Archive for the ‘Online Marketing Advice’ Category

5 Tips for an Effective Landing Page

Friday, January 30th, 2009

For those of you who have tried your hands in Paid search campaigns like Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter etc must have felt the importance of a good landing page. A good landing page can make a huge difference to your campaign's performance by drastically improving your conversion rate. Here are some quick tips for improving your landing page..

a) Don't distract your visitor : Focus the entire page on one objective and set up everything towards it. Multiple options would distract the users and none of the objectives would be achieved. If you want to have multiple objectives, use separate landing page for each of them.

b) Content flow: It is typically observed that a vertical content flow through the center of the page works best for sales pages. Use the right and left column for supportive information like testimonials, SSL support, customer support phone number etc. This will build confidence in your visitors when they reach the "order now" button.

c) Avoid Extra Elements: Each element of the landing page should contribute towards guiding the visitor towards your objective. If there are graphic elements, animations, images that does not contribute to this, get them off the page - they can take away your visitor's attention.

d) Navigation: Try to put the navigation to the far right column or even better in the footer only. Putting the navigation infront of the user gives them the option to click off to another page and even if they come back after that you will need to establish the user's attention again. For any supplementary information that the visitor might need try to provide passive pop-up or CSS based slide down content.

e) Testing is the Key: Yes, even if you get a considerably good conversion rate don't be satisfied, keep a copy of that page and do further testing. Testing must be a continuous process and you should maintain complete record of the campaign for each landing page to see which performs the best.

Facebook for Business?

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Can you remember the excitement and boom with the myspace rush back in 2006?   Besides classmates.com, myspace was first true social networking website to penetrate the mainstream and to be solidified as a cultural icon.  After all it was mentioned in blockbuster movies "Iron Man" and "Superbad".   In June of 2006 the 100 millionth account was created on myspace.  It had plenty of traffic and plenty of visitors spending hours of time communicating.  The behemoth social networks seemed like a untapped gold mine for online businesses, so many quickly created and feverishly promoted their own online accounts.  So how did things pan out for entrepreneurs?   It turned out it wasn't for everyone. Considering the age group myspace attracted the networks was an appropriate advertising medium for rock bands, hip clothing lines, cell phone ringtones and other products that were "cool" for teenagers and young 20ish adults.  It also quickly became infested with spam and less than noble business ventures (adult content).

At the time SEO prodigy never condoned using time and money to promote a myspace profile to any clients.   Afterall most adults in their 30s upwards viewed myspace as nothing but a teenage fad at best and medium for stalkers at the worst (think of infamous "catch a predator" tv show)

Then came a breath of fresh air; facebook.com.  Back in 2006 facebook was dwarfed by the roaring popularity of myspace.  When I asked a college buddy if he was on myspace, he replied "no I'm on facebook.com".  Facebook? I responded with a puzzled look.  What on God's green earth is that?  At the time it sounded like some offshoot, wannabe myspace that interested me in the least bit.

So I stayed loyal to myspace communicating with my friends and enjoying my custom layouts and cool profile songs.   However as time went on it seemed that Myspace was losing it novelty.  In 2007 nobody no longer cared if you had 50000 friends on myspace (in fact if you had paris hilton in your top ten....you risked being regarded as pathetic).  Further souring the experience was the bombardment of almost daily spam and a growing annoyance of pop up ads.  What professional business would want their name on site like this?  SEO Prodigy never had a myspace profile.  It was just a hobby to send joking messages and comments to long lost friends.

Then in December 2007 my loyalty to myspace got it's nail in the coffin.  I was traveling to Las Vegas to attend a Pub Con conference.  While out there I met a very nice acquaintaince in Las Vegas back in December 2007 I casually asked "are you on myspace?".  "Myspace?" she asked very surprisingly.  "That is SOOOO OLD........."  In that embarrassed moment I came to the realization that it was time to find other options....along came facebook.

My effort to facebook.com quickly came as a "breath of fresh air".  No blinking banner ads, no animation, no distracting videos, no overcustomized user profiles where I couldn't EVEN READ and best of all NO POP UP ADS.  It took me a good 10 minutes to setup my profile.  There was some learning curve at first, but it was quickly overcome by facebook's clean and crisp layout.   At the time facebook would not allow customization of profiles  (still few profiles are customized).  While that seemed to counterproductive to what Myspace provided, this simplicity turned out to be a fantastic idea.

