Search Engine Optimisation, in the wrong hands, can turn into fishing.

I had a conversation recently about generating a keyword rich page in a highly competitive space. Even if we didn’t get page one, or two, or three of Google, some people might find the site and then, perhaps, might decide to buy some products.

Really? Would they? Sounds like fishing to me. We’re dropping our bait into an incredibly busy river (there are LOTS of fishermen here!) hoping that a fish might not only see our bait, but also like it. Like it more than all the other bait they’ve seen already.

The first problem with this approach is that it is almost infinite. You could create ‘keyword rich’ (ooh, I hate that phrase) pages for all of your products and services, and their related phrases, and hope that some of them get noticed.

There’s no denying that this can and does work. It’s a tried and trusted formula for limited success. My main problem with it, however, is that it is not user centric. We are not asking the question, “what do our users expect to find when they search for that phrase”.

For example, if we were a tennis ball manufacturer we could create a page for the phrase “Wimbledon 2009″. Granted, some people searching that phrase might want to buy tennis balls – but the chances are they want information on the tournament. We could even include some wonderful keyword rich paragraphs about Wimbledon but, unless we’re Slazenger, it’s unlikely this text will be of value for the user.

Another example might be a car insurance provider optimising for ‘Toyota Prius’, because the person searching either  has a car or is about to buy one. Surely they’ll need car insurance at some point too? Maybe, but that’s not what they’re searching for!

I guess that doesn’t stop car insurers sponsoring motor shows, but isn’t a point of the online marketing that we can accurately target people and their interests?

There is also a (please don’t run away here) moral issue. Google is, in many ways, a victim of it’s own success. As SEOs try to keep up with the algorithm, and websites vie for a page one ranking, all kinds of SEO’d content is being created which can be of no use to users. What use is a visitor to you and your site? Vanity? Ego? Would you rather have 1000 visitors who don’t convert or 10 visitors who do?

How many results on page one of Google are directly targeting your search phrase, and how many have been SEO’d to appear there?

This, my friends, is fishing. If you have the time, go nuts. But there are far better things to do. Seriously. You need to get out more.

Throw away your rod, get up off the riverbank, and go hunting.

You know who your prey are – people who want to buy tennis balls. Optimise for phrases like ‘tennis balls’ and ‘buy tennis balls’ (or whatever your keyword research suggests). It’ll be much easier to get a good result on Google, and it’s likely you’ll enjoy much higher conversion rates.

So sling your shotgun over your arm and spend your SEO time more effectively. Don’t waste time competing with the BBC’s coverage of Wimbledon and settling for a page 3 or page 4 result. Go deep and long with your phrases and links, and (last pun coming up) your conversion rates will be an ACE.

That was shocking, I know.

The start of spring means brand new stock for our Travel Store, with new lines of outdoor clothing and travel gear from many of our suppliers. It’s easy enough to put this new stock in a prominent place in our physical shop, but how do we let our online customers know that there are new products available? We can put these new items on our fortnightly mailshot, but of course that’s limited to existing subscribers.

Our shop is increasingly turning to Twitter (@talkontravel) and our blog (www.talkontravel.com) to promote new stock, as well as competitions and travel updates.

Our use of Twitter, like many companies, is still in its infancy. We are slowly building up ‘followers’ as we ‘tweet’ (send out an instant message) about new products, blog updates and, most recently, competitions.

Let’s say we want to tweet the following:

A brand new mailshot has been posted at http://shop.packyourbags.com/Mailshots/2009/pybts-April-3-2009/index.html and includes a chance for you to win a set of Surfanic Thermals!

There are plenty of ways we can improve this tweet. Firstly, we need to shorten it. At 157 characters it’s too long for Twitters 140 character limit.

Next, we can embed tracking code which allows us to monitor how successful a link is. And with URL shorteners like bit.ly, a mouthful like http://shop.packyourbags.com/Mailshots/2009/pybts-April-3-2009/index.html?utm_source=twitter-06-04-09 (notice the tracking code for Index Tools) becomes a much more manageable http://bit.ly/2YJXX.

Let’s take this one step further. When we send this tweet you have to be following @talkontravel to see it – and at the moment this is a rather narrow audience. Enter ‘hashtags’, the frequent tweeters friend. Hashtags are a way to group twitter messages together according to subject matter, similar to the concept of tagging in blogs. Head on over to search.twitter.com, search for #G20, and you’ll find a bunch of tweets about the G20 Summit. You could try #formula1 or even #britneyspears.

So if we tag, or hashtag our tweet there’s a much larger chance it’ll reach a wider audience searching through (amongst other sources) Twitter Search and Monitter. Hashtags aren’t set in stone, and you may need to search around for the most relevant ones for your tweet. This is time well spent, because you’ll be using them again and again.

#outdoorclothing seems to have no interest out there in the Twittersphere, but #travel and #competition are popular hashtags so let’s use them.

Our final Tweet might look something like this:

Our brand new #travel #newsletter includes a #competition where you can win a set of Surfanic Thermals! http://bit.ly/2YJXX

At just 106 characters we can even add in ‘Good Luck!’ and stay under the limit.

We now have a bright and tight tweet which links to our mailshot (with a link we can track) and includes three hashtags which will help expose it to a wider audience.

There are no guarantees with Twitter, but this might just grab you a few extra followers and perhaps a few extra sales too.

Happy Tweeting!

Richard Shepherd
Online Marketing Manager
PackYourBags Travel Store