Upon visiting your site potential customers will either "surf" (engage with your content) or they will "turf" it (leave without participating.) You only have about 7 seconds to engage a visitor to your site and that includes the time it takes for your site to load on their computer. Ultimately you want your visitors to visit multiple pages of your site and click through when given the opportunity, or if you create a great landing page they should be able to "convert" on that page without needing to see anymore pages.
Considering how challenging it can be to get a consumer to your site you don't want to lose them by making it hard for them to find what they need via search. The key is making sure your site pages are listed in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Visibility on SERP is achieved through SEO to increase your organic search standing, through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads, and indirectly through Social Media. Ultimate success is often achieved with a combination of the two. Since it is easier to guarantee your standing in PPC it is important to create a conversion-focused PPC ad that compels a consumer to click through.
Here are 3 tips to create a successful PPC ad:
1. Include Strong Call-to-actions or Promotional Offers
- Use compelling words like "save, "order", "buy" etc. If there are no current sales "free shipping" or "compare" are also successful.
- Keep the most important information within the "Title Tag" which is the line of text underlined in blue. Pay attention to how any characters each search engine will display in the Title Tag and make sure your most important information is within that range.
2. Ensure You Write Your Keywords in the Title Tag First
- Do not begin your title tag with your brand name. It won't be as well received by the user and it hinders SEO efforts.
- Following your keywords use action words in the title such as "learn", "discover", "find" etc.
- Add secondary keywords or geographies you business services to the title tag.
- Last but not least, put the brand name of your company.
3. Go Social
- Social media is an umbrella term for medias that integrate technology, social interaction and include pictures, videos, audio and written communication.
To learn more tips to help ensure your website is "surfed" rather than "turfed" check out our recorded webinar, "Surf and Turf with Surf and Social."
If you are trying to increase your website visibility through a PPC campaign or by improving your organic search standings it's time to think about the speed behind your website. When ranking PPC standings Google has added loading time to it's ranking and organic searches will soon take page load time into account as well. There's no reason to allow messy coding to prevent you from getting the best possible search engine rankings.
The goal was once to keep a page load under 100kB per page. Today that can be more difficult but if your site falls between 300kB and 500kB then you need to reduce your page size. You can use Google's Page Speed plug-in for Firebug to get a page speed analysis.
The best place to start evaluating the loading time of your site look to these four areas:
1. (X)HTML: What is Your Code Weight
Make sure your HTML is clean and simple. Avoid unnecessary tables and inline images. HTML should not be over 30kB - 50kB on a single page.
2. CSS Sheets
Keep sheets minimal and well written. Divide the sheets so they are organized within the site structure. Remove any unused classes.
3. JavaScripting
Make sure all JavaScripting files are external and with everything else, keep them lightweight.
4. Images Optimization
Using the correct image files and reducing image size is a common cause of slower page loading. Use JPGs for photos and PNGs for line art. Avoid GIFs when possible as they do not compress as well as PNGs. Make sure image files are compressed correctly to avoid an oversized page.
This information came from today's blog post: Need For Speed: Give Your Web Pages a Nitro Boost by Kristine Schachinger. To read her tips in more detail click here: http://budurl.com/NFSBlogWSI63
You may have a beautiful and user friendly website but that alone will not insure that consumers are finding it. Contrary to some beliefs the best way to increase visitation to your site is not through costly print, radio, TV or online banner ads. The ultimate way to attract more visitors is through content marketing combined with a good SEO strategy.
Filling your site with fresh content that is valuable to your target audience and then promoting that content can have a major effect on your site's exposure in the search engines. The ultimate goal it to write great content that your relevant for your target audience, promote the content on your site and additional content marketing sites/article marketing sites. Promoting on article marketing sites can help drive new links alone will and improve your search engine rankings. Finally promoting your content within social media outlets, YouTube and blogs will complete that extra step to taking your content virally.
The most important factor here is that your content be relevant and of high value to your reader. In order to take the first step towards content marketing is to create a content blueprint. Here are 6 steps to creating a content blueprint:
Step 1: Define your business goals What do you want to achieve in the next 12 months?
Step 2: Identify your ideal website audience
Who exactly do you want to be visiting your website? This is typically the person most likely to be making the decisions about your product or service. As a homebuilder you may want to target housewives for example as they may be the primary decision maker when it comes to building a new home.
Step 3: List the types of information they require
For each target audience what questions will they typically ask and what is the information most requested about your company, product or service?
Step 4: Determine the action you want your target to take
What is their call to action? Watching a video? Signing up for your newsletter? Whatever you direct them to,m that information needs to help your visitor solve their problem and ultimately encourage them to engage with your company.
Step 5: Research search keywords
Use keyword research tools such as Wordtracker or Google's keyword tool. Find out what people are searching for and use the tool to identify niche topics that you can create content for.
