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More Influencers are Google Certified

At Search Influence, we have always prided ourselves on the knowledge and expertise of our team members. Our innovative company culture encourages our staff members to constantly improve their skill set and familiarity with online marketing industry trends. Anything that gives Search Influence and our clients a competitive edge — we take it on. With this go-getter attitude, we have been able to boast the title of most qualified Google AdWords company in Louisiana, and we are happy to announce that we will continue to own this title with the addition of four new Google Analytics and Google AdWords qualified team members.

Search Influencers Leigh Aucoin, Amy Arnold and Paula Keller recently received their Google Analytics Individual Qualifications, further solidifying our company’s authority on Google products and our ability to effectively measure our clients’ online marketing campaigns as well as their return on investment (ROI).

The Google Analytics Individual Qualification is a proof of proficiency in Google’s Analytics tool, which can be obtained after an individual passes the Google Analytics IQ test. Google Analytics is the most widely used website statistics service and allows marketers to view detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and traffic sources as well as measure conversions and sales. Google Analytics is one of the prime tools we use to show value to our customers each month. It allows us to showcase our customers’ increases in traffic, and it provides valuable insight that drives each client’s ever-evolving online marketing strategy.

Amy, Paula and Leigh have each been able to apply their learnings to our clients already in individual ways. Leigh, as a web developer, has troubleshooted and solved complex Analytics code implementation issues related to cross-domain tracking and e-commerce websites. Amy, as Director of Research and Development, has used advanced data points to identify areas of opportunity for individual clients as well as assess client traffic data in aggregate to make overall assessments of performance and industry trends. Paula, as our Director of Account Management, has passed on advanced knowledge to her team to use in strategizing and showing value to our clients.

In addition to our team’s proficiency in Google Analytics, we are well versed in Google’s advertising product AdWords — a tool that allows online marketers to implement advertising campaigns by way of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, cost-per-thousand (CPM) campaigns, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner and rich-media ads.

Search Influence is a Google Adwords Certified Partner, which means that we meet a minimum spend of $10,000 for a 90-day period. With our account management team managing on average $112,000 per month in Google AdWords, it’s safe to say that we know what it takes to execute a successful paid online advertising campaign. So, its no surprise that Account Associate Laura Manning has also received her Google AdWords Individual Qualification and will join our existing qualified team members with superior AdWords skills. Congrats, Laura!

Earning these certifications keeps Search Influence up-to-date with Internet marketing skills relevant to SEO services, social media management and paid online advertising, which in turn allows us to help our clients compete more aggressively in the online marketing area. Our clients are our main priority, and having our staff trained and certified in Google AdWords and Google Analytics helps the team execute effective and scalable campaigns. Our long-term goal is to have all of our account management team trained and certified in both Google tools so that we can continue to be seen as the leading Internet marketing company on the Gulf Coast!

August 2, 2013
New Orleans Non-profit Spotlight: Café Reconcile

Many of us go about our days without thinking about the non-profit world in New Orleans, including myself. I heard about Café Reconcile through one of my family members and wanted to share some of the amazing things they are doing to turn lives around in Central City, New Orleans.

The dining room at Cafe Reconcile usually packs a good crowd.

Café Reconcile improves future employment opportunities for youth by removing some of the barriers that generally stand between them and success. Since the non-profit restaurant opened in 2000, it has made strides in reducing the roll of poverty in a part of town that is ridden with drugs and crime. Marketing & Events Coordinator Cara McMenamin, said, “We want to change the perception of Central City,” and they are doing just that. This change is largely catalyzed by the restaurant training they provide students. Participants in the program can train in nine different restaurant positions, giving them the tools they need to secure a job in a restaurant, hospital, or other food provider.

I had a chance to speak with Cara about Café Reconcile’s social media marketing. They have almost 4,000 likes on Facebook and nearly 3,200 Twitter followers. They are reaching a wide audience from the New Orleans area and around the country. On Facebook, they have found that posts on lunch specials, special events, smiling students, and good-looking food attract a lot of attention, usually in the form of likes.

Members of the Cafe Reconcile team.

The restaurant uses their Twitter account to get quick words out to their followers while things are happening such as contests and graduations. They find that people mention them in tweets while they are eating at the restaurant. Café Reconcile occasionally receives negative feedback on social media, but it’s usually from individuals who are ignorant of the fact that the restaurant is staffed by students.

Café Reconcile is open Monday through Friday for lunch and also offers off-site catering and space for special events on the second floor. Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter to stay updated on their delicious food and inspiring updates!

