Why hire an Internet savvy, professional writer?

Many potential clients ask me what the benefits are of hiring a professional writer, who specializes in web site content and keyword writing. This is a valid question, considering up until a few years ago mainstream America barely knew what search engine optimization was. However, in 2007 competition on the Internet has become just as cut throat and intense as competition in the real world of business. Professional web site content development and keyword writing are now essential components to the success of a web site and its ability to perform on the search engines. These days companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for web sites that are highly interactive. Web sites can present real time market information, collect and organize databases, allow clients to manage their own accounts online and streamline information for large mobile sales teams.

Protect Your Online Investment

Building a web site is a financial and professional investment. You want to represent yourself in the best way possible. Just like traditional marketing, Internet marketing is a serious endeavor. A business associate of mine, Jason Syzdek, president of Jaymunda www.Jaymunda.com, asks his clients an important question, “If you are going to invest your money in a high end web site, why wouldn’t you pay to include professional writing services?” Even if you have someone on staff who can write well, it is essential to have a keyword specialist complete some research about keywords that will be useful for achieving your web site marketing goals. It is also good to have a web site content developer review and edit any content you or your staff have created for your web site. They will generally review the marketing voice, offer formatting suggestions and go over basic grammar and spelling.

Choose Your Web Design Firm Carefully

When it comes time to choose the right web site development firm to manage and maintain your Internet investment it is essential that the designers you choose also offer content development, keyword research and search engine optimization services. If they do not then begin looking for a search engine company that can partner with them to assist on search engine strategies. Remember, the website design itself is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to being successful and profitable on the Internet.

At Sidhe Communications we offer a variety of services including web site content development and keyword analysis. We also offer web site design services, web site programming services, search engine optimization packages and more with the help of our strategic partners around the country. If you are in search of a firm that can handle all aspects of your web site development project call us for a free one hour consultation. If you have a web site but are unhappy with its performance contact us for a free one hour evaluation.

Until next time…

Sarah Benoit

A web site is a unique and revolutionary marketing tool because each time a web site is visited, every move of the visitor is recorded. Think about it. Television, print, or radio cannot be measured in this way. Downloads of audio and video podcasts can be measured statistically too. Every bit of information that is disseminated on the Internet, whether it is an article, press release, blog, or even the text of a web site page, can be measured for its impact and popularity by a web site analytics program. In fact, web site analytics are the foundation of any solid ‘usability study’ of a web site. Where the user pauses to read, enters, and exits a web site can have a profound effect upon future web site architecture, marketing goals, and online conversion rates. Effective online marketing means more sales generated from the Internet.

How Do I Access My Web Site Analytics?
Many web site owners are unaware they even have a web site analytics program. This program is usually put in place on the server, by the web site host. The host usually requires a username and passcode to access web site analytics. The best way to find access to web site analytics is to phone or email the web site host for instructions. Or, phone or email the web site designer to find out how to access statistics.

What are the Best Web Site Analytics Programs?
There are many different software programs designed to record and publish web site analytics. In my opinion, the best programs are AW Stats and Webalizer. These programs offer monthly breakdowns on web site visits, daily breakdowns, and even hourly analyses of visits. They allow the user to look at ALL referring URLs and they also capture visitor landing and exiting pages. There are many other features of these programs. I am only highlighting the features I feel are important to measure on line marketing activities.

Posting Articles, Press Releases, Blogs and Podcasts on the Internet
Posting information on one company or organization web site is not enough. Materials such as articles, press releases and blogs can be spread across the internet easily through RSS or Real Simple Syndication networks. These days, audio and video podcasts can also be syndicated. In order to promote a web site to the highest search engine position, text based materials and podcasts must be published at multiple web sites, and republished by digital and print publications, Publishing and republishing text materials also creates link popularity for a web site and ‘click thru’ traffic to the site over the long term.

