Keyword Research Mistakes That Cost Us Money

One of the reasons search marketing is so effective is that it delivers information on products and services to people who are actively seeking them out. People enter search terms into a search engine and the engine provides sites and ads that are relevant to the terms. This arrangement is beneficial for the user because they are provided what they want and it’s profitable for the company selling goods because their products are put in front of motivated buyers—so the potential for a sale is high.

The success of search marketing hinges on whether the keywords the searcher puts in the query box match the keywords the company has targeted in their online campaigns. If the company selling goods has properly identified the keywords a searcher might use to find products, then there is a good chance a conversion will occur.

The process of identifying keywords is wrought with pitfalls which can reduce the effectiveness of online campaigns. Here are eight common mistakes companies make in selecting keywords for their campaigns.

1. Targeting keywords that people never use

You don’t have to look very far on the web to find companies targeting phrases that visitors seldom enter into a search engine.

There are several ways this error can manifest itself. The most common is when a company selects keywords from insider jargon that they use within the company, but with which the outside world is not unfamiliar.

Even the most enlightened of us can fall into this trap. We use terms in our day to day vocabulary and the words are so ingrained in our mind that we overlook the fact that the rest of the world isn’t familiar with our internal corporate-speak. In many cases the company is suffering from a form of myopia: they are so close to the products that they don’t see that the rest of the world might call it by another name.

Another situation where obscure keywords are targeted is more nefarious. Although most online marketing companies are honest and want only the best for clients, there are a few bad apple SEO firms that have purposely selected off-the-wall keyword phrases so they can guarantee rankings on those phrases. Obscure keywords are usually not very competitive so the SEO firm can easily win the term.

They tell a client, “We’ll get you ranking on phrase X”—often the phrase sounds good on the surface. The trusting client approves the term, not realizing that the phrase will never receive any traffic or bring conversions. Alarm bells should be going off in your head if your SEO firm is claiming guarantees. Ask for popularity numbers of the phrases they are selecting, test the phrase in PPC to get real performance data, then decide if the phrase is worth pursuing in organic marketing.

2. Confusing keyword popularity with keyword appropriateness

Professional keyword tools like KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker are valuable tools for providing insight into the traffic potential of search phrases. This is useful information to have, but sometimes this one criterion gets blown out of proportion in importance. Other considerations like relevancy, user intent, and the competitiveness of a phrase are overlooked.

Something to keep in mind is that many popular phrases are also extremely competitive, making highly popular phrases an expensive choice. PPC bid prices will be higher and winning a top organic spot will require more work because more competitors are targeting that phrase. An alternate approach, especially for a small business, would be to pursue more focused, more relevant terms that are less popular but would be better choices because they convert better.

3. Not considering user intent in keyword selection

Selecting good keywords requires the ability to get inside the mind of the user to learn what they wanted when they entered the phrase.

The phrase a user enters reveals much about the state of mind of the user and where they are in the buying process. For example, a search for “car reviews” might indicate that the searcher is in the research phase and is comparison-shopping. In contrast, a searcher entering “fast auto financing” is actively looking to buy—he wants that hot car in time for the weekend.

4. Selecting single word keywords

Only on rare occasions is a single word a good choice, and this happens mostly for big powerful sites. If you are Maytag, the single keyword “washer” might be fine. For most sites, however, single terms are just overly competitive and expensive. They tend to be overly broad, too competitive, and not perform well.

5. Keyword misalignment

One needs to be careful when selecting keywords to make sure that you select phrases that do not unintentionally conflict with unrelated industries. For example, consider the phrase “mobile marketing.” A company selling advertising on mobile billboards might unintentionally be competing with a company selling advertising on mobile devices. Careful keyword selection can help prevent this misalignment.

