5 STEPS TO A MORE EFFECTIVE WEB SITE

Are you frustrated by the lack of business your Web site generates? By making some simple changes you can improve the effectiveness of your site. These changes will lead to increased online visibility, more quality traffic and more inbound leads that build your business.

Make it easier for people to find you.

I’m still surprised by how little businesses invest in their search engine optimization (SEO). They’ll spend thousands upon thousands on a Web site but not a dime on SEO. That’s like building a state-of-the-art retail store in the middle of nowhere and not providing directions.

Perform a keyword analysis and make sure the words your prospects use to search appear throughout your Web site, especially in your title tags, headers, body copy and internal links.

Stop talking about yourself.

Read the copy on your home page: is it about you or about your audience? Remember: nobody cares about you or your business. They care about their problems, their issues, their pain points. You need to address those issues first before you start talking about how long you’ve been in business, your hours, or even your products or services.

Get people actively involved.

Remember those mailings from the Columbia Record Club? Eleven LPs for one penny? (Anyone under 30 can Google it: music used to come on vinyl. Really.) They would mail you a penny to take from one page and paste it on the return form. Why? Because the market research showed that by doing so they got significantly better response rates.

Get visitors involved by downloading articles, using calculators, entering contests, taking surveys, or clicking links. Passive visitors don’t buy; involved visitors become customers.

Lead visitors down the sales funnel.

This isn’t 1997 and your Web site isn’t a brochure. It’s 2010 and your Web site is your best salesperson. It doesn’t eat, sleep or ask for time off. If you’re not treating it like your number one sales tool, you’re leaving money on the table.

Focus on what your site visitor wants to accomplish and make it as frictionless as possible to achieve that goal. Lead them down that path with clear calls-to-action at the bottom of each page that tell them what the next step is.

If you want the phone to ring, make sure your phone number is at the top of every page. If you want more members for your organization put that application form front and center. If you want inbound leads make sure your calls-to-action lead to a contact form.

Measure and improve.

Take a look at your analytics”"your traffic reports”"weekly, if not more often. What search terms are people using to find your site? What Web sites or blogs are sending you the most visitors? What caused that recent spike in traffic?

By determining the answers to these and other questions you can continually improve what you’re doing on your Web site and in your Internet marketing. Maybe you’ll see it’s time to step up your activity on Twitter, or cut back on podcasting, or create more videos for YouTube and other video sharing sites.

If you’re not regularly checking your analytics you don’t know what’s working and what’s not. It’s like shooting at a target with a blindfold on.

In Conclusion

If your Web site isn’t generating inbound leads the way you had hoped, take these first steps towards making it a more effective sales tool. It may take a few months after you make your changes before you start to see an uptick, so be patient, but keep monitoring the situation and making incremental changes along the way.

Also consider porting your site over to WordPress or another content management system (CMS) so that you can make these changes yourself, saving you money and giving you more control over your Web site–and ultimately–the success of your business.

If you need help on any or all of these steps, please contact Vision Web today.

Sincerely,

Ken Murray
Founder/CEO, Vision Web

Highest Bid Is Not Highest Rank!

Hey, I was jut talking to a client and realized it may not be clear why the last post is so important. It is important because Google does not serve up ads based on who the highest bidder is, they consider relevance (a human actually looks at the ads and landing pages) and click through rate (one other way of measuring relevance).

Google wants to give the searcher what they want, or as close to it as possible, even in the paid listings. The higher your click through rate (%) the more relevant you look and the less you have to pay for a top listing. One good trick is to include the search term you bid on in the title of your ad and the headline of your landing page – even better, put it in the URL of the landing page too.

Keep coming back, or subscribe to my feed so you don’t miss any breaking news of critical tips!

Ken

The 10 Most Guarded AdWords Secrets

While Google AdWords is a revenue generating machine for the savvy advertiser, 9 out of 10 people often FAIL in their first few attempts to create an effective campaign.
That is why I have created this report – to help these new or not-as-experienced advertisers battle through the initial learning curve, and to implement a few very simple but effective strategies that will help you achieve your advertising goals and improve the overall performance of your advertising campaign.

1. Expand Relevant Keyword Terms
Keyword relevancy is the KEY to success with Google AdWords.
While it may be tempting to include all sorts of keywords you can get your hands on, be aware that this is often the #1 mistake advertisers make when creating their first campaign.
The keyword term qualifies the user as someone who is interested in the your products/services. For this reason, we need to make them as relevant as possible.
Do not go out on a whim and start adding terms that are somewhat related, because, chances are, even if users do find interest in clicking on your ad, they will end up leaving your website without making a purchase because your product/service was not exactly what they were looking for.

2. Be Familiar with the Various Matching Options
While broad match is the default match type and should be used more than 90% of the time, you should also be familiar with the other matching options that are available to you.
Selecting the right match type will increase your performance potential and for driving clicks/sales.
If you are unfamiliar with the different matching options, here is an example:
When tennis shoes is broad matched, your ad will show when users search on the keywords tennis and shoes, in any order, and even if the query includes other terms, such as tennis rackets and shoes.
With broad matching, the keyword is also automatically enrolled in expanded matching. This means that Google will show the ads for other relevant terms and variations (such as tennis sneakers) even if these terms are not included in the keyword list.
When tennis shoes is phrase matched, your ad will only show when users search on the keywords tennis shoes in that order. For example, queries red tennis shoes and tennis shoes sale will generate your ad, but not shoes for tennis.
When tennis shoes is exact matched, your ad will only show when users search on the keyword tennis shoes. This must be typed in exactly in this format. No other variations of this term will trigger your ad.

3. Use Negative Keywords Read the story »

Critical SEO Basics

OK, so here are the basics you absolutely need to do before anything else.

META Tags

You need a couple of things in your meta tags at the top of every page. first and foremost is a page title. EVery page in your website needs to have its own title and they should all be different. Under no circumstances should your business name be our page title. Page title can be as much as 30% of the score for what is actually on/in the page code, including the content – that’s huge, don’t blow it.

The second meta tag you need is Read the story »