Google is like God. It works in mysterious ways.

But there are people who think they have the inside story. I gather some serious testing has been done to validate the claim that Google Places (http://www.google.com/places/) helps one’s ranking significantly. 

5 reasons to partake in Google Places:

1. It's free
   And the listing fast to create. I'll explain how in this post.
    
2. You don't even need a website
   Just pop your details in and – voila! – online presence. 
    
3. Local biz?
   Google Places promotes your physical location through Google Maps. So if your customers are local, and you want more of them, and what you do for a living is legal, then you really should appear on Google Places, no question. 
    
4. Local or not local
   Either way the keywords in your profile will help your Google ranking. More about this in a jiffy.

5. Protect yourself from identity theft
   Some soul-barren businesses actually search to see which of their competition hasn't gotten around to listing themselves on Google Places – and then take advantage. Basically, they pretend to be you and direct the visitor to their site and phone number. So best get onto it, I say.

What is Google Places exactly?

Google allows you to create a basic profile (business listing) and a ‘pin’ to pop on Google Maps as to where you are located. Here's an example showing My Marketing Thing (you can see a red pin that says 'A' indicating where My Marketing Thing resides):

Don’t want people visiting you at home?

If you work from home/online like I do, invest in a PO Box. There’s no problem listing a postal box on your Google Places profile. That’s what is happening here for My Marketing Thing's pin.

Click on the name of the business…

….and you see this:

As I don't have a shop but a post box, Google has taken the liberty of putting a photo up of a café next to where the post boxes are. I guess, while they’re trying to find me they can pit stop for a cuppa…

Note: Put a fake street address in your listing and Google will smack you. Put multiple listings for the phone number and it will smack you again (which is a real bummer if you have genuinely different businesses using the same phone number…but life isn't fair). Actually, Google won't smack you. It will just remove the extra listings.

On a happier note…The wonderful thing you might notice here is that my website link and phone number are both there in all their glory. Beautiful. But wait – there’s more!

Click the ‘more info’ link…and you see something like this:

Quelle joyeux, oui?

What goodies do you get?

• A description about you – written by you
• Contact details – again, bless them
• Photos and reviews - Google assesses these prior to letting them through the gate (best not write your own review…they won't let it through)
• Related places - okay…that’s often your competition but, hey, it’s a community thing, and then they make it all better by letting you promote yourself EVEN FURTHER under:
• More about this place - your additional description plus some mysterious streaming stuff happens here (your activities on other sites)  beyond your control…be prepared to be amazed.

So how do you set up your Google Places listing?

1. Sign up for a free Google account (if you haven't one already)
   (make the email address relevant to your business as the public will see it)
2. Go to: http://www.google.com/places/
3. Click on this bit: (insert pic of Google Places page)
4. Sign into your Google account on the right hand side (if you're not signed in already)
5. Enter your business phone number and select the correct country, as requested 
6. Follow the rest of the prompts, it's pretty straight-forward
   …but there is one thing we need to talk about:

 
About 'Breaking into the Top 7'

When you hear people talking about 'Breaking into the Top 7' of Google Places they are talking about when someone searches in Google (i.e. 'Google proper') there's often seven flagged listings that appear first on the page – with a Google Map beside the section indicating where these businesses are found. 

Pretty nice real estate, oui?

Here's an example of an accountants search (with my scribble indicating the Adwards pins and the free Google Places pins):

Keywords for higher Google ranking

You can have keywords in the areas of: your business name, description and additional details of your Google Places listing. Here's the low-down:

Your business name
You would this this one's pretty straight-forward. But some business names don't really say what area they are in. This can put you on the backfoot, Google-wise. Some add a word or two after the business name to explain it.
Accountancy example:
Your business name could officially be XYZ Pty Ltd.
But some people might choose to type something like: XYZ Accountancy Services for better search engine optimisation.

Warning on 'keyword stuffing'
Be careful with keywords in the business name, however. Some people have been caught (usually by their competitors dobbing them in) putting a heap of keywords in the business name field. It can get to the point when it's obvious this isn't the proper business name. And you're sunk. If the name looks strangely keyword crammed (called 'keyword stuffing') Google will have you for breakfast.

Your description
Your 200-character description needs to focus on your key products and services. Don't waste characters on your history, your geographic location or try to impress with jargon. Just say what you specialise in and what your services/products include – keywords should appear naturally in this description.

Hint 1: If you are an accountant, use both 'accountant' and 'accountancy' in the description. If you're a trainer, use 'trainer' and 'training'. Get the picture?
Hint 2: Apparently using 'the word free' is a good idea – so end with: 'Free quotes'.

Your category
You have to have at least one standard category, but for better Google ranking use all five opportunities available. Look at your top keywords and choose the most relevant five.
Example: Accountant, Business Accounting, Tax accounting, Chartered accountant, Financial Adviser.

