Speak No Evil
Posted: Tuesday, August 10, 2010
by Grace O'Malley
If you have a mother anything like mine, I am sure you have heard enough warnings to fill a book. Do this Don't do that If you do such and such something bad will happen. There are occasional pearls of wisdom thrown out now and then during these anecdotal ramblings. Too bad as children our mind has a tendency to hear everything our parents say as blah, blah, blah and blah.
One idea that sticks in my mind is that mama always told me to use my words carefully before speaking. It looks as if a lot of mothers must have said the same thing. In direct marketing the practice of using keyword searches and anchor texts has become critical to any marketing campaign.
Those pesky techno geeks at Google now have all of us direct marketers pulling our collective hairs out. Attempting to find the THE phrase guaranteed to push our clients to the front page of search engines is a daunting task. Thanks a lot guys!
Analytic algorithms for keywords and anchor texts are best left to those with the mathematic minds to understand the complexities involved. All us neophytes need know is how to use it.
For the uninitiated, keywords and anchor texts are one to six word phrases that are repeated within a viral article, advertisement or website. The purpose of this is to help online explorers find information pertaining to their search parameters. On the surface it would seem simple enough and when first introduced it was. Again with thanks to Google and their staff, after offering John Q Public a free tool to "rank" something within the first page of an online search, simplicity soon went out the door: and hit direct marketers on the proverbial backside when it shut.
In the not too distant (two years ago) past, if a company wanted to advertise their product or service using a common word in the description, no problem. Chances are unless you paid a search engine to rank among the top one hundred search results the company would be found fairly easily.
Now it is almost impossible.
Direct marketers themselves are finding it grueling to advertise. Google the word "marketing" and 389,000,000 results are found. Direct marketing finds 49,800,000 keyword and anchor text matches. The upshot of direct marketer search is 49,900,000.
*sigh*
When attempting to find a company, service or blog that covers a particular search, the public has learned to want it instantly: and let us not forget perfectly meshed to their thought process. One and two phrase keyword searches no longer offer that kind of effortlessness.
To get the best results, online readers are required to be much more specific. Search for New York City direct marketer and the results drop to 5,940,000. Want a lesser result? Requesting New York City direct marketer agency for only 345,000 matches.
The outcome of this keyword and anchor text necessity is that direct marketers are in a position to become infinitely more creative than ever before. Businesses who hire marketing agencies will demand at least a modicum of return on monetary investment for that creativity.
The next time you find yourself looking at a form of direct marketing and wonder why the verbiage cannot be simple and straightforward, thank the staff at Google. Their mama's taught them well.
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