Why do people still believe the idea of keyword density?

Personally I blame Web Position. Many years ago, when their product was a desktop product called WebPosition Gold, they used to produce reports based on individual pages, containing nonsensical figures:

“A word count from 123 to 467 is suggested for the Body Text area. Your word count is 939 right now so you might consider decreasing your word count in the Body Text. A keyword prominence of at least 23% is suggested for the Body Text area. Your prominence is 4.6% right now so you might consider increasing your prominence in the Body Text.”

To this day there are still people who believe that you need X words in the title, Y keywords in the meta tag and a keyword density of Z%.

There are also people who genuinely believe the world to be flat.

Both ideas are absolute nonsense, based on out-dated hokum.

Google do a good job of finding the content on your pages. You can certainly help them, and if you know what you’re doing you can tweak your chances a little.

But applying meaningless figures onto out-dated silly ideas is pointless.

Share and Enjoy

Google trends never lies. Less people are looking for your software than ever before. And the trend suggests a continuing decline.

The reason is simple. They don’t need it.

When people have a problem, they go looking for a solution.

If people don’t realise they have a problem, they look for pictures of cute animals.

And if technology means that your solution is starting to become redundant, it’s time to find another problem to solve.

Here’s the first question to ask yourself:

What problem are you solving?

Here’s the second question:

How can you make more people aware of their problem?

If I sell shampoo to rid your hair of head lice, it’s easy. Merely reading the words head lice makes you itch a little, and the thought of those disgusting little parasites crawling between the hairs on your head and biting to drink your blood makes you itch even more. Did you know that you can catch head lice from a pillow or cushion? Or that a female louse lays 3-5 eggs a day?

What makes your users itch?

Share and Enjoy

The mistake goes something like this.

You look at your Analytics data and identify the main keywords that are pulling in visitors to your website.

If you’re clever you’ll run each of them through Google Trends to see which way the wind’s blowing.

You then start optimising your website for the strongest performers.

The mistake is that you’re only looking at part of the picture. You’re not seeing the keywords that should be sending you visitors but aren’t.

How do you find the ‘other’ keywords?

Three options:

1 – common sense. Brainstorm all the words and phrases a person might use when trying to find what you sell.

2 – keyword tools. The Google Keyword Tool is a useful free tool. My experience, however, is that it isn’t quite as good as it once was, and today I’ve switched back to using Wordtracker.

3 – your competition. I’m not suggesting that you copy-and-paste their titles and meta tags, but looking  to see what they’re targeting makes sense.

Without extensive keyword research, you’ll never even realise what you’re missing,

Share and Enjoy

Many people are concerned by how much information Google have on them. Yet many of these same people share an incredible amount of information with their Facebook friends, and often with friends of their friends.

I use Facebook, and think it’s great. But I’m careful to the point of paranoia with what I share.

Like AdWords, many of Facebook’s defaults are not in your favour.

Yet what baffles me are the changes that Facebook get away with sneaking-in quietly.

The latest, as detailed on their developer blog, is sharing a user’s address and phone number.

While it’s true that the user will have to authorise this, you can probably guess how many people will click Allow, happy that what they’re doing makes sense.

You might think that this is reasonable. You might argue that if users choose to allow this information to be shared, then they alone are responsible for the consequences.

But if the Request for Permission had a large red exclamation mark, and said something along the lines of “WARNING: You are about to share your home address and mobile phone number with this website…“, don’t you think the opt-out rate would be much higher?

Sooner or later the critical masses (*) are going to realise the risks of what they’re playing with. And once they start to smell the poop, there’s no turning back.

* - remember you read that phrase first here!

Share and Enjoy

Napster and Spotify have an uphill battle because of their competition.

They compete with your radio, your MP3 collection, your CDs, your dusty record collection, internet radio, illegal downloads, the music collection of your friends, apathy and more.

So how do they persuade people to part with their cash? They do it quickly.

Their website main pages are classic examples of beautifully optimised landing pages. They have to convert as many visitors to customers as possible, and there’s no room for pointless text that serves no purpose.

Next week I’m hosting a free webinar that will look at how you can convert 50% more of your website visitors into paying customers.

It’s only 20 minutes long, so the pace will be relentless. But I guarantee you come out with some good ideas that can affect your sales.