6. Not considering the competition

Many companies blindly select keywords and don’t stop to consider the competitive landscape of that phrase on the web. Put the candidate term into a query box at a search engine and take a look at the sites ranking for the term. Do they have .gov and .edu extensions? Examine how optimized they are. Compare the backlinks of the sites ranking to your site. If you want to rank, you’ll need to outdo what the other sites are doing. Pick your battles carefully: can you realistically afford to pursue that phrase?

7. Failing to periodically review keywords

Language isn’t static. New words come into the vocabulary of people and other words drop from use. Scanning forums and blogs where people are discussing products like yours is a good way to watch for new terms. Wordspy.com is a favorite free tool for learning new expressions.

It is important to periodically review your keyword list to see if there are phrases you’ve overlooked or terms that are new or grown in popularity.

Another good reason to review keywords is that, upon closer inspection, you might find inappropriate keywords that are not performing well and are costing you money. Perhaps when you made your original keyword selection you only had limited data on which to base your decision. Revisiting your keywords when you’re armed with performance data can guide you to refine your choices.

8. Not allocating enough resources and time to perform good keyword research

Almost all online marketing has its foundation in keywords. The words you buy in pay per click, the terms you target for organic, the phrases you focus on in your images and videos, all depend on making good keyword choices up front. It takes time and resources to do keyword research properly.

If you were constructing a building, you would take measures to ensure your foundation was strong. It is the same with the keyword research process. Unfortunately, what happens in many companies is they rush the keyword process and do not allocate the necessary resources or time to do it right. This leads to poor keyword choices and costing the company more money in the long run.

A better strategy would be to take the time it takes to do the project right. A sound keyword process is one of the best investments a company can make. Take a few minutes today and review your keyword lists. Chances are you can save yourself and your company a lot of money and improve your return on your search campaigns by simply improving the keyword pool.

Spreading Love In Silicon Valley: An Infographic

Chemical Food On Our Plate ?

This is a presentation prepared by me for the awareness of Chemical-free food in India. Please have a look and let me have suggestions.

Chemical Food on Our Plate ? from Nikhil Kuruganti

Who are US Entrepreneurs ?

Click on the pic for a better read

A peek Into CEO's Life: Guardian Article

Investigating the bedtimes of high achievers in hopes of divining the secret of success sounds a bit like looking to a novelist's desk placement for the key to good writing. I want my characters to be believable – should I be facing the window? But there is no doubt that once you start examining the daily schedules of CEOs, patterns emerge. Some of the routine is dictated by the job, but a lot of it is the product of outlook and approach. These folks live their lives in a very directed way. How do they manage, day in, day out? And what can we learn from the habits of seven highly effective people?

• First off – and there's no getting around this one, I'm afraid – you have to get up early. Really early: 6am is good, but 5am is better. And CEOs don't hit snooze: most of them claim to leap out of bed in the morning (even though it's basically still night) and more than one said that "life is too exciting" for sleep.

• Business and domestic life are hopelessly blurred. Leisure activities are as rigidly organised as the office diary – nobody lies in on Saturdays; they get up early and exercise – and everybody seems happy to let work follow them home. Quality time with children is timetabled, which might sound a bit ruthless, but at least they are determined to include some. For most of these company heads, the working week starts again on Sunday evening.

• It's clear that none of these people ever gets a chance to do the sudoku in the morning.

• They may be in charge of large international companies, but they are absolute slaves to email. Karen Blackett of MediaCom claims to receive 500 a day. They're emailing first thing in the morning, and last thing at night, and throughout the day. For the modern CEO, dealing with your own email seems to be some kind of touchstone of accessibility. I'm not sure what I'd do if I got 500 emails every day, but I know what I wouldn't do: I wouldn't read them.

• Far from giving you a blueprint for your rise to the top, these routines will probably cause you to reconsider the whole idea of becoming CEO of a major communications conglomerate. For the most part, it sounds horrible. There is no respite at the top of the greasy pole, no finish line at the end of the rat race – it's just more of the same. What's the point of being rich and successful if you have to get up before dawn every day to answer 500 emails? There are so many other options open to you: wage slave, failed artist, cowboy plumber, petty thief, local weirdo. The money isn't good, but the hours are very attractive.

