Internet Marketing - Keywords How Important are they? - Unknown Secrets to SEO E-Webstyle Number 2

Hi, I'm Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. And I'm Paul Hanson, sales manager at eWebStyle. Alright, welcome to our shoeless eWebStyle podcast. No shoes on today. Welcome everybody, thanks for joining the podcast. No shoes on, everybody's got to take their shoes off today. Why are we taking our shoes off? You're probably wondering why we're taking our shoes off, because I'm wondering. Well, since the journalist hurled the shoe at George Bush today, we thought it'd be safer not to have any shoes anywhere in the podcast area in case we were to say something to offend somebody, and they wanted to show you the shoe. And hopefully I can duck as quick as President Bush. He was pretty stealthy there, wasn't he? I give him a hug in the props for that. That was awesome. Twice. I thought you would have got hit with it, personally. Yeah, it would have been a funnier video clip. It would have been hilarious. Right in the head. We would have been the laughingstock of the world if our president got hit with a shoe, but that's a whole other story. Well, anyway, welcome back to the podcast. What are we going to discuss today? Well, first, with all of our podcasts, we'd like to recap what we covered last time in our last podcast. We covered quite a bit, actually. We covered different internet marketing. We talked how internet marketing, in general, is just one cog in the wheel of marketing that a business should take. You know, when I say take, that they should be doing on a regular basis. Internet marketing is composed of search engine marketing. Of course, search engine marketing is exactly what it sounds to be. It is all marketing related to search engines. That can be search engine optimization, pay-per-click, and actually submission onto search engines. Also, pay-for-inclusion would be something that would be considered search engine marketing. We, of course, are kind of focused on search engine optimization. We started covering some of the important aspects of search engine optimization and things that we

do here at eWebStyle to take our clients' websites from oblivion, if you will, onto the first page of Google specifically. Also, Yahoo and Live Search are certainly some of our targets, Google being the main one. Let's give a brief definition. In case you missed the last podcast, we gave a definition of search engine optimization. And basically, it's a way to improve relevant, qualified traffic to a website via having improved natural search results. So, coming up on that first page of Google and the organic results, or having that premium placement on any search engine on that first page, second page, via the natural results. Most of you probably don't go past the second or third page. I am typically a first or a second page clicker, so to speak. When I search for something, it's got to be on the first or second page. And search engine optimization helps bring a website to the, I guess, the premium placement or the first page is what we focus on, getting that good visibility from that premium placement, and then thus turning into more clicks, turning into more sales, more customers, whatever it is that you're looking for. And it's not just clicks. It's actually really targeted clicks. And certainly, any business owner who has a website out there, they want lots of traffic. Specifically, they want very relevant traffic, and that's the beauty of doing search engine optimization. Paul talked about organic and natural optimization right now. And just to be clear, there is a section on Google, usually across the top. It's not always there, but it is often there, and it is a sponsored ad that is called pay-per-click area. You can actually, if you have a website, you can create a Google account, or you can have us create a Google account for you, and we can manage the dollars that you spend with Google, and those dollars would be diminished, or each click that you get takes a specific dollar amount, usually a cent amount, 25 cents being a reasonable average, with each

click. So those are the sponsored ads across the top. They're also across the right side of the page. Let's sort of say, if I have a sponsored ad, and my click budget is $100, give me an example. Like, what's going to happen? Okay, so Google has a lot of tools on pay-per-click. We'll get a little off-topic, but I like it. That's how we usually go, right? Oops. But that's excellent. So when you have $100, or whatever your budget is that you want to spend with Google, Google has a vast amount of tools that you can use to make sure that that particular $100 goes a long way. There's a lot of different things that you can do. You can control the maximum bid that you would bid. You can control how much you want to spend per day, so that, you know, let's say you're targeting a really high-trafficked keyword. I don't know, let's just throw out news, world news. Say that you wanted to target world news. If you're spending $100 a month, you could actually spend that $100 in the first couple hours, because so many people would be searching for world news. Actually, they're probably searching for some other terms a little more. Shoe thrower. That's what people are searching today, shoe thrower. Or good ducker, presidential duck. And it doesn't go quack. So he ducked. He actually ducked. Did you see that? I mean, the guy lined up the shoe, president ducked. That was awesome. Bobbing and weaving. Maybe he's been training with Pacal. Oh, God. That was awesome. That was awesome. So if I have a $100 click budget, what does it mean that, like, you said it's going to get reduced by, like, descent? Okay, so every click, you can define the value of a particular click. And, of course, it depends on the terms, because there are terms out there that are more valuable. So you're not going to make very much headway if you're trying to bid the lowest possible amount on a term that's incredibly popular.