Additional details:
Like with description, focus on products and services.
Accountancy example:
Chartered accountants and financial planners specialising in: Assurance and advisory, business solutions, corporate finance, financial services, outsourced accounting, risk management, tax services, insolvency.
Each detail consists of two fields with a maximum space of 200 characters each. The colon after 'specialising in' separates the two fields.
 

After submitting your information

You have to verify your listing by phone (you trigger a phone call from Google's computers – quite nifty) or mail (snail mail of up to 5 weeks).

Don't stop there!

Once your Google Places listing is there for all the world to see, you can really ramp up the action:

• Reviews
  Strong-arm clients to write gushingly positive reviews about you (email them the link to your Google Place page for easy access).
   
• Offers
  Have a special offer to lure new clients? Promote it here. Or you can create one especially for those who have found you on Google Places Upload it (with a coupon?) to your Google Place page. Note: if there's a time limit on the offer, make it crystal clear.
   
• Photos & Video
  You can upload 10 photos and 5 videos (from YouTube.com). Add relevant, meaningful photos (your 'outlet', your products, a photo of you and a happy client who likes having their photo paraded online). Consider a special video message from you for those who have found you on Google Places (mentioning that special offer we talked about in the previous point perhaps?). 'What we do' videos aren't particularly enticing – lead in with how you solve a common problem.
  SEO hint: have keywords in the titles of your photo and video files.

That's enough. It's probably taken you longer to read this article than to actually create your Google Places listing. But there's no excuses now. Off you go. Et bon chance!

This post was written by Megan Hills. Megan is a writer, cartoonist and marketing consultant who finds having a fixed address challenging – just as well it's a post box. Find out more about Megan.

Up until recently, article marketing used to mean writing a 'how to' article (preferably a keyword laden one) and pasting it into as many article directories as you can (like Articles Base, Article Directory and Article Dashboard).

Having your article duplicated on a multitude of top ranking sites meant that people had a better chance of finding out about you – not just through your articles but also through Google ranking.

The keywords in your articles would be rewarded by Google. And having your website address in your author profile of these directories was enough to significantly help your search engine optimisation (SEO).

So what's changed?

Google has been a bit of a mystery from the start. No one knows exactly what's going on in Googleland. So it's fitting that the latest dramatic change might be called 'Panda' or it might be called 'Farmer'. We're not really sure.

What we do know is that on 24 February 2011, Google did a major ranking algorithm update. For many, this has halved their sites’ visitor numbers. It started causing havoc in the US (because they don't have enough problems at the moment), but it's soon to work its magic in other countries, too. 

The main problem seems to be around unoriginal and duplicated material. Article directories have had a particularly rough time with this new change.

Some spectacular examples

According to Search Engine Journal:

"Ezine Articles and Suite 101 lost over half of their visibility, with Wisegeek getting devastated at a 93% drop. The percentage of loss as calculated by Sistrix placed some prominent sites such as Associated Content, Business.com, and Articles Base at over 90% of traffic which simply evaporated overnight….While major sites such as YouTube, eBay, and Facebook were considered net winners in the Google algorithm modification, some prominent publishing sites such as Ezine Articles, Buzzle, and HubPages were seen to lose considerable traffic."

Why is Google being so cruel?

The aim of this change is to remove poor quality sites from the top of Google’s results pages. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of spam, explains their intention in his update announcement post on the 24th of February:

"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

Sounds fair enough.

But accidents happen.

So Google have asked those with “a high quality site that has been negatively affected by this change” to let them know about it. That is, if you can work out that your site has been unfairly affected by Panda. Or Farmer. Good luck with that.

And then there was April Fools…

April 1st didn't help things. This year, Google continued its proud tradition of April Fools’ Day pranks with a 'new' Gmail application and the unveiling of CADIE, a Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. 

Billed as the world’s first artificial intelligence tasked-array system, CADIE had already scanned the Web and created her own homepage, which demonstrated the entity’s love of all things panda-related (see it here). We already feel foolish enough around Google. Did they really have to make us feel stupider?

Jokes aside – what now?

• Quality content is still king – best have your original, niche-driven content appearing on your own website. If you are too broad in your topic range, Google won't like you as much. 
• If you have lots of articles on your site, have a list of 'categories' on your home page which leads to those articles on a particular theme.
• Don't have too many advertisements on your site. Google won't like that either.
• Try reducing the number of article directories you use to the top ranking ones.
• Find other ways to get your website link onto other sites – ways that have a more natural relationship-building approach.
• Embrace social media – if you can bear it (excuse the Panda pun).

Being an authority in your area of expertise is still what everyone is banging on about. Most importantly, I feel, is being committed to it for the long-term. Apparently Google rewards those who 'keep calm and carry on'.

This post was written by Megan Hills. Megan is a writer, cartoonist and marketing consultant who is waiting for Google to blackmark anyone who uses Facebook or Twitter. Now that would be interesting. Find out more about Megan

Following from the last post: Making a Business-ish Video, you are going to move from the director's chair to that of 'film distributor'. 

In this post we'll look at setting up your YouTube account.

