Let’s assume you have somewhere between twenty and fifty pages of content, and a list of about 100 keywords that you would like to optimize for. You are web-savvy, but no “SEO expert” and have decided to take the Do-it-Yourself approach to optimizing your website.

Your keyword research has already been done, and you know which terms get the most searches, which have the highest competition, and where your “sweet spots” are. Your plan is to slightly change the content you already have in response to this newfound knowledge, rather than rewriting the entire site from scratch to target these terms.

Here is your dilemma: You need to know which of your pages have the best keyword density (KWD) or keyword frequency (KWF) for a particular term so you can use that page and take the path of least resistance. Without going to a tool like this and entering in each page one at a time, and without purchasing an expensive SEO tools package, how do you choose the best possible page for a particular keyword?

I’m sure there are some free tools out there that spider an entire site and allow you to enter in a keyword and see a result of the top three pages for the keyword in terms of either KWD or KWF. If you know of one, feel free to point us there in the comments section below.

Until then, we suggest this little shortcut…

Assuming that all of your pages are indexed on Google, search for:

“your keyword” site:yourdomain.com

There is no need to put the keyword in quotes unless it includes more than one word (i.e. “fitness marketing”). When using the site: command, there is no need to include www., and there is no space between the : and your domain. And, of course, replace your keyword and yourdomain with your keyword and your domain.

This search will return a list of pages on your domain that Google equates with that keyword. Ostensibly, the best ones will be toward the top of the results. Your home page is likely to show up for most terms. Obviously you would not want to optimize it for every term.

This is just a little shortcut that you may or may not have thought of before. Stay tuned and perhaps someone will suggest a free tool in the comments section. Ideally, it would spider the whole site and cache the keyword data so you could perform searches on demand to find out which page is the best candidate to be optimized for any given term.

We are testing a little piece of java script from nitobi that powers their new tool called Robot Replay, and allows us to see your every move on www.firstpagefitness.com. Well, not “every” move. We can’t see what you type into the forms, but we can see where your mouse cursor goes, and which links you click on as you move about the site. It is like watching a Tivo video recording of a user browsing a website. Or, if you prefer, like Crazy Egg in realtime.

The Admin Interface for Robot Replay

Sound a bit too 1984-ish? We think so too, but don’t worry - we don’t like Big Brother any more than anyone else does and will be taking off the script here in a few days once we give it a proper test run. The script considers each visit to our website a session. Although it does not tell the webmaster “who” you are, it does provide the time and length of your visit. If a webmaster was really curious he or she could check their log files for that time period and obtain an IP address, get a general idea of which city you live in, which website you were at before coming to theirs and, if it was a search engine, what keyword you typed in order to pull up the result.

The Robot Replay Playback Window
Notice the big cursor; this is the user’s.

Why would First Page Fitness or any other website want to see a video of a mouse clicking around? To gather data that will help us improve our website, of course. We can see if you stop scrolling to read content for awhile, which would indicate that the content is of interest and value. Or if you quickly get bored with content and click away, we know that it wasn’t what you were looking for. Do you read the whole page, or just the first paragraph? Do you click back and forth? Do you have trouble finding some page that you were looking at before? I have already made a few small navigational changes based on the user behavior seen in some of these recordings.

What You Can’t See With RobotReplay:
A webmaster can not see your taskbar, tabs, browser menus or anything outside of the window that shows their own website.

Does it Work?
Yes, although we can only see the latest ten sessions at any given moment. I would not expect RobotReplay to stick around long before being purchased for serious bucks by a major analytics company.

Oh no he dihhen…! Yes, I did. Common, don’t pretend you have never noticed the difference in size between people at Safeway and people at Wholefoods; people at Walmart and people at Ikea.

So what came first? The Kentucky Fried Chicken or the Egg?

Scenario One
Are lower income Americans overweight because they are lazy and ignorant, thus their economic status is just another symptom of their personality? That’s what statisticians call a correlation between obesity and economic status, but not a direct cause and effect relationship.