August 1, 2013
Easy Ways to Improve Your Pinterest Descriptions

By now, we should all know that Pinterest is a great tool for businesses. But, since Pinterest is so visually centered, what you may not have thought about is the importance of your written content.

After you have your About section properly filled out and you’ve established your boards, it’s time to direct your attention to your pin descriptions. Some of the biggest mistakes that you can make are not spending enough time writing descriptions and not editing repins.

Whatever industry you may be in, it’s never a good idea to repin content that has a description written in the first person. Since there’s no need for a stranger to be essentially speaking on behalf of you or your organization, take advantage of the description, and use it as an opportunity to appeal to the reader.

Instead of keeping an existing description like, “Everyone in my family loved this recipe,” it would be more effective to draw your reader in with descriptive language. Your audience is more likely to click on a pin with a description like, “This unique DIY skirt is both casual and comfy. All you need is a yard of fabric, elastic, thread, and 30 minutes to spare, and you’ve got a new addition to your wardrobe!”

You can also keep it short and sweet. If your descriptions aren’t complete sentences, pick a format and stick to it to keep your pins looking neat and uniform. If, for example, you choose to use title case, make sure that you apply that format to your other descriptions. As pin descriptions, “Sweet Southern Iced Tea” and “Quick and Easy Garlic Dinner Rolls” look better than, “Sweet southern iced tea.” and “Quick & Easy garlic dinner rolls.”

In short…

Take time to make sure that your pin descriptions are saying what you want them to say and not what someone 5 pins ago might have said.

Use descriptive language that will make your reader want to come back to you or your organization for quality pins.

Clean up your text so that it is aesthetically pleasing to the reader and they can quickly scan for the information that they want.

July 31, 2013
Dungeons & Dragons: An Inspirational, Creative Team-Building Exercise

The path before five adventuring comrades follows the dark tunnels of an ancient ruin. With only a torch to share among them, and their wits and reflexes, they must avoid traps, goblins, disease-ridden rats, and other unknown horrors that they would never expect to find. But at the end of this adventure, should they succeed in overcoming their obstacles, is a treasure trove of gold and jewels, and a single item that might protect them in the coming months. Will they succeed? In a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, that is up to the creativity of the player and the roll of the dice.

Search Influence employees at a weekly DnD game.

Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) is a Tabletop Role-Playing Game (RPG) that allows for a group of people to fall into a largely unknown and dangerous fantasy realm as characters other than themselves.

So why talk about an RPG within a blog for an SEO company? That’s because the game itself is a way to give employees, and their supervisors, a chance to have fun, separate themselves from reality for a little while, and create a level of teamwork and adaptability.

In many ways, this is a great opportunity for like-minded (or open-minded) coworkers to come together and experience a kind of adventure that can span about as long as a career. There are even a few stories of DnD players that have outgrown their characters, but have continued the story with some of their children. The game develops a very strange, but professional and long-lasting, friendship and also supports a creative, and adaptable mindset. It also tends to make people more open with each other. If you can’t trust a friend that you fought side-by-side with against a mountain-horde of Trolls and Orcs, then who can you trust?

Various dice used for a DnD game

In order for a campaign to be successful, everything and everyone needs to come together to reach an eventual goal, survive, and then move on to the next stage of the adventure. Players team up and start to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and figure out ways to support each other with their ongoing endeavors. The Storyteller, or Dungeon Master (DM), then provides goals in the form of quests, as well as obstacles and ways to reach each goal. Sometimes, very little information is given, and it’s up to the creativity and adaptability of the party to find an answer that perhaps even the DM never thought of.

Of course, Dungeons and Dragons isn’t the only RPG in existence, and it’s better to find a setting and a genre that everyone is interested in following. The important thing is the journey, and the times you work together to keep moving forward.

July 30, 2013
5 Tips for Managing a Multi-Location Business Online

Managing a business with multiple locations online can be challenging. It’s important to connect potential customers online with the business location nearest them. Follow these 5 tips for best practices for managing your multi-location business.

1. All locations need their own individual page!

It’s important for each location to have its own page on your website. You want each location page to rank for local search in the area. Having one page for each location maximizes the relevancy of the location web page to a searcher and has better chance of ranking locally, especially in blended results (organic mixed with maps results).

