There’s nothing more disheartening than seeing visitors flooding into your site thanks to some good campaigns . . . But then not sticking around.

This is the frustration Bret Hoyt Sr., president of contract manufacturer Vitakem Nutraceuticals, was experiencing.

“Our website wasn’t working for us,” recalls Hoyt. “We had visitors coming in but very few were contacting our sales team.”

Hoyt approached me to see how we could turn this around.

Identifying The Problem(s)

Since the best solutions are built on a clear understanding of the problem, we started with a website content audit.

First, through an initial interview, I ferreted out the goals for the website, Vitakem’s USP and the competitive environment. Then, by examining the website data and assessing the website’s content I gathered clues that helped paint a picture of why website visitors were skipping away at the drop of a hat.

Here’s what I discovered:

The initial copy had been well optimized for search engines. But the human visitors had been largely ignored. In fact some of the website copy was downright unintelligible.

Adding Glue To The Webpages

Drawing on my knowledge of the nutrition industry and interviews with Vitakem’s sales team, we honed in on the pressing issues most prospective customers care about. I replaced the website’s existing copy with copy that was written for these potential customers while maintaining optimization for search engines.

As a result, the site’s overall bounce rate dropped from 57% down to 40%, with some individual pages dropping from bounce rates into the mid 80′s to bounce rates in the 20′s and 30′s. These numbers told us that less people were  “bouncing” off the pages (leaving soon after they’ve arrived).

Lead Generation Tactics

Now that visitors were sticking around more, we wanted to take them to the next step – initiating contact. The only invitation offered to visitors to contact the sales team was a Request-A-Quote link or a bland Contact Us option.

The site offered no opt-in incentive to visitors who were not ready to get a quote. Even worse, by making a quote request the sole contact option, it framed the whole sales discussion around pricing.

To change the focus of the conversation, we created a white paper, “6 Questions You Should Ask When Choosing Your Nutritional Supplement Manufacturer”. This paper positioned Vitakem not only as a service provider, but also as a helpful partner in making the crucial decision of choosing a contract manufacturer. And it took price away from the center of the initial conversation.

To gain more traffic, the report was also repurposed into several SEO articles that were used for two purposes: 1.) To bring in traffic through SEO and article marketing; and 2) as part of a survey and 3-part email series sent out to lapsed leads bringing them back to the sales team.

Following on the heels of the report download came a carefully-crafted 11-part autoresponder series. This series highlighted the report’s tactical information. It also prodded prospective customer pain points, reminding them of how Vitakem could help them. Each autoresponder’s call to action encouraged the prospect to call the sales team.

Finally, as an added push to encourage even more visitors to get in touch with the sales team, we created a 2-minute video. The video welcomed visitors to the home page and directed them to the report offering.

A Website That Helps Grow Business

Vitakem’s CEO and President, Bret Hoyt, Sr. couldn’t be more pleased with the results, “Since implementing the marketing funnel Sarah created, we’ve had a 20% increase in leads,” Hoyt reports. “But even more importantly, these leads are already pre-sold on our services helping us with our lead conversion.”

By finely tuning the messaging on the website, the report and the autoresponders to tap into prospective customers’ most pressing problems we made Vitakem an option visitors couldn’t ignore. The website and the report spoke to their questions, doubts and interests. And as a result, more visitors contacted the sales team and more of these leads were predisposed to like what they heard as the process continued.

Concludes Hoyt, “Overall, investing in Sarah’s expertise and keen understanding of the nutrition industry has been invaluable for my business.”

For more information on how a lead-generation strategy like this could help your B2B nutrition industry website, be sure and get this meaty report:

“How To Turn Your Website and White Paper Into A Recession-Busting Dynamic Duo”

Or email me at Sarah @ HealthyMarketingIdeas.com to schedule an appointment to discuss your marketing concerns

I love potatoes.

And one of the delightful surprises each year in my garden is the discovery of potatoes I didn’t plant.  See, each year there are a few spuds that didn’t make it into the harvest buckets. They sit in the earth all winter. And when spring arrives, they push through the softened soil to volunteer their tasty tubers.

This year I found Yukon Gold potatoes in my squash bed, Banana Fingerlings tucked in among my garlic and some beautiful large Kennebec’s thriving in the compost pile.

