Guest author: Megan Jeffery

We’ve been talking a bit about landing pages, and how they are really a very important part of your online marketing strategy. Going over the basics, I’ve already talked about how you need to make it as easy as possible for the user to get to the product or information they want.  Can’t reduce all friction, as that would mean no sale, but you get the idea.

The next thing you need to take a look at is, does your landing page have a motivator? Something that makes the user happy, makes them want to close the deal?

The number one most important motivator is… relevance. If a user does a search, clicks on your SE results, but they don’t find what they would expect to find, you almost instantly loose that conversion. That’s why it is so vital to really nail down what your page is about. If you sell tropical fish, you probably have different types of fish, right? In order for your landing pages to be as relevant as possible, you need to create a page for each type of fish you sell. That way, when someone is looking for say, ‘angel fish’ , hopefully you have optimized your page well for this phrase, included some pictures of angel fish, with the alt attributes in place. With the proper steps taken, your users should be well pleased with what they find on your landing page.

If, on the other hand, you have angel fish showing up in your SE results, but your page is about all the different fish you carry, the user will become frustrated and probably click away pretty fast. The motivation for having clicked through to your page is gone, or converting is harder to accomplish than your average user is willing to do.

So, when building your pages, do your best to be concise, make the page about the specific phrase (topic, product) you are going after. Make it as easy as possible for your potential clients to find the information or products they are looking for, and make sure that the checkout process goes smoothly. Any hangups along the way can cause cart abandonment, and we don’t want that!

Guest blogger: Megan Jeffery

The SEM community has been really generous in sharing it’s knowledge and expertise. There are many places where you can find viable tips and information to point you in the right direction. It can be a little overwhelming, as there is so much information out there, so I have complied a list a some of the sites, articles and blog posts that might be of help.

1.    Anita Campbell is the founder of Small Business Trends, and a great friend of TKG. She often speaks at TKG’s  Search Made Simple seminars. One of her recent blog posts included a “reading list” as it were. A compilation of a number of blog posts that are a great read for anyone using SEO to promote their site. This reading list was compiled by a panel of SEOs that presented a webinar for the Verizon Small Business Center on SEO  strategies for small business.

2.    Mashable.com promotes itself as “ The Social Media Guide”.  Several sections are devoted to “How To’s” and guidebooks for Facebook and Twitter. If you need help getting started in this area, this is a great place to find a tutorial on just about any social media application.

3.    SEOmoz.org has a remarkable number of tutorials and tools for anyone trying to increase the rankings for their site. The daily SEO blog and free tools make this site a regular stop in my daily browsing.

4.    The SEO Book of course has many tools and posts that you will find quite valuable in your efforts. The Link Building guide is very helpful, and  one of my favorite posts from this site is a link building article called 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity. It’s a bit on the older side, but still has a lot of really pertinent ideas.

5.    Any good SEO campaign starts with a great keyword list. But, perfecting that list can be daunting. Search Engine Land has a great blog post with every keyword generation tool you could ever want  – sweet! So hopefully you’ll end up with the appropriate phrases for each page you’re optimizing.

As always, TKG is here to answer any SEM questions you might have, so if you haven’t gotten quite what you were looking for in this list, drop us a line – we’d love to be your go-to resource!

Guest author: Megan Jeffery

Okay, so lets pretend you’ve got a landing page (the first page a user sees after clicking a search engine result) that’s not so hot. The user can’t find what they’re looking for, or the information presented isn’t relevant to their search.  Maybe, they’ve found what they wanted and had every intention to buy, but the cart isn’t working, or there are too many steps to get through the checkout process. Believe it or not, these are all still very common problems.

Your landing page is really important, as it’s often the first representation of your company that a user sees, if he has done a search rather than type in the URL to your homepage. (This is most likely the case unless you’re a huge brand.) And, it had better reflect the description of the page found in the search engine results.

In evaluating your landing pages, there are several areas that need to be addressed. As I alluded to above, the first thing ought to be the optimization of the page. We’ve been all through this before when discussing the Fortune 500s and what they are  and are not doing, but I’ll run through briefly:
1. metas: keywords, description and page title – especially the description and page title. The description is often used in the SERP. The title will be at the very top of the page, telling the user what they will find on the page. The title also helps the SEs determine what your page is about.
2. on page optimization: h1, alt attributes, copy, navigation and any inbound links all appropriately optimized.

If you’ve got all this under control, take a look at your navigation. Is it easy to understand and follow?
Is the copy easy to read? Is there a clear call to action? Is the purpose of the page obvious?

If these questions leave you wondering about your landing pages, shoot us an email with your questions, we’d love to help you out!

