SEO is an art more than a science. Essentially the goal is to make the search engines think your page is more important than others on a specific topic. How you do that is the million dollar question. The better your SEO is the more FREE traffic you will receive. SEO traffic is also the most targeted, so website owners get the best of both worlds.

ASANT Media has put together an article that takes a look at what SEO is, why it is important to your business, and looks at how to create a solid SEO game plan.

The full report can be seen here (PDF)

What seems like a simple yes or no question is actually more complex than it seems. For example, lets say you determine the success of your website by how many more leads it brings in per month. Typically users will make judgements based on the raw numbers, but a little more digging will uncovering the truth behind whether your website is successful or not.

Analytics allows users to see the statistical data of how visitors interact with their website. How many visitors come to your website per month? How many of them are new users? How do they get to your website? Where do the leave your website? How many pages do they visit before they leave? The data that can be pulled through analytics seem never-ending and invaluable in terms of optimizing your website for the highest success rate.

Below are some key metrics that can be tracked using Google Analytics to see how your visitors are interacting with your website.

Bounce rate – Measures how many visitors leave within a couple seconds of the website loading. If this this number is high, then that means your design is not engaging the visitor. Possible solutions include: web design change or content change.

Content-in-page analytics – Allows the user to visually see how visitors interact with the website by showing what links visitors are clicking on. Pair bounce rate with content-in-page analytics and you can get a better picture of exactly where your website is struggling.

Create goals – Each goal is essentially a funnel system. It lets you track a visitor from page 1 to page-whatever the final goal is. For example, users can see where visitors are breaking off in the system for buying a product. Based on this data, improvements can be made to the purchase cycle like shortening how much information you request from the customer or condensing how many pages you make the customer go through before finally making the purchase.

You can see more documentation on Google Analytics here.

If you don’t already have analytics set up on your website or need extra insight on how to use this feature, get in touch with me today.

The idea of a web campaign is to get the end user to do something. What is it?

Thanks to low costs and quick turnarounds, breaking even on the cost of building a web campaign does not take much work, but the difference between making a small or large profit margin is a thin and can be addressed before the web campaign is ever even made.

Below are some questions to consider when determining the business needs/requirements of your web campaign.

1. What is the end goal?

A web campaign needs to be tailored to the direct business needs. In today’s Internet users are becoming experienced. Gone are the days when a customer would peruse a website just to play with all the cool new features. Today there is a lot of information and not many people that want to read it all. To combat this, a web campaign needs to be tailored to the exact business needs. No fluff, just the information the customer needs.

Do you want to build an email list? Sell a product? Strictly inform customers about your business?

Before there is even any consideration in how a website should look or what features are wanted, a full analysis should be done on what the actual end goal of the website is.

2. Do you plan to update/manage content?

Dynamic content is great. It fosters recurring visitors and builds search and other forms of incoming traffic; however, dynamic content that becomes static is often worse than no dynamic content at all.

Before requesting a blog to be added, understand what and whose job it is to manage this updating content. What kind of content will you share? Lay ideas and thoughts out, and, if there is not enough substance there, then do not force dynamic content. Rather rely on key and information heavy pillar articles.

3. Are there future plans or ideas to build on?’

Similar to a house, if a website is left unattended and not maintained it becomes outdated and ultimately useless. Web tools are always evolving and business needs generally tend to change or alter as a company grows. Is your website prepared to handle this demand or addition of services?

By laying out possible future plans early on in the web development process it can save both time and money when implementing those new plans later on down the road as the foundation will already be set.

4. How will analytics being tracked? What is a successful campaign?

Once a website is ready to go live, the job is not over. How do we know that the website is fully meeting the business needs? What other strategies can we explore to meet our goals? Tracking analytics of performance and how users  interact with a website can give us key insight into what potential customers are actually looking for.

Your Turn! Talk with a design specialist to see what are the best requirements for your web campaign.

A regular question or request I often get asked to help with is “how do I own my name on Google?”

