Monkeys Eating Red Bananas

A client emailed me the other day after discovering that her site came up high in the search engine rankings (1,2, and 3 in Google) for the phrase “monkeys eating red bananas” (I’ve obviously changed the phrase so as not to give any information about my client away).  She wanted to know how I thought we could leverage that phrase to drive more traffic to her site.

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence. Small business owners will monitor their site stats and notice a keyword or phrase that starts sending some traffic their way. They type the phrase into Google and, what d’ya know – they’re #1 in the rankings!

That’s great! Or is it?

Here’s what I told my client:

One component of keywords is the competition and where you rank in the search engines (ie. low competition, greater chance of being high in the search results).

Another, and more important, component is what kind of people is the keyword going to attract (and of course, how many). So think about people searching the phrase “monkeys eating red bananas” or some close variation thereof.

What are they looking to find?

What state of mind are they in (research vs. buying mode)?

Can you make some educated guesses about the demographics of people typing in that phrase?

I could go on. Bottom line – it’s great that to come up 1,2, and 3 in the rankings. However, if the term is unlikely to generate visits from legitimate prospects for your business, then it’s not worth your time trying to figure out how to leverage the traffic.

It’s not about driving traffic to your website, it’s about driving legitimate, qualified, and motivated prospects to your website.

I’d easily trade 1000 or more of the former for just one of the latter.

UPDATE: It took less than 7 hours to get the #1 Google ranking for “monkeys eating red bananas.” Won’t do me any good, but it does show that if you find a good search query that no one else is using you can be ranked high very quickly.

Adam Kreitman Is Now The Rise To The Top’s Internet Marketing Expert

An exciting day for me and my company, Words That Click.

I’ve teamed up with David Siteman Garland of The Rise To The Top to become a sponsor of, and Internet Marketing Expert for, his emerging new media empire!

David and I both come from a long line of entrepreneurs and have a passion for entrepreneurism coursing through our veins. I’m thrilled that I’ll be working with him to develop the web presence for TRTTT which is “THE source for entrepreneurial education and lifestyle design for young, emerging, and established entrepreneurs and business professionals.”

A major component of The Rise To The Top is a TV show which airs in St. Louis at 5 PM on WRBU-my46 TV every Saturday and at 1 AM on KDNL-ABC30 every Wednesday night after Jimmy Kimmel Live. Shows are also available 24/7 at www.therisetothetop.com.

David’s assembled an impressive list of experts and guests that will be sharing their passion and experience with aspiring and accomplished entrepreneurs. And people are already paying attention – the show’s second episode was seen by 100,000 on TV in St. Louis.

As The Rise To The Top’s Internet Marketing Expert, I’ll be on each show starting in January on a segment called “Build Your Business Online.” In the segment I’ll be providing viewers with a tip, strategy and/or other interesting tidbit about how to market their business on the Internet. Additional material will be provided online in the educational packet that accompanies each show.

I’ll also be helping David in promoting and growing the company’s popular website and blog. There are already lots of exciting plans in the works – be sure to check the TRTTT website often in the weeks and months ahead!

A Web Design Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was an incredibly intelligent and amazingly adorable little 9 month old girl (though I’m a bit biased!).

This little baby loved looking at books. She would sit on her floor and turn the pages one-by-one, get to the end of the book, flip it over and start all over again.

For the books she really enjoyed, she’d flip through them 5 – 10 times in a row before she getting bored and moving on to something else. Other books, however, she would toss aside as soon as she turned to the first page.

One day her father (no slouch in his own right) noticed something. The books that she quickly tossed aside were very busy. They had lots of pictures, colors, text and more. It was hard to focus on any one thing. Frustrated and overwhelmed by these books, his darling daughter would quickly move on to something more appealing.

This made the father wonder, “if babies are overwhelmed by lots of pictures, colors, text and more in a book, why would many website owners and designers think things are any different for their site visitors?”

It seems pretty obvious – people visiting a website want to find exactly what they’re looking for FAST! If they don’t, they won’t make it past the first page and will quickly move on to another, more appealing site.

Yet so many still try to cram every last graphic, offer, and piece of information they can on their home page (or, even worse, their landing pages).

If they would only keep things clean and simple . . . if they would make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for . . . if they would stop trying to tell their whole story on one page of their site . . .

then customers would be more likely to stay on the site and buy something, or contact them, or sign up for their newsletter.

An then everyone would live happily ever after.

Seth Godin Is Writing About You

Best selling author, top blogger, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and fellow smokin’ hot piece of brain candy (sorry, couldn’t resist) Seth Godin is writing about you.

This paragraph from his recent post “Death of the Personal Blog?” caught my attention:

There’s a difference between a blog about YOU (I call this a cat blog) and a blog about the reader. Guy Kawasaki’s blog, and my blog for that matter, are not about us, about what we ate yesterday or how great we are. They are about you, the reader.

It’s really pretty simple. If you want:

• people to read your blog;
• people to follow you on Twitter;
• prospects to come to your website;
• sales -

you have to make it About You – the reader, the follower, the prospect, the customer.