Websites harbor the same delightful surprises. Real solid mashed-potato meals for your business. Pure Yukon Gold. But too many businesses don’t look for them . . . don’t find them . . . Or don’t know what to do with them once they do find them.

As a natural health SEO copywriter, I find them all the time for my clients and help them put these untapped resources to good use.

Here’s what I mean.

The 3 Secret Treasures In Your Website You Don’t Know About

1.    The High-Traffic Page Lost In the Archives

Just this summer I did a website content audit for a client. And lo and behold, when I looked through his analytics I found one page was getting thousands of hits each month. It was an article about fungal infections, one of this business’ specialties.

Despite the popularity of this page with his visitors, my client had forgotten that it existed. In fact, he couldn’t even find it using his website’s navigation.

Clearly he had a great landing page that was pulling in traffic. However, when I looked more closely, most of the visitors were leaving the page and his website after a short perusal of the page.

I realized based on the search terms it was ranking for that many of his visitors needed a little more confirmation that they had come to the right place for their search. We needed to tailor the content a little more, add a sidebar and make sure these new visitors stuck around a bit more.

And then we needed to artfully move them deeper into his website towards his sales pages.

His website is not alone. Most websites have terrific content that’s pulling in traffic but not being used effectively to convert that traffic into customers – or at least hot leads.

2.    High ranking pages that aren’t converting to clicks

It was exciting to find this page bringing in all these visitors each month. But soon my excitement reached a fevered pitch when I looked even more closely at the data.

It was ranking #1, #2 and #12 for some very high-volume search terms. Using some raw estimations, if this page was ranking like this it should be pulling in close to 40,000 visitors each month.

It wasn’t.

So I looked at the search engine results page (SERP) for the different terms. This is the results page people see after they put in a search term with Google. It is the page that lists the different options Google has come up with.

His pages were up there, ranking well. But the title and description that appeared in the list of options Google brought up did nothing to intrigue searchers. I could tell right away that he was losing potential visitors right from the start, despite its stellar rankings. The people who had searched for one of the terms that brought up his page just weren’t being drawn to click on his website listing.

See, plenty of SEO’s do some meat market page title that just lists a few key words. Like “fungus| fungal infections| natural antifungals”.

Ho hum. If I’m looking for some help, I’m more likely to go for a title that says something like, “Got Fungus? Best Natural Antifungals For Fungal Infections”.

And then under the title I’d create an equally intriguing description that ends with a call to action, encouraging searchers to click through to his website.

Maybe something like, “Got that sneaking suspicion you’re battling a fungal infection? Use natural antifungals to beat fungus safely. Find out more . . .”

These two bits of copy, called metatags, are often overlooked by webmasters, put in as an insignificant afterthought. Some SEO’s belittle meta-descriptions as not such a big factor in ranking.

I beg to differ. When it comes to SEO, every bit helps in telling search engines the goods are on this page. And when it comes to searchers, if you can’t grab their attention and encourage them to come to your site on the search engine results page, why bother ranking?!

3.    Hidden High Attraction Search Terms You’re Already Pulling With

This is a lesson I discovered on my own HealthyMarketingIdeas.com website.  When I looked through my website analytics, I found out that many of my visitors were not potential health copywriting clients, but beginning health copywriters looking for information!

I found I was ranking well for terms related to health copywriting courses and resources.

Hmm. I’ve written an e-book on writing copy for nutritional supplements. And I’m an affiliate marketer for many tremendous health copywriting resources. I realized that if I publicized the same products I used to keep my business humming, I could get a nice affiliate commission as a result.

If I don’t create some pathways for this traffic to purchase things from my website, I’m missing out!

Not to mention I’m doing a disservice to these visitors who may be looking for recommendations to get their business going.

Based on this discovery, I’ve slowly been retuning my website to help these visitors out. And making some income from it on the side.

Tap Into Your Natural Health Website’s Hidden Treasure Chest

Your website could be loaded with gold, just hidden beneath the surface. However, you won’t know it if you don’t look for it.

This is why the data you collect on your website traffic is so important. It can help you recalibrate your marketing to capture potential customers you’ve been ignoring.

