Saturday, February 20, 2010

Seed the Net and Await a Harvest

The following news clip features identity theft prevention expert Robert Siciliano, a longtime client of mine, discussing the dangers of identity theft posed by Skype.


By the way, did you notice, just above the clip, that I immediately preceded Robert's name with his primary keyword phrase? I did so purposely. Just now, I've again contributed to his natural search engine presence (a.k.a. organic SEO). And it's how Robert and I built his online identity (no pun intended...) over several years -- to the point that the print and television news media now call him when they need an expert on identity theft prevention. Because he's easy to find and highly relevant, there's no high-priced publicist making outgoing calls for Robert; he doesn't need one.

Last week, a SearchInsider article shared data revealing the power of natural search traffic. The full article is jam-packed with information, but if you don't have the time to read it, here's the most important piece of information: An iCrossing study on natural search has found that sites receive more than 95 percent "of all their non-branded natural search traffic from page-one results pages across all three major engines. The data included 8.9 million queries sampled over nine months, representing 10 enterprise-level Web sites in many different diverse verticals."

I'll translate that for you. They're talking about keyword phrases that is not necessarily tied to your brand language. Think of all the keyword phrases you would like people to see you associated with in the search engines. Some of it might overlap with your brand language, but there's no necessary linkage. These are the keyword phrases of yours that would have counted if your own website had been included in iCrossing's study.

Now, what if you took it a step further? What if you were to integrally and purposely associate your primary keyword phrase with your brand language? This is what Robert and I did, and we proceeded to seed the net relentlessly with this language. The harvests have been bountiful. The news media now reach out to Robert first, not the other way around.

Now that's pull-marketing. And you can do it, too.