knowing your customer and intended TARGET MARKET

  The true value of knowing and understanding your customer base and intended target market audience is one of the most important aspects of your SEO strategy.

Before you can know who your customers are, and who your intended target market audience should be,   you need to do the relevant research and have the company action plan in your arsenal of documents that you will be using as reference points in your target market research.

Knowing the purpose, aims and objectives of the company are very helpful in doing your target market research.  Having access to the product / service or event documentation, that you will be marketing and all related information is also a pre-requisite to any serious topic and key word research.

Access to your company accounting records, showing the contact details and any other information that may be available such as buying patterns, product usage stats,  service complainants and complements as well as any recommendations that may have been sent to the administrative staff  are of extreme helpful nature during the early stages of the SEO process where key words and selected topic structures are selected to be turned into online content for your information consumers (intended target market audience) to consume.

Content that supplies an answer to your interned target market audience as well as your current audience and customer base is highly recommended as potential online content, and this should be a very highly sort after content category. If you do not know your intended target market, how can you satisfy the information  needs of your intended target mark.?

How do you get to know your target audience so that you may use this within your greater marketing vision?

Target market research is a very delicate affair, where great care should be taken to ensure that all false positives are eliminated from your target market makeup.  failure here can be very costly further down the line, when your online content suddenly starts to tank out of the SERP's due to a very poor conversion rates as well as bad  bounce rates The false positives within your target market mix is the biggest cause of this terrible state of affairs that is going to be very costly to repair. 

If you take the time to do your target market research properly,  and document this in a manner that others can easily understand, and also have access to, then things further down the line also become an awful lot easier.  From a #FUFISM based marketing  perspective this documentation of your intended target market is vital, as the post publication stages of your SEO where you concentrate on expanding the influence of you  published content through the #OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) stages of your SEO using the various social media marketing techniques where link building, network building, inbound marketing, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and so many other techniques are applied, all have the same target market and focus on the same basic keyword set that is used within your #IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation)

By taking the time to know and understand your intended target market audience, then documenting your findings,  you allow your various online marketing teams to have insights into how they should apply this information.  This will help your copywriters for your  various online platforms to collaborate and share insights as to the methods that they use within their specific platform, and how other copywriters in other platforms may make use of their content to bolster #STFSEOVI (Semantic Trust Factor Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)

If your copywriters all have access to this customer / target market centric information, as well as the issues around the In Page SCHEMA tricks and other related techniques used to expand the semantic footprint of your original web site or blog content, then these can be used as well in ways that  enhance your semantic footprint and add value to the related SEOVI associated with the IPSEO.


It thus follows that knowing your target market audience and customer base are an essential part of the SEO process that needs to be shared across different marketing platforms, as they all have the same basic issues when it comes to connecting with the end users thinking patterns and related online behavior.

Once your web site content is published the real SEO takes place within the social media, where your social media posts discuss your web site content in ways that entice your intended target market to click through and consume the content within your web site.  Social media marketing thus also forms a large portion of your traffic driving techniques and plays many different roles within your total marketing strategies .

Improving the STFSEOVI or Semantic Trust Factor Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators is not the only function of your social media marketing. Driving traffic to your web site is also part and parcel of your social media marketing aims and objectives.  Link building and network marketing are also part and parcel of the SEO factors included in your social media marketing efforts. There are also a host of other issues that are addressed by your social media marketing such as but not limited to :

inbound marketing
customer contact  and information sharing issues
HR (Human resource) issues
PR (Public relations) issues

*knowing how your intended target market audience perceives these issues, and knowing how to frame these issues in a manner that best suits your intended target market is thus a vital issue that can only be addressed through a clear understanding of who your intended target market audience is, and why this population segment was chosen as your intended target market audience  in the first place*

IT IS THUS IMPORTANT THAT YOU KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS AND INTENDED TARGET MARKET AUDIENCE VERY WELL.

 Knowing your customers and intended target market audience allows you to target them in an informed and well managed way, that would be impossible other wise.  Knowing your audience allows you to address their pain points and service their information needs  from an informed perspective, so take the time and do the necessary research, and remember to document this research clearly, as many different marketing professional will be relying on this vital information in their planning of content strategies and associated work.

key words versus query: what is the difference?

Key words versus query : what is the difference?

This topic comes up quite a bit within the search industry, and is actually rather irritating in my mind.  The reason,  at least in my minds eye,  is that those who are asking this question have no clue as to the meaning of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and even less understanding of the terms #IPSEO  #OPSEO   (edited and added new term) #OLSEO

First I do believe we need to clarify what exactly is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, as there are so many different definitions for Search Engine Optimisation, with many being worded specifically so that a certain biased view is highlighted.  this leaves many people confused, as they do not get exposed to other ideas, and are stuck with a biased view of what Search Engine Optimization truly is, and what it can achieve.

From my perspective,  I like to think of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) as all the work done by your entire marketing team, as well as all their partners to ensure that your online work is discovered by your intended target market audience,  when they search online for anything related to your products, services or other  online content.

SEO or search engine optimisation has three separate objectives that need to be achieved to be declared successful, and the last objective has two components.  these objectives are

1) your online content must be indexed by a search engine

2) your online content must appear in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

3) Your selected target market audience must select your result in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) then follow through by clicking on your desired CTA (Call To  Action) within your online content.

