The Flaccid Launch

The ugly term “soft launch” has been used delicately in the tech industry for quite some time now and, unbeknownst to the public, it really just means, “We have something, it’s not done yet, but we couldn’t wait any longer.” Cue the nasty humping sounds and wah-wah pedal, to accent the appearance of the diseased, lecherous bean counters, making sure everyone knows that just because its not ready doesn’t mean you can’t charge for it.

I believe the car industry tried this trick a while back, and we all know what rave reviews the Taurus received–that’s right consumers, you are all going to pay us to be our beta testers. Long gone are the full years between upgrade. Seems like every January you have the latest release of some awful thing. The software industry appears to be taking business tactics from the music industry, with regards to the timeliness of hot new models being shoved into the public’s face.

Maybe you’re different than I am, but I really don’t want a product, be it hard- or software, that is going to fuck with me for six months before it does what it was supposed to do from the beginning. I’m a “late adopter” for this very reason and, even then, disaster can strike. Enter the latest streak of operating system releases from the leading monopolies.

Snow Leopard is here, and well, I have heard some really great things about the “upgrade” but, for the most part, I am sure there will be kinks to work out, as with any new framework that gets released. Apple’s track record for releasing less buggy OS has been good so far and long gone are the memories of the first incarnation of OSX. But those of us who know better, will wait to upgrade until we get the OS bundled with our new hardware.

Windows 7 likewise, will be released well before the eve of Vista’s third year in the public domain. And due to its fantastic approach of alienating and frustrating users by not having drivers available at launch I am sure that the masses are unlikely to leap all over Bill Gates’ Ken doll luggage.

I think it’s safe to say that anyone would wait for real upgrades. Real honest to goodness changes, improvements and stability bought and paid for by us. Here is the issue I see, with all the tech industry lazily launching whatever they feel is sell able to a public that is so easily distracted by the reputation of brand, there is no real backlash against inferior products. We need to stop buying from these jackasses till they get their act in line. Sony has learned from their mistakes and at least attempt to hold some kind of ethics level with their products.

Lets hope that our consumer future shows a bit more competition and a bit less wang.

Special thanks to the genius at the rantpuppets.com for these little gems of wisdom.

How to Find and Target the Right Keywords to Maximize Your Search Engine Rankings

Obtaining and maintaining rankings in the search engines starts with writing people friendly and therefore search engine friendly content – and writing your content should always start with keyword research.

Keyword research itself isn’t technically a difficult thing to do, but it does take some practice to earn your chops. When starting, you’re basically looking for 3 general criteria:

1. What keywords are most relevant to your offering, without being too specific? (don’t overlook too much at this point)
2. What keywords have the most search demand in your industry? (usually displayed in projected daily, monthly or yearly volumes)
3. What is the level of competition likely to be for these keywords? In other words, how easy is it going to be to rank (organically) for these keywords?

There are certainly other things to consider like, what keywords are currently driving traffic to your site, if you have an existing site with access to such analytical data. But for this article, we’ll assume you’re just starting off.

Compile A Rough Keyword List

To get started I always recommend using a keyword research tool. Today there are many free high-quality keyword research tools to use. Just a couple years ago, it was better to subscribe to a keyword program such as Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery. And while these two programs are still well worth the subscription prices today, the free web tools of today are considerably more detailed and a good place to start. This is because many of them are coming from the major search engines themselves. My personal favorites include:

After using some of the above tools to compile your list, you may notice you don’t really have a clear picture of the competitive landscape for your keywords. Who is the competition? Even if you’re using a paid tool such as Keyword Discovery, or the SEO toolbar, you may feel confused about how to interpret the data. Try asking yourself one question: What are the top ten websites in my industry that rank well?

To help you answer this question, start typing into the search engines the following search parameters. (Replace “keyword” with what you have determined to be your top keywords according to search demand):

• allintitle:keyword (keyword occurrence in the title of the search result)
• allinanchor:keyword (keyword occurrence in the links to the search result)
• allinurl:keyword (keyword occurrence in the URL of the search result)
• allintext:keyword (keyword occurrence in the text of the search result)

Doing the above should help you get a clear idea of the competition that is applying particular SEO tactics to achieve rankings. Try matching the keywords on your list to specific competitors who rank well for them. Doing this should also give you a better idea of what keywords the competition may not be targeting.

You might realize the competition is scarce and/or sporadic. This doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t strong competition for your industry, it may just mean the competition isn’t applying certain SEO tactics very efficiently and this will be something you can take advantage of. On the other hand, if you find a website or two that is clearly in control of the search engine result pages (SERPs), then you should note this on your list as well. Then you’ll want to analyze their website further to see what additional keywords they may be targeting which aren’t on your list.

Organize Your Keyword List

After identifying your keywords using the criteria and tools above, my advice is to then create separate buckets targeting both the keywords you wish to achieve rankings for in the short term (defined by search volume and competition), and the keywords you wish to achieve rankings for in the long term.

In general, there are two “types” of keywords to take note of:

1. short-tail keywords – keyphrases that are single to three words long. Depending on your market, these will typically go into the long-term bucket.
2. long-tail keywords – keyphrases that are four or more words long. Go ahead and place these into your short-term bucket.

Why should you separate these?

There are a couple reasons why. First of all, it’s important to understand what you realistically will and will not rank for immediately. Again, depending on the competition in the SERPs and depending on the content you write, your goal is to get the most traffic you can from the search engines as quickly as possible. Therefore you always want to try to identify the less competitive keywords to target immediately. Secondly, your list of long-tail keywords is likely to deliver topic ideas when it comes time to write content.

One of the best representations I’ve seen that describes the relationship of short-tail and long-tail keywords as they relate to obtaining targeted organic search engine traffic is the following :

As you can see, the best opportunity to maximize potential ROI is to focus on key-phrases 3-4 words long. However, if you are not relying on ROI as one of your key performance indicators (most people are), then you’ll still want to analyze your targeted traffic potential based on the length of the key phrases and how much time it’s potentially going to take to rank well for all of your keywords.

Once you’ve determined all of the above, you should have a pretty good idea of what keywords you should start targeting in your content. look for common themes as you go through your keyword list(s). Chances are, people are looking for the same thing, but saying it in different ways. Semantics can sometimes play a key role in determining what keywords to target. For example, differentiating between using the term lawyer vs attorney – even though they have the same meaning, they may show different results in the SERPs. Also, be careful with accidentally assuming intent. If someone is searching online for “tax help”, this may mean they need tax preparation help, or it could mean they need tax debt help – two completely different services and therefore the traffic would not be as targeted.

Like I said, keyword research is not technically difficult, but it does take a little time to develop a system. Without doing keyword research, you may start targeting keywords with little or no demand. And even though you may obtain good rankings for these keywords, these rankings may not be driving nearly as much targeted traffic as they could. But if you use the tools above and start analyzing your keywords systematically, you should start to see your content begin to form that is both people and search engine friendly.

Happy Rankings. Joynt