When you hear short or long, you think of the length of something right?
These terms worked well in the old days of copywriting – a sales letter’s content could be easily described as either long or short.
But websites are much different since hyperlinks break the flow of web copy. People, and I’m no exception, rarely read entire web pages in a sequential fashion – they scan content for relevant information and move from one page to another through links that interest them.
So in the context of web copywriting, short vs. long means more like minimal or pared down vs. expansive and content rich.
More crucial than simply long or short is whether your copy/content answers potential customers’ questions and concerns. Studies show that well over one-half of potential customers do not convert because the site’s content fails to do just that.
That’s why “long” copy web pages have better sales conversions than minimal or “short” copy – they do a much better job of completely answering customers’ concerns.
And answering questions isn’t limited to just copy…they are also answerable through video, audio, customer reviews, blogs, forums, etc.
Think of it this way – sites who do not answer visitors’ questions through content and hyperlinks run the risk of falling into the “used-car salesman” trap and do nothing but frustrate prospects and force them to look elsewhere.
Focus more on putting yourself into your customer’s shoes – copy on a page can be short if it includes hyperlinks to more information and/or addresses their concerns. Each individual can learn as little or as much as they need or want before purchasing your product or subscribing to your service.
Learn more about short vs. long in the context of SEO copywriting in this informative article from GrokDotCom.
Convincing potential clients or managers of the advantages of organic search has over pay-per-click ad campaigns is quite the challenge – here at SEO Advantage, we’re always trying to get potential clients to migrate from PPC to SEO because of the long-term benefits it holds over PPC.
But to a marketing manager at a large corporation, PPC is quite attractive because it’s the most familiar to them…and there’s a clear connection between money spent and results. Ads can be set up and implemented quickly. Marketers and budget managers can easily calculate ROI and see clear profits within a few days at most.
It’s difficult to sell SEO against PPC since initial results may not show for six months. If a professional search engine marketer is being honest, they cannot possibly pinpoint exactly when you will begin seeing the fruits of your investment nor will they be able to tell you precisely what the impact will be.
Search engines also can change their algorithms during this timeframe, obscuring the impact of an SEO campaign.
But there are many reasons why SEO is better – 75% of all search traffic is driven by SEO, versus only 25% for PPC so potential opportunities are three times greater with SEO. And according to this heat map image by Rand Fish, searchers focus more top search results anyway. (some argue being in the top spot of search results carries a high degree of brand value as well)
Courtesy of Rand Fish at SEOMoz
PPC ad campaigns are also getting more competitive…current studies conclude PPC profits are shrinking and may be gone altogether in some industries.
Since SEO builds on itself, traffic continues to grow if you keep doing the right things. As traffic continues to grow from the original baseline, a company may see a doubling or tripling of their investment.
Read this Search Engine Watch article for more insights on why SEO is better than PPC and some of the barriers of convincing potential clients or marketing managers at your company of the benefits of investing in SEO.
A new report from the Catalyst Group shows searchers giving good marks to Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. However, many of the same searchers indicated they plan on continuing with Google since they are familiar with it and use many of its additional features like Gmail and Google News.
Key findings from the study are reported in this TechCrunch article, which says even if Bing proves to be just as good as Google, it may not matter since Google’s brand is so established and well-known.
A focus group of 12 people was monitored with eye-tracking cameras as they conducted searches…after this, each individual completed a survey and interview. All participants were exclusive Google users before the experiment.
Test subjects were asked to rate Bing on specific criteria: visual design, organization of features, filtering options and relevance of results. It beat Google on everything except relevance of results, the most important criteria.
Catalyst CEO Nick Gould concludes that Microsoft “created something as good as Google and that is not good enough.” Overall, the test subjects “were not swayed.” No wonder Microsoft is spending up to $100 million on Bing marketing.
See the full results of the Catalyst Group’s study including data from the eye-tracking cameras used to gauge the attention given to ad space on each search engine.
We’ve all heard the rage these days about Twitter and how it’s the must have online marketing tool. But how can Twitter contribute to an overall online marketing strategy that yields results?
Marketing Experiments has a concise study on just that – teaming up with other marketing professionals to review research studies, evaluate companies who harness Twitter successfully and explore different ways small businesses should be using Twitter.
