There are only two reasons why any potential webmaster or SEO guru should be concerned about rankings and reports. The first is to justify one’s work (and often pay) and the other is for simple, old fashioned, bragging rights. Honestly, more search optimization specialist spend too much time monitoring metrics when they should be writing new and unique content or link building (social advertising). Many times, report monitoring can become an addiction, leaving one really happy or really depressed depending on the results of his / her daily Google ranking report. However, metrics and reporting are often a necessary evil as such, there are a few things that you can do do become addiction free and time effective.

The first thing to keep in mind when you are running your metric reports is that your results will often drastically change from day to day. As such, never make changes to a website based off of a single day’s or week’s worth of data. Your ranking will almost always rise and decline and should you make changes too soon, you may end up making your situation worse.

The second point to remember is to try and run your reports only once per week. If you can get away with monthly reports, even better. Let the averages suggest any changes you need to make and spend the time you are saving doing something else. There are several really reliable and effective tools that you can use to assist in your metrics and reporting. Each one has its own benefits and features so it is up to you to decide if any of them are right for you.

1. Web CEO (free version) – Web CEO is awesome in the fact that it tries to mimic a human searcher. Each request to the search engines is calculated and delayed to simulate someone doing the search manually. Too many automated queries and Google could very well block your IP address! Web CEO also lets you customize what keywords you are searching for and even automate the entire process. The software has a free version that is great for any beginner search optimizer.

2. The Rank Checker, over at SEOmoz.org is another great tool to monitor and track your rankings. The nice thing about this tool is that the reports are saved and compared against each other and all hosted on seomoz.org (so you can access it from any computer). Unfortunately, you cannot run multiple keyword searches at the same time.

Let the SEOatSea Team help you with your SEO Metrics and Reporting

We offer fully customized reports and metrics for all of our clients. Simply let us know if you are interested in any of our SEO for ANY budget packages. If you would prefer to go your own way, our do-it-yourself seo services are simply awesome!

There has been a recent increase in the debate about search optimizers targeting long tail keywords in their s.e.o. campaign and the traditional “focus” keywords. It’s funny how issues that have been discussed over and over resurface months or even years later. In most cases, the debate is pointless and the results are exactly the same.

Targeting Long Tail Keywords
“..the purpose of longtail is to capture unrealised or undersearched terms” ~ djstreet (SEO Chat Forums) 

When someone talk about long tail keywords, they are referring to the 4 to 5 word phrases someone types in a search engine. The idea is that a four or five word keyphrase is much easier to target and rank for than one of the more competitive one or two word phrases. Obvisously, the traffic drops off significantly the more “wordy” your keyphrase is. But, by targeting many long tail phrases, your traffic could add up to more than you could hope to get by focusing on the single word keywords.  

An S.E.O. specialist should target long tail keywords when the niche is competitive and the target keywords are hard to rank for.

Long Tial Keyword Pros:

• easier to get ranked for
• higher conversion ratios
• faster ranking / conversion results 

Long Tail Keyword Cons:

• not as note worthy or impressive 
• inconsistent traffic / conversions
• much more content needed 

Targeting Competitive Keywords

Ranking for competitive keywords can be a difficult process that takes time, money and patience. When you are finally able to get ranked well for a competitive keyword however, you can expect to see a significant ammount of traffic from that one keyword as well as enjoy the benefits of becoming an authority in your industry.

Competitve Keyword Pros:

• less content needed
• generates industry authority
• large volume of traffic from less keywords 

Competitive Keyword Cons:

• typically convers less
• significant link building needed
• could miss out on a lot of traffic with other keywords 

In the end, you should focus more on the method that caters to your strengths (either in link building or content writing). If you can manage both then, by all means, do so.

But having good content is only part of the equation. If that content is not written in a way that is readable, informative AND search engine friendly, there is a good chance your new greco-roman novel of a web page will never be found.

So, what do you need to do when writing your own content, in order to ensure that it is both readable AND search friendly?

….This is where we shamelessly plug our do-it-yourself seo package…..

Believe it or not, writing awesome content is very simple. All you need to do is be an expert on the topic you are writing about. One of the most common mistakes in online content generation is authors writing about topics they are not experts in. More often than not, an online author will simply scour the top 10 pages in google and summarize what they read. They will then type the same content in their own words and claim it as unique. Unfortunately, this practice has substantially lowered the quality of the information available on the internet.

As a webmaster, if you are running a website based on content that you are not an expert in, save us all the hassle of reading repeated information and simply hire someone who is an expert to write something UNIQUE and USEFUL.

Should you decide to continue on with your own authoring however, please be considerate and use the following guidelines:

1. Cite your sources! – Most people do not care if you are the brainchild behind a good idea. If the user is already reading your web page content, do the right thing and give the original author some credit. This also reinforces to the reader that the content they are reading is accurate and trustworthy.

2. Always spell and grammar check your content. – With word processors as advanced as they are, spelling and grammar mistakes are unforgivable. If english (or whatever language your site is written in) is not your native language, have someone help you. There is nothing worse than the improper use of present participles, conjunctions and pronouns.

3. Make sure the information is useful. – I am so tired of reading empty sales pitches on how to make money with Google Adsense and no, I do not want a free trial of any blue pills. If you include an ad on your website, make sure it relates to your UNIQUE and USEFUL information. If you are claiming something (like getting rich with Adsense) prove it or at least back up your claims.

Here are some additional articles that may prove useful to you if you are attempting to write and SEO your own content.

10 Big Myths About Copyright explained
Writing Good Content

Let the SEOatSea Team help you with your Web Content and Ad Copy. We have a full team of expert search optimization staff ready to help optimize your website and get you the search engine ranking you need. If our Do-It-Yourself pac