How are Press Releases, Articles, and Blogs Tracked by Web Site Analytics?
Whenever any articles, press releases, or blogs are syndicated or posted on the Internet, a web site’s analytics program is available to immediately test and record the popularity of the materials. How does an analytics program measure user behavior? Check to see the top 25 URLs or web pages the user lands on when visiting the site. The user should be landing on the home page. However, when articles, blogs, or press releases are posted on the web site, users may enter to read these materials first, because they found them in keyword searches. If a visitor entered to read an article it will show by indicating the article or landing page. If the visitor read the information then exited, the analytics program will show this, too. The most popular articles, blogs, and press releases are visited month in and month out, and visitor reception to the information is easy to measure by calculating the number of visitors who read the information.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns
To measure the effectiveness of keywords purchased for a PPC campaign, focus on the keywords/keyphrases section of analytics and note the number of click thrus for purchased keywords. Also, if an Adwords campaign was In progress, note the number of Google searches which were used as a referring URL.

Referring URLs
The referring URLs section of the analytics program is crucial to understanding the reach of syndicated materials. To see which URLs have referred visitors to your web site, check this section regularly. Press release and article sites are found here, as are other web sites where a hot link to your web site is posted.

Keywords or Keyphrases
A good statistics program will show the top 10-25 search keywords and search keyphrases used to find a web site. This information is important for an on line marketing campaign. After depositing say 2,000 words of keyword rich text onto a web site in the form of an article and multiple blogs, an analytics program will let the user know almost immediately if the article and blog content has successfully increased the density of keywords desired.

Duration of Visits
It’s nice to know if your web site visitors breezed through or stayed for a while. Looking closely at these figures will let you know how many visitors you actually engaged. The visitors most interested in your product or service stayed for more than 10 minutes, and probably visited several pages.

What’s a Bot????
It is important that spiders and robots (bots) visit your site. A bot is an automated program designed to crawl a web site’s content and report back to the search engine the content therein. Every month, bots and spiders should be crawling web site content, looking for updated and relevant information. If an article marketing, press release, or blogging campaign is in progress, bots and spiders need to be crawling the newly uploaded information. A correctly designed web site will allow spiders and bots to crawl each piece of new information uploaded to a web site immediately. A web site analytics program will confirm that a site is being crawled by spiders and bots. Just check the Robots/Spider Visits section.

Web Site Analytics and ROI
I have highlighted some of the basic sections of a web site analytics program that can be used to evaluate an online marketing campaign. For PR and Marketing professionals, keeping a watchful eye towards web site analytics can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful online marketing campaign. Gaining access to a client’s web site analytics can be a challenge. But it can also prove to be valuable information to measure return on investment (ROI). It’s important to remember that click-thrus to a web site have real value in the Internet world.

Sadly, many web site owners and public relations and marketing professionals are daunted by technical personalities and technical terminology. Engaging in the interpretation of web site analytics is a good introduction to the terminology. So long as misunderstood terms can be explained, why not embrace this amazing new marketing tool, and use it to our best advantage?

Technical Terms Defined:

1. AW Stats: A web site analytics software program
2. Bot: An automated program that originates from a search engine (i.e. Yahoo, MSN, Google). The Bot is designed to crawl web site pages, find content, evaluate and categorize it based on certain criteria.
3. Crawl: a term used to describe a search engine spider or bot that scans and categorizes information uploaded to your web site.
4. Exit Page: The page on a web site where the visitor disengages from the site
5. Keywords/Keyphrases: Words of phrases typed into search engines to find your site
6. Landing Page: The page a visitor lands when they visit your site
7. PPC: (Pay Per Click) Paying for keyword click thrus on Google or other search engines.
8. Referring URL: A web site that contains a link to your web site, the user ‘clicks thru’ and visits your site.
9. ROI: Return on Investment.
10. Spider: Same as Bot. See above.
11. URL: (Uniform Resource Locator) The actual web site address: http://www.sidhecommunications.com
12. Webalizer: A web site analytics software program

by Elizabeth Kirwin
Partner, Sidhe Communications
ekirwin@bellsouth.net

Many clients want to know the best and most cost effective way to promote their web site. Writing articles and having them submitted to popular article marketing sites on the Internet is the most stable, long lasting way of marketing a web site.

Finding the Right Article Submission Service
Yet how does a writer or industry expert distinguish the best article submission service to use? After all, shouldn’t the list and the method of submission matter? The answer is yes, the list and the method of submission does matter, especially to web site content editors who manage large article marketing sites.