Scenario Two
Or are lower income Americans overweight because things like healthy food, gym memberships, and personal trainers are expensive? In this case, we have a more direct link between the two - Poverty causes obesity.

The first scenario is appealing to those who would like to write off the problem of a working-class poor, the issues of overpriced food, underpriced junk, unattainable healthcare, and maybe even the direct exploitation of millions of Americans by the fast-food / cheap food / junk food industry. Yes, the title of this blog entry is sensationalist at best, offensive at worst. But the purpose is to draw attention to the problem, not belittle it. I work in an industry that spends a lot of money on marketing, and I see the “demo” that gets marketed to - or at. That income demographic is mostly above the $50,000 per year mark. And for good reason… it’s expensive to be healthy.

My favorite non-SEO blog blog in the world is probably Wisebread. While reading it today, I came across an entry titled: “Why is it so Expensive to be Healthy?” and thought to myself: “Finally, someone has the guts to say it!” Here is a quote from the aforementioned blog entry:

It is expensive to eat well, even if you are only buying raw veggies. The truth is that lower income shoppers, and other populations that live on junk food, are getting more calories per dollar than the rest of us. It’s economically efficient, if tragically perverse.

Have a look at this graph from the Utah Department of Health showing the amount of obese adults by income:

So I thought it was an interesting observation and collection of information and something that is on my mind often. Coming from a single-parent, factory-job household in the decaying Midwest city of Cincinnati to where I am now has allowed me to see both sides of the fence. Moral of the story: Judge not lest ye be judged yourself after walking a mile in someone else’s shoe to cast a stone and save a penny.

The marketing and development teams over at www.shockabsorber.co.uk have the right idea when it comes to linkbait. They have created an interactive tool called the “Bounce-Ometer” that allows users to choose a cup size and a level of activity to see a computer simulation of the difference between no bra, a normal sports bra, and their patented Shock Absorber collection of sports bras.

You really have to see it to fully grasp the effort that went into the design and implementation of this tool. It is sure to receive hundreds of links from high-profile sites all over the web. Not only that, but - as a man - it has a rather hypnotizing, calming effect. I say they market it as a meditation tool as well.

Are you ever pulled in multiple directions from different sales people trying to sell you advertising? Have you ever advertised and found it unsuccessful?  Perhaps it had a very low Return on Investment (ROI). You thought, “I’ll never do this again.”

Many people I talk to have told me just that. They think advertising just doesn’t work. When I ask them what kind of advertising they did, I often find out they were advertising in a medium that wasn’t right for their target market.

I recently had a client try to make a cable TV buy on their own.  Fortunately, right before the order was placed it occurred to them to check with me. The buy was all wrong for them. The salesperson was just trying to sell them advertising and was not concerned whether or not it would be effective. The salesperson put them into networks with higher male demographics and children’s shows (this client was trying to reach busy working females).

Others I talk to had someone call on them using a high pressure sales tactic, “If you don’t advertise in here, you’ll lose business.” Or, “Your competitor is advertising in here – you should too if you don’t want to lose business.”  I tell my clients just because their competitor is doing something, doesn’t make it a good media buy.  Often times in cases where the salesperson is using these high pressure techniques, business owners end up not doing their research and impulse buying expensive advertising that doesn’t get results.

You can avoid this – how?

Use a professional media buyer.  A professional media buyer can save you hundreds of dollars by making sure you only spend money in the right mediums and getting you the best deals possible. However, the best way to avoid these media buying pitfalls is to have a marketing plan, which includes a media plan.  Knowing in advance what your budget is and how you will be spending it alleviates last minute deals presented to you in high pressure situations.

Contact First Page Fitness to learn more about a customized marketing plan for your business. You will be surprised at how affordable it is, and in the long run this will save you many thousands of misspent dollars.