A tiny SEO job I did free for a mate has led to a fascinating brief from a massive new client.
“As Confucius once said, “To open yourself up to the possibilities of the universe, you occasionally need to do an SEO freebie’.”
At the centre of the universe is one small act of SEO kindness.
The ‘optimised’ website that showed no evidence of SEO visitation
A friend of mine asked me to look at his site and I didn’t have good news for him. Despite the fact that it had supposedly been search engine optimised, I could see little evidence of it.
The keyword strategy seemed flawed, but the damage was limited because they hadn’t really optimised for those keywords in any event. There was not a single keyword in any Page Title for example. He appreciated my candour but couldn’t afford my services. What the hell, I thought. I’ll do it anyway.
The freebie SEO job that snowballed
I spent a few hours doing keyword analysis and surveying what his competitors were doing. I then spent another few hours rattling off the page titles and meta tags for each page of his site. Unable to help myself, I went on to make recommendations about a switch of domain names, and crafted individual page URLs that were keyword-rich. In for a penny, in for a pound – I then rewrote the home page copy using the principles of Persuasive Architecture. All for the same very reasonable price of nada. But, as things transpired, I got paid back in spades.
I optimised for free but not without expectation
I can’t say I did this free SEO job without expectation. I’m not that altruistic. I did it in the belief that some day in some way I would be repaid for my efforts. My faith was rewarded – more quickly than I could possibly have imagined.
The web lets Karma work its magic
Within days of doing the work – and before my mate had even implemented my SEO recommendations – I got an email from a seriously large client who’d found me on a Google search. When we got to chat, I asked him what it was about my site that convinced him to get in touch. You guessed it. It was my blog post about the work I’d done for my mate. And he wasn’t impressed by my generosity of spirit. He liked what I had to say about Persuasive Architecture. He’s now presented me with a fascinating brief that I can’t wait to get started on, and I feel fairly confident it will cover the cost of the SEO work I did for my mate.
The devout atheist with boundless faith
I’m a devout atheist – don’t get me started – but I do have boundless faith. I genuinely believe that if you make a habit of doing good things that ultimately things will work out for you. This faith can be tested at times. For example, when you promptly respond to a request for a free SEO report card and you don’t get so much as a thank you – let alone a follow-up commission of more work. But this latest episode is a wonderful reminder of why economic rationalists never have any fun. As Confucius once said, “To open yourself up to the full possibilities of the universe, you occasionally need to do an SEO freebie”.
Some SEO tips from the Web Copywriter are hopefully going to lift the Google Search Ranking of a UK company that turns photos into Personalised Pop Art on canvas.
Which bits did the SEO guy optimise exactly?
Email Marketing leads to SEO opportunity
I recently sent out a Web Copywriter email update and heard back from a mate I used to play tennis with when I lived in Brighton, UK. Dave – who’s worked for some of London’s top design consultancies – had just created a website and invited me to take a look.
UK Personalised Pop Art firm, Photo2Art's website - Before
Personalised Art – turning photos into pop art portraits on canvas
His business is called Photo2Art and the idea is that they turn your photos into Andy Warhol-inspired pop art portraits on canvas. A cute idea but they’re not the only ones doing it and they need to distinguish themselves from firms that just print your photos onto canvas. Unfortunately, even though he’d employed a web copywriter (rather than The Web Copywriter) and an SEO guy, site traffic had been poor, and conversions had been low. What was the problem?
No evidence of SEO
The site had a Google PageRank of 3/10 which wasn’t bad but it showed no evidence of being optimised at all. It had poor (and repetitive) meta page titles, few relevant h tags, no highlighting and no terms being emphasised. I was left thinking, “Which bits did the SEO guy optimise exactly?”.
Why Keyword Analysis Tools need to be used with discretion
I asked to look at the SEO guy’s keyword analysis and discovered that they’d recommended “unusual gifts” as the best keyword for this business. Why? Because their Keyword tool said it had the highest Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI).
