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.

I recently learned that Google is adding an interactive component to YouTube called ‘Google Moderator’ which looks like it will result in a better video experience for users. The YouTube blog explains:

“That’s why, starting today, we’ve integrated the ability to use Google Moderator into every single YouTube channel. Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows you to solicit ideas or questions on any topic, and have the community vote the best ones up to the top in real-time. We previously used Google Moderator as part of our interviews with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.”

“Here’s how it works: You set the parameters for the dialogue, including the topic, the type of submissions, and the length of the conversation. Watch as submissions get voted up or down by your audience, and then respond to the top-voted submissions by posting a video on your channel. The platform operates in real-time, and you can remove any content that you or your audience flag as inappropriate. You can also embed the platform on your own website or blog.”

This interactive feature will help channel owners with everything from developing content to interacting with their viewers and getting their feedback! Here is a great example of the ‘Google Moderator’ in action with Chef John from Foodwishes:

I recently learned that Google Maps is doing away with the “community edit” option on local business listings. This is great news for business owners that have been fighting to keep their Google Maps listings spam-free and professional. Prior to this change, it was possible for anyone with a Google account to edit a business listing and the changes would automatically go live unchecked. This gave competitors, ex-employees, unhappy customers, etc the opportunity to “get even” with a business owner by making whatever changes they wished to a listing. These changes are to blame for false information which, for some, ended up costing companies that were affected a lot of business.

However, now any changes that are made will be manually checked by Google Maps staff to determine if the edits are correct or not. I am not sure how many edits Google will be reviewing or what their process is, but I would expect that there will be a few days lag between submitting edits and getting approval. Hopefully, the edits won’t take too long to approve! Business owners should sleep easier knowing that their listings are no longer at risk; just make sure that you claim your business listing! All of these new updates to Google Maps have left me wondering what they will think of next!

I noticed a new Google Doodle today. This time it’s for the 30th Anniversary of PAC-MAN. However, to the best of my knowledge, this marks the first time Google has made an interactive Doodle.

If you wait a few seconds while on the Google home page, you can begin playing the game with the arrows on your keyboard. Or you can click the “Insert Coin” button that replaces the normal “I’m Feeling Lucky.”

According to Joystiq, the Google Doodle is a full featured game with 255 levels and a 256th “kill screen” just like the original.

Give it a try. Lets hope we can expect more interactive Google Doodles in the future.

Source: Joystiq

There are some advantages of being at an agency and one of those advantages is seeing things across multiple sites. Recently there have been some changes over at Google including things like the Caffeine update. This past month we saw some traffic decreases across the majority of our clients. From a two second glance, you couldn’t really see what was going on besides the search traffic decreasing compared to the previous month. We went through and checked rankings and across the board those had either improved or stayed the same. We’re just checking the head of the tail primarily and haven’t gone back through to check the longer tail terms at this point. There came to be some immediate questions about the drop in traffic:

1. Were there less searches in April to cause the decrease in traffic?
2. If my rankings on the head of the tail keywords didn’t decrease, where was my decrease from?

There are some interesting studies about the long tail and that potentially 80% of a website’s traffic can come from the long tail. If these terms were effected, that could be the source of these decreases we’re seeing. We’re in the process of going through our client’s site to see how these were effected and dig deeper. Rand over at SEOMOZ did a great post on the “May Day Update“. I’ve embedded the video below, it is definitely worth a look, especially if you’re trying to figure out what happened to your site(s). Here are a few things Rand had to say in the post:

How do you know if you were affected? Well, start by checking your search referral traffic between April 28th and May 3rd; do you see a drop? If so, is the change in the number of referrals, or the number of pages getting traffic?  A drop in traffic to your big terms isn’t likely May Day, but a drop in pages getting search referrals (long tail traffic) could be. If you monitor rankings for a handful of obscure tail terms (which you should do specifically for this reason), did your rankings suddenly plummet? Did your indexation or crawl stats change suddenly (you can use Webmaster Tools, site: searches, etc. to check)? These could indicate you were hit by the update.

Let us know what kind of things you’re seeing with this update!

The Google Webmaster Central Blog recently announced new features to the ever expanding Webmaster Tools data. The new features are set to allow webmasters to track the top searched queries that drive traffic to the site along with the following data being reported on each of the searched queries:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Click Through Rate (CTR)
• Average Position

In addition to the new data that is now available, you can “star” a query so that you will be able to track those queries over time:

Overall, these are very good additions to the data that is already available. You are able to get a better picture of how your site is performing with this new data that is now available.

You can read more about these features over at the Google Webmaster Central Blog: Top Search Queries is now Search Queries with Average Position and Stars

If you are interested in growing your Northeast Ohio business via the web, this workshop is for you! GetListed.org is bringing in some of the nation’s leading online marketing experts, including representatives from Bing, Google and TKG’s very own Geoff Karcher!

When you attend the workshop, you will get an intense 4-hour crash course on internet marketing and also learn some Search Engine Optimization tips along the way!

Here are some additional details:

Place: Educational Service Center of Cuyahoga County

Date: June 30th, 2010

Time: There will be 2 half day sessions (8am – Noon & 1pm – 5pm)

Price: $129, but enter ‘karcher’ at check-out and receive a discount

Capacity is limited to 200 attendees per session, so register today!

Google will begin sending photographers to a city near you to take photos of the inside of your business. This new feature will complement your Google Places (previously called Google Local Business Center) listing. Instead just having Street View photos of your business, Google is now adding “a new way for you to showcase your business to the world.”

And to top it all off, Google will send the photographers to your location for free! All you have to do is apply.

Right now the Google photographers are only visiting select cities in the US, Japan, and Australia. But Google says “demand will help us decide where to send our photographers next.”

Select US Cities Google has photographers:

• Atlanta, GA
• Boston, MA
• Chicago, IL
• Denver, CO
• Detroit, MI
• Houston, TX
• Indianapolis, IN
• Jersey City, NJ
• Hoboken, NJ
• Kansas City, KS
• Last vegas, NV
• Los Angeles, CA
• Miami, FL
• Minneapolis, MN
• Nashville, TN
• New York, NY
• Philadelphia, PA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Portland, OR
• San Antonio, TX
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• San Jose, CA
• Seattle, WA
• St. Lois, MO
• Washington D.C.

Learn more about the Google Business Photos and the select cities they’re in.

On Friday, Google announced on their official blog, 3 new enhancements that will make searching easier.

More Localized Google Suggest They rolled out a version of Google Suggest that is tailored to specific areas in the U.S. When you do a search, the queries beneath the search box seem more locally relevant than it used to.

Spelling Enhancements for Names Google noticed that when people search for names of those they are not familiar with, they often struggle with the spelling. Google’s new technology is based on the concept that people often know something else about the person besides the spelling of their name. The correct name shows up in the “did you mean” link:

Spelling Auto-Correction in 31 Languages Another improvement to the Google spelling system is auto-correction, which started in the US this past December. Google auto-corrects if they are highly confident in their correction in order to get the user information faster. They expanded last week to 31 languages!

I think these 3 improvements all have great benefits for faster searching, but think it’s weird that Google can now read my mind.