Step 6: Create your blueprint
Sort your content by target audience and create a sitemap and navigation plan to channel your content effectively to your visitor. For each piece decide what channels you will use to promote. Consider website, blog, YouTube, Podcast, LinkedIn, Facebook and anywhere else you anticipate your target frequenting.
Create a schedule for when you will create and publish content. Publishing regularly will increase visibility. The best part about content marketing is that the information you create and share is actually increasing the value of your business.
Lastly make sure you have a way to measure your success. Install Google Analytics to monitor website visitation and set business goals that you can measure.
Search engines have finally surpassed the Yellow Pages (print versions). Think about....when was the last time you opened your Yellow Pages? The shift in how we find products and services we want is being dominated by search.
The graph below from webpro news, shows that search engines have finally surpassed the Yellow Pages.
Why have search engines overtaken the Yellow Pages and why are they more effective:
Yellow Page ads often appear next to your competition. (Search engine ads do as well most times, but you can differentiate your business with proper targeting (keywords, location, niche markets), good landing pages, social media, and more).
An optimized, well planned website, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors. It's hard to tell which company is a better fit for you when looking at Yellow Page ads.
It's difficult to determine what business came from your Yellow Page ads vs. your other marketing mediums. Yellow Page ads are costly and provide low measurability.
Using web analytics you are able to track the how, what, where, and when of your online marketing campaigns.
Establishing a content marketing plan, your website will become a resource and asset to your business.
Search engines deliver quicker results and allow you to quickly gather more information about the products and services you are interested in. The Yellow Page process is just that....a process that takes far too much time to gather the information you need to make an informed choice.
Search engines allow us to compete on a level playing with bigger brands. This is not possible with Yellow Pages without having a large marketing budget. Using long tail, niche keywords in your search marketing efforts, you can drive affordable traffic and new leads for your business.
In internet marketing, we constantly have potential clients who are hung up on the cost of search engine optimization and aren't sure if they can justify the cost. While it may seem expensive, search engine optimization is perhaps the most important part of your internet marketing mix. Why? Because while you may not be willing to spend the money to have it done correctly to yield the best results, your competitors are. And every month that goes by that other websites are benefitting fromSEO, your site is falling farther and farther behind.
It may help to look at SEO as a long term investment rather than a one time or recurring cost. Unlike pay per click campaigns, where you are essentially "renting" the space at the top pages of the search engines, SEO helps you "own" the space and ensures that you will continue to stay at the top once you get there. And because SEO is an investment, keep in mind that as with most investments, you get what you pay for. There are certainly SEO packages at every price point, but you need to ask yourself how one company is able to provide this costly service for so much less than others in the market. Search engine optimization is extremely time consuming, which is reflected in the pricing of most reputable internet marketing companies.
Is search engine optimization expensive? Yes and No. It's really only considered "expensive" if the service does not help you increase revenue above and beyond what you invested into it. But we assure you, it's the best internet marketing dollars you'll ever spend if it's done correctly.
Twitter is a social networking site that people and businesses use to stay hyper-connected to other people and businesses. By "following" a user on facebook, you receive up to the minute updates ("tweets") as often as they are posted. If you're like most of our clients, you've heard of Twitter - maybe you're even a member - but you're not 100% sure how it fits in with your overall Internet marketing plan.
Although Twitter has been around since 2006, it has only recently blown up to the 30,000,000 users it currently has. And even with those astounding numbers, according to a recent article by eMarketer, 25% of users have never "tweeted." Obviously there is a tremendous opportunity to reach businesses and consumers using this service, but industry experts have yet to pinpoint exactly how.
We're using Twitter to update our followers and drive traffic to our website, and a handful of our clients are doing the same. Twitter is a great complement to the rest of our Internet marketing solutions, but it doesn't appear that it will replace any of the tried and true methods of revenue generation like search engine optimization and pay per click.
Forbes Media "Ad Effectiveness Survey" polled 112 marketers online back in February and March to learn more about their attitudes towards digital marketing. Not only were these forms of internet marketing considering most effective at increasing conversions, but also considered most effective in demand fulfillment rather then demand creation. That is the true beauty behind effective internet marketing, your message appears at the exact time the prospect wants it to appear, its not forced, the prospect has the control.
Internet marketing is not a "demand creation" marketing medium like TV or radio. TV, Radio, and even magazines can be effective in creating demand for your product, but we get bombarded everyday with thousands of marketing messages and most people are simply tuning out. A greater ROI can be derived from effective internet marketing campaigns because we are focusing only on those who want to learn more about our products and services, and not wasting our time/money on those who don't. In today's economy, a great website marketed effectively on the internet, can be the difference maker between those companies who survive and those who don't.
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