Wear Your Marketing Hat Often!
Optimizing a website is a craft that many acquire after going through the motions time and time again, and gaining the knowledge to do search engine optimization effectively. It is not about jamming keywords throughout your website with having the hopes of gaming the system along the way. Put all that nonsense aside bring some marketing to the table and watch your efforts work much more effectively.
1. User Experience: Think about the user experience for a minute. If you jam keywords all over each page where the flow of reading is disrupted then how is your audience going to respond to that? In order for them to pick up the phone and call you they need to be able to read your copy with no interruptions and if every three words of your copy is a keyword they will most likely just leave your website entirely. There is a thin line between too many keywords and not enough so make sure you walk that line safely.
2. Targeted: Make sure you are picking keywords that fit the content of that specific page. What I mean by this is that if you sell headbands on a specific page target head band related keywords for that page. Don’t target wrist band related keywords as well because you want to rank for that keyword. Always keep things relevant when it comes to optimization because the search engines will respond much better to it.
3. Conversions: Optimizing a website is not just about search rankings and keywords. It is also about how people interact with your website. Content is great and all but what good is all that content if your traffic does not understand what they should be doing once they arrive at your website. Think about all the conversion aspects that need to be visible on your website for your traffic to actually convert into an action.
Approach the optimization of your website using a marketing approach rather than a ranking approach and your decisions will be centered on building your brand and converting your traffic rather than just jamming keywords into your website with the hopes of ranking in the search results.
14 Responses to “Wear Your Marketing Hat Often!”
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Some solid advice here Nick! I especially agree with your points over user experience..too often do you see a site ruined by over active SEO which can only lead to a high bounce rate. Like you said a fine line…high keyword density regarded as SPAM, wont rank and ruins user experience but too low and you won’t appear for keywords your putting effort into. SEO is like internet marketing high wire…its a balancing act!
Thanks for the post! I couldn’t agree more, jamming key doesn’t mean SEO. Do you have any examples of sites that do this well?
Great insight Nick – I am learning a lot from your posts!
Bob
Thanks everyone for reading and the comments! Don’t forget to wear your marketing hats every day!
Good article Nick.
If you think back to Google’s instructions in regards to website copy they tell you to “Write for people, not search engines”.
This means a natural flow without keyword stuffing.
As long as you present your keywords once in the proper context, it will be enough. Repetitions are not needed.
Present your primary keyword phrase in the header in the largest text to establish relevance and build on value added relevant information in deeper page sets.
Navigation should be obvious, product listing should not have to be searched for. Too many sites have too many internal navigation links. It has been a while since I read any discussions on it but I think it is a nav menu should not exceed 6 links.
If you are selling products, present them well.
There are a lot of open source content management systems available to do the job.
Most of these are structured to help with SEO and product presentation.
Stores are generally structured to follow an established guideline for element positioning.
best,
Reg
nbs-seo.com
Hi Reg,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, which are very valid and true…thanks again!
Nick
Agreed. Build a website with the consumer in mind so that when people find your site they will convert to customers. If your site is great at getting onto the upper ranks of Google but it’s a site that turns people off what good have we accomplished?
Presentation, relevance and conversion. That’s pretty much the essence of marketing Nick no matter what medium you are using to broadcast your message.
Hi Gary,
Exactly! It is so very important to remember and consider the marketing aspects as part of your entire SEO program!
Thanks for reading and your comment!
Nick
Nick
Thank you for your article, and thank you all for your comments. It helps people like myself that are new at building a website.
I do have a question, maybe someone can answer.
I have an article that is about 375 words in lenght on my lead page, and I’ve only included 2 keywords in the article.
How meany keywords might be a comfortable fit for an article of this lenght?
Thank you all!
Nick
How meany keywords might be a comfortable fit for an article of 375 words in lenght?
Thank you
Absolutely right. Many times there are keywords thrown in that make no sense in the content. Not to mention the keywords that are stuffed into the meta tags that are never found in the content.
I have just started doing what you said in this post- I started looking at the marketing side as well as SEO and my whole view of everything became clearer(i needed to improve my conversions) .
I totally agree do not stuff keywords and keep them relevant to which page they are on.
Navigation needs to be kept clear and precise so potential customers will know how to use your site
Time to finish what i started .
Have a Great Day
Mark Demers
Hi Jim,
Thanks for reading. Personally, I never write content (or articles) only to rank for keywords. Write your informational article naturally first, do you keyword research then optimize naturally thereafter. Hope this helps.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for sharing your situation. I am glad to see I can help you…remember take it 1 step at a time