Product Positioning 4 Differentiation Tips

Product Positioning 4 Differentiation Tips

by: Daniel Levis

Here are 4 product positioning tips to differentiate your business.

Luckily, it’s not all that hard to stand out from the crowd, as long you realize the importance of product positioning. Positioning is the art of matching your marketing message, with the desires, feelings, & beliefs of the particular type of customer that you know you can service better than anybody else. You make yourself กvisibleก as the kind of business this individual would naturally be attracted to.

Why would I say that it’s not that hard?

Well, you really don’t have to look very far to see that effective product positioning is about as common as caviar at a McDonald’s outlet. Just look in the yellow pages, look on the net, and you’ll soon see what I mean.

It’s more of the same old same old, look at us were #1 for pricing, service & selection nonsense. It’s just meaningless drivel. Anyone can say these things & everyone does, & I ask you this.

Are you guilty of spouting these กbuy from us for no apparent reasonก platitudes? Don’t feel guilty if you are. Just take these product positioning tips to heart.

What happens when everybody in your industry says the same thing? Customers don’t know how to tell the difference between one product & another, so they make their decision based on price. And everybody loses. The customer doesn’t get the product that best fits their needs. You don’t make nearly as many sales as you could, and those that you do make, are at less margin than you would like.

Listen, if you can just get the principle that I’m about to reveal hammered into your head, you’ll have more business than you can handle, and you won’t worry about having to undercut the competition.

That sounds pretty good doesn’t it?

Here’s the secret. Just take the time to communicate, clearly, specifically, & thoroughly why you‘re different & how that difference makes a difference in your customer’s perception of his or her life. Such a simple concept, but so rare, it can’t help but differentiate you.

You see, people really don’t buy on price at all. They buy on value. If they bought a cheaper product, it’s because you didn’t demonstrate the value of yours. Admittedly, there is a certain percentage of the market that is best served by an inferior low end product, but this segment is much smaller than it appears. More often than not, people cannot differentiate, buy based on price, & live to regret it. This is a crying shame, & were not going to stand for it much longer, are we?

As you absorb this material you will become intimate with the following 4 product positioning principles that will set your business apart.

*** Unique Selling Proposition

Something unique, that you have to offer. Not necessarily entirely unique. You can appear unique by simply packaging your product or service in a unique way. For example, a lawyer, might advertise flat rate incorporation, and attract a lot of customers because the market fears the open ended legal bill. In reality, it is all of the other กback endก services that come about as a result of incorporation that generate incorporation revenues. But who do you think will end up getting more of that lucrative business, the flat rate USP savvy attorney, or Mr. Conventional?

*** Risk Reversal

Differentiate yourself with outrageously bold guarantees, that you’re competition don’t have the guts for. Most people are genuinely honest, and if your service is what you say it is, youกve got nothing to worry about. The increased sales volume will be well worth it.

*** Inordinate Value

Leverage your advertising, by offering to let complimentary businesses come along for the ride, in exchange for a free sample of their wares. Then bundle those into your offering. Cut the right deals, & your offer will appear กirresistibleก, compared to your competition.

*** Clear, Complete, & Concise Customer Education

Hereกs were most advertisers fall down, and you can stand head & shoulders above the crowd. Tell your full story. Don’t make people try to figure out on their own why they should be doing business with you. Spell it out for them.

Spend some time thinking deeply about these product positioning ideas, and how you can use them to your advantage. Your market share is predicated on how well you assimilate them, & apply them to the promotion of your business.

Copyright 2005 Daniel Levis

About The Author

Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto Canada. Recently, Daniel & worldrenowned publicist & copywriter Joe Vitale teamed up to co author ขMillion Dollar Online Advertising Strategies – From The Greatest Letter Writer Of The 20th Century!ข, a tribute to the late, great Robert Collier.

Let the legendary Robert Collier show you how to write words that sell…Visit the below site & get 3 FREE Chapters!

http://www.AdvertisingOnlineStrategies.com/adstrategies.html

This article was posted on February 26

by Daniel Levis

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website Step 10: T

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website Step 10: The Extras

by: Dave Davies

Welcome to part ten in this search engine positioning series. Over the past nine weeks we have covered the nine fundamental steps to a proper search engine positioning campaign. From choosing keywords and writing content to optimizing your pages and building quality links we have covered the required steps to attaining solid rankings that will last. In part ten we will cover the extras.