Guest Author: Megan Jeffery

So, you have this site, and for the most part, it’s pretty well optimized, it has some good copy, you think you are following all the SEO “rules”. So, why aren’t you converting? Quite often the problem is “friction”. Friction is the stress that is created for the user when trying to convert on your site. If your site is hard to navigate, that creates friction. If there are too many clicks to get to the products, or services, or forms, that creates friction. Many people still hesitate to hand over information on the web, or to buy products. You have to make things comfortable and easy as possible to get users to convert.

A few areas that you may want to take a look at on your site:

• newsletter sign up
• contact form
• email capture
• copy
• special offers
• shopping cart
• shipping

The idea is to eliminate as much friction as possible, but of course not all, as every action on a site causes the user some friction. So, for instance, look at your copy. Is it long? Does the user have to scroll to get to pertinent information? If so, you might want to look at reducing the copy, make it shorter and more concise. While ensuring that you don’t change the integrity of the copy itself, or your targeted phrases, you want to make sure the user gets the information they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible.

Do you have special offers on your site? If so, make sure it’s easy for your potential customers to take advantage of the special. Don’t make them fill out a whole form, just give them a short cut to the purchase process.

Look over your contact form. Don’t ask for information you don’t need, this is a hassle, as no one wants to fill out a long form, and it makes users nervous. Same goes for your shopping cart / shipping information. You don’t want them backing out of a sale because you asked for an unnecessary piece of information. Keep the form short, and only ask for the information you really need. Make sure that your site is secure and that your method of ensuring that is plainly marked near the form fields.

Are your products easy to find, and easy to purchase? Most users expect to be able to make an online purchase in just a few clicks. If you get them to a place where they are 4 or 5 clicks in, and they still have not been able to submit their order, you could be looking at a high rate of cart abandonment. Take a look at ways to shorten your purchase process, and implement them – right now!

Just common sense, really. Keep your site clean, and easy to use, and your conversions will be there. If a site is hard to use, does not feature security prominently, or requires too much from the user (whether it is effort or information), then you need to do a little restructuring.

The newspaper industry has been struggling over the last few years as people are turning to the Internet for their news. Newspapers and their supporters have been quick to blame Google for their problems. They know that Google provides the majority of their site traffic, but they are not happy that it is free. It was very interesting to hear Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, give advice to the newspaper industry

Despite their differences, Schmidt gave hope to the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) that things will get better. He spoke to the ASNE last night in Washington DC about the future of newspapers on the Internet in a very positive tone.

Schmidt said, “Newspapers will make money once again, but it will be from online advertisements and an altered subscription model.” In addition, Schmidt explained that Google is currently working on new ways to modify ads and content for consumers, based on their preferences. Schmidt advised that news needs to be more personalized and that news sites need to be tailored to mobile devices to continue growing.

Schmidt’s words took a negative tone when he addressed bloggers by saying that quality newspaper journalism is “an art”. This implied that blogging is less than newsworthy, angering bloggers worldwide.

Schmidt wasn’t able to provide many details but he did imply that Google is working on developing solutions for the dying newspaper industry. Newspapers rely heavily on Google to provide traffic to their site, so it might be worth swallowing their pride to work with the Search Engine giant. Check out Frank Reed’s post on Marketing Pilgrim to learn more.

Search engine optimization is constantly changing. Knowledge and details are very important in the SEO world. In this post, I will continue on from a previous post – ‘Give your New Site an SEO Boost’ and give you 5 tips for creating strategies that will help your site rank better, as well as help increase traffic and conversions.

1. Content – It is important that the content you create is high quality and written by someone that researches the topic before jumping headfirst into writing it. Creating new content throughout your entire site is time-consuming, but will separate and elevate you from the rest.
2. Link Building – Create a custom link building campaign and try to gain links from trusted sites that are relevant to the topic of your site. Link building needs to be an ongoing project and also requires a lot of research. Check out some more link building tips that I recommended in a previous post.
3. Page Titles & Descriptions – Page titles are how the search engines identify the relevancy of your page. Each page title should be unique to what that page is about and try not to over-use phrases, or it might dilute your efforts. Meta-descriptions are what the users see in the Search Engines when your site pops up in the results. They also organically help your site rank.
4. Site Architecture & Navigation – If you have good navigation in place, it not only helps the users click around your site better, but it helps the Search Engines navigate through your site better too. This includes footer navigation, menus, breadcrumb navigation and even how pages are interlinked with each other.
5. Keyword Terminology - In your content, use 2 or 3 keyword phrases that you use in the page title. Don’t over-do-it (may cause KW dilution), but be sure everything is in line and included – keyword title; keyword phrase in description; internal navigation keyword links; fresh keyword rich content.

If you are new to the SEO world, the tips above should give you a nice solid start to the art of SEO!  