Of all the research the team reviewed, one fact stands out…Twitter and other social networking utilities cater primarily to the early-adopter audience, or tech-savvy people who are the first, and most prolific users.
Many people who claim to be proficient in social media have no experience in actual social media marketing, which is a completely different rubrics cube to solve. Research from Nielsen Online showed 60% of Twitter users in the U.S. do not return the month after sign-up.
But research also shows Twitter is valuable at live events…social media service Pathable analyzed nearly 800 “tweets” from a Wordcamp conference and found that 1/3 of them were useful to attendees.
At a minimum, monitor Twitter to see what others are saying about your brand…nearly 2/3 of marketers do not monitor social media or response to negative critique according to MarketingSherpa. This represents a missed opportunity to learn what customers are saying and manage customer issues.
Use it in the right ways, and Twitter can become a valuable online marketing tool. Use it to impact your bottom line in one of three ways: increase revenue, build brand or equity, decrease costs.
If you can’t see how Twitter helps your organization accomplish at least one of those three goals, now may not be the time.
But even if this is the case and you don’t plan on immediately building a social networking presence, create an account for your brand or business on Twitter and other major social networking utilites so that option stays open to you in the future.
See the presentation or simply review the synopsis at Marketing Experiments and learn more about how you can use Twitter to impact your bottom line along with examples of real world success.
We have all most likely used an Excel spreadsheet in the past to organize some information into a list – using them for link building campaigns though is a must to keep track of all the links going out and coming in.
Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal has a great short blog piece on link building worksheets. Remember though, these are just examples…do not use an exact variant of the examples below but pick and choose from each and add custom elements of your own that you see fit.
The first example from Garrett French of Link-Building-Guide.com is a comprehensive and concise worksheet that promotes an advanced approach to link building…evaluate each linking page and track keywords in the title, text and within tags. This guide provides a systematic approach to link acquisition and takes into account many advanced SEO features like crawlers and massive amounts of link data.
Another link building spreadsheet from Kalena describes organizing a spreadsheet for directory submissions. Her system creates 5 or 6 Excel worksheets for different aspects of the link building campaign – columns in each workbook have the same headings. Read more about Kalena’s system here.
YourSEOplan also gives suggestions on how to construct a link building worksheet along with examples you can download…columns include: URL of linking page, requested landing page, contact e-mail, date requested, link received? (Y/N) and notes.
Two more examples, Raven Tools and WordStrea, are given in the comments section of Ann’s blog.
Also, see this forum discussion at Sphinn for more insights.
Researching keywords is the first and most vital thing to do when optimizing your site for the search engines. It used to be so simple…easily assemble a keyword basket that did the job from the now defunct Overture Keyword Tool.
But in the age of data overload, there are multiple tools that are a part of any SEOs radar include WordTracker, Keyword Discovery and Google AdWords. And there are even niche keyword tools, even ones that track social media marketing as well.
A savvy SEO today for instance can take top keyword data from SpyFu, copy it into WordTracker Lateral Thesaurus and AdWords External Keyword tool, then sort the data to find where the low cost-per-click average intersects with higher search frequency…keywords fitting this profile then become a valuable component of a SEO campaign.
This Search Engine Watch article includes a checklist for using multiple datasets for keyword research. These different tools and datasets are best used in creative combinations, the article says.
The important point is to think beyond traditional frequency-based keyword research when building baskets…consider data from WordTracker’s Thesarus and Buzz Pocket Mining. Evaluate conversion metrics, search analytics and achievable SEO to get the best keyword data.
Online marketing professionals like you and me are always on the lookout for tips and techniques we should employ to make the site’s we work on search engine friendly.
SEOMoz today released a comprehensive list of SEO best practices. Like many other professions, there is room for debate…but these tips can give your website a solid SEO foundation. This list this time is also based on correlation data collected by SEOMoz. Data that revealed some best practices should be removed from the list and others more strongly emphasized.
This year’s list has information on a wide-variety of SEO elements and how to employ them in crafting a site optimized for the search engines. Elements include: title tags, H1 tags, meta keyword tags, parameter driven URLs, canonical tags and more.
Read the tips along with the comments to learn more in this SEOMoz blog post.
