dkwebconsulting.com
19Jul/100

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

Why Firms Need to Market to Hispanics

Hispanics are young and on Social Media, so why aren't you marketing to them? And oh yeah, 1 in 3 Americans will be Hispanic within our lifetime (by the year 2050).  The ever-growing Hispanic market within the United States offers tremendous opportunities for marketers. Today an estimated 17% of the US population is Hispanic. Furthermore, Hispanics are the largest growing demographic in the country.  The rate of growth in Hispanic purchasing power is equally impressive and by 2013 it is estimated that Hispanic purchasing power will be$1.3 trillion annually.

In addition to those inspiring figures, Hispanics are also avid users of the internet. In fact, Hispanic consumers are younger than the market as an aggregate.  They are also often early adopters of technology and frequently use social media sites.  More importantly, Hispanics frequently seek out product information online.  57% of Hispanics always go online to find product deals as opposed to 43% of the general market. Hispanics also prefer to learn about brands, compare prices, and make final decisions online. One of the most interesting statistics we found is that 72% of Hispanics trust an online product rating over a friends opinion.

These market conditions make social media a great tool to connect with Hispanic consumers. Social media is excellent for creating a discussion with people, building brand awareness and loyalty.  As Hispanics are already very active on social media it makes sense for marketers to add this approach to their overall campaign. However, there is more to it than just posting content on Facebook and hoping it works. The US Hispanic Market is very diverse.  It is made up of people from multiple countries with their own culture living within various levels of acculturation to American life.   For example, some Hispanics prefer Spanish, while many prefer English or Spanglish.  Overall, successfully engaging Hispanics can be tricky but is an opportunity that cannot be ignored.

Related Articles:

What to read from the Top 2010 Hispanic Online Marketing Reports

How Fortune 1,000 Brands Engage Spanish Speaking Facebook Fans




14Jul/100

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

Why Marketing to Hispanics using Social Media Works

Check out this quick presentation which covers:

  • Why is the Hispanic market important?
  • Do Hispanics use Social Media?
  • Why is Social Media an attractive way to target the Hispanics?
  • Benefits of Marketing to Hispanics using Social Media
  • How businesses will engage the Hispanic market?
  • What is Social Media Spanish?




15Jun/102

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

What to Read from the Top 2010 Hispanic Online Marketing Reports

Since there are already too many 40+ page reports out there instructing marketers as to where the opportunities lie in engaging with Hispanic consumers, we're here to make it easy.  This is our analysis of the 3 most current free Hispanic Online Marketing reports; the 2010 US Hispanic Social Media and Marketing Overview, the 2010-2011 Hispanic Social Media Guide,  and the 2010 Hispanic CyberStudy.  They each have their own strengths and weaknesses and we have ranked them in the order that we recommend them to a marketer with a limited amount of time for research on the Hispanic Consumer.

1. 2010 US Hispanic Social Media and Marketing Overview

This was our favorite report and a clear case of why not to judge a book by its cover. While the title page and overall design may look a bit like a 12th grade History Paper, this report is full of useful statistics as well as qualitative data from industry experts that make it a good read. Recommended reading includes:   "The Latino Research Story" (pg 9-10), "Who's Best to Handle it All" (pg 21-23), "The Pan Latin Connector" (pg 33-34) and "Expectations, Propositions, & Future Thought" (pg 35-39).

2. 2010 Hispanic CyberStudy

This is the shortest and most visually attractive by far of the three studies, you can actually get through the entire report in about 15 minutes. The focus of this report is on internet usage by Hispanics and it breaks the Hispanic population down by level of acculturation and details the language and usage preferences of those groups.  While it does not have the sheer amount of information as the other two studies, we found it to be very educational and succinct.  Must reads include: "American Yardstick" (pg 15), "Young Hispanics" (pg 11), "Technology Leaders" (pg 15), and "Life Stages" (pg 22-26).

3. 2010-2011 Hispanic Social Media Guide

This report reads like a conglomeration of differing opinions from a multitude of firms in the Hispanic Marketing industry.  So if you are looking to shop a number of these firms, you can find plenty of advertising and contact info in this report.  Besides that, the only articles that I would recommend reading would be "How to Build a Hispanic Online Community" (pg 19-22) and "How to Effectively Work with Latino Bloggers" (pg 24-26).