• Interviews by Laura Barnett and Patrick Kingsley

Tim Armstrong - 5-5.15am. Photograph: Jennifer S Altman/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Tim Armstrong, CEO, AOL

How and when does your morning start?

I usually get up at 5 or 5:15am. Historically, I would start sending emails when I got up. But not everyone is on my time schedule, so I have tried to wait until 7am. Before I email, I work out, read, and use our products. By 7am, I usually have questions or feedback about AOL. I am not a big sleeper and never have been. Life is too exciting to sleep. Arianna Huffington is preaching sleep to me all the time, but I will need a DNA transplant to adhere to her advice. She is right, but I just can't do it. I have three kids and my middle daughter (nine) has my sleep DNA, so she gets up and I drink coffee and she tells me about her life.

When you wake up, do you leap out of bed immediately?

Yes.

What time are you at your desk?

My desk starts the minute I leave my house. I have a driver and my commute is a little over an hour. I am very productive in the car.

Do you email throughout the day?

I do most emails in the morning, during the commute, and late at night. When I am at the office I try to listen and learn.

Do you have a secret email address?

No. Do you?

What time do you go home?

Most days around 7pm and I get home at 8 or just after. When I get home, I try to read my two daughters a book. They usually win and get two or three books. I eat dinner with my wife; she is a gourmet cook and her food beats most of the best restaurants in New York. After dinner, I play Nerf hoops with my 11-year-old son – full contact, losers out, and no hanging on the rim.

What time do you go to bed?

Most nights around 11. Can be later if I have a dinner in the city.

How much sleep do you get?

I try to get six hours. I can operate on less, but it isn't ideal.

What is your weekend like?

Friday night is family movie night. Saturday is sports with kids. I am coaching my son's fifth grade basketball team on Saturday and Sunday, and it is my favourite thing all week. Saturday night is date night with my wife and sometimes dinner with friends. Sundays are church, basketball and work, starting at 7pm – calls and emails.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia – 6.20am. Photograph: Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Jayne-Anne Gadhia, CEO, Virgin Money

How and when does your morning start?

Left to my own devices, which means assuming I don't have to travel, I get up every day at 6.20am. No alarm. That's just when I wake up every morning, weekends too. First thing I do is look at my emails and answer any outstanding. I can't stand having any not done! Then I look at the BBC news website, then Twitter. If that counts as an early start, I do it because I always like to be on top of work so I can enjoy the non-work stuff, like having breakfast with the family and talking to my daughter on the way to school, rather than being distracted by work. So it sort of helps me have a normal life.

What time are you at your desk?

If I'm working in my home city of Edinburgh I'm at my desk by 8.30am, having dropped Amy off at school. I email all the time. It used to drive me mad, but that's now the way I keep on top of things. Multi-tasking has become essential as far as I can see. I do have a separate private email address that fewer people know – but that gets quite busy too these days.

What time do you go home?

I try to be home by 7pm. If I'm away I work until about 10pm – again, that's a way of not letting things encroach on normal life too much. I do work from home in the evening, but usually only in a multi-tasking sort of way. I certainly don't sit at a desk.

When is bedtime?

I try to be in bed by 10.30pm. And I always sleep like a log! I need and get about eight hours a night, unless I'm travelling, when I just get what I can. I rarely feel tired. Life's too exciting! I always get straight out of bed when I wake up. I don't lie there doing my emails.

What is your weekend like?

I love my weekends. I try to run both days before the rest of the family is up. Then being the normal taxi service for children kicks in. We usually have dinner with friends on a Saturday night and then more family stuff on a Sunday, until about 4pm. In the winter I like to be home then, curtains drawn, music on and getting us all ready for the week ahead – homework check, clothes check, scrubbed up – a nice tea, then settle in front of the telly.

Karen Blackett – 5.45am

Karen Blackett, CEO, MediaCom UK

What time do you get up?

