I use Google’s keyword tool because other keyword tools require you to sign up as a member or limit the number of searches you can do. But there are many tools out there for you to choose from.

How to use the keyword tool

1. Before you go to the keyword tool, make a list of words that your customers might use to find your products or services
2. Now, go to the Google keyword tool and enter your search terms into the box Word or Phrase– you can add as many terms as you would like. I will add up to 10 terms before I begin searching.
3. Next select a region. This can be a little deceiving because the local search is actually on a national level – so you are not getting Ontario or Toronto trends but you are getting Canadian trends.
4. Then: select whether you want to search for broad, phrase or exact results. I’ve given you a little more detail below as to the advantages of using each level.
5. A quick tip: Consider adding a geographic location with the search – if you’re searching for “web copywriting”, search “web copywriting Toronto” or “web writing Oakville.” While we live in a global economy, people still search locally for products and services.

Different levels in search

On the left hand side of the Google keyword tool URL, you’ll see the words Match Type. Match type allows you to select the level of search that you would like to perform.

The broad search gives you search results at the widest level of search. Broad search returns the “sum of the volumes for a keyword idea.” The results generated pick up terms that do not “match” directly to the terms you have searched but have a relation to the terms at a broad, conceptual level. For example, in searching today for Boards of Directors and governance, the term leadership displayed in the results. This makes sense because leadership is one of the roles for Boards of Directors.

Using the broad search is a way to generate related keyword terms and other key words and phrases that you might not have thought about.

The phrase match gives you the “sum of the results for all searches that include the whole search phrase.”  These results show search volumes for your terms as part of a longer query (more words). These results are a more accurate reflection of the number of times per month your terms are searched in Google.

The exact match result gives you ”the search volume for that exact keyword.” An exact match result gives you the closest result to the monthly searches.

Record your keyword results. Determine which terms best describe your product or service, are used most frequently and then compare them with how your clients speak about your products and services.

Now What?

Once you have identified words and phrases that return good search engine results in your region, you can now incorporate those keywords into your titles, web copy, alternative text and images. If you’ve written your copy, review it and incorporate your new keywords.

Keywords play an important role in website and blogging. And Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a free online tool to help you start your keyword research. My last word of advice is: make sure your content still offers plenty of interesting, original content. Being found is only one piece of the search engine optimization puzzle. The other important piece is to keep your readers through compelling, informative content.

Are you using keywords? A keyword tool? Do you have a strategy? And are you happy with the results?

Cross-posted at Go WordPress

Here’s a copy of my Creating remarkable copy – one WordPress website at a time presentation. Make sure you leave any questions or comments.

Cross-posted at Go WordPress.

Feedburner is a Google service for bloggers or anyone who publishes content online. Feedburner delivers your new posts and updates to your subscribers via email or via Google Reader (or other readers).  Feedburner provides another way to share your content with your community.

What is an RSS feed?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a way to let your subscribers know that you have fresh content on your blog.RSS feeds can be emailed to your subscribers or delivered to their readers. That way they can enjoy your content their way and in their time. Here’s a great explanation of how RSS feeds work.

How do I burn a feed?

(NOTE: This post was first published on the Go WordPress blog. The feed example for this post related to burning a feed for Go WordPress)
First you need a Google account.  Once you’ve logged in, go to Google Feedburner. At the welcome  page, you’ll be invited to burn a feed.

1. Begin by selecting your Feed’s Title.  We chose GoWP – Toronto WordPress Workshops for our Feed Title.
2. Enter your blog’s address and add the extension /feed -> so that your URL looks like this: http://yourdomain.com/feed
3. You claim your feed by clicking the Next button at the bottom left of the welcome page.
4. You’ll be congratulated for successfully burning a feed and you should see the address of your feed. GoWP’s URL for its feed is:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/gowp
5. Next, you be invited to Optimize (enhance Feedburner services), Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshootize.
6. In the Optimize tab, in the sidebar, make sure that there is a checkmark beside the BrowserFriendly option (ensures readability across all browsers). If it isn’t ticked, click on it and then enable the browser friendly option.
7. In Optimize we also recommend that you subscribe to Smartfeed. Smartfeed consolidates your subscription links into one feed that works in any reader, on the desktop, web, mobile devices and beyond. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Smartfeed. And on the page, click to enable Smartfeed.
8. You can explore monetize, publicize and troubleshootize. These are extra features that you can choose to enable but are not necessary for a successful feed.
9. To verify all your feed details, look below your Feed title and click on edit feed details. This is what you should see:
10. Now add a widget to your website (you have a few options). You can have an RSS icon linked from a social media widget. You could have a follow button for Feedburner or you could use the Feedburner
11. Into one of these options you should insert feeds: feeds.feedburner.com/goWP. Replace goWP with your Feed name.