There is a notable lack of quantitative data as the first graph doesn't show up until page 27 and it is borrowed from an eMarketer Ad of their own report.   Additionally, a majority of the other statistics found in this report are copied over from the Hispanic Cyber Study Report described above.

All three of these reports bring something a little different to the table while educating the marketer looking to engage Hispanic customers.  Hopefully this guide saves you a little bit of time in trying to read all three.

7Jun/100

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

Engaging Spanish Speaking Consumers through Social Media – the March of Dimes Way

After years of fielding thousands of phone calls and emails from Spanish speaking mothers and parents to be, the March of Dimes realized the necessity to expand their outreach efforts. And while reports are now streaming in bearing statistics about how much more active Hispanics are on social media, it seems that the March of Dimes knew all along.

100% Comment response is the goal at NacerSano

The March of Dimes launched its Spanish-language site, nacersano.org, in 2004 as a response to the deficiency of trusted and accurate health information among Spanish-speaking women and their families. In 2007, realizing they needed to have an even bigger presence within the Spanish-speaking community; they kicked off a social media initiative with their Spanish-language blog, located at blog.nacersano.org. This blog enabled the March of Dimes to engage with their consumers in a more organic and informal setting.

Social Media is not new to the March of Dimes. Beverly Robertson, a National Director at the March of Dimes, who heads up social media efforts, has gained approximately 8,000 twitter followers to date (@marchofdimes). Their Facebook page has over 70,000 fans.  But what is quite noticeably innovative & impressive is the manner in which they are able to converse openly with their Spanish speaking fans.  To enable this, Miss Robertson’s Hispanic Outreach team, spearheaded by Lilliam Acosta-Sanchez, has established Spanish language Facebook Fan page and Twitter accounts, all linked through their Spanish-language brand “nacersano.”  The overall goals of the team are to use social media for health information outreach and to raise awareness of the March of Dimes and its mission among Spanish-speaking Latinos.

During our conversation in May, Mrs. Acosta-Sanchez noted that an average month will bring approximately 400 questions from consumers that need a response via social media.  They are proud that their team is able to respond to 100% of the questions that come in through their blog, Facebook Fan page and Twitter accounts. An impressive feat, considering the low or non-existent engagement levels of many large firms and organizations.

We at DK wanted to dig deeper, so we looked at the numbers to verify the March of Dime’s claims.  We found that they were indeed very active conversing with their fans and consumers.  The nacersano.org Facebook page is able to maintain a 335 Engagement Score, indicating a very high level of interaction with fans on their page.  This ranking (take a look at our ranking system) calculates how often a fan comments or 'likes' a posting, and evaluates all Facebook pages on a pound-for-pound scale.  The nacersano Twitter page obtains an equally high Engagement Score of 60, calculated by dividing mentions by nacersano by the times nacersano has been mentioned.

The team behind nacersano also discussed growth of their Spanish social media presence with us.  They explained that their growth to date is primarily viral and that their objective is less about growing and more about building relationships with their current fans/followers.  Based on their ability to engage their consumers thus far, we also believe their growth will come naturally.

nacersano's web presence:
www.nacersano.org – The March of Dimes Spanish-language Web site
http://blog.nacersano.org – Spanish-language blog on pregnancy-related topics.
www.twitter.com/nacersano – Pregnancy-related tips.
www.twitter.com/nacersanobaby – Baby-related tips.
www.facebook.com/nacersano – Fan page.

3Jun/100

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

Measuring Social Media Engagement

So if your Facebook fan page has 2,000 fan interactions per week and mine only has 200, is there any way my page could be considered more engaging?  Why yes, absolutely there is.  What needs to be considered is the amount of interaction per fan, which puts all pages on an equalizing, pound-for-pound scale.  Basically, this enables an apples to apples comparison of your fan page with 2 million fans with my page of 200 fans.

It is often hard to measure how effective a campaign is and how engaged fans are in the conversation. A simple, albeit manual way to measure how involved fans are is by using the Social Media Engagement Scoring system that ranks a page based on posts per day to quantity of fans.  This system allows a brand to take a realistic view at how well they converse with their fans in comparison with other brands.

We have found that in general, a score of over 200 in Facebook means fans are engaged. A score over 300 means that fans are highly engaged.  A score of over 50 in Twitter is good.  A Twitter Engagement score of over 75 is superb.  Our calculations are simple (download an example here) and can be broken down into four easy steps for both Facebook and Twitter.

