*This is a guest post by Nick  LeRoy*

Everyone wants to rank number one for trophy keywords within their industry.  What they fail to realize is that rankings for these terms is not always the best.  While traffic sent to your site is important it isn’t nearly as important as conversions.  Think about it this way, would you rather have 10,000 visitors visit your site and only 50 convert or have 200 visitors and 100 convert?  Traffic is important but conversions should always be your top focus.

Ranking For Trophy Keywords

Trophy or ‘money’ keywords are what I refer to as any keyword that drives a ton of traffic but is also extremely competitive.  I have already mentioned that traffic does not always equate to high conversions but some people don’t seem to care.  When you’re attempting to rank for trophy keywords it’s very important to analyze your competition.  Below are three things you must look at.

1. Competitor Site Size – Take a look at the top 5 websites ranking for your trophy keyword.  How many pages do they have indexed?  Is it substantially more then your site?  Granted size doesn’t have a direct effect on rankings but typically the larger the site the more authority it can generate.  Site size may not be an element but site authority is a ranking element.  If your website has ten pages and all your competitors have thousands of pages you know that you could be at a serious disadvantage.
2. Competitor Links - Links arguably have the largest impact on search engine rankings but it’s not a ‘more equals better’ algorithm.  With this in consideration it’s still important to see how many and what type of links your competitors have. Are all of them simply ‘www’ domain links? Do the links contain keywords within the anchor text?  Are they “no-follow”?  All of this has a direct effect in the value of each link.  If your competitors have significantly more links and are of higher value then yours you should know that it will be difficult to rank for this keyword.  This is a very important analysis to conduct before you go after your trophy keywords.
3. Frequently Updated Content – This goes hand in hand with site size but I believe it’s important to have its own bullet point.   What type of frequently updated content does your competition offer?  Do they have a message board? Blogs? Articles? All of these are fantastic sources for frequently updated content.  Most of the time it’s these articles, blogs, and message boards that help generate the quantity of links that a site may have.  Also make sure to note what type of content they are writing and who is linking to it.  If you can improve upon what they already have then you too could gain links through frequently updated content.

Trophy Keyword Alternatives

You’ve done the research and you finally realized that it’s not in your best interest to compete with the big boys.  What else are you left with? You would be surprised how much easier it is to focus on ‘long term’ or ‘long tail’ keywords.  Instead of ranking for the keyword “shoes” you can focus on “size twelve Nike shoes”.  Yes these types of keywords may not drive as much traffic as the trophy keywords but it definitely brings in more qualified traffic.  A more qualified lead increases your chances of making a conversion, which should be everyone’s priority when trying to sell a product/service.  The best part about ranking for ‘long tail’ keywords is that if you find enough of these easier to rank keywords you can drive just as much traffic to your website then focusing on a single trophy keyword.

Set Your SEO Ego Aside

A lot of pride can be placed on a top ranking trophy keyword.  However the goal is to drive traffic and most importantly convert the traffic into customers.  Don’t let your ego get the better of you.  Know what your website offers and its strengths.  Compare your site to your competitors and sit down and figure out the best strategy available to you.  If you know that you aren’t going to be able to compete with the big boys then don’t fool yourself.  It might just be a waste of your time attempting to rank for these trophy keywords as your competitors already have a big lead.   Don’t get me wrong, anyone can rank for any keyword it’s just how much money, time, and hard work they want to put into their campaign.  So set your SEO ego aside and truly decide which route is best for your site.

Nick LeRoy is the Search Marketing Specialist at Minneapolis Web Design firm DKS Systems.  DKS offers award winning web design and development that can be very SEO friendly.

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Now, this is a huge day and exciting news! Search & Social (the company I work) has merged with 10e20 and Brent Csutoras, Inc. to form one AMAZING all encompassing online marketing agency, BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.

I know I am biased but I am sure this merger is going to bring together the web most powerful marketers and form the Internet largest marketing agency.

I am happy to be part of something that huge and I hope we are going to face many exciting changes.

P.S. [offtopic] If you’ve been trying to contact me lately and never heard back, I have some personal issues now and will be back soon!

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If you are addicted to Wordpress as much as I am, you are most likely to be subscribed to Yoast.com and you should have seen this post reviewing WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM plugin. As I was just looking for some good plugin to enhance my contact page as well as organize my leads, I promptly decided to give it a go.

