I’ve got an important question for you and your answer will directly impact the success of your website.  So come in close and read carefully.  Here’s the question:

Is the goal of your website to sell or to gain leads?

See, there’s a big difference here. And you better know the answer or you’re blowing a hole right through your winning strategy.  Your approach will be completely different depending on whether you want your visitors to pull out a credit card or simply hand over information.

How to deal with visitors once they hit your website is a copywriting issue.  But getting the “right” kind of visitors to your website is an SEO issue and keywords play a starring role.

If you want visitors who are interested in buying…you know, the kind of folks who have a credit card ready, you’ve got to target your keywords properly.

The way you do that is by determining the commercial intention of particular keywords.  So if you are selling an eBook on vegetable gardening, one of your keyword phrases might be “how to grow vegetables.”  Now using this phrase would be a mistake because it scores very high for non-commercial intention.

That means most folks searching this phrase are looking for free, how-to info.  You may attract a ton of visitors if you optimized your site well enough but your sales will fall flat.

If you use the phrase “vegetable gardening book,” it scores high on the commercial intention scale.  People you hook with this phrase are more likely to be searching for a book to buy.  They’ve already done their research and they’re ready to roll.  Those are the tye of visitors you want.

But…

If your goal is to build a list, the first phrase would be a better choice.  Offering a free report or email how-to series would be successful.

Do ya get it now?

Now if you’re wondering how the heck I know which phrase scores what, you’ll be glad to know there’s a handy little free tool that will make the calculations for you.

Microsoft’s adCenter Labs has created an online commercial intention tool.  Here’s the link: http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx.

Now have fun with the tool and go find success!

Evy Schwartz
SEO Services, San Antonio

Darn right it is!

How, you might ask?  How in the world can content be king when page-after-page of most e-commerce sites is loaded with products and generic product descriptions?

Well, there’s the problem right there.

First, the generic product description.  You know, the one that the manufacturer provides with their products.

Well, a lot of e-commerce sites have this generic, bland and boring description cut and paste right onto the sight.  So first, there’s no differentiation going on in the consumer’s eyes between sites.

And second, Google won’t index those pages because the content is not original.  Relying on these canned, unappealing descriptions kill your SEO before it even has a chance.

I know it’s a lot of tedious work to write original, pithy product descriptions but the hard work will pay off in higher search engine rankings and higher sales.

Now another area where content can really help an e-commerce site is “buying guides.”

If you sell shoes…why not have buying guides for ladies shoes, boots, kids shoes, athletic shoes and so on?  That way you give the visitor a reason to hit your site, you can include links to pages within your site and you give others a good reason to link to your site (backlinks, yea!).

Get the point?  Better content, SEO!

So if you have an e-commerce site, remember, content really is king…with customers and search engines.

Evy Schwartz
SEO Expert
San Antonio, Texas

I’ve been working with a local client on getting their website properly SEOd.  So the other day, I’m asked to sit in on an interview.  The company has another completely different product line and they needed someone to handle the SEO for the other site.

So anyway, I’m listening to this person talk and talk about how great she is.  So I asked her how she would get the website ranking on the first page of Google.

She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Oh, I’ve got this fantastic method of putting the keywords in the HTML code.  It doesn’t show up on the page but the robots can see them in the code.”

HOLD ON…STOP EVERYTHING!!!  OMG…

I couldn’t believe it.  So I said to her that her “fantastic” technique is black hat and Google will deliver a smackdown to any site that does this.

She actually had no clue.  She told me she thought as long as the 20 keywords were put in a sentence, it was okay.

And of course, when I searched for the local restaurant who paid this woman $2000 to SEO the site…the restaurant was no where to be found.

Why am I telling you this?

I just want you to be careful.  This woman talked a good game.  She really did sound like she knows what she’s talking about.  And she’s currently here in San Antonio working with poor, unsuspecting companies who are relying on her expertise.

So beware…your next SEO expert just may bury your site so well that no one could find it even if they tried.

Evy Schwartz
SEO Guru
San Antonio, Texas