Jennifer Slegg - Search Engine Marketing Consultant |

When planning and researching your keywords to target for either pay per click advertising campaigns or on-page keyword focus within your content, most marketers don’t realize they are leaving a lot of potential keyword options on the table. And what’s more, these alternative keywords are often less expensive to purchase or less competitive to target in the search results for. Why is this? Because too many people take what keywords the various keyword tools give them to heart. There is a huge wealth of traffic to be gleaned by targeting variations of your top chosen keywords.

So what exactly do these “variations” refer to? It definitely goes far beyond the typical misspellings, which is what most people think of when considering alternative keywords. And while misspellings are a crucial part of your keyword variations, there are more areas to look at. Here is what they are and how you can use them to your advantage when creating keyword lists.

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We have all heard everyone say that quality inbound links are crucial to any search engine optimization campaign. But that said, what exactly qualifies as a quality link? Is it just a link from a PR6 site or higher? Is it a link from a site that ranks for your chosen keywords? Is it a site that sells links through a text link broker? You would probably be surprised that the answer can be yes or no, but it is up to you to identify what makes a quality link and one makes a link you’d be better off passing on.

There are many factors that can go into identifying what makes a quality link from a site. Let’s look at some of the things that makes a link a quality link and how to know if there are potential buyer-beware issues for each.

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A couple of years ago, using meta tags definitely fell out of style. They went from being near the top of every search engine optimiser’s to do list to being dropped right off the bottom and added to a site more as an afterthought than a SEO technique. True, they stopped being the sure-fire SEO technique they were several years ago, but should they really have been relegated to non-existence? Definitely not.

Even today, however, marketers are confused about what meta tags are actually good for, especially with so many people saying meta tags are useless and not to add them. But then add to that the fact that Google, Yahoo & Microsoft have stepped up to add new meta tags into the mix in the past year to allow webmasters to customize how their sites are displayed in the search results. So here is what meta tags are still useful for in 2007, and why you should be using them.

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At Seodays, we talked about keyword density and how important keyword density is when optimizing your content. However, not everyone understands how keyword density works… and how going overboard with keyword density can sink your entire page to the bottom of the search engine results, if it even ranks at all.

Keyword density is a tricky one because the percentage you should have can vary depending on the market area. In a non-competitive area, you don’t need to worry much about it too other than to make sure those keywords are on the page, preferably in the first half of the content rather than the second half. But if you are in a competitive area, you need to hit certain percentages of keyword density, and placing them at specific places within your content, without crossing that invisible line where your content becomes so keyword heavy that it becomes spammy.

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Whether you love it or hate it, link bait has been going strong for about a year now, with webmasters and bloggers carefully crafting titles and articles for the maximum amount of link baiting goodness. But like all SEO techniques that webmasters run wild with until it is done to death, is link bait due to be exterminated as a usable technique?

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While most people use dynamic keyword insertion in their Google AdWords campaigns for ease of use and customization when using large lists of keywords or to use for tracking purposes, most people don’t realize they can also use dynamic keyword insertion in their display URLs to increase clickthroughs as well.

First, let’s look at the display URL and how it works. This is the URL that AdWords displays when your ad shows up in the Google search results or when displaying on the search or content network. And as per AdWords requirements, this display URL must match the destination URL…. however, what most people don’t realize is that they don’t need to match exactly.
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How many times have you seen a hot looking navigation structure, only to discover it is practically useless when you tried to actually use it? Or when you are trying to find a site in the search results, but the site’s entire Google snippet consists of nothing but the list of categories taken from the site’s navigation?

When designing a site’s navigation structure, it is one area where it is crucial to carefully balance the needs of usability with the needs of search engine optimization. And unfortunately, it is one area that non-SEO web designers tend to excel on one or the other, but rarely both. There are several things you need to consider when designing your site’s navigation structure, so that you don’t discover problems with it down the road when wondering why your bounce rate is so high or why your pages aren’t being indexed as well as they should.
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Branding with pay per click ads is one of those hard things to track. When you are branding, you are not necessarily looking for clicks or conversions, although those can be seen as an added bonus. As a result, traditional methods of creating and tracking ad campaigns, as you would for regular keyword targeted campaigns, are thrown out the window when you are using pay per click strictly for the branding aspect.

With branding, it is all about getting your brand out there to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible… while paying the least amount possible. And if you are doing it correctly, your brand becomes known and easily recognizable within your market area, even if there is not the corresponding ad clicks to your site… something that tends to make some advertising execs very nervous. But in reality, it is not that much different from advertising through magazines where you have lots of eyeballs for branding potential, even if they don’t end up going to the URL listed in the ad.

Why brand with pay per click? First, if you do it correctly, you can get those eyeballs for a relatively cheap amount when you compare it to the pricing with regular keyword targeting. And if you have a recognizable logo – or one you want to be recognizable – you can also explore using image and video ads to compliment your branding campaign. But branding with pay per click, and particularly Google AdWords, is something that many pay per click advertisers overlook when considering their marketing efforts. However, following these steps will show how to easily start a branding campaign while spending the least amount possible on it.

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Jennifer Slegg began as a freelance writer, and then turned to writing content for the web ten years ago. She is definitely a writer at heart! She has created numerous content-rich and community based sites in niche markets since initially venturing onto her first website, and as a result, Jen is well versed in the many ways to monetize content online. She also an expert with the many problems writers face online, such as copyright infringement and duplicate content issues (and especially how to deal with these issues in Google), and how to combat them so it doesn’t affect search rankings.

Acknowledged as the leading expert on the Google AdSense contextual advertising program & the Yahoo Publisher Network, she also writes on JenSense: Making Sense of Contextual Advertising, a blog dealing exclusively with contextual advertising issues for publishers. Her unique style brings insight to both publishers and advertisers of contextual advertising programs. She is also well known as Jenstar on the various search forums where she contributes and moderates at the leading online forums.

She is also a well-known Disney fan, and the chance to speak on contextual advertising at Disneyland is near the top of her list for favorite moments in the industry… although it doesn’t quite beat the experience of talking with Larry & Sergey after the Google Dance at SES San Jose.

Jennifer writes for Search Engine Land (and Search Engine Watch previous to that) and has been quoted in publications such as Washington Post, USA Today & The Street.

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Having a corporate blog is a great way to connect with your customers, but unfortunately, not all companies get it right when they first launch their blog… and not knowing how the blogosphere works is a public relations disaster in the making. While a blog can enhance and build your relationship with your customers, doing it wrong can have the opposite effect. Do you really want your company’s blogging faux pas to wind up all over the blogosphere? Not really, but corporations have stumbled repeatedly when trying to find their blogging voice, not to mention blogging policies to deal with problems that will pop up along the way.

Is your company ready to take the seemingly big and scary step into the world of blogging? This advice will help you make sure you and your company get it right the first time around… and you will soon discover that starting a corporate blog really isn’t as scary as your PR department (and maybe your legal team too!) is making it out to be. Here are twenty best practices for starting your corporate blog.

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