There used to be an old saying that if you throw enough mud at the wall some of it will stick and that used to be the way people threw in keywords. Splatter enough keywords across a Home Page and some of them are sure to attract the big boys. Times and the competition have moved on since then and now it’s not enough just to work out the most relevant and most Googled keywords; now it’s how those keywords are incorporated into key phrases.

A well-optimised website will have a combination of carefully chosen keywords that combine to make popularly searched key phrases.

If people search for a steel bin or search for steel bins they will probably enter in the search box the two single key words ’steel bin’ rather than type “steel bin” with quotation marks at the beginning and end to establish the phrase – steel bin. But, there will be a few people who will know that quotation marks will find them a steel bin that is more accurately targeted.

“steel bin” in quotation marks attracts via Google about 35,000 websites and steel bin without quotation marks attracts about 300,000 websites. Therefore, by incorporating the two words < steel bins >, into a complete sentence, without quotation marks, then steel bins is recognised by search engines as a genuine phrase.

Of course, people searching for items on the Internet often misspell or mistype. It can work to your advantage to allow for common misspellings of products or services. If you enter steal bin as two separate words into Google it produces about 2.6 million websites. But if you enter “steal bins” in quotation marks, Google returns a mere 286 results on Monday, April 27. In other words, if you incorporate steal bins as a phrase within your body copy, without it appearing to be a misspelling, the result can be very effective. i.e. ‘Steel bins supplied by the Steel Bins Company at these low prices are a veritable steal. Bins provided by the Steel Bins Company are produced in a combination of brushed steel bins, matt steel bins and mirrored steel bins’.

Keywords and key phrases. Stuff that makes the SEO world go round.

What keywords usually refer to in SEO terms are the search terms users enter and websites need to rank for in order for the site link to appear on search engine results. They are very important if you want to get people to your site. However, once on the site the next step is to make sure that you also have the necessary “carewords”.
In a study conducted by CDA (Content Delivery & Analysis), a web and email content consultancy firm, it was found that “The language used by participants to describe their behavior before they carried out the task — classified here as the language of intent — differed from the language they used online when actually carrying out the task.” What this means is simply that the search terms entered by users are different from what they want to read word per word when they reach the site. Furthermore the search terms used are usually more precise and mechanical. The search terms, as we already know, are our target keywords but the words that the users want to find in your site are what they call “carewords”. Aptly termed since they are there to take care of your visitors needs/preferences.

These carewords are just as important as the keywords because they are what will keep the visitors interest and what will close the deal for you. This is why we always say that content is still king, after all it is in the content that you will find these carewords. So if you are doing SEO for your site make sure that you take into consideration both the keywords and the carewords.

This topic has been discussed way too many times by way too many people yet it is a bit discouraging how many website owners still do not really care to give emphasis on the development of their website’s actual content. For the most part I believe that it is because many wish to get as much money out of their sites while spending as little money and effort as they can. I guess this is true for many things, not just websites. If you look at the truly successful websites though you’ll see that the success really hinged on the content. SEO as I’ved said time and time again can only get you so far. It will help bring in traffic but it won’t guarantee success. So next time you take a look at your site or a client’s site be honest in your assessment of the content. Remember the website doesn’t need to have an astoundingly novel content but it does need to offer something of real value that will make it worth to visitors to not just visit once but to keep on returning.

As for the SEO aspect when it comes to content be sure to:

• use keywords as often as possible - Things to remember in placing keywords in your content would be: the importance of keyword selection, keyword density (don’t make it spammy!), and the placement of keywords.
• make it readable/viewable not only by humans but also by the search engine spiders.
• also take into account content other than text (images & multimedia content).
• hire an SEO copywriter to check if your content needs any editing or rewriting.

Getting, convincing, keeping and dealing with clients is an art for itself. Whether you’re a freelancer or part of a company, whether you’re a SEO, web designer, programmer or writer you will encounter the same issues again and again. You might argue that everybody is different and no client matches another one. This is true. Nonetheless the situations you will go through often match. So you can prepare yourself for those recurring situations.

After 11 years of web working as web developer, blogger and SEO both in agencies and freelance I have collected a list of 30 timeless tips to get, convince, keep and deal with clients.

How to get clients
To get clients you have to first make them contact you. Cold calling and aggressively marketing is bad for your mental health, most people do not like it and you get the wrong clients this way. You need to attract those clients who need you already. They are out there.