For Facebook:

Step 1 -  Decide how many days to count for (if an account is very active, than fewer days) and then extrapolate it to 1 month or whatever time period you prefer.  If the account is not terribly active it is easy to account for a whole week and sometimes even month.

Step 2 - Our  favorite part - counting. This is the most time consuming part. We count both interaction on admin posts and fan posts in Facebook. We count a post by an administrator plus any "like" of that post or comment on that post as an "Admin Interactions".  For "Fan Interactions" we count any post by a fan on the wall  and any comments or "likes" of that post.  We sum those interactions and obtain the number of fans of that page.

Step 3 - Record these numbers in a spreadsheet such as the one we provided as an example above.

Step 4 - Run the numbers.  If you use our example (above) the formulas are already there (no calculation necessary!)  For Facebook we add up the number of interactions from admin posts and fan posts and convert that to a daily figure. After that we simply divide "Total Interactions/Day" by the number of fans and multiply that number by 100,000 to make the figure a bit more usable.  This will give you the Facebook Engagement Score for that page.

For Twitter:

Step 1 - Decide what time period you would like to account for. A week is the most practical for Twitter but you can also do daily. This is because the Twitter search function only maintains one week of results.

Step 2 - Count the number of @s (mentions of another user) on a given Twitter page for that time period.  After that number is obtained we find the number of times that Twitter page has been mentioned.  We use http://search.twitter.com to search how many times that twitter page has been referenced (See illustration below).  Again, this data only goes back one week so that limits the time period you can actually account for.

Using search.twitter to find mentions of any Twitter user

Step 3 - Record these numbers in a spreadsheet. Use our example from above.

Step 4 - Divide @s by mentions  and multiply by 100 to arrive at the Twitter Engagement Score.  (Calculations already done when using our downloadable example.

Now you will understand how a fan page with only a few dozen fan posts can be far more engaging than a page with thousands of fan posts.  Do you have anything to add?  Other ideas?  Let us know in the comments please.


7May/101

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

How Fortune 1,000 Brands Engage Spanish Speaking Facebook Fans

spanishfacebook

Many large brands such as Nike, McDonald's and others have well over 1 million fans and struggle deciding how best to communicate with Spanish speaking fans which in many cases are 10% or more of their total fan base.  We determined there are 4 main methods to begin engaging a brand's fans using Spanish language marketing.

They are:  1 - Creating a new Page, 2 - Posting to Everyone, 3 - Using Filters, or 4 - Creating a new Tab.  We created a list of pros and cons for each of the 4 methods and we detail these below.

1 - Creating a new Page
Building a new page dedicated to Spanish content is one popular choice that many large brands use.  AT&T, CNN, Tostitos, and the NBA have all chosen this path and grown substantial followings.  A new page will show up on an internal search by the firm's brand name which will help in drawing new fans.  A key benefit for choosing this method is that it enables a brand to provide content specifically targeted to its Spanish language fans in a dedicated forum.  This has been seen as the most common way to communicate with a brands Spanish speaking fan base.

However, there are a number of cons associated with beginning a new page dedicated to Spanish conversation.  First of all, you will be driving fans away from a very popular page with thousands or millions of fans and starting a new page from scratch.  Secondly, the new Spanish page will inevitably cannibalize fans from the existing page.  Maybe most importantly, many Spanish speaking fans of these large brands are bilingual and enjoy having access to content in different languages.  Now with two pages, the brand is making them choose.  Furthermore, many bilingual Americans have the belief that English content is generally more accurate and updated then Spanish content.

2 - Posting to Everyone

A solution to beginning a new page, is to integrate all Spanish content onto the existing English page.  Whether the brand adapts all content to Spanish, or just selected parts, it all will appear on the Facebook stream to all fans whether they speak Spanish or not.  This may be a good option for brands as the method generates high awareness of the fact that the brand speaks and understands Spanish and they will do so without starting a new page without their millions of fans.  Bilingual fans will also be able to easily see all content in both languages.

There are many downsides to this method though.  First off, it can get very cluttered.  Postings of the same content in different languages may actually turn off a number of fans.  Also, the brand is losing the opportunity to target its Spanish speaking fans using a dedicated forum.  Finally, what if fans that speak other languages get offended that they do not see their second tongue displayed?