At 5.45am three times a week to spend 45 minutes in my garage, which I have turned into a gym. Otherwise, I wake when my son comes into my room – any time between 6.30 and 7am.

When you wake up, do you leap out of bed immediately?

Define "leap" – I'd say I roll out of bed.

What time do you start sending emails?

I quickly scan my emails while my son is taking over my bed and having his milk. Urgent ones I reply to there and then. I flag others to follow up on my commute into work. My early start is due to the need to exercise more to keep fit as I get older, and due to my three-year-old kick-starting my day (literally).

What time are you at your desk?

8.30-9am — it depends on whether my son is at nursery and I do the nursery run, or at home with his nanny.

Do you email throughout the day, or do you have fixed times at which you send messages?

I receive an average of 500 emails a day, so I email throughout the day.

Do you have a secret email address that few people know?

No, I'm accessible to everyone and there's no hierarchy.

What time do you go home?

I try to be home for 6.30pm so that I can spend time with my son before he goes to sleep, read him his bedtime story and put him to bed at 7.30pm. My team know that I'll clock on again once Isaac is settled after 8pm, and reply to emails or take calls. My clients also know that.

What time do you go to bed?

11.30pm.

How much sleep do you get?

Six to seven hours. I'm the mum of a three-year-old: you survive on what you can get! I thoroughly recommend ginseng and David Kirschvitamins.

What is your weekend like?

Isaac time, peppered with the odd bit of work when he's sleeping.

Hans Vestberg – "Early." Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Hans Vestberg, CEO, Ericsson

What time do you get up?

It varies, but usually early.

What time do you start sending emails?

No day is similar to another, but usually mail is part of my start of the day. Our company never sleeps: we have business in 180 countries, so there are no real mornings or nights.

Do you email first thing?

I often exercise (running or gym), especially when I am travelling.

What time are you at your desk?

Flexible on time but seldom after 8am.

Do you email only at fixed times?

I read mails throughout the day but answer mails more in the morning and evening.

Do you have a secret email address that few people know?

No, my mail address is open for anyone and I read all my mails by myself.

What time do you go home?

It depends on the day's activities. If I am in Sweden, I try to get home to be with my children. I can do work after that from home.

What time do you go to bed?

Quite late.

How much sleep do you get?

It varies, but enough.

How much do you need?

Not too much.

When you wake up, do you leap out of bed immediately?

Yes.

What is your weekend like?

I spend time with my family and exercise. Of course there's no such thing as a "normal day" – depending on travel schedule and customer meetings, so the answers above are all approximations.

Helena Morrissey – 5am. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Helena Morrissey, CEO, Newton investment

What time do you get up?

5am, sometimes earlier. I get out of bed straight away and go downstairs to check and send emails on computer and BlackBerry. At 6.30am my children start to get up.

How much sleep do you get?

Five to six hours. This is as much to do with having nine children as having a business job, but I do end up feeling a bit sleep-deprived. There isn't a lot of slack. I put on the washing about twice before I go to work. People make resolutions to do more things, but one of my ambitions for 2013 is to do slightly less. With children, you end up adjusting, and not needing so much sleep. But every now and again, you think: oh, I could do with a proper eight hours.

What time are you at your desk?

About eight. I'm on my BlackBerry all the time.

When do you go home?

Around 6pm. The whole family tends to eat together at about 7.30pm. I work after supper– sending more emails, often to US-based colleagues, or doing two hours of prep for the morning's meetings. I try to get to bed around 10pm, and aim to be asleep by 11pm, but there's usually one child who's awake. With so many there's bound to be one.

What is your weekend like?

On Saturday evening, the whole family tends to sit down and watch a movie. On Sunday mornings, the children do their homework, and I do mine. I spend Sunday evenings preparing the children's schoolbags for the week ahead. It takes a little while, organising that many children, making sure the girls don't go off with the boys' stuff. I have done that occasionally.

