Kristie T’s Home Business Blog Fun, mom-geared work-at-home tips and advice on making money on the net.

If you have heard the term KEI and scratched your head wondering what it is, let me enlighten you.  KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index.  If you are doing keyword research for your business, KEI can help you choose hot keywords and find out how many people are competing for those keyword phrases.  It offers a sort of index that tells you how hard it will be to optimize for those keyword phrases.

I found this great post on Derek Gehl’s blog that clearly explains what KEI is and how to use that number to choose hot keywords and find good niches for your product.

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Just watched a kick ass webinar on SEO strategy by Omniture.  The webinar points out how SEO strategy for large and small sites differs.

According to Omniture, on page SEO techniques account for 80% of the ranking equation for a large corporate website.  For a small business website, on page SEO accounts for only about 20% of the ranking equation.

Here are 5 off page SEO techniques that I have found help newer, smaller websites boost their search engine rankings quite effectively!

1) Link building - the number and quality of backlinks to your website
2) Social Media
3) Blogs
4) Submitting Press Releases online
5) Article promotion in article directories

One of the key points I “got” in this video is the importance of using 1 keyword phrase per page and declaring that the authoritative page for that keyword.  So anytime you create a link to that specfic page, you need to use that exact keyword phrase as the keyword rich text for the link.

For example if I optimized my product page for “marketing consulting service” then anytime I make a link on my website or blog to that product page, I need to use the words “marketing consulting service” as the hotlink to that specific page.

Another thing that will boost your indexability is to create a Google site map.  If you go to www.google.com/webmasters it will help you create an XML feed that helps Google find and spider all the pages of your website.

Watch the free SEO webinar 30 SEO Strategies for Corporate Websites.  You’ll learn a TON.  I did!

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I stumbled across the coolest tool today in my morning “walk on the net”. It’s an awesome free tool that tells you your link popularity. It tells you the Google PageRank, and number of sites linking to your website in Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati links, Google indexed pages. It even tells you the Alexa ranking! It’s a neat “snapshot” tool to see what’s going on with your website and quickly size up potential joint venture partners (and even your competition).

Try this cool tool to see your link popularity and the number of links to your website.

http://www.wholinks2me.com/

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Search engine optimization, keyword research, keyword strategy- if you think you are choosing the BEST keyword phrases, think again!

I had a huge “aha” moment today in talking with SEO expert Roy Montero. (Hint - Roy will give you a free 1 hr SEO consultation if you ask!) I am very well versed in SEO and and can whip up a search engine optimized web page in about 5 minutes flat. But where I was really struggling was around strategy for choosing the best keyword phrases. I mean obviously there are thousands of keyword phrases that you potentially would want to rank for. So how do you prioritize to choose which keywords to optimize for first?

The revelation - start with keyword phrases relating to phrases that you can monetize most easily.

So what do you sell? advertising, your book, consulting - what are the keyword phrases people search for around that? Well guess what, I hadn’t optimized a single page relating to those phrases at all.

My mistake was going way too broad after major keyword phrases or minor low hanging keywords phrases relating to that. I also was going around other related subjects I thought my target audience might be interested in.

Have any of you ever taken that approach to seo? How do you determine keyword phrases you will do your keyword research and search engine optimization for?

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Search Engine Marketing Program Success
excerpted from an Advertising Age Search Marketing Fact Pack 2006

What kind of success did search engine marketing bring the companies who implemented it?
Data from IntelliSurvey & Radar Research commissioned by SEMPO, Dec 2005, via eMarketers’ Search Marketing: Spending and Metrics April 2006 Study found the following.

1. Increased Traffic Volume 80% - Yeah, you would hope better rankings would bring you more traffic!
2. Conversion rate 76%
3. Clickthough rate 69%
4. Return on investment 62%
5. Cost per click 60%
6. CPA 54%
7. Total number of online sales 52% - Interesting, all that extra traffic online increase sales for 52% of companies.

Hmmmm… kind of makes me wonder if people should focus first on making their website really sell and getting the conversion rate up, then getting traffic second.

Psst. The Motherload Guide to Websites that Sell shows you how to do just that!

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Best and Worst Performing Online Ad Tactics
From Advertising Age Search Marketing Fact Pack 2006
According to MarketingSherpa, January 2006 via eMarketer’s Search Marketing 1: Spending and Metrics

1. Paid search ads 52% rated best — 8% rated worst
2. e-mail house list 47% best - 9% worst
3. rich media ads 38% best - 21% worst
4. behavioral targeting 36% best - 23% worst
5. search engine optimization 33% best - 14% worst
6. contextual targeting 31% best - 19% worst
7. affiliate marketing 29% best - 22% worst
8. text link ads 23% best - 20% worst
9. pop-ups, pop-unders 22% best - 39% worst
10. ads in email newsletters 16% best - 34% worst
11. banner ads 14% best - 39% worst
12. email rented lists 10% best - 52% worst

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Advertising Age had a cool little insert called “Search Marketing Fact Pact 2006“. There were some interesting statistics on search engine marketing I thought I’d share with you.