This post described my whole experience of the plugin installation and customization.

The steps are as follows:

1. Create a Trial Account at SalesForce

(to test things out)

2. Upload and activate the plugin

(as an avid Wordpress user, you are likely to be familiar with the process).

3. Configure the plugin:

3.1. Basic settings: Customize status messages displayed after the message is sent or if there was an error:

3.2. Connect to your Salesforce account by providing your company ID (located in your Salesforce.com account, go to Setup » Company Profile » Company Information):

3.3. Customize the form settings: the form phrases and look:

3.4. Customize the form fields:

• Specify which fields you want the customer to complete;
• Select the required fields;
• Specify the type of each field;
• Set the field order:

4. Use the form

To use this form, copy the following shortcode into a post or page:

Additionally you can use the sidebar widget to have the form blog-wide (this is where I am having it now as I am testing it so far):

Here’s how the plugin looks when added to the sidebar:

The whole process just over-viewed above is clearly described in this video as well.

5. Enjoy the service

Now I should be able to:

• Track all conversations and interactions
• Organize your contacts and tasks in a single spot
• Easily synch with Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo!, and more

Which tools are you using to organize your leads?

Post image by batega

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I was contacted by the representative of the most popular (I guess) European information portal and news aggregator – Wikio.

The good news is that SEOsmarty.com was ranked #10 among most popular blogs in the SEO category according to Wikio.

The weird news is that SEJ is not ranked in top 20 at all but I like the company nevertheless:

Ranking made by Wikio

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The following is the guest post by Brandon Hopkins

When it comes to ranking being first is the only thing that matters. Last month I had a site that has been ranked #2 for it’s main keyword move up to #1, want to see what the traffic was like? Check out the screenshot below.

As you can see from the picture the site went from about 130 to 900 visitors in one day. Early the next morning, the site moved back to #2 and had 319 visitors. For this small niche, ranking #1 is about 7x better than #2! So if anyone ever tells you “The top 10 is good enough!” or “If you can get into the top 3, you’ll be OK“, those people have no real experience with being #1. So what makes the difference between a #1 and a #2 ranked site? Links, of course.

Here is another screenshot showing the increase in links paralleling an increase in rankings.

As you can see, when I started working on this site around the beginning of February, the site was ranked in the top 10 and floated around for over a month. However, take a look at the total links, there was a continual and steady increase from about 150 total links to 1300 total links. Sure, you can go out and get some good directory links at Ezilon Web Directory and Best of the Web, but you need those and more!

Since I’ve stopped working on this site, the links will slowly decline a little as sites go offline or certain links get moderated. Overall, to keep a #1 ranking, you want to have links consistently going up.

Why Is Link Building Still a Numbers Game?

Let me tell you about my competitors. One is Amazon (160,000,000 incoming links, strong domain), one is a wikipedia entry, one is a 10 year old domain with 4.4 million incoming links (my domain is 3 years old), 4 of my competitors are the creators/manufacturers of the product I’m selling. I’m their affiliate, but I’m ahead of them!

So what makes the difference? Links to my target page. Here is the breakdown of the SERP’s and incoming links to the page.

1. 1230 (manufacturer)
2. 1120 (My site!)
3. 114 (10 year old domain, 4.4 domain links)
4. 64 (9 year old blog, 2 million domain links)
5. 35 (manufacturer)
6. 242 (manufacturer)
7. 0 (Amazon.com)
8. 5 (blog, 751,000 domain links)
9. 0 (Target.com)

See a pattern? The number one site has the most links, crazy to think that Google is telling us that it’s all about page load time and relevancy isn’t it. Looking at those stats, what do you think impacts SERP’s the most?

Brandon Hopkins works with companies around the world to provide website design and IT consulting services. You can contact him at his Fresno web design company.