Some in the business have been suggesting Microsoft’s new search engine Bing may offer better keyword research tools, especially in finding the most up-to-date keyword data.
In terms of providing the most current trends in search queries, Bing’s keyword research tool, xRank, outperforms Google Trends according to Eric Schonfeld of TechCrunch. Keywords that online marketers identify from this data are an important component in a company’s search engine optimization campaign.
With the exception of the most popular ones, Google Trends has a three-day lag time – but xRank displays current information for that day says Schonfeld.
Take this past weekend’s U.S. Open for instance…xRank is showing a spike in search queries for golfer Ricky Barnes for yesterday. Google Trends on the other hand has no data for yesterday.
“This may not be a major feature, but it shows a weakness in Google’s armor,” commented Schonfeld.
In its second week, 12.1% of Internet searches were on Bing…that’s up from 9.1% in the week prior to their launch according to comScore.
We announced today in an optimized press release SEO Advantage’s updated site design…not a totally new design, which is what many companies do as often as every year, but incremental changes so new site visitors will be able to easily learn about us while veterans do not get frustrated and lost.
We’ve also made many of the same changes to our blog as well…all the content is the same, but a few changes have been implemented to accomplish the same goal as our web site – make it easier to learn about SEO’s value and importance.
Our web development expert, Gaby Zapien, updated the blog while retaining the look of our brand. Increase font size gives it a more personable feel. And navigation links at the top make it very easy to get to SEO Advantage’s homepage to learn more.
Another, behind-the-scenes change we did was transfer the blog to a new platform, WordPress. Now, it will be easier for us to share graphics and embedded videos in our posts so expect to see more of those in the coming weeks. And, we now have the ability to accept comments!
As you know from our SEO knowledge center articles and other places, a press release is a method to not only get your company noticed by journalists, bloggers and other media outlets, but help build search engine rankings as well.
But you need to know how to optimize press releases to have the greatest positive impact for your company. Over 50,000 press releases go out each month, 1 every 12 seconds in fact. This fact drew me to really appreciate this informational video from HubSpot I recently saw. The tutorial lasts around 35 minutes or you can simply download the slides.
The tutorial video details two types of press release formats: traditional and social media. The basic premise I drew away from the tutorial was their suggestion that pulling factors from each is how you should optimize press releases.
For instance, a traditional release will not have any anchor text links, an important component to building search engine rankings. A social media press release generally has an embedded video, which was found to limit the distribution.
I won’t give it all away…watch the tutorial below or simply view the slides for tips on how you can get the most bang for your buck from your press releases.
Your site’s conversion rate is defined as the number of people who took an action you wanted them to divided by the total number of people who could have taken that action. Looking at conversion rates this way begins to help you understand how to optimize them.
FutureNow co-founder Brian Eisenberg provides a step-by-step process for optimizing conversion rates for your site.
Step 1 – Understand the “number of people” visiting your site. Different who people visit your site arrived there through a variety of means. They vary by demographic, what stage they are in the buying process. Some get there by simply typing in your URL. Others arrive through a search engine results page or a social media network like Twitter or Facebook.
This is why an average conversion rate is meaningless. There is no average person when we’re talking about search engine optimization and analyzing conversion rates. Calculate the conversion rate for each demographic AND marketing effort you employ to get an accurate figure.
Step 2 – Understand the action you want visitors to take. If you’re in retail, you want them to buy something. If you’re into lead generation, you want them to become a lead. If someone does not buy or doesn’t become a lead, try to understand what may be holding them up. If they’re simply bouncing away, what is causing them to do that?
These different micro- and macro-actions you take have to be analyzed individually to get an accurate conversion rate. Some visitors may not buy or become a lead immediately – they may need more time to build trust that your products/services are what they need.
Step 3 – Understand total number of potential people who could have taken that action. Use the hierarchy of optimization from FutureNow to understand why site visitors did not convert. Did they land on your site by mistake? Did something go wrong when they tried to purchase? Do they not trust you? Did they leave with unanswered questions?
Using the hierarchy system, there are thousands of improvements to choose from. Prioritize these based on the maximum impact you can get for the resources you have.
Optimize conversion rates by first focusing on things that encompass as many as your customer segments as possible. Then, focus on smaller issues to further optimize conversion rates.
