May 11
5
Grow Online Organically: Improve Your Ranking Without Spending a Cent
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!
Marketing by .
May 11
3
The Landing Page: If You Build It, Will They Come?
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
Dodging the Desktop Recycle Bin: How to Get Your Emails Opened
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.
Marketing by .
Of the many ways to obtain an email list, by far the best and most productive e-list you will ever use is your house list.
A house list consists of customers and inquirers who have volunteered to receive emails from your business. Since they know you and intentionally opted in, they are most likely to look forward to, open, read, and act on correspondence from you.
Tips for building a productive house list
First, please memorize Rule 1: Never, ever add anyone to your e-list without permission. It alienates people, and can even lead an email server to block you. You can obtain permission with language like, “To receive valuable emails from XYZ Company with exciting news and special offers, click here.”
For added safety, send a confirmation with a link that subscribers can click to confirm, and one they can click to decline.
That said, here are some ways to build your house list:
- Set out sign-up sheets in your store.
- Mail postcards inviting people to sign up.
- Add a sign-up box, button, or link to your website, Facebook page and individual email communications.
- Include a “forward this email to a friend” link in all emails.
Need more help? Many reputable third-party vendors provide free or low-cost web-based tools that make it a breeze.
Warning: lists go out of date fast. The best way to keep your house list fresh is to use it often, and to track what happens in terms of opens and actions taken.
If a contact joined your list over 90 days ago and has not opened an email message from you since, chances are you’re being ignored, marked as spam, or going to an address that is no longer current.
You can also keep a list fresh by sending only useful, relevant information. Contests, surveys, free offers and exclusive product offerings can make it worth your customer’s while to remain on your list, and alert you of address changes.
Finally, always include a link for opting out. I admit that this may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but it’s considered a best practice. Moreover, giving customers control over their own information is smart customer relations.
Marketing by .
Mar 11
31
10 Tips for Creating Effective Online Surveys
Thanks to the Internet, many tools once exclusive to professionals are now widely available at low or no cost.
Nowadays, just about anyone with a computer can design a page, retouch a photo, or even compose music. But if you’ve ever had to hide crossed fingers behind your back while muttering something nice about a friend’s would-be masterpiece, you know that tools don’t ensure competence.
This is particularly true when it comes to conducting online research. An array of affordable web-based tools makes it a cinch to build and distribute an interactive survey. But there remains an art, even a science, to designing the questions. The results of an unwittingly but poorly framed question can be costly. Besides wasted time and expense, there is a danger of basing important strategic decisions on “facts” which later turn out to be fiction.
Even the seasoned research pro must exercise ongoing vigilance to avoid ending up with abundant-but-useless feedback. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:
1. Some pitfalls are less obvious than others. For instance, even the order in which questions are listed has been documented to influence answers. So has a survey’s background color. To ferret out hidden problems, try randomly mixing things up. Perhaps each respondent can receive the questions in a different order, in different colors, on different days, etc.
2. Word choice matters. Spotting and pruning potentially biasing words is trickier than it seems. Though technically the same, people may have a different reaction to a question about a “rule” than about a “regulation.” For that matter, more people would rather “not lose” than “save” or even “gain.”
3. Never ask respondents to predict or even report their behavior. They can’t do it. At least, not with any degree of reliability. Yet if you ask, they will try to answer, and they will be sincere in what they tell you. The problem is that people perform poorly when it comes to correctly identifying what they do today, much less predicting what they’ll do tomorrow.
4. Caveat to the prior question: Unless, that is, you want to reveal something else. Asking people to predict their behavior won’t tell you anything about what they will or won’t do, but it can tell you a lot about how they see themselves.
5. An online survey may not be representative of your market. For one thing, only customers who are online can participate. Responses will only come from those who care to and have the time to participate. Thus your data may be weighted toward people with complaints, people with time on their hands, people who are bored, or people who enjoy completing forms.
6. Provide a “does not apply” option. This keeps people from checking a box, any box, just to keep you happy.
7. Don’t overlap. Say if you want to know how many employees a company has. Do not offer choices like “up to 100” and “100 or more.” Make the categories distinct: “Under 100” and “100 or more.”
8. Keep it simple, but not too simple. Too many questions, too many steps between “strongly agree” and “strongly disagree,” too-long pull-down menus, and too many essay-type questions can lead respondents to rush or simply quit. On the other hand, too few options won’t get to the nub. Seek for a balance.
9. The more respondents, the more reliable the data. I have seen companies that should know better than to base big decisions on opinions from 10 or 20 people. While no response is 100 percent reliable, try for at least 5,000 respondents. And do your best to ensure that they represent a good cross-section of your market.
10. Research is not invincible. Take care as to how you use survey results. Treat them as suggestive, not conclusive. If they lead you to a hunch, test the hunch before betting the farm. A little caution now can spare you a lot of trouble and expense later on.
Marketing by .