We have yet to begin search engine optimization (SEO) for Sullivan Graber, but have done so for Legal Advance Funding. What follows is a case study that will help you to understand the process of using research, SEO and pay-per-click marketing in order to get more traffic (or visitors) to a website.

Keyword Research and Tracking

Legal Advance Funding needs to target specific customers for its services. Typically, customers who need lawsuit advances have personal or business cash flow problems, and the company needs to find these types of customers online. In addition, the company needs to establish a way of tracking visitors to its website and to identify key search terms that would indicate a buyer “ready” for the firm’s services.

Having a tracking system is critical for any SEO campaign. It is not enough to get a higher google ranking. You also need to know exactly what keywords searches a person does on Google to reach your company website, as well as other metrics such as the length of time they stay on your page, the pages that they visit and other metrics such as what geographic location they are visiting from. The relevant metrics are different for different businesses. But choosing the right metric and then tracking it is crucial.

Google analytics was installed on the website in order to track visits to the site and to establish a baseline performance level. Searches of multiple online databases and search engines yielded a cluster of terms that were likely to indicate a customer searching for the company’s services. Armed with this information, website copy on the lead generation page was edited in order to emphasize those key terms. In addition, a link-building campaign was established in order to help the site achieve a higher ranking on Google for the targeted terms. A link-building campaign is designed to get high-ranking websites to link to yours. Each link is like a “vote” for your website. The more votes, the higher your google rankings will be. A Google Pay-Per-click program was also initiated so that the company could get immediate traffic to its website.

Initial SEO Results

After 45 days, the website shot to the top of google for key terms. Traffic from the search engines increased 99% each month for the first 90 days. It will continue to increase as we build more links and add more content to the website.

The initial phase of the project has brought a steady stream of new traffic. However, the lead generation rate is not as high as the business needs. Next a testing phase will begin where specific elements of the website will be adjusted to help increase the percentage of website visitors who fill out the lead generation form and call the firm.

Twitter is a social media platform that some people - like me - use only grudgingly. No offense to all you twitter-heads. I like the platform, but I do not like to tweat very often. I find twitter to be a distraction and rarely useful for my information junkie needs.

That being said, Twitter can be an incredibly useful tool, and I do use it from time-to-time. However, I do not want to have to REMEMBER to use it, so I found a way to automatically tweat my blog posts using Feedburner. If you don’t have a free FeedBurner account, I recommend getting one. The service is a great way to get people subscribing to your blogs and to keep them updated on what you are doing.

This blog post assumes that you already have a FeedBurner account and are going to use it to automatically add your new blog posts to your Twitter account. The set-up process will take less than five minutes.

Here is the lesson as a pdf: Tweat Automatically with Feedburner.

How To Tweat Automatically Using Feedburner

A short screenshot session on how to use Feedburner to automatically post your blog posts to Twitter. Feedburner is free. And it was purchased by Google last year, so you will need to log into Google to use it:

Pick Your Feed:

Click the Feedburner Option That Reads “Publicize”:

(and try not to laugh at the tab that reads “troubleshootize”)

On the left hand menu pick “Socialize”

And Now Click the Tab That Says “Add Twitter Account”:

*Please note: You can post to more than one twitter account from one blog. And you can post from multiple blogs to one twitter account. See the end of this post for why you might want to do so.

Google takes you to Twitter where you can connect your Twitter and Google/Feedburner accounts:

If you are already logged in, you can just click “Allow.”

Or you may need to log into your twitter account:

For now, leave the options as they are:

Check out the bottom of the page to see how your tweet will look:

My tweats are the “Default,” they have my blog post title, plus Google’s automatic URL shortener. Pretty cool, eh?

You are not done until you activate the service. My button says “Save.” Yours will say “Activate.”

Now, write a blog post and watch it show up on your twitter account!

You are now twittering automatically. Every time you make a blog post it will show up on Twitter.

Tweating to and from multiple blogs and twitter accounts

Above, I mentioned that you can post to more than one twitter account from one blog. And you can post from multiple blogs to one twitter account. Why would you want to do so? If you have a business with multiple people blogging, you could set-up one Twitter account for your entire company and have all of you employee’s tweats go directly to that one twitter account. It would be a great way for fans of your company to keep up with everything that you are doing. Your employees could tweat to both your company twitter account and their own personal twitter account.

