Marketing to Women Online

5 Tips for Search Engine Optimization

I'm hearing from a lot of clients right now who are asking, "Are there some simple steps I can take right now that will help me grow my business in 2010?"

Yes.  One of the best things you can do right now is make sure your website is super search engine friendly.  

I know just enough about search engine optimization to be dangerous.  But I thought I'd bring in an expert instead to give you some great ideas on specific steps you can take to make your website or blog more search engine friendly.  

Michelle Strassburg has 10 years experience managing online marketing.  She has this to say about current best practices:

While there are many ways to drive web traffic to your business such as affiliate marketing, paid ads and even guest blog posts, natural traffic from the search engines will always prevail over others because of the sheer amount of customers using the search engines. In this post I am looking to highlight some of the less known search engine optimization techniques which became popular in recent months and how your business should react to changes in the search engine ranking algorithm.

5 tips for improving your natural search engine rankings

Are You Speaking Your Customer's Language?

Are you like me?  When you work with a client and they tell you they're bringing in a "brand manager" does your stomach start to tense - do your eyes roll up into your head - do you want to mumble something about your cat having a contagious skin rash (when you do not even own a cat) pick up your laptop and run out of the room never to return?

Why this extreme reaction?   Because, and I can only speak from my own experience, brand mangers come in and spout fancy new terms they want to plaster all over the website and marketing material.   

"We want to be known as the human capital management solutions resource"   

"When you think integrated component technology applications - think Brand XYZ."

"We're going to name the new suite of services Technology Synergy products."   

(quick disclaimer - not all brand mangers do this - some of my best friends are brand managers and they're wonderful smart people)

Here's the problem. 

Online Copywriting

One of the most powerful persuasive forces you have when creating your online customer experience is – copy.   Women are communicators; their brains are specifically wired for verbal skills.  Women are all about relationships – you build those relationships through communication. One of the most powerful communication vehicles is –words. That's why online copywriting is so important.

More and more successful companies are recognizing the power of online copywriting.  When they create their websites, they often come to me asking “What makes a good online copywriter?  How will I know when I find one?”

I’ve never really had a good answer.  So I put the question to the most powerful and somewhat large heads I could gather together:  Jeff Eisenberg, Bryan Eisenberg and Lisa Davis.  What resulted are the 12 qualities of a good online copywriter.   

Find Your Best Keywords

Women sometimes have unique ways of describing things.  When my girly girl friend was feeling macho and wanted to hang a window flower box outside she promptly marched up to her boyfriend and asked to borrow his “whirry whirry screw thing…you know…..vroom” - not the technically correct name but he knew exactly what she was talking about. 

When you’re trying to find your best keywords – keep two things in mind.  One – what is the visitor intent?  Two - how does the visitor describe your product – it may be different from the terms you use internally.   

Find your best keywords tip #1  - Visitor intent

What is the intent of the person typing in the keyword? Women owned businesses are growing at an exponential rate.   Many of these women business owners are opening up offices or stores and need phones.   A woman business owner typing in “phone systems” – a broad term – may be early in the buying process.   What does she see?  A landing page with tons of techno speak or a page displaying lots of products with no text to help her choose which one might be right for her.

Wouldn't it be nice to be taken to a page that explains what the different phone systems are and which options might be best for a small business owner?     

Now - a woman business owner typing in “IP-PBX phone system” has probably done a lot more homework.  She knows a specific type of phone system – she’s later in the buying process.  Now is a good time to take her to a specific phone system.  To find your best keywords, understand what your visitor’s intent is.

Find your best keywords tip #2 - Words your visitors use to describe what they need

How a customer describes your product may be very different from terms you use internally.   Example “Human capital talent acquisition” is how some staffing firms refer to their services.   But the business owner looking to hire people may just be typing in “mortgage staffing” or “automotive staffing company”.    

We have a client who sells a self help releasing technique.   A huge issue for women is what they term “emotional trauma.”  Upon further exploration – we found emotional trauma could be broken down into lots of other terms:  grief, caretaker’s syndrome, co-dependency, martyr syndrome, low self-esteem.   The other problem with trying to find your best keywords is – some visitors do not recognize their true condition.   A martyr thinks she is a self sacrificing saint, and that’s a good thing.  “Martyr” strikes her as a negative label she would never give herself.  So we had to delve deeper – what do women with this syndrome suffer from – sleep deprivation and lack of energy – so we targeted those keywords. 

Go out there and find your best keywords.    The time you spend researching will be well rewarded by attracting qualified traffic to your site.