Archive for the ‘SEO Facts’ Category

« Older Entries

Credibility – Yours to Lose

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

These days, most people are less skeptical about the internet.  We think little of viewing bank statements, paying utility bills, and entering our credit card numbers online.  More often than not, visitors won’t think twice about making an online purchase, that is, until you give them a reason to.

Imagine this scenario:  You’re on a site, and you find the perfect TV.  You’ve seen it before in stores, talked to sales people, done your research on consumer reports, AND now you’ve found it 45% off and with free shipping! You’re already imagining who you’re going to invite over to watch the big game… until you notice that there are 3 typos on the homepage, including the brand name of the TV you’re purchasing, and there’s no way to enter a shipping address that is different from your billing address. Notice how quickly you’ve gone from ‘cloud nine’ to ‘too good to be true’.  Chances are, you are not going to be making this purchase and you rationalize that watching the big game on a little TV isn’t so bad, even if it doesn’t have HD.

Credibility is yours to lose.  Visitors will give you the benefit of the doubt until you don’t meet their basic expectations.  Most SEO Professionals and web designers often will give clients little pointers about misspelled words or broken links as part of their SEO Campaigns to improve their marketing results.  Unfortunately, many times, clients don’t seem too concerned about it.  The truth is, every visitor who notices these little things is less likely to convert on your site, return to your site or recommend your site to someone else.

The 3 most common credibility mistakes:

1. Typos and grammatical errors. Examples: loose/lose;  their/there/they’re, its/it’s, a lot (it’s two words, people) etc.  Pick up a copy of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” if you want to set yourself straight on what is proper.  At 85 pages, it’s the most concise miracle ever written on grammar.

2. Lack of (or un-clickable) security assurances in checkout.  In rare occasions with clients, their privacy page is the most visited page by visitors who convert.  This is not un-likely if you have a very methodically minded product like insurance or software because people come to your site expecting to look for detail-oriented information.

3. Un-professional design. Search engine optimization is an ongoing task.  What may have been the norm for website design a few years ago is likely to be obsolete now.  If visitors come to your site and have to think about what they’re seeing, you’ve already lost.

So, proof-read your site, have someone else (preferably not involved in the creation of the site) go through it and make a purchase online, and remember not to give visitors an excuse to leave!

Tags: , ,
Posted in SEO Facts, SEO News, SEO Tips | No Comments »

It just gets easier with Click-to-Mobile Ads

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

A few weeks ago, Google released a mobile feature that allows marketers to add a click-to-call mobile paid search ad to their paid search campaigns. While paid SEO marketing is nothing new to the mobile world, the new feature of click-to-call has made it a much more accessible space to advertise in. This is an ideal setting for local businesses to advertise in, but it is also is great for direct response marketers, especially those marketers looking for leads.

Let’s take a step back and consider that one of the biggest obstacles for marketers when it comes to advertising on the mobile platform is the diverse operating systems used by the various cell phone carriers. Creating several different mobile versions of a website can be difficult and not always a profitable option for some advertisers. While this is still somewhat of a problem, the click-to-call feature has helped the customer skip over the website portion of the chain and get connected right to the company they are looking for. Sure, any local business can benefit from this new feature. The click-to-call feature makes it easier for people who are on the go to get connected with the closest source to what they need. But for a lead generation direct response online search marketing campaign, this is a fantastic bit of news.

Many lead generation campaigns are based on a “cost-per-call metric.” Many times there can be qualifiers within these calls, but the base data set that is analyzed is cost/calls. Now that Google has eliminated a step in the process of getting the phone to ring, a paid search campaign that is optimized for click-to-call advertising can provide many more leads to a direct response campaign. Also, according to Paul Feng, Google group product manager for Mobile Ads, clickthrough rates for these new search ads have seen increases up to 30%.

Google charges the same price for the click-to-call ads as it does its normal paid search ads. All bidding still takes places on an ad group level so a marketer’s current campaign can be optimized for click-to-call advertising in a few simple steps. While the volume may be low at first, this will obviously be an area of growth as smartphones continue to dominate the mobile phone market. Google has made it seamless to include click-to-call advertising in a SEO marketing campaign. Advertisers are well-suited to jump on board now and take advantage of this new space.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Mobile SMS, SEO Facts, SEO News | No Comments »

Search Keywords are your Market Segments

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

People who know how to do offline marketing often have no idea on how to get started with one of today’s most efficient forms of marketing – search. They know their market segments, and they know how to think about them in terms of demographics. They know which magazines to buy ads in and which industry trade shows to attend. But search seems so much different, because there are no demographics to latch on to. When they come talk to the SEO Professionals, we explain that search keywords are their search market segments… – That’s when it all begins to come together.