Failure in any one of these three objectives means that your SEO (search Engine Optimisation) has failed.

SEO is divided into  two main parts, the first is #IPSEO or In Page search Engine Optimisation and the second is #OPSEO or Off Page search engine optimisation, which has a NEW subdivision called #OLSEO

IPSEO is the primary part of your SEO strategy, and is dependent on your target market and the associated target market research, along with topic and key word research.  There are also a host of IPSEO issues that are not connected to keywords in any way, which are also of extreme importance.  These are things like the visual appeal, the navigation structure, in page images, in page audio, in page video, content structure, meta tags and HTML mark up as well as  many others.

OPSEO is all the stuff that happens of page and includes things like but not limited to

relationship building
link building
social media marketing

OLSEO is where you do all the off line stuff like

radio marketing
print media marketing   (news papers, flyers and bill boards)
road shows and Public relations issues

These off line media are the spaces  where you psychologically attack your intended target market in subtle ways to get your keywords stuck within their thinking patterns so that they will use these key words when they formulate their online search queries.  You basically plant semantic seeds in this zone, that will be nurtured and fertilized within the online environment to grow from semantic seeds to become search queries.

Key words are those words that your copy writer and associated staff will use during content creation.

Queries are what an end user of a search engine type into the query box when looking for your online content.

It thus follows that you use keywords and selected topics within the make up and design of your online content, and your intended target market constructs queries (hopefully using your selected keywords|) which they then type into the query box when searching online.

If you have done  your OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation a properly, then your intended target market audience will use your selected key words when they construct their query.  


This is an awful lot more difficult than I have alluded to here, and the OPSEO work covers many more areas than I discussed here, but each is in place to ensure that your intended Target use your selected key words when searching, and that search engines understand the intent of your online efforts. 

If you have done your #IPSEO or In Page Search Engine Optimisation properly then the search engine will match a search query to your online content  by understanding the intent of both your online content and your intended  target market audience when they are looking for your content.

Key words are used by the design staff during the page creation process, and queries are used by your intended target market audience to surface your online content.

Queries are constructed using what ever words are in your target markets current thought processes, so your OPSEO or Off page Search Engine Optimisation and the related OLSEO or Off Line Search Engine Optimisation, must in some way influence the thinking patterns and thought processes of your intended target market audience to be successful. 

Your IPSEO  must  cater to the search engines algorithms,  and influence the semantic footprint of your online content to reflect the intent of your online content in the most appropriate way to search engines 

Your OPSEO must cater for both search engines and your intended target market. Your OPSEO must influence the thinking patterns of your intended target market to ensure that they will use your key words in search queries.  Your OPSEO must also allow search engines to interpret and act on the intent of your online content as well as the meaning and related semantics of your online content.

Your OLSEO must impact on the thinking processes and thought patterns of your intended target audience and influence this group to use your selected key words as search queries.

What is OPSEO, and why should you care?

OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation is the true driver of impressive Search Engine Results Pages more commonly referred to as  SERP's

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is divided into two separate parts, the first is #IPSEO or In Page search Engine Optimisation and the second is  #OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation.  

IPSEO is all the coding and HTML work, as well as the related image issues,  copy writing stuff  and other issues that are found directly within the page.

OPSEO is all the other stuff that happens off of the page in question, and included a wide variety of different issues, most of which are not easily interpreted as being directly related to a search engine in any way.

 Off Page Search engine Optimisation is very poorly understood, and when Google introduced the Hummingbird algorithm in August / September 2013 things got even more confusing because they introduced a whole new range of OPSEOVI (Off Page Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators) ,  where the STFOPSEOVI (Semantic Trust Factor Off Page Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) were totally ignored in the beginning because we as online marketers did not realise the value that Google and other search engines placed on these very sneaky and ultra devious new range of Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators

When Google attempted to force all authors to make use of the *REL = AUTHOR* tag within their online work we as marketing folks did not understand the value that they had attached to this, and many simply ignored this, and quite a large percentage of folks out there were very anti the FORCED MOVE,  and refused to take part in this exercise.  This along with the fact that the G+ or Google Plus Social media network was also not taking off as many folks thought is should,  set the Google authorship program back a lot more than most folks realise.

Google was forced to take other measures to calculate and measure topical author authority, and its connections to the value of specific online content.  These were the early days during which many of the new algorithms defining topical author authority and relevant publisher authority as #OPSEOVI (Off Page Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators)  were developed and tested.  Today Author authority and publisher values are used extensively within many different algorithms that focus on the issues around social media signals and SMSEOVI ( Social Media Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)

Author value on its own is worth didly squat (NADER ZERO) just as publisher value on its own is worthless    That being said these two values of Author value and publisher value are two of the most importnat issues when dealing with all web pages, blog posts and social media posts within both the IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation)  and the OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) calculations, that form  the core value indicators for each and every social media search engine optimization value indicator that is algorithmically calculated and later used in other search related algorithms.