3 - Using Filters

To avoid having duplicate content visible to a brand's fans, they might also consider the use of filters.  Any time an administrator posts content on a fan page, they have the option of posting to everyone (default) or to post only to certain geographic areas or languages.  A brand can thus post Spanish content only for its fans that have their Facebook account set to Spanish.  Bilingual fans will like this as they will see all Spanish and English content with no duplications.  Also, the brand doesn't have to start a new page from scratch and fans with different language settings will not even know that there is additional Spanish content.

There are some big problems with filters though, chiefly is that many bilingual Spanish speakers have their settings on English.  They would not even know that there was additional content there for them!  Also, as the page would mostly be an English page with only some Spanish content available through filters, it would not have the same feel as a newly created Spanish dedicated page.  Finally, some of the virality would be lost as a fan's comment on a Spanish posting would not have the ability to stream to a friends' wall unless they both had their language settings on Spanish.

4 - Creating a new Tab

The final option to consider is the use of custom built tabs.  Many ad agencies and other custom web agencies will develop a custom Facebook tab that can hold all Spanish content within the original main page.  This would in many ways work as a second wall in which the brand would engage its Spanish speaking fans with an attractive Spanish title as well as content targeted in their language.  They would maintain their original fan base and be able to provide links to this tab in all their marketing material geared towards Spanish speakers.  Also, bilingual fans would not feel left out from the English discussion which is important to consider.

Creating a second tab has some disadvantages of course.  They are typically more costly to maintain, on average between $100 - $2,500 per month depending on the content and frequency of posting.  A custom tab also does not have all of the same functionality as the wall does such as the ability to show up on the stream of friends of fans.  Virality is critical to the success of many brands marketing campaigns and a degree of this is lost here.  Finally, the tab will not show up in an internal Facebook search.

You can download the entire Facebook Spanish Engagement Options List here.

This list is in by no means complete.  Please comment back with your thoughts, additions, and revisions as we all think about how best to engage Spanish speaking fans.

<p><code><br />
 <meta name="Keywords" content="Spanish social media, facebook fans, engage facebook fans, facebook engagement, Hispanic social media " /> <meta name="description" content=Many large brands such as Nike, McDonald's and others have well over 1 million fans and struggle deciding how best to communicate with Spanish speaking fans which in many cases are 10% or more of their total fan base. " /><br />
</code></p>



16Apr/100

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

How to Build Link Popularity

link-buildingVery important to building your site's natural search result status is link building. It is very important to have inbound links to your website from as many websites with a good reputation as possible. Basically, Google evaluates all websites and gives them a ranking for any given set of keywords. One of the primary criterion for rank is how many inbound links are going into your website, and which websites they are coming from.

Getting Links
There are many ways to go about getting links to your website.
One popular way is through seeking out vertical search engines and business directories.  A vertical search engine is a website that lists companies in a certain niche or industry.  It is important to find these for your own industry and get yourself listed.  These are typically free and I strongly caution against paying for any type of listing.

Another method of building links to your website is through blogging.  Bloggers are typically very conscious of other websites that are linking to their blog.  Many times if you have relevant content on your website they will give you a return link to your own website.  Also, commenting on other blogs is also an excellent strategy towards getting links to your site as most times you are able to leave a link to your website.

Building links in social media is ever growing in importance.  Search engines are now giving heavier weight to social media websites which means links found there are now stronger.  On top of that, high-quality social content will generate links to your own website from outside the social media world as well.

Not all links are Equal:
The greater the reputation or ranking for any website linking to you, the better the ranking for your own website. A link from Facebook, Yelp, a national media website, or a highly viewed blog such as Mashable is ranked very high by the search engines. On the contrary, a link from a local business directory with minimal pageviews is not ranked nearly as high. That means you want to strategically seek links from highly ranked websites in order to bolster your own ranking.  Find rankings for any website in the world using Alexa.  Obtaining links without investigating how highly ranked the linking website is, only wastes time and effort.

Track your links:
Keep a record of all the websites that link to you. At DK we maintain a spreadsheet with the listings, passwords, and other pertinent information to any website that links to our own site. There are also tools from all the major search engines that provide you with all the links they have found for your site, but they rarely will all agree about where your links come from on any given day. Yahoo Site Explorer is a good place to start researching your own links.

