Many of you know that in addition to my internet marketing consulting, I also own MVP Visuals. 100% of MVP's business comes from internet marketing. No mail, no phone calls, no print ads, just internet. So I have the chance to share my practical experience as well as my theory. But just like many of my clients, I'm busy and don't always spend the time I should looking over my analytics.

My original intent this month was to share with you some of my results showing how my "backlinks" on ThomasNet helped my rankings in the organic listings in Google, but as I did more analysis what I learned about keywords was a real surprise to me! So I'll share both experiences with you.

PART I: BACK LINK SUCCESS

I frequently tell my clients about how Google uses backlinks on other highly ranked, relevant sites as a "vote" for your site and will move you up the organic ranks. It is right out of the Google webmaster tools page:

"In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance."

I often hear companies complain, "I spend over $500 a month in Google pay per click" you would think that it would help improve my rank in the organic listings." Actually the opposite is true! Google makes it crystal clear that it's organic listings are completely independent of their pay per click program. They make sure that it does not appear that they favor their pay per click customers because if they did their "organic" search would then be compromised.

By the end of 2006, I knew that my site needed backlinks to be taken seriously by the search engines so I started with just a few links on ThomasNet. ThomasNet had the targeted corporate audience I wanted to get a shot at the "big orders" and at the same time it gave me the high quality, relevant backlinks I needed for the general search engines. You can see below the results. In February of 2007 I added 4 links to ThomasNet and got immediate results from all of the search engines. Then in November of 2007 I switched over to a "content based link package" which gave me many more weblinks and this change approximately doubled my activity again! Success!

PART II: 9700 KEYWORDS!

Now for the real shocker. I ran a report to see what were the popular keywords that my site had been found under over the last year and a quarter. I expected there would be maybe 100 or more different keywords or phrases. Boy was I wrong!

The results: 9,714 keywords... WHAT??? I couldn't fathom what they could be. I downloaded the keywords into an excel spreadsheet and learned that my visitors had lots of details in their search terms. Instead of "tents" they asked for "ez up tents", "10x10 tents" , "printed logo canopy" and so on. They even had a variety of spellings, such as "ez up tents", "easy up tents" and "ez-up tents". No wonder pay per click advertisers are frustrated, who could afford 9,700 keywords!

My number one keyword only had 412 searches. Only 4% of all of that activity came from my most popular keyword term.

So what is the moral of this story? "Stop killing yourself trying to get #1 under the same keyword as thousands of other websites." If your site has lots of details, specifications, brand names, etc. then you will be picking up the other thousands of keyword phrases that your buyers use and if your site does not offer this level of detail then look at what you are missing out on!

Written by Mary Dykas, Internet Marketing Consultant representing ThomasNet.
If you would like a web evaluation or need help with your internet marketing, website update or search engine optimization call 860-601-0150 or email mary@mvpb2b.com