2. Optimize content for each page

Add content to the page optimized for a top level keyword and location. Make sure to do this in a way that reads naturally.
Content can be relatively short and simple, explaining what the business is / offers, unique selling points, and where the business is located. Make sure to also optimize the On Page heading (H1), title tag, and meta description as these are all important factors for SEO. It is crucial to have unique content for each page. Many businesses use the same content for all location pages, only switching out the geographical location. This duplicate content leaves the site vulnerable to penalties from Google. For a business with over 100 locations, creating unique content can be difficult. A tip for the writing unique, compelling content for these pages is to incorporate some “local flare” or any information specific to that location in the copy.

3. Provide a good user experience

On each location page, also be sure to list out the name, address, and phone number for that location. Its important for visitors that come to the page to be able to easily contact the business or find out where it is located. Adding a map with a pin on your location also proves to help visitors get a better visual of exactly where you are located. When listing the NAP for each, keep the format consistent across all pages. Make sure the name is the actual, official name of the business–instead of “Domino’s New Orleans”–as this will be consistent with other local listings across the web.

4. Tell Google where you are!

Implement Hcard or schema around each name, address, and phone number of the location pages. Let Google know who and where you are. These are microformats that provide a standardized way to tell Google and other search engines your contact information. By implementing Hcard around your NAP, you can let Google know “this is my physical location.” Adding this code to the site will help the location page rank well in local search. By knowing where your business is located, Google now knows the page is more relevant to searchers.

5. Consistent Citations

When creating local citations across the web, be sure to list the name, address, and phone number of each location consistently. Having consistent listings across online directories helps enforce your physical address to Google and increases the chances of ranking locally. It is especially important to have your NAPs listed consistently on your Google+ local listings. If the directories allow, add the location landing page url in the website field, as this page is most relevant to the listing information.

Google offers businesses with 10 or more locations a way to bulk upload local listing information. The upload process creates new listings as well as edits pre-existing listings. From my experience, this method has proved to be a very slow process. Bing offers very similar services for multi-location businesses, but 25 or more locations are required to use this upload. The most efficient bulk upload offered by a directory has to be Foursquare. I created a bulk upload for a business with 117 locations, and in less than 24 hours all the listings were created/updated and live.

Following these 5 steps can dramatically help your local search presence. What other tips do you have for managing a multi-location business? Please share in the comments below!

July 29, 2013
Optimize Your YouTube Videos With Video Transcripts

Using YouTube to promote your business is one of the best avenues to take when it comes to outranking your competition. YouTube is one of the largest search engines available today, which means that everyone is trying to get a piece of the action. The only problem is that most people do not know how to leverage the power of YouTube, because their video gets lost in what I like to call “The Black Hole Of Videos”. People still have not learned that YouTube is a search engine, and therefore, your videos have to be identify by the search engine as an authority. Video transcripts can play a major role in telling search engines, “Hey! Look at me! I am a good video and I have content to prove it!”

The problem with YouTube video optimization is the only thing that YouTube has to determine what the content of your video entails is the description, the title, and the tags. While these are great ways to get more viewership for your videos, if your niche is popular with a lot of competition it could be very hard to outrank. Video transcripts give YouTube something to actually read and determine what your video is about based on more than just titles, descriptions and tags. YouTube and Google read text to optimize content, so by adding a transcript you are adding extra content to crawl! Remember, content is king in search engine land. The transcripts are classified on your video as “CC” or “closed captioning”. It’s almost equivalent to putting your Youtube video on steroids. Most of your competition will not upload a video transcript and this gives you an advantage of your competition.

If you don’t have time to transcribe your video, go to Fiverr.com. People have offers to transcribe videos for $5 dollars so you don’t have to! Transcriptions will skyrocket your YouTube videos to the next level, simply because you are giving YouTube content to actually read and crawl instead of just titles and tags.

July 26, 2013
Influencer Spotlight: Gabrielle Benedetto

Native New Orleanian, Gabrielle Benedetto has been working on the Search Influence account management team for over a year and a half. When she isn’t at the office, you can probably catch her running around New Orleans training for her next big race or enjoying time with friends and family.

As an Account Manager what do you find yourself doing on an average day?

As all members of the account management team, my goal everyday is to make sure my clients are happy! Regardless of how simple a client’s question may be, my job is to make sure they feel confident about their SEO campaign and they understand what our team is doing to improve their online presence.

Many of the accounts I work on have very niche markets. I make it a point to spend quality time with each client so I can get a better understanding of their marketing goals to insure we are running a great campaign.

What would you say is your specialty and what do you enjoy most about it?