Now it’s your turn to burn your feed. Questions or comments? Leave me a comment or question.

This post, originally posted on the Go WordPress blog, has been lightly edited here.

What do I mean by keywords?

Keywords are those words and phrases that searchers use to search for your products and services. You want to use these keywords within your site or blog because this is one important way that Google will determine the “match” or “relevancy” of your site content and your searchers’ query.

How does Google determine your site’s content?

Google spiders and other search engine crawlers constantly crawl the web indexing and collecting information about “what’s out on the web.” As spiders crawl your site, they are reading your content looking for signs of what your site is about. Once the search engines have collected this data, they match searches with relevant sites. So the words and phrases that you use – your keywords – and the way that you use them can help provide good signals to search engines. Your website has a better chance of showing up well in search engine results.

Tactics & Tools to uncover your keywords

1. Google Adsense Keyword Tool

With this tool, you can determine search volume at three different levels (broad, phrase and exact), search volumes for your region in particular (to the country level in this tool) and the level of competition for your keywords.

2. Google Suggest

Use your search box to uncover related and new terms as you type into the search function on Google. Let’s say that your search term is management training. As you type in management, Google will generate other possibilities (and I suspect what others are searching). As you type in your second word, Google will return other suggestions.  I’ve listed a Matt Cutts post at the end of this article if you would like to learn more.

3. Google Insights for Search

Google Insights is a tool that helps you identify trends in searches and search volumes. You can also compare search terms with Google Insights. Google Insights also allows you to search at the state or provincial level which is important for a “locally-based” service or product.

4. Ask your existing client base about keywords and phrases

Conduct a straw poll with your existing client base. What terms did they (or would they) use to find the services and products that you offer? Identifying and using the terms that your clients use will result in targeted search results. 

And now?

If you want to enhance your site’s visibility in search, you need to incorporate the words, phrases and terms (we call them keywords) your searcher’s use to find you, throughout your site.

Try testing the tools that I have linked to below. Find the keywords your searchers use. And use them throughout your site.  Don’t expect instant results in Google or any other search engine – this is unrealistic. But over time, keywords are one tactic to improve your search engine results.

And leave a comment if you have other tactics that help in keyword research. Thanks!

Links to Related Posts

• Google Keyword Tool
• Google Insights for Search
• Matt Cutts on Google Suggest

Photo Credit: Stock image courtesy of

Cross-posted today on the Go WordPress blog.

Mobile Marketer  and Google’s howtogomo.com (link is further down the post) offer some convincing stats on mobile usage in 2011 and mobile’s growth. You’ll find these stats among others on Mobile Marketers’ website.

Mobile Stats 2011

• Mobile social media
• 166 percent increase in Facebook Mobile users in the first half of 2011
• 103 million wireless tweets were posted each day
• 1 billion foursquare check-ins
• Mobile commerce sales 
• Predicted to reach $6.7 billion in 2011 – a 91.4% increase over 2010
• In 2012, sales will rise another 73.1% to $11.6 billion
• Mobile email  
• Open rates increased 34% in 6 months during 2011
• Open rates on iPads jumped 73%
• Mobile video  
• Consumers are spending 29 percent more time watching videos on their mobile devices

Easy and not-so-easy ways to make your website mobile friendly

1. Begin by assessing your website with Google’s How to Go Mo Initiative

Test your site for important mobile features on the GoMo Meter. This test will assess your

• Website Page load speed (should be less than 5 seconds)
• Images’ and how they appear on mobile
• Text and whether it can be read without pinching or magnifying
• Website buttons and if they are thumb friendly?)

You can take the test at Google’s How To Go Mo. 

2.  Install a WordPress Mobile Plugin

There are several plugins that you can use to adapt your WordPress website to mobile. Adding a WordPress plugin is the easiest solution to solving your mobile-unfriendly site. Here are a few options for plugins.

1. WPTouch: This plugin is the cadillac plugin for mobile. I use it on my site.  I use the WPTouch Pro version of the plugin. Prior to installing it, I was using the free version and it was giving me some difficulty. Read about WPTouch here.
2. Mobile Press: Read about it here.But WordPress.org reports that it is only compatible to version 2.8.6. I know it is being used for sites updated past 3.0
3. WP Mobile Detector: Read about it here
4. WordPress Mobile Pack: Read about it here.

3.  Take a Mobile Site Build Workshop

Another option for you is to take a course on how to build a mobile site. This course is for those of you (and perhaps not me) who are comfortable in the website development world or who are familiarizing themselves with WordPress web development. I know of one course offering in the Toronto area. Ladies Learning Code teach a weekend day class. A colleague wrote about her experience in this post.

So if 2012 is the year of Mobile, do you plan on doing anything about it?

