The other day, a friend asked me what the best setting was for Google’s keyword tool-broad, phrase or exact match, when doing keyword research for content writing.

Here’s my response regarding using the exact match setting to initially help you determine a keyword’s volume and importance:

“For any given key word you want to target, you should be looking at the volume for the exact match keyword.

If you were to broad match the phrase ‘jump start a car’ you would not only get results for that phrase, but also for something like ‘jump starting your car’ or other close variations including ‘jump starting my ’57 chevy’.  Likewise if you used ‘Phrase’ match for ‘jump start a car’ you would also get results for keywords that contain that phrase like ‘how to jump start a car’ or ‘jump start a car easily.’

 My technique is to find the exact match keyword that I want to target, then review the phrase match to see what else people like to include with my keywords-it helps me write an article that includes some of the popular phrases surrounding that keyword.  It also helps to further define the searcher’s intent surrounding the keyword.”

Bear in mind that Google isn’t always accurate when determining the competitive nature of the keyword, but it is likely to give you some idea.  I like to use some additional tools to further analyze a particular keyword when I do keyword research.  One such tool is Spyfu.com for researching what advertisers are paying for a keywords. Once my keyword research is complete, I also like a tool called InboundWriter.com to help me analyze the article and optimize it for my particular set of keywords.  I will write an entire post on that the next time I feel the urge to write about content generation.

In the mean time, keep keyword research fun, and feel free to sound off on your thoughts on usage of the exact match keyword setting in Google, or about content marketing in general.

• Hire someone who provides local SEO services to do an audit of your site.
• See what your competitors are doing – analyze their web strategy to determine if there is something you can apply to your site.
• Submit your site to as many local business directories as possible.
• Make your site mobile friendly.
• Start a blog.
• Make sure your Google Places page has been claimed and is being displayed
• Start a Youtube channel showing your product or service in a different way, or simply post your most recent TV commercial.
• Write a press release.

These quick items don’t have to be expensive, but to get good organic traffic and local placement, you’ll want to invest time in working on your site daily.  It’s important to have a good web strategy built into your marketing mix if you want to be found.

While there are many free or low cost options, if you don’t show up locally for your desired terms, you may want to consider some paid online advertising such as Google Adwords, or see if you can get a little bit more buzz created about your business by hiring a blogger or writer to get the online word out.

Start with a plan

I usually try to put together a 4-6 month content building strategy, incorporating some of the ideas in my bulleted list.  This helps to visualize all of the items needed to help bolster your position in local search results.  Organizing the assets also helps to determine who will assist when the time comes to distribute the articles, write the blog, or whatever the strategy calls for.  The business owners I have worked for in the past are often too busy to pull together all of the required items for SEO, but they are happy to point me to the person in the organization who has enough knowledge to help in writing a great article or blog post to get the business started with some good content.

Once you have a written content building strategy, you are far more likely to be successful in local search results for your business.

These are just 2 examples of local professionals who know their profession and also love to keep it local.  Personally, I don’t find it any easier to manage a project when you can not sit down and work face to face, so think about this the next time you need to outsource a professional service in Omaha.

1. They all have the same ugly template and offer no opportunity to brand the business.

2. They are not driving the searcher to the Dex client’s actual web site.

3.  The ads show no regard for whether the keywords will produce a conversion (and it likely won’t even if it is good based on point #1)

4.  Often, the ads are displayed on irrelevant keywords.

5.  The ads displayed on the right side of Dex’s landing page are very often not relevant to the key words (so not adding any value to THAT advertiser) and distracting to the user who has arrived at the page.

6.  These ads drive up the price for businesses who are legitimately trying to run a good ad campaign with relevant key words and good ad copy – much better for the consumer to have specific, targeted ads placed in front of them.