However despite this revelation in my personal social networking life, I still did not view facebook as a viable interface for business.  Sure there was advertising (and at least it was unobtrusive).   This was of benefit to some of clients who targeted young age groups.  But it still didn't seem appropriate for a place to communicate with customers and clients.   In fact I knew two small business owners who had their business profiles deleted.

Maybe they were over aggressive in recruiting friends or maybe they made their intentions to obvious on facebook.com.  Either case it didn't seem like a good idea.  Why waste all that time building out a facebook profile just to get it deleted?

However I knew a few other business owners who had a different approach.  They started a facebook account, but they used a real person's name...not a business name.   They also treated their profile as if it were a real person.   While that method may be questionable to some, when it compared to what I saw on Myspace it was rather innocuous.

Finally a colleague of mine who happened to be a well esteemed financial planner commented to be after the new year, "Chad many of my professional buddies are on facebook, shouldn't we be on it also".  At that moment I no longer had any doubt about business professionals being on facebook.  The answer is YES, DO IT! Create a profile and make friends.  But do it smart.

Here are three tips about a facebook business profile:

1.  Do NOT name your profile your business name

This makes your intentions too obvious.  Either use your real name or a made up one.    You have to make sure the profile sounds like a real human being.

2.  Make sure your facebook link in your website

Unlike myspace, facebook does not give you a direct link to your profile.  Fortunately there is a application that allows you to create one.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/apps/application.php?id=4619579915&ref=s

You can also create custom "badges" to put on your website

3.  Don't expect the world from social marketing

Social media marketing is a small component of web marketing.  If you are spending more time on social media marketing than SEO, PPC, etc....then you are wasting your time.  Better to maintain the account and allow it to grow.  Also don't become overzealous with recruiting friends/groups.  This will only get you flagged and deleted.  Nothing is worse than when you try logging in facebook and you get a message "Your account has been cancelled".

To give an analogy, I would compare myspace to "Wal Mart" and facebook to "Target".  I still use both, but prefer on over the other (need not elaborate why).  Both social networks attract different age groups and even socio economic groups.  Are you selling punk rock tshirts?  That would probably do fine on both myspaces and facebook.  Are you a CPA or lawyer offering services to corporations?  Highly doubt you would get the right attention on myspace.

Google Analytics- Under Reporting Traffic Data?

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

Since its inception Google Analytics has always been reputed as an excellent web analytics reporting tool.  They are continually providing new interfaces to analyze data.  Best of all they are completely free.   In fact SEO Prodigy believes that Google Analytics is a must have for any webmaster, no matter how small or big.

However lately we have begun to question Google Analytics' reporting accuracy.  We were quite shocked to observe large discrepancies in our clients local hosts web analytics stats and Google Analytics stats.  While we are confident of trusting my host stats, since, they are more precise in reporting bot visits, page load time, page view time, etc.  We are finding that several of our clients are really getting a higher volume of traffic and more importantly, goal conversions being reported on their back host management as to opposed what Google Analtyics tells them.

Our advice to you on Web Analytics!

Don’t count on Google Analytics reporting completely.  It provides extremely valuable data of where your main traffic sources are coming and easy comparison benchmark function that allows you to measure your website promotion performance.  However if you really concerned about getting accurate web analytics variables, such as cost per acquisition (how much you spend to acquire a lead or sale) we recommend using a paid third party software such as Web Trends.

5 Excellent Ways to Screw Up your Web Marketing Campaign - Part 3 - Believing your Web Designer is a SEO Expert

Friday, November 14th, 2008

You want to start an online business.  Who do you first turn too?  Thats easy; a web designer.  What is the first mistake you will likely make with your web promotion campaign?  Even easier, hiring your designer as your SEO expert.   Why do we say this?  Very simple; it's about time.

A bona fide web designer must devote untold amounts of time learning html, php, xml, asp, css and long list of alternative design codes along with the applications to actually apply these skills (dreamweaver, frontpage, etc).