Heather Rabbatts – 6am

Heather Rabbatts, non-executive director of the Football Association

What time do you get up?

I am usually up by 6am, but wake earlier. I've always been an early riser. I love that sense of quiet first thing in the morning as the world (well, those of us on GMT) wakes up.

What time do you start sending emails?

By 8am – sometimes earlier, depending on what is on my mind.

Do you email first thing?

If I'm in London, I start the day with a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit. If I'm home in Kent, I feed my two spaniels, have a cup of tea and defend my digestive biscuits from being snaffled by my crafty dogs.

What time are you at your desk?

I'm a bit of a wandering minstrel: my day often begins with breakfast meetings, before I head to my desk.

Do you email throughout the day, or do you have fixed times at which you send messages?

I usually send emails throughout the day and into the evening. My business partners are in New York and LA, so emails/calls extend my working hours.

Do you have a secret email address that few people know?

If I did, I wouldn't say.

What time do you go home?

It varies as I usually have evening engagements.

Do you work from home in the evening?

I try not to work too much from home in the evening, but it depends what's going on.

What time do you go to bed?

I don't have a regular bedtime.

How much sleep do you get?

My sleep patterns vary. I used to be a bad sleeper – ie a virtual insomniac – but I'm getting better with age. I'm always up early, I never need an alarm and am instantly awake.

Do you feel tired?

Who doesn't, sometimes?

What is your weekend like?

I walk the dogs; try to learn to ride my horse, who continually sees tigers lurking behind trees; spend time with my partner and friends. And smile, because life is to be lived!

Vittorio Colao – 6am. Photograph: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Vittorio Colao, CEO, Vodafone

He gets up at 6am, exercises for 40 minutes then works continuously through the day with constant emails and meetings ("because people need to progress with decisions and logistics, and technology today allows everybody to be always in contact"). He works through until about 10.45pm – with a brief pause for dinner with his family – before going to sleep by 11.30pm. Weekends consist of four hours of exercise, then the remainder is split between time with his wife and children and preparing for the following week's work.

Seven Simple Ways to Annoy Your Readers

If you want to make a living blogging, there are a number of things that you need to get right. Arguably, the most important being some killer content and some savvy SEO. One other thing that you need to get right however, is to not irritate your readers.

Many bloggers make mistakes, that unbeknown to them, greatly irritate their readers. Such mistakes result in a loss of traffic, a loss of profit and in some cases, a loss of a blog. Here are seven simple ways to turn loyal readers against you.

Ignore Your Comment Sections

Just about every blogger is aware of the importance of blog commenting when it comes to promoting their blog. What many bloggers don’t realise is that how they handle their own comment sections is equally important.

When somebody leaves a thoughtful comment on your blog, you need to respond. When you fail to do so, it gives the impression that you do not care what your readers think. And that’s simply not how you build a following.

Take Frequent Unannounced Holidays

One of the first rules of running a profitable blog is that you post on a regular basis. You can post daily or weekly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you post to a specific schedule.

When you disappear, your readers continue to check your blog for new posts. When they do so, they get disappointed. And eventually disappointed readers stop being readers.

Cover Your Blog in Ads

Bloggers, like anybody else, deserve to earn a living. And one of the easiest ways to turn a blog into a profitable web property is to include a few advertisements. There’s nothing wrong with this and most of your readers aren’t going to begrudge you for it.

There is however a line and when you cover your blog in flashing banners, you’ve crossed it. If you want to monetize your blog, do so with subtlety. If your ads are the first thing that visitors see, you’re not being subtle.

Write Sneaky Sponsored Posts

Another highly effective way to monetize a blog is to write sponsored posts. While there’s nothing wrong with sponsored posts, two important rules must be followed.

First off, sponsored posts must be honest. Don’t write a positive review for a poor product. And secondly, the sponsored nature of a sponsored post must be declared. Break these rules and you will lose your readers respect.