Here are the 11 easy steps required:

1. Go to YouTube
2. Click on the big blue 'create an account' button (they make it pretty easy for you)
3. Type in your email address.
4. Type in a username (there's more info about that below).
5. Click from the 'Location' menu where you are
6. Type in your date of birth
7. Click your gender
8. Check the first box if you want those who have your email address to find you (it just means that others will be able to find your account by searching with your email address)
9. Check the next box is you want to receive YouTube's promotional material
10. You need to accept the terms and conditions
11. The next step may ask you to link your YouTube account with your Google account (if you have one), just involves signing in with your Google password.
    Or you'll need to set up a Google account – so go through the process of creating a password for that (remember to go to your email inbox to verify the account).

Profile

You can click on your profile and add all kinds of extra information about yourself.

Settings

Click on 'Settings' and you can add a title for your channel, and put in Channel Tags (those handy key words and phrases that will help people looking for good videos in your area of expertise).

Note: you have far fewer characters available in this section than your actual video tags so be specific to target your niche. You can use the free Google Adwords keyword tool to help you identify the best keywords for you. Post on choosing keywords for your video tags to come, so stay tuned! But in the meantime…you can check out my other post: SEO and Keyword Research: Goldilocks meets The Devil.

Choosing a username

There are some handy things to know about choosing a user name. I typed in 'MeganHills' and found that it was already taken. So I tried MeganTV' (afterall, YouTube is like having your own TV show) but that was taken. So I tried MeganHillsTV'  and it was available! That sounds much better than 'MeganHills1' (which was also available). 

Best not have personal videos mixed up with professional ones, though. So keep that in mind if you are using your personal name as a username.

Business name-wise, I could have tried MyMarketingThing if that was my only focus. But I have two other blogs (My Cartoon Thing and My Burnout Thing) and my (low-profile) consultancy, wordmix. So I decided to try MyThing, not available but MyThingTV was available. Snap! 

My partner, Jeff, has a business called Ethical Practice (business training for health practitioners). EthicalPractice was taken, so he nabbed MyEthicalPractice. Not a bad second option. 

Ultimately, you want your YouTube username to be short and catchy. You want it to be memorable.

Don't have any videos yet?

You can still post other people's videos on your channel to get going. But make sure the videos you choose to promote are related to your niche and have something useful to offer. Their quality affects your reputation.

What username would work best for your business? 

Let us know about your experiences with selecting a YouTube name.

Next post…

We will be looking at how to upload your video. Livin' the dream, baby!

This post was written by Megan Hills. Megan is a writer, cartoonist and marketing consultant who likes the idea of hosting her own TV show called 'Warren'. Find out more about Megan 

You know those guys in goggles and white jumpsuits on the tarmac waving paddles at airplanes? 

A 'landing page' is like one of those guys. Waving at your target market – showing them that you are their guide for a secure place to rest and have their needs met.

Imagine how annoying it is when a whopping big airplane ignores all your expert waving and goes to land somewhere else.

Let's not have your landing page experience this public rejection.

What is a landing page exactly?

Okay, a landing page is one way to create sales from pay-per-click ads and e-mail campaigns – or even from social media (like a Facebook profile page). It is sometimes known as a 'lead capture page' 

Here's how a landing page works in conjunction with an AdWords campaign:

1. A person searches for something on Google 

2. They click on your AdWords ad which matches those search words they used (AdWords ads are usually on the right hand side of the search results page – more AdWords info here)

3. The person who clicked on your ad finds themselves on your landing page – a page tailored to their exact needs….

A landing page could be considered a full page advertisement online. A full page ad with a coupon box. Why the coupon box? Because giving your visitor a way to interact with you is what the paddle-waving is all about. 

A landing page generally involves luring your visitor to fill out a form of some kind. This might be to receive a free report, a free e-book, or a free sample of a product. Or the form may promote an actual sale of a service or product.

The form asks the visitor for their an email address – maybe perhaps a name and telephone number as well. Enough to 'capture the lead', add the visitor to your mailing list and get some kind of relationship started.

Some people build an entire business on a landing page, by-passing having a website altogether. 

4 'hard' landing page questions:

1. What are you offering?

2. Who do you wish to appeal to?

3. Why would they be interested in your offer?

4. What do they need to do to participate/buy?

Once you've nailed the answers to these questions, you can start working on a layout for your landing page.

What does your landing page need to be?

'Focused and simple' is the key to creating a successful landing page.

What was that again?

Focused and simple.

One more time…

Focused and simple.

Yep, you've got it!

7 nifty tips…

The visitor needs to know what’s being offered quickly and easily. 

1. Write down 5 great reasons for your visitor to take action, put them in bullets and pop them at the top of the page, next to your main photo or even above it.

2. Write from the visitor’s perspective (i.e. what their key concerns are and how you can help).

3. Make sure it is super-clear what you want them to do to take up your offer.

4. No technical web design gizmos (you can’t assume what apps your visitor has on their computer and you don’t want long download times).