If you're thirsting for more, find many more tactics on either of these 2 highly ranked locations:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-from-a-to-z

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml



Filed under: SEO No Comments
2Apr/100

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

Birth of Confusion – the iPad Debuts Tomorrow

The revolution begins...?

The revolution begins...?

Well greatly confusing things are born on April 3rd it seems.

Tomorrow the iPad is born, and I, the editor of the DK Web Tech Blog, turns 30.  So do I and the iPad have anything else in common other than a birthday that is way too close to April Fool's Day?  Yes, as a matter of fact, our ability to confuse.

While my girlfriend wonders how I don't see the problem in keeping shaving razors and toothbrushes together, the iPad is really shaking people up because no one knows what to think of about it. There have been mixed reviews over the global appeal of the product as seen in this great article.  Many people wont find the need to buy a machine that lacks a USB drive, CD drive, and keyboard among other things.  However, features such as it being lightweight, availability of 150,000 apps, an amazing e-reader application, and a 12 hour video battery life will make a large number of people splurge on the product.

Confused technology fans are debating that if they already have a laptop and an iPhone, why would they also need to spend a minimum of $500 for an iPad?  So, will the iPad be able to gain long term appeal as their iPod or iPhone have?  Guy Kawasaki, a renowned Silicon Valley entrepreneur summed it up by saying, "You can’t make a phone call with it, you can’t take a picture with it, and you have to buy content that before now you were not willing to pay for. That seems tough to me."   Much of the confusion about the iPad's purpose is covered in this New York Times article.

So how will the iPad do on the Apple Retail Store shelf?  While it will likely sell out its immediate limited supply, long term success is impossible to predict.  It largely depends on the amount of apps that are built for it that will enable its functionality to grow exponentially.  Positive signs include the fact that firms such as Kleiner Perkins have committed large amounts of capital to development in this area over the last few weeks in anticipation of the iPad launch.  However, unfortunately we likely wont see many apps released for another 6 months.

More helfpul information about the iPad launch:

Apples website

iPad FAQ's

26Mar/100

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

What Would Google Ethernet Mean for Columbus? Still Time to Nominate Today!

Google-EthernetGoogle Ethernet would change Columbus in many ways. Mayor Michael Coleman and others show their interest in getting Google Ethernet in this video.

For those that are unfamiliar with the topic, Google is planning to launch an experiment that they hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. They plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Their networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 Gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections.  They'll offer the service to 1 or more cities and to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

So in Columbus, that could potentially change the way we live in an ever more connected world.  In Columbus, a 15mb/s connection will run you about $55-$70 a month from WOW or Road Runner. Pretty expensive for a pretty slow service.  Surveys indicate that the average speed for the American residential consumer is about 5mb/speed. Google's 1 Gigabit per second dwarfs these speeds. It is not for certain at the moment how Google will work with the incumbent internet service providers, but it could be interesting.  Google's promise of competitive prices makes this a very attractive proposition for consumers.  With Google's Ethernet service, Columbus' citizens will benefit from lower prices and a wider variety of speed options.
Columbus-Ohio
Outside of their home and office, people in Columbus access the internet through their cellphones or in their neighborhood Panera and Starbucks.  However, the ability to have lightning speed connections through Google Ethernet will make using a Verizon Blackberry for internet search as ridiculous as digging a Motorola beeper out of your pocket.  Coffee shops could face decreased usage as a place to do work and use free wireless if they don't have access to Google Ethernet.  Overall, access to ultra high speed internet across the entire city will change people's internet usage habits.

This experiment hopefully will result in all Americans having access to ultra-high speed internet access within the relatively near future.  Only time will tell which cities Google will pick and how soon the revolution to 1 Gigabit per second ethernet speed reaches us all.  So, whether you are in Columbus or not you should nominate your city before Google closes nominations tonight.

18Mar/103

Home | Portfolio | About | Contact | Admin

Choosing Keywords to Land Your Webpages on Google’s 1st Page

Picking the right keywords can take time and a large chalkboard

Picking the right keywords can take time and a large chalkboard

No-one knows the exact way that Google (or any other search engine) ranks websites.  There are over 200 factors that are analyzed that determine how your website will rank for any given keyword set.  It is known that content is king.  If your website is easy to find, navigate, and gives a reason for users to return it will likely have a higher search result.  This article is all about making your website easier to find.  Read more specific detail in Step 7 Implementation for specifics on how to use the keywords you have chosen.

