Why Mumpreneurs Really Do Need to Know About SEO

Nikki Backshall — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:27:10 +0000

Do You Know How to Optimize Your Site?

I rather got on my soapbox the other day regarding Search Engine Optimisation, because it’s getting to the point where I think it’s more a case of many people just not ‘being bothered’ to learn it rather than just not ‘getting it’.

And this bothers me why? Well, I kinda get a bit peeved about it when I am always answering questions about it only to find that many of the web masters then don’t bother to implement it as it would cause them a little bit of work (sigh!).

And here we all are, this new surgence of brilliant mums coming through and breaking down all sorts of obstacles to bring our dreams of online business alive….. only to kiss it goodbye again as frankly, dunking a Hob Nob and chatting on Twitter is far more interesting than seeing to our Meta Tags!

I’d like to share some of my forum rant with you now, and I hope that you will get some value from it and consider learning about the fundamental basics of SEO. Sign up to my newsletter on the right if you want some more info.

The more I research into the background of reg folks trying to get a business, the more I want to get this stuff out there! I’m seeing designers, (mostly self taught) who are creating beautiful sites for people but with no SEO on them at all – none – nada – zip – zilch! It makes me wanna cry! More to the point, the people who are buying these sites have no way of accessing their templates and have to pay their designer to make any changes – which is scary when you consider that the designer has no clue about SEO in the first place.

I see shop after shop and site after site, just not doing even the basic SEO, keyword research or marketing – then I hear them whining about how badly their business is doing and then eventually I go look them up and they’ve gone – Twitter – gone! Facebook – Gone! Website – Gone! And it’s so sad and often completely avoidable.

And then there are the *cough* SEO Experts *cough* that spout out all sorts of crap on Twitter and various other platforms. It’s frightening because people are FOLLOWING these people and BELIEVING what they are saying, but there is no real expertise here, there is no real ethos into the background of the ‘accomplished results’.

Am I an SEO expert? Or a Social Media expert? No – I wouldn’t label myself as an expert. I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from the very best, world class experts for the past few years, but even though that may be the case – I still consider myself their student. That said, I know more than the “Twitterspert” who seems to know everything from flicking through an eBook and having Aaron Wall on their friends list (sigh).

Let me give you an example of what I mean,

If you look at the images below, you’ll see that I rank very highly for ‘best ecommerce tips’ Wooooooh! Should I go over to Twitter with claims of ‘you can do this too’, or ‘I can do this for you’ – because I could, or shall we look a bit deeper?

Well, you’ll also see that I have included the shot from the Google adwords tool, where it says that there is insufficient data for ‘best ecommerce tip’ which basically means I am ranking at the top of page one for a term that no-one is searching for Now, I also rank highly for ‘ecommerce tips’ and that’s without me actually doing any promotion or linking, but the traffic for that is still fairly rubbish with about 260 searches.

So, what’s my point? Well, there is a lot more to SEO that just ‘ranking’ for a word, it’s choosing the right words for YOUR business in the first place and knowing how to do that, then it’s placing them correctly and then it’s all about the campaign around it. So whilst all of these ‘so called’ experts yap away on Twitter about how they got their client to rank for _____________ (insert pointless keyword) I just shudder and despair about another business going down the toilet!

But another problem we have – is the ‘instant results’ syndrome! Everyone wants results but no one wants to really do the work. There is so much stuff (much of it crap) about how to optimize your sites out there that people are rightly confused. Days can be wasted whilst you search about for information and then you give up and chat to your friends on Twitter instead.

It’s Not an Excuse or a Reason to Give Up!

As a mumpreneur you need to take responsibility for all of your business as you can’t always rely on the traffic you get from social networking. If you are designing sites for clients, then at least try and learn the basics of SEO so that you can add title tags and Meta descriptions before you hand it over, or make it possible for your clients to be able to access their templates and make the changes needed. It will work in your favour too – when was the last time you checked your portfolio? Are all your clients still at the end of the link or have they vanished and did you maybe play a part in that by handing over a site that was essentially worthless in terms of traffic generation?

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

Over at the WebMums camp, my group of BETA testers are doing a pretty fine job on learning how to optimise their sites and we’re already starting to see some great results. These folks have taken some action and realised that you can’t build a business on tweets alone, has the realization of that dawned on you too?

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Do You really Want to Rank For That?

Nikki Backshall — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:21:06 +0000

Finding the Right Keywords

Time and time again I see web masters flogging themselves to death to rank for a certain keyword. They believe that if they can only get to page one on Google with this keyword then the floodgates of wealth will open.

After weeks (sometimes months) of trying, they finally make it to the prime front page on Google and (man the trumpets) ….. er…….nothing / nada / zip / zilch!

WTF?

When I find these poor, broken souls, weeping softly in the dank, dark corners of forums, I offer to help and often find that their keyword is actually worthless! The reason that it hasn’t changed their life is not because they sucked at getting the traffic – it’s because they sucked at doing the research!

A simple search using the free Google Keyword Tool shows me that no-one is actually searching on that keyword. No-one is going to Google and typing in ‘ Where Can I get Me A ______’. I ask “Have you checked whether there is any value to this keyword before you decided to ruthlessly pursue it?” The deafening silence is normally answer enough!

So, first things first – make sure that the keywords you are targeting are actually worth it or you will be wasting your time.

So, now that you have done a little research and found the main keywords you want to rank for – where are your going to put them? Well, for the page to rank well in Google you will need them to appear within the following:

Your meta title tag Keywords here

Your meta description tag

Your H1 or H2 tags
Title of your content with keywords

Within the content of the page

Within the ‘alt tags’ (for your images)

As anchor text from external links to the page

If you can do all of this, then you are going to start to rank for your chosen keywords fairly quickly. The more quality links that you get coming in – the better your chances of ranking higher.
Now, you just need to do this for EVERY page that you want to rank within your site – not just your home page!

So, before you move on, make sure that you are targeting the RIGHT keywords for your market and not the ones that you THINK you should.

Photo Credit Chris Baker.

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