The extras consist of tips, tools and resources that you will want to use to keep you on the cutting edge of who’s who and what’s what in the search engine positioning arena.

Over this series we have covered the ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Have Gone Through Are:

Keyword Selection (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/searchenginepositioning/keywords.htm)

Content Creation (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/searchenginepositioning/content.htm)

Site Structure (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/searchenginepositioning/structure.htm)

Optimization (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/searchenginepositioning/optimization.htm)

Internal Linking (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/searchenginepositioning/internallinking.htm)

Human Testing (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/searchenginepositioning/humantesting.htm)

Submissions (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/searchenginepositioning/submissions.htm)

Link Building (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/linkbuilding/linkbuilding.htm)

Monitoring (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/searchenginepositioning/monitoring.htm)

The Extras

Step Ten – The Extras

The first nine steps in this series cover the true nutsandbolts of a solid SEO campaign. These are the crucial steps you need to take to attain top rankings that will stick. That said … there are ขthe extrasข, the icing on the SEOcake sotospeak. Those little things that will bump you up from number 4 to number 2, or help you hold your positioning through an algorithm change.

Some of these things have been touched on in previous articles while others are completely new. Either way, these are the things that will give you that little oneup over other ethical SEO’s who know their stuff.

Tools

One of the most important advantages you can gain over your competition comes from the tools you use and more importantly, how you use them. Some people blindly follow the advice given to them from socalled ขSEOsoftwareข. This is never the right decision. Taking the information these good tools can provide, and knowing how to turn that information into advantage is the key.

Here are the tools that many successful SEOs use to build solid rankings for their clients and why:

Top Optimizer Pro (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/resources/recommended/top.htm)

I’ve noted this one in the article on link building and it’s definitely worth mentioning again. Never before have I found a tool that can tear apart your competition so thoroughly for such an affordable price and in such an easytounderstand manner.

This tool with take a look at the top 10 for a search phrase, and give you:

their position

their PageRank

their Alexa rank

the total number of backlinks to their site as seen by Google

the number of their site pages indexed by Google

their keyword density for the targeted phrase

their title

their H1 tag

This is the overview it gives you. You can then select one of the sites and view more detail including:

the backlink URL

the backlink domain

the IP address of the backlink

the PageRank of the backlink from that page

the specific anchor text use for that backlink (or a note whether it was an image)

the title of the page linking back

the Alexa rating of the page linking back

the top three keyword focusก of the page linking back

the number of links pointing to that page

the number of outbound links from that page

Right below that there is access to a breakdown of the sites backlink’s that gives a summary of:

the specific anchor text, the number of times that anchor text was used, and the percentage this represents of the total backlinks counted

where these links come from. This will give you great information as to how many of these links are coming from the same domain, which is generally accepted in the SEO community as holding less weight than the same number of links from different domains

a PageRank breakdown of all the links

At $247 from TopNet Solutions it’s a bit pricey but worth every penny if you only use it on one campaign.

PR Prowler (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/resources/recommended/prprowler.htm)

A necessity for any search engine positioning campaign that requires link building. This tool, also developed by TopNet Solutions, doesn’t do all the fancy things that Top Optimizer Pro does however it does do one thing VERY well – it’s seeks out quality relevant link partners with high PageRanks.

If you’re not in a competitive industry and you just want to save time on link building (and I do mean a LOT of time) this tool will do it for you. You simply set it to find links based on specified search phrase(s) and with a minimum PageRank. You can search for up to 1000 links at a time. Simply start the tool and continue on with other work or go to bed while it’s working for you. Come back and you’ve got some great leads and the best part is, it’s weeded out all the duds so your efforts are focused only on the links that will most benefit your site.

This tool has taken campaigns that would have required many hundreds of links to a point where the same effect can often be realized with 50 and in a fraction of the time spent.

FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/)

While this isn’t exactly an SEO tool perse it makes researching and optimizing much faster and more convenient. FireFox is a browser (read: Internet Explorer replacement) that has MANY features that make it more convenient.

I like the tabbed browsing (moving between multiple pages through the use of tabs on one browser screen), the username and password ability is far better and more advanced than Internet Explorer’s and it’s far more secure than the more popular Microsoft product. It blocks popups and spyware just isn’t written for it.

