Posts Tagged ‘SEO Professionals’

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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!

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Conversion 101: Part 1

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

In the world of search engine marketing and campaign measurement, the web has been a goldmine. Almost every conceivable metric can be measured online. But of all the things you can track, measure, weigh and analyze, the only metric that truly matters is conversions. Click through rates, page views, time spent on site, number of pages read, entrance and exit points, abandonment; all of these metrics are fantastic, but if you’re not using them to improve your conversion rates, then why bother?

Stepping Stones

Most people look at their website as a whole but in reality it is a collection of many parts. These parts (web pages) are essentially individual steps on a path that should lead your visitors to a specific goal: the conversion. If your site as a whole, and web pages individually, are working properly, you should see an increase in conversion rates and sales. If anything is broken along the way, your visitors are led the wrong way at the wrong time and you open the door to having them leave before they’ve reached the conversion goal.

Each entry point of your site (wherever the visitor lands first, not just the home page) needs to be treated as the starting point that will lead your visitors step by step toward the conversion goal. In order to guide your visitors from this starting point to the end point, you need to make sure each step along the way is aligned with the next; in sync and unbroken.

The seven steps to strong conversions

Step 1: Build the path to the conversion point

Just like good book needs to have a beginning, middle and an end, your site should be no different. All the steps, from start to finish, need to work together to bring the visitor toward the ultimate goal. However, with a website the start isn’t always the home page. In fact, a website is more like a choose-your-own-adventure book than a traditional novel. The visitor starts at different points; wherever the search engine dropped. This could be the home page, product page, testimonial page, informational page, an article, or anywhere else.

This makes building the path to the conversion a bit more challenging, but it can be done. Each page must be able to act independently from the previous, having a beginning and a middle while guiding the visitor to the end. Essentially, every web page of your site needs to be able to be the very first step in the process, provide a link to or act as the middle step, and lead the visitor to the last step, which is the conversion.

Step 2: Create alternate paths to the conversion point

Not every visitor has the same wants, needs or desires as the next. If you plan only a single path to the conversion point, you will ultimately lead much of your audience down a path that isn’t meant for them.

Twenty visitors can land on the same page and take 20 different paths to the conversion. Some want to read about your company, others want to see your testimonials, while another group wants guarantee or warranty information. Yet still others want to read more about your products or services before learning more about you and then getting some testimonials for confirmation. And of course there are always those who are ready to buy now with very little persuasion having to be done..

A path to the conversion should be created to provide each of your users precisely what they need in order to take the next step. Every visitor has different needs, desires, and temperaments from the next. Their needs vary at any given time in the process. Keep your visitor’s options open but also be aware that too many options can create confusion or inhibit your visitors from choosing any path at all. Don’t try to be all things to all people, but instead try to narrow the options down to the most common and significant so you can be sure to meet the vast majority of your visitor’s needs.

Step 3: Inspect your conversion paths

Once you have created your paths you then need to inspect them. Put yourself in the mind of your visitors and follow through as many paths as possible. This is where you’ll find out if any steps are missing or broken, or if there are too many steps in the process.

SEO Professionals say to take notes of obstacles that may disengage the visitor or may be an impediment to them reaching the conversion goal. Look for missing information, errors on the pages, broken links and calls to action. You want to make sure that the visitor finds no hindrances to getting to the destination and are able to find all the information they need to make a confident purchase decision.

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Afilliate Programs 101

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Mike Evans from Search Marketing Standard posted an interesting blog about Affiliate Programs and their function in a struggling economy. The ad network is responsible for finding and managing the affiliates, and for checking to make sure that the affiliate is a reputable person who is running clean traffic to your offer. The ad networks also manage payouts to affiliates and add roughly a 20% fee on top of whatever the affiliate receives as a commission in exchange for getting their affiliates to run your offer and managing the technical details involved in tracking your offer and payouts. Mike goes on to discuss merchants, multiple ways to drive traffic and the possible drawbacks in his blog post below.

The great thing about an affiliate program, especially in these hard economic times, is that if an affiliate doesn’t produce any sales, there’s no cost to you.

Another function the ad network performs is staying on top of your sales to make sure they back out. Having sales back out is the process of making sure your customers are happy and are not submitting a large number of credit card charge backs. One of the main functions of the software run by affiliate ad networks is to give them (and you) immediate notification if a particular affiliate is running bad traffic that does not back out. The network will speak to the affiliate and shut them down if their traffic is not backing out.

Now, all of the above sounds great, so here’s the not-so-good news. You have to structure your offer in a way that is attractive to an affiliate. You need an offer that has sufficient demand on the Internet, and you need work with your ad network to create the highest payout you can, with attractive, high-converting landing pages.