5. Keep your visitor on the page – avoid links to more information because you tend to lose them when they leave.

6. Back up your claims with traceable testimonials.

7. The key photo, bullets and headline should all appear 'above the fold' – visitors shouldn't have to scroll down to read them. 

The more costly an item is, or the more unique it is, the more content will be needed to convince a buyer to opt-in

The subscription area

If possible, just ask for an email address so you can start as many new relationships as possible and get more registration info down the road. If you need – and I mean really NEED – more information for what you are selling: 'phone number', 'title' and 'company' is doable (if relevant). Just remember: the more details you ask for the less they are likely to opt-in.

Extra tip:
Have a big button with an enticement ‘Sign up now’ or ‘buy now’ – whatever is relevant (not just ‘submit’ or ‘click here’)

The subscription process

If someone leaves a field on the form blank, make sure it's easy for them to fix it. Clearly indicate the field they left blank, and explain what they need to do. Don't wipe the whole page blank and make them start over.

Look at the resolution page, or what is sometimes called the ‘encore’ page. That's the page you get after someone has submitted their information for that PDF download or made a purchase or subscribed to a newsletter.

DON’T leave them with: "Thank you, you've been subscribed." At the very least, have a link with: "Return to Home Page" Better still, you can offer them a subscription to your newsletter, give them an incentive to take a survey, etc. 

How do you gauge its success?

A visitor doing what you want them to do (i.e. fill out your form and submit) is known as 'a conversion'. The success of your landing page can be measured by its conversion rate – i.e. the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action. 

Testing

Prior to launch, ask those you know in your target market about your page.

• Don’t tell them what it’s about first

• Give them five seconds to look at the page 

• Ask them what their impression of it was

• Ask them what they remember from it

• Ask: "What would make it clearer for you?" 

Testing different content elements live

You are able to change your landing page anytime you want to see if another approach might work better. Here are some elements worth playing around with:

• different subject headers

• how many fields you ask for in your request form 

• the length of your copy 

• your Pay Per Click target phrases

Change one thing, and assess. Then change another thing, and assess. Don’t change too much at once or you won’t know what’s working and what isn’t.

If visitation averages just a few seconds, and you aren’t attracting the subscriptions you are after, then it's obviously not grabbing their attention.

Test in all browsers. Make sure your page looks okay in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (recent versions, not just the latest version).

There’s no guarantees

People don’t want to be hounded. This means they won’t sign up for just anything. The more specific the offer, the higher the response rate and the closer you will be to attracting the people you want to reach. 

This post was written by Megan Hills.  Megan is a writer, cartoonist and marketing consultant who enjoys take-off and landing equally. Find out more about Megan

I'm going to keep this post simple.

Powerful content writing (i.e. writing for the web) generally requires a degree of simplicity. So this is going to be Zen-like in it's minimalism. This will be a post of few words. More like a meditation. A web writing meditation. Okay, I'll shut up now. On with the post…

I should mention that I've already written about keywords for web writing: Using keywords for SEO and other alien adventures. But this post is about writing style.

Below are four tips only, like the four seasons of nature.

(gong sound) 

Spring

Smell the cherry blossom? It's spring. The beginning of things. What do you do when a nice stranger comes to visit asking for help?

The important thing is to be helpful. Which means being nice back and trying not to talk too much. Your home page, and your next tier of pages, must be friendly, succinct and show that you are ready to assist. If they want more information, you will give them the hyperlink to it, won't you? It's only polite.

(another gong sound) 

Summer 

It's hot, damned hot. But for some reason we generally feel more active in the summertime. We jump from spot to spot like a frog in a lotus pond.

Your visitor will tend to scan your website text, rather than read it. So use headings, sub‐headings, and bulleted lists as lily pads for your visitor to land on – and to convey important messages quickly. Remember to keep your bullets (and the words in your bulleted lists) short but sweet.

(two gong sounds)  

Autumn 

Walk through the golden leaves in your visitor’s shoes. 

Your words need to be written from your visitor's perspective. So have text that speaks from their point of view. For example: 'Your family…./'If you would like…./If you are looking for…./Having…..feels good, right?'.

This is much more effective than speaking from your (or your company’s) point of view. For example: ‘We are…/We believe…/We recognise…’.

(a gong sound with haunting Japanese flute) 

Winter

It's cold out there. So invite your visitor in to stay awhile, and to wander around at leisure. Every room is heated. 

Use your text to lure the visitor from page to page via enticement lines and hyperlinks. The longer the visitor spends wandering about your site the more of a relationship develops and the likelihood of them contacting you.

Which means it's not a bad idea to end every page with a recommendation to contact you (with a hyperlink to your contact page).

(haunting flute starts up then fades…)

End of post. Thank you.

This post was written by Megan Hills-san.  Megan is a writer, cartoonist, marketing consultant who has nothing else to say right now. Find out more about Megan.

Have you heard people jabbering on about 'Adwords' and  'PPC' as if you should:

(a) know what they're saying, and
(b) care?