I will admit that for the first few hours I was trying it out I found it a bit more difficult to use but once you realize how much more powerful it can be and that the difficult arises from the instinct to make the task more difficult by doing it the way you would have with IE, you’ll never want to switch back. The next time you’ve got 5 IE windows open to various search engines, another for WordTracker and a couple more to various other pages think of FireFox and you’re world will be made easier. It’s a free download.

You can read more on the advantages of the FireFox browser in a search engine positioning article written by ISEDB Editor Jim Hedger at http://www.isedb.com/news/article/1062.

Search Status (http://quirk.co.za/searchstatus/)

A tool developed for FireFox users giving them access to the Google Toolbar and Alexa Rankings. It can be downloaded and installed free of charge.

A big thanks to developer Craig Raw for a great tool, free of charge, for those of us who want to use something that isn’t powered by Microsoft and that has all the advantages of the FireFox browser.

WebAlerts (https://www.google.com/alerts/signin?hl=en)

You’re doing your linkbuilding, you’re writing articles, or you just want to see what others’ are saying about you. Do you really want to run searches for yourself and for your articles every few days?

Set up a Google WebAlert for a phrase from an article you’ve written, for your company name, for your competitors and/or for a phrase from the description you’re using in your link exchanges and let the most powerful servers in the world do the work for you.

Beanstalk On Tools …

There are definitely some very useful tools out there as noted above. What must be understood is that these tools alone won’t get you the top rankings any more than a map will guarantee you a good vacation if you don’t know how to read it and you don’t know where you want to go.

The single most important thing anyone hoping to attain (and maintain) top positioning on the search engines can do is to keep himself or herself educated. While we noted a few great resources in the last article on monitoring here are some of the key resources I uses to keep uptodate on what’s going on the in SEO world.

Search Engines

This is definitely the most obvious. Run periodic if not daily searches on your keyword phrases and a few others. Don’t just look for your rankings but look at who’s in the top positions and look at their sites and who’s linking to them. Watch for changes and look for what’s different in the sites that are now on top.

Don’t kill yourself trying to figure out every single engine. Google, Yahoo! and MSN are the three biggest and just following these three is more than enough work. Generally I’ve found that meeting the requirements of these three will generally result in solid rankings on most of the other ขsecondaryข engines.

Forums

I can’t speak highly enough about forums. When you’re looking for uptodate information this is where to go. The challenge on forums however is in deciding who knows what they’re talking about and who doesn’t. Further, you’ll need to be able to figure out which members follow your code of ethics when it comes to SEO. Business owners seeking longterm rankings with minimal maintenance should not be taking advice from Blackhat SEOs.

I mentioned a few forums on the last article. A few additional forums worth watching are:

Search Engine Watch Forums (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/) – There’s not much to say about this one except that it’s a mustsee. Tons of great information, many members so a wide variety of opinions to draw from.

IHelpYou Forums (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/) – Managed by SEO Doug Heil this is an interesting one. While I can’t say I agree with everything Doug has to say I will give him credit for ethics. If you want to make sure your tactics are squeakyclean then here’s where to get advice. My recommendation: take the info with a grain of salt. Doug tends to occasionally make blanket rulings on tactics that have their place however if you go in knowing this he can be a great source of some solid information.

High Rankings Forums (http://www.highrankings.com/forum/) – Managed by SEO Jill Whalen, this one has some great discussions. Sticking with my belief in giving credit where it’s due I have to advise to pay attention to what Jill says. She knows her stuff and while she definitely falls into the category of whitehat SEOs, she’s willing to discuss a variety of tactics, their merits, and judge them based on their use and worth. Open and honest discussion – that’s what forums are about. Mentioned last week but worth mentioning twice.

The other forums mentioned last week were:

Web Pro World (http://www.webproworld.com/forum.php)

SEO Chat (http://forums.seochat.com/)

Search Guild (http://www.searchguild.com/)

Li’l Engine (http://forums.lilengine.com/)

Conclusion

So here we are, the end of it all. 17,000 words read (thank you) and, if you’ve been following the program, many MANY hours spent optimizing your website.

Will it be worth it? If you have followed these steps, keep yourself updated on changes, and keep working on building your links, creating quality content, and insuring that you’re always putting in 10% more than your competitors then it certainly should be.

I would like to take a moment to thank those of you who have worked through these past ten articles and to wish you the very best of luck in your online promotions. As always, you are welcome to contact me with any questions you might have. Our goal in this series has been to provide you with the information and the resources to do it. I hope we have done just that.