And then you can get to work . . . mining that treasure and growing your business. Sometimes it takes just a few tweaks. Often enough, this sleuthing can reveal the direction for a whole new profitable marketing campaign.

I offer a site content audit to help marketers ferret out this gold and create a strategy for making it shine. If you’d like to have me do some detective work on your site, contact me at sarah @ healthymarketingideas.com. (Just take out the spaces  – they’re there to keep spammers at bay.)

For a more in depth look at how to make your website work harder for you,  be sure and check out my report written just for health marketers, “5 Internet Marketing Mistakes . . . And How To Fix Them For Online Success.”

If you’re a B2B business you might be interested in the B2B version, “Turn Your Website And White Papers Into A Recession-Busting Dynamic Duo.”

Be sure and sign up for one of these maps of what your website should be doing.  And then let’s get treasure-hunting . . .

Every online natural health business should be integrating search engine optimization (SEO) into their business plan.  And plenty are. 

However, too many are leaving it all to a general SEO firm and leaving out one essential element . . . a natural health copywriter skilled in SEO.

I have worked with too many clients who have invested money and time in SEO only to find that it’s not working for them in the way they expected.  And often enough it’s the absence of a health copywriting specialist with strong SEO skills that’s to blame.

Here’s why:

Reason #1 For SEO Health Copywriter:  Keyword Research That Targets Your Market

The first job of any copywriter that’s worth their salt is to know their prospect.  This doesn’t change when you get to keyword research.  Just recently I worked with a client who had optimized for "cardiovascular disease". 

Yes, there were plenty of searchers for this term, but were they your ideal customers?  More likely than not, most of these researchers were health professionals, public health foundations or high school students working on a paper – not your prospect. 

The average person is more likely to look for cardiovascular health solutions under "heart health" or "artery health" than "cardiovascular health".

Reason #2 For SEO Health Copywriter: Metatags That Convert

I just recently finished working on a client site that was ranking well for some keyword phrases, a phrase that gets about 200 searches each day.  But my client was only getting 30 visitors for this phrase despite his no. 2 ranking position.  Statistically-speaking, he should be getting a lot more than that.

The culprit?  His title tag and description.  Say you’re trying to rank for "heart health supplements". Imagine your potential customer scanning the search engine results listing and seeing just a bunch of title tags that say "heart health supplements/Your business’ name" over and over again.

Now imagine their eye hitting upon one that says, "Heart Health Supplements – No More Worry!"  Now, that would catch their eye.  Especially if the description that followed (the 1-3 sentences under the title in the search results) engaged and enticed them.

A SEO copywriter understands that these key spots are important not only for ranking but for conversion and actually bringing visitors to your website.

Reason #3 For A SEO Health Copywriter: Less FDA Hassles

Now this won’t concern you if you don’t sell supplements.  But if you do, it’s a big one.  I’ve worked with clients that have sent over to me wonderful lists of great keyword phrases.  Each one is carefully selected for lots of searches and not too much competition.

But unfortunately, they also contain terms that the FDA would declare illegal according to DSHEA.  It’s heartbreaking but true, you just can’t optimize your product pages for "diabetes treatment" no matter how many of the people using this search term would love to find your solution.

In fact, the FDA looks at metatags specifically for non-compliant language.

A health copywriter who understands these regulations and has worked with them can help you identify keywords that do meet FDA criteria. And then skillfully write copy that still appeals to people seeking diabetes treatments, even if these words are never used.

Reason #4 For A SEO Health Copywriter: Quality Content, Not Just Quantity

Plenty of SEO firms offer copywriting services to meet the content requirements of developing good rankings.  Content is an essential part of SEO strategy.

But too many of these services give you keyword-spiced content that, yes, bulks up your website to please Google’s eye.  But does nothing for your visitor. I’ve seen website content that doesn’t even make sense.  In less dramatic cases, I’ve seen website content that makes sense but doesn’t make customers or money.  It isn’t compelling.

Every bit of content that an experienced SEO Health copywriter writes will focus on one thing – building a rapport with your visitors and leading them to a sale.  Yes, some of it will be a couple steps away from the sale in the "getting to know you" stage. But it still works hard to build your reputation in your visitors’ minds, build a connection, keep them interested and lead them into your sales funnel.

