Choosing good keywords is hard – no matter what size your business is. Sometimes it’s a challenge to get my clients to see the importance of using language in their marketing materials – including their website – that they themselves wouldn’t necessarily use to talk about their products or services.

Sometimes C-level executives don’t like using words they feel have the wrong connotation. Sometimes this boils down to the fact that they see their product or service as unique, so unique that it can’t be described in standard terms. Sometimes the Marketing Department is concerned about the brand, about setting their company apart from the competition in a good way. These things are fine. You want to show that you are different from your competitors in significant ways. But there are a couple of serious problems with insisting on being unique when it comes to choosing the language you use for marketing.

First, if you brand your product or service using language that none of your competitors uses, you stand a good chance of not being found in search results for the keywords that really matter, the keywords that will bring success. Second, you risk being so unique, so innovative, in the way you talk about what you do, that customers and potential customers won’t see you as being able to solve the problems that matter to them, the problems they know your competitors can solve – because you are not using language that they recognize and associate with the needs of their business.

Some companies understand this, and they do the right thing. Here’s a concrete example. Look at the box for Bayer Low Dose Aspirin above. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Why does this low dose aspirin have a bottle with an Easy Grip Cap? Because the product is for elderly people. If it’s for elderly people, why does it say “Baby” Aspirin on the box? This aspirin is most certainly not for babies. The fact that “Baby” is in quotes is a clue. It means that this product is identical to baby aspirin. It’s what’s called “Baby” Aspirin. It’s the same dosage. This is the aspirin we have all heard so much about in the news and in medical studies. One tablet a day prevents heart attacks. Not in babies. Babies don’t have heart attacks. Bayer wants you to know that this product is for elderly people AND it is the “Baby” Aspirin dosage, just in case there’s any doubt.

This is exactly how we need to choose keywords – the language we use in web pages and in links to our web pages. Just as people will search for “Baby” Aspirin on a grocery store shelf, people will search for and recognize keywords they associate with what they need when they use Google or any other search engine. If your web pages don’t include those keywords, you’re missing a huge opportunity and you are not going to win at SEO.

If Bayer didn’t put “Baby” Aspirin on the box, shoppers might see the easy grip cap and think that’s not what they’re looking for. All the studies and all the news reports have said “Baby” Aspirin is the form of the drug that is most effective against heart attacks. Is it aspirin for babies? No. Should Bayer call it that? Absolutely.

WordPress SEO – WordCamp Portland 2010 – Full-Length Video

Mark McLaren on 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with WordPress – These Tips Apply to All Websites

Here is a video of my presentation at WordCamp Portland in September 2010 covering Search Engine Optimization using WordPress. Much of the presentation focuses on a basic working example of what constitutes good SEO, using titles from the WordPress.org support forum to show why some web content works and other content fails miserably.

The presentation also stresses the importance of link building for search engine optimization. The number and quality of links to your website from other websites is the number one factor used by Google and other search engines to rank your site. Finding ways to grow the number of these “inbound” links is essential to SEO success!

Choosing a good set of keywords – the words you use on your site to tell people about your business and what you do – is also critical to SEO success, so I spend a good bit of time on that.

SEO Presentation Outline:

1. Choose Good Keywords
2. Build Inbound Links
3. Use Detailed, Keyword-rich HTML Page Titles
4. Turn on Permalinks in WordPress Settings
5. Create Engaging, Well-structured On-page Content with Video, Slides and Keywords in Headings, Bullets, Links

Included at the end of the presentation slides are links to Search Engine Optimization Resources – for link building, tracking inbound links, tracking search ranking of pages on your site for various keywords, best tools for keyword research, using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools for search engine optimization and so forth.

Here is a link to the slides:Search Engine Optimization for WordPress – WordCamp Portland 2010 (3 MB PDF)

Huge thanks to Joe Christensen and Peter Schmidt at Portland Video Broadcasting and Recording Company Blaze Streaming Media for the awesome live stream, video recording and production work they did for WordCamp Portland.

You can find the original video on WordPress.tv: Mark McLaren: Get Found Easier and Grow Your Business — 5 Tips for Better SEO

My presentation was called “Get Found Easier and Grow Your Business: 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress”. Thirty minutes is just about enough time to get through the essentials of SEO for WordPress, although I’m sure it could be a two-hour presentation without too much trouble.

Half of the time does not involve using WordPress! I do a quick overview of what a keyword is, how to pick a good keyword, how to check your initial search ranking, and, after optimizing, how to see if your optimization efforts had any effect!

Understanding keywords is absolutely critical to search optimization, but it’s not often talked about in a way that most people can get. This is going to have to change as more businesses use WordPress and other CMS solutions for websites and then decide that they need to do their own SEO.

The 5 Tips for Better SEO are spelled out in the presentation slide deck below. They are also available in PDF form here (right click and select “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…” to download).

5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress (PDF)

At the end of the slides and the PDF, there are links to SEO Plugins, Tools and Resources. If you would like the .pptx file of  the presentation – including the Notes – contact me.

Here are the 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress in case you want a quick overview:

Tip #1: Use keywords in your HTML page title

Tip #2: Write a page description that makes people want to read more (include keywords)

Tip #3: Customize permalinks

Tip #4: Use keywords in the visible page

Tip #4 continued: Make content “sticky”, useful, a resource

Tip #5: Links

Free Social Media Marketing Tool: Press Release Grader

Unlike monitoring tools, Press Release Grader is not about gathering information and figuring out what to do with it. It’s an instructive tool that runs your press release through a checklist, giving you feedback about things like the readability level (high school, college, graduate school), overused words and words used most often.

One of my favorite features is a link checker that inspects the number and quality of links you include in the body of the release. Since many press releases will wind up on the Web, links are especially important. You need to be sure to include good links: think about the pages you are linking to and whether you have included keywords in the links.

Press Release Grader is an instructive tool in another sense: it teaches the user how to optimize content. Many of the same principles apply to all Web-based publishing. It’s also likely that this tool will improve as Hubspot gets feedback from users. There are search engine optimization tools that do the same thing, Hubspot and Optify are two notable providers.

Press releases are not dead. They are still a valuable way to get the word out and build inbound links. So, as long as you are going to use them, you should take a few minutes to check them over with a tool like Press Release Grader.