I know. 'Adwords' sounds like an uncreative copywriting agency. And 'PPC' sounds like an uncreative insurance company. But, surprisingly, they are neither of these things.

When the used-car salesmen of the internet holler 'Be on the first page of Google!', they are often referring to Google Adwords campaigns.

Google Adwords is one form of pay-per-click advertising (otherwise known as PPC).

What is pay-per-click advertising?

Unlike PPC, pay-per-click is exactly how it sounds. If someone sees your ad and clicks on it, you pay.

AdWords is a rather popular form of pay-per-clicking. Apparently Google made $20 billion from AdWords in 2008. What the advertisers made is another story…

What is Google Adwords exactly?

The Google Adwords ads are the sponsored link areas of a search results page (see the red circled areas below):

Adwords positioning

When talking about Adwords, people generally mean the ads on the right hand side column. So much of the AdWord ranking rant by search engine specialists is about being at the top of that column. King of the hill, top of the heap.

It's as if they don't want to be so bold as to mention 'the other place': directly above the search results (see the other red circled area at the top of the diagram). This spot is Google's royalty box.

Getting into Google's royalty box

Having your Adwords ad at the top of the search listings means you are smack-dab in Google's premium real estate. Ads go to this red-roped area when they have met an additional performance standard.

Like much with Google, this additional performance standard is shrouded in mystery. We do know, however, that it's something to do with the relevance of the ad to the visitor. This seems to be strongly determined by the click-through-rate (CTR) of your ad while it's sitting on the right hand side, waiting to be selected by the Google prince for a watlz.

How do you start this Adwords thing?

1. Go to Google AdWords
2. Set up an account
3. Pay the $5 account set-up fee
4. Create your ad
5. Sit and watch your money flow out

Giving Google even more of your money

Google allows you to bid on keywords that you want to activate your ad. It's kind of like EBay, but without getting anything tangible.

The higher you bid (i.e. more money you spend on a particular group of keywords) the more likely you will be placed at the top of the sponsored links column on the right hand side.

Some royal gossip

A good number of Google ranking specialists are now saying 'Beware of AdWords'. Why? Because Adwords is fast becoming the domain of large organisations with big Adwords budgets. It doesn’t take much to use up a more modest Adwords budget – which, of course, then makes it to harder to spin your ad budget into gold. 

How high up you appear on the sponsored links list depends, in part, on how much you’re willing to spend on your campaign.

Why AdWords might NOT be worth trialling

If you are a small business and have only recently launched your site, try other ways to raise your ranking before launching into AdWords.

Even if you have been around for a bit (online) but still have low visitor numbers, be careful. Try getting your numbers up before going down the Adwords track.

Other ways to raise visitor numbers before launching an Adwords campaign

Read the previous My Marketing Thing posts on search engine optimisation:

• SEO: true meanings and confessions
• SEO and keyword research: Goldilocks meets the devil
• Using keywords and other alien adventures
• Courting Google to raise your SEO
  

If you choose to go ahead with this AdWords caper…

A successful AdWords campaign hinges on choosing the right keywords to put in you ad.

To choose the right keywords, it's best to embrace the‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ formula: not too broad (too expensive), not too niche (no one will search for it), just right.

Sound familiar? Yes I wrote about my Goldilocks keyword theory in SEO & Keyword research: Goldilocks meets the devil.  

How much does AdWords cost?

You can set a price limit per day, but have a popular keyword and your campaign can get very expensive very quickly. 

For more information: Visit Google's pricing information here.

3 key tips to making AdWords work for you 

1. If you are wanting to attract customers from a particular geographic area 
   incorporate the name of the suburb or city as a keyword to niche your campaign.
    
2. Niche by having an exact phrase only
   Use brackets or quotes at either end of the phrase to let Google know that you are promoting a phrase (not a collection of single keywords). 
    
3. To inspire the searcher to click on your ad 
   Offer a free e-book or free mini-online course – i.e. offer something attractive to your target audience that is free if they visit your site (by clicking on your ad).

Something many forget about AdWords campaigns

The Adwords campaign is designed to send visitors to your website. So having a great click-through stat is fine. But what happens when the visitor arrives to your site?

Do everything it can to make that AdWords visitor welcome. Tea, coffee, cake?

Make the most of their visit. Encourage them to contact you directly, subscribe to your e-news or buy something on your online store. 

Once started on AdWords, then what? 

This post was written by Megan Hills.  Megan is a writer, cartoonist, marketing consultant who is wondering how to organise a coup d'etat against the leader of the free world: Google. Find out more about Megan.

As promised in my last post Using keywords for SEO and other alien adventures, here's a bigger picture (beyond keywords) on SEO.

In other words, here are some dating tips when seducing Google into giving you a higher ranking. It's sort of like the Bachelorette of the Internet. 