Better yet, when you create good content that people want to read, they also want to share it.  And here’s where you get a lot of mileage through social media.

So don’t trade off quality for quantity.  Quality is still the most important criteria for building your online presence.

Now you’ve got 4 reasons to make sure a SEO copywriter is a part of your SEO strategy team.

Bottom line, when you make sure good copywriting forms the base of your online strategy you can make sure that no matter how high your rankings . . . no matter how much traffic you get . . .

You convert that traffic to solid leads and committed customers.

What are your thoughts?  Please add them in the comments below.

A few SEO lessons from the garden: Read on to find out how to capture alternative health traffic you may not even have on your radar – it may be some of the most profitable traffic for your business . . .

Sure, I plant seeds in my garden each year.  But inevitably, the volunteers spring up – chervil, cilantro – kale everywhere – purple mustard, potatoes, beans, lettuce.  Plants I let go to seed or tubers I overlooked the year before return in the next years’ unplanned crops.

I could leave the garden alone completely, never plant another seed, and I would get a good harvest.  And this isn’t even accounting for the weeds– lambsquarters and dandelions – that also grace my table and freezer.

Truth is I have a hard time sacrificing these volunteer plants for the orderly rows that match my garden plan.

But you know what?  I eat better for it.  The lambsquarters and kale can always be counted on for dinner.  Especially when the lettuce bolts in July’s inferno or a frost hits.  And few plants can match their nutritional value.

These volunteers in my garden teach me a lot about keeping perspective on my website – a lesson I’ll share with you right here.

Plenty of times we set out to optimize a website for visitors and key words we plan for from the outset.  But often enough, our true profit may be in the ones that we don’t expect, that come on their own accord and let us know, “Hey, I want to be here.  I’m interested in your product or service!”

For example, I created my business website, healthwriterclachar.com, primarily to fuel my copywriting business and cultivate a good harvest of clients.  But interestingly enough clients have not been the only valuable visitors.  I posted an essay on how to become a freelance writer on my website and on an online article bank.  To my surprise, it generated a rash of visitors.

And these were not potential clients.  Or even copywriters looking for some new ideas.  Many of these visitors were people looking broadly at how to turn writing into a viable business. During the period of a few weeks when it was reprinted at a freelance writing website, it actually doubled my traffic.

Now, if I was just the gardener sticking to my plan, I would keep hammering away at marketing to potential clients.  But instead, when I checked my website data, I noticed this trend and decided to bring it into my business plan.

I’ve adjusted some of my product descriptions in my copywriting resource sections, wrote additional pages and started to think about how I can plan more for these volunteers.  I’ve also started researching keywords within this niche.

One of my clients had a similar experience with her product line.  She originally formulated her all-natural body care products for children.  But she was pleasantly surprised to discover that adults loved her shampoo and conditioner as well.  So rather than doggedly marketing these as only for kids, she added messaging that noted how the whole family can use and enjoy her products.  It strengthened her marketing. And it differentiated her products from many of the others stuck in the baby box.

In both these cases, we noticed the volunteers sprouting up in our garden and decided to cultivate them and harvest them.

So here are my suggestions for you so you can capitalize on unforeseen niche markets and key words:

1. Watch your analytics. See who’s coming to your website and why and plan accordingly.  Scott Kincaid, the usability expert I talked about last month, told me about an electronics client of his who took forever to note that people were coming to his website looking for ring tones – something they weren’t selling at the time.  Once they started paying attention to this and added ring tones to their product line, they saw terrific sales.

2. Experiment. The lovely thing about the web is that it’s easy on, easy off.  You can write a new page or two, publish an ezine article, run a few ppc ads for minimal or no expense and see what happens.  If nothing flies, you can simply take it off or leave it alone.  But if you notice rumblings, build on it.

3.Brainstorm and research key words. I can spend lots of time on Wordtracker and Google Adwords’ keywords tool looking at what people are looking for.  And I’ve stumbled upon many a good find.  For instance, when researching key words for a client with a product for people with metabolic syndrome, I discovered several phrases with “belly fat” were relatively untapped as key words.  And they fit the target market perfectly. SEO bells and whistles went off as I continued to research different variations of this angle and incorporate them into our copy.