One needs to remember that Google currently uses in excess of 250 different variables in their many different algorithms that calculate and then  make use of a vast host of different SEOVI (Search engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to match a search query to a SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Page rank, site rank and domain rank are three of the most critical SEOVI (Search engine Optimisation Value Indicators) that need to be understood when it comes to author and publisher issues, as these three variables are all different and each has an impact on the other two within their calculations, that are done through feed back loops that run until a stable value for each is established, using extreme mathematics that use calculus and derivative limits, where author values and publisher values are also part of the equations.

Domain rank is for the whole domain.  Site rank is for the actual site, which may be  a sub web, a sub domain or the actual domain itself, depending on how your web master has set things up. Page rank is the ranking value for the specific page in question.  Here one needs to remeber that every blog post is deemed to be a stand alone web page,  and every social media post is also deemed to be a stand alone web page with its own URL (Uniform Resource locator or web page name)

This applies to all social media posts including Facebook posts, twitter posts, Google plus posts, Pinterest pins, Instagram posts, linked in posts and any other social media platform that you can think of..  The page rank, . site rank and domain rank all have a big influence on your other Search Engine Optimisation variables, where once again the mathematics involves a means to calculate limits through integrated and derivative methods within the calculus world.

Every single OPSEOVI (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicator) is generated by an author,  or a publisher, and as such carries the semantic relevance attached to that specific author or publisher or both, as determined by the search engine during the information evaluation stages, where the online information is evaluated and worked on to set up the preliminary stages of setting values for secondary  SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) which will be used by the next stage search algorithms, to calculate and store a new set of SEOVI that will be used to match a search query to a set of results in the form of a SERP (Search Engine results Page) in subsequent algorithm activities.

How you as an author use the social media, other web sites or blogs to link to the information that you want found within the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) is carefully evaluated and studied by the search engines, where a host of different things are evaluated during the OPSEO process and include but are not limited to questions like:

who you are
what do you normaly write about within the social media (all platforms)
is your social media post, blog post or other web page on topic when compared to
     the information that you are linking to
     the in image meta data of any images within your online content
    other related posts that you have made linking to the same domain, the same site or the same page
how often do you post within this specific social media platform.
how often do you post on other social media platforms
Do you comment on posts in this social media platform, and if so how often
do you comment on posts in other social media platforms, and if so how often
do you post to any blogs
    are these blogs related to each other semantically
   are these blogs related to your post in any way at all
   does this specific post contain relevant semantically linked content

There are so many more questions that are addressed and answered,  then these answers are used in  extreme mathematical equations to determine the relevant SEOVI  for this stage, and the values that will be pushed through to other algorithms that will check and compare these results for quality and correctness before storing the values for future use in the next stages of the search process.

It thus follows that ones author value along with the associated semantic trust factors that are connected to you as an individual in the form of your SEMANTIC FOOTPRINT are important issues that need to be well manged and properly understood.  Failure to interpret these issues properly and address issues that have a negative impact on your author and publisher values thus have a negative impact on your OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) efforts, which will cause all your other online work to feature less prominently within any SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Now the trick here is to understand the values associated with public and private shares within the social media and how these impact on your OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation)   Private shares are blocked from being included in the search indexing process, and so have a ZERO value to your OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation).  The only place that private shares have any value within Google Plus (G+) is when you are logged in to Google, then your private shares and all your public shares as well as a host of other stuff such as your other Google activities including Gmail,  your Google calendaar, your Google docs and so many other Google related issues are considered.  This includes the issues of all those within your contact lists, your G+ Circles and where you have commented on any private posts as well.

You do need to understand the very big difference between a search in Google while you are logged in and a search in Google when you are logged out.   Many do not know that there is a vast difference, as they are nearly always logged into Google through Gmail, Google Docs or some other Google service..

Now getting back to Off Page Search Engine optimisation......  OPSEO is all the work that your entire marketing team, and their many partners  do, which is both off line and online to promote your online work within the search space.  Many marketers forget that the print media, the radio, television and any other media forms part of their SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tactics.

  I here you asking what does radio have to do with SEO.... 


Well to answer where RADIO advertising /marketing and the print media  as well as other off line marketing tactics fit  into the SEO world we need to understand WHAT IS SEO.

SEO or Search engine Optimisation is all the work done by your entire amrketing team, along with all thier partners to ensure that
1) your online work is indexed by a search engine
2) the search engine lists your online content in their SERP's (Search Engine results pages)
3) your selected target market discovers your online content when searching online
4) your desired target market audience actually clicks on the your link in the SEREP's (Search Engine results Pages)
5) your target market selects and acts on a CTA (Call To Action) within the page he / she selected from the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

So the question arises how do you influence your intended target market audience to type those specific keywords chosen during your target market research and related semantic information into a search box ?

This is done by sneakily using the Television, radio, print media and other offline marketing platforms to use psychological tactics and put these specified key words into your interned target markets thinking patterns,  and talking styles,  to ensure the use of these words and the language that they use in general conversation,  with their family, friends or work colleges within their search query.   This step is the most vital part of any good SEO campaign especially if you are using #HASHTAGMARKETING in any way.

Many online marketers do not use this step, and have very little or in most cases ZERO input into any off line marketing campaign.  This is a very big error, which can be eliminated through the use of a #FUFISM based marketing management style.

