Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
Monday, December 14th, 2009
I have to admit I don’t always do a lot of keyword research when I’m writing blog posts. However last week when I wrote about the iPhone competition in Singapore, I did make it a conscious effort to check out Google Insights for Search to see what search terms people were searching for (click for bigger image):
iPhone Singapore Searches
Although I had originally intended to title the post a little different (something like “What happens when you don’t compare yourself to the competition”), I realised that when it came to the subject matter (the iPhone in Singapore), branded keywords were the way to go. Almost every phrase in the screenshot above has some variation of a brand name + iphone, and that’s why I included all 3 brand names and the iPhone into my title eventually.
The results?
Just looking at top level data the results are stunning (click for bigger image):
iPhone Referral Traffic
iPhone Search Traffic
- On average, people who entered via search spent 44 seconds longer (that’s 25%) on the site than people who had entered via referring traffic (which included heavy hitters like Singapore Daily).
- Not only that but both the % of exits and bounce rate averages were lower for search than for referring traffic.
- Finally search traffic came from 95 keywords. That is a lot of long tail traffic that can be really valuable. To put this in perspective, my 2nd most popular post this month on 2010 social media trends had all of 15 keywords.
Two takeaways from this:
- Do not ignore search, it’s definitely the low hanging fruit. Three extra minutes spent on keyword research just for the title tag could create a lot of value when it comes to your on-page copy.
- Don’t think it’s about choosing referral traffic or search. Go for both.
Finally, it’s different for me because I run a blog. If I was one of those telcos I would make sure that for this landing page, there would be something, anything, that consumers can do to encourage conversion. Whether it’s entering their email to be kept up to date with the latest plans or getting them to leave their number so customer service can call them back or some digital collateral to download – there must be a call to action.
How are you using keyword research and SEO to make your content work for you? Are your initiatives producing results? Would love to hear from you in the comments.
Tags: iphone, iphone data plan, iphone singapore, m1, referral traffic, search traffic, SEO, singtel, starhub
Posted in SEO, Singapore, case studies, social media | 1 Comment »
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
This is a really late post but I’ve completed my probation period at BLUE and am now a full-fledged, confirmed full-time employee of the company.
Needless to say, I’m pretty happy about this because I think BLUE is a great place to start my career and the analytical, structured nature of the firm is exactly what I need to nurture the left side of my brain. Not that I’m illogical by any means, but being in an enironment where I’m forced to think through things step by step and get to the point in a concise manner is good training for me. Especially coming from a school like SMU that has the tendency to reward fluff.
For the past three and a half months I’ve been straddling a 50% search engine optimisation (SEO) role and 50% social media. I’m really finding this to be a great match because having lived in the ’social media’ world for the last 1.5 years before employment, I didn’t know much about the SEO side of things. Now that I’ve been exposed to it, I think the two are very natural marriage partners and being able to combine both is definitely a big big strength that I have developed. I’ve applied the SEO stuff I’ve picked up at work to my own blog and I’ve already begun to see results, and that’s very fulfilling.
On the social media side I’ve had the opportunity to be exposed to some pretty nifty tools for listening and having access to all these real world data that I would never dream of having with just my blog. Seeing a Google Analytics account with traffic and data in the thousands was really a big eye-opener for me. I’m really proud of getting the BLUE blog up and running, as well as managing all fifteen of our social media presences. I’ve had to put together documents for internal “training” and again I’m finding it really useful to take what I know and delivering it in a way that is easily digestible to someone who might have little to no knowledge of social media.
What I’m liking most is the way work is handled. When projects come in I’m generally left to my own devices (after some initial training for SEO), but when I hit a brickwall, there’s always support of the people I’m working with to help me break through the wall. As far as mentoring goes I find this has been a nice balance because I can spend a couple of hours knocking a problem around, but yet know I have ready feedback to tell me if I’m knocking it around in the right way or not.
Thanks to everyone who’s been supportive of me getting a job at BLUE and I hope to have more stuff to share as my working life develops in the months and years to come.
Tags: blue, mentoring, projects, SEO, social media
Posted in SEO, Work, social media | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 24th, 2008
How much should the average blogger know about SEO?
Frankly, the average blogger does not need to be worry about SEO. Here’s why:
First, the blogging platform which most bloggers use, such as Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are generally search engine friendly come complete with SEO-friendly default template or theme.
Second, most bloggers do not need to rely on the search engines to bring them traffic. They can get traffic from the plethora of social networks and Web 2.0 sites.
If you are interested to find out what are the other 20 ways of generating traffic, click: The 21 Traffic Generation Methods
SEO For Blogs
SEO is appplicable to the more advanced bloggers, who are not in the average or casual bloggers category, and those sites which rely on the search engines to drive new visitors to their blogs.
Usually, these blogs focus on a topic of interest or a niche, e.g. Engadget.com which blogs about the latest electronic gadgets and Blogopreneur.com which focuses on SEO and Blog Marketing.
The 7 Unbreakable Rules of SEO
In order to make your blog rank well for your targeted keywords, these are the 7 things that you need to do and must pay attention to:
- Focus on one keyword per blog post. Stay within the theme of the keyword.
- Keyword-rich blog title. Blog engines such as Wordpress automically uses the blog title in the <title> tag.
- Write a description for each post and add it to the <meta name=”description” …> tag. Make sure you include your targeted keyword in the description. See #7 below.
- Use the keywords in the first paragraph of your post and repeat it as many times as per your editorial requirement.
- Focus on writing great content. Make it useful to your targeted readers and interesting enough for fellow bloggers to quote you and give you that valuable backlink.