A true SEO also must invest copious amounts of time to learn and understand the up to date functions of search engines and predicting future changes.  Google is rumored to change their algorithm (how they rank websites) every 24 hours.  This was confirmed by famed Google Engineer Matt Cutts during a recent live question and answer session held by real Google staff.

How often does your search algorithm change?

Matt Cuts: "We change the algorithms all the time - last year we had over 450 changes."

Would your superman web designer have the time to research and keep up to date with these changes?  Unless he never sleeps and has an attention span of a Buddhist monk, this is highly unlikely.

True SEOs also must have excellent writing and copywriting skills due to the fact a large component of effective optimization requires content writing.   This includes direct onsite optimization, article writing, press releases, blogging, etc.   They have to understand technical structures of websites and know which codes/urls are easier for search engines to read and rank.   They also must understand external promotion tasks including effective link building.

What should you do if you plan on getting your website designed?  Have your SEO communicate with your designer.  He or she maybe able to identify and correct major problems before your web design is finalized. This will save you time, money and headache down the road.  Also hire an independent SEO to promote your website after it's finished, but make sure he or her has a open relationship with your web designer.  The SEO will often make suggestions that will require the web designer's assistance.

Remember the SEO Industry would not exist if the web designer could do such an "easy" job.  Make sure you take the time to find the right person for the job.  It's worth it.

Search Marketing in One Sentence - Revamped

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

A while ago we wrote our theory about "search marketing in one sentence". Our editors took some time to rewrite this. Here's the updated theory:

SEARCH MARKETING IN ONE SENTENCE

For the past few years of a full service web marketing firm our team has more than often heard (beyond exhaustion) the infamous question.

How do you get websites ranked higher or how can I get more traffic and more sales???

Being that is usually coming from a business owner/internet entrepreneur this question is economic in nature. This person or company is actually asking “how do we make more money” with our website(s)?

While we are not stock brokers or financial experts, don't be naive to think that the internet is exempt from the universal laws of economics. The supply and demand of your product or service CAN and WILL influence your search engine positioning and ultimate success. If you change your perspective to fit one economist you can actually boil down a mountain of books, blog advice and lectures into one simple answer. SEO may be an art...but true success in internet business is a economic science.

So here it is point blank

DEMAND (MONEY + TIME) = Your Website's Online Visibility

That's correct. This simple algebraic equation is a baseline approach that intelligent Internet marketer must consider when promoting a website. Let us explain the variables to this formula.

Variable #1: MONEY

DEMAND (MONEY + TIME) = Your Website's Online Visibility

We are mean and green. Welcome to the NOW generation. Most businesses are impatient and will quickly turn to paid advertising for quick traffic and sales. This includes spending on paid advertising, paid linking, press releases, anything that costs money to get visibility on line. It could take months to rank for a phrase like “New Balance running shoes” where it takes only 15 minutes to setup a Google Adwords campaign and start getting traffic immediately. However you must be willing to pay anywhere from $0.01 to over $50 a click for this traffic. Once your out of money, tough luck.

There is nothing wrong with spending money on paid advertising as long as your business is producing a positive ROI. Paid traffic can also bring you repeat business that will likely go directly to your website. Also considering this primary way search engines generate revenue (in fact Google makes 99% of its revenue through Adwords) it's unlikely the paid online advertising will ever go obsolete. Our suggestion is to make sure you are carefully managing your paid accounts...or hire a professional to manage them for you. Many people are clueless when it comes to setting up and managing pay per click campaigns. Similar to hiring an accountant to save money on taxes, hire a legitimate search engine marketing professional to save money on pay per click and/or other forms of on line advertising

Variable #2: TIME

DEMAND (MONEY + TIME) = ONLINE VISIBILITY

It's possible to generate on line visibility without spending a dime on paid advertising. This is usually accomplished through countless hours of search engine optimization, blogging, social networking, etc. This is often more common with hobbyists/part timers who are under less pressure to generate on line revenue. The problem it may take several months/years to learn how to naturally promote a website and much longer to actually apply these tactics. A common problem (and sometimes fatal error) beginners may succumb to taking bad advice and end up using questionable tactics that end up hurting their online positioning. Plus it isn't just about SEO anymore, there are newer web marketing options such as blogging, video promotion, mobile advertising and social marketing that smart businesses are embracing to gain new customers. Not to mention the organic listings on search engines are finite, where the competition is growing every minute.