• Make a name for yourself, a name brand and/or a “real” brand. Do not act a one of thousands, stick out by being extraordinary in whatever way you choose.
• Be trustworthy by design, especially if you work in web design, copy writing or SEO where everybody can claim to be an expert. Prove it by showing off current working projects, having a good blog, testimonials, other people writing about you.
• Do not compete with India. Charge more instead of less and less. Most clients think what’s cheap is worthless. Indians will be cheaper anyways.
• Get clients to get more clients. If you can’t get any clients whatsoever do something for free for friends or charities to show off some work.
• Always keep your own projects alive. Clients will come and go. After a while you won’t be able to show off their work anymore. You need your own projects.
• Do not make a fancy website, show off your work on a usable website where the potential client can contact you easily.
• Be present on the main channels like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and whatever is industry specific. Some people do not use the overall WWW or email to find and contact you.
• Support your community. Nobody can do everything her or himself so that your “competitors” will bring you new clients.
• Specialize in rare, new and upcoming niches. Do not stick to what everybody does. Everybody offers services like web design, copy writing or SEO but who offers iPhone optimized web pages?
• Be local and proud of it. Many people prefer local businesses they can relate to or even visit.
• Offer more stuff to your existing clients or those you have already worked with and keep track of your clients with some CRM (customer relationship management) tools. There are web based CRM tools and open source ones for free.

How to convince clients
Once a potential client has contacted you doesn’t mean you’ll get him to work with you. Most people will contact several service providers and compare.

• Listen to what the client really wants and reply to exactly this demand. Do not just offer the standard package without even contemplating the specific case.
• Be quick or at least tell the potential client how long she or he has to wait. Use a template reply that has been tested and worked with previous clients of course changing the data and the text where the situation is specific.
• Do not try to teach the client everything about your trade. Concentrate on a few key issues the client has to grasp, the rest is your task and the reason why the client wants to pay you (not to bother with it her or himself).
• Do not talk about problems, speak about solutions. Do not focus on why Flash is bad but how you can use Flash to please both the client and to comply with web standards and SEO best practices.
• Be friendly and be yourself, explain why you are interested in a specic client and project based on your hobbies, family history and experiences. This way you also ensure that you really work for clients you like.

How to keep clients
Once you have convinced your clients to choose you, you want to keep them as long as possible. This may prove difficult just due to the nature of the Web and web working.

• Always say “yes”. Clients do not want to hear a “no”. Always say “yes, you’ll deal with it” and then do it on your own terms. A client wants a Flash intro, an all Flash site, or a bigger logo? Create a Flash intro for first time visitors which fades out on mouse movement, create an all Flash site with a HTML backup, add a layer with a huge logo that disappears when the visitor performs an action on the site.
• Document what you do and explain why. Web development, writing and SEO are often invisible. Clients do not see any changes on the outside after you spend a night on cleaning the code, a day researching for your article, a week testing on different browsers and a month on link building. Document each step.
• Be proactive in communicating issues and when being late. Clients who have the impression that you’re too slow and making too many mistakes you want to hide will quit sooner or later. Be open about issues you encounter and being late with a project.
• Do not stay the same and offer the same solutions even if “times are a changin’”. Clients are prone to buy and pay for things that worked once. They assume they’ll work again and again. The web is changing at a very fast pace. So things that worked 10, 5, 2 years or even a few months ago do not work anymore in many cases. Offer new solutions to old problems before the old solutions stop working.
• Do not keep all clients. To keep your good clients you have to drop those clients who prevent you from spending the right amount of time and effort with your good clients. When you frantically attempt to keep clients who are always discontent you will in the end loose both the bad and the good clients.

How to deal with clients
Working with clients will never be pure harmony only as your interests and those of the clients only converge partly. In many cases your own interest and that of the client differs substantially. You have to deal with that, you can’t ignore it and you can’t let your client dictate everything. Ignoring those issues will make you either insane or inefficient or both and both you and the client will end up discontent afterwards. So make sure to address these issues before they really affect your cooperation.