And just to add another convincing reason to look at untapped niches, in Internet Retailer’s latest edition of its Top 500 Internet Retailers, once again the editors noted that two of the keys to success on the Internet were

1. Finding a niche market and really honing in on it.
2. Being nimble as a business – being able to adjust and move with new opportunities.

The Internet certainly facilitates both these strategies as noted by Wired magazine’s editor Chris Anderson in his seminary business book, The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (which I highly recommend).

Start using these tips I’ve listed above to identify and work with your volunteers.  But to really hone your strategy, I highly suggest Nick Usborne’s online copywriting course.

Nick Usborne is a master at flushing out these niches.  In fact, in addition to his stellar copywriting services, he’s built quite a little retirement fund business for himself by developing information-rich websites around relatively untapped niche markets.

He documents his approach to researching these overlooked markets in his course.  It’s a great plan for setting up a side business on your own. But the skills taught in this course don’t stop there . . .

It’s an excellent SEO course for learning how to identify niches with finely-tuned keyword research.

So don’t step on your volunteers!  Notice them, nibble on a few leaves and see if you’d like to adjust their status to valuable crop.  As with most things the answers and patterns are there.  It’s just a question of noticing them and then learning how to capitalize on them.

And if you’d like some help in identifying these accidental markets and catering to them, give me a call.  Let me help you rope in some of these uncultivated alternatives that may enrich your alternative health website.  I always enjoy foraging.

I’d love to hear your comments on this – add them below.

They were in ecstasy.  Muscular snouts deep in the rich forest soil, stirring up pine needles and grubs galore.  Their tails moved back and forth with pleasure.  We had returned home from a bike ride to find our pigs had taken advantage of a weak electric fence and moved on to new territory.

We tried everything to get them back in.  Melon scraps, fresh sumac leaves, pleading and commands.  Finally, my husband and I were forced to use raw might against these obstinate 140-pounders.  I pulled a rope looped around a foreleg and he pushed from behind.

We pushed and pulled them, joining them in muddy pig glory on the other side of the gate (of course the muddiest part of the pen).  And to add insult to injury, after each roundup I had to reach into the ooze and carefully work the rope off of the pig’s foot as the errant diner lay there panting with exhaustion.

That night we went through dish soap, baking soda, salt, vinegar. Only an enzyme cleaner got the smell of pig off of us.

Just like me, you want to keep out of the mud – the FDA mud that is. And as tough as it is, because of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), you cannot let your customers dig into everything and indulge their every curiosity and question. You can’t talk explicitly about all that your products can do to help them.

This makes things particularly difficult when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO).  Because while you can’t talk about “diabetes” or “Alzheimer’s” in your sales materials, those are the very search terms your potential customers are using.

Now some of you may be saying, but so many supplement websites use disease terms – why can’t I?  How are they getting away with this?

I’m not going to get into this discussion right here about the consequences of being noncompliant.  Pam Magnuson covers this beautifully in her course and landing page on FDA-compliant copywriting.  But suffice it to say, the FDA is increasing its vigilance and this is something worth paying attention to.

But what you can do is this:

-         You can mine the tail of your key words by building content around more FDA-neutral search terms like “blood sugar levels” or “healthy blood pressure”.

-         You may also be able to pull in some good traffic with search terms that address benefits like “strong memory” or “healthy joints”.

-         And you can continue to extend your reach with deeper benefit references by talking about “senior exercise” which may pull in people concerned about arthritis or “losing belly fat” for people who are also concerned about pre-diabetes or diabetes.

But you also want to be able to tap into that core traffic.

And this is where I take advantage of the “2-click rule”.  According to noted FDA attorney, Marc Ullman, you can talk about diseases, post relevant research, and more as long as it is insulated by two clicks from sales materials that specifically references your products.  In the interim page, you can have some generic information about an herb or supplement, but no brand-references.

So draw your traffic with good articles or free reports that use their search terms – “heart disease” or “cancer”.  And even though you can’t make a sale right there, if you have an opt-in, you can get back to them with an email follow-up that is integrated with other content you send to your list.