We reported here on May 1st the top 10 search terms in 10 separate categories for March. Search Engine Watch has posted this data from Hitwise for May.
These lists, released monthly, can help you find useful keyword phrases that can integrate well into your content, bringing higher search engine rankings.
Categories in May’s survey are the same as March’s. They are: IT and Internet, automotive manufacturers, movies, net communities and chat, food and beverage brands and manufacturers, pharmaceutical and medical products, blogs and personal websites, broadcast media, shopping rewards and directories and travel destinations and accommodations.
Keyword data is collected by Hitwise by monitoring how 25 million users around the world (10 million in the U.S.) interact with over 1 million websites in 160 industries. Data is anonymous and obtained through partnerships with internet service providers in accordance with all local, state, federal and international privacy laws.
Check back again with the search engine optimization blog regularly for important announcements like this and stay up-to-date with the tips you need to know to optimize your site for the search engines. We should have data for June by the middle of next month.
According to ComScore’s “State of the U.S. Online Retail Economy in Q1 2009″, search engines are considered the most important web sites to consumers when shopping online.
- 72% said search engines are important (up 5% versus Q4 last year)
- 54% said online coupon sites
- 46% cited comparison shopping sites (an increase of 4%)
- 44% said auction sites were important
- 36% noted online classified as important
If your ecommerce marketing strategy does not yet include helping your products show up in search engines, you’re missing out on the number one way to reach shoppers!
Many webmasters have been reporting in recent days they have had warnings appear in their Google Webmasters utility that reads “Invalid XML Tag. This tag was not recognized. Please fix it and resubmit. Parent tag: author”. Google has confirmed it as a bug.
It was first thought this bug only affected Blogger/Blogspot sites but Rusty Brick found them in other sites last Thursday and Friday but the bug is now gone.
In an announcement on their Webmaster Help Forum, Google said this message is simply “…informational and does not affect our parsing of your RSS feed for Sitemaps, nor does it affect your site’s crawling and indexing.”
A thread from a Google employee says you can safely ignore this message if you see it.
A piece of news I came across that should be on the minds of all search engine marketers…Stanford computer science professor Rajiv Motwani died at his home last Friday in Atherton, California, he was 47.
His death is still under investigation by the San Mateo County coroner but the police do not suspect any foul play was involved.
Motwani was a frequent investor in many tech start-ups but is most well known as a mentor to many young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin who were graduate students at Stanford in the mid 1990’s.
Professor Motwani, who was an expert in algorithmic and mathematical theories underlying computer science, helped Page and Brin explore the possibilities of analyzing the Web as a graph of interconnected pages.
Those conversations and Professor Motwani’s approach, Brin said Monday, were “what enabled us to ultimately create something that turned out to be very useful for search.”
His death has caused an outpouring of eulogies and from many of Silicon Valley’s best-known entrepreneurs and inventors. As search engine optimization professionals, we should recognize Professor Motwani and his academic theories as a major pillar of the SEO profession.
We at SEO Advantage extend are deepest sympathy to his family, friends and colleagues.
Auditing your website for SEO from time to time is vital to ensuring you maintain high search engine rankings and site traffic.
Three veteran search engine optimization professionals (read about their workshops at the SMX Conference) recently gave their perspective on how search engines work and things you should look at when conducting an audit.
First up was Derrick Wheeler, who explained how search engines work. Organic search engine optimization is the process by which you systematically satisfy the needs of the search engines and your users. Successfully troubleshooting anything requires information.
Refer to your log files and Webmaster tools to see how a search engine is crawling your site. Check to see how you rank for certain keywords and determine how much traffic you get from search engines. Also, understand how people navigate when they are on your site.
Next, Adam Audette explains that SEO site audits are part art, part science. If a site or navigation just doesn’t seem right, you need to dive-in and figure out why. This art requires diligence and trust.
Once problems have been identified, SEOs have many tools at their disposal. Like science, everything must be documented.
Vanessa Fox was the other speaker…she has developed different checklists you can employ to conduct an SEO audit. These checklists include important things like URL discovery, accessibility and crawl efficiency to name a few.
Read the article at Outspoken Media for more information on SEO audits and helping your site maintain peak performance for the long-term.