• a high number of visitors,
  but it's even better if you have…
   
• a high number of 'unique visitors' (i.e. first-timers – Google likes it if you make a good first impression) 
  but it's even better if you have…
   
• a high number of unique visitors who then return a lot and wander around your site for ages in wonderment
  but it's even better if you have…
   
• a high number of unique visitors who then return a lot and wander around your site for ages in wonderment and subscribe to your newsletter and/or your RSS feed and/or buy stuff and/or leave a comment and/or email you directly, and/or engage in your visitor poll (quick online survey), etc.

In summary: Have a cool group of friends – that just keeps getting bigger and bigger – who like to do stuff with you.

How do you do this? By being attractive, interesting and interested in those who come to visit you.

2. Are you, like, into talking about stuff?

Google isn't into the smouldering silent type. She hangs with chatty, social personalities. 

Constantly changing content, particularly on your home page, is a good thing. Constantly changing content that have great keywords (relevant to your site) is even better.

This is why blog sites are so popular with Google. The format of blogs is inspire new articles, regularly posted, right there on the home page. And they are also strongly designed to inspire visitor comments (remember that visitor interaction thing in dating tip #1). 

However, if you have a website instead, your Google cred can still be intact. You can still have changing news on your home page with an opportunity for people to comment. Everything is possible. Just make sure you have a CMS (content management) website so you can go in and change anything at any time.

3. Are, like, other cool people talking about you?

4. Do you want to, like, get married? 

Google doesn't want a fly-by-nighter. She likes the solid ones who have been around awhile.

The longer your site has been online, the higher your ranking is likely to be. It's just one of those things.

Final episode

Just because Google is partial to polyandry doesn't mean she won't give you the affection you want. You just need to play by her rules, whatever they are. Women really never tell you, do they?

So the above is advice given by SEO experts around the place who have tested their theories by taking Google on different kinds of dates to see what makes this mysterious woman smile.

But, the problem is, she's a fickle individual who will never kiss and tell. So we just keep buying those flowers and chocolates and calling her number again…and again…

What's next in the Google dating game?

Prostitution. When people say, 'We can get you on the first page of Google' they are generally pimps, touting pay-per-chick advertising services. We're talking AdWords campaigns.

Stay tuned to find out how to get to home base with Google.

To re-cap this SEO series: 

If you want to know what SEO (search engine optimisation) really means: 
SEO: True meanings and confessions

To find the best keywords for you: 
SEO and keyword research: Goldilocks meets the devil

To work out how to apply those keywords:
Using keywords for SEO and other alien adventures

This post was written by Megan Hills.  Megan is a writer, cartoonist, marketing consultant who is looking forward to writing about making a meaningful connection with real people – rather than these superficial, popularity-seeking search engine spiders. Find out more about Megan.

If you've just started visiting, this is the third post about that crazy thing called 'SEO'. For many of us, it's much like the acronym 'UFO'.

Admission: I know quite a bit about SEO, but it still makes me feel like an alien. 

Here is what this particular marketing therapy group has chatted about so far:

If you want to know what SEO (search engine optimisation) really means:
SEO: True meanings and confessions

To find the best keywords for you:
SEO and keyword research: Goldilocks meets the devil

Keyword definition re-cap:

Keywords are those niche words and phrases your target market is likely to type into Google's search box. This involves a combination of research and ESP (interestingly, this is just what aliens are renowned for). 

So, now that you know what your best keywords are…  

What is next? Knowing the best way to insert these little bundles of joy into your site. Take my hand and I'll show you around Planet Keyword…. 

On your actual web (or blog) page

It's a good idea to use keywords in your page content in the following ways:

• in your tag line (otherwise known as a slogan)
  
• in the titles of your pages
• throughout your content text, home page particularly (but don't over-do it, good communication comes first)
• in the titles of any news articles
  
• in sub-headings
• in bold words
  
• in hyperlinks
  

All of these have been suggested by SEO experts. But it's not a perfect science because Google refuses to tell anyone their secret recipe.

What happens keyword-wise on your web or blog page is only the beginning. There is a host of 'back end' tricks that you can make yourself available to. And it is not as painful as it sounds. 

Your domain name

'Marketing' is a keyword for this site. And it's is in my URL: www.mymarketingthing.com. With that said, 'marketing' is an insanely broad (competitive) keyword so I'm not going to get much SEO mileage out of having this in my blog address. Never mind. I'll be moving to Mars soon anyway.

It might not be too late for you though – if you're wanting to stay here on Earth, that is. So if you're still deciding on your domain name then consider inserting a keyword there.

Title tags

If you visit the home page of this blog site www.mymarketingthing.com, you will notice some words on the bar at the very top of the page: marketing plans media public relations…etc. etc. This is my home page title tag.

Title tags work best when you have key phrases and perhaps your business name. If your business needs to attract clients from your physical location, a geographic reference like 'Brisbane' is worth putting in.

Some say 65ish character limit ballpark for title tags, but other say around 10ish words. Can’t find a definitive answer on this. 

Alt tags

Keywords can be very important when it comes to ‘Alt tags’. Alt tags mean ‘alternative text’ and this field comes up when you are inserting an image on a web page.