KEI is a measure that you’ll use in SEO to try to unearth a niche keyword but it needs to be used with discretion. How many people who are looking for “unusual gifts” will want this offering? How many will you actually convert? Meanwhile, you have failed to optimise for the keywords that would attract people who are actually looking to convert their photos into personalised pop art portraits on convas.
Revisiting Keyword Analysis
I used Wordtracker with its UK database option to identify a bunch of keywords that are popular in this category and was surprised at the results.
- “personalised pop art”
- “personalised art”
- “personalised wall art”
- “personalized wall art”
- “personalised pop art portrait”
Who would have thought that “personalised pop art” would be the most popular – for a factor of almost two.
“Pop art portraits” and “pop art canvas” were also rated highly.
“Photos on canvas” was searched for much more frequently than any of these – but it’s too broad and too competitive. You get those people who just want to put their photos on canvas and you’re competing in a very crowded and better resourced market.
But before making any recommendations, I wanted to see what Dave’s competitors were doing?
Which keywords? Look at your competitors
Dave had identified the number one competitor as You Are Art so I checked out their site and guess what I found? They were optimising for the terms that Wordtracker had identified. What’s more, Google ranked them #1 for these terms. Clearly they must be the right terms. But could Dave’s firm hope to compete?
Can you compete for the prime keywords?
This competitor only had a Google PageRank of 3/10 – the same as Dave – and its page titles weren’t as good as they could be. Other competitors who were ranked highly also weren’t too intimidating. So I recommended that Dave optimise for these keywords and rattled off some meta tags at very affordable rates (ie free). But I didn’t stop there.
Domain names – .co.uk vs .net and usability
Dave’s domain name – www.photo2Art.net – was problematic. Firstly, it’s a .net domain, which means that when people in the UK look at a Google search results page, they can’t be sure whether it’s a UK firm or not. Secondly, if people have been to the site, when they come back – assuming they remember your name – they are more likely to go to photo2art.co.uk than photo2art.net. I sure did.
A keyword optimised domain name
It’s always a good idea to try to have a domain name that includes keywords – particularly if you are first and foremost an online business. While www.personalisedart.co.uk and www.personalised-art.co.uk were both taken, www.personalisedpopart.co.uk was not. So the domain name with the most searched for keyword phrase in the category was available. Fabulous. They bought that. But I made a further recommendation.
Domain name usability and defending your turf
I said they should also buy www.personalised-pop-art.co.uk for three reasons. Firstly, Google will rank more highly a domain that has words delineated. So it will prefer www.personalised-pop-art.co.uk over www.personalisedpopart.co.uk.
Secondly, it’s easier to read on a Google Search Results page. People can look at it and at a glance see exactly that it is “personalised-pop-art” whereas “personalisedpopart” is much harder to discern and can be read as “personalised po part” amongst others.
The final reason is a defensive move. Because it’s a better domain name, you don’t want anyone else to get it.
So I recommended they set up the site as www.personalised-pop-art.co.uk. However. when they tell people where to go, they should say “personalisedpopart.co.uk” because it’s easier to remember. They then redirect all traffic from www.personalisedpopart.co.uk to www.personalised-pop-art.co.uk.
But – and this is a very big but – I said they MUST use a 301 Permanent Redirect from all their old pages to their new ones. This way they get the advantage of the SEO improvements while preserving their existing PageRank.
Practise what you preach
I do this with my own Web Copywriter domains. I own web-copywriter.com.au and the site is set up there, but I also own webcopywriter.com.au and I use this for my email address because it’s easier to type in and remember. I also own thewebcopywriter.com.au. Domain names are partly about SEO, partly about usability and partly about keeping your competitors at bay.
Beyond SEO
I have also recommended that Dave rejig his information architecture (IA) and website copywriting to make it clearer, cleaner and more action-oriented. I wanted him to implement Persuasive Architecture. This means guiding people through your site step by step, massaging them past all of their psychological barriers in turn until they WANT to press that order button. But this will have to wait – and I might have to get him to part with a few sheckels for that.
I also said that link building was important and that they should get themselves listed on a reputable gifting website. Those inbound links from high ranking sites are gold.
Watch this space
The recommendations are in. Let’s see how they go. I’ll keep you posted.