About The Author

Dave Davies and Beanstalk (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/) offer guaranteed search engine positioning. He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 30, 2004

by Dave Davies

PowerPositioning: WillYouAcceptThisRose.com

PowerPositioning: WillYouAcceptThisRose.com

by: Peter Andersen

Positioning is a powerful concept in marketing. To illustrate, have you ever visited a fast food restaurant, and, in a rush to complete your order asked for a coke when you กperhapsก meant to order some other soft drink? The Coke brand and its owners have achieved a top of mind awareness. Their brand name has become synonymous with a commodity that has a strong demand. A lot the brandกs success may be attributed to being the first successful soft drink on the mass market, other possibilities may be due to their perpetual multimillion dollar global marketing campaigns that span lifetimes as well as cultures. Whatever the cause, the Coke brand has a very successful & fortified position.

Another example of a strong positioning statement that achieves a great top of mind awareness is Verizonกs กCan you Hear Me Nowก campaign. How many times have you uttered those exact words, sometimes even consciously, when the person the other end of the tele has a low signal. In most cases, what follows are expressed or unexpressed images about the กCan You Hear Me Now Guy.ก

Good marketers know the power of a strong positioning statement. With strong positioning, it is nearly impossible to be outpaced by the competition using moderate marketing dollars alone. Furthermore, there are cases where product owners with seemingly unlimited/ multimillion dollar marketing budgets were unsuccessful at winning significant marketshare against a product with an established position. In fact, given a strong position that is known by the market, the competition is better off not competing on your terms, because the consumer already intuitively associates your brand with the commodity and has successfully filed you away in their mental filing cabinets as occupying that กspot.ก Therefore, marketing communications that are contrary to the consumerกs product knowledge are challenged or unconsciously blocked/denied by the mind.

Now, having demonstrated the power of a strong positioning statement, Will You Accept This Rose? Logon to see an interactive demonstration of how positioning can help you achieve the coveted ‘topofmind.ก http://www.WillYouAcceptThisRose.com

Power Positioning Exercise: Can you think of a few virallike positions (intentional or not) that help reinforce Mountain Dewกs Code Red brand? Hint: One deals with extreme heat/humidity advisories within U.S. Cities & States that have extreme summer temperatures.

About The Author

For more tips subcribe to our newsletter today.

Focused Impact Media Group specializes in integrated marketing communications. We are skilled at optimizing results by coordinating multiple communication channels into a highly focusedimpact that enhances brand identity, positioning and market awareness. For more information visit: http://www.focusedimpact.com.

(c) 2000 2003. Focused Impact Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

Reprint rights: This article may be reprinted with all above copy intact.

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 20, 2003

by Peter Andersen

Positioning For Success:

Positioning For Success:

by: Ed Newman

According to military historian David Chandler the campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte consistently rose above the expected. For more than 20 years Napoleon showed genius and skill as a general on the field of battle.

To what did Chandler attribute Napoleon’s great string of successes? First, he was a master of translating theory into action. And second, in addition to being a man of action Napoleon was not concerned about being original. He borrowed from history, developing and perfecting the ideas of others.

Napoleon made no secret of this secret of his success. ขRead and meditate upon the wars of the great captains,ข said he. ‘this is the only means of learning the art of war.ก

Success in marketing is precisely the same. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, the chariot, or the smart bomb. Marketing successes and failures are well documented. Books on marketing are abundant. Those who read them, and learn what is valuable through trial and error, action and evaluation, will become increasingly powerful.

THE SEARCH FOR SILVER BULLETS

In my two decades of experience thinking about marketing related problems, a number of observations have impressed themselves upon me so that they have now become personal marketing principles. Among these I include the well worn maxim, ขThere are no silver bullets.ข

I know that a lot of business people wish there were indeed a silver bullet, a top secret marketing tip that they might be privy to. This would help them find relief from having to do any further homework, any further study or thinking or work.

When you stop and think about it, virtuosity in any endeavor is the result of a hours of practice, preparation and sweat equity. Some people have natural abilities, but unless sharpened and honed the most gifted musician, athlete or sales professional will falter. Applying oneself to think from a marketing point of view is not natural to many of us. It is a skill, however, that we can learn.

Unfortunately, most books on marketing are an attempt to chronicle universal truths that apply to all businesses. They do not and can not necessarily address all the particulars of our specific situations. Each of us in a different set of circumstances. Thus we must each do our own homework to think through how this principle applies to one’s unique place.

