SEO Review

Many companies make the mistake of spending money in areas where it’s not necessary. Take, for example, companies pumping marketing dollars into increasing traffic on the website. It’s great to get more traffíc, but that is just the first step. Now you need that traffic to do something.

Website Conversion Defined

The percentage of total visitors who come to the website, follow through after clicking on the company’s desired point of action (POA) and submit information, download a demo, make a purchase, etc. is the definition of website conversion. In an e-commerce application, multiple visitors will add items to their shopping carts, but a smaller percentage will actually make the purchase. The percentage of visitors that complete the transaction signifies the conversion rate for the website. In a lead-generating application, multiple visitors will follow a path that you desire for them to follow (at first), but will not complete the form, download, etc. The percentage that does signifies the conversion rate.

In order to boost the website conversion rate, companies need to determine why potential customers drop out at certain points in the process and eliminate these roadblocks in order to improve sales. Clearly defined POAs, intuitive navigation, and simple checkout processes all make it easier for potential customers to buy, contact, download, or whatever else it is that you want them to do that will lead to a sale.

Point of Action

Basically, the POA on your website is what you want visitors to do initially. Many websites will have more than one POA, so POAs are further broken down into primary, secondary, and even tertiary POAs. A primary POA (usually the most profitable action for a user to take) might be completing a purchase on the site while a secondary POA might be signing up for the site’s email newsletter announcing weekly specials. As a general rule, the marketing department (not the web designers) in consultation with sales should decide what the primary and secondary POAs will be.

Some websites have no clear POA and mainly serve as ‘brochure-ware.’ If a website doesn’t have clear POAs that guide users toward taking specific, valuable actions, those users are of course less likely to become purchasers.

Take Rate

The number (or percentage) of visitors who show interest in your POA (i.e. click on a link to visit the site’s contact form), comprise your take rate. Say a B2B website is highlighting its downloadable demo as its POA; a visitor might click on that link to get to a download page. Whether or not they actually follow through with the download has no bearing on the take rate – the take rate merely demonstrates that there was enough interest for them to take the POA.

On an e-commerce site, for instance, a visitor who adds a product to his shopping basket has taken the first step toward the company’s desired POA, but the potential purchaser may not complete the transaction.

There are many ways to improve the take rate of a website. One of the biggest ways is to simply make it very clear to visitors, on every page of your site, what you want them to do. Whether this is to purchase, to contact, to download, to sign up, or any number of other actions, make it clear and prominent for the visitor. No matter where they are on your site when they decide they are ready to take that POA, your site should make it easy for them to do so.

Website Conversion Rate

The actual website conversion rate is the ratio equal to the number of people who actually convert on the site versus the overall number of visitors to the site for a given period. If, for example, 3 out of every 100 visitors to your B2B site filled out a contact form (and that form was your only POA) your website conversion rate would be 3%.

Obviously, improving your take rate will also improve your conversion rate, since more people will be coming to the form, download page, purchase page, etc. But there are many things you can do to improve the likelihood that people will convert after they have taken the initial POA. Keeping contact forms short and only asking for the minimal information you need is one way. Having a prominent and clear privacy policy or encryption policy can also help. The important thing to recognize is that a large number of people who demonstrate an interest in your products or services by clicking on your POA may not follow through, and it is important to determine why and to eliminate those obstacles.

Putting it Together

There are literally thousands of elements you can change on your website to improve both your take rate and website conversion rate. A/B testing has long been used to determine how changing certain variables affects the conversion and take rates. However, this method is limited to testing one variable at a time if you want to gather the granular metrics from each slight modification. Today, with more sophisticated testing software packages available, multivariate testing, which enables you to test many variables at the same time while still seeing granular results, is becoming more common. Common tests include changing color schemes, tweaking various aspects of navigation, copy, and POAs have all been proven to maximize the take rate, website conversion rate, and subsequently, your revenue and bottom line. Website conversion is all about your visitors – appeal to their needs and desires in a logical, concise way, and you’ll see your rates improve.

About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

Obtaining one-way quality links is often cited as the “Holy Grail” of online success. Especially if you take the SEO route for getting high rankings for all your profitable keywords in the search engines. It’s no wonder then, achieving top spots for valuable and popular keywords should be the ultimate goal of any webmaster or online marketer.

How well you do in this “link quest” will largely determine the success or failure of your site or online business. Assuming of course, you’re going after free organic traffic from the search engines and not using Pay Per Click or other means of succeeding online.