But there’s another benefit to this as well . . .

(And this is for you if you’re not marketing nutritional supplements as well . . .)

Not only does this tactic help out with the FDA but it works fantastically to build credibility and good will.  If you have followed internet marketer Frank Kern’s map to success, he takes advantage of this same tactic – give give give great information.  After you’ve established a strong relationship, where they feel indebted to you and eager for more information, you can bring in a sales message with tremendous results.  Your prospects will be even more primed to receive it.

A Word of Caution: While there is room with free reports to discuss diseases, it’s not an absolute safe zone. The 2-click rule is not law, just standard practice.

The FDA may conclude that the intended use of your free report is for marketing purposes – even if it is insulated – and send you one of its infamous letters about selling an unapproved drug.  You have to consider carefully the context of how you’re presenting this report, the report itself and how you use the list you build with it. Make sure that you stay heavy on the information side of things with mailings to this list.  And some companies, to play it safe, have created separate “information library” websites to further insulate their publications from being connected with their marketing activities.

Bottom line, you should always evaluate your publications with a lawyer who specializes in FDA legalities.

Please add your insights on this tricky issue below in the comments.

And if you’d like some help on developing SEO-rich content – both tip-toeing around disease claims and discussing diseases full force, keep my services in mind.  Email me at sarah@healthymarketingideas.com and we can set up a time to discuss your business, your goals and your website.

For some ideas on cost-effective marketing in addition to SEO, see my latest report, 17 Health Copywriting Tactics for a Tough Economy.

As snow piles up, my driveway is starting to shrink.  It’s becoming almost impossible to see around the snow banks at the end. 

And forget the mailbox.  Not only am I worried the postman will bypass it, but I’m not sure the snow plower will!  I’d hate to see this family-crafted work of art – spattered with 5- and 8-year-old painted renditions of suns and flowers – get smushed by the ruthless road crew.  So shovels in hands, we’ve been doing a lot of digging (good alternative to the gym).

That feeling of being hemmed in isn’t just coming from my slip of a driveway, economic reports are making us all feel like it’s hard to see an opening, let alone make it out in one piece.

So, I’m going to spend the next few newsletters covering a couple recession-marketing copywriting strategies that didn’t get enough attention in my free report, “17 Health Copywriting Strategies for a Tough Economy”  – SEO copywriting and white papers.

SEO – An Invaluable Marketing Tool That Doesn’t Cost Much

Now Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be made to sound quite complicated – and it can be.  There are numerous layers to this fine art.

But I like to see it in a more basic way.  And, with respect to copywriting, it really is.  Meet your readers where they are and talk to them in their language.

Sure we’re going for search engines, but search engines are really tuned to respond to what readers want – and do.  And good search engine optimization is not about writing for an algorithm.  It’s about using your skills of understanding how your prospects think and how they express their thoughts so you can make sure they find you.

Another way to look at it is this:  Poor SEO is like telling someone in Russian that the bathroom is to the right when they’re asking you where it is in Japanese.  They’re looking for the bathroom – just like your prospects are looking for you and your product.  But you need to make sure you can tell them in language that they recognize, “The bathroom’s right here!”  or “What you’re looking for is right here!”

SEO Copywriting Tip#1: Really Get To Know Your Prospects – Not Just Their Search Terms

In addition to tools like Wordtracker.com and Google ad words, I make good use of forums, reviews, testimonials and blogs to develop key phrases and words.  These are a good starting point.  They help me think of key word phrases to start researching that I might overlook if I didn’t get to know my prospects.  And they are end points.  They help me to see how key word phrases fit into larger thoughts and discussion of my prospects. Essential for good conversion.

SEO Copywriting Tip #2: No Matter How Much Traffic You Get, You Still Need Good Copy To Convert Them

This is critical to making SEO segue well into the second part of making your website work for you no matter what the economy is doing – conversion.  The most important factor is good copy.  No matter how much traffic you’re getting, if the pages aren’t written to convince your prospect to buy, they won’t sell.

SEO Copywriting Tip #3: Make Your Traffic Feel Like They’ve Found The Right Spot

Match the terms you use to drive the traffic to your website in a ppc ad, article link, etc. to the terms on the landing page they arrive at.  It should feel like a seemless transition for the folks who follow your signs to your lovely website.  There should be no doubt in your prospect’s mind that they came to the right place for what they’re looking for.