Rod Johnson, Director of Marketing & Business Development at Eventis Telecom, once observed that successful people do the things that are necessary, not just the things that are enjoyable. ขIt is interesting,ข said Johnson, ขthat by doing these necessary things routinely and developing skills in those areas, they become enjoyable or at least not unpleasant.ข

So it is with finding business and marketing solutions. We must invest time to think, to gather information, and do our homework.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

ขIf we would first know where we are, and whither we are tending,ข Abraham Lincoln once said, ขwe could better judge what to do and how to do it.ข This is a requirement in our business planning today as well.

Too often we simply blunder forward without a plan. Many people have found early success simply on the sheer force of their personalities. Eventually, without a plan they will come up against a wall or end up in a corner.

Lincoln observed that we need to have a clear understanding of where we are first, before we act. A lot of money is wasted in advertising because we do not take the time to figure out what is really happening. By this I mean, what is our situation? Who are our customers? What is their opinion, if any, of our products and services? Who are our competitors and how are we perceived in relation to these competitors?

In short, our business exists within a context which includes both the market and our overarching business strategy.

POSITIONING FOR SUCCESS

Positioning begins with establishing an identity. The concept is easily understood when you look at examples. McDonalds and Bellisio’s have created two very different identities in the Duluth eatery market. Is one right and one wrong? Absolutely not. Each has targeted a different consumer niche. McDonalds is fast food with no surprises, the same burgers that you get it in Ohio or Michigan or South Carolina. By way of contrast, from the wine racks to the menu selection Bellisio’s speaks to a different class of consumer.

Positioning is more than branding. When you think of McDonalds you not only have golden arches in your head, but you have a product and experience as well. Getting the name Bellisio’s into the market means nothing unless there is also an association made with the identity.

Al Ries and Jack Trout, authors of Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, talk about capturing the mind of one’s prospects. One can hardly talk about this subject without tipping the hat to the two men who popularized this concept (and claim to have invented it, thereby positioning themselves as the ultimate authorities.) The book is an easy read, and widely recommended, with anecdotes and case histories that bring clarity to the key idea.

SUMMING UP

Advertising, like any investment, involves risk. There are no silver bullet universal truths that eliminate the need for strategic thinking. That is, even the best marketing concept requires that we think through how it applies to our specific situation, our specific market. This homework is foundational to our success.

Knowing who we are is not the end of the matter. Do our products or services have value in the market? Do they meet a need? Once we have determined who we are and what we have to offer, we must find the most effective means of communicating this message to those who need our goods and services.

I once attended a direct mail seminar in which the speaker stated that 95% of all mistakes occur before the pen hits the paper. Understanding who we are and who are customers are will help us craft promotional messages that are targeted to connect with the right hearers, achieving the results we seek. We can never eliminate risk entirely. But we can certainly improve our odds.

####

About The Author

Ed Newman is Marketing and Advertising Manager for AMSOIL INC., the world’s largest independent manufacturer of synthetic motor oils. He has published more than 200 articles in a variety range of publications.

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 23, 2004

by Ed Newman

SEO & Competition Analysis – Part One

SEO & Competition Analysis – Part One

by: Dave Davies

Analyzing your competition should be the second step taken during the SEO process (right after and sometimes even during keyword selection). Looking at what and how your competition have positioned their website where you want yours to be placed will lend great insight into how to get yours there.

The above statement should not be taken as meaning that early in the campaign is the only time that competition analysis is important. Once you are holding a top position your competition will undoubtedly renew their efforts to take back what you have replaced. Competition analysis is a step that must be taken to find out what you need to do to take a top position but which also should be performed periodically to detect your competitor’s efforts to take back ขtheirข former positions.

In this article we will cover onsite factors which must be considered and in part two we will cover external factor analysis including incoming links, anchor text, PageRank, etc.

Onsite Factors

Onsite factors of your website are the easiest to address as they are factors which are under your complete control. You have the power to change anything within your site from the content, internal linking structure, and even the design structure itself.