So in conclusion #OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimsation is all the off  Page work done by your entire marketing team to ensure that your intended target market uses the correct terminology and semantic terminology when using a search engine to surface your online content within the SERP's, and then select your online content as a result of the relevant search snippet showing within the SERP (Search Engine result Page)

You need to care about your OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation, as this is the most appropriate  way that you can influence a search engine to take your online content seriously, and influence a search engine to apply the best snippet that matches a search query, to entice your intended target market to select your online content from the results displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Below is a list of pages discussing related issues including semantic search.  each of these posts will add some value to your understanding of the issues around OPSEO and what you can do to get better at doing Off Page Search Engine Optimisation.

READ THE COMMENTS IN THESE POSTS

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/do-social-signals-drive-seo/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JasonDarrell/posts/PrNxt4xeFn4
https://plus.google.com/+SergioRedondo/posts/56nQK53kTTS
http://www.kayakonlinemarketing.com/blog/does-social-engagement-affect-search-results
https://plus.google.com/+RandyMilanovic/posts/gMH9yFqia4d
https://plus.google.com/+FrankGainsford/posts/VWoJQWPRFEr
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/103079475562443214899
https://plus.google.com/+FrankGainsford/posts/AEe4ePWRziy

Issues around #IPSEO or In page Search Engine Optimisation

I have a collection of infographics discussing  SEO or Search Engine Optimisation at
 https://www.pinterest.com/info4u2use/seo-search-engine-optimisation/

This article adds value to the pin found here https://www.pinterest.com/pin/100275529176554919/ which discusses On Page Search Engine Optimisation.   I prefere the term of In page Search Engine Optimisation so that one can differentiate between IPSEO and OPSEO

#IPSEO or In-Page Search Engine Optimisation is the primary stage of the SEO process which starts with a marketing brief, then flows through product / service / event research into target market and key word research.  The next stage of  the seo process is  #OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation,  which is well covered in this article, (http://www.razorsocial.com/blog-promotion/ where the orignal infographic is used.    OPSEO comprises of  the essential online actions of marketing your online content to your intended target market audience through the utilization of OPTE (Other Peoples Time and Effort) as you convince them to share your content to their audiences. OPSEO also covers many other areas such as print media, radio, television if your budget allows, road shows, and any other marketing that you may do within the off line media of all types.

The shares to the social media audience of others is where the search engines start to gather the semantic trust factors and semantic footprints of those who interact with your post, where the engagement issues play a very important aspect.  These engagements with your online content in the form of social media signals such as face book likes and shares, Google plus PLUS ONES, comments  and shares, twitter posts and re-tweets as well as many others all add to the trust factor #SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)

This article talks of ON Page SEO, but I like to talk of it as In page SEO so that it can be differentiated from Off Page SEO.    using the terminology of #IPSEO and #OPSEO allows to explain the differences and why each of these two SEO sectors are important and how they interact with each other, as they both target the same target market audience, but serve very different functions within the #FUFISM based marketing philosophy.

FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social media  is a marketing philosophy where the social media is used to promote the OPSEO factors of your online content in a very well managed and properly co-ordinated manner so as to leverage the most powerful SERP"s (Search Engine Results Pages)

The off line space is very critical to your SEO process, though many SEO professionals will beg to differ and say that the off line space has naught to do with SEO   Search engine Optimisation is actually very dependent on the off line space to be of any functionality at all, as this is the space where you do the physiological work of getting the desired search terminology into the thinking patterns and thought processes of your intended target market, through news paper articles, radio discussions, bill boards, flyers  and any other means at your disposal that can be accommodated by your budget.

Without some prodding and pushing of your desired search terms within the offline space where your intended target audience lives, plays or works, how would you induce or perhaps even trick your desired target market audience to use your selected keywords, topics and hash-tags within the online search environment?  It is vitally important that online marketers understand this, as this gives them the tools that they need during their target market research, so that they may then use the data obtained during the target market research phase to develop well thought through  topics and related criteria which will then be fed into the keyword research stage of your SEO process.   It thus follows that your online marketing must be aligned with and work closely together with your off line marketing to ensure that your intended target market audience used the correct terminology and associated sentence structures within the efforts to find your online content in online search.

Copywriters and other content creators thus need to work very closely with the IPSEO team, to ensure that their content fits the many different criteria for the in page search engine optimisation process, ranging from using the correct syntax, the correct terminolgy, the correct image visualization aspects, the correct audio aspects, the correct colours and so many other issues that would impact on the intended target market  audience firstly discovering the page in search, and then  opening your link within the SERP's and then following through and completing the first part of the conversion process by clicking on one of your selected CTA's (Call To Action) within the content that has been discovered through search, or actually consuming the content as desired.

The biggest issue that needs to be addressed here is the *BOUNCE RATE* as this is used in very complicated calculations to determine the trust factors as associated with, the page in question, the author and other contributors, as well as  the publisher of the content in question.  The bounce rate is not a signal on its own, but is a factor that is used to generate trust signals, so you do need to ensure that the trust signals associated with your content are addressed during the SEO process.  Bounce rate is one of the minor factors, but it can influence many other areas, so your target market research must be of high quality, to ensure that only properly qualified searchers would use the search terms,  syntax and language structure in their online queries, as you do not want to generate any false positives that result in your target audience leaving your page early.  keyword and target market matching are thus critical issues during the keyword research stages, where you need to ensure that your target market is narrowed down  to only properly qualified groups.

landing pages and conversion issues from an SEO perspective

A landing page is not easily defined, and the reasons for having specific landing pages is not well explained within the SEO (search Engine Optimisation) Industry. 