Benefits:

1. Improves, doesn’t replace. You keep your existing accounts and payment setups.
2. Works with most popular ad networks: Google AdSense, Yahoo, ValueClick, Advertising.com, Tribal Fusion, BlueLithium, and more!
3. Easy, one-time setup. Don’t muck around with code every time you want to change something.
4. Consolidated reporting gives you insight into traffic and monetization patterns that are making you money.
5. Used by hundreds of well-known sites. Now open to publishers of all sizes.

Link building and achieving top placements in the search engines (especially Google) has been my main objective for over ten years of online marketíng. Over the years, I have tried hundreds, if not thousands of link building methods in order to get those links. I would like to discuss briefly some of those methods and then explain in full detail my four favorite and most effective proven ways to get quality one-way links.

First, some general tips on how you should approach your link building from the get-go. You must realize the web is based on content; web surfers/users are looking for quality content. If you can supply valuable content that surfers want, you will build your links naturally. People will see your content and want to link to it. This process is often referred to as link baiting – you make your content/offer so irresistible, they will not only want it but they will go out of their way to tell others about your fantastic content.

Be careful not to link to “spammy” link farms and it’s probably a good idea to always check the Gooogle PageRank (PR) of any site or page you link to on the web. Many cautious webmasters/marketers won’t link to anything less than a PR3 page but use your best judgment here.

There are numerous ways of getting quality links:

• place your links in directories – free and paid
• join online forums and place your links
• do recommendations and testimonials
• viral videos with your embedded links
• join social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, etc.
• use hub traffic sites like Squidoo and Hubpages
• use Google sites like Google News, Google Docs, Google Knol
• use Wikipedia to build links
• use Yahoo Answers and those types of sites
• use eBay and sites like Craigslist
• use viral ebooks and software programs

Now, I have used all of the above link building methods and many more over the years but I would like to explain to you my most effective link building techniques – these are the proven methods that have worked for me. No doubt you may have heard of many of these link building methods before… but here goes:

Article Marketing

This is still one of the most effective ways to build good one-way links to your site. I know this is “old school” but it still works. There are rumors Google is cracking down on article links but for now links in your article resource boxes are still very effective.

From my own experience, article marketing is my most effective technique at building links. My sites and my onlíne marketing were going nowhere until I started writing articles. Now I do aggressive article marketing using all the major online article directories…

The Top 5 I Use Are: EzineArticles, GoArticles, Isnare, Ideamarketers, and Buzzle.

Now just look at my stats from EzineArticles alone and you will know why I use them.

Account Statistics

Articles Views: 421,327

Profile Views: 2,573

Articles Published: 4,787

URL Clicks: 49,480

Emailed: 115

Live Articles: 203

I have roughly 200 articles which have been viewed over 400,000 times which has sent around 50,000 visitors to my sites. Plus, I have around 5,000 places where my articles are published. And this is only for one online article directory – I have my articles in hundreds of them.

Whether you’re just a webmaster or into marketing online you must realize all this stuff is a “numbers” game. The more content you have out there, the more links you have on the web – the more traffíc and visitors you get coming to your site. It’s not rocket science, it’s simple math. The more links you have, the higher probability someone will click them and come to your site.

The same goes for high rankings in the search engines, the more good quality links you have, the higher your rankings. Article marketing will give you highly targeted keyword links to your web pages. I also use SubmitYourArticle which will automatically submít my articles for me to many dífferent article directories. I use this service to save time, but you can hand-submit your articles.

One last point about article marketing – you’re not just using articles to build links, you’re also using articles to “pre-sell” yourself, your site and/or your product. It’s a very effective way of funneling interested visitors/buyers to your site. Many of my sales are already made before visitors reach my site.

Add This Bookmark

Now I am not really into the “social media” sites but that has not stopped me from using them to my advantage. And it would be a BIG mistake not to use these social media sites for your link building.

Sites like MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Linkedin… and thousands of others are very important for link building. They are becoming even more important as Google moves away from articles and focuses on the “real interactions” taking place on these sites.

Couple of years ago, I added the free AddThis Bookmark to all my sites. This is a simple code which lets your visitors bookmark your site or content in any or all of the major social media sites.

