May 11
26
If you want your website to be found – and who doesn’t? – get in the habit of using key words effectively. Key words are the terms and phrases that people type into search boxes. When the key words that people type match key words woven throughout the content of your website, the search engines can guide them to you.
Let’s look at an example of how it works, along with some suggestions for boosting your “findability.”
Take attorneys. A Google search just turned up 201 million–Yikes!–hits for attorney. Narrowing it down to family law attorney generated 10.1 million. Family law attorney San Francisco pares the possibilities to a paltry 5 million. Better, but still too much.
If you were an attorney, you would be wise to find a way to the top of a search pile. But even 5 million is a big pile. What can you do?
Choose key words that are specific to your business. The more relevant the better. “Attorney” is clearly too general for winning qualified leads.
But don’t be too specific. If you sprinkle “left-handed family attorney” liberally throughout your web copy, the search engines will likely rank your site high each time someone searches that term. But it may be a while before anyone actually does such a search.
A variety of relevant key words can make you more findable. For instance, adding “Geary Street” and “San Francisco” to search for “family law attorney” reduces results to 231.
Use search engine to help you determine relevance and volume. Once you’ve made a preliminary selection of key words, you can get a very good idea of relevance and volume just by searching them on the likes of Google, Yahoo and Bing. You might also research possible key words on Google’s free AdWords service.
Key words (and phrases) are your friends. Like any friendship, let it grow and you’ll see increased web traffic–and more qualified prospects. In the next post, I’ll talk about where to place key words to increase your odds of being found.
May 11
5
For those of you expecting a post on organic gardening, I apologize. This post is about how to improve where search engines rank your website, all by yourself, for free. Before you hand over a bunch of cash to a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm, try these easy ways to improve your ranking. You may find you don’t need that expensive firm’s help after all.
First, let’s get a handle on how search engines work. Personally, I think it’s magic, but our programmers assure me that logic and mathematics are involved. Search engines send out web crawlers to search the Web and use the information they gather to develop rankings. This is called organic search. The better your site does in these searches, the better it ranks with the search engines.
Search engines look for three things when ranking websites: content, links, and activity.
Content — Every day, web crawlers comb the millions of pages on the Internet looking for specific words and phrases. The more of these you use in your text, the higher your ranking.
Let’s say you want to be ranked highly for serving delectable sushi. If you sprinkle your text liberally with the word sushi as well as related words such as Japanese food, sushi, sashimi, teriyaki, or Japanese restaurants, the web crawlers will note it and rank you higher as a result. While you’re at it, you might want to avoid words like raw fish or bait.
Caution: Crawlers are smart. That is, smart people program them. If you place a banner on every page that says sushi sushi sushi sushi sushi sushi, it’s considered cheating, and crawlers are programmed to detect it. Attempt it, and you’ll soon end up in the trash with the heads and tails.
Links — Search engines notice when visitors reach you through links on other sites. Look for legitimate links that enhance your reputation, and avoid those that have more advertising than content. But use the tactic legitimately. Crawlers can spot wanton use of “you link to me and I’ll link to you,” and punish you for it.
Activity — The more you update your site, the more the crawlers will notice it. An easy way to keep your site active is to have and regularly post to a “News” section, a blog or both.
There’s much more to SEO than can be covered in a single post, so in the near future I’ll be delving more into subjects such as content, key words, meta tags, photos and videos, and mutual links to make your online presence bloom. Stay tuned!
May 11
3
We’ve all heard that, “If you build it, they will come.” But for a landing page, that applies only when you build it right.
Since by definition a landing page exists outside your main website, odds are you’re creating it for a specific purpose. It follows that a good first step to an effective landing page is to determine just what its purpose is.
Obvious? Sure. But you’d be surprised how often people overlook that step. So, first decide if your landing page’s job is to provide information, create interest or awareness, generate leads, or complete transactions. Then build the page to suit.
Creating an Effective Landing Page
Here are four key elements to creating an effective landing page:
1) Consider the source. You increase relevance when you customize a landing page to its referral source. If you sell outdoor gear, you might take one approach with people responding from a hiking magazine ad, and quite another with people responding from an article in an environmentalist publication.
2) Gather data. As I wrote in an earlier post (see “Building Your Own Email List”), the most productive e-list you will ever use is the one you build yourself. At a minimum, request a name and email address from each visitor, along with permission to send them email in the future. The more value you offer in return (like information, publications and/or incentives), the more information people will hand over. Remember to state that you keep all information private.
3) Clicks are nice, deeds are better. Include an easy-to-complete call to action, making clear what you want visitors to do, and how it will benefit them.
4) Keep It Simple. Animation and showy graphics are fun and can increase results, but too much can confuse, prolong download time and even drive people away.
Customizing and Testing
What is prohibitive to test in other media can be easy and affordable online. Test and track different approaches, headlines, colors, appeals, offers, etc., and you’ll soon learn which work best for you. The information you gain can guide future efforts as well.
So, go ahead and build that landing page. Do it right, and the prospects will come.
Apr 11
29
It’s not very often that I open an email with a cryptic subject line. My inbox is just too full (as I’m sure most of yours are) to take the time to guess what it’s about, or to open it and read for a couple of minutes to see what’s being pitched. It would probably be safe to guess the same goes for the recipients of your emails, as well.
Sure, we’d all like to think our readers love us so much that they open our email the moment it arrives and gobble up every word. I know that’s what I hope. But a much more likely possibility is simply that the subject line engaged them.
So, while we may live in the hope of others reading our “deathless prose” simply because we write so well, it’s best not to put all our eggs in that basket. To help get your emails opened, I suggest making the subject line as productive as possible. Here are some tips.
1) Relevance – Craft a subject line that’s meaningful to your audience. Your subject line works like the headline in an ad or on an envelope. You have only a few seconds to grab readers’ attention before it goes in the trash or they turn the page.
2) Balance – There’s a fine line between words that motivate and words that scream, “Trash me! I’m spam!” Scroll through your inbox for subject lines that make you think, “Oh, I want to open that.” The same tactics those emails used will likely work for your own email campaigns.
3) Communicate one-to-one – Email has the advantage of being highly personal. Use this advantage in your subject lines. Including the recipient’s name in the subject line has proven to be an excellent way to increase “opens.”
4) Remember the “from” line – Never try to hide your identity in the “from” line. When I get an email with a cryptic subject, I’ll check the “from” line to see who sent it, before I hit “delete.” This is a good indicator of whether the email is worth my time.
5) Test and Analyze – There’s no excuse. If you have an email marketing program, you should be testing. Test subject lines, salutations, formats, design and copy. You may need some help from the IT department, but don’t let that intimidate you.
Devote the same attention to your email campaigns that you do to your other marketing activities. Find what works best, use it, and keep learning. You’ll soon be a master at keeping your emails out of the trash.