believe that’s what our readers want.” He adds, “We’re not dumbing down, we’re dumbing up.” Just let that one sink in for a moment.

You can’t fight the future. We’ve seen the music industry and the car industry each suffer the consequences of trying to make their consumers do it their way. You simply cannot insist on sticking to business as usual in the face of a changing marketplace.

The Internet is a brave new world. It flies in the face of conventional business wisdom. You build the network and then you monetize. You don’t ask your visitors to come to you, you go to them. If the ways you’ve always made money in the past are no longer working, you have to innovate or die a slow and, in this case, humiliating death.