The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

First, excellent and thanks, ExcelinSEO! I'm the first to admit I know nothing about traditional search engine strategies. I started my reply following ExcelinSEO's comment and decided to write a full post instead of a thread as a thread might be difficult (for me, anyways) to follow.

In the following, ExcelinSEO's comments are in regular font, my replies are in italics. Enjoy!

Hi Joseph,

Howdy, ExcelinSEO, and thanks for your comment.

great to see people working on a scientific base for SEO.

I'd rather use the term "inquisitive" or "interested", and I'm flattered.

You are aware though that being able to craft a search query that brings up your own site #1 will not do the trick for you?

I'll need an explanation of "You are aware though that being able to craft a search query that brings up your own site #1 will not do the trick for you?"

You need to be found by people searching for popular keyword phrases, you can't force them to use your specially coined long-tail keywords.

I agree and accept that a site needs to be found by people searching using keyword phrases. It's the "popular" concept I have a challenge with. Further down I have some information on "specially coined long-tail keywords". I'm pretty sure the formula I use didn't do that.

Popular Keywords: I recognize that the most popular keyword phrases may not be the keyword phrases the most motivated and interested searchers are using. This is a significant conceptual difference, I think. I'm not particularly interested in getting lots of tirekickers, I want buyers. Knowing the difference in how active buyers craft a query versus how people just exploring craft a query is what I find valuable.

This goes back to my post about how language is changing due to the internet and how people use it. Also, is it better to craft for a keyword phrase that everyone is using or craft for a phrase that you know your target audience would use? I would rather come up #1 in a search that 100 truly interested and motivated people are using than #1 in a search that 1,000 people in general are using, 1% of whom might be in my target audience.

Or if you really want to brand a keyword phrase so your potential customers search for it, you might as well use your original brand name; no point point in pushing a phrase like "I am free to approach the subject from directions no one else thinks of" (#1 spot!) into your target audiences consciousness when you can as well just try to make people search for "bizmediascience".

Here is a chart of term frequency in the keyword phrases I calculated would be used by interested parties. There were 30 terms and their variants used to create the keyword phrases. Some of these included intentional misspellings based on common English misspellings made by both native and non-native English speakers. The most common terms were "search" and "engine". The average keyword search term phrase length was about four words, average syllabation was just under two. Average syllabation of a search term phrase was 1.8 with a low of 1.25 and a high of 2.4. Thus, none of the tests I conducted had anything close to "I am free to approach the subject from directions no one else thinks of" as a search term or keyword phrase. I'm not sure if the numbers I've provided qualify for a "specially coined long-tail keywords" and, as always, I'm willing to learn.

All of this is academic, however, unless it translates into desired activity. This chart is what NextStage calls a "Level of Interest" report. It's actually a measure of Attention, as in "Attention is a behavior that demonstrates specific neural activity is taking place." The first spike corresponds to SEO Prediction Tools, Predicting Page Rank on Search Engines and Knowing What Keywords to Use and the second to Successful Search Engine Placement Strategies. I can go back further and the story's pretty much the same. And yes, both paid and free downloads from the NextStage site went up during this period.

Wouldn't you rather rank for terms like "successful marketing strategies" or something similar?

What? And lose connecting to a highly motivated audience that is actively interested in doing business? With all due respects, I'd rather not.

Cheerio

And to you, too. Thanks for your comment and sharing your thoughts. It is truly appreciated. - Joseph

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Links for this post:

• Searching for Search blog arc
• Search Engines, SEM, Getting the Perfect Placement, Social Media, Web 2.0, the Co-Evolution of Species and Will Our Language Survive?

• Know How Someone's Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at Toronto Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 3 April 08
• Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 13 June 08

• Toronto Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 31 March - 2 April 08
• New Communications Forum 2008, 22-25 April 08 at The Vineyard Creek Inn & Spa, Sonoma County CA
• San Francisco Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 4-7 May 08
• SUNY Marketing Professionals Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 11-13 June 08

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