• Do not answer emails ten times a day. Email is an incredible time waster and very inefficient. It only works if used wisely. When a client emails you more than twice a day with issues and requests set up a todo list instead of answering each and every time. Replying to an email in most cases means that the client will rely too so you’ll end up writing emails all day instead of working. Or just call the client and sort out the issues.
• Charge by the hour and assess the number of hours you need per task beforehand. Otherwise a client won’t value your time. When a task runs out of hand you write a email that the assessed time for this task has run out and if the client wants to pay for another 2 hours.
• Send emails with protocols, todos and tasks for the client all people responsible. Then refer to your older messages.
• Contact clients who are late with answers, materials or payments telling them how it will negatively affect your project and that you might need to work for another clients in the meantime and having to set aside your project for a while due to them being late.
• Always charge upfront. Charge at least 1/3 of the sum at stake. Otherwise clients might even forget about you, hire other people to do the same work or not take your work after you’re done. Of course they just might not pay at all.
• Make sure to be allowed to show off your work. Some clients, especially in SEO tend to be paranoid. Also working clandestinely makes them assign a low value to your work. Sometimes they even tend to propose work that might compromise your integrity.
• Never depend on just one client. In this case she or he might just lay you off as if you are an employee.
• Do not meet a client more often than needed. Some local clients want to meet you several times even before the projects have begun and they paid you a Cent. keep off those clients, they will always want you to attend them in this way. Otherwise charge them the extra costs, both the time and the cost of getting there.
• Never let clients treat you like subordinates. You and the client are partners. Clients who do not grasp that will never make you happy with your work and will steal your time you could have invested in the clients who treat you right.
• Stop dealing with clients who get angry at you, shout and swear at you. Those people will always do that no matter how good you are at your work.

You can’t adhere to all these tips at the same time. Also if you just adhere to the “how to deal with clients” part without first making an effort to stick to the “get, convince and keep clients” parts it won’t work out either. The rule of thumb always must be that both you and the client are happy with your work.

“It doesn’t make sense to give up your life, integrity or self-respect for a client as it ultimately will hurt the client as well.”

That said I’m really, really happy with my current clients. SEOptmise is one of them as I’m a paid writer for their SEO blog. I even accept lower pay from those clients I am happy with which in turn of course makes them happy as well.

To work with clients be it in a SEO, writing or web development you must be eager to work on a project. You can’t be too selfish as you must be proud of the success you generated for others and you have to give the best you have.

My work for SEOptmise is proof of this. I just write once a week for the SEOptmise blog but I generate several thousands of page views with each of my bigger articles, much more than on my own blog.

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30 Tips on How to Get, Convince, Keep and Deal With Clients, Be it in Web Design, Writing or SEO

Many SEO practitioners still apply optimisation techniques like in 1999. Back then popular belief was that it was perfectly enough to lure Internet users to a website with whatever means it takes and then everything else would would work fine. Things like readability were far off the SEO agenda.

For a few years now the SEO industry focuses on conversions, that is converting a website visitor to a client through web design for ROI. In order to achieve that the foremost task is to keep the visitor on the page in the first place.

Still you see plenty of people who do not apply the most basic readability measures to increase their conversions. Webmasters still risk a high bounce rate due to large chunks of text which are not easily digestible by people visiting a site. It actually makes them leave instantly in most cases.

It’s known at least since 1999 that people do not read on the web, they scan pages in order to find quick clues about the subject matter they are interested in.

There are at least 10 ways to provide them with such clues. Thus I introduce to to you 10 readability measures to increase conversions. I start with the most basic, important and must use methods of making any text readable. Of course you’re advised to write an abstract, intro or teaser even before the main text starts.

1. paragraphs
Any text that is longer than a few sentences must be split into paragraphs, otherwise the human eye can’t deal with it without getting tired very quickly, espeically on the Web where screen flickering even aggravated this problem.

2. bold, italic
Bold and italic are the two most basic ways of stressing or emphasizing the most important key terms in a text. Don’t ever use underline on text online unless it’s a link. Italic works best on new terms you introduce, bold on the most important parts of a given message. You should never use bold and italic more than once in a paragraph as this takes the emphasis away and confuses the reader.

3. background colors
Text marker like emphasis by background colors (think yellow!) can be very powerful to capture readers attention. It’s also a little annoying to the eye so use it wisely, like once per page. Also you could use very modest colors to prevent eye strain. Sometimes a grey backgropund color is perfectly enough.

4. citation
A very intriguing tidbit which also works without reading the whol etext is often great to get attention of the raeder. Thus I most often use at least one citation in my posts. Use blockquote for this purpose.