Tip #4:  Think Strategically About What Kind Of Traffic Your Key words/Phrases Are Bringing – Researching Or Buying?

Think about what kind of traffic you’re targeting with your search terms.  For example, simply by adding an “s” to your key words, you tend to get more research traffic than buying traffic.  Also the more specific the search phrase (the more words) usually means the traffic is closer to the buying point than the research point.  For example, “joint health” is more research,  “joint health diet book” is probably someone ready to buy such a book.

Search marketing is a great tactic for this economy – low-cost to implement and you’re really getting people when they’re looking for you.  Not pounding down their doors with your pitch.

If you’re looking for help on your search engine marketing projects – from key word research to SEO rewriting to SEO writing from scratch – consider using my services.

Stay tuned for more ideas on bringing those search engines into the marketing team.  And add your comments on this below

For more ideas on how to market during a recession, check out my free report “17 Health Copywriting Tactics for a Tough Economy”.  Get this recession marketing report right here.

True confession time – I’ve been so excited about this new tool that I seriously considered keeping it to myself and not telling anyone about it.  I felt like it was my secret weapon . . . and I couldn’t help but want to keep it close for a while.

On the other hand, I also felt so excited about it that I was bursting with the news.  And I think you’ll be pretty excited about it, too.

It’s a keyword research tool offered by some friends of one of my favorite search engine optimization go-to resources, Stompernet.  It’s called Market Samurai.

I’ll let you get to the sales page to get the full gist of what this amazing tool does.  But let me tell you how it solves one of my major problems with keyword research – researching the competition.

See, it starts out like many a keyword tool – generating a list of keywords related to your initial keyword and then telling you what the search volume is for these.  And like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, it will tell you how many websites you’re competing against.

But after these initial bits of data are listed, you can start to narrow things down easily by creating filters for search volume minimums, phrase broad match percentages, adwords values and search engine optimization competition.  BTW, if this sounds like a bunch of gibberish to you, don’t worry, they do a great job explaining the terms.  They’ve had plenty of people new to SEO use it with success (according to testimonials).

Suffice it to say, with just a few buttons you can start whittling your keyword list down very very strategically.

But then it gets even better . . . Just like the fabled ninjas, Market Samurai not only gives you a broad scope of the battlefield, but helps you to really know your opponents intimately so you can map out a stealthy plan of attack.

After you’ve honed down on a keyword, with another couple of clicks you can get a list of all the top 10 websites ranking for this phrase with an extensive evaluation of each one – looking at the age of the website, backlinks, .gov/.edu backlinks, page volume, etc.

Then it goes on to help you find sources of content for these keywords or find the best place to put content so you can develop good backlinks.

And can you believe it?! The list goes on with what it can do . . . This is a beta version but later this year they have programming coming that will hook you right into affiliate programs to monetize your site, help with adwords and a rank-tracking system.

It’s very comprehensive.

Right now, while they are still furiously updating it and working on it, Market Samurai is only a onetime fee of $149 if you get in on it while it’s in the beta stages.

That’s right.  It’s a one-time fee.  No subscription costs – none of that.  With Wordtracker you have to pay $59/month or $399 per year.  Other services have similar pricing.  This offers much more for a single low one-time fee.

Once they finish developing it and launch it for real . . . well, I’ll let you think about where the price may go . . .

I have to confess, I’ve just started using it – so I can’t vouch for the results yet.  It does have a few programming quirks.  I have to update it often since things are changing so frequently in the programming.  But the customer service has been great – even though they are all the way in Australia.  I’ve gotten email responses within a day.

But so far I’m loving it.

If you’d like to take a look at it, here’s my affiliate link to the free trial.  The free trial doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it’s a good place to start and you can move right through to purchasing the whole kit and kaboodle from this web page.

http://www.marketsamurai.com/c/sarahcla

Not only will Market Samurai help you do keyword research efficiently,  it will also help you speed up and succeed in implementing your entire SEO  battle plan.

