Grow Your Training Business

Online Marketing to Grow Your Training Business

 

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Most independent training professionals have a limited marketing budget. And they can clearly see that compared to traditional print and promotional media, the internet is much more likely to be a productive marketing resource for them.

However, every other corporate training business owner has the same realization, so how are you going to drive more relevant visitors to YOUR website?

The good news is that there isn't any single silver bullet. In fact, there hundreds of complex, time consuming and sometimes mind numbing things you need to do in order to maximize the marketing potential of your website. Why is that good news? Because it means that very few other training businesses will invest the time (and/or money) needed to do it right.

While we are not breaking much new ground here, this is a LONG list, and our most important advice is to do EVERYTHING on this list. Don't just pick and choose. That's what everyone else is doing. You can quickly scan down the paragraph headings below to identify the actions you have already taken along with those you have yet to complete.

Google Profile

If you haven't set up a free Google profile for your business, do it now. Go to www.profiles.google.com to set it up. Research shows that Google is still the most trusted search engine for business people. Make sure your profile description includes the most common search terms that individuals might be using when looking for your specific training or coaching services. When someone does a Google search to find who you are and whether you are legitimate, it is often that your Google profile will be the first thing they notice. Plus the key words and phrases within your profile will raise your ranking in the search engine.

Linkedin Profile

A close second to Google in terms of credibility and usage by most business professionals, LinkedIn allows you to create a free individual profile along with a seperate free profile for your business. Set up both of these, and be sure to include links back to your website. Go to www.LinkedIn.com to do this. Much of the same content from your Google profile can be used here. 

Write Keyword-Rich Page Titles. Write a descriptive title for each page on your website, one that is rich relevant keywords you want people to find you with - using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title (such as "the," "and," etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Encourage searchers to click on the title by making it compelling.

Bad Page Title Examples:

• XYZ Training Home Page
• Customer Service Training
• Untitled-new-page3

 Great Page Title Examples:

• Improve Employee Productivity with XYZ Training
• Customer Service Training with Quick Results
• Sales Training Proven to Drive Sales Growth
  
  

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in communication skills training and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Training, Inc.," use "Communication Skills Workshops - ACME Training, Inc." The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is your identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.

Write a Description META Tag for Every PAge

Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. Don't include keywords that don't appear on the webpage. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the tags, in this format:

The maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed. When you write an article for your website, create the article first, then develop a keyword-rich title (see above). Then write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag.

Next, strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It's no longer used much for ranking, but leave it in anyway, because it may have some minor value.

Photo Tagging

Photo tagging has proven itself one of the best methods in online marketing to get traffic to your website. This means that you use keywords below your photo to describe important data. The digital photo or document must be something that fits in with your keyword usage. You can put the photo with a keyword(s) in your website, on a website farm, or even in your profile. You also can put a link in the keyword that will direct traffic back to your website. Many people use the photo tagging in order to increase traffic, which proves that it is a successful means to increase your online presence.

Search Engine Strategies

 Perhaps the most important -- and inexpensive -- strategy is to rank high for your preferred keywords on the main search engines in "organic" or "natural" searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot "spiders" to index the content of your webpage, so let's begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing. The idea here is not to trick the search engines, but to leave them abundant clues as to what your webpage is about. This approach is called "search engine optimization," abbreviated as SEO.

Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3)

Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That's a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text

Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it.

Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags.

This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors (www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/) and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes do help get your images ranked higher for image search (see #12 below).

Use Keywords in Hyperlinks

Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.

Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly

You want search engine robots to find all the pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don't read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. Don't set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, out-dated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems.

Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.

Create a Site Map

A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use a free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/xml-sitemaps.htm) to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your webpages accurately. Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN), following instructions on their sites. By the way,  Google Webmaster Central (www.google.com/webmasters/) has lots of tools to help you get ranked higher. Be sure to set up a free account and explore what they have to offer.

Develop Webpages Focused on Each Your Target Keywords

SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or keyphrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let's say you sell teddy bears. Use Google Insights for Search (www.google.com/insights/search/) or the free keyword suggestion tool on Wordtracker (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/wordtracker.htm) to find the related keywords people search on. In this case: write a separate webpage featuring the keyword "teddy bear," "teddy bears," "vermont teddy bears," "vermont bears," "the teddy bears," teddy bears picnic," "teddy bears pictures," etc. You'll write a completely different article on each topic. You can't fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but for each of these focused-content webpages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking, as described in point #10.