As a merchant, have to understand that the affiliate is using his time and money to promote your product. The affiliate has thousands of other offers to choose from, and for him to run traffic to yours; you have to make it worth their while. If the commission you expect to pay is only pennies, no one will run your offer; you have to make sure the relationship formed between you, the ad network, and the affiliate is mutually beneficial. Your ad network will guide you in this.

One of the second most popular ways affiliates drive traffic is through email. Many affiliates develop an opt-in email list in specific niches. There are affiliates that specialize in every niche out there, including yours. An opt-in email list is one where a consumer has chosen to receive information about a particular topic. In our baby-blanket-related example, an affiliate might offer a free newsletter on the latest ways to help your baby go to sleep. Consumers opt-in to receive the weekly newsletter, and the affiliate then sends your offer to his email list.

There are many, many other methods affiliates use to drive traffic. These include buying banner ads to advertise your product, making simple websites that provide consumers information, writing articles for blogs, making videos and posting them on YouTube, making product review sites, and posting classified ads.

Thatcher Michelsen, a super affiliate with over ten years Internet marketing experience advises, “Merchants need to believe this is real. Many SEO marketers don’t believe at first that it’s actually possible to get other people to pay to advertise their products. The Internet is not like print or TV. Everything on the Internet is trackable, and that’s why affiliate marketing works. There’s no risk for the merchant at all, they just need to make sure they have a good offer.”

According to the 2009 AffStat Report, a document put out by Affiliate Summit (the industry-leading affiliate advertising convention), 80% of affiliate programs use a revenue sharing or Pay-Per-Sale method, nineteen percent use a Pay-Per-Lead lead method, and the remaining programs use a custom solution.

Don’t think this is easy money however. Successful affiliate programs require work and maintenance. But in these times, any additional sales, especially those with no up-front cost, are a welcome addition to your bottom line.

While affiliate marketing has benefits, there are, of course, drawbacks. For instance, you’ll be sharing your profits with an outside party. And if an affiliate uses unscrupulous means to drive traffic — email spam for example — you’ll have to exercise some damage control on your reputation.

Okay, so we’ve covered the good and the bad. How do you get started? Using a hosted solution is often the best way to start. This means you use a third-party affiliate management company to set-up your offer and promote it to their affiliates, using their servers and infrastructure.

Ultimately, I believe that every business will have to at least look at the affiliate model to promote their product. The ability of the Internet to track all of these sales allows the affiliate model to work and continue to grow at an amazing pace. Affiliates are, in effect, an extended sales force for your business. By using them wisely, you will be able take your company to heights you always imagined possible.

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The Key to Effective PPC Campaigns

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

SEO Professionals are always looking to capture a valuable and relevant click throughout their pay-per-click campaign. Here are five ways to help target those all-important searchers through compelling and effective ad copy.

1. Utilize Your Product’s Uniqueness – Most companies already know what separates them from their competitors. For most, your company has already completed hours of market research, so you should use this information in your copy. For example, if you have a Volvo dealership, capitalize on the safety aspect of your brand; if you have a Subaru dealership, then you could target “bad weather driving.”

2. Turn a Feature into a Benefit – Features are easily identifiable – they are the adjectives of a product. “Stronger abs,” “anti-lock brakes,” and “diabetes supply home delivery” are all valuable features, but you must draw attention to the fact that they will also make you more attractive, keep your child safe, and be more efficient by saving you time.

3. Use Credibility Words – “Guaranteed,” “Authorized Reseller,” “Certified,” “Bonded,” and “Secure” are just a few examples. With the intense competition and overwhelming number of ads that most consumers are bombarded with in the search space, many are drawn towards an ad that provides them some peace of mind about their choice to make that click.

4. Include Keywords in Your Ads – With the flexibility of 25 campaigns per account and 100 ad groups per campaign, make sure to segment out your keywords into lists that are associated with as few keywords as possible. By incorporating the main keywords into all of the ads within that ad group, your ads will be more relevant to the searcher and more compelling by nature.

5. Strong Call to Action – This is common knowledge, but a strong call to action can make or break your ad. Second only to a PPC ad’s headline is line 2 of your description. This is directly related to the fact that a call to action is usually placed here. “Act Now,” “Subscribe Today,” “Learn More,” and “Book Today” are just a few examples of a strong call to action.

Of course not every ad will utilize every feature listed here, but by incorporating some of these points into your next round of ad copies, you will see a lift in relevant traffic which will shine through with an increased conversion rate and a higher ROI.

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