In my case, I have several blogs that are thematically connected. I have both of them automatically posted to the same twitter account. When people follow that one account, they get updates from both those blogs. My twitter account gets more followers and my blogs get more visitors. And because it all happens automatically in the background, I don’t even have to think about it.

It’s crucial to consider the differences between the plural and singular versions of a keyword term. They can often mean dramatically different things to both a customer and to google and they can get different numbers of searches. It can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful campaign.

There are many factors to consider. But today, we will cover the two most important factors:

1) The intent of the searcher.
2) The number of searches.

Is there a difference in intent between the plural and singular keyword search?

In the private investigator example above, the answer is not clear cut. However, consider this one: Searching for “apple” or searching for “apples.” You can probably guess that someone searching for “apple” is looking for the computer and someone searching for “apples” is looking for the fruit. Not always, of course, but more often than not. In this case, simply adding an “S” the end of a word can change the meaning of the search.

If you are not convinced, do a search on google. The top 10 searches for “apple” on google are all (yes, ALL) related to Apple Computer. If you search for “apples” you will still get many listings about apple computer. But you will also find results related to the Washington Apple Commission, the different varieties of the apple fruit and so forth. In this case, google has decided that the searches may represent different needs

How would this play out in your niche or industry? Does the plural of your main keyword mean something different than the singular? Do a google search for both terms - does google show different results for each? Do the top ten results look different between the singular and plural? If so, you may need to consider which is the most important for your business and then optimize for that term.

Which gets more searches, the plural or the singular?

Many times one version of a keyword will get far more searches than the other. For example, on any given day there may be ten times as many people searching for “free credit report” as “free credit reports.” Can you see why? If someone wants a free credit report, that’s exactly what they will type. They don’t need to add the plural to get what they want. That’s just one example. I’ve seen many case in which the plural gets more searches. A quick way to do this research is to use Wordtracker’s free keyword tool. Go there right now and see what you find. Which keyword term in your niche gets more searches?

Take home message: Singular and plural keywords can often be considered different searches.

The plural and singular of a keyword can be very different. Different in the mind of your customer. Different in the eyes of google. And different in the number of searches. So do a little keyword research and competitive research and see what is the best for you to target on your website.

If you are looking to get a higher search engine ranking it can be useful to know where your website ranks on a variety of search engines, especially the “big 3″: Google, Yahoo and Bing. Using any of the three tools below, you can enter in your business name or keyword and get a snapshot of 2-3 different search engines in one search.

All three of the tools are relatively new and have similar features. But I like the fact that the bottom two on the list below (Panabee and Goog*A*Whoo?) show the results as they appear on the regular search page.

Play around with the tools by doing a search for your most important keyword.

Search3:

Try it:

http://www.search3.com/

Goog*A* Who?:

Try it:

http://www.googawho.com/

Panabee:

Try it:

http://www.panabee.com/

For example, on the search “lawsuit cash advance” 3 of the top 4 results on google have either “lawsuit” “cash” or “advance in their url. One website has all three keywords. If I type in a related search phrase “lawsuit loans” the same result happens: 3 of the top 4 results contain one of those keywords.

You will likely find a similar result in your niche. Try it.

Go to Google and do a search for a phrase that someone might type to reach you.

What do you see?

Is one of your keywords in the URL? Do you see:

www.keywordphrase.com

or

www.samplewebsite.com/keywordphrase.html

Well, there’s your SEO Tip for the day. If possible - especially when first starting a website - consider adding your targeted keyword somewhere in the URL. It’s not 100% necessary, and you can still get a top-ranking without it. But why not make things easy on yourself and use the keyword for which you want to rank?

If you are still in the process of deciding what keywords to target or what URL to buy, see my recent post on pre-launch keyword discovery and also the article on Why Being #1 on Google Matters. Getting a top-result on Google and the other search engines can bring you a great deal of visitors to your website. And if your website is compelling and can convert visitors into sales or leads, you may have the beginning of a successful internet-based business.