“PageRank sculpting is dead” or “Search engine X doesn’t look at the meta keywords tag” or “Insert your favorite SEO catch-phrase”. A lot of times people in this industry get caught up in the hype of the new buzz topic, which I admit, I have. Something new and shinny is being talked about and it controls a lot of the talk in forums and on blogs. This year alone PageRank sculpting with nofollow was a big discussion. People used it, the search engines then said it didn’t work and then it was in the spotlight again. Did it really not work? It wouldn’t be the first time a search engine said something but the reality was different (Yahoo claiming they don’t use the meta keywords tag as an example).

There is a great article over at SEOMOZ posted by Danny Dover called Tests Show PageRank Sculpting with Nofollow Still Works. He outlines a test he did for nofollow:

The Experiment

We chose the following five PageRank sculpting methods to test:

Rel=‘nofollow’ – The standard mechanism for nofollowing a link. example

Link Consolidation – Consolidating low priority pages. You can read more about link consolidation here.

Iframe – Include a standard link in an iframe that is blocked via robots.txt or meta robots so engines can’t follow it.

Javascript – An external Javascript file (blocked from robots) that inserts links into divs when the page renders.

Control Case – Null test with standard links.

The post is worth a read through as it lays out a good test and shows the results. This test is more evidence that testing IS important. How can you say something works or doesn’t work if you haven’t tested it? Just because someone tells you something, or the search engines say something, that doesn’t really mean that is really what is going on. I think certain things also come in cycles as the algorithms change. Some minor element may not work today or might not have as much importance/weight put on it, but who’s to say it is going to stay that way? In Danny’s post he establishes 2 points at the beginning of his post that I also want to share:

1. There is overwhelming evidence that from a “ROI on time spent working” perspective, there is much more value in link building and creating content that is link-worthy than obsessing over search engine algorithm fluctuations like PageRank sculpting. Link building is human oriented and thus more inline with the long term goals of the search engines. Links also have the added bonus of being easy to measure and thus easier to prioritize.
2. We can’t directly measure how PageRank flows so we can only infer results. This needs to be acknowledged when interpreting test results. That said, we also can’t directly measure objects outside our solar system and this solution of inference has become the basis for modern Astronomy. (If it is good enough for NASA, it is good enough for SEOmoz ;-p)

As the year comes to an end, everyone begins to prepare for a new start in 2010 but we can’t do that without looking back and reflecting on 2009. One trend that I think deserves some attention is the upward shift in comparison search tools. These tools allow users to compare rankings from two or more search engines, which can be very useful to SEO’s.

Comparison search tools enable users to run a query in multiple search engines at one time. This allows me, as a Search Engine marketer to quickly glance at the results to see what sites are ranking for a phrase I’m targeting for a client. Comparison tools enable me to be more efficient and more easily provide results for our SEO clients. Knowing who is already ranking for a phrase in multiple search engines and what SEO tactics (if any) they are implementing on their site will help me create effective strategies as well as successfully track my strategies.

Search Engine Land has a great blog post about some of the best comparison tools of 2009. Learn more about these comparison search tools.

Looking for beginner SEO tips and info?

I know that getting started in search engine optimization can be confusing and overwhelming – trust me I’ve been there! Check out TKG’s free SEO E-book, “Search Engine Optimization for Newbies: Getting You On Your Way to Web Marketing Nirvana”. It has all of the web marketing advice you need to strategize and implement effective SEO tactics.

Did we mention that it’s free? Happy reading!

If you are launching a new website, then there is no better time to think about SEO than now. You can increase your chances of being seen by the Search Engines if you give thoughtful consideration to your on and off page optimization efforts.

Some good SEO tips include:

1. Make it simple –The more complex you make your code, the more difficult it becomes for the Search Engines to read your content.

2. Meta-Descriptions – A lot of people downplay the importance of meta-descriptions. Although meta-descriptions themselves won’t drastically change the organic ranking of your site, they do create the display text users will see when your site appears in search results. If your meta-descriptions are Search Engine optimized and compelling, you increase the changes of improving traffic.

3. Header Tags – By applying the proper header tags (H1, H2) to your page, you will call attention to your content and promote your keywords and keyword phrases. Try to use the first phrase of your page title for best practice, but make sure the content flows and doesn’t look too out of place.

After ensuring that you’ve made your page easy to access and presented copy that is optimized, you also want to consider other factors that can help long-term with your SEO efforts. We sometimes get caught up with on-page factors, that we overlook things that would be great for the long run.

For example, you may want to consider having pages that you can add to over time that support link building and better Search Engine access. Be sure to include:

1. Sitemap - Including a sitemap on your site makes it easy for the Search Engines to access your full website index accordingly.

2. New Content - One of the most powerful Search Engine optimization techniques is the addition of new content. When Search Engines see new content, they respond well. Don’t underestimate how important it is to add optimized copy from time to time.

So what are you waiting for?  Give your new site an “SEO facelift” today!