Fine-tune with Careful Search Engine Optimization

Now fine-tune your focused-content pages and perhaps your home page, by making a series of minor adjustments to help them rank higher. Software such as WebPosition allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors. I use it regularly. WebPosition's Page Critic tool provides analysis of a search engine's preferred statistics for each part of your webpage, with specific recommendations of what minor changes to make. The best set of SEO tools is Bruce Clay's SEOToolSet (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/clay_seotoolset.htm). You can find links to many SEO articles (www.wilsonweb.com/seo/) on my site.

Frankly, this kind of SEO fine-tuning is time-consuming, painstaking work that takes a lot of specialized knowledge. For this reason, many small and large businesses outsource search engine optimization. If you'll explain your needs to me on my online form, I can refer you to appropriate SEO firms that I know and trust (www.wilsonweb.com/recommendations/seo-services.htm).

Promote Your Local Business on the Internet.

These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you, include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too. When you seek links to your site (see #15 below), you should request links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide.

Also create a free listing for your local business on Google Places for Business (places.google.com/business), Yahoo! Local (local.yahoo.com), and Bing Local Listing Center (https://ssl.bing.com/listings/). That way your business can show up on a map when people do a local search. For more information, see articles on local marketing (www.wilsonweb.com/local/) on my site.

Promote Your Video, Images, and Audio Content.

Google's "universal search" displays not only webpage content, but also often displays near the top of the page relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses (see #11 above), and audio clips.  Therefore, consider creating such content appropriate to your business and then optimizing it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video on YouTube (www.youtube.com) that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site. For more information, search on "optimizing images" or "optimizing videos." You can see how I use videos to promote my business on my Web Marketing Today YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/WebMarketingToday).

Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites drive additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website ("link popularity") as an important indicator of relevance, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines. Google has a measure called PageRank that reflects the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links aren't all equal. Links from trusted, popular sites help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites. You'll find articles on linking strategies (www.wilsonweb.com/linking/) on our site.

Submit Your Site to Key Directories, since a link from a directory will help your ranking -- and get you traffic. A directory is not a search engine. Rather, it is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), overseen by overworked volunteer editors. But if you don't get listed right away, don't be impatient and resubmit, or you'll go to the end of the queue. A link in this directory will help you a lot.

Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) is another important directory. Real humans read submission, so be careful to follow the instruction given. Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don't have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Yahoo! Directory Submit (https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) requires a $299 annual recurring fee to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days. Other paid business directories that might help are About.com and Business.com.

Submit Your Site to Trade Organization Sites and Specialized Directories. Some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member directories. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it may help boost your PageRank.

Marginal directories, however, come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up, so don't try to be exhaustive here. Beware of directories that solicit you for "upgraded listings." Unless a directory is widely used in your field, a premium ad is a waste of money -- but the (free) link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.

SubmitWolf (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/submitwolf.htm) is a directory submission tool I've used with good success . You complete a listing form in the software interface. Then they submit your listing to all the appropriate directories they know of, plus links to sites that require manual submission. It's a timesaver and works well. Just be careful to submit only to actual directories, not "linking sites."

Write Articles for Others to Use in Websites and Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time. You'll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article marketing site, EzineArticles.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.

Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for several months and will temporarily improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity. Use a online news release service such as PR Web (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/prweb.htm). Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity temporarily.

Two additional linking strategies, discussed below, are to ask visitors to bookmark your webpage (#20) and to develop a free service (#23), which will greatly stimulate links to your site.

Begin a Business Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site's PageRank. Consistency and having something to say are key. If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

Become Part of a Social Media Community. Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook (www.facebook.com), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), and Twitter (www.twitter.com). In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don't like). These include Digg (www.digg.com), Delicious (www.delicious.com), StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com), and Google Bookmarks (www.google.com/bookmarks/). Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your site), link to you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic, see #21 below).

One important reminder, don't join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your business. Like any community you must listen, comment, and make a genuine contribution for the good of others. Don't hog the conversation. Otherwise, your self-serving links and comments will hurt your reputation. By the way, to get started, why don't you visit my social media pages and become a Facebook fan (www.facebook.com/pages/Web-Marketing-Today/85187746383) or a Twitter follower (www.twitter.com/ralphwilson) -- please! Thank you!

Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Discussion Lists -- "old school" social media.The Internet offers thousands of very targeted e-mail based discussion lists, online forums, and groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Use Google Groups (groups.google.com) to find appropriate groups. Search online for blogs or other forums.

Don't bother with groups consisting of pure spam. Instead, find groups where a serious dialog is taking place. Don't use aggressive marketing and overtly plug your product or service. Rather, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the "signature" at the end of your e-mail message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you.

Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site. It seems simple, but ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. I use a widget called AddThis (www.addthis.com). When you put the AddThis JavaScript on your webpage, it automatically determines the title and URL of that page. When visitors click the button on your page, they are automatically taken to a page that allows them to choose which bookmarking service they prefer, and then pre-populates the appropriate form with the title and URL of your webpage. I use AddThis throughout my website, as well as in my newsletters. If you have good content that people want to bookmark, this can generate hundreds of links to your site and significantly raise your rankings.

Online Marketing: Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research is much more than just guessing about what search terms potentially-interested customers might use to search for specific products or services. Successful webmasters must select terms that directly relate to the product or service they are offering. Additionally, the keywords and phrases must be searched on by prospective customers. The very best keywords and keyword phrases are those that are included in searches and that directly relate to your product or service, but do not have a lot of other websites competing for them.

Keyword research takes a considerable amount of time. Brainstorming about keywords is just the beginning of optimizing a website for keywords and phrases. Webmasters must also review their web logs for search phrases, and monitor competing websites to see what keywords and phrases the competition is optimized for. Webmasters must then take their keyword list and use keyword tools to determine what related keyword phrases will result in the highest rankings and the most searches.

Keyword Tools
Pull out the keyword tool chest to locate the best possible keywords and keyword phrases for your website and marketing campaign. The following list of tools will assist webmasters in finding the best possible search terms to optimize their websites...

Locate Keywords:
Overture
SEO Book
iWebTool
WordTracker
Keyword Discovery
GoodKeywords
Keyword Spy
Lycos Top 50
DogPile Search Spy

Hot Words:
The Buzz
AOL Hot Searches
Zeitgeist
Google Trends
SpyFu
Ask Top Searches

Market Research
Ebay Research
Amazon Best Sellers
Questions Askville
Answers

Other Keyword Tools
SEO Digger
Quintura
Keyword Tools

Related Posts:

Online Marketing: Search Engine Spider Food

Online Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Guide

Online Marketing: Optimize for Organic Search

Online Marketing: Your “To Do” List

Online Marketing: The Keyword Search

Online Marketing: Keyword Research Tools

Online Marketing: How to Select Good Keywords

Online Marketing: How to Select Good Keywords

Selecting keywords and keyword phrases sounds like a simple task but the reality is that choosing the right keywords can be a challenge.

There are two main components to selecting good keywords, relevance and popularity. If you select a keyword or phrase that is highly relevant but is never searched on, you will not prosper. Conversely, if a word is incredibly popular but not relevant to your offerings you will not have a good conversion. So, while you might have web traffic, none of the traffic will be targeted. The key to selecting good keywords is striking a balance between relevance and popularity. The more relevant a term to your product or service offering, the more likely the website visitor will convert to a sale.

Generic keywords result in lots of impressions (views) but usually result in few click-throughs. More than that, generic keywords do not result in qualified traffic. Unqualified traffic is less likely to convert to a sale.

Keep in mind, keywords can vary based on the searchers age, culture, region, education or knowledge. In other words, you need to define your target audience, then select keywords or phrases your target audience would likely use when searching for your product or service. You may need to create multiple keyword groups to target different audiences or demographics.

Example:
Say you have bird watching software, hobbyist might search "bird watching software" while professionals might search "orthinologist software". If you have both a low end, and a high end version, it might be appropriate to target both audiences.

Keyword phrases should be 2-4 words in length. Single words are too general, searchers now rarely search on a single work. Additionally, multi-word phrases are of a higher quality and they are "lightly filtered". According to a OneStat.com survey from February of 2004:

81% of all searches contain more than one word.
19% of searches contain one word
32% of searches contain two words
26% of searches contain three words
13% of searches contain four words
10% of searches contain five words

Keywords should be used as a filter attracting visitors who have a a genuine interest in your products or services.

1. Misspellings
Optimizing for common word misspellings will increase your audience, the easiest way to capture misspellings without compromising your professional image is to use forums where users are posting, or use actual questions from your customers in a FAQ or an "ask us" column. The questions there are posed in the customer's real words, and may contain the misspellings.

2. Stemming
Word stemming is the practice used to capture traffic surrounding a single root word and its derivatives. When searching for keywords make sure to optimize for a word's various forms and word stems.

Example:
orthinologists and orthinology are word stems.

3. Synonyms
Synonyms are different words with similar or identical meanings. The best place to locate synonyms is the thesaurus.

Thesaurus - http://thesaurus.reference.com/

4. Geo Modifiers
If you are targeting a specific region you can use geo (geography) modifiers which will use locations to filter your traffic.