In general, I feel that the phone books do a terrible disservice to the client when they buy a domain for the client and put up a splash landing page to run the PPC campaign to.  Why not do it correctly and drive the traffic to the real domain of the business.  A domain I saw the other day didn’t even make sense – it was for The Cookie Company, Dex bought myTheCookieCompany.com and applied their expert design skills to the landing page.  Terrible for the brand image of the client, confusing for consumers, and probably much more expensive for the client in the long run.

If you need help with your online exposure via paid or organic search please be sure to give me a call -  I have the expertise you need as an Omaha Adwords professional.

Since 1 in 3 mobile searches show local intent, one useful extension is the phone number extension – if you add it to your campaign, it creates a phone number that can be clicked to call your place of business directly.

Additionally, you can use the location extension to display how far the user is from your location and also to get a map directly to your place of business.

If you would like to learn more about these adwords functions or would like a consult on how mobile can work for you, please contact me here in Omaha.  I am a Google adwords marketing expert.

Fresh content is always good, so if you already have the on-site blog, continue with that.
The benefit of adding the external blog to the mix – get some links coming in from an outside source.  Other ways to accomplish this would be to get involved in a forum where you can leave a link in your signature, commenting on someone else’s blog post, submitting articles to ezinearticles.com or even establishing a relationship with another blogger to “guest blog” where you would have the chance to link to your site.
The inbound links provide a signal to the search engines that your site is relevant to the keywords you link it with, and often a handful of well placed links with strategically chosen key words can make a big difference for you.
Rather than maintain a second blog, you might be better off finding a couple of these other spots to link back to your site.
Hope that all makes sense, usually you can get me to talk for an hour or so about it if you just buy me a coffee too.

Todd states:  “Our media analysis and position as a news monitoring service has led us to the conclusion that the fundamental rules of public relations communications has not changed, only the tools we have at our disposal are new.”

For practical advice on these new tools, check out SameRulesNewTools.com or follow @Universal_Info on twitter.

Some things that you can do to help get targeted traffic:
Write in your blog frequently – link a short blog post describing a product to the item in your shop. The post contains valuable keywords for search engines to get ahold of and if the blog is updated frequently, Google will come back and index your site frequently. This is probably the most important thing you can do – 2-4 times a week at a minimum – you have a topic and products that online consumers are searching hard for.
Put those videos from YouTube on your site, embed them directly from YouTube – this is simple to do – just put them right in a blog post. It’s great content, establishes credibility and encourages the visitor to stay on your site longer.
Submit your RSS feed to FeedAg.com: this will distribute your Blog content around the web via RSS-the more spots you can get this, the better.
Hook your RSS feed up to a fan page in Facebook – this will make your facebook page look updated, and will automatically update every time you update your blog. Social Networking and gaining friends via this method is a great medium for your store – it really helps that customer relationship.
Submit your product list to Google Base: This will get your items into Google’s comparison shopping engine. You’ll need a plug in for OScommerce or whatever shopping cart you are using to generate an XML product list that can be submitted – you’ll want to regenerate on a monthly basis, or as often as you change your shopping cart and submit it every 30 days to Google.

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These are just some of the things that you can do, all simple, but require time spent on your site, working on it. But this is what will separate your site from others, in terms of traffic.

I have an exciting new service that I am offering – a 3 hour on-site Adwords training session for up to 2 employees of any local Omaha business. For just $199 you’ll get quality training on the basics of the Adwords interface, training on picking out key words, and setting up your web site for maximum conversions. If your Adwords account is new (within 2 weeks) I have a $100 new account credit that can be applied as well.

Here’s a basic overview of the session.

Intro to Adwords – why the marketing works.
Setting up your account.
Setting up your first campaign
Proper targeting geographically
Proper key word research and bidding techniques
Proper landing pages on your web site.
Effective Ad writing.

Please contact me if you are interested in setting up a time for me to come train you or your employees. You’ll need a computer with a connection to the internet and a quiet spot with no interruptions as I cover quite a lot in 3 hours of time.

Steve 402-210-3283