Devoting your effort to promoting a website/blog can be very rewarding if you are diligent in your work. However remember the old cliche “time is money”. Do you really have extra time to devote to your project? If the answer is “yes” great, if no find someone to do it for you (unless you want to become a SEO professional).

VARIABLE #3: DEMAND

DEMAND (TIME + MONEY) = Your Website's Online Visibility

In the not too distant past, the venerable web marketing guru Danny Sullivan commented at SES conference in Chicago that when it comes to web marketing “it is much easier to have the search engines pull your product or service....then trying to push it”. Just face it, some services or products are in more demand than others. And some industries are more or less complicated. If you are trying to promote a website for general keywords related to mortgages, real estate, viagra, etc you are likely going to have demand variable that is far less than 1 ( < 1 ). This variable will unfortunately lower the return on your efforts involving TIME and MONEY. So for instance your product/service demand is 1% then your equation might look like something like this

(1%) multiplied by ($100000 x 200 hours of work) = ONLINE VISIBILITY RETURN

Not to be discouraging, but just realize that if you have a low demand service/product you will end up investing more time and money. You may also have to focus more a certain niche for these markets. For example, you may next to impossible for a newbie to get ranked on the first page of Google time getting ranked on the first page for "New York Real Estate". Considering your brutal competition your demand variable is going to be very low for this phrase. However if you try promoting our website for "Ashland New York Real Estate" (Ashland is a small city in NY state) your are much more likely to get higher returns and placement for this specific phrase.

Also don't forget to mention hot topics that are being noticed by the media/public. Have you found the cure for cancer? Did Oprah endorse your book/product? Do you have something special that none of your competitors can offer (and your customers truly want) If your honest answer is YES your demand variable will increase exponentially. So the little money/time you devote to a high demand service/product will be significantly multiplied.

The tricky part about demand is that many business owners often overestimate the true demand for their service or product. You need to seek unbiased information about popular your service/product is.

You also need to protect yourself against copycats, imitators and knock off artists. If you have a great idea make sure to file for a trademark/service mark immediately with the United States Patent and Trademark Office

So you may be saying to yourself “well I get your point....so now what?”. Well every situation is different. First off except the fact that there are NO SHORTCUTS in online marketing business, but you can make better educated choices. Just like any long term investment you must stay optimistic because you will eventually get what you pay for.

SEO Prodigy understands that there is no best answer for online marketing, but there are better answers.

Online Marketing Summit - Downtown Denver

Monday, September 15th, 2008

To better serve our clients SEO Prodigy staff periodically attends web marketing conferences to stay abreast with newest developments and strategies in the ultra radical online marketing industry.

On August 14th SEO Prodigy marketing director Chad Klingensmith along with future SEM manager Rachael James ventured to the Online Marketing Summit to learn about the newest AdvOnline Marketing Summitanced Online Marketing tactics. The summit was hosted by online marketing bravado Aaron Kahlow who is currently a managing partner of Business Online. Kahlow humorously commented that this isn't "your daddy's conference" since most of the topic covered the newest developments in online media including social networking and video marketing.

While many good ideas were discussed at this conference, there was one prevailing concept; website usability. Unfortunately many webmasters invest tremendous amounts of time, money and effort promoting their website but make careless oversites that could seriously inhibit the performance.

Fact of the matter is that the industry website conversion rate is 2%. Simply put for every 100 visitors, 2 of them are either filling out a lead form, making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter/membership. Obviously this number fluctuates depending on the industries and whether the conversion is hard (spending money) or soft (providing information i.e. signups/leads).

However there is any entire analytical science behind about how visitors behave while visiting a website. Webmasters who are aware of this can achieve improved conversion rates. Here are a few quick tips.

1. People are attracted to people.

Studies have shown that visitors first look at images of people on their site while scrolling over websites...then they at the text. So if you are selling a service such as health insurance it may be a good idea to have the images of the smiling family redirecting to the quote page.