Example: chicago custom software

5. Purchase Modifiers
Studies show that individuals interested in purchasing often will use purchase indicators in their search terms. Enhance your listings by selecting keyword phrases that include purchase modifiers.

Example:
buy +
purchase +
compare +
shop +

6. Combination Tumbling
Be sure to mix and match words and word order to increase your search phrases.

Locating great keywords can be a bit tricky and time consuming, but it is undoubtedly time well spent!

Clustering Engines - Tools for locating related keywords.
Vivisimo - http://vivisimo.com
Clusty - http://clusty.com/
Quintura Search - http://www.quintura.com/
Google Sets - http://labs.google.com/sets

Keyword Suggestion Tools
SEO Book - http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
Overture Keyword Suggest - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
SEO Tool Keyword Suggest - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-suggestions-overture/
SEO Logs - http://www.seologs.com/keyword-suggestion.html
Digital Point Keyword Suggest Tool - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Related Posts:

Online Marketing: Search Engine Spider Food

Online Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Guide

Online Marketing: Optimize for Organic Search

Online Marketing: Your “To Do” List

Online Marketing: The Keyword Search

Online Marketing: Keyword Research Tools

Online Marketing: How to Select Good Keywords

Online Marketing: How to Optimize for Organic Search

Many thanks to our friends at digital river for this great information designed to help you promote your training business online.

Organic search listings are the natural listings that occur from whan a search engine spiders your website. They are provided to users when a keyword is entered into a search engine. The listings are not paid, or they are the websites the search engine has determined to be the most accurate matches for the keywords entered. The goal of the search engines are to deliver the "most accurate" results for the search terms.

Google Organic Search for "Digital River"

Yahoo Organic Search for "Digital River"

MSN Organic Search for "Digital River"

Legitimate search engine optimization does not attempt to "fool" the search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is used to help search engines understand the contents of a webpage or website.

Search engines want to provide searchers relevant search results. Legitimate SEO helps search engines discern the contents of a web page and the web pages relevance. Webmasters wishing to rank well should use SEO for their websites.

Tips for Organic Search Engine Optimization

1. Meta Tags
Each and every webpage on a website should contain meta tags with a unique title and description tag. The title and description should appear in the header tags of the HTML code.

Format Sample:
<title>The Web Page Title</title>
<meta name="description" content="Description that explains the page content">

Meta Tag Example:

 

2. Alt Tags
Images should include an alt tag , this is beneficial for individuals with disabilities and assist search engines in determining what the graphic represents. Search engines cannot spider an image and tell what the picture is. The "alt tag" on an image is the next best thing, and provides text related to the image, so that search engines can classify the image.

ALT Tag Format Sample
< img src="http://www.domain.com/images/image.gif" alt="image description">

3. Well Formed Copy
Copy should be well written using proper grammar and punctuation. Each page should contain a minimum of 250 words in order to perform well in the search engines.
(more on Writing Web Copy)

4. Well Formed HTML
All web page tags should be correctly formed, invalid HTML will not only prevent the web page from being properly displayed in web browsers, it could affect search engine ranking.

W3 Validator
HTML Validator

5. Focus
Each website's copy should be focussed on one or two search phrases. The keywords or keyword phrases should be sprinkled throughout the web copy.

6. Bold for Emphasis
Use H1 or H2 tags to emphasize important page section titles in the web copy.

7. Domain Age
Domains are like fine wine, they improve with age. There is not much you can do about this if you are just starting out, but aged domains perform better than new domains.

8. Keywords
Keywords and keyword phrases should be included in the web pages title tag, description tags, the web copy, the anchor text pointing to the page, and possibly in the URL of the page itself.

9. History
Links gradually added over time show a strong history and are favored by search engines. A sudden rush of incoming links shows less credibility. Search engines take a historical look at websites, to establish a websites value. Longevity of links builds credibility.

10. Keep it Fresh
Search engines prefer websites that contain fresh new content on a regular basis. Stagnant websites will see their search rankings suffer.

Optomizing for organic search results is time consuming and involves a number of different areas. While it may seem overwhelming, keep in mind that organic search brings free search traffic.

 

Related Posts:

Online Marketing: Search Engine Spider Food

Online Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Guide

Online Marketing: Optimize for Organic Search

Online Marketing: Your “To Do” List

Online Marketing: The Keyword Search

Online Marketing: Keyword Research Tools

Online Marketing: How to Select Good Keywords

Online Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Guide

Here is a quick guide to search engine optimization for your web pages. See the sample page below. The numbers on the page relate to the tips listed below. Many thanks to the folks from Digital River for providing these suggestions.