There are many different aspects to look at when one is dealing with landing pages and conversion issues and the first one is an understanding of your target audience and their behavior patterns.  Then there is also the issue that all web site and blog owners need to keep in mind at all times, which is that we as publishers and authors have no control what so ever over what words, phrases, sentences or hash tags an end user will type into the search box when looking for online information to satisfy his / her information requirements.

It is thus of extreme importance that authors, publishers and site owners take the time to do their research properly and ensure that all the different aspects of preparing your online content are well documented and properly debated at marketing meetings discussing your online content, with a focus on  how you are going to entice your intended target market audience to use specific key words, phrases and hash tags within their efforts to locate your online content when using a search engine of any nature, be it an internal search engine within the walled garden of your own site / blog or online resource or a public search engine like GOOGLE or BING.

So what is a landing page, and why does it need special treatment within the social media?

A landing page is best described as one of the preferred entry points to your online content, so as to facilitate meaningful information flow patterns for your intended target audience.  Each subsection of your web site or blog should have a specified and documented landing page so that your #OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) team, or all those persons who are working on your Off Page Search Engine Optimisation efforts can do their work in a balanced and informed manner..  The documentation for your specified landing pages should be very informative and contain the following information as a bare minimum.  The more information that your Off page Search Engine Optimisation Team (OPSEO) have at their disposal,  the easier it will be for them to optimise their individual efforts to enhance the many different #SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) associated with their  individual efforts in all areas where they may have an influence, especially within the context of their semantic footprint and related trust factor areas.

• The purpose of this specific page, along with why it should be considered as a preferred entry point to your online content. 
• the aims and objectives of this specific page within the context of your site and the information flow patterns that you wish to influence from this specific page
• the target market research associated with this page and the rest of the the pages that are below this page, or directly associated with this page,   in the navigation structure of your blog or web site.
• the key word and related copy writing brief and instructions for this page
• The #IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) notes and specifications along with the brief to the IPSEO  (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) team
• any special IPSEO tactics and associated notes so that these may be further exploited where ever possible. here we are talking of things like but not limited to
• author issues connected to REL  = AUTHOR
• publisher issues connected to REL = PUBLISHER
• schema mark up
• java scripts and other special coding
• back ground audio
• social media sharing tactics and commenting structures
• special membership rights or privileges when logged in 
• which area of the conversion process this page will be influencing, and related marketing notes for this portion of the conversion funnel or sales process, focusing on the CTA's (Call To Action) that need to be performed by the information consumer (your intended target audience)

Where an end user,  or information consumer (read your intended target market)  will end up within your pages upon using a search engine depends largely on which of your pages are well optimised in terms of your SEO efforts, and what words, terminology or phrases  were used in the search query.  It thus follows that you as a site owner or publisher need to do some work outside of your online content and within other media, such as on the radio or in the printed media domain through news paper or magazine adverts, to influence your intended target market audience  to use specific words, phrases or #hashtags when looking for your online content

Different areas of your conversion funnel  or sales process will thus need to use different key words, topics and associated terminology to attract the attention of specific groups within your full target market spectrum. Getting the wrong target market group to any specific landing page will lead to a very low conversion rate, and may even lead to a poor bounce rate as these viewers or information consumers may have already completed this step in your conversion process and so return to the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) very quickly.  This has many very serious implications and can cause your entire site some considerable harm, as BOUNCE RATE is a very powerful SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicator) where a good bounce rate causes your content to raise within the SERP's and a poor BOUNCE RATE causes your page to drop out of the SERP's if not attended to.  If this specific page was well optimised and gets an awful lot of attention from information consumers, where a large percentage return to the SERP (Search Engine Results page) without clicking on a CTA (Call To Acton) this impacts on your SITE WIDE TRUST FACTORS in a very negative manner and CAN CAUSE YOUR WHOLE SITE  some considerable harm

Besides poor SEO related issues,  there are a host of other things that impact on BOUNCE RATE and they all need to be addressed,  the lay out of the page in question along with the images and in page text need to be addressed keeping the intended target market audience, and the purpose of the page in mind at all times.  Your keyword and selected topic of discussion within the page,  play a very critical role in your conversion process, so this needs to be clearly understood, with a focus on why these specific topics and related keywords were selected for this page, and what their significance within the conversion process plays in this set of criteria,  being used within the in page make up selection process and procedures, as defined in your blog / website purpose, aims and objectives.

The purpose, aim and objectives of each landing page needs to be very well defined in the documentation of your online marketing campaign,  so that others who work on either the IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) or your OPSEO (Off page Search Engine Optimisation) can use this information in a meaningful manner that expands the SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) connected to each individuals efforts.  These individual SEOVI can be very significant and have large impacts on the publisher and author related trust factors that come along for the ride.