Methods of Article Submission
There are two methods of submitting articles: manual posting and automated article submission software. In my article, Article Submission Tips: Syndicate Writing on the World Wide Web, I advise the person submitting articles NOT to use automated submission software. Many web site editors and programmers are setting up guards against article submission software. Automated submissions are suspect, because they are dumping huge amounts of repetitive copy on their sites.

What Do Article Marketing Sites Want?
Article marketing sites are seeking original, copyrighted materials, not articles purchased from article factories with many different bylines attached.

Manual Article Submission Service
Do not use article submission software if you want to achieve high rankings on the web. Use a manual submission service. At Sidhe Communications, we submit manually and we cultivate our article submission list. We have older high ranking web sites on our list, and the newer RSS feed sites, as well as some international web sites, too. The articles developed by Sidhe Communications are visible in multiple places on the Internet, where their shelf life is long and the results produced from publication are ongoing.

Invest in Article Submission Services
An investment in article submission services outlives a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign. If the articles are written in an educational manner and shed light on a specific topic of interest, articles can circulate for years on the Internet. Hurry! Take advantage of Sidhe Communications Article submission services introductory rate of $100 per article. Our list is high performance – let us prove it to you.

Syndicating text on the internet, or posting it widely at article submission portals, can generate income for a business and be a great long term web site promotion strategy.

What is Article Submission?
Article submission services provide a wider venue for text-based materials (such as articles, press releases, or blogs) on the Internet. By launching the writer’s work into the proper digital venues, the author is assured of multiple publications on web sites and ezines nationally, and internationally. The author does not receive payment for articles upon publication. Payment comes in the form of a three to four sentence bio with a link to an email and a web site. These links have real value on the Internet and are viewed as payment. Readers who are intrigued with article content click through to the author’s web site or email to make further inquiries.

Benefits of Article Submission Services
The benefits of article submission services are great for search engine marketing (SEM). Articles setup permanent back links when published on prominent article publication and Real Simple Syndication (RSS) sites. It helps if the article submission list is cultivated. The list should contain the most popular sites editors are inclined to visit for content. The article submission service should have a list of longstanding, high-ranking web portal sites with lots of ‘Googlejuice.’ This means that to be any good, web portal sites must maintain high traffic rankings — in the hundreds of thousands of hits per month range. Google then associates the web site being promoted with the high-ranking sites where articles are published, and archived.

Article Submission Boosts Web Site Rankings
What happens when a timely article is published on say 20-30 web portal sites? This creates immediate back-links to the web site being promoted. Google and other Search Engine bots and spiders periodically crawl for links and include the number and quality of the links as criteria in search engine ranking.

Use Article Submission Software at Your Own Peril
Article submission software is available – from programmers who are attempting to ride the wave of popularity of article submission on the worldwide web. Remember, web article sites are owned and run by real individuals and companies. Many of these companies detest article submissions that arrive in an automated fashion. In fact, their programmers put in place controls to weed out automated article submissions. For example, once a user is registered to a web site with a username and pass code, he or she is sent an email to verify ownership of the account. The user must click the link on the email to activate the account. Articles are reviewed by an editorial staff in many cases, and accepted or declined from sites. Editors do not want to spend time wading through piles of articles generated by article factories. They want original submissions by real writers and they have distaste for and mistrust of article submission services.

How Do I Submit My Articles?
Anyone can benefit from submitting articles on the Internet. Perhaps there is a new product or service to be promoted, a book, movie or musical piece, or a personal viewpoint. Whatever it is, the Internet can provide a wider venue for it – provided the right article submission service is used to syndicate the information.

Don’t delay in bringing a message to the world. Utilize an effective article submission service, and these tips, to launch a business, idea, product or service on the worldwide web.