1. Keywords In Title

Each webpage within a website should contain a unique title, and meaningful keywords and keyword phrases should be included in the title of each webpage.

2. Keywords In URL

Use hyphenated keyword phrases in the URL's subpages, as some search engines take notice of keywords used in URLs. The hyphen used between words allows search engines to better identify and recognize the separate the words used.

3. Anchor Text

When linking to web pages, use descriptive keywords to identify the links to webpages. The "anchor text" used to link to a specific webpage is weighted as part of some of the larger search engines ranking criteria. In other words, search engines make note of the text used to link to specific webpages, and use the text relevance to determine a search ranking for those pages.

4. Keywords In Header Tags

Keywords should be used to highlight sections on a webpage, as mini-titles over each subsection in a webpage. The subsection heading keywords should be identified as header tags or bolded in the HTML. The added emphasis, by applying specific HTML properties to subtitles, is noticed by search engines and given extra weight in the search ranking process.

5. Content Length

Each webpage should contain a minimum of 250+ words in text. Generally, it is best for the text to be formatted in sentences and small paragraphs. Bulleted lists can also be used for text contained in a web page.

6. Meta Tags

Keywords should be included in both the "description" meta tag and the "keyword" meta tag in the header of each webpage (please note: not all search engines pay attention to keywords in meta data, but for those that do, it is worth the effort of including them). Each webpage in a website should contain unique descriptions. The description should be 20-30 words in length.

7. ALT Tags

Keywords should be used in the "alt" tags for images, to describe the images.

8. Keywords In Image Name

Keywords should be used in the naming schemes for the images themselves.

9. Spider-able Navigation

The websites navigation should be in a format that allows search engines to easily "spider" the contents of each page and follow the links.

Utilize Analytics

After optimizing a website, it then becomes a waiting game. In order to assess the effectiveness of any optimization, you will need to evaluate web traffic. That can be accomplished using web logs and various tracking products. There are a variety of solutions available; find a solution that provides statistical data in a meaningful format and benefits your company's needs.

Keep in mind that the effects from optimization will not be immediately visible in your web logs, or in the search engines. The webpage will need to be spidered and indexed first. The frequency of spidering and updating varies greatly, depending on the age of the domain and popularity of the website. Patience may be needed to see how effective changes are.

Tweak Optimization

After reviewing web logs, you should tweak optimization with minor adjustments, and then re-evaluate the results. Keep in mind that search engine optimization is an ongoing process, and rarely are the results visible overnight. Evaluate web logs on a regular basis, and modify optimization to enhance your listings.

Collection of Search Engine Tools

 Related Posts:

Online Marketing: Search Engine Spider Food

Online Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Guide

Online Marketing: Optimize for Organic Search

Online Marketing: Your “To Do” List

Online Marketing: The Keyword Search

Online Marketing: Keyword Research Tools

Online Marketing: How to Select Good Keywords

Online Marketing: The Keyword Search

Average keywords (that produce no results) are easy. Great keywords (that actually drive new traffic to your website) are hard.

A good keyword or keyword phrase is one that receives a lot of search engine searches and is relevant to your product and is distinctive enough that you aren't "competing" with tens of thousands of other sites for the same keywords. 

In order to rank well in organic search listings for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, it is best that there are not a lot of websites that are already optimized for that specific keyword or keyword phrase. In other words the less competition the better. The trick to great keywords is finding popular, relevant words that do not yet have a lot of competition. We have a few suggestions for locating good keywords.

Determining good keywords can result in qualified traffic that generates revenue in both optimizing for organic search and implementing pay per click campaigns.

Brainstorm
Sit down and make a list of keywords that are relevant to your software. Remember, different people in different age groups, jobs, or geographical regions, might use different words to describe the same thing.

Leverage Current Clients
Get curent clients to brainstorm (along with friends and family who are familiar with ytour training business). You might be surprised to find that your clients use a number of terms that did not occur to you.

Web Tags
Examine the websites of any competitors, take a look at their website header tags, what keywords are emphasized in their website title and description, or keyword meta tags.

Pad Files
Examine competitors PAD files for their keyword lists. Consider if those keywords are related to your products.

Google Suggest
Use Google Suggest to locate possible terms. The Keyword Tool generates potential keywords and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Yahoo/Overture
Use Yahoo to find additional words and phrases.
http://inventory.overture.com/

Word Tracker
Use WordTracker, a web based service, to analyze keywords and related words. WordTracker assigns a value (known as KEI) based on the number of searches a word or phrase has and the amount of competition that the word or phrase has.
http://www.wordtracker.com

Competitive Intelligence
Use competitive intelligence to locate keywords. This can be done by analyzing competitors.

