Keyword Research and SEO Expectations Featured in SEO Newsletter

It’s time for another edition of What’s in Your SEO Newsletter? This month’s volume, hitting inboxes now, features two practical and actionable articles and more tech-industry news than you can shake a stick at. (I have no idea where that turn of phrase comes from, but I think it’s time for a comeback.)

If you’ve signed up for the SEO Newsletter in the past, you can expect to find this month’s edition waiting in your queue. If you’re not one of the 12,000 or so people who’ve signed up to receive your monthly fill of search industry news, you may be interested to hear what the SEO Newsletter has to offer you.

So let me sum up the contents of this month’s SEO Newsletter. If you like what you see, be sure to subscribe, and the SEO Newsletter will be warmly waiting in your inbox on the 15th of each month, luring you in with equal parts easy news bites and in-depth analysis.

Keyword Research for a Firm SEO Foundation

Keyword research involves many steps, and it never ends. It’s an ongoing process of discovery, evaluation and implementation. And with each task the content of the site is fine-tuned, gaining a competitive advantage.

Keyword discovery involves brainstorming, audience research, utilizing tools, and competitive analysis. Site search and social communities are additional resources from which to glean keyword data. Keyword evaluation revolves around site relevance, search activity, conversion potential, competitiveness, audience targeting and ROI. Implementation puts keywords in place across a site strategically, but requires a hard-to-achieve balance between a natural and deliberate touch.

Keywords and content form the core of any Web site. Keyword research is the foundation for that content, helping to ensure that the words used on a page or throughout a site will draw the right eyeballs and deliver conversions.

SEO Success Means Letting Go of PPC Expectations

The phrase “SEO is a long-term investment” gets around. You’ll often hear it when an Internet marketer attempts to set expectations at the outset of an SEO program. Meanwhile, PPC programs are known for delivering immediate returns on investment. But sometimes clients expect SEO projects to return PPC-like results, leading to unhappy campers all around.

An analogy of a farmer and a grocer may help illustrate the fundamental difference between results that can be expected from search engine optimization and pay per click advertising. A grocer buys a product, and then immediately turns it around for a profit. A farmer invests his time, along with seeds, water and fertilizer, and then, over time, harvests a crop that can be sold.

The grocer is dealing in PPC, while the farmer is taking on SEO. Both processes offer a return on investment, but success in either requires an understanding of what can be achieved.

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.