Keywords in alt tags are generally good for ranking. When people (and search engine tracking spiders) look via keywords on Google images, your photos and graphics can appear. So this is another way powerful way potential clients can stumble across your site.

Apparently alt tags shouldn't have more than 5 words in each. And be aware that your visitors might be able to see them if they run their mouse over the image. So alt tags need to say something that makes sense. 

Title of your image with a keyword(s) example: alien.jpg 

I read on Splash.net.au that a maximum of 78 words is allowed for all alt tags on one web page.

This article has post tag words like: 'keywords', 'search engine optimisation', 'SEO' and 'title tags'.

A note about article directories

If you ever find the time, you can also submit your keyword-savvy articles to online article directories to raise your online presence – therefore, your ranking. This can be done for free and each article generally has a tag section where you can type relevant keywords.

The article generally ends with your website link, acting as an 'inbound link' (a link on another website pointing to your website, or blog site). Great for SEO. More about inbound links in the next post.

Category titles

Keyword tricks you can get into trouble for

Avoid hidden text or hidden links, and don't load pages with irrelevant words. If you do, Google will send you to the back of the class. And you don't want to go there.

SEO is not all about keywords, by the way.

Nooooo….. There is a much bigger, even more exciting picture afoot. I'll be back soon to take you to the Mothership of SEO.

Search engine optimisation (SEO). Everyone wants to know about it. Even if they really don't.

Because, surely, there are more interesting things we can do with our time. But I guess (she says begrudgingly) if you want to be found easily on Google (or other popular search engines) it's probably not a bad idea to know the lay of the land.

Then, if you wish, you can reject all these SEO tips outright and focus on being more interesting.

Note: Being interesting online is good for your SEO. 

Second note: If you're unsure what search optimisation means, read my previous post, SEO: True Meanings and Confessions

Let's start with what I call 'The Devil'

Another word for The Devil: the keyword. And to confuse things, key phrases (i.e. more than one word) are also called keywords. 

Keywords are what other people will type in the Google search box to find websites that cover a particular criteria. Ideally, you want these words to appear on your site so they match with the kinds of searches your target market is likely to make…all to find someone special like you.

It's supposed to work like this: Your potential customer taps in a word or two, clicks on 'search' and voila! There you are, on the very first page (ideally), waiting to greet them.

An aside: Why my bad press on keywords?

My personal distaste for keywords stems from the bizarre communication contortion that people embrace for the sake of good ranking. They can spoil creative communication, and even straight-up clear writing. Keywords can be party-poopers in the fun park of message giving.

Admittedly, people are starting to find ways to use them for good and not evil. 

My distaste also stems from that fact that I am number phobic. Ascertaining the right keywords is a numbers game. As you are about to find out…

What keywords are best for you?

Let's use an example. Say you want to set up a website that sells meditation books and CDs via your site's online store. This means you are creating an online business, so ranking will be rather important for moving your merchandise as well as your chi.

‘Meditation’ is an obvious keyword to focus on – or so you would think. Of course, 'meditation' will appear on your site, but the term is very general. And so it attracts a massive number of sites on Google. In fact, 27,400,000 searches came up for that word when I last looked.

How do I know? Because at the top right hand side of the Google results page (under the Google logo and search box) is a light blue bar that gives you these results.

27,400,00 search results is called 'insanely large competition'. The enlightenment industry is humming like a plague of bumblebees on heat. In other words, be prepared to get buried somewhere on page 37 (i.e. the outer reaches of the Google universe).

So what's the answer?

The Goldilocks theory 

This is where having a ‘niche’ is handy. What you want are keywords that are not too big (because of that 'insane competition' problem) but also not too small (i.e. no one would dream of typing it in to search for it). So we are shooting for: not too big, not too small, just right.

‘Home meditation’ is getting better niche-wise but still pretty competitive (20,100,000 searches came up), perhaps also ‘DIY meditation’ (1,010,000 comes up for this term). ‘Guided mediation’ brings 734,000 searches.

'Guided meditation cd' is better at 192,000. ‘Guided meditation audio’ is also smaller at 168,000 searches. So these two are much better than just silly old 'meditation'.

Getting the picture?

Proper keyword finding tools

Looking at the numbers on the results bar after a Google search is one way to get a rough gist. To get a better gist you can use Google's Adwords Keyword Tool and click here for Google's new Beta version.

AdWords is Google's pay-per-click advertising service. But you don't have to be an AdWords customer to use their Keyword Tool. And it's free. Aren't they generous?

The Keyword Tool shows you how many people are searching for what words (related to whatever you type in the search box). It also shows you how strong the competition is for particularly words and phrases. Very handy.

So type in the words that relate best to your core products or services and research away.

Spy on your competition

The box where you can type in a website address offers a great opportunity to see what keywords your competitors use (competitors being those that offer the same kinds of products and or services to the same kind of target market).

Looking at the keywords of websites by those competitors who are already highly ranked can give some useful clues.

Spiffy keyword finding tools

If you don't mind spending some money to get a closer look at what might work best for you, Wordtracker is one of the best known keyword research tools.