What actually happens is that your visitors are building your links for you. I have gotten hundreds of links from these sites just by placing this simple bookmark on my sites. Truth be told, I nearly laughed at this idea at first – sure visitors to my sites would automatically bookmark and build links for me? No way that would happen?

Wrong again!

This really works, so if you want this simple way of building links, just use the Addthis.com bookmark to your site or pages.

Google Alerts Link Building

This method of building good quality one-way links does take a little more work, but it is extremely effective, especially for getting high rankings in Google.

Here’s how it works:

You sign-up for Google Alerts for your major keywords that you’re promoting. Google will send you email alerts whenever a new page/site/link is created containing your keywords. You then go to those newly created pages to make a comment and add your link.

Many of these new pages will be on blogs so you can easily add your comment and link. The trick is to add valuable comments/content which the site moderator will approve because it adds to his/her site’s value. Many will also approve your link because your link is related to their site and this is just good SEO practice.

The key here is to put yourself and your site in the whole discussion of related blogs, sites and forums relevant to your content. You want your site in the whole mix of things so that relevant links will flow naturally from the discussion. Now all your links won’t be accepted, but you can easily add 2 or 3 links each day with very little time spent on this. Great way to build links, hope you can give it a try.

Press Releases

I am just starting this method of link building, but what I have seen so far tells me this is a very effective way to build links. It’s not cheap, I use PRWeb and I believe it’s $200 for a release. You can get a cheaper price at around $80 but you don’t get the full benefits at this lower price.

Press releases are very effective because you can embed your links with your “anchor text” into the body of your press release. Other sites pick up your release and place it on their site with your keywords/links embedded. This seems more like natural link-building which the search engines love, especially Google.

Again, depending on your marketing budget, press releases can be a very effective way of building links. I have noticed sites going from a PR0 to PR4 in less than 6 months using this method and also getting top 5 rankings in Google in the process. Keep in mind, sites displaying press releases are usually already highly ranked in Google so some of their PR juice is passed on to your site.

I hope this article has given you some fresh ways of building your one-way links. Consistently build these links to your site over an extended period of months or even years and you will succeed online.

About The Author

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: BizwareMagic.com .

If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7 Day Traffic Course at: MarketingToolGuide.com . 2009 Titus Hoskins.

Increasing online visibility is the goal of most online business owners. After all, without visibility, you have no traffic and thus no business. However, when you start to research how to improve your online visibility, you discover many options, but find that there is little time for research and implementation. Where does an online entrepreneur turn first to get the visibility (and traffic) to promote an online venture?

New tricks and gimmicks come out every day, but unfortunately, most of them are like so many recording artists and become one-hit wonders. In my business, I’ve discovered that there are a handful that are able to stand the test of time. Some have been around for as long as websites have been around, while others are newer kids on the block. Here are my 10 most effective strategies to massively boost your visibility online:

1. Press releases.

Press releases are a well-known marketing strategy that have worked for years with print and broadcast media. In recent years they have found new life as an online visibility tool. Just like in the old days, your release should carry some newsworthy angle that has been optimized with a select few keywords by which you want your business to be found. Don’t waste your time submitting your release to the free press release sites — the release simply sits on the site and goes no where else. Instead, invest in a fee-based service (I prefer PRWeb.com), which will ensure your release gets the recognition it deserves.

2. Social Networking.

A "johnny come lately" to the online visibility scene, social networking now ranks near the top in terms of attracting visibility to your business for a very low cost. If you don’t yet have accounts on the two most popular social networking platforms, Facebook and Twitter, today is the day to hop on board and begin to network. Choose 1-2 social networking platforms where your target market hangs out, and then begin to work it by making connections, joining groups or networks, sharing resources, and asking questions. Dedicate 15-30 minutes each day to your effort to begin to see results.

3. Article Marketing.

Writing and submittíng articles to major article directories has definitely stood the test of time for online visibility. Article marketing will drive traffic to your site, establish you as an expert in your target market’s eyes, and give you valuable content to repurpose into information products. For maximum effectiveness, your article needs to contain a strong resource box (author’s bio) that drives traffic back to your site, needs to contain useful content that solves a problem of your target market, and be written in a tips-based fashion, like this one, since it is the easiest format for a website visitor to read and digest.

4. Blogging.

Business blogs (a web log or journal), have gained popularity over the last few years as an online visibility tool. Blogs use RSS feed technology to immediately get new posts and updates out to your blog subscribers through a feed reader. Unlike ezines or traditional websites, search engines index blog posts almost immediately, which help you generate traffic to your website. To use effectively as an online visibility tool, you need to post 2-3 times per week to keep your readers interested and coming back.