A business and life coach I work with (Corrie Woods is amazing. Check out her web site at http://www.WindRiverCoaching.com and look for her new book The Women’s Field Guide to Exceptional Living this summer!) suggested I choose a theme for 2007. She indicated I should choose something that was general enough to apply to all aspects of my life, but specific enough to create a strong intention for the next cycle of my personal and professional goals. After a few days of processing and brainstroming I decided my 2007 theme was going to be GET REAL! I won’t go into the personal implications of this theme, but the professional ones have helped me to generate a refreshed and invigorated sales and marketing appraoch for the coming year. I am pumped, thrilled and bursting at the seams with ideas on how to manifest this intention into my career! I am even more excited to share this concept with my current and prospective web development and Internet marketing clients.

GET REAL: Achieve Active, Authentic, Honest Success

The marketing world sometimes feels like it is no different then visiting “spin alley”. The advertising, marketing and public relations industries can seem so fake at times-all talk no depth. In addition, when prospective clients meet with me for their one hour free consultation I often find professionals and business owners who are a few french fries short of a happy meal when it comes to what marketing, PR and communications entail. Marketing and Communications is not just the act of reaching out to your target market, it is the process through which you will grow your business. It is the plan you will make in order to achieve greater financial success. Getting real is important for everyone! Marketing professionals must keep in mind that every client is individual and unique. Every company has its own route, map and preferred scenery when moving forward. Clients need to remember that nothing happens over night…well some things seem to, but we can’t all be the owners of You Tube and own a company for 10 months and then make a billion dollars! Clients need to remind themselves that marketing consists of a variety of strategies. A marketing and communications expert, with experience and creative inspiration can help you discover the best way to reach your goals and your potential customers, while keeping in mind you have individual needs and most of all that yu want to have fun!

Telling the World Who You Are Can Be Fun!

Many of the clients I consult with are lost, confused, frustrated and eventually sick of dealing with complex decisions involving advertising, PR and marketing. I believe selling your products and services can be a fun experience. It is work, but work doesn’t have to be stressful or dreadful. As a business owner myself, I would sink into serious depression if I invested time, money and effort into my company but working to build it felt like a chore. If marketing your company is a thorn in your side how can you expect to send the right message to your potential customers? This is why hiring a marketing and communications professional to assist with decisions, research, long and short term strategies is essential. If that is not in your budget seek out training. Many small business organizations and marketing professionals like myself offer affordable or free training, workshops and advice. There is nothing I like better than empowering businesses and professionals to get excited about the possibilities and teaching them how to make the right decisions for the future. So, in 2007 I challenge you to GET REAL: with yourself, with your company partners, with your staff and with your clientele. Getting real can create the thing we are all searching for: REAL SUCCESS!

As a writer I studied many of the traditional forms of writing: marketing, business, technical, journalism…but who knew that web and Internet writing would become a skill all it’s own. The Internet offers a wide variety of opportunity for writers from web site content to blogging, article syndication to digital press release distribution. The key is that writers learn the specific formulas and structures associated with Internet writing. Although I will always be a lover of the printed word, Internet audiences are growing daily and their needs are very different. Here are some important tips for writers working on the net or individuals in charge of their own web content.

Keywords are essential. Understanding the keywords that belong to a particular Internet audience or online target market is the way to attracting more web site traffic and the attention of search engines. Use them on the front and back end of your web site.

The attention span is SHORT-you have seconds to make your point. When a potential customer visits your web site they will spend about ten seconds (if you are lucky) scanning your homepage. If they don’t understand what they should do within that ten seconds it is likely they will go to another site. If you want them to BUY then say it right away. If you want them to READ ON then state that. If you want them to “Call You For a Free Consultation” make sure it is clearly displayed in the beginning.

Avoid large blocks of plain text. Online most readers scan first and then continue to read something that sparks their interest. Make sure your content online inlcudes subheads, pull quotes and other bolded themes. This will help the reader know what the content is before they read it and they will continue reading if the information pertains to them.

As writers, the Internet provides a variety of jobs and specializing in the type of writing that is required for web sites, blogs and other online tools is slowly becoming an important skill. Web designers and programmers often don’t have the time to invest in writing and most of their clients don’t know enough about the technical aspect of web writing to complete good text on their own, but in order for the web site to succeed the content must be optimized and handled correctly. This is why web designers and programmers are a writer’s best friend! Get to know these people if you’d like to write for the web. Learn from them, network with them and offer affordable services. They can often times be your best sales person since they know the value of what you do! Branch out and think outside the box! Creativity is a commodity for all of us and if we share this energy we wil also share one another’s success.