Or, you know, something like a Wii. Let's just use that. The W-I-I, the game that apparently I'll be playing all Christmas because my brother-in-law is going to get one. I already know that. Awesome. And so we'll be spending time with that. If you were to type in Wii or if that was your target term, you know, so many people are typing in Wii now that there's a lot of competition for that term. And you're not going to get away with the five-cent Wii click, just the Wii. You want to narrow that down. Maybe you want to target a particular region. Maybe you want to target a particular game that you sell. Or you want to target a particular accessory, whether it's the nunchuck or whatever it may be associated with a Wii or a combo package. But the more terms you could put in a row, Wii, Houston, nunchuck, the more likely the $100, because that is a severely limited budget for a term like Wii, the more likely you're actually going to be able to find clicks that you can purchase and get those to last through a certain amount of time. I'm not sure if I answered your question. I hope I gave some good ideas around that. Yeah, I got it. I got it. Well, here we go. I just remembered your question. It's a good thing. So when you do set a bid amount, let's say you happen to set a bid amount of $0.25. And when your ad shows up in the sponsored areas and somebody clicks on that ad and goes to your website, Google will deduct from your $100 that $0.25. So there you can see the process. The way we work those accounts here is we take care of all that process. We take care of the bid. We optimize everything. We can actually extend, we've calculated some numbers, we can extend between 5 and 10 times the value of your dollar because we're doing some really good analysis on the keywords that you're using and the

bids that you're actually bidding for specific keywords. So our service sometimes is more expensive than the amount of money people are spending. But if you can get 10 times the amount of money you're spending, then $100 is actually worth $1,000 and you're spending our monthly fee, which you can visit our website and send us an email and we'd be happy to give you a quote. Our website is e-webstyle.com. So let's finish up, so some of the things, at least the last thing that we were covering on our last podcast was keywords. And we were, I think we were doing a pretty good job, actually, let me, let us pat ourselves on the back here. We were doing a pretty good job of emphasizing the importance of keywords. There is literally nothing more important for either search engine optimization or pay-per-click than determining the right keywords. Well, give me an example of a keyword. In this case, someone just tuned in and they're like, okay, well, what is a keyword? They've been under a rock. What's the keyword? Well, we'll stick with the same example with the we, right? So, you know, ideally, somebody who just created a website and is now selling we products, again, whether it's games, accessories, the console, the first thing that pops to mind, I need to be on the front page of Google when somebody types in the word we. And, indeed, we is a keyword. Another keyword, even though it is multiple words, would be we console. We console combo would be another. We console, there's a fitness game. I don't know what it's titled. We'll say fitness. We fit. There we go. There we go. So, we fit. Now, we fit is obvious because you know the we and you're familiar with that game, but somebody like me who doesn't actually know the name of the game. That's completely unintentional. I might type in we fitness, so that would be something that you might target. Each one of those is a keyword. Even we fitness Houston or we

fitness New York, we fitness Oklahoma, those are all separate keywords. And your selection of those keywords is absolutely paramount for search engine optimization and pay-per-click. And it's not always trivial. You know, these examples that we're given right now, they're pretty obvious, right? Of course. Yeah. So, I've got a we. I sell consoles. I want to target Houston, so I'm going to do we console Houston. Or I'm going to do a different neighborhood around Houston, like a we console Baytown, which is east of Houston. Or we console Hempstead, which is north of Houston. That way you're targeting those specific areas. If anybody happens to type in those keywords, boom, you're there on the top. And hopefully you're converting that sale. And we can actually help you with that, too. Laying out your website the right way to be the most impactful for those people when they finally do get to your website. Now, I understand that keywords are very important because that's how most people are going to find you. Or let me take that back. I search keywords. I think many people also search with keywords. And I think for the most part, it could be very easy or simple to determine your keywords because it's direct. Like you said, if I'm looking for a we console, I'm going to type in we console. But I know you had an example of a situation where the keywords didn't quite jump out at you. Talk about your ortho example. Okay. So we've got a surgery center here in Houston. They're actually a little bit north of Houston. Orthopedic Surgery Center. Those are people who are basically a bone doctor. And they're one of our clients. And we sat in and actually, contrary to what Paul said, the keywords for them were actually pretty easy to come up with. So we came up with the kind of obvious ones. If I were injured in a sports injury and I broke a bone, then I'm going to maybe look up sports doctor. Or if I just know that