A week after Bing was unveiled to the world, Google has added this new search engine to their analytic reports. Webmasters expressed frustration that Bing was not immediately available in search engine referral reports Google’s free analytic reports.
It seems Google added Bing support over the weekend, perhaps Saturday evening according to this S.E. Roundtable post.
If you go to Google Analytics now, you can click “traffic sources” then “search engines” and see the number of keyword referrals have been sent your way by Bing since Friday, June 5th.
The delay could be attributed to the fact Bing came online a few days before it was anticipated.
S.E. Roundtable concluded only 0.39% of his search referrals between for this past weekend came through Bing.
Mari Smith, a leading authority on Facebook marketing, gave a 10-minute interview where she laid out different insights into utilizing the #1 social media tool on the Internet.
One thing that needs to be stressed and is a common misconception – do not depend on Facebook for your entire marketing efforts.
However, developing a “fan” page can be quite useful in getting your content indexed in the search engines…all content on fan pages is indexed by Google. Static FBML is a tool that allows you to put HTML on your fan page. You can even change wording in the tabs and create targeted landing pages.
Our web site development guru, Gaby Zapien, has done it again! She was looking for a way to update the SEO Advantage site design while retaining the unique look of our brand. You can see the result at our SEO company web site. I particularly like that she has increased the font size and given the site a much simpler, easier feel. One thing I do intend to watch, though, is whether the new horizontal menus, accessed by mousing over 4 circles representing top-level pages, is too advanced for some users. We love how it gives some movement and color to the site, however.
There are several different approaches to redesigning a web site. Some companies decide to do a complete redesign every few years (or even every year!) However, if your site has built up a good client base or following, it may be worthwhile to simply evolve your site design bit by bit over time. Make changes incrementally, keeping in place major elements that your site visitors will identify with. In addition to retaining that continuity, you’ll also be able to see which changes helped make a difference. If you change everything at once, there’s no way to tell which new aspects may have been the most impactful.
If you were familiar with our previous SEO site design, you’ll see that we’ve kept the grey while just adding colorful pops in the text and images. The menu uses a completely new format: SEO + Copy + Media + Design = Long Term Rankings – and each of these items contains sub pages that go into more detail. The text is larger and there’s a magnifying glass giving the page some dynamic movement. While a bit of a departure from our previous design, it’s still easily recognizable to repeat site visitors and all the same information should still be easy to find.
As you likely know, blogs are a great and informal way to build long-term search engine rankings. But how will Google’s new NoFollow PageRank policy announced in yesterday’s SEO-e post affect blogs’ ability to get the most link juice they can for their parent websites?
Search Engine Roundtable gives a good explanation of the effects this change can potentially have. For instance, if you have 10 links on a page and nofollow 5 of them, the 5 that are followed will only get half credit now.
Therefore, if you have 40 links on your page and 15 of them are nofollows, over 1/3 of your links will be wasted according to SER’s example.
Blogs automatically generate nofollow links through user-generated comments – so technically, this change will have a pretty big impact on sites that include blogs since search engine optimization professionals use nofollow links in a practice called PageRank sculpting – or diverting PageRank to more important, higher conversion pages.
Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam team, made a surprise announcement today regarding the nofollow attribute for links according to a Search Engine Watch article.
Nofollow links were originally developed by Google in ‘05 to fight spamming on blogs. By 2007, they developed into a powerful tool for professional SEO’s who use them in a practice called PageRank sculpting, which diverts PageRank to more important pages on a site.
Rather than having link juice going to a static “contact us” or “about us” page, it can be going to pages that yield conversions.
But according to Cutts, who made the bombshell announcement at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle, nofollow may not continue to work like SEOs think. Danny Sullivan explains it well, simply speaking:
“If you have $10 in authority to spend on those ten links, and you block 5 of them, the other 5 aren’t going to get $2 each. They’re still getting $1. It’s just that the other $5 you thought you were saving is now going to waste.”
Google has made some much needed changes to its business listing quality guidelines in Google Maps. This change is welcomed by professional SEOs as necessary to limiting the onslaught spam entries to the Google Local Business Center that has occurred over the past two years.
