by Admin on March 22, 2012
Lately I’ve seen a lot of websites that look good on the surface, but are horrible when you look at their underpinnings (on page SEO). When I ask about this, I am told that the website designer doesn’t do SEO. Really?!
From a graphic design point of view these websites may be stunning. But from a website design standpoint, they are ineffective at best. Graphic design is not website design. Website design incorporates graphic design and much more. It is possible to build a website a hundred different ways and still achieve the same finished look. However, hidden in the code and content can be a website’s inability to be marketed, managed or monitored properly because a designer/developer used poor or dated techniques.
Some of the items that need to be considered when designing a website are:
1. Canonicalization (does www forward to non-www or vice versa [301 redirect])
2. Map 2-3 keywords per page.
3. What is the density of the target keyword on each landing page?
4. Image & Hyperlink Optimization
5. Header Tag Optimization
6. H1 Analysis – Is the target keyword in the H1 for each page?
7. Title Tag Optimization – Is the title keyword optimized?
8. Nofollow – Are non-target words nofollowed on site.
9. W3c Validation
A website is like a house. You can cover up the poor underlying structure with an aesthetically pleasing surface, but you still have a poor structure. Would you buy a house where you knew the underlying structure was in disrepair even though it looked good on the surface?
Ask your website designer if s/he includes SEO with the website. If not, find another website designer.
by blogmistress on March 21, 2012
Sometimes the best laid plans just don’t work. It could be that you have the wrong tools or maybe outdated tools. Maybe your technique wasn’t correct. Probably the main reason for failing when it comes to internet marketing is because you didn’t have the right plan or perhaps you didn’t have a plan at all. What makes an internet marketing plan fail?
- No clear goals – if you don’t care where you are going, anywhere you end up is fine. Or is it really? Sometimes we don’t get where we want to go because we didn’t have a destination in mind in the first place. Decide on realistic, measurable goals for your business before you start to implement any internet marketing plan. Your goals will help you determine what tools and techniques are correct.
- Focusing on things that will not help you achieve your goals. - Let’s take your website as an example. Everything on your website should have a purpose. Perhaps you should have content that is search engine friendly to help you get more organic traffic. If your goal is to convert traffic into leads for your business, you should probably have clear calls to action to help you achieve that goal. If your focus is on having just the right color of blue as your background color or using a particular font, you need to think about how those things will help you achieve your goals. When is the last time you visited a website just to admire their background? When is the last time you filled out a form on a site because of the font they used? Oh, and by the way, that perfect shade of blue that you love so much will look different on my screen than it does on your screen or your customer’s screen.
- Adding elements to your marketing without understanding how they fit into an overall plan that will help you achieve your goals. – Perhaps you are told that you have to be on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Google+. While those are all great marketing tools, you need to be sure that you are using them in a way that fits your overall internet marketing plan. Too often, businesses feel like they have to jump on the latest thing without deciding first how it can be used to help them reach their goals. Without a plan, many businesses end up wasting time and money on efforts that are not moving them to their goal.
- Not measuring your results. – If you are not measuring your results, how will you ever know if you meet your goal? How will you know if you are veering off course and need to adjust? Measuring your results is an often overlooked but very important part of internet marketing.
- Not working with people who understand the importance of having an overall internet marketing plan with measurable goals.
Don’t fail! Make a plan and do it right. In the long run, you will save money and you will have measurable success.
by blogmistress on March 19, 2012
Is SEO part of your internet marketing strategy? Not including SEO in your internet strategy is like spending money on a sleek, beautiful car and then not putting fuel in it. SEO is the fuel for driving traffic to your website. When people are looking for you, you want to make sure they can find you!
As we have discussed, many times, keyword research is an important first step for SEO. But, as we have also seen, search engines really like fresh content. The best way to use the keywords that you have researched is to combine them with fresh content through blogging. Okay, I know that many of you might want to stop reading right there. I’ve seen it on the faces of business owners when I mention blogging. It is true, blogging is not one of the easiest things to do. However, it produces such great results, it is something that you really should consider. Studies show that companies that blog:
- get 55% more visitors
- convert 40% more of their visitors into leads
- have 434% more indexed pages
- get 97% more inbound links
Those are some pretty powerful numbers. If blogging is so great for helping you get found and convert visitors into leads, isn’t it something that you want consider? Blogging is like super-fuel for your internet marketing. So why aren’t you blogging?
- “I don’t know what to write about.”
- “I don’t write very well.”
- “I don’t have time.”
These are just some of the reasons we hear. However, every business that we have worked with that made the effort to blog, even if it wasn’t that often, has seen good results. Don’t wait, the only way to get started is to take that first step.
by Admin on March 14, 2012
What’s your website’s purpose? That’s a pretty simple question, but you’d be amazed at the number of people who can’t answer it. By the way, the answer is not to make you more money, but more money may be the result of your website achieving its purpose.
The purpose of your website might be to:
- Drive customers to your brick and mortar store- this type of website informs visitors of what’s going on at your physical location (sales, special inventory, etc.) in hopes of enticing them to visit your store.
- Generate leads for your sales force- this is where website visitors fill out forms to get additional information, they then become leads in your sales funnel.
- Provide a way for customers to shop online- these are ecommerce sites where customers can shop online
- Provide contact information to potential customers- these are brochure or yellow page websites that provide information to visitors who may be looking for a phone number or address.