Landing pages play a very significant role in the psychological approach to enticing your intended  target audience to complete any CTA (Call To Action) within all other  pages, and a landing page thus  needs special attention in this area, as a landing page is intended to be a high  traffic volume page, and an introduction to all future pages that your  target audience will experience.  First impressions are very significant, and can make or break a web site, bog or other online resource in terms of viewer experiences.  It is thus also important that you do not get the wrong pre-qualified target market audience in terms of your conversion funnel to visit primary landing pages for any specific set of pages that define a specific area within your conversion funnel.

How you pre-qualify your intended target audience to be the primary target market  for any specific landing  page needs plenty of thought, and lots of co-operation from all persons working on both your IPSEO and OPSEO. The process of pre-qualifying any subsection of your intended target market audience needs to be well documented, and shared with the relevant people, as this will be used to define the topics and related key words used within the IPSEO process of that specific page.  The IPSEO process MUST be well documented and easily accessible to the OPSEO )Off Page Search engine Optimization) team, as they will need this information when writing related social media posts, press releases, radio marketing, and  print media marketing along with  related work  to ensure that the correct terminology and desired SEMANTIC FOOTPRINT is generated  for the page in question, as well as the associated digital entities that will be supporting the page in question in terms of SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)

Conversion rates and associated bounce rate issues need lots of thought and clear understanding of the target market audience and their related online behavior patterns.  These re very complicated issues, and the actual work connected to the SEO and related SEOVI of landing pages needs to be well documented and discussed extensively during marketing meetings discussing your intended target market audience and how you intend to generate conversations, and keep them focused on your intended purpose aims and objectives as defined in the marketing brief, through ongoing conversations in many different areas.

It thus follows that the C-suit team (Chief something Officers) need to have a clear understanding of the purpose, aims and objectives for having an online presence in the first place, and how this is used to ensure better long term customer relationships and higher sales volumes. Once the c-suit team are on board, then things will become an awful lot easier in terms of managing
your SEO from a #FUFISM based perspective.

What impact does SEO have on your conversion issues

During the writing of my book on #FUFISM  the question of the impact of SEO on conversion and marketing funnels and how your two separate SEO teams need to collaborate and co-ordinate their efforts in a manner that best impacts on your SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)  came up in a few different areas, so needs to be addressed.

I would like to share this preliminary quote from the book with you and solicit some conversation around these issues so that I may have a deeper understanding of how technical I need to make this small section, which will be about three, perhaps four pages in the book.

FUFISM is a marketing philosophy where the social media is the primary driver of your link building campaign and plays a major role in your SEO policy and all marketing strategies, both online and off line.   to read more about FUFISM read here

Start Quote

One of the biggest issues within the SEO INDUSTRY is for the copy writer and associated visual content creators to understand which portion of the sales funnel or conversion funnel that they are working on, when they work on the content of any specific page.

Each visual content creator as well as the copy write, r and every member of your IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) TEAM,  as well as all others who work on your In Page Search Engine Optimisation issues,  need to receive their own individual marketing brief.

You also need to ensure that these individual efforts and related issues,  are  properly documented,  showing purpose, aims and objectives, so that those who will be doing your OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation can properly understand the specific target market and primary CTA or call to action which the public relations team and associated marketing management  have laid out, and documented in their marketing action plan., which they expect the OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation), implementation team to follow through with.

If these contributors to either your IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) or OPSEO  (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) for your online content get things wrong you can end up in real trouble real soon as far as your SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) are concerned. The issue is that these have very significant impacts on your bounce rate when a page is opened from the SERP’s or Search Engine Results Page, then closed or not viewed. 

Viewers (your target audience) will quickly close the page in question or go back to the SERP’s, if what they see is not what they are looking for. This action by your intended target audience will result in the search engine giving the page in question a poor bounce rate and associated trust factor signals.  This will soon start to have an impact  on the SERP’s for this particular page, and it will slowly drop out of the SERP’s as soon as the so called QPFS or Query page freshenes score,  starts to wane with age. Remember that a fresh page always has a big boost in the SERP’s due to this QPFS which is a significant SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicator) that looses value over time on a logarithmic scale.  Many SEO practitioners do not take this into account and very few ever tell this to their client base.

This slow drop in the SERP’s is not serious at first, but as the associated trust factors start to filter through into your page’s semantic foot print over a week or so, this suddenly starts to impact on a wide variety of other issues, such as page rank, site rank as well as many different author and publisher  related SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) that are connected to trust factor issues, which makes this a very serious site wide issue.

If your web site has other such pages where the bounce rate is unduly high, these issues become ever more important to understand and fix. We will not discuss actual conversion processes or sales funnel techniques here, but this section is just to advise you that these things need to be taken into consideration, and as your specific target market for your SEO varies according the the product, service,  information, or specific online content that you want your intended target market to be exposed to, and what the primary call to action statement within that comment is, needs to be evaluated very closely when doing SEO for any specific online content..

It thus follows that knowing about specific issues associated with conversion rates and sales funnels need to be understood by your marketing team, and also documented in the over all marketing action plan.  This is essential so that one has the tools and the necessary documentation to fix any errors that may creep in and have a negative impact on your total SEO STRATEGY.

Your Social Media marketing team who are the primary OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) drivers need to use the documentation associated with target research and associated point within your marketing / sales funnel to do their job right, as this will give them a deeper understanding of the copy and associated links that they will insert into their social media posts. Here the sequence of events leading up to that specific point in the conversion process must be clearly understood, so as to ensure the highest possible conversion rate for that page in terms of clicks on page so as to have excellent bounce rates.