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What determines the usefulness of some of your content (as compared to the rest of your articles you write)? The number of people who found it valuable enough to link to it? The number of people who found it great enough to Tweet it or vote on social media? The number of people who re-blogged it? There are plenty of criteria and it is a wise idea to evaluate your content against various combinations of the criteria. Another wise idea is to try to realize which part of one particular article accounted for its popularity and apparent “usefulness”. And here’s a great way to do that: see which part of your article is copied more than the other parts and thus get a clear understanding of what exactly appealed to your readers. In other words, create a copy heat map of you posts. Why can a copy heatmap be used to define the content quality? This is obvious, I guess: if you copy something on the page, you either want to share it or save for the future reference. In either case, you have found the content useful enough to share or save. Thus, by taking a look at what people copy from your pages, you can define what appeals most to them and how to create more content like that. Is there any tool that can help you create a copy heat map of your pages? If there were no such a tool, I wouldn’t write the post! Tracer, the tool that can be mainly used to protect your content and get links from content thieves, has another cool feature: the heat map of your content based on the number of times it was copied. Some examples? One of my most successful posts on color branding, has been copied multiple times. According to Tracer, the post most useful parts are:

• The table representing the color in business theory;
• The facts about colors listed below the table:

My other high-traffic post on optimizing images for search and social media appeals to the readers especially due to that part about making the images social-media-friendly:

What other heat mapping tools do we know? We’ve already seen a few tools that help you create heat maps:

• CrazyEgg shows which elements of your page gets clicked more often;
• Feng-Gui shows you the heat map of any image you submit based on the colors, orientation, contrast, intensity, element size, etc.

While these tools are definitely worth a try for various purposes; they can hardly be used to determine the quality of your actual content. So what are your thoughts? Do you use any of the listed heat mapping tools and if yes, then how exactly? Post image by steve phillips

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We have set up a fun quiz together with Gerald that tells you which type of Twitter user you are. Go take the quiz and let me know your result!

Here’s mine:

Learn Which Type of Twitter User You Are My Result: Twitter Bad Ass annsmarty You Tweet like a bluejay on crack! You spend hours upon hours each day/week finding quality content and relevant news to tweet to your followers. You have a reputation for tweeting quality content and along with this comes a small cult following that thanks you. Excellent job you “Twitter bad ass”! Quiz School Take this quiz & get your result

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When I watch this video, I feel even more envious to those who are going to make it to Search & Social Spring Summit

Also don’t forget that the readers of this blog are offered 15% discount! (just choose the coupon: seosmarty)

Just a few details for you to encourage you to go to the event:

• Event date: May 3-4
• Speakers include:  Greg Boser, Todd Malicoat, Chris Winfield, many more!
• You can register here;
• You can win a free pass here (Complimentary airfare, hotel accommodation and access to the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit plus $500 in cash.);

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*This is a guest post by Will Harrison but it perfectly describes this blog attitude: LINK OUT GENEROUSLY*

Because this is a guest post, and although I do SEO work similar to Ann Smarty, all I ask is that if you find this article, contact her if you need SEO help. I just landed a job with a major company and I do not need any more clients at this point in time. I have linked to my website to provide information to those who thirst for knowledge, not to compete with Ann.

The beauty of this country is that people are free to believe and think whatever they want. If you don’t like someone’s advice, you have every right to ignore it completely regardless of if it is valuable and helpful. As an American or Canadian, you are allowed to be a free thinker and decide for yourself when you see, read, or hear something that is of value.

For those of you that are here reading this page with an open mind, you will likely learn something valuable and useful and for those of you that have your mind made up already, you can move on to reading some of those useless search engine optimization blogs out there.

You probably have already read countless blogs and articles about search engine optimization and found that one thing that significantly contributes to the direct success of search engine results is linking. Linking is what makes the Internet go ’round. I don’t want to get too in depth into what Google PageRank is all about in this article, but essentially PageRank is Google’s stock value of a website and part of how that value is determined is the quality of the links to that website. Although a website and a blog are completely different in my opinion for the purpose of this article, they are one in the same.

There are two types of linking, internal and external. Both are equally important to the success of a website. If an end user cannot navigate internally around your website easily, they will get frustrated and likely leave. If you direct them to other useful information on other websites, they will likely return to yours to find more helpful information.

How do you build links? What’s the best way to improve PageRank and increase linking to my website?

You have probably read that if you create good content the links will come, that’s partly true and partly untrue. There is tons of websites out there that have excellent content but nobody is linking to it. It is buried under thousands of Google search results and will likely never be found. Part of getting good content recognized is through networking. If you say to a few people, “HEY! LOOK AT THIS!”, and they read it and like it, they will hopefully: PASS IT ON. If you are the kind of person who is constantly screaming, “HEY! LOOK AT THIS!”, then you may likely be ignored like the boy who cried wolf.