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Optimizing your site or your blog for organic (naturally-occurring) searches has been around from the beginning of Internet marketing. Use a keyword research tool and create a listing of keywords applicable to your business. Don’t forget to add things like "how to", "tips", or short descriptions of your target market’s problems to your research. Then, take a look at your page titles, page descriptions, page headlines, and formatted text on a page (bolding, italicizing, underlining) and include your keywords in those areas, as well as sprinkling 1-2 keywords throughout the content of your page. Make the SEO appear to be natural, not forced, and the search engines as well as your visitors will love you.

6. Email Newsletter (Ezine).

Regular publication of an email newsletter (weekly is most effective) will enable your prospects to get to know, like and trust you and have you be top of mind when they are ready to solve the pressing problems that fall within your line of expertise. If you make opting into your ezine the primary call to action on your website, you continually build your list with prospective customers. Best of all, if they like what you write, they are more likely to pass along the issue to their contacts, thus increasing your visibility yet again.

7. Signature Teleseminar/Speech.

Have you created your signature speech or teleseminar that you can present whenever you’re asked to speak to any type of group (face-to-face or virtual)? If not, design a signature speech or teleseminar that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise without giving away the store (focus on the what and the why but not the how) that compels your listeners to visit your website or request your client attraction device and get on your líst.

Then, begin to research groups that contain your target market both in your geographic area and online. Once you’ve landed a speaking gig, strategize your best call to action for the group — do you want participants to sign up for your ezine, purchase a product, or book a consultation? Add that call to action to your presentation.

8. Videos.

With the popularity of broadband Internet connections, it’s much easier for almost anyone to view online video these days. And, with high-quality yet low-cost web cams, video cameras, and screen capture software readily available, anyone can make a video today. You might record a live Q&A session on UStream.com and post it on your site. Or, perhaps you want to record a "how to" tutorial using screenshots from your computer and upload that to your YouTube.com channel. Remember to include your call to action in your video so that you drive traffic back to your site. Just think — your video may cause you to become the next YouTube star!

9. Expert question sites.

Most people conduct online searches to find free information that answers their questions. Many online entrepreneurs are registering as experts on an expert or answers site, like Yahoo Answers or AllExperts.com, in an effort to get visibility online. To be an effective expert on these sites, you need to seek out questions that you can knowledgeably answer as an expert. Your answer needs to be very detailed and as specific as possible. The more thorough your answer, the better chance you’ll have of getting chosen as the "favorite" answer, which is the one rated highest on the site and in the search engines.

10. Viral marketing.

Viral marketing involves creating a marketing piece (ebook, video, software) that gets passed along free of charge from person to person. Publicity Hound Joan Stewart does this quite effectively each year when she compiles the best tips she’s written about in the previous year in a "best of" ebook compilation that she gives away free of charge on her site. She also encourages her líst and website visitors to "regift" it.

You’ve got two options when you try to get online visibility: the "steady and effective over time" method or the "quick and short and probably get banned" method. I prefer to use methods that have stood the test of time and won’t result in my site being removed from the search engines. Use one or more of these time-honored strategies to get you the visibility you deserve online.

About The Author
Internet Marketing Strategist and Boomer Biz Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses that they love by demystifying and simplifying the tools and strategies needed to market and grow their businesses online. To claim your FR*EE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com . Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com .

In this economy, any marketing tool you can use to find new customers is worth considering. But perhaps the best marketing tool available to many small businesses is a yellow-pages-style web site. Such a site means prospective local customers looking for a business like yours know that you’re in business and ready for their patronage.

But a word or two of explanation… While the traffic statistics of the typical small business web site may not impress Google, eBay or Amazon.com, many small business web sites do generate significant numbers of prospects compared to the other marketing tools available. Commonly, for example, small business web sites can attract anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred new unique visitors on a daily basis. And that’s a lot!

What’s more, setting up one of these Internet marketing web sites just doesn’t have to be that complicated or expensive. Often times, employing the following half a dozen tips lets you enjoy surprising success:

Internet Business Marketing Tip #1: Evaluate Your Competition

A first and very simple tip is this: Start out by sizing up your competition. Do see what the other guy or other guys in town are doing. Look at the information they’re providing. And check out the number of links that point to their site.