The new general guidelines went into effect yesterday and include:
1. Only enter listings for businesses you own or are explicitly authorized to represent
2. Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website
3. Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords into the title field, and do not include phone numbers and URLs in the title along with your proper business name
4. Create only one listing for each physical location of your business.
5. When entering categories, use only those that directly describe your business. Do not submit related categories that do not define your business.
6. Provide information that best identifies your individual locations and provides users with the most direct path to your business.
7. Provide the one URL that belongs to your business both in terms of the landing page and the displayed URL. Pages that redirect to another domain, or act as “click through” sites may lead to penalization.
8. Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title, address or category fields.
This list is only general as other factors could lead to your site being removed. If you’re not sure if something would be allowed or not, err on the caution or get clarification by posting a question in Maps Help Forum.
Search engine optimization professionals are delighted Google has made these changes…see some of their reaction in this Webmaster World discussion thread.
On May 20th, we reported here in the search engine optimization blog an announcement that Microsoft would soon be unveiling a new search platform. It was to be called Kumo and be on display at a digital tech conference that took place last week – that’s what we thought was going to happen anyway.
At the conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made an announcement – the Kumo name has been replaced with Bing, a totally rebranded search engine. MSN Live Search will be phased out with this change, which has consistently been far behind Google and Yahoo! in terms of search numbers.
A commentary at Search Engine News does not interpret this move to be smart on Microsoft’s part. Basically, professional SEOs shouldn’t take these developments too seriously. Microsoft has strayed away from the user-driven solutions that have worked well for them, like Office and their acquisition of Hotmail in the 1990’s.
For all of you who have been around the Internet for awhile, you may be surprised to learn that as part of a cost-cutting move, Yahoo is shutting down GeoCities (GC) by the end of the year according to an article at Search Engine News.
Yahoo’s actions should serve to remind site owners that hosting your site on another domain is an extremely bad idea.
Why? First, you don’t even own the site when it’s another domain and any links on your site benefit the host, not you. And if that company decides to shutdown, it can cause some serious problems for you.
The longer you wait to do it, the harder it will be to move your site from GC. First, search engine spiders will need to crawl your old site and find a redirect to the pages on your new site before the new site will be crawled. Understandably, this will take some time.
Register your own domain and get a real web hosting account, which isn’t very expensive. First, you will not be building someone else’s site AND you will not be at the mercy of another company’s financial problems.
Have a site hosted by GeoCities? Read the Yahoo Shutting Down GeoCities… article for a step-by-step approach to moving your site from GC and start taking control of your web property and let it benefit you.
Changing the URL of a page ranking well in the search engines can be a risky move, but it can be done if necessary according to a post at Search Engine Roundtable.
There is an interesting Cre8asite forum thread discussion about changing pages that are ranking well. Specifically, a Cre8asite member is adding a content management system (CMS). To transfer the page to CMS, its URL will have to change – a certain drawback of this particular system.
Replies were varied…some suggested changing the page will cause rankings to go down for awhile but they would return. Others suggested the new page should be setup with maximum search engine optimization.
The administrator however was quite critical of CMS and said it is neither necessary nor prudent to move the page. A page ranks well in search engines because of links, not whether it’s CMS or not.
Check out this interesting discussion at Crea8site with some more analysis from the Roundtable, who suggests if you need to move the page do it during a slow season.
Writing good copy for the web is not as simple as it may seem. There’s more to it than simple keywords, links, title tags and the like.
Web copy has to grab one’s attention and motivate them to act…simply slapping together some garbled text and putting it online may work great for short-term search engine optimization efforts but sales conversions will most certainly disappoint.
Read Optimizing Website and Landing Page Copy – A 10 Step Process, a blog article by Michael Eisenberg, a copywriting veteran who is the co-founder of FutureNow. He outlines a 10 step process that will surely improve not only the content’s appeal to the search engines, but bring conversions as well.
1. Headlines – The headline is the important attention getter. Readers use headlines to gauge what a page is about and whether they want to continue.
2. First Mental Image – Usually your headline and how it relates to the first few sentences and your first image if you have one. FutureNow has many insights about a powerful first mental image.
3. Message & Tone – Is your copy speaking to your readers about what matters to them? Differing personalities will interpret your copy and make decisions differently.