I’m one of the few members of the account management team who works on site audits. This is basically a report run on an entire site that analyzes everything from internal links, HTML coding, optimized content, site navigation, and even off-site marketing. I really enjoy working on these as it provides me with a pretty deep understanding of how the site is currently optimized and shines light on opportunities to improve.

Many client come to me saying “I have a user friendly site and provide visitors with unique content about my business, but I just can’t seem to increase my rankings.” In presenting a site audit, this allows me to spend time with the client and not only show them what areas of their site need improvement but how my team can address each issue.

You’ve had a great deal of experience working with a wide range of clients, from local business to some national companies. After working with and analyzing their websites, you’ve discovered some funky stuff along the way. Any easy tips out there for an average Joe looking to improve their site?

Ah great question! I have three rules: make it natural, make it pretty, make it search engine friendly. This may be a little easier said than done, but that’s where Search Influence comes into play.

When optimizing or looking for ways to improve your site, you can’t go wrong if you follow these three rules.

1) Make it natural: Although sites with all the bells and whistles can be really nice to look at, they don’t always work properly. When optimizing a site, do what comes natural. This applies to something simple like making sure the content on your site reads naturally and is well optimized for your keywords. You could even take a more technical approach with this in making sure that you’re setting up an easy-to-use navigation and structure for your site.

2) Make it pretty: I think we have all visited a site that wasn’t organized well and looked unattractive. Having a site that isn’t organized properly or comes across as ugly or outdated is immediately going to make you think of the “s” word… spammy. Having an updated, attractive, and welcoming site allows for a better user experience and also allows for your site to be seen as a little more trustworthy when compared to some of your competitors.

3) Make it search-engine friendly: So you now have a site that just looks stunning! Your site is organized properly, attractive to visitors, and reads and functions naturally to the human eye. Regardless of how good it looks, if the search engine spiders can’t access your site’s information, no one will be able to visit your site. Make sure all content, pictures, pages, and URLs (just to name a few) are accessible to the search engines.

If you could give advice to a new client starting up their first SEO campaign, what would you say?

SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. I have many clients who come to me with larger-than-life goals for their campaign. While the competitive streak in me is eager to accept a challenge, I always want to make sure realistic goals and expectations are set properly. If you want to rank on page one tomorrow, launch a paid search campaign. If you want to build strength, trust, and authority to your site, run a properly optimized SEO campaign. Results traditionally aren’t immediate, but SEO is a great way to naturally increase your search presence. Once we lay the foundation and the campaign starts to pick up speed, we can see the rankings “increase to infinity and beyond” as one of my clients put it.

What’s your favorite thing about working at Search Influence? Anything in particular you could live without?

Something that makes Search Influence different than other companies is our staff and work space. Our office is full of monitors, MacBooks Airs, and extremely talented young professionals plugged in and focused on their work. Our staff is not only talented, but energetic and brings so much personality to this company. The team is constantly looking for ways to improve day-to-day internal processes, deliverables to increase the success of our clients’ campaigns, as well as our overall brand.

SI has a finite amount of candy at the office. There is a love/hate relationship between the team members and the candy supply. I’m trying to quit, but candy is always in the office taunting me. There are brief periods when the candy supply is low. I secretly enjoy this time without candy, but everyone else in the office starts shaking and needs their candy fix. I think I could live without the candy in the office, but I might miss the constant battle to cut down the candy. Strange enough, this bonds us a little. But let’s quickly move on to the next question before someone yells at me for speaking out against our candy supply.

Tell us a little more about your life growing up around The Big Easy. In your free time, what do you do for fun?

I am New Orleans through and through. Although we may be called the “Big Easy” there are always events going on in this town. Between races, social events, restaurant openings, or fundraisers there’s always something to do down here.

In a perfect world, left to your own devices, what would you be doing all day?

When I’m not at the office I’m probably at one of the events mentioned above. Yet, subconsciously I’m still working, networking, and meeting new people. Since a lot of people aren’t extremely familiar with SEO or Internet marketing for that matter, I’m always explaining how Search Influence helps companies all over the country promote their business and increase their search presence. I never leave the house without a stack of business cards.

One last hard hitting question —- If you could identify yourself with one designer brand what would it be and why?

That’s easy, DVF (Dianne Von Furstenburg)! Her line is classic, professional, and fashion forward. She’s been rocking it for decades and still vogue — just one of my own aspirations!

July 25, 2013
The Return… of the Website

The website is back, y’all! Yeah yeah, we know they didn’t go anywhere, but for the last few years we have had a large shift to companies investing in their social media presence and building out experiences that their fans can interact with on Facebook.