Until next time…..enjoy the beauty of winter as it descends upon us!

Sarah

I recently attended a gathering here in Asheville, sponsored by a group called “Meet the Geeks” and the Media Arts Project, that blended art and technology. It was called “Liquefaction: A Geek and Artist Mixer”. The focus was to bring artists like writers, photographers and painters together with tech professionals like programmers, software developers and web designers. It was a very fun meeting and most of the people I met fell into both categories: Artist and Geek. I may be a writer, but I can talk about search engine marketing and optimization with the best of them. Mainly because after three years in business and a lot of study I have both knowledge and experience; two of the key things needed to become an expert!

One of the keys to achieving expert status has been to NEVER stop admitting there are people with more expertise than myself and to NEVER stop learning from those people. Search engine and web site technology changes as often as computer technology in general. You will never run out of new things to learn, understand, test and read about. Every six months Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other search engines will give you something new to think about, incorporate into your web practices and be challenged. This is what attracts many computer and creative professionals to the Internet, it never stops evolving and that means the excitement never ends and neither does your education.

One of the most beautiful realizations I had at the “Meet the Geeks” gathering was that technology and art share one important characteristic: creativity! Creativity demands a certain level of originality, inspiration and passion. These are the reasons I love my job and why I always crave to learn more. It is also why I am good at my job. The technicians that create the search engines have originality, inspiration and passion and in order to understand their thinking and the ways in which the search engines develop each year I must meet them with the same amount of energy and drive. Ten years ago I never dreamed I would use my writing and marketing skills almost exclusively on the Internet, but now it seems the perfect marriage.

Artists and Geeks share and exchange creative energy like a commodity and it is! It fuels the fast paced advancements happening every day and the more we combine our efforts and ideas the more often our clients will achieve their professional and financial goals. It is my belief that we can all join “virtual hands” and move successfully into the future!

Until next time…may the creative force be with you!
If you are in the Asheville area and want more information on Meet the Geeks visit http://www.meetthegeeks.net.

Sarah

Every company or organization wants to deploy a web site which will reach its clients, project a certain image, and help solicit new business or members. Most companies, organizations, and individual entities prioritize the overall look and feel of a web site, and assess the final web site based on its ability to provide information in an organized, easy-to-read way. These are all important issues in web site construction. Yet, other aspects of web site development need to be addressed in order for a web site to be an effective marketing tool for a company.

Search Engine Marketing Produces Income

In order to produce income, increase membership or visibility, speak directly to niche markets, or generate new leads, a web site must be outfitted properly for search engines. This means that all of the text should be easily ‘crawlable’ by spiders and bots. The web design is integral to this process, but is not central to the process. A web designer should work hand-in-hand with a web site programmer and a keyword writer or information architect in order to build a high performance web site. If one of these aspects is ignored in web site construction, the web site runs the risk of falling behind in performance, and will not be an efficient tool for Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Web Site Designer

When building a high performance web site, always aim for the web site designer with the most experience. Review the web site designer’s portfolio to see if his or her style coincides with your own. Email or telephone past clients to get a feel for the web site designer’s work ethic.

It is true that an experienced designer may be costly. In the long run, it will be worth it. The web designer is responsible for executing the client’s ideas for menu structure, color, graphics and web site layout. Experienced web designers may have some knowledge of web site coding (or programming). However, it is not the designer’s job to review the back-end of the site. It is the web site designer’s task to construct a front-end image of the company, organization or individual.

Web Site Programmer

Chances are good most web site designers do not have the programming background to create a high performance site on the back-end. The solution to this is hiring a programmer to work directly with the web site designer. According to Trevor Lohrbeer, a programmer and President of Agile Muse Development, “A good web programmer will have a strong understanding of HTML and the Hyper Text Transmission Protocol (HTTP), over which the World Wide Web runs.” The web site programmer will also have a basic understanding of properly coding links so pages of the web site can be indexed or ‘found’ by search engines.