Web Logs
Examine web logs to determine what words customers are currently using to locate your website. Consider using derivatives.

Thesaurus
Use the thesaurus to locate synonyms.
http://thesaurus.reference.com/

Ideas:

Take a Tumble
Tumble keyword phrases to create different possible combinations.

Popularity
Check the popularity of keywords and phrases using online assessment tools

Optimize
Optimize each web pages for 2-3 phrases. Each page on a website can and should be optimized for different keywords.

Other Resources

Downloadable Software
Good Keywords - http://www.goodkeywords.com/

Related Posts:

Online Marketing: Search Engine Spider Food

Online Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Guide

Online Marketing: Optimize for Organic Search

Online Marketing: Your “To Do” List

Online Marketing: The Keyword Search

Online Marketing: Keyword Research Tools

Online Marketing: How to Select Good Keywords

 

Online Marketing: Your "Must Do" List

Most independent training professionals have a limited marketing budget. And they can clearly see that compared to tradition print and promotional media, the intenet is much more likely to be a productive marketing resource for them.

However, every other corporate training business owner has the same realization, so how are you going to drive more relevant visitros to YOUR website?

The good news is that there isn't any single silver bullet. In fact, there are hundreds of complex, time consuming and sometimes mind numbing things you need to do in order to maximize the marketing potential of your website. Why is that good news? Because it means that very few other training businesses will invest the time (and/or money) needed to do it right.

While we are not breaking much new ground here, our most important advice is to do EVERYTHING on this list. Don't just pick and choose. That's what everyone else is doing. You can quickly scan down the paragraph headings below to identify the actions you have already taken along with those you have yet to complete.

Select a Set of 5-10 Keywords / Keyphrases

The reason we are doing this first is because you will use these words and phrases in virtually every element of your online presence, from your company website to professional and personal online profiles, online article and blog postings and email marketing messgaes you send out.

It is important to keep in mind that search engines are incredibly smart, and profoundly stupid. They can pnly process the information you give them to process. (OK, they can do a lot more than that, but the point is, you have to think carefully about the information you give them, and how they will process that information). You have to factor in the reality that in addition to processing your online content, the search engines are processing the content of thousands upon thousands of other corporate training businesses.

It is probably a waste of time to try to differentiate yourself online with keywords that are being used broadly by other businesses such as: Coaching, Training, Communication Skills, Sales Training, Customer Service Training, etc. These are all examples of very commonly used keywords, and if you use terms like these you will be competing with thousands of other sites for differentiation.

So think through your training product or service offerings, and the types of internet searches that your typical prospective customer might be making. Of course the most common searches they make will be similar to those above, but you need to think of other phrases that might be somewhat less common, but also likely to be used on occassion by your target audience.

Let's use a sales training provider as an example. While it is true that the most commonly used search term for sales training is "sales training," it is also true that there are many online searches every day using terms like: prospecting skills training, how to coach salespeople, bad economy selling, elevator speech, etc. By selecting 5-10 keyphrases like these, it is true that you are cutting down on the number of searches that will be relevant to your phrases, but you are cutting down much further the number of competitors who have similar content.

I reccomend that you spend a signifiant amount of time thinking through your keywords and phrases, because you will be leveraing them in virtually every aspect of your online marketing. You can find out more about selecting good keywords by clicking here.

Develop Webpages Focused on Each Your Target Keywords

SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or keyphrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let's say you sell teddy bears. Use Google Insights for Search (www.google.com/insights/search/) or the free keyword suggestion tool on Wordtracker (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/wordtracker.htm) to find the related keywords people search on. For example: write a separate webpage featuring the keyword "sales training reinforcement," "sales training skill development," "sales execution" "sales force effectiveness," "sales training process," "sales training online," "selling skills online," etc. You'll write a completely different article on each topic. You can't fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but for each of these focused-content webpages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking.

Google Profile

If you haven't set up a free Google profile for your business, do it now. Go to www.profiles.google.com to set it up. Research shows that Google is still the most trusted search engine for business people. Make sure your profile description includes the most common search terms that individuals might be using when looking for your specific training or coaching services. When someone does a Google search to find who you are and whether you are legitimate, it is often that your Google profile will be the first thing they notice. Plus the key words and phrases within your profile will raise your ranking in the search engine. Be sure to use each of your keywords at least once on this profile.