my back hurts, I might type in back doctor or spine doctor, you know, broken bone doctor. Those kinds of terms were really the first thing with our first meeting with that company that we went in. And we had this list. We actually had, you know, we typically sell our services in packs of 15 keywords. So I think we went in there with some 45 keywords that we thought that they really should target. And in the conversation, in our typical conversation with a company, again, it's not just trying to provide the service. We're trying to provide the best service possible. And the only real way you can do that is to understand their business as well as you can. And my goal sometimes, or as often as possible, is to understand their business better than they do. And, again, their ideas in terms of keywords, they saw our list of 45 and they're like, oh, these are great keywords. These are exactly what we want. That's going to get our clients in here. We're going to be well known in the Houston area and north of Houston. And anybody looking for any one of those particular terms is going to find us. And I started asking them questions about, you know, about how their business works, where most of their profit comes, how do they get referrals, what are the, do they have a referral structure? And it turns out with a specialization like orthopedic surgery, the most valuable thing that we could bring to the table for them as a customer was actually referring doctors. Now, I know your dad's a doctor, right? Yeah. And I know for a physician or for a hospital, a referring doctor is like gold. I mean, if you're in sales, that's a hot lead. And referring, someone that's going to refer you business, that's going to trust to put their clients or customers in your hands, that's like gold. Tell them about that, the referring doctor process. So what we decided was, okay, doctors are so busy, and you

can attest to this, they're so busy they don't have time. They typically don't get on the Internet. Say they have a, you know, it's a general doctor and they're doing a general exam of somebody who has some knee ache or whatever. And, you know, in our current health care system, we shall make no comments about the current health care system. Another podcast. Requires that they have a referring doctor, that they be referred by their standard physician to a specialist. Again, orthopedics is a specialty. And so this doctor, he may have heard recently of a particular type of surgery, or he may be interested in a particularly non-invasive surgery. And he's going to ask his MA, medical assistant, or his PA, his physical assistant, physician's assistant, excuse me, to actually do the research for him. And we decided, okay, that's what we really need to target on. Of course, those first 45 keywords, we actually should trim those down. Let's cut out 15 of them and focus 15 of those keywords on those particular terms that an MA or a PA might be searching at the request of the attending physician. To try and find, again, a very specific type of surgery, or procedure, or hip replacement, or whatever it may be. And because this orthopedic surgery center offered those, those now became our keywords. And so now it's not just a matter, we're not just getting, and I'm just going to use totally made-up numbers here, an individual client may be worth $1,000. But a doctor who's referring, because he knows that this particular orthopedic surgery center provides a particularly non-invasive knee replacement process, surgery, he can be sending customers, repeat customers, time and time again. So one of those has significantly more value than a whole slew of actual customers, of the actual retail customers who could walk through the door. So did that make sense about the value? That makes perfect sense. And also, just to add a side note, it brings up a really good point about the value of your keywords,

and about, I guess, thinking outside, that's a perfect example of thinking outside of the box. Yep. Of, you know, what are other, you know, people will just type in the obvious keywords, but, you know, he went above and beyond and said, okay, well, what about referring doctors? Or how will the PAs or the MAs search for this? Because they're going to be the ones that are doing that research. And that, to me, that's just an excellent example of thinking outside the box about keywords that are related to that particular client, their industry, and the ways that people will search there. And this applies to, I'd say, just about any industry, not just surgery centers or orthopedic centers. I think you're exactly right. And, you know, we will probably do a podcast on what to look for, what to stay away from, where is the beacon of hope if you're looking for search engine optimization. And that's a great example where there are a lot of organizations that are really, you give them the list of keywords, and they're really, you know, they do a bang-up job of getting you good search engine placement. They are really good search engine optimizers. And if they're optimizing for the wrong terms because they don't understand your business, they don't take the time to understand your business, then, of course, their service is a value, but their service could be significantly more valuable if that time and expertise were taken to find those right keywords. And, you know, that's something that, you know, clearly you get here at eWebStyle and just make sure that you get an incredible comfort about how willing is your SEO provider to spend a lot of time, and how willing are they to spend a lot of time and understand your business so that the work they do is the most impactful and can increase your business the most. I like how you said understand your business. If you're going to trust your company, your website, with some foreign person that, excuse me, not