4. Check for We-We – Using your name or “we” in your copy will make it sound self-centered and not customer focused.
5. Remove Black Words – Avoid using words that do not portray a vivid, colorful mental image.
6. Reformatting for Readability – Be sure copy is formatted for online reading…many people simply skim through content, so the copy needs to formatted to maximize skimming and scanning
7. Improve your Verbs – Write in an active, not passive tone. Pumping up your verbs can always improve your copy.
8. Wording in Links and Calls to Action – Keywords in hyperlinks are very important from a search engine optimization standpoint but they have to be written so they naturally flow with the copy.
9. Words Exist in Other Places Than Just Your Copy – Check flash, images, video and audio content to be sure it’s written in a way that brings conversions.
10. When All Else Fails – Use The Sucking Wind Checklist
1. Do you offer a clear message and value?
2. Have you established trust & credibility?
3. Have you answered all the main objections?
4. Have you addressed the emotional “ownership” of the sale?
5. Have you substantiated your claims?
6. Have you made the next steps clear?
7. Could you have said the same thing in 1/3 the words?
Marketing your small business online requires finding the right tools to make the greatest impact. But there are so many out there – and more cropping up all the time. Finding which marketing tools to use can take weeks of research.
This small business marketing article shortlists the best of the best when it comes to online marketing tools. We have already researched and used most of them ourselves, so we can point out the strengths and why we recommend them. You’ll find listed free marketing tools as well as those that require investment.
Here’s a sampling of the 39 recommended online marketing tools for small businesses:
Press Releases
Marketwire offers traditional wire service distribution and exceptional online benefits at cost savings over PRNewswire and BusinessWire. We recommend PRLog for free press release distribution due to the long-lasting, high visibility of releases and great site features like dedicated press rooms.
Social Networking
Create a page on Facebook and think about MySpace, even though it’s no longer the center of focus for the media (a large percentage of this crowd may still be in your target market). LinkedIn is essential, now allowing you to create a profile for your business in addition to your own professional page.
Email Marketing AWeber lets you start building your email marketing list for under $20/month. You get unlimited autoresponders and email blasts, where most providers only offer one or the other.
Today’s interactive landscape brings many opportunities to market a business online – local search engine optimization is one way to market online at minimum cost. And the fact Google is showing more local results without someone entering a town in a search query only serves to drive that local SEO cannot be ignored.
For a local business of any size, local SEO starts with keyword research and identifying the terms your customers use to find you, including any geographical terms – these keywords can include “New York City coffee shops”, “Greenwich Village coffee shops” – you get the idea.
With a solid understanding of keyword phrases, you can begin developing individual pages for all your locations. Keywords should be included in the URL, meta tags, title tags, heading and above all, content.
Another step is to take advantage of local online opportunities. Be sure you’re listed in Google Maps and Yahoo Local and you even might consider social media outlets like Facebook and Squidoo to boost your local online profile.
Times have certainly changed since the days of print, radio and TV advertising – and for once, things have changed in favor of small businesses.
After some extensive testing, Google today announced more features to Google Suggest that will make searches go faster. These new features were added after extensive comment by individual users and online marketers and will be gradually rolled out – but should all be available soon.
“Suggestions on the results page” is the first such addition. Before, Google only gave suggestions on searches originating from their homepage. Now, searches from a results page will provide suggestions that relate to the current results page.
Google estimates that 1/4 of all internet searches are simply monthly repeats…personalized suggestions can help you remember that query that worked so well before. Sign in to your Google account and enable the Web History feature to make it work.
If you’re starting to type in a search and Google thinks you are looking for a specific site, it will be listed where you can click on it and go straight there.
Finally, in addition to navigational suggestions, Google will also include sponsored ads if they detect the most relevant results in a search query may include an ad.
A couple other changes: Google will no longer include the result count in the suggestion box and the text of suggestions will be in bold to help searchers more quickly scan the list.
In an attempt to grab market share from Google, it is expected Microsoft will demo its new search engine at the D: All Things Digital conference next week.
Share of the search market has been and continues to be dominated by Google – according to the latest data from comScore, their share was 64.2% in April, up nearly 3% from a year ago. MSN search on the other hand accounted for only 8.2% of searches in April, down almost 1% from a year ago.
After failing to acquire Yahoo! last year, Microsoft has been spending aggressively to try and catch up in the search engine game.