Part of getting links to your website is by giving links out to other websites. As you see, I used the anchor text “the boy who cried wolf” to link to the story about the boy who kept crying out to get attention, only to finally be ignored when he actually had something important to say. I have written several hundred articles and pages of information over the last year and think my TOP 10 articles are the only ones I would want to constantly promote or have people link to.

I now have more than five years in the SEO industry and have found that getting quality websites with good PageRank to link to your content can be nearly impossible at times. I have tried to network with webmaster, after webmaster, after webmaster, only to be shot down continuously. It can be extremely discouraging knowing that many people that own websites are link hogs and suffering from PageRank greed. The first rule in life is: NEVER GIVE UP. At some point, someone will grant you an opportunity to network with them, and carpe diem. Networking with competitors and people in your line of work can go much farther than succumbing to PageRank greed and being a link hog.

There is a  faux phenomenon known as “leaking PageRank” is an urban legend. Websites do not leak Page Rank, I don’t care what you have read or where you have read it, it simply is untrue. You do not lose PR because you link to another website. In fact, I have done some experimenting and have found that the opposite is true. If you wrote an article and linked to 5 web pages that each had a Page Rank of 7 of more, you would likely get a small fraction of that Page Rank returned to your page for linking to high quality sites even if you had no incoming links. Linking to pages with Page Ranks of 4 of more can be beneficial to you because you are letting Google know that you are linking to quality websites.

Linking is essential to the success of a website. However, playing fair and following Google’s “Rules of the Road” is more important than the links themselves. Matt Cutts states on his blog, “–the best links are earned and given by choice.” Google’s webmaster guidelines states, “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.” It is made clear on how NOT to get links, but very few webmasters are able to find people to link to them, because they fail to network.

Hey, if you read and  like this article, link to it. Link to it to help people realize what a great site SEO Smarty is and to provide people with more information. Information is the key to success in life, not money. Don’t link to it because I asked you to, link to it because you found value in the information in it just like I linked to the various websites that contained other useful information for the readers. Who knows, you might even get some Page Rank back in return, right?

Post image by by P/\UL

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*The following guest post is by Duncan*

Have you ever felt like your blog readers are just a hassle to your site? Using up all your bandwidth and leaving messy comments all over the place? If so, you need some tips in how to alienate them and stop them coming back for good. Just follow these 4 simple tips and you’ll soon be the only one reading your posts in peace and quiet.

Insult Their Intelligence

Thinking that you are more intelligent than your readers and assuming they won’t understand if you start talking technical is one way to annoy them. You can of course alienate readers by being over-geeky, but this is nowhere near as affective as stopping to explaining every other word, or saying things such as “I would explain about this further, but it’s for a more proficient audience”. BTW ‘proficient’ is an adjective meaning ‘competent’ or ‘adept’. If you don’t know what these words mean either…go away.

Make Stuff Up

Following on from the last point, you can both anger and patronize your readers by making things up in your posts as well. Firstly, your readers will see right through it and become angry that you have the gall to lie to them, and they will then feel patronized by the fact you thought you would get away it. I once lost over 30,000 subscribers to my blog overnight when I lied about my gender. My readers Google-imaged my name and found out quite quickly I was not in fact a girl.

Not Proof Reading

Nobody is perfect and expecting bloggers to write without making any mistakes is unreasonably. However, when you read posts that have quite obviously been thrown together in ten minutes and have more mistakes that a dyslexic child’s workbook, it suggests that they don’t really care about what they are writing. If they cannot take the time to go over what they have written a couple of times and think carefully about their sentence structure, why should a reader invest any time in digesting what they have to say?

Disallow Comments

If you’re confident in what you are saying and you think you’ve pretty much covered all the bases, why should you throw your posts open to the audience? Believe it or not, blog readers like to have their say and often consider it arrogant when a blogger does not allow comments. The Internet is built on freedom of speech and choosing to terminate a conversation because you think there is nothing left to add will likely rile your readers beyond belief. Just in case you’re wondering ‘terminate’ is a verb meaning ‘to end’ or ‘finish’.

If, on the off chance you don’t want to alienate your readers, you might like to do the opposite of the advice given here and instead write honest, well thought out and intelligent posts, having the decency to allow your readers to leave their comments if they wish. This will help build trust and respect between you and your readers, and leave everyone much happier.

Duncan is an online marketing expert and SEO blogger, working for a corporate hospitality company in the UK

Image by TheAlieness

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