- Use a SEO-friendly theme. The WordPress’s default Kubrick theme is SEO-friendly. And most variants of the Kubrick theme are also SEO-friendly. Don’t worry about the cosmetic effect first. It is more important to get into Google and have a good following because of your interesting content.
- The SEO-All-in-One Pack for WordPress is a must-have plugin if you want your blog SEO-friendly and it helps you to prevent duplicated content. This WordPress plugin for SEO also enables you to enter description for each individual post.
P.S. You will need the self-installed version of WordPress to install plugin. So you will not be able to do #2 and #7 if you are using free blog at WordPress.com.
About the author: Shi Heng Cheong is the SEO Trainer with Finggle Pte Ltd, a SEO training company based in Singapore.
Tags: blogger, blogging platform, blogspot, finggle, search engine optimisation, search engine optimization, sem, SEO, shi heng cheong, timmguru, unbreakable rules of seo, what to know about seo, wordpress
Posted in Google, SEO, Search, social media | No Comments »
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
2) What Do You Do in Your SEO-Related Field Of Work?
As a trainer in SEO and search marketing, I allocate “surfing time” everyday to visit forums, read blogs and articles to keep abreast with the latest SEO and traffic generation techiniques.
Then I spend most of my “free” time testing these techniques to see how effective they are before implementing them into my SEO training workshops.
Not When, But How Quickly Can Your Site Be Found
Currently, I am working on a simple method to help small and medium-sized business’s Web sites to get into Google organic listing in a very short time, say within a few hours.
For large portals e.g. www.channelnewsasia.com and www.asiaone.com, which already have high Google PageRank, getting into the SERP quickly is not a problem. However, for many small and medium-size companies in Singapore, it is a challenge even to be listed in the seach engines for one’s company name.
SEO Specialist: The Web Site Repairman
Many of the small and medium-sized company sites are broken and not accessible to the search engine robots. The problem could be due to a combination of factors:
1. Pure graphic page
2. Flash only splash page
3. Excessive use of Javascript
4. Zero hyperlink to inner pages
5. Illegal re-direction
6. and many more…
In order to fix these problems and make the Web site search engine friendly, you will need the help of an experienced SEO specialist. Sometime it is easier and cheaper to create a new page than to fix a broken one.
Web site owners, Web masters and Web designers may use the 3 simple steps I mentioned in SEO Guest Post #1 to ensure good search engine ranking and quality traffic to your new Web site.
SEO Specialist: The Marketing Maverick
Building Websites to market your business using the new media requires a change from the conventional thinking of traditional media.
The final goal may be the same: you want paying customers. However, the rules are different. For example, Long Tail keywords are more profitable than generic keywords. Also, using less graphics and more words may help you to convert more sales.
A good SEO specialist, besides possessing the required technical knowledge of tweaking the Web page for search engine robots and algorithm, will also need to have a great understanding of marketing in order to give advice on the most probable keywords and how to make your page layout appears simple and easy to use and yet useful for your visitors to return again and again.
Enormous amounts of time and effort has to be spent on collecting the right marketing knowledge and building the required technical experience to provide effective solutions and strategies to make a Web site successful.
That may well be the job description of a SEO specialist.
About the author: Shi Heng Cheong is a SEO Specialist turned SEO Trainer based in Singapore. He blogs about SEO and search marketing related topics at http://shihengcheong.com/blog/ and http://www.TIMMGuru.com
Tags: forums, search marketing, SEO, SEO specialist, timm guru, traffic generation, web designer
Posted in SEO, Search, Singapore | No Comments »
Friday, February 29th, 2008
As promised, we’re kicking off a series of guest posts by Shi Heng Cheong on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Here’s question #1:
1) What is SEO and Why Does it Matter?
SEO is about getting visitors to your Web site from search engines by being visible when people search for terms related to your site’ content. SEO is more than just getting high ranking in the search engine results page(SERP).
Targeted Traffic High Response
You want search engine traffic because these are filtered traffic and highly relevant to your site’s content which in turn increases the success rate of getting your most wanted response.
Effective search engine optimization strategies can get you the search engine visibility and targeted traffic to promote your services and products. It is low cost, offers measureable results and imposes no geographical barrier.
On the other hand, advertising and promotion using traditional media is high cost, results not easily measureable and usually confined by geographical barriers.
Search Engine and The Long Tail
Search engine is an effective tool for filtering The Long Tail, and it is in this part of the market that search engine optimization and search marketing excel.
Now, small and medium-sized companies with limited marketing resources can tap into this huge number of niches and grow their business. The days of blockbuster hits are numbered. With the Internet and ever increasing online space, more variety can be offered in smaller numbers. Think Amazon.com and eBay.com.
The search engine helps the consumers to find the unique products they want. As for the merchants, it is important that their Web site can be found in the search engine results listing.
SEO – Marketers’ Core Competence
Search engine optimization should and will be the core competence for all marketers as companies rely more on the Internet to conduct business. Using the search engine to promote your business need not be rocket science.
Here’s the 3 simple steps that will ensure good ranking and quality traffic to your site:
1. Select the right keywords
2. Make your Web design search engine friendly
3. Make your site simple and easy-to-use
About the author: Shi Heng Cheong is with Finggle Pte Ltd – a search marketing training company that conducts regular SEO Web Design Courses and SEO workshops to Web specialists, marketing professionals and business owners.
Tags: search marketing, SEO, the long tail
Posted in Google, SEO, Search | 3 Comments »