Photo Credit for top image: Flickr – Langwitches.  Smaller stock image courtesy of Pond5.

Listening to Matt speak last night and then doing a little bit of reading about WordPress this morning, I’m reminded again about why I love WordPress (and I’m not even going to mention all the business benefits – too many to add to this post). Here’s some of the reasons I love WordPress:

WordPress is community based – For the community, by the community

The WordPress community ascribes to cooperation.  Quoting WordPress.org:

“Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee and a number of other important freedoms.

The WordPress Toronto community is a natural extension of WordPress worldwide. The photo that you see here is courtesy of a WordPress blogger that I met at WordCamp 2009 and see at WordPress events. Willingly and freely given.

WordPress equalises the world of publishing

As Matt pointed out to us last night, WordPress has contributed to the democratization of publishing – in other words – the little company or solopreneurs has an equally elegant and powerful platform from which to publish content to the world. The publishing playing field has been leveled.

WordPress embodies the entrepreneurial spirit

The founders saw a need (as entrepreneurs do) and sought to fulfill it. WordPress “started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing” (WordPress.org). By December 2011, WordPress 3.0 has been downloaded over 65 million times.  

WordPress empowers people

Open source, free, fully available and accessible to those of us who are not coders and web developers.  WordPress has opened the web world to writers and given them a platform from which to publish without the need of web techno geek knowledge.

I love you, WordPress. Can I really say that online?

Lastly, a shout-out to the Toronto WordPress MeetUp group. I appreciate you all. You embraced a simple end-user like me, entertained my (sometimes) silly, uninformed questions and treated me like an equal player in the WordPress arena.

How I use Dropbox

• Cloud Backup for my website files: I use a WordPress plugin for backing up my website files called BackupBuddy.  By syncing it to Dropbox, I have a complete copy of my website files in case something goes wrong with my server or my website.
•  I also use Dropbox to share files with clients and family and friends. It’s a convenient way to share information, files and documents without email (and we’re all in email overload, aren’t we?).

Why I like Dropbox:

• Once you drop a file into Dropbox, it will show up almost immediately on another computer that has Dropbox installed.
• Dropbox apps are available for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry.
• You can access your files from your account on the Dropbox website too.
• No need for multiple emails about web content development. You can DROP your web content files into a Dropbox file that we’ll create and share.

Join Dropbox

Send me an email ~ dawn@dawncomber.com and I’ll return an email invite. Using this method, we will both be rewarded with 250 MB of bonus space on our account.

Or if you’re in a hurry, you can just go to Dropbox.com and sign up there.

11 Steps to Dropbox heaven

1. Install Dropbox on your computer (it’s a free download) (and you can take the Dropbox tour too)
2. Create an account (You’ll be prompted to do this during installation. You’ll also see a new icon Dropbox adds to your desktop and the bottom right of your taskbar.)
3. When the installation is complete, click the taskbar icon and then select launch Dropbox website. You’ll be brought to a page with file tabs at the top of the page
4. If you don’t see these tabs, you may not be logged in. To proceed, you have to log into your account
5. For the thorough step-by-step folks: select the Getting Started tab and go through the steps to ensure that you’ve done everything to make your Dropbox service work for you.
6. For those who don’t want the step-by-step: If you want to skip the Getting Started tab, create a folder. Give your folder a clear, meaningful name. If you plan to use this file with me, use your business name or your name to the folder.  
7. Hover your mouse over the new folder and you will see a little arrow appear on the right side. Click on the arrow and a drop down list will appear. From the list select invite to folder.
8. Click invite to folder and a share window will popup.
9. Enter the email addresses of those you want to share the folder with. Send a note with the email to give more info to the email recipient.
10. If you’re sharing with me, include my address on your email list (dawn@dawncomber.com).  I’ll receive a notification that you’ve invited me to share your folder.
11. When I accept your invitation, I’ll have access to the folder and we can begin sharing!

If you want to start sharing with me, don’t forget to send me an email at dawn@dawncomber.com

Not quite clear enough? Watch this Dropbox in plain English video.

Like my image? It’s a stock photo courtesy of .

According to the psfk blog, the idea was imagined by an agency in Stockholm and approved by the government. The goal is to increase tourism in Sweden by enriching Sweden’s ‘personality’ through different perspectives.

As a creative director of the agency in Stockholm said, “What we’ve done instead is said; all people living in Sweden are in essence ‘Sweden’ so they’re a good representation. So together the total of us give a multifaceted view of what Sweden is all about and very personal – high and low, funny and stupid, intelligent, stupid, funny, quirky.”

This initiative is brilliant for several reasons.