It must also be noted that pages with higher conversion rates tend to climb higher in the SERP's as the trust factor signals associated with the page in question grow to a favorable bounce rate.

End quote

Leaving your comment here or in a social media post using the hash-tag #FUFISM will be truly appreciated. I use the the mention social media marketing tool to keep track of these issues, and should respond within 24 to 48 hours

What is the value of a comment within the social media?

Comments within the social media have been  getting quite a bit of coverage during the last few weeks with many discussing the value of comments in terms of their impacts on your SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tactics, with a focus on the semantic relationships between those who comment on a social media post or other online article and the content that elicited the comments.

+Randy Milanovic  wrote a great article where he requested input from others to discuss the issues around
determining the value of the ongoing conversation that may or may not take place within the comment stream of a post within the social media, on a blog or other online resource.  This conversation was quite interesting and had many influential people within the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) industry passing comments and discussing the implications of comments on your Search Engine Results Pages.

Randy Milanovic posed this question : 

Does Social Engagement Affect Search Results?

This question is not a new one, how ever search engines have been evolving and growing their algorithms progressively as they gather more data about us from a variety of different sources.  The many different search engines are now using this data in meaningful ways that link individuals to specific social media  profiles, which can be identified and linked to comments made across a wide spectrum of web sites, especially those web sites that use social media plug ins to register users before they add content or comment on the content already published within that specific web site.

Following His discussions with those who chose to interact with Randy's Google plus post he wrote a blog post using that discussion to elicit a much deeper  and more meaningful conversation,  covering the many sneaky and devious issues around the semantic value of comments and the impact of this potential semantic value of comments on  other related SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)

This all came about following a comment I left using the DISCUS PLATFORM on an article that Randy Authored in the   Kayak Online Marketing Blog    

Social engagement takes on many different forms across the various social media platforms, web sites, blogs and other online resources available within CYBER SPACE, but I am only going to discuss comments further here.  Comments are a very important aspect of the social media or social aspect of any online platform and allow for ongoing conversations hopefully discussing the topic that was introduced in the original post, or  article, from a few different perspectives within the marketing industry.  This discussion will focus on the issues around search and the impact of comments on the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

On going discussions within the comments of any post or article have many impacts on a variety of marketing issues, and these are commonly called engagement issues.  Engagement issues cover a wide spectrum of issues including but not limited to 

•  network building
• link building
• content marketing
• inbound marketing
• OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation)
• Public relations issues
• customer care issues

This article will focus exclusively on the #OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation issues, but that does not mean that the other issues associated with the value of comments are not important or significant, because they are,  and many of these issues have sneaky and devious positive feed back loops that add some serious SEMANTIC SEOVI (Search engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to any links that may placed within the comments, and increase the depth of the associated semantic footprints of all identified individual digital entities who comment or are mentioned in the comments associated with the post or article in question.

Search engines collect a vast quantity of data about us all the time, and use this data in VERY LARGE SCALE DATA to evaluate so many different aspects of who we are, what we do, which sites we visit, what we write about, which people we associate with online, what field of expertise interests us, and where we as individuals are deemed to be knowledgeable and so many others.

Individual people are identified, and associated with separate identifiable digital entities such as web sites, blogs, social media profiles and many others. Each digital entity has its own SEMANTIC FOOT PRINT which is much like our human fingerprints, and is unique to that specific digital entity. The more often one uses the internet the bigger the data that is collected about you, and the more accurate these calculated profiles become. For those who have concerns about online privacy these matters must be a night mare, as web sites use cookies and many other devious and dubious tracking techniques to follow our every move.  Search engines are the worst at this and they really try all tricks in the book and then a few extra to extract as much information about each online individual as they possibly can.

This information is used in many trust factor  calculations as well as in assessing your digital footprint, and the traces that one leaves where ever they visit online, are all factored into the various algorithms which pre-populate certain databases that are used in calculating the next stage algorithms which places SEOVI or Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators at the disposal of the next stage algorithms.  Google does not let us know how many stages their algorithms have, but it is at least10, though many say it is much more.  each of these preparatory stages  prepares data for the next stage, and the final stage is calculated when the end user (the searcher) presses the enter button or initiates the search by other means, such as through speech in the newest mobile devices.  The algorithms like PANDA and PENGUIN are done at the early stages just after your online content has been indexed, but are run many times over, and each iteration adjusts the SEOVI in question, and these algorithms are repeated until a limit is reached and the changes within the various SEOVI are small enough to ignore. 

Trust factor algorithms are run later, and the results of these are then fed backwards into the system and the process is repeated again until the results stabilize, then this is repeated again til these impacts of the trust factors also stabilize.  Now one must remember that every social media post is viewed as a stand alone web page within a sub web (your profile / page profile) within the specific social media platform.  This is seen very clearly seen  by the way that your profile on any social media platform is structured.  For instance my personal pinterest profile is https://www.pinterest.com/info4u2use/  where pinterest.com is the domain, and info4u2use is the sub domain, and individual pins of images  are the separate pages.  Your G+ posts are seen the same way by Google. Comments that are added to any web page are thus an addition which is deemed to be an edit by a search engine, and so the process of adjusting the associated SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicatiors) must be processed again.