2. Move it to the right

Make sure the call to action button is strategically place UP and TO THE RIGHT of your website.

3. Use those curves

The human eye is attracted to an oval. Make sure that your call to action icon, images or letter are very big and well rounded

4. Remove the clutter

Make sure that on your sales/checkout page that you have absolutely no distractions/outgoing links that may confuse the visitor. We suggesting having one link back to the home page. That's it.

5. Use contrast

Make sure that your call to action link/banner has a darker contrast (with light background). This is also makes it easy for seniors to read what you are trying to promote.
Those were just few small tips from the conference. Stay tuned; Rachael and Chad will likely share with us.

5 Excellent Ways to Screw Up your Web Marketing Campaign

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

After years of optimizing and promoting websites our team has seen about every web promotion fumble, roadblocks, hindrances possible that can limit a webmaster from reaching their online saturation goals. The fact of the matter is that many of these problems could have been easily avoided.

We are going to review the top 5 bloopers webmasters can make when they are trying to promote their website.

Here is number 1:

Web Designers who still use frames

Absolutely amazing that this problem still exists. In the late 90's the use of "frames" became very popular in web design. You can tell if a website is using frames by viewing their source code and finding the script that looks like the following:

<frameset rows="*,1" frameborder="no" border="0" framespacing="0">

  <frame src="home.html" name="mainFrame" id="mainFrame" title="mainFrame" />

Frames are usually used to accomplish some web design goals/tricks. The most often is to include an audio file/music when you visit a website.
The problem is that frames inhibit search engines from crawling necessary content and information needed for indexing. They also limited an entire website to just one webpage which severely limits search engine saturation and internal link popularity.

When I was first introduced to this issue in early 2005 I believed that the majority of the web design community understood this mistake and would cease using frames in web development. However in the last 6 months our company received web marketing requests from three different websites using frames. It turns out that some amateur web designers are still using frames/framesets to acheive aesthetically pleasing designs but are clueless of the consequences.

To save some time, headache and money make sure to communicate with your web designer about how SEO Friendly your current (or future) website is. If you have your doubts make sure to look through their source code for the word "frames" or contact us at info@seoprodigy.com to take a look at the website.

While frames are not the only web design structure problem you can have when promoting a site....they are certainly one of the biggest.

And yes, we have a full web design team that can make SEO friendly websites 100% frame free.

In the next post I will blooper number #2: Not 301 redirectly to your new URL.

Search Marketing in One Sentence - Part 3

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

VARIABLE #3: DEMAND

Demand is the secret sauce to the online visibility equation.

DEMAND (TIME + MONEY) = ONLINE VISIBILITY

In the not so distant past, the venerable web marketing guru Danny Sullivan commented at SES conference in Chicago that when it comes to web marketing “it is much easier to have the search engines pull your product or service....then trying to push it”. Just face it, some services or products are in more demand than others. And some industries are inherently more or less complicated. If you are trying to promote a website for general keywords related to mortgages, real estate, Viagra, etc you are likely going to have demand variable that is less than 1 ( < 1 ). This variable will unfortunately lower the return on your efforts involving TIME and MONEY. So for instance your product/service demand is 1% then your equation might look like something like this

($100000 x 200 hours of work) = ONLINE VISIBILITY RETURN

Not to be discouraging, but just realize that if you have a low demand service/product you will end up investing more time and money. You may also have to focus more a certain niche for these markets. For example, you may next to impossible for a newbie to get ranked on the first page of Google time getting ranked on the first page for "New York Real Estate". Considering your brutal competition your demand variable is going to be very low for this phrase. However if you try promoting our website for "Ashland New York Real Estate" (Ashland is a small city in NY state) your are much more likely to get higher returns and placement for this specific phrase.

Also don't forget to mention hot topics that are being noticed by the media/public. Have you found the cure for cancer? Did Oprah endorse your book/product? Do you have something special that none of your competitors can offer (and your customers truly want). If your answer is "yes" than your demand variable will increase exponentially. So the little money/time you devote to a high demand service/product will be significantly multiplied.

The tricky part about demand is that business owners often overestimate the true demand for their service or product. You need to seek unbiased information about popular your service/product is.