It’s not that demographics will never be important search as an SEO Strategy. As personalized search begins to take off (and especially as mobile search grows in importance), marketers are likely to know much more about how their market segments are searching than they do today. So, you might, in fact, know gender, age, industry, and other demographics (and firmographics).

But that’s not the place to start. Instead of trying to map your existing market segments onto search, you need to give in to the idea that the first level of segmentation in search marketing is the keywords that your customers type into the search engine. Those keywords give you the insight you need to craft the message. There is a huge difference in the proper message between those two segments, just as in offline marketing, you have different messages for different segments.

That’s the key to success. Put your copywriting mind to work. Instead of trying to think about what message you want to send, and blanketing it over as many people as possible, you must do your keyword research to find out what people are looking for. Then, like any good salesman – you tailor your pitch to hit the points they need to hear.

So, market segmentation isn’t dead when it comes to search engine marketing. You just need to take what you know about segmentation and apply it in a new way. If you do, your skills in messaging will suddenly start to make you successful in search marketing too.

Tags: ,
Posted in SEO Facts, SEO News, SEO Tips, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Making time to Blog…

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Many people that call themselves bloggers, aren’t really bloggers. Real bloggers don’t have additional jobs, they just get paid for writing about their opinions. The 21st century Journalist.

Many people are just small business owners that happen to blog a few times a week. But since most business-owners have only one source of income (their business), blogging takes a back seat to business needs. Most small businesses can’t afford to hire a full-time blogger or ghost writer so they have to make time for blogging in addition to their many business-owner duties. And because those duties are so heavy on the business owner, blogging generally falls by the wayside as more pressing matters are attended to.

Many small business owners are out there thinking, “Blogging? That’s just one more thing to add to my already slammed work schedule. No thanks.” The feeling is understandable.

There is no doubt that sitting down to write a good blog post takes time. Add in artificial deadlines and blog posting schedules, that’s why most small businesses simply don’t do it.

But blogging is an important aspect of growing your business. The key to good blogging is understanding how to work it in, prioritize it properly, and not to feel obligated to anybody but your family and customers. Like all other SEO strategies, timing is everything.

Establish your blogging priority

Many small business that blog find themselves torn between business obligations and feeling like blogging is one of the most important things we can do to grow their business. It is important, but it needs to be prioritized properly.

Looking at the big picture, blogging isn’t just about communicating with our audience. Blogging, when done effectively, helps us improve our reputation, build a brand, get customers, increase SEO Marketing and rankings and, ultimately, grow the business. Yet, missing a day of blogging here or a week of blogging there certainly isn’t going to cause collapse your business or stop customers from calling.

As with everything else, you have to keep your blogging time in perspective and prioritize it properly. You don’t have to blog every day. You can set time aside on a weekend, or on your typically slow days and write several posts at once and publish them later. If your designated “blogging time” gets interrupted by more important issues, take care of what’s important. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get your post(s) completed on schedule.

Know when to stop writing

All of our time is limited so when writing a blog post, sometimes we find it taking a lot more of our time than we anticipated. And BLAST!!! you still have two more posts to write today! Ok, stop for a second. Think about this. Can your wordy blog post be broken down into several short posts? Snip here, cut there and you just met your blog quota for the week!

You can also break your blog writing time into several shorter periods. Write one post a week, spending 15-20 minutes a day until it’s done.

Change your blogging patterns

It is often not so much a matter of how much you blog but a matter of the content you provide. Not every blog post has to be 1200 words. Some can be a few hundred, so long as the information you provide is valuable.

If you didn’t get time to sit down and write your typical blog posts, just think of something that you can share in a couple of quick paragraphs. Write it, post it, move on. You can always go back later and revisit on and expand the topic it later.

Short posts can often be just as good, if not better than, long posts. Quick bits of information can be fantastic to readers who don’t always have time to invest in reading long pieces.

Create a blogging schedule

How and when you blog is up to you, but I recommend that you work blogging into your schedule. Have certain times of the day or days of the week or month that is designated as blogging time.

It’s also a good idea to stay a few weeks ahead of yourself. I like to keep 4-6 weeks worth of blogs posts ready to go. This gives me a chance to 1) write a post and go back to it later for proofing, and 2) have blog posts ready to go should something interfere with my normal blogging schedule. Then you never have to worry about not having a blog post ready.

Blogging can be very important to the success of your business. There is a lot of value and potential growth you can get from it, you just need to make sure you set time aside to make it happen.

Tags:
Posted in SEO Facts, SEO News, SEO Tips | No Comments »

« Older Entries