Now one must realise that the search engine understands that this is an edit, and thus treats the added comment as an addition to the page, and runs through the algorithms again, but does not start at the very beginning, rather jumping into the information flow pattern at a pre-determined point and proceeding from there.   The trust factors are now an important issue, as the author attribution of the new comment is known, because only logged-in persons may place comments within the social media structures. Who is the author of this comment and what is this authors niche field of knowledge are now an important issue.  If these issues can be matched to the content of the page in question and shown to be semantically relevant to the authors niche then some extra SEOVI's (search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) are added which will have an imp[act on the position of this social media post / article within the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

Each additional comment causes the same re-action from the search engine, and the trust factors as associated with each new comment are evaluated and added into the mix.  If any of the commenters have a high authority rating within the semantically linked space, then this may improve the accumulative SEOVI's associated with this particular comment and pass along many other SEOVI to other areas such as links placed with the comment in question.  The value that this has should not be underestimated, as this is part of a feed back loop which can have many unforeseen implications,  especially if the link points to a page where any one of the other commentators is referenced as an author, or directly connected to these issues through a link to a publisher, where any one of the commenters or the original poster is associated as a publisher or contributor.  When Google or other search engines re-asses the page in question these issues will then cause an improvement in some of the trust factor SEOVI and thus improve other related SEOVI that pass along value further up the chain. This added SEOVI here has a further knock on impact as this filters through the system and opperates as part of a positive feed back loop, pushing up values all along the way.

Each iteration of the algorithms causes a slight improvement until the values stabilize again at some new value.  These changes can be small, but they can also be quite substantial depending on the topic, who is commenting, what they actually type in their comments, and the links within any comment and the feed back loops that are created.  this is the reason that one should expand the conversation by placing meaningful links that expand the conversation within both the original post / article as well as within the comments.  the impacts of these links is very significant, and if done in conjunction with more than one social media platform, they can be very significant when added together.  If the original content in the web or blog has listed a publisher, through the accredited HTML 5  methods (REL = PUBLISHER)  and that publisher has created a community and then this commenting  happens within a post in that community, which is created by the author of the original article,  then the SEO impact can be very substantial.

Where the post in question that is receiving the comments resides,  is also a very big issue here, and the domain rank as well as the page rank of the original location where these comments are considered will also have an impact on the growth in value of the SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation value Indicators) associated with any individual comment.

It thus follows that the SEO value of a comment can be very significant, especially if persons who have some authority within the semantically linked niche comment and sustain an ongoing conversation with links to other resources to expand the conversation.  This once again boils down to issues of quality, and not quantity, though quantity does play a role, especially when there is plenty of good quality.

Many thanx for reading to the end...

Does paid advertising have any SEO Value?

The SEO  benefits of paid advertising are huge! 

 

Paid advertising is not usually associated with SEO, and this is a very big mistake, especially since the introduction of the Google Humming Bird Algorithm where SEMANTIC FOOTPRINTS and TRUST FACTORS now form the core of the primary SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) which need to be considered when doing any form of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

To understand these issues better, we need to come to grips with what is meant by SEO and there are so many different versions of this story, so to ensure the we stay on the same page and that  YOU clearly understand my point of view I will once again quote my definition of SEO.

In my opinion SEO or Search Engine Optimisation has three distinct objectives

1) to ensure that search engines index your online content.

2) to ensure that your online content appears within the SERP's  when people are searching for your products, services and related company / organization information.

3) to ensure that your intended target market audience select the link to your  on line content, then follow through by performing at least one CTA (Call To Action)  within the page that they selected from the SERP;s

If any one of these fails your SEO has failed.   Now that we understand the purpose, aims and objectives of any good SEO strategy lets see how PAID ADVERTISING IMPACTS ON THESE ISSUES

When a spider takes its data from the page in question the information about the advert in question is also included within the page as part of the #IPSEO or In Page Search Engine Optimisation.  So you as the owner of the page need to negotiate with the advertiser and ensure that the advert is suitable and relevant to your intended target market audience.  This is basically saying that you are in control of the quality of the advert and must thus ensure that the advert meets your qualifications,  other wise do not display the advert within your page.

When you place paid advertising within your page, from display networks like Google adsense and many others you specify your target audience, and have access to many filters and tools that would ensure that your adverting is in some way related to your target audience.  If you have done your #IPSEO or In Page Search Engine Optimisation right, and documented this clearly within the target market research phase then setting these related filters within your adsense campaigns will be relatively easy. If you make it easy for the search engines to identify your desired target audience, then the ad display network will also be able to calculate and predict your intended target audience, and thus have much better quality adds.

It is our considered opinion that this improved quality of the in-page advertising filters through to the quality of your page and impacts on many other #SEOVI (Search engine Optimisation Value Indicators) from page rank and domain rank through author, publisher and many other SEOVI specifically your semantic foot print and the associated trust factors.  These Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators (SEOVI) are the variables that Google as well as other search engines use within their very complicated multi stage algorithms that match a search query to a SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

+Rand Fishkin  of +Moz posted this  #whiteboardfriday  where he talks about the issues associated with paid advertising and explains many of the related issues.