A small business client of ours asked us a question this week how we go about choosing keywords for our website to land on Google's first page.  Many small businesses with limited budgets need a process for choosing keywords themselves without paying for automated or professional keyword assistance.  We remind our clients that picking accurate keywords and optimizing their web pages for them enables natural search traffic, which is the best (and cheapest) kind of traffic to have.  Our own team has considered several different tactics for picking keywords over the years, but the one we have the most success with is detailed in the following 7 Step Process.

Step 1: Brainstorm

Of utmost importance is thinking of what products, services, news,  promotions, etc. you offer that have a high probability of being interesting to the target market.  Begin with that list and then come up with some basic keyword ideas that you believe people may search for that are interested in those topics.  The picture at right gives an example of an online fitness training company brainstorming keywords it may like to optimize its site for.  Choose your keyword sets and move on to step 2.

Step 2: Research additional Keywords based on Actual Search

Very important is to not just pick keywords that your team thinks may get searched a lot, but to use an analysis tool such as Google's Keyword Tool to find words relevant to your products or services that your target market actually searches for.  Imagine the example for the online fitness training company having selected the keyword set "online fitness coaching."  When putting the keyword set in the keyword tool they realize that no-one ever searches for that keyword set.  However, the tool does suggest to them "online fitness trainers" and "online fitness training" which generate 590 and 3,600 local searches on a monthly basis respectively.  Notice that just because one search generates 3,600 local searches per month does not necessarily mean it will be the best overall result until we finish the entire process.  Also note that the Google Keyword Tool does provide Local Search data as well as Global Search Data.  To avoid confusion 'local' here means in the country you are accessing the search from (USA in this case).  Also, to be even more specific you can use the tool to only look for phrase or exact matches monthly searches to be even more accurate.

Step 3: Cross Reference Potential Keyword Sets against Google Search Results

It's always good to know how much competition you may have.  That is exactly what we do here as we take those keyword sets that have been selected and run a simple keyword phrase search in Google.  To run this test, simply go to Google and enter in the keyword sets in parentheses (like this "online fitness trainers") to obtain the search results figures Google presents.  In this example Google presented 498,000 results for "online fitness trainers" and 30,000 results for "online fitness training'. These figures represent the total amount of web pages you will compete against when optimizing for each keyword set.

Step 4: Obtain the Keyword Score for each Keyword Set

Finally, you will divide the Search Results total by the Local Searches total to obtain each Keyword Score.  The lower the Keyword Score, the better as it means there are more monthly searches and less competition for that keyword set.  In this case you will find that "online fitness trainers" has a score of 844 while "online fitness training" has a score of 8.  Then you will select the keyword set with the lowest score for your page.

Step 5: (Important but Optional) Head to Head Comparison with First Page Search Results

For even higher probability of choosing keywords that may gain you the respect of the search engines' algorithms, you can take the process a step further.  If you are evaluating many keywords with similar Keyword Scores, you can compare your site against the websites that come up on Google's 1st page of search results for any keyword set.  Using Alexa's free toolbar ranking system, compare how your website ranks against the other 10 pages on Google's first page of results.  If you rank higher than a majority of them, then you have a much greater chance of replacing them on the first page of search results.

Step 6: Implementation

Now that you have found your keywords, how do you use them?  Well, you don't load them up in the keywords meta tag and expect good things to happen. Google has explicitly stated that they no longer use that factor in search rankings because of the amount of spamming found there.  You do want to use your keywords in the Title, Description, link URL, and definitely in the overall content of the page.  Those locations, especially the Title, help Google understand what your page is about and deem it as relevant to its users.

Step 7: Monitor Your Results

It is very important to monitor your results and constantly improve.  You can download the RankChecker add-on for Mozilla to easily run your keywords and see how your optimization efforts are doing.  If you find there are words that just aren't working, then go through the process again and choose new keywords.

Finally, there is no guarantee for how to land your web-page on Google's first page of results.  If any company says they can guarantee that, your best option is to turn around and run as far as you can from that liar.  For more information from Google about how they rank websites, see the Google Webmaster Blog.