Archive for the ‘Web Marketing’ 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.

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Posted in Online Marketing, Online Marketing Advice, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

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.

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Posted in Online Marketing, Online Marketing Advice, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | No Comments »

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.

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Posted in Online Marketing, Online Marketing Advice, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

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.

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Posted in Online Marketing, Online Marketing Advice, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

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.

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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.

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Posted in Online Marketing, Online Marketing Advice, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | No Comments »

Search Engine Marketing in One Sentence - Part 2

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

So what the second biggest component of search marketing?

VARIABLE 2: TIME:

DEMAND (TIME + MONEY) = ONLINE VISIBILITY

It's possible to generate on line visibility without spending a dime on paid advertising. This is usually accomplished through many 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 (sometimes fatal errors) 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 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).

Tags: , ,
Posted in Online Marketing, Online Marketing Advice, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | No Comments »