It’s likely the majority — or at least a significant amount — of your traffic comes from organic search. That being the case, you’ll probably already know all about SEO (search engine optimization) and how important it is to your business. After all, if you’ve done your research and you’re on the front page for your chosen keywords, you can pretty much guarantee a steady stream of traffic and customers. Similarly, “long tail” searches for specific phrases can generate a surprising amount of traffic from people who know exactly what they want.
Can good search engine results be crowdsourced? Bing…
There’s a great story over on the BBC website this weekend about a digital marketing agency that ended up with a business selling parrot cages. How? Why? The answer’s simple. They’re professional PPC (pay-per-click) and search marketing experts. And they decided to use their skills to find an untapped market.
It turns out that lots of people were searching for parrot cages online, but nobody was buying ads with related keywords. In other words, there was a gap in the market. By using PPC advertising the firm were immediately able to test the water — no waiting six…
So, it’s finally happened. Now, there’s specialist companies claiming to be capable of giving you an ‘online detox’, cleansing your online reputation — getting rid of those nasty photos of you, drunk, on Facebook, cleaning up the vindictive messages left on some blog by your ex. More importantly, these companies claim to offer the ability to manage the reputation of your brand or business, “burying the damaging stuff and promoting the good.”
So how does it work?
Well, it’s a little like reverse SEO. Where a page or a comment can’t be deleted, it can be buried.…
As a copywriter, I often get asked to make my work SEO compliant. In short, people are relying on me to know what works in terms of SEO — where should keywords go, and how often should they be repeated? Until now, I’ve relied more or less on a working knowledge of search engine optimization best practices I’ve learned from working with web designers, bloggers and other copywriters. This week, I’ve started using Scribe — a WordPress SEO plugin developed and promoted by Brian Clark of Copyblogger.
What does it do?
In short, Scribe…
The last three jobs I’ve done have all involved SEO in one way or another. Yet without fail, every time I’ve handed over draft “BTL” copy (that’s the big, block paragraphs that make up the bulk of a website or a sales brochure, rather than headline or concept work), I’ve been told to lose the repetition. Or simply to reduce the size of the copy — sometimes from paragraphs to two or three sentences. Which is fine by me — I happen to think that short, minimalist copy that grabs attention and tells people what they want to know, quickly,…
I’ve been working on copy for the web this week, so naturally I’ve been brushing up on my SEO skills in my spare time. SEO isn’t something you can learn and forget about, it’s constantly evolving — just like the web.
If you’ve got a website and you don’t know what SEO is, you might as well sell your computer and buy a typewriter. Or at least rip your modem out of the wall. Let me guess — you’re still on 56k, right?
But let’s assume for a moment you don’t know what SEO is. To be honest, unless…
I’ve been brushing up on my new media skills. I started out copywriting for blogs and websites a few years ago when SEO as we now understand it was but a glint in the web developer’s eye. Now in new media, it’s the undisputed king.
Yet times are changing. Already it’s being argued that Facebook is killing SEO. Essentially, ‘linkbait’ is what’s going to drive hits to your website in the future. It’s another one of those fancy buzzwords, but it’s nothing new. It’s just a modern form of a technique that has worked for generations — in…