Not sure if this ever happens to you, but sometimes I am writing a blog post and look to link to an article that I wrote only to find out that I never actually published it. This is that post. When I was writing the Social Slam SEO wrap-up post I was going to link to my post about the SEO value of keeping keyword focus per page, and guess what, I found the draft of the post that had never been published. Ironic, I know.
Without further ado, here’s a modified (and now published) draft from 2007. 🙂
Keyword Focus is Good Business
In college I played guitar in a band. I met a few talented musicians, and we were getting to know one another while jamming. In my attempt to impress, I was ripping through riffs and tearing up scales, and then during a break one of the guys turned to me and told me something that sticks with me to this day, “great music is sometimes about the notes that you don’t play.” Score one for the over-anxious guitarist.
All to often, and especially as we market our businesses online, we want to ‘play all of the notes.’ We want our message circulated in every circle because we operate under the assumption that more is better, but great businesses focus on less. They spend a great deal of time and money is focusing and refining a few things well and clearly articulating that message (take GoPro for example). A number of smaller businesses want to chase the latest trend without a clear purpose, and are left without a clear message. So as you think about your Internet marketing strategy focus on hitting the right notes and every aspect of your business will benefit. Good SEO is good business, which is also good social media.
- Once you are clear about what you aren’t, explore the universe of what you are. Use keyword tools to establish a variety of “long tail” words that you may not have originally considered.
- Every page on your website should have a single keyword focus.
- Use that keyword in the title
- Use that keyword in the Headings on the page
- Use that keyword in the body of the page
This is a crazy, distracted world in which we live. Scrolling through hundreds of posts, statuses and not to mention all of the ads, our attention is divided. The “social mind” has no tolerance for nuance. Keep the focus tight around one subject and one keyword will not only help you increase search engine rankings for that keyword, it will also help you penetrate the social noise.
Image used under Creative Commons license via Patrick Nouhailler.