It was almost impossible for my husband to contain his excitement Sunday. His eyes glowed and you could tell something big was up.  I got the feeling this was no ordinary Mother’s Day gift.

At his urging, we quickly put on our coats (can you believe it was in the 50′s in May?!) and followed him quietly through the woods, avoiding sticks in the path that would give us away.  Fortunately the same wind that whipped around our ears stole our noise as well.

And there – on our little pond, (which is not more than a home for goldfish and a snack stop for our local great blue heron) – they were.

Not one, but two sets of Canadian geese parents, carefully shepherding their little grey-yellow puffball gosling as they explored the waters.  Twelve in all!

Not many things could beat this for a Mother’s Day gift – two families deciding our little pond was safe for their babes.

But as the wonder of the moment began to settle, I started thinking – how did they get here? Were they hiding in the rushes in nests while we walked blithely by?

Hard to say – maybe they waddled (do geese waddle too?) through the culvert under the road and found the pond after their eggs hatched.

In any case I was both thrilled by the unexpected visitors and intrigued with what signs I may have missed over the last few weeks . . .

Hmm. Just like search engine optimization (SEO) . . .

In wildlife watching, I’ve learned that sometimes it helps to lose your center focus a bit (the way we tend to usually look at things) and let your vision widen and relax into peripheral vision.  This way you can pick up little movements around you with a wider lens.  It’s like you kind of let your eyes unfocus and your scope expands.

Tactical SEO requires doing the same thing. While it’s important to be strategic, start with a focus and a plan, you have to be prepared for the unexpected and open to opportunities you may have no clue are hiding there in the rushes, so to speak.

To find that sweet spot of keywords, you often have let your focus drift so you can see things you may not notice on the periphery.  You have to look beyond the expected and be prepared to embrace the unexpected.

Here are 3 ways to do what I mean with some concrete examples:

1. Watch your analytics.

Just like those geese, visitors you aren’t expecting often show up.  A great place to see this is in your analytics reports.  For example, you may be optimizing your site for “menopause help” but find that because you have so much content about women and hormones, you’re also getting younger women dealing with hormonal imbalance finding you through Google. Even though you weren’t originally planning on targeting this market, you may decide it’s worth pursuing further.

1. Go deep into your keyword research to find unexpected niches

Keyword research always starts with brainstorming.  And it can be very frustrating when you start with what you think is your target audience and hitting dead end after dead end . . .   Not enough traffic for this phrase . . . Too much competition for this one . . . Aarrgh!

But if you keep going, digging deeper and deeper with a good keyword research tool, you may find nuggets that you can really work with.

For example, I started a website about family fitness based on some initial promising keyword research.  But as I finessed my techniques, I realized that I was up against some tough competition with these words.  However, as I kept going with my research, I found lots of promise with specific activities that involved kids and parents.  These keyword phrases did not include “family” nor “fitness” but provided lots of opportunities for talking about how families can exercise together.  And they had solid traffic with a lot less competition.

If I hadn’t keep unpeeling the layers of keywords and looking for new angles, I might have had to slog it out with “family fitness”. Or, even worse, give up and go watch my chickens peck for ticks outside.

1. Add qualifiers to keywords that may have too much competition and turn them into longtail keyword phrases.

This last one is pretty similar to the example above. Except it doesn’t abandon the initial phrase you’re working on.  A classic example is the monster keywords “lose weight”.  Now this is a tough place to get rankings since it is such a competitive market.  However, if you qualify it a bit, you may be pleasantly surprised.  Keyword phrases like “healthy ways to lose weight” or “lose weight in the winter” will most likely have a lot less competition and may also get some good search traffic.

So if you’re hitting a dead end in keyword research, try adding some qualifiers to your phrase and see where it goes.  You may find the devil is in the details – and your success as well.

Who doesn’t love pleasant surprises, especially ones that even make you giggle and slap your forehead because they were hiding right under your nose.  Just like the two families that mysteriously appeared in our freshwater haven, keywords and the markets using them may suddenly appear in your optimization process if you relax your focused vision a bit.

The key is to be ready to take advantage of them when they show up . . . and widen your perspective sometimes so you can see them.

Enjoy discovering some great market niches!  And check out my latest favorite keyword research tool here.