foreign as in where they live, but outside of your company, if someone is going to come into your company, if you're going to trust your company and your website with them, they need to understand your business. So if they're not asking questions about, you know, well, you know, tell me about your business, how long have you been around, or how do you operate, that's a big sign. They should be asking things like this because, and it's our belief, we need to understand your company to be able to help you, to bring that qualified traffic. We need to know how people, you know, how people come to you now. How do they search for you? What do they do when they get here? So that's a big, that's a big flashing light, I guess, for lack of a better term. They need to understand your business, and that's something we always try, we do with every single client. We need to understand their business, how they operate, things that, you know, just, you know, maybe even things that go on day to day. It just, it helps us do our job. It helps us give you that valuable, qualified traffic. And there's two things that we really focus on in terms of customer, you know, the term ROI, return on investment, is thrown out all the time by every consultant on the planet, doesn't matter what they consult on, by, you know, every article you read. The two things we focus on are, one, what is the most valuable client to you? And the orthopedic example was a perfect example. The most valuable client actually wasn't even a client. It was actually somebody who refers. And the other one is, what do you sell the most? So obviously this doesn't necessarily apply to orthopedic surgery, but, you know, somebody who has, who's selling different products. What do you sell the most of, and what's the most valuable thing? Because sometimes they're not the same. Sometimes one sell that gives you $1,000 of profit doesn't happen very

often, and you'd like it to happen a lot more often. And then there's another which sells all the time and on a monthly basis generates more revenue for you. So we need to know both of those things so that we can figure out, you know, where are we going to spend our effort? What's going to get the most value? Because I'd like to get you 10 more of the $1,000 clients rather than, you know, another 10%, again, depending on volumes, of the lesser client. Because you're clearly doing pretty well with that kind of client. So here, let me ask you this. You said, what sells the most and what's the most valuable to your company? I think those are two great questions. And I'm sure there's some people out there that are like, wow, I never thought about that. I mean, everyone knows what, it's easy to find out what sells the most. You can just look at your numbers. But I think a lot of people out there may not sit and think, okay, well, is this a pretty piece of paper or whatever? We're a paper company all of a sudden. And is this piece of paper that we sell 1,000 of them a day, is this sale as valuable to me as this box of paper that I may sell, you know, once a week? That's worth, you know, 100 times what a piece of paper is worth. I mean, this is a terrible example. It's a great example. Absolutely. I love it. But I think it's a great question. It's a great way to sit and think about your business. Okay, what sells the most and what's the most valuable to my company? And they may not be the same thing. That's a great question. Yeah. So, again, keywords, so incredibly important. And they really, the genesis for the keywords for your company come out of understanding your company. So, you know, either you've got to understand it and be able to convey it to your SEO guy or your SEO

guy slash company has got to be able to get in and understand your business and at the point that they understand their business be able to bounce ideas off of you. So, if you're a company out there looking for SEO work, then you want to know your business and be willing to work with your SEO company because that's how you're going to get the most bang for your buck. And that's, you know, let's be honest, that's what we're all looking for. If you're an SEO provider, you know, keep in mind those two questions. Those are the great questions. Almost invariably, it's a really well-organized businessman who's growing his business, who understands what's the most valuable client and what brings, you know, what he sells the most of. And that's, again, dollar amount for one or volume. And most clients don't, and they really appreciate when you're asking that. So, I think we've probably covered that enough. I think if anybody in here had a shoe. I'd be hit in the head with a shoe, with a flying size 10 shoe. She would have had two targets, and we probably would have ducked our heads the same way, and we'd be unconscious here. So, everybody understands keywords now. Awesome. Yes. So, the next thing we want to talk about, we want to just move down our list. We've got another five minutes here. So, we're going to cover a little bit more of what is involved in SEO. So, what do we do? And I've got to say it. Number one is keywords. Back to keywords. There's the shoe. Remember the Eddie Murphy? Mom always could throw the shoe around a corner in the other room and put it back on. That was hilarious. Other than keywords, what else? What else are you doing if you're doing some type of search engine optimization? You've got to use your keywords. What else? Well, I think we mentioned, and we forgot to reiterate, did we mention in-page and out-page stuff? Oh, that's right. Well, we did the last

podcast. Let's talk about those two different types of things. So, we've got, in any form of search engine optimization, you have the work that you do on your page, obviously called on-page optimization, and off-page optimization. That would be things that you do outside of your website that generate value and traffic and better rankings on the search engine. Okay, so keywords would be? They would be an on-page optimization. Okay. Actually, they would guide both of those. Okay. That's how important they are, is that, you know, in search engine optimization, you're either working on your page, or you're working on things off of your page, and what you're doing is guided by your keywords. So, let's throw that not even on or off. That's above. That's the first step. Above everything. That's above everything. Well, give me an example of off-page optimization. So, the most obvious off-page optimization is getting inbound links. And the first thing that you think of in terms of on-page optimizations is going to be the text that you have on your website. So, that's your on-page. You want to make sure that you've got keywords on your page. You want to make sure that some of your header tags have keywords built into them. You'll hear meta tags discussed. And I think we mentioned meta tags briefly last time, where you can actually view the meta tags on a page available. So, go ahead and go back to that podcast. Look at your source code. I walk at your tags. Exactly. Okay. So, your tags, like header tags, title tags, image tags, those will be things that you'd work on on your page. Yes. I guess behind the scenes, that would be on page. Is that correct? That's absolutely correct. Now, when I first say the word link building, most people will think of that as only off-page optimization. And I'm going to give a great example of how newbies or people who aren't that focused on search engine optimization or who just don't know anything about it, one of the biggest