Key onsite factors that must be considered in competition analysis are:

Titles and meta tags

Keyword density and content

Special formats and positioning

There are many tools that are available to help you determine what the optimal levels are. Generally these are knows as KDA (Keyword Density Analysis) tools. Of all of them there is one that we use at Beanstalk that we have found provides better, more accurate information than the others and that is Total Optimizer Pro by TopNet Solutions (www.beanstalkinc.com/resources/recommended/top.htm). The reason we chose this one above the others is twofold. First, it provides very easy to read and thorough information that can be analyzed quickly and second, they have built in tools to analyze offsite factors to a level that don’t exist in other software. Essentially this means for you that a single tool can basically give you the recipe you will need to take and hold your position in the top ten.

Title And Meta Tags

While meta tags definitely don’t hold the weight they once did they are certainly worth adding to your site given that they take seconds to add. Titles on the other hand hold significant weight and must be created carefully to insure that they hold maximum SEO effectiveness and also that they appeal to the searchers.

In analyzing the titles and meta tags essentially you are looking for the optimal keyword density of those tags. A KDA tool will let you know what percentage of your competitions tags are made up of the targeted keywords. A good KDA tool will also display the range or average of percentages. Due to their low weight, meta tags don’t have to be given quite the attention that titles do. When you are optimizing your titles you will want to insure that you fall somewhere near the middle of the pack. Hopefully in your industry, the top ten sites have relatively close percentages in which case it is easy to determine what the optimal percentage is, however assuming that they don’t, you will want to gear your title tag to something that falls in the upper end of the range (though not over) of densities and also keep that title interesting to the searcher who will see it as the link to your site in the search results.

Google at least and probably the other major engines as well have or will be adding into the ranking algorithm a function that records the number of times a specific link is clicked when it appears in the results. If your site appears in the top of the results but is not click at a rate that is acceptable for that position your website will slip. Like any other marketing tool, your title tag is the gateway from the search engine results to your website: insure you’ve created an attractive welcome mat.

Keyword Density And Content

There has been much discussion over the years as to whether there even is an optimal keyword density or whether density even matters. While there are intelligent SEO’s out there who would disagree, the entire debate seems obvious to us at least. If the search engines are looking at onsite factors at all (which they are) and looking for relevancy then it naturally follows that there is a percentage of your content that can consist of the targeted keywords and indicate to the engines that your site is relevant for a given phrase.

That said, and like the titles, it is not about cramming in keywords anywhere to boost the density in your content. Using a KDA tool to find the optimal density for your industry will give you a good idea of any content changes you may need to make. From here you will want to look at two additional areas of your competitors sites. One which you can get from an advances KDA tool such as Total Optimizer Pro and the other you can get right from the engines themselves. Which brings us to …

Special Formats And Positioning

Special formats will be considered content elements such as bold, colors, anchor text, or any other content characteristics that sets specific text out as different when a search engine is spidering your site. Positioning refers to the position of the keywords in relation to the entire content on a given page. Aside from this type of positioning there is also the consideration of how the content and keywords are positioned relative to the code of the page (and sometimes these can be two very different things). This topic was touched on in a past article on table structures (www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/sefriendlydesign/tablestructure.htm) and will be covered in a future miniseries on W3C complaint and search engine friendly design, to be published in September.

Special formats such as bold, colors, italics, highlights, etc. set specific content aside as more important than the rest. The use of these formats, provided that it is done correctly, can not only help improve that rankings of your website for specific phrases but can also enhance the usability of your website in general by drawing the human eye to key content. This is not to say that you should bold, highlight and color every instance of your targeted phrase but rather use these elements to draw the eye to the key content you are most interested in getting read.

With positioning the job is a bit more difficult to assess. One of the best ways to quickly isolate how your competitors have used special formats and where they have positioned there keywords in relation to the entire page is to simply run a search for the phrases on Google and view the cache of the page. The keywords will be highlighted in a variety of colors and will allow you to quickly glance through their page and isolate what special elements they are using and where they have positioned their keywords on the page. You will want to do this for the top 10 competitors.

Conclusion

As with any competition, if you understand what those who have what you want are doing it becomes a matter of doing the same and then adding 10% to your efforts. In the case of onsite optimization you’ll simply want to duplicate the best of the top ten, in part two on external factors you will be doing the 10% more.

About The Author

Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning Inc (www.beanstalkinc.com/). Beanstalk is a guaranteed SEO firm that insures top positioning on the major search engines. Beanstalk would like to thank Shawn and all the folks at TopNet Solutions for seeking and taking our advice when adding their newest onsite factor analysis enhancements to Total Optimizer Pro (www.beanstalkinc.com/resources/recommended/top.htm).

This article was posted on September 08

by Dave Davies