You also need to protect yourself against copycats, imitators and knock off artists. If you have a great idea make sure to file for a trademark/service mark immediately with the United States Patent and Trademark Office

So you may be saying to yourself “well I get your point....so now what?”. Well every situation is different. Our best advice is to accept the fact their are NO SHORTCUTS to success in web marketing. Stay optimistic because you will eventually get what you pay for. However watch out for charlatans/fly by night gimmicks that promise your website "a 100000 visitors for only $29.95". True SEOs understand the value of white hat optimization.

Search Marketing in One Sentence - Part 2

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Variable #2: TIME

Demand (Money + Time) = On line Visibility

Time which is often synonymous with money is fundamental variable of a successful online marketing campaign.

It's possible to generate online visibility without spending a dime on paid advertising. This is usually accomplished through many hours of self taught search engine optimization, blogging, social networking, link requests, etc. This choice is often more common with hobbyists/part timers who are under less pressure to generate on line revenue. The problem is that it may take several months/years to learn how to naturally promote a website and much longer to actually apply these tactics. Another problem (sometimes a fatal mistake) is that beginners sometimes succumb to taking bad advice and end up using questionable tactics that end up hurting their online positioning. Plus it isn't just about SEO anymore, there are new marketing options such as blogging, video promotion and social marketing.

Devoting your effort to promoting a website/blog can be very rewarding if you are diligent in your work. However remember the old cliché “time is money”. Do you really have extra time to devote to your project? If “yes” great, if no find someone to do it for you (unless you want to become a SEO professional).

In part 3 we will discuss the third variable and the "secret sauce' to online visibility: Demand.

Search Marketing in One Sentence - Part 1

Friday, June 13th, 2008

The one sentence answer to the meaning of life (at least for online marketers)

The QUESTION:

Over the many years our web marketing campaign our team has often been asked the ever so rhetorical question? How do I get my website ranked higher? How do I get more traffic? Or sometimes, almost incredulously, how do you get websites ranked higher (with the expectation of one sentence answer)? The modern day search engines use a state of the art, ultra-sophisticated, borderline artificially intelligent algorithms (formulas search engines use to rank websites) this question could be considered along the lines of “what is the meaning of life”. Unless you are a Google Engineer who is sworn to secrecy....nobody has a one right answer for marketing a website.

So maybe you belong to the growing market of web marketing newbies and rather not spend hours learning and researching search marketing. When starting out, how can you determine the best plan of action is for marketing a website? Let us give you a fresh perspective. Barring all extraneous circumstances or outliers the answer boils down to simple fundamental economics (and you thought you were finished with high school/college economics.....)

Lets clean up the chalkboards and mute out the noise. Here is a simple formula you can apply to web marketing visibility. Yes there is an ANSWER in ONE SENTENCE:

Demand (Money + Time) = Online Visibility

Yes that's right. This simple algebraic equation is a baseline approach you must consider when promoting a website. Let me explain the variables to this formula.

VARIABLE #1: MONEY

We are mean and green....Welcome to the NOW generation. Most businesses are impatient and will quickly turn to only paid advertising for quick traffic and sales. This includes spending on paid advertising, paid linking, press releases, anything that costs money to get visibility on line. It could take months to rank organically for “New Balance running shoes” where it takes only 15 minutes to setup a Google Adwords campaign and start getting traffic immediately. However you must be willing to pay anywhere from $0.01 to over $50 a click for this traffic. Once your out of money, you are out of traffic.

There is nothing wrong with spending money on paid advertising as long as your business is producing a positive ROI. In fact I know SEO Prodigy has always been careful to calculate how much a client is spending to obtain a conversion (sale, signup, lead, etc...) Also considering this primary way search engine generate revenue (in fact Google makes 99% of its revenue through ad words) it's unlikely the paid advertising will go obsolete anytime soon. Our suggestion is to make sure you are carefully managing your paid accounts...or find a professional to manage them for you. Many people are clueless when it comes to setting up and managing ppc campaigns. Similar to hiring an accountant to save money on taxes, hire a legitimate search engine marketing professional to save money on pay per click and/or other forms of on line advertising.