It made sense 100% of the way at that point in time. That’s where the users were — on Facebook. That’s where MANY users still are. Facebook is still growing; albeit, not quite as rapidly as 2 years ago, but doesn’t it feel like you see at least one new aunt and uncle popping up on Facebook each week?

If it’s growing, then why does it feel like it has become stale?

The challenge here lies in the evolution of Facebook over the more recent years. Facebook started with a wall for each person. That was the only place, besides on your own profile, that you could write anything on Facebook.

If you wanted to see what someone was saying, you had to visit individual Facebook profiles. Since 2006–and then expanded upon by “the new Facebook” in 2010–we have the News Feed. Facebook prioritizes what it thinks is news based on an algorithm of what it thinks you want to see. The problem is, I am pretty bored with checking my Facebook because the algorithm hasn’t quite got it right, and it’s too far gone to ever get corrected.

If you are a business, Facebook admits only 16% of your fans (I refuse to call them “like-ers”), are seeing your posts that you are putting all of that thought and energy into. Now I am not recommending you abandon Facebook — as you shouldn’t — buyers (especially women) are on Facebook, so learn how to improve your EdgeRank with our recent post by Laura Manning.

When Facebook users see only a couple new posts every time they check, they get bored. And bored on Facebook means your user starts to think “hmm… what else can I do on my mac, iPhone, or iPad?

I have found that I have started to wander the internet much more than I did a year ago. Facebook used to consume about 90% of my leisure internet use. Now it consumes about 20%.

What I am starting to find is an appreciation for websites again: a place where you can go and dive deeper into a product or service and really discover your options. Kind of how it was in 2000.

So for those of you who have truly been investing in your websites in the right ways over the past decade, who have recently started, or want to make an investment now, my prediction is that is the right time to do so.

The Key Things You Need to Remember:

1. Make sure they can picture themselves using your product.

Got a spa? Make sure they can see themselves in it. Got a house cleaning business? Make sure they can picture themselves sitting in their clean living room when you are done.

2. Sell it.

Sell what you’ve got to offer. Whether you’ve got, again, a spa or a house cleaning service, buyers want to read all the juicy details of how they’re getting a quality, comprehensive service for their hard earned cash. Explain every aspect of your packages, down to the last detail. Even if you think it’s insignificant, your buyers will appreciate it. Your customers want to know the benefits!!

3. Update your website.

Feature all of your products or services on your website. I want to know what you can do for me. No one wants to ask “do you do stump grinding?”

4. “Give away a little bit of the store.”

Search Influence’s Director of R&D, Amy Arnold, often preaches that each website needs to “give away a little bit of the store.” This means provide info on your site that you would typically share with someone when you have an initial call, consultation, or meeting with them. Yes, yes, it may be more than you want to put out because “what if they don’t call me” but trust me, this is the right thing to do. We have low bounce rates on sites that support this recommendation.

If you provide them the information they are looking for without them having to call you, you are proving to them that you have the knowledge — when you competitors are probably not.

The key learning here is simple — don’t ignore your website — your website should be updated almost as many times as your aunt comments on your recent pics on “the Fbook.” Your customers are searching, and they will likely find you if you continue to keep your website up to date. Of course, doing some off-site promotion of your site never hurt either, but that’s not the point of this post 🙂

Your website is being looked at more than you think. And if you don’t know how many visits you are getting to your site and from where they are coming, for heaven’s sake, install Google Analytics on it!

July 24, 2013
Improving EdgeRank on Facebook Pages: Chasing the Mythical 16%

Facebook has been rather straightforward about the fact that Pages only reach about 16% of their fans on average organically. The social media giant recommends posting engaging content, such as videos and photos, or asking questions of your fans in order to reach a wider audience. Of course, they also heavily recommend promoting your content so that more of your fans have an opportunity to see it and interact with your page. But, what if you simply don’t have the budget to spend on social influence?

We typically don’t sponsor posts on Search Influence’s Facebook account, so it seemed like the perfect candidate for a case study on organic reach. I started the project in March with no real goal other than figuring out if our reach could grow just by changing the type of content we were sharing on our page. I was already posting on a daily basis, but we saw very little interaction with our fan-base, and practically no interaction from fans who were not directly connected to our office (employees, spouses, my mom…).