Make Navigation Impossible

The wonder that is WordPress allows just about anyone to create a reasonably professional looking blog. Web design expertise is therefore by no means required to profit from blogging.

One thing that you do need to get right however is your blogs navigation system. If navigating your blog is confusing, frustrating or simply inefficient, you will lose readers. Here are a few tips to help you avoid this faith.

Categorise your posts in a clear fashion.

Include links to said categories on every page.

Underline all textual links and don’t underline any other text.

Use breadcrumbs so that readers know where they are.

Experiment with Cool Fonts

There are many ways to express yourself in your blog but your choice of font isn’t one of them. When deciding what font to use for a new post, the only thing that you should be thinking about is legibility.

This means nice big, black letters. It doesn’t mean Comic Sans and it certainly doesn’t mean yellow text.

Make Them Wait

Some bloggers get a little carried away when it comes to making their blog look shiny. They add a few hundred photos, choose a textured background and finish the effect with some nice Flash graphics.

While the resulting blog often looks fantastic, it suddenly takes forever to load. This is not a clever trade off to make. If you think that your blog takes longer than average to load, here are a few tips for solving the problem.

Limit photos to one per post.

Optimize all photos.

Remove flash completely.

Clean up your blogs code (or pay somebody to do it).

Leveraging Social Media for Better Website Traffic

The only way to keep ourselves on top of the SEO game is to keep ourselves updated with new techniques and strategies. Many are still coming to terms with the new strategy of using social networks as a method of promoting their websites. Many would even say that creating links on social networking sites such as Facebook for example could have some effect on a website’s search engine results.

Social Networks and SEO

Before we get confused, let us first define what SEO and Social Networking are. SEO is defined as strategies or techniques employed to improve a website’s search engine results. It works on the principle that websites that are prominently displayed in search engine results have a better chance of attracting traffic.

Social Networks on the other hand improves traffic to your website thru community building and information sharing. This does not in any way optimize a website’s search engine results. They work very differently but are similar in their objective which is to drive more traffic to your website.

Social SEO

I’m not exactly sure if this is the perfect term to describe the process of optimizing your social network campaign for improving your website traffic but I guess it’s clear enough to stress the point. With Social Networks gaining more prominence, search engines like Google have included.

Great Titles

Just like your regular websites, social networking sites gives you the option of creating titles for your articles or announcements. You could then link these back to your website. The great thing about social sites is you don’t have to come up with long word articles just to capture your audience attention. A few words or killer title is all it takes to drive traffic to your website. The rule of thumb here is to create a killer title that is difficult to resist which is easier said than done.

People Targeted Content

If you’re going to write, write for people. This has always been an important factor even for web content but the difference here is that no SEO is required. Throw keywords out, no amount of keywords is needed here. Even Google’s ever dependable spiders will not be able to crawl their way thru social networking sites.

Build your Social Profile

Be an active member of the community. Joining other social networking groups helps you build meaningful relationship and increases your exposure. This is where branding and link building comes into mind in terms of social networks. Just like link building, you are creating backlinks to your social network sites.

Add Social Widgets

Many website owners are missing out on the benefits of social networking by failing to install social networking widgets on their website. It only takes a few minutes to install these but their benefits are invaluable. People are unable to follow you simply because you have not given them the option of doing so. Adding a share button makes its simpler for them to tweet or share your articles at Twitter and Facebook.

Images and Videos

Social media sites have opened new doors for promoting your services and products. Posting a few images and videos over YouTube for example gives you a creative way of promotion aside from writing good content. It is said that pictures can tell a thousand words enhancing the quality of content.

Different Strokes

SEO and Social Media Marketing are two different sides of the coin. SEO in its strictest definition helps us get to the top of search engines to increase traffic to our websites. Social Media can also be considered as a tool for increasing traffic to your website but works on a different principle. The difference is that SEO targets search engines while Social Networks is people oriented. With the growing popularity of Social Networks it has become another valuable tool for increasing traffic to websites.