Linkedin Profile

A close second to Google in terms of credibility and usage by most business professionals, LinkedIn allows you to create a free individual profile along with a seperate free profile for your business. Set up both of these, and be sure to include links back to your website. Go to www.LinkedIn.com to do this. Much of hte same content from your Google profile can be used here. Once again, be sure to use each of your keywords at least once on this profile.

Associated Content Community Profile (Yahoo!)

This is the world's largest source of community-created content, and a place where you can post articles, answer targeted questions based upon your expertise, and in other ways share your "voice" with a broad community. More importantly, your profile on this community will boost your search engine rankings. Go to www.associatedcontent.com to learn more about the community, then scroill down to the bottom of hte page to sign up and create a free online profile. Once again, be sure to use each of your keywords at least once on this profile.

Local Online Communities

Your local chamber of commerce and other local groups probably offer opportunities for their members to create online profiles. You should leverage every opportunity to do this. Make sure there is linkage back to your own website and once again, be sure to use each of your keywords at least once on each of these profiles.

Also create a free listing for your local business on Google Places for Business (places.google.com/business), Yahoo! Local (local.yahoo.com), and Bing Local Listing Center (https://ssl.bing.com/listings/). That way your business can show up on a map when people do a local search.

Write Keyword-Rich Page Titles or EVERY Page on Your Website

Write a descriptive title for each page on your website, one that is rich relevant keywords you want people to find you with - using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title (such as "the," "and," etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Encourage searchers to click on the title by making it compelling.

Bad Page Title Examples:

• XYZ Training Home Page
• Customer Service Training
• Untitled-new-page3

Great Page Title Examples:

• Improve Employee Productivity with XYZ Training
• Customer Service Training with Quick Results
• Sales Training Proven to Drive Sales Growth

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in communication skills training and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Training, Inc.," use "Communication Skills Workshops - ACME Training, Inc." The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is your identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.

Write a Description META Tag for Every Page

Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. Don't include keywords that don't appear on the webpage. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the tags, in this format:

The maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed. When you write an article for your website, create the article first, then develop a keyword-rich title (see above). Then write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag.

Next, strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It's no longer used much for ranking, but leave it in anyway, because it may have some minor value.

Tag EVERY Image and video on your website

Videos and photos give you absolutely no SEO benefit by themselves, becasue (for now) search engine spiders cannot watch a video or see a photo. But if you tag your images and videos, this can provide search engine spiders with the information needed to boost your rankings.

Image and video tags are simply keywords applied to these online resources. If you are blogging, take advantage of the "Post Tags” field in most bloggin software to add keywords that will tell the search engines what the post is about.

Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags. This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors (www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/) and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes do help get your images ranked higher for image search (see #12 below).

Make sure you have “alt tags” for all your photos. While you’re Inserting a photo, add some keywords or a description of the post to the “Caption” field and voila! You’ve tagged your photo and given the search engine a better idea of what the post is about (note: describing the photo itself is not very search engine helpful – do you really want the search engines to think your post is about a “business woman drinking coffee”, or something like that? No! So use your keywords – what the picture symbolizes for the blog post, or for your business)

If you upload your videos to YouTube (or other video sites) and embed from there, then take advantage of YouTube’s tag feature. It will help for search engine friendliness on their site. But on your own site, you will also want to add a quick sentence describing what the video is about, and why someone should watch it. One - because search engines can’t watch the video for themselves. And two - because the video won’t come through in your RSS feed or in someone’s email, and you want to encourage them to come back to your site and actually watch the video.

This doesn’t mean that you have to give up video blogging since you have to write anyway. One simple sentence is enough to at least give the search engines info on what the post is about so they can index it. And there really is power in video. So just be sure to take that extra step of tagging your photos, videos and posts, and you should start to see improved SEO in no time!

Photo/image tagging has proven itself one of the best methods in online marketing to get traffic to your website. Of course the digital photo or document must be something that fits in with your keyword usage. You can put the photo with a keyword(s) in your website, on a website farm, or even in your profile. You also can put a link in the keyword that will direct traffic back to your website. Many people use the photo tagging in order to increase traffic, which proves that it is a successful means to increase your online presence.

Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3)

Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That's a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text

Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it.

Use Keywords in Hyperlinks

Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.

Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly

You want search engine robots to find all the pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don't read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. Don't set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, out-dated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems.

Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.

Create a Site Map

A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use a free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/xml-sitemaps.htm) to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your webpages accurately. Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN), following instructions on their sites. By the way,  Google Webmaster Central (www.google.com/webmasters/) has lots of tools to help you get ranked higher. Be sure to set up a free account and explore what they have to offer.