Once you decide what the purpose of your website is, you can start measuring your results to see if your website is achieving its purpose. If you aren’t getting the results you need, then you can modify your website.
by blogmistress on March 12, 2012
One of the best things about internet marketing is that it can be measured. You can actually “see” whether or not you are getting results. So, that begs the question: Are you getting results? Surprisingly, many businesses don’t know if their website is really working for them, they just know that it “looks pretty” and that they get “compliments” on it. This is known as the “spray and pray” marketing method – put something up and pray that it will work.
Often times, what makes a website great and what gets results are the things that you don’t see like:
- Well researched keywords placed in the right places on the site
- Clear calls to action
- Well-made landing pages
If you are basing your marketing on how things look on the surface, you may be missing the point. It is like finding a great looking dress or nice looking suit. It may look great on the hanger but once you try it on, you find that it is poorly made. The fabric is shoddy or the fit isn’t right. Just because it looked great, doesn’t mean it will work.
Don’t spray and pray, do it right and get results – which in the case of most businesses, means more leads and customers.
Is your website getting results?
by Admin on March 8, 2012
Your Facebook page should strengthen existing relationships, and also forge new ones. You will need to closely monitor your Facebook page to understand what you fans want.
Things to Consider:
- The most frequently used activity for young Facebook users is wall posts.
- The older Facebook demographic is more interested in using Facebook for themselves.
- Share original content:
- 60% of links shared on Facebook are published content.
- Additional 36% of shares were embedded content.
- Put like or recommend buttons at the top of the blog article.
- Community will build up a reputation for the article by “liking” the content.
- Post articles on the weekend.
- 51% of American companies block Facebook at work.
Source: HubSpot, The Science of Facebook, 2011
Your Facebook page should be the launching point to your home website, blog, and conversion offers. By encouraging discussions on your Facebook wall, you will be fostering a community in which your newest visitors interact with your most dedicated and loyal customers. In doing so, your existing customers’ excitement to share and interact with your material and page could impact your more casual fans’ decision to purchase your product.
by blogmistress on March 7, 2012
Setting up your Facebook page is just the first step when you are using Facebook for business. It is essential for you to distribute remarkable content that your fans will want to share so your fans can attract more visitors to you Facebook page.
Action Items:
- To increase your Facebook exposure, you need to design offers and content that will motivate people to “like” or share your page. 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations.
- Posts with the word “video” in them are shared 30% more on Facebook than posts that do not.
- Posts that use buzzwords or business jargon like “optimize” significantly decrease the number of fans for a Facebook page. These pages have 100 fans, as opposed to the average page with 624 fans.
- Posts with digits in the title tend to be shared more often.
- Lists using words like “top” make tremendously successful Facebook posts.
For your customers and prospects to find your Facebook page engaging, they will need enticing materials and regular posts.
Find out how to really rock it with your social media presence to attract more visitors and convert them into customers with the Social Media Tune-Up Guide.
by blogmistress on March 6, 2012
Although Facebook has made it easier than ever to set up a business page, there are some steps that you may have overlooked. When you are setting up you Facebook page, keep this in mind:
- People have profiles; businesses/brands have pages.
- Create and treat your welcome page like a landing page. Add calls to action; don’t miss the opportunity to generate some leads.
- Set up Custom Tabs for resources using the FBML application.
- If you are a single location business, set up a “places” page.
- Add useful applications such as Discussions Boards and YouTube Video Box.
Facebook pages must be as inviting as possible. The format of your page should first be focused on creating an engaging environment for your fans, which when executed properly, will result in generating and collecting more information about your leads.
Be as creative as possible, and determine which activities or apps would best supplement your company’s brand.
by blogmistress on March 5, 2012
Think social media is just a place for social interactions and “fun?” Think again! Social media can be a powerful inbound marketing tool for your business. It can have an impact on your traffic, leads and inevitably, sales. Consider this:
- US Internet users spend 3x more minutes on blogs and social networks than on email.
- 93% of US adult Internet users are on Facebook.
- 1 out of every 8 minutes online is spent on Facebook.
- 49% of people use Facebook to share content.
- More than ½ of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks.
- 79% of US Twitter users are more likely to recommend brands they follow.
- 67% of US Twitter users are more likely to buy brand they follow.
- Pinterest is the fastest growing website – EVER!
Social media amplifies your content, your website and your brand. It allows for you to establish and foster a more personal relationship with your potential customers, and when done correctly, can generate website traffic, inbound links, and leads for you.
Social media has become a major part of consumer culture, and it is time for you to capitalize on it. Get started with our Social Media Tune-Up Guide!
by blogmistress on March 2, 2012
Recently, Google announced 40 new search updates. What does this mean for you and your website? Well, it depends. Let’s take a look at some of the things that they say will make a difference to you and your business:
- Fresher images. We’ve adjusted our signals for surfacing fresh images. Now we can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web.
- Improvements to freshness. We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.
- Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.
These three changes are directly aimed at trying to give users fresher content. Fresh news often breaks on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Google is usually behind in presenting fresh information because it has to find it and then index it.
So, how does this affect your business? Google rewards fresh content. That means, you need to be continually adding fresh, relevant content to your site. The easiest way to do this is with a blog. On your blog you can be easily and quickly add new content.
Google is also working to improve it’s local search results. They say:
- Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.
If you are a local business, make sure you have all your local listings up to date.
One of the more interesting updates has to do with how Google evaluates links:
- Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
Google has declined clarifying the link evaluation process, including specifying the method that they have “used for several years” that they have now turned off. Very interesting . . .
Bottom line: SEO is an ongoing process. It is never a once and done proposition. Learn more about how you can improve your SEO from our SEO 101 eBook.