The Experiment (and a little trial and error):

I began posting much more image-heavy content and focused a lot more on interacting with our biggest brand advocates– our employees. Sharing photos increased post reach from the get go, but reach grew exponentially larger when we tagged our employees in photos of them. That simple act could take a photo from a reach of 350 to 500 or more. We also took some of our internal contests to the Facebook page, asking our fans to weigh in on the “Best April Fool’s Day Meme” and “Best Group Costume”. These questions were seen by thousands of users, because a News Feed “story” is created for each person who answers a question. We also posted photo albums of company events, which were quite successful in terms of reach.

After only two weeks of focusing on sharing pictures, albums and videos on our page in addition to our daily blogs, the results were glaringly obvious. The reach difference between a link post and an image post ranged anywhere from 15-40%, which is a sizable amount when you’re looking at our total fan count. On average, the image posts were reaching 34% of our fans, with some reaching upwards of 54%. The link posts featuring our blogs? Not so much. They reached only 14% of our fans on average and often much less than that. I will happily admit to being a big data nerd, and these numbers certainly don’t lie.

But… what does this have to do with EdgeRank?

To calculate EdgeRank, Facebook looks at three main factors for each post (or “edge”): Affinity, Weight, and Time Decay. The “Weight” factor is where post type plays in, and clearly has a huge impact on how frequently your “Edge” gets seen by your fans. By utilizing post types with a heavier Weight, you are more likely to show up on users’ News Feed, and therefore much more likely to get interaction (which increases your “Affinity” score for that fan). When you really think about the algorithm, these two elements are so intertwined that one distinctly begets another.

By increasing the Weight of our posts, we reached a wider variety of our fans. As those fans began seeing more of our content, they interacted with it, which further increased our Page’s reach amongst our audience. After a few weeks of posting more heavily weighted content, we were seeing a larger Reach for ALL of our posts, not just those with images. We also took the knowledge we gained about post types and applied it to our blog posts– posting a blog with a photo instead of just a link improved its organic reach significantly. By slightly modifying our posting, we greatly improved our interaction level and reach. Have any other good ideas to improve Facebook Page EdgeRank or Reach? Let us know in the comments!

July 23, 2013
Expand Keywords for Expanded Results

Keywords are the key—no pun intended—to driving traffic to your site, and is part of the SEO basics a site owner needs to know. A smart business manager will put a great deal of thought into which terms to target. Even a fantastic list can always use improvement—however, four simple keyword expansions can be the trick to increasing your impressions using terms that are proven to get results.

Keyword expansion is quick, easy, and almost guaranteed to work. It might not drive tons of traffic, but it will certainly add to your existing pool.

1: Pluralize

Many of the main keywords can come to mind almost automatically: if you sell dog brushes, you’ve probably already factored “buy dog brush” into your list. But even if someone only wants to buy one, they’ll often search for “buy dog brushes”. Because some engines recognize plurals as separate keywords, you are potentially losing out on all the impressions from the “dog brushes” searchers. Adding an –s or –es to your common terms becomes a no-brainer when you realize how easily it can boost your traffic.

2: Rearrange

People typing search queries don’t always use syntax and grammar the way they do in everyday speech. To continue the example above, someone might search “dog brush buy,” which follows a pattern of what they want (dog brush), followed by what they want to do (buy). Yes, it’s likely to be a far fewer number of people than those searching “buy dog brush,” but that fewer number is not insignificant. Mixing up your word order often elicits more results.

3: Misspell

Another regularly overlooked area for keywords are typos and misspellings. Some errors are certainly more common than others; a check down the search query report should show you where you might have luck. If your canine brushes are of the affordable variety, running both “cheap dog brushes” and “cheep dog brushes” could benefit you. Fewer search engine gurus are competing for misspellings, as well, meaning you’ll have a good chance at capturing more of the market.

4: Match

The three different match types—exact, broad, and phrase—generally work together to generate the most impressions and clicks even though many choose to limit to exact match for a quality response. If your aim is to get more traffic to your site, though, casting a wide net will bring in more fish. Broad match additions to “dog brushes” might include “dog kennels” or “hair brushes,” but people running those searches might also be pleased to stumble across you. You’ll also pick up on new keywords, through broad and phrase matches that make sense, which you can incorporate into your list.

Keywords and keyword rankings are important to being found online. With a few additions and clicks, you’ve now expanded your keywords to draw impressions from those who pluralize, rearrange, or misspell words, as well as those running similar searches. You’ll benefit in impressions and ultimately traffic as well, without stressing over your keyword list.

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

July 22, 2013