The webinar will take place on Thursday January 20th at 9:00 AM (Pacific), 12:00 PM (Eastern) 5:00 PM (GMT).

I hope you can join us.

What if you could convert 50% more of your visitors into customers?

PS: As always, there will be no sales pitch. We don’t do that.

Share and Enjoy

We live in an age of hype. Every product or service we come across is the latest, greatest, fastest and cleanest, and independent tests consistently prove it.

Yet people appear to be growing weary of hype. 2011 might be a good time to start focusing on actual quality rather than hot air and hype.

Take the concept of internet marketing gurus.

Most of them are self-proclaimed. It’s the online equivalent of a person describing themselves as “funny and caring”. It makes you cringe.

And there are a lot of them.

Jim Kukral and Shawn Collins have started Unguru.me – the community for small business to network and learn, without the hype:

“Unguru.me is focused on give and take. This new community is the antithesis to the typical customer and guru relationship where the customer gives and the guru takes. There are simply too many snake-oil salesman preying on desperate people who can least afford to part with their money. Enough already.”

Nice.

Take a look at your website. Check your hype density.

Share and Enjoy

I’m perpetually baffled by Facebook.

I use it and I like it, but I don’t see how they’re ever going to make enough money from their advertising to break-even, let alone make a profit.

To me it’s simple. I go to Google because I want to find something. The search results and ads that I see in Google are (mostly) relevant to what I’m looking for.

When I go to Facebook, however, it’s because I want to see what my friends are up to and engage with them. I’m not looking for a solution and I’m not looking to buy anything.

In the world of online marketing, there’s an unhealthy obsession with social media.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the next ‘new big thing in social media’ may potentially be marginally useful to your business. The important words have been highlighted for your convenience.

Take a look around. Everyone’s talking about how important Social Media is for online businesses, but show me an actual example of this in practice.

I’m not talking about the big brands. I’m not interested in how Dell, Coca Cola or McDonalds use it. I’m talking about small to medium sized businesses. People like you.

In April 2009 I offered a $100 Amazon voucher to anyone who could tell me how to use Twitter for my business.

By August 2009 I’d raised the offer to a $250 Amazon voucher.

The prize still remains unclaimed.

I hope that you’re intending to make 2011 a great year for your business. I hope you’re starting work on new ideas, new goals and new projects, instead of merely picking up where you left off.

Make 2011 a great year for your business. But don’t waste time trying to milk a dead horse.

Share and Enjoy

Broadly speaking, there are two types of people in the world. Reasonable and angry.

Reasonable people show sound judgement, make rational decisions and usually make logical decisions even when unhappy. They make good friends.

Angry people, on the other hand, lash out at the world, are prone to rash decisions and can make really bad enemies.

Here’s the key point. Reasonable people can be turned angry a lot easier than the other way round.

I recently discovered that my new PC had frozen for no apparent reason. After a little snooping, it appears that Norton Internet Security 2011 was the cuplrit.

Evidence #1:

At this point I was still reasonable. Software issues happen.

Evidence #2:

So far so good, until…

The support website was where it started to go wrong. I won’t bore you with the details, but I was soon calling a local (UK) phone number for further support.

After my call was connected to a place a very long way from the UK, I spoke with someone from whichever company Symantec outsource their support to. He sounded like he knew what he was doing, so I (grudgingly) gave him control of my PC.

The nutshell version: he was clueless. He floundered around my system with no real idea what he was doing, and at one point had to be stopped from making changes to my Windows Registry. Not a setting for Symantec software, but a general Windows security setting.

I find it genuinely terrifying to think what damage he might have caused. This is a person who repeatedly demonstrated the most appalling lack of knowledge about basic Windows procedures.

When I asked to be transferred to a supervisor, I received someone equally inept. Someone who quite literally believed that clicking Cancel was the same as clicking Okay.

Here’s where I’m going with this.

One of the overheads of selling software is providing a reasonable level of support.

People only use support when they need it, and more often than not they will be unhappy and tense when they do.

If the support you provide your customers is shoddy, they will turn from reasonable to angry, and you will lose them for life.

The moment I read a trusted review that leads me to believe there’s a better product than Norton Internet Security, I’ll buy it. And I’ll never, ever purchase from Symantec again.

See how reasonable people can turn angry?

Share and Enjoy