5. subheadlines
It is not coincidence that HTML has as many as 6 headline tags, the h1 - h6. Most people do not use more than 2 of them while at least 4 make sense. h1 as headline of the page (SEO blog), h2 as the headline of the article “12 Readability Measures to Increase Conversions”, h3 could be abstract. h4 can be used for long texts as headlines for each paragraph.

6. unordered (bulleted) lists
Unordered lists using the ul-tag are a very simple means to make a text readable. Any list of items that is no longer than 6 is best fitted into a simple bulleted list.

7. ordered (numbered) lists
Nothing makes a post more readable than a numbered list. Be it a top 7, 8, 10 or top 100 list. People reading on the web rely on lists to quickly find the relevant part of a text. You notice in an instant which items you already know or do not interest you and skip them, while perusing a page and jump to those most relevant to you.

8. tables
More complex data can’t be fitted into a simple list be it bulleted or numbered. Once you have to compare data you need a table with columns. tables provide a quick overview and comparison of numbers or factors. I love the our product vs the competition features tables and always stick to analyze them.

9. charts, pie charts e.g.
Humans can better grasp visual information than information hidden in a text. So whenever there are numbers, especially percentage numbers or date over time a chart is the best way to display them in a meaningful way. Pie charts are great for percentage numbers and bar graphs for data colected and compared over time.

10. images (photos)
Most main stream media employ illustrators for their feature articles. In SEO most people do not use images. Either they can’t afford illustrators or due to lack of SEO images, you just don’t see much of SEO you could photograph. Instead you can use real life stock images to illustrate your points metaphorically. Beware of SEO stock image cliches though. Nobody wants to see an ugly spider on a SEO company page or a magnifying glass like on all others.

11. pagination
Pagination is a method of making test readable we know from books and magazines. On the web pagination is often annoying and requires several clicks on tiny icons to see more images or read a whole text. Sometimes pagination can also result in duplicate content issues that hamper SEO efforts. On the other hand scrolling huge pages and loading them in the first place is annoying as well and makes people run away before the page is full loaded. You can connect both worlds by using CSS pagination.

12. borders
Ever since CSS was introduced you do not have to stick to bold and italic anymore, you can use background colors and borders as well. A border around a large piece of tect makes it appear like a painting. This very much magnifies the importance of such a text part.

I assume most people already know that you should place a text of approx. 200 words to not be considered an empty page by Google. This number has been contested but it’s common sense that you need content to get found in most cases. Also most of these measures have a direct positive impact on search engine visibility. For instance keyword repetition in lists is regarded as natural and is not perceived as keyword stuffing like elsewhere on a page.

I’ve been blogging for the last three years now and one of the most important things I’ve learnt is readers don’t have the time (or attention span) to read through long detailed posts. Concise, attractive looking posts grab the attention of readers and performs far more effectively almost every time.

I figured this out the hard way, spending hours writing up long posts which I perceived as quality content. Unfortunately no-one else agreed! Surprisingly the short and very quick posts which I didn’t think were anywhere near as interesting, seemed to grab the attention of readers, commenter’s and social media audiences.

5 reasons why you should forget about writing the perfect piece of quality content

Image Credit: Flickr

1) Ditch the long paragraphs - no-one reads them!
Is it worth describing point 1 in detail here? Chances are that readers will skim over the title and skip to point 2! So off to point 2…

2) A diagram paints a thousand words
An informative diagram will be quicker to understand and instantly provide an overview of the post. Additional content can be added to back-up the post for users who are looking for more detail, without the need for reading through everything for those who aren’t so interested.

3) A picture doesn’t even need to paint three words!
Images make the page look attractive and can be the difference between a StumbleUpon thumbs up or a user leaving the site before the browser even loads.

4) Spend your time researching a large number of bullet points instead of copywriting
As interesting as the post might be, if it looks long-winded it will probably get ignored. If you have a bullet-pointed list full of useful information or links, for example, users are likely to scan through each item and bookmark to finish later.

5) A boring headline = no-one reads your post
You might have thousands of website visitors or RSS subscribers, but no matter how good the post is, it’s likely to get skipped if the headline is dull. Put more of your copywriting effort into considering the headline and the reward should be far greater.

So there you have it, it’s simple - blogging’s all about headlines, lists & images! Maybe you should try it yourself, drop the hours of copywriting and watch the social media votes roll in!