mistakes that they make is improper linking within their own website. Well, give me an example. Okay. I'm Joe the Plumber. I just started tuning into the podcast. Joe again. What is a, someone who's just brand new to this, that man, what is a link build? Or what is, what is it all about? What is a link, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. So, because, Joe, because you asked what is a link, I'm assuming you didn't make your own website. No. So, I'm also going to assume you weren't actually that involved in the process of making your website. Somebody just, No, just cut a check. Handed it over to you. And that's fine. That's fine. We like those customers. Yeah, we do accept checks. So, the link would be Joe the Plumber. In our typical package, we have a small business package that includes five pages, everything you need for a year. It includes a domain, five pages, some animation, and hosting for the year. Okay. On that typical package, you've got five pages. One of them is, of course, your homepage. That's going to be your base page, joetheplumber.com, which I haven't pulled it up, but I'm sure it's a website out there. But Joe the Plumber, if it wasn't, it is now. Yeah, really. Joetheplumber.com is your home site. Maybe you've got some information about me, Joe, and your political stance. Maybe you've got some information about your services, so you have a services page. Maybe you have a privacy policy or something along those lines and a contact us form. We almost always have a contact us form. So, Joe, how do you get from your homepage to your political position page? Well, I click the button that says, my political views or whatever. That button is a link. Okay. That's what a link is. And the typical mistake that people will make, and I'm not going to use the political stance page. I'm actually going to use the homepage. Once you're on the political stance

page, usually across the top or in text links, you've got, most people put home as the link to the homepage. I see that all the time. You see it everywhere, right? Now, you know that it's home for Joe the Plumber. Google has a bunch of computer software out there called Spiders going across your website and trying to figure out what each link means. What's the information available at the end of this link? So when it sees a link and the link is home, the text is home, what do you think Google thinks is on that page? I'm going to take a wild guess and say something to do with your home. Yes. Or the home. Which would also be something totally unrelated to what you do. Actually, Joe the Plumber, he might actually go in home, so, It could be home improvements or something like that. It just, yeah. So that's the classic, one of the classic mistakes. Now, we're not, we're big proponents of using things that are user-friendly. Home is very user-friendly. So we will end up using home and we will typically have an additional link at the bottom of the page, which we put there. It's very user-friendly. It's very aesthetically pleasing. And Google now knows, so the link would be called Joe Plumber's Service in Houston or whatever the target keyword, one of the target keywords that we're going after, which would just be plumbing in Houston or plumbing, again, in Hempstead. And what Google now knows is that the information at the end of that link, which is the home page, is information about plumbing in Hempstead. So that's a great example of, Excellent example. Of link building, how it's relevant on in-page or on-page optimization. So, well, I think we covered a lot of information. I think we really, obviously, we're going to title this podcast Keywords. Keywords. Because I think we stressed that enough, and it's actually probably worth doing a couple more podcasts as we get additional

examples of brilliant keyword selection. And the value of spending time selecting your keywords, we'll certainly be putting those in our podcast. Because that is the first and, it's the foundation of your search engine optimization and pay-per-click efforts is your keywords. And with horrible keyword selection, you will achieve nothing with great keyword selection and great SEM, including SEO and pay-per-click, because SEM includes both of those. All these acronyms. SEM, CNN. CNN. No, that was the shoe. All right. So we're going to sign out from this podcast, and we'll be back to continue talking about on-page and off-page optimization. Again, we're really happy you guys are listening in. We're really happy to do this podcast. It gives us great opportunity to give back to the SEO community. Yes, the SEO community has given so much to us. We always like to give back. We certainly appreciate you tuning in to the podcast, and we're going to be back when? We'll be making another one within a week. We'll be back. So within a week, we'll see you guys. Thanks again for listening. We really appreciate it. Paul Hanson. I am signing off from eWebStyle. And I'm Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. And if you've got any email, any information, any question you'd like us to cover in this podcast, feel free to send it to podcast at e-webStyle.com. So that's podcast, that's easy enough, at e, and then it's the dash or the hyphen, w-e-b-s-t-y-l-e.com. Thank you very much for listening to our podcast, and we will catch you on the next one.