What’s the Top Search Engine? - Google of course!
No surprise here. According to comScore qSearch, in August 2006 Google gets 44.1% of traffic, followed by Yahoo with 28.7 %, and third is MSN with 12.5.

Males love Google - Females love Yahoo
According to Hitwise, males prefer Google 53.16% of the time (versus 46.84% of females)
and 50.25% of females prefer Yahoo (versus 49.75% of men)

Top 10 Categories Reached by Search
According to Hitwise for week of Sept 30, 2006.

1. Heath and medical - 43.19%
2. Education - 40.76%
3. Food and Beverage - 37.76%
4. Government - 31.14%
5. Community - 30.11%
6. Travel - 28.63%
7. Music - 27.74%
8. Shopping and Classified - 25.23%
9. Aviation - 21.90%
10 Automotive - 21.32%

Top Search Terms - My Space tops the charts!
for four weeks ending Sept 30, 2006 (study lists the top 50)
1. myspace
2. myspace.com
3. ebay
4. yahoo
5. www.myspace.com
6. mapquest
7. my space
8. myspace layouts
9. yahoo.com
10. steve irwin
11 craigslist
12 dictionary
13 lyrics
14 walmart
15 map quest
16 google
17 wikipedia
18 white pages
19 youtube
20 ebay.com

This data on search engine marketing, keywords, and the findings of these search engine studies is pretty interesting stuff huh?

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I’m sure your library is probably as crazy as mine. But sometimes I think I have so many awesome resources, that I forget what I have. Someone once said that the only thing that will be different 10 years from now is the books you read, the people you meet, and the experiences you have.

I have more the enough books that I’ve read - that’s for sure. My goal for next year is to IMPLEMENT what I have read. No more learning (which will be hard - I love learning)

Well, here are the books I have in my library. I have read 80% of them. The others, need to sit down and read.

Is your library as big as this? - And there are LOTS of ebooks and books in the basement haven’t even accounted for here.

(more…)

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Are you leaving a breadcrumb trail for search engines? Maybe you should!

I was checking out this month’s issue of Practical Ecommerce in which Stephan Spencer was talking about how a breadcrumb trail boosts SEO rankings. And I was intrigued. “What is a breadcrumb trail?” The article in Practical Ecommerce goes on to explain that it’s a type of navigation that shows the visual path of a website’s structure and the page hierachy of your site.

For example: A breadcrumb navigation at the top of your page might look like this:

Home > Category > Subcategory > Product

And the product of course would be the product name and a “hot link” for the current page you are on.

Search engine optimization experts are “pro breadcrumb trail”. And usability experts on the other hand are against them.

I say that the breadcrumb trail provides keyword rich links that will boost rankings (SEO benefit) AND visually shows a visitor where they are at in the same way that a “you are here” sign at a mall does (usability benefit).

I may think about playing with this on some of my website sections and seeing how that improves my rankings. Has anyone seen a site that uses breadcrumb trail navigation? What are your thoughts about the SEO benefits and the Usuability benefits? Share your thoughts about breadcrumb trail navigation here.

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These days it seems that using SEO to get traffic to your site is an uphill battle. Everyone and their mother is an SEO expert and counting on high rankings to get your traffic is becoming a much tougher game. That’s where pay per clicks come in. They even the playing field. You can use pay-per-click advertising to get your business listed on the major search engines for people seeking information regarding your products and services.

Here are 3 pay per click services to consider:

1) Microsoft AdCenter - Just launched, Microsoft AdCenter is the new guy to the pay per click block. And according to a 2006 study conducted by WebSideStory shows that Microsoft adCenter converts customers at a rate that is 48% higher than Yahoo! and a full 57% higher than Google.

2) Yahoo Search Marketing - Search Engine Giant Yahoo joined the pay click click game in an attempt to keep up with forerunner Google. Through Yahoo Local Sponsored Search listings, Yahoo helps local businesses target visitors demographically. Local mom and pop businesses can now use the power of the web to send customers to their brick and mortar storefronts.

For people implementing pay per click with Yahoo, I even found a Yahoo Search Marketing forum devoted entirely to strategy with this kind of marketing on Yahoo.

3) Google Adwords - And of course the reigning rock star of the pay per click world is now Google Adwords.

If you aren’t using it now to promote your products, you should! Seriously, it’s a great way to drive traffic to your site for just A few bucks. All you do is write a couple of ads, and * BAM * Google publishes it instantly to millions of potential customers.

It’s one savvy way that internet marketers are split testing ad Elements of their sales letter. Run headline A against headline B - the One with the most clickthrus wins!

But if you don’t know what you are doing, it’s an easy way to lose A lot of money quickly.

Here’s a cool free ecourse on Google Adwords with great tips On how to get the lots of traffic without losing your wallet! There’s no charge for it. You can find out about it here: http://www.webmomz.com/adwords.htm

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