In a nutshell, you need a better site than your competitors in order to beat them at the Internet marketing game. You need more pages of on-topic content. And you need more inbound links pointing to your pages.

You can check the number of inbound links pointing to your web site by visiting the Yahoo search engine page and then typing link:www.yourcompetitorsdomain.com into the search box. (Replace the smooshed together word yourcompetitorsdomain with the real domain name.) Yahoo then lists the number of links pointing to your competitors’ sites.

By the way, if competitors’ web sites provide only a few sparse pages and a handful of crummy in-bound links, you’ll find it very easy to make your site a rip-roaring success.

Internet Business Marketing Tip #2: Pay for an Inexpensive Professional Design

Another quick and easy tip: If you have an extra couple hundred bucks for marketing, spend that money on a professional web designer.

In other words, once you have a few pages of text about your business–perhaps a welcome letter, a page that provides directions and then a page or two that describes your products and services–pay some professional to setup your web site.

Web sites like elance.com make it pretty easy to find extremely talented designers who can create outrageously attractive web sites for modest costs.

Internet Business Marketing Tip #3: Get Smart about your Domain Name

One caution: You won’t want to make the mistake that I made. In other words, if you can avoid it, you don’t want to name your business using your name or some meaningless if clever phrase.

For my Seattle area CPA firm, I named my domain name stephenlnelson.com and have spent the last dozen years telling people, "No, with a ‘ph’…not a ‘v’ and don’t forget the ‘l’…."
Rather you want to use search words, also known as keywords, in your domain name. For example, if you operate a drycleaner located in town named Pine Lake, try to get something like PineLakeDrycleaners dot com.

Putting search words in your domain name will make your website easier to find when people use those search words. In other words, search engines are more likely to display a website named PineLakeDrycleaners.com when someone searches on phrases like "drycleaning pine lake," drycleaners in pine lake," "pine lake dryclean," and so on.

Internet Business Marketing Tip #4: Add Your Site to Google Maps

If you include your business address on your web pages–and you should–Google will probably, eventually, display your business’s website when people search for a local business like yours.

If your business’s web site isn’t appearing when someone searches for local businesses like yours, you can visit the Google maps page and then click on the Put Your Business on Google Maps link to begin the process of adding your business to Google’s local search results.

Internet Business Marketing Tip #5: Win the Local Links Competition

You’re going to need to get more inbound links pointing to your site than point to your competitors’ sites in order to rank highly when people look for a local business like yours.

If you’ve done a bit of research on your competitors as suggested in the first tip, you already know how many and what sorts of links you need. With that information in hand, try the following:

1. Request that your site be added to free directories. Free directory links are not worth very much, quite honestly, but in a local search competition they can help. Search Google or Yahoo on the phrase "líst of free directories" to get a decent, reasonably-fresh listing of freebie directories, and then begin submittíng your site to the directories listed. Also, note that you can pay a directory submission service like DirectoryMaximizer.com to submít your website to around a thousand free directories for about a hundred dollars.

2. Grab, beg or pay for links from the websites of the local business and community groups you’re associated with, including the chamber of commerce, community organizations, the public library, the local newspaper if you advertise there, and so forth. These links, especially when coming from a trustworthy local web site, can help your search engine visibility a lot.

3. Attempt to duplicate the links that your competitors show. In other words, if your principal competitor in town has purchased some links in paid directories like Yahoo.com or Business.com, do the same thing. If the competitor participates in and gets links from social networking sites like facebook and linkedin, do the same thing. Imitating your competitor will eliminate rather quickly any link advantages he or she possesses.

Internet Business Marketing Tip #6: Experiment with Pay-per-click Ads

A final quick though general tip: Pay-pay-click ads like those offered by Google can be quite costly. But the ads also often work wonderfully well for certain types of businesses.

If you can pay $2 for a click and 15-20 clicks usually seem to turn into a customer, for example, that means you can "buy" a customer for $30 to $40. In many businesses, acquiring a customer for $30 or $40 may be a steal of a deal. For more information about how Google’s pay-per-click advertising works, visit adwords.google.com.

About The Autho

Author, business consultant and CPA Stephen L. Nelson is the author of more than 150 books about using computers and the Internet, including many of the best-selling "… for Dummies" books. Nelson is also the author of a new ebook, "Starting an Internet Business" which is available for purchase at StartingYourVeryOwnBusiness.com .