1. The initiative epitomizes the ethos of social media. Tweeting by everyday people will make the @Sweden account more social, personal and interactive.
2. The initiative is a grassroots approach. The government is willing to let any ordinary citizen have a say about “their” Sweden.
3. The initiative will make tweets more personal – and therefore add a personal feel to learning about Sweden. Having everyday people tweet whatever they want to about ‘their Sweden’ is more likely to bring a more personal and “real” feel to the tweets.
4. The initiative may produce more entertaining tweets and more attention. People search the web for information and entertainment. How many entertaining videos went viral last year? Remember the one about the dog owner torturing his dog with amazing food he wasn’t sharing?

It is a bold and risky move to hand over branding to your population, or is it? I no longer think it is risky because a move such as this harnesses the power and appeal of social media and acknowledges that some elements of branding are a direct result of customers, clients and anyone who interacts with you.

What do you think about Sweden’s experiment? Would you be willing to hand over your Twitter account? Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

If you are interested in the Globe and Mail article, you can read it here.

If you found this post interesting, you might want to check out:

• Blogging and Social Media
• Social Media and Social Activism
• Camping Social Media Style 

Like my image? It’s a stock photo courtesy of .

But that principle doesn’t apply on the web. First impressions are central to making and keeping website visitors.

So how do you write web copy that will make that great first impression? How do you make it magnetic? Whether you’re blogging or creating static content for your website, here’s a web copy manifesto that will ensure that you don’t worry about first impressions:

1. Short sentences without extra clauses
2. One main point per sentence
3. Short paragraphs (sometimes even one sentence – breaking traditional grammar rules)
4. Chunking/segmenting – including several sub-headings. This helps your readers scan and find the pertinent information that they are looking for.
5. Bullet points – a great technique that enables scanning – it’s like reading down a list without extra verbiage in it (like phrases and all that extra stuff that make up sentences)
6. Bolding or italicizing – this makes certain phrases stand out – bold or italicize the information that you want your readers to notice while they scan
7. Hyperlinking – making sure that you have text that links your site together for a smooth user experience
8. Using keywords both in titles and subtitles on the page and throughout the text. The closer to the heading or beginning of a paragraph the better. [This technique is not for your readers but for search engines]

If you use these web writing principles, you won’t have to worry about being “judged by your cover.” You’ll be on your way to keeping and then engaging your site visitors.

Have I missed any web writing techniques? What else do you do to magnetize your web copy? Leave me a comment.

Stock Photo Courtesy of

If you liked this post, you might enjoy:

Thoughts on writing naked
Draw and keep your website audience with 4 time tested tactics
Five ways to kick start your writing
Developing web content through play

Cross-posted at Go WordPress

This growth means that even though more people are coming online, competition for their attention is growing.  Even though your opportunities are growing, so is the competition for those opportunities.  So your website must make a good first impression – and quickly.  Here are some time-tested tactics to help you draw your audience’s attention and keep it.

1. Use keyword techniques

A lot of people think that on-page SEO (search engine optimization) is less important than it used to be before the web became “social.” This is just plain not true. SEO will be important as long as people use search engines to find things on the web.  You have to pay attention to what your customers are searching for and how they are searching. Then you should work to integrate these into your website.

The first step in SEO is to know the keywords and phrases that your website audience uses to search for your products or services. Use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool to search for those terms. Once you have identified keywords and phrases that you think your potential customer is using to find services such as yours, incorporate those terms throughout your site wherever there is text and wherever it makes sense. Don’t sacrifice your readers for SEO though. Reader experience should trump keyword usage every time.

2. Create great content

Make sure that your content is:

1. Useful to your audience (Is your content so great that people will bookmark it?)
2. Free of broken links
3. Without grammatical or spelling errors and well-written
4. Original – no lifting paragraphs, sentences or ideas

3. Make your website social

This is the era of engagement. Give people the opportunity to respond to what you have posted. Have sharing buttons for Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. I use the Simple Social Buttons plugin for WordPress. This allows readers to tweet, +1 and like your post without leaving the page. Make sure you have sharing buttons so that people can subscribe to your content, follow you on Twitter, add you on Google+ and LinkedIn. Of course there are other ways that people can engage with you but I consider these the big 5: your blog, Twitter, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn.

4. Have smooth usability

Usability is about your readers’ experience on your website. Make sure that your site is easy to navigate. Google likes websites (I confirmed this at BlogWorld Expo in Los Angeles) that use breadcrumb trails, internal linking – but not overly linked, a visible search box for your site and a sitemap. If you have advertising on your site, keep within the 80/20 rule – 80% your content, 20% ad space.

Have I missed something in my 4 time-tested steps? What do you do to draw readers’ attention and keep them? Let me know… I’m curious.

Photo Credit: Chili and Lemon
Photo Credit: Velvet Bokeh