To make the web site perform well on search engines, the programmer must have experience in the area of Search Engine Optimization for web sites. Again, review the programmer’s portfolio of web sites. Lohrbeer says, “the bottom line is the programmer needs to be aware of the issues related to search engine optimization, or else the design and programming might not be indexed by search engines.”

Hiring the Web Site Designer and Programmer

Should a programmer and designer be hired together to work on a web site? Or should they be hired separately? Lohrbeer commented, “If a programmer and designer have been working together for a long time and have built up a rapport, it can make sense to hire them both together. But a good designer should be able to work with a good programmer regardless of whether they are hired together or not.”

When hiring programmers and web site designers separately, find out if they have collaborated with a programmer or designer in the past. If hired separately, “a company or organization can pick the very best for jobs,” said Lohrbeer. The pitfalls of hiring separately are the possibility of a clash between the programmer and the designer.

Keyword Writing and Web Site Promotion

Keyword writing is the final icing on the cake for a company’s or organization’s web site. This writing is employed on the front-end of the web site, however the back- end metatags should inform all keyword writing, including menu items, subheads and headlines, home page text, and more. To create a high performance web site — hire a keyword writer or information architect to work directly with the web site design and programming team. A trained keyword writer will work directly with the client to strategize and deploy the keywords necessary for effective Search Engine Marketing. Keyword Writing and Web Site Promotion Techniques

Once the web site is live, employ some extra keyword writing strategies to ensure longstanding performance on the search engines. This includes press release writing and syndication on the Internet, article writing and syndication on the World Wide Web, and podcasting production and syndication with descriptions of the audio or video written with keyword text. The idea is to increase the density of keywords on the home page or landing page, so the web site should include integration with WordPress, a self-publishing program which allows the web site administrator to upload new articles, press releases, and podcasts with text onto the site easily, by only placing the title on the home page. The rest of the article or press release text sits behind the title and is easily crawled by the search engines, so the visitor is not overwhelmed with home page text.

Some keyword writers offer syndication strategies with article or press release writing. These keyword writing strategies are proven to be the most effective method of increasing backlinks and the density of keywords.

Web Site Promotion/Search Engine Marketing Tricks of the Trade

Keyword writing takes focus, time, and the allocation of resources. Make certain to integrate these tactics into web site development and promotion for maximum success. As Web 2.0 takes hold and The Long Tail begins to widen, more and more small to medium sized companies will be able to compete with larger companies through Search Engine Marketing. Effective web site promotion techniques are still not widely practiced. Because of this, companies and organizations that begin to deploy these web site promotion strategies will be ahead of the mark when these strategies do become widely known. If the competition is not employing keyword writing or web site promotion, a commitment to doing so will very likely place the company engaged in these strategies in lead positions in the search engines.

Web site promotion strategies are less effective if a web site has not been designed and coded properly from the outset. So, the key to building a high performance web site is hiring the right web site designer, programmer, and keyword writer needed to make the equation for effective Search Engine Marketing complete. Although it may seem like an expensive commitment – the investment is well worth it. Search Engine Marketing can bring in a new influx of business to any organization or business, and help it grow in leaps and bounds.

As a writer with a background in public relations and marketing, I’ve always wanted to focus my energies on one particular client and make them a great success. In 2004 & 2005, I got my wish. Elaine VonCannon, a REMAX Capital REALTOR in Williamsburg, Virginia, had attempted to enter the real estate profession and thrive in a market where the ‘old guard’ has a stronghold. Sidhe Communications internet marketing tactics helped launch her career as a REALTOR. And her sales and marketing skills helped turned the leads Sidhe Communications generated into solid sales.

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In on-line marketing strategies for companies and organizations, the key to capturing the attention of niche markets is in keyword writing. Understanding the concept of keyword writing, which originates in programming language, is essential to on-line marketing success. A programmer and web site consultant develop a list of metatags or industry specific keywords when building a site. They are contained in the ‘back end’ of the site, which is invisible to viewers. These keywords should ideally be contained in menu items and in headlines and subheads on the home page and other pages. Keywords must also be repeated an infinite number of times in the entire content of the site. An adept internet marketer will have strategies for repeating industry keywords on the home page by informing and educating a reader.

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