Note: You will find that keyword research software companies generally offer a free trial. Plunder at your leisure.

But according to Top Ten Reviews, the best keyword analysis software is:

1. Web CEO (over over 707,000 businesses currently rely on it…Lordy)
2. Advanced Web Ranking (the company who made ABR is from Romania, which must be embarrassing because heaps of people are using this software but don't like to admit it)
3. iBusiness promoter (from the more respectable country of Germany, these people say that you will be in the top 10 of Google or get your money back – except that their clients might be too afraid to ask for their money back because the company is German)

Well, that's the first three. Check out the rest here. 

Other popular packages include:

• Market Samurai
• SEO Elite 
• Good Keywords
• Keyword Spy
• Keyword Discovery

Trawl through at will.

How do I use keywords on my site?

My God, are you still awake? My hat off to you. As a reward for your persistence, we are going to 'hold that thought'. You can go and have a nap now. 

But I'll be back next post to answer your sage question. If you don't apply this keyword caper correctly search engines can penalise you in ways you haven't even imagined.

Google might be a cute name but do the wrong thing and, man, they can get ugly. 

Stay close.

This post was written by Megan Hills.  Megan is a writer, cartoonist, marketing consultant who wonders whether Goldilocks was ever the butt of a blonde joke. Find out more about Megan.

Let's start from the beginning. What does SEO really mean? 

• I originally thought it represented the names of the cars I have owned: 
  Sam, Eric and Owen
   
• Certain people lacking social skills think it means: 
  Starship Enterprise's Oscillator

• A small town in Croatia known for their philosophical bent believe it means: 
  some endless osmosis…
   
• It's the acronym for the name of an unusual environmental group – who deny climate change – called:  
  Sun Earth Ostrich
   
• The French insist that it means:  
  séance en oeufs (seance in eggs)  

But today we are in the marketing zone. So here SEO means…..

…drumroll…

Search engine optimisation!

How exciting. All clear, then? No? Okay…

It's not a particularly warm and fuzzy term, I'll grant you that. But if you say 'I want to be on the first page of Google', you will be yelling the same SEO mantra as 99% of the people out there.

Where you appear on a certain Google page determines how many people will find you online. That's why being on the first page of Google is the prayer of the twenty-first century.

The big question people forget to ask…

Being on the first page of Google is all very well. But the thing people often forget to ask is this: the first page by what search words?

Type in 'My Marketing Thing' and I'm top of the page. Yay! But that doesn't help me if I'm trying to reach people who don't know about My Marketing Thing yet.

Type in 'marketing and Blink' ('Blink' is a book by Malcolm Gladwell talked about in an earlier post) and I don't have a hope in hell of being on the first page of Google. Why? Because the big publishers and distributors involved in selling 'Blink' have taken up that first page. And they will probably continue to for awhile yet.

Why do the big guys get the ranking?

The longer you have been around online, the higher your ranking is likely to be. The bigger you are (i.e. lots of traffic on your site and other people listing your web address on their site), the higher your ranking is also likely to be. 

My Marketing Thing is relatively new and relatively small. So my ranking isn't hey-wow fabulous right now.  Well, that's one excuse. There is another big reason why my ranking isn't so hot…yet. And I unveil it very soon – read on!

Happy news for My Marketing Thing

'Marketing coke cartoon' (an image related to my chat about Blink) got me on the first page. Yay! Okay, the likelihood of someone typing in 'Marketing coke cartoon' is much smaller than 'marketing and Blink'. But you do what you can.

One key SEO rule is: try to find niche areas, not highly competitively broad areas.

But we need to stop here for a moment. There's a confession I have to make…

My SEO confession

I would rather have interesting and creative un-search-friendly words than boring and predictable search-friendly words. Search-friendly words are known as 'key words' or 'key phrases'.

I really should have titled my 'Briefing your web dude' series as 'How to brief a web builder'. Why? Because who is going to type into Google 'Briefing your web dude'? No one. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

But I wanted the word 'Dude'. And Goddamnit, I was going to have it.  

My stubborn creative soul does tend to fight this SEO business. But I do have some other strategies that might bring me that ranking without losing the fun bit.

Some shocking news about SEO

There are all manner of things that can apparently raise your page ranking, but….regardless of what SEO experts tell you…nothing has been actually proven.

Note: Apart from getting on the first page of Google via Adwords (pay-per-click advertising). But we will get to that in due course.

What's next?

The next post will give you (in a happy-go-lucky nutshell) the stuff that SEO experts suggest as 'the thing to do' to nab your position on The First Page.

Hey, it's good to know your options and play around with them. I've already used a good many of these babies.

Later I'll also share with you my secret strategy on how to avoid looking like a tedious key-word contortionist – and still get a place in Google's good books.  

This post was written by Megan Hills.  Megan is a writer, cartoonist, marketing consultant who begrudgingly admits that SEO is the devil we need to get to know (buy him a drink, ask about his weekend, that kind of thing). Find out more about Megan.