Sharpie Markers

Posted in art supplies on 09/11/2006 03:44 pm by admin

Sharpie Markers

Without This Step Your SEO is Guaranteed to Fail!

Back in 1999 I wrote my first search engine optimization book and have published seven more since. Believe me, that's a lot of research! While investigating number eight it struck me that pretty much every facet of the game has changed dramatically over the past decade. Even the name has been shortened to SEO because it's so well known these days. But unfortunately one aspect has not changed... Too many people still miss out on the single most important step in SEO; Keyword selection!

Let's face it; without targeted keywords your site might as well be a storefront with no sign, no windows and no front door. And without the right keywords targeting is useless. In fact, worse than useless because it's five times more difficult to have a search engine reevaluate a site it has already evaluated once for the wrong keywords.

Keywords are your most important SEO asset. It's that simple. Some people will argue until they're blue in the face saying "META tags don't even matter anymore." Well, who said anything about META tags? I'm not talking about the keyword tag or stuffing ALT tags. I'm talking about keywords for your site as a whole. They define how your pages will be found online and if people will even bother to visit if found.

Here's an example... I just typed 'markers' (no quotes) into Google and see there are 37,500,000 Web pages. The number one match is for magic markers but just below it is some golf course called the Markers Golf Club. A couple spots down deals with DNA markers indicating diabetes in certain patients. And the list goes on and on. Could the results be any more random? Your site is probably more targeted but the same principles apply. And trust me; with millions of competing web pages for every word in the dictionary, you need every advantage you can get.

Think about it. You'd have to be crazy to try to beat out over 37 million competing pages about 'markers' if you were selling 'permanent markers', especially since Google only has 553,000 matches for that keyword phrase (permanent markers). Now what if you were selling a specific brand like "Sharpie"? Well, 'sharpie markers' has only half the competing Web pages as 'permanent markers'. Better still, 'sharpie permanent markers' has less than one tenth the competing pages of 'sharpie markers.'

Ready for the best part? If you check these keywords on Google's free Adwords keyword site at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in 'sharpie markers' (don't use quotes for any of these I mention) you will see that for January '08 the term 'sharpie permanent markers' is just as popular as 'sharpie markers' but has less than half the competition for people paying per click! So whether you're saving a fortune in pay per click fees or optimizing much better for organic ranking, you will have just as many highly targeted visitors with much less competition.

Remember, good keywords are nice to have but GREAT keywords are your secret weapon! If you take nothing else from this article, please know that keyword selection is still the single most important step in optimizing your web pages and where the majority of your time and effort should be spent up front.

Up until a couple years ago I even had part time staff members that did nothing but research keywords for my SEO company. Of course, today you can spend less than a hundred bucks and get a piece of software like GOOHAY Keywords (http://www.GOOHAYkeywords.com) or a little more for Keyword Elite (http://KeywordEliteWeb.com) either of which do as much as several full time employees.

Whether manually or with software, it's also a good idea to reevaluate your keywords every so often. This is especially true if your site deals with seasonal items or topics. I use keyword software to evaluate mine the first day of each month and it keeps my sites one step ahead.

By starting with the very best keywords, you are already ahead of 99% of your competition, which gives you an incredible advantage. Best of luck!

About the Author

Michael Small is a ten year veteran SEO consultant and author of numerous search engine optimization books and whitepapers including the SEO Answer Book, available at http://www.seoanswerbook.net .

Can you use watercolors over sharpie paint markers?

i made a design with sharpie paint markers on watercolor paper and was told it wouldn't run, but now i'm having doubts. also if i use black sumi ink and spray workable fixativ over it can i then watercolor paint over that? or does anyone know the effects of painting over workable fixativ?
thank you so much!

I have used sharpie markers with both water color paints and water color pencil crayons on water color paper as well as Mayfair Stock which is an inexpensive 90 paper that is great for cards and also for beginners art work. When I was in college, it was the student grade paper of choice for both acrylics and water colors. You can also use acrylic paint thinned with water which will also give the appearance of water colors. Then, if you want to push the envelope a bit, you can use the acrylics in a more opaque way, for variation. The advantage to this is that you can put lighter colors over the top, whereas with water colors, you start from light to dark, but you can't go back. Painting over workable fixative is no problem, in fact many artists spray the pencil drawing done on their canvases before they begin to paint so that the graphite doesn't leach into the paint causing muddy looking colors. Hope this helps. I've also enjoyed working with Metallic Gold and Silver Markers over the dry surface of the finished art work for something a little different and used sparingly, it looks pretty neat.

Beckham covets fans' Sharpie markers