Promote Your Local Business on the Internet.

These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you, include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too. When you seek links to your site, you should request links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide.

 Promote Your Video, Images, and Audio Content.

Google's "universal search" displays not only webpage content, but also often displays near the top of the page relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses, and audio clips.  Therefore, consider creating such content appropriate to your training business and then optimizing it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video on YouTube (www.youtube.com) that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site.  

Submit Your Site to Key Directories

A link from a directory will help your ranking -- and get you traffic. A directory is not a search engine. Rather, it is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), overseen by overworked volunteer editors. But if you don't get listed right away, don't be impatient and resubmit, or you'll go to the end of the queue. A link in this directory will help you a lot.

Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) is another important directory. Real humans read submission, so be careful to follow the instruction given. Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don't have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Yahoo! Directory Submit (https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) requires a $299 annual recurring fee to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days. Other paid business directories that might help are About.com and Business.com.

 Submit Your Site to Trade Organization Sites and Specialized Directories

Some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member directories. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it may help boost your PageRank.

Marginal directories, however, come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up, so don't try to be exhaustive here. Beware of directories that solicit you for "upgraded listings." Unless a directory is widely used in your field, a premium ad is a waste of money -- but the (free) link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.

Request Reciprocal Links

Find websites in your general niche and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites -- so you don't send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that generate a similar amount of traffic as your own site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don't have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages. 

Important - avoid "link farms" or recipricol links from sites that are clearly in the business of marketing their links to other businesses. These sites are constantly being identified by the major search engines and their links to other sites are often actually "downgraded" causing the linked sites to LOSE ranking, not gain it. The search engines are getting better and better at identifying effrts to rig the system, and they combat these efforts aggressively.

When you locate a truly relevant site, send a personal e-mail using the contact e-mail on the site or to the administrative contact listed in a Whois Directory (www.networksolutions.com/whois/). If e-mail doesn't get a response, try a phone call. Warning: Only link to complementary sites, no matter how often you are bombarded with requests to exchange links with a mortgage site that has nothing to do with your teddy bear store. One way Google determines what your site is about is who you link to and who links to you. It's not just links, but quality links you seek. Reciprocal linking as hard, tedious work, but it doesn't cost you a dime out of pocket! Keep working at this continuously, a little bit at a time. Patience and persistence will get you some good links, so keep at it.

Write Articles for Others to Use in Websites and Newsletters

You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time. You'll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article marketing site, EzineArticles.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.

Issue News Releases

Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for several months and will temporarily improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity. Use a online news release service such as PR Web (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/prweb.htm). Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity temporarily.

Begin a Business Blog

Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site's PageRank. Consistency and having something to say are key. If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

Become Part of a Social Media Community

Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook (www.facebook.com), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), and Twitter (www.twitter.com). In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don't like). These include Digg (www.digg.com), Delicious (www.delicious.com), StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com), and Google Bookmarks (www.google.com/bookmarks/). Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your site), link to you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic, see #21 below).

One important reminder, don't join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your business. Like any community you must listen, comment, and make a genuine contribution for the good of others. Don't hog the conversation. Otherwise, your self-serving links and comments will hurt your reputation. 

Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Discussion Lists

This is "old school" social media, but it still has value as part of an overall online strategy.The Internet offers thousands of very targeted e-mail based discussion lists, online forums, and groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Use Google Groups (groups.google.com) to find appropriate groups. Search online for blogs or other forums.

Don't bother with groups consisting of pure spam. Instead, find groups where a serious dialog is taking place. Don't use aggressive marketing and overtly plug your product or service. Rather, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the "signature" at the end of your e-mail message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you.

Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site. It seems simple, but ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. Use a widget called AddThis (www.addthis.com). When you put the AddThis JavaScript on your webpage, it automatically determines the title and URL of that page. When visitors click the button on your page, they are automatically taken to a page that allows them to choose which bookmarking service they prefer, and then pre-populates the appropriate form with the title and URL of your webpage. Use AddThis throughout your website, as well as in your newsletters. If you have good content that people want to bookmark, this can generate hundreds of links to your site and significantly raise your rankings.

Include Your URL on Stationery, Business Cards, and Literature

Make sure that all business cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company's URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print, leave off the http:// part and include only the www.domain.com portion.

Related Posts:

Online Marketing: Search Engine Spider Food

Online Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Guide

Online Marketing: Optimize for Organic Search

Online Marketing: Your “To Do” List

Online Marketing: The Keyword Search

Online Marketing: Keyword Research Tools

Online Marketing: How to Select Good Keywords