A popular strategy by many companies or prospective clients is to Google search the name of the person of interest. Thanks to all the spam sites and social networks a Google search for your name could very well hurt you.

For the most part, as long there are no risqué photos or defaming articles you will be fine; however, for many people, owning their name is a great way to control their identity and build their credibility. For example, a journalist might want a webpage they created to be displayed at top of the search results as a starting point for anybody looking up the person. The page could give the reader a background and directly point to highlighted articles the journalist wants searchers to read.

Now depending on the popularity of your name, it may prove to be harder to take back your name on Google. If your name happens to be Michael Jordon or George Bush there is probably not much that can be done.

Take a look at an interview I published on The Wild Investor that ranks high for the interviewee. In fact, for the past year it has ranked number 1 for his name.

Along with our 7 steps for effective search engine optimization, below are some tips on how to claim your name in Google search engine results.

1. Buy your name as a domain. If possible try to get a domain with your name in it. The structure and words in a URL play a huge part of ranking high for certain key terms.

So for myself, I might go for ameyshivapurkar.com or asantmedia.com/amey-shivapurkar. The idea is to get your name visible somewhere in the URL of the page you are trying to get picked up.

2. Delete unused social network profiles/accounts. How many websites have you created an account for and haven’t used them in months or even years, but somehow you will notice that many of these websites actually rank high for your name.

Delete as many of these accounts as possible, and soon enough you have already eliminated some of the competition.

For those accounts you want to keep, but also don’t want to keep it floating out there in the public, consider checking the private box in your options page that will hide your profile from search engines. I do this for my Facebook account.

3. Go image crazy. One of the best and yet most underused aspects of search engine optimization is using images.

Name the image using.. well.. your name and title different images other variations of your name that people might use to search. Also use the “alt” attribute in the image tag to give your name even more boost.

4. Link your social networks together. Because you will be fighting against random spam sites and social networks, odds are you might not get the number 1 spot for your name, but at least you can manage the sites that do show. Take all the social networks and websites you do use for your name and link them together. This will create a web of sites that will point searchers where you want them to go.

Also make sure you create your Google profile as they will show up at the top of the search results no matter what.

5. Sit back and wait. Even after taking all the required action, you won’t claim your name overnight. It could take weeks or even months. Ultimately the speed is determined by how often your websites of choice are crawled by the search engine spiders, but slowly and surely you should hopefully see the Google search for your name turn more into your favor.

Regardless of how great your product is, it means nothing if you can’t persuade customers to buy it.

Everything from the layout of your website, marketing campaigns, colors, to the sales copy used for your products is part of the sales process. One break within the chain can result in loss revenue.

Two-time number 1 salesperson in the United States, Dave Kahle, has written a phenomenal book, How to Sell Anything to Anyone Anytime, that teaches readers how to… well… sell anything to anyone anytime.

Kahle’s book features lessons on:

• How to convince customers they need your product.
• How to actively engage and follow-up with customers.
• Using the right words in your sales pitch.
• How to ultimately close the sale.
• And more…

Best of all, Kahle has organized the book with task lists and charts to provide step-by-step guidance on how to execute these selling techniques.

There are tons of books out there can teach you how to sell, but very few offer the insight, guidance, and real-life examples like Kahle does in How to Sell Anything to Anyone Anytime.

How to Sell Anything to Anyone Anytime now available on Amazon.

Below are 4 ways to use your website to motivate your consumers to buy:

1. Share Your Knowledge-base

Half the battle is convincing the consumer that they need your product – essentially fabricating the demand. A great way to do this is to create “how-to” or tutorial articles. Your article will teach or inform the reader on how to do something, and somewhere within the article a mention to your product should be included.

Not only will this help the consumer know what your product can do, but also helps create the relationship between you and the customer that you are an authority on this topic.

Lowes handles this problem by creating tutorials on popular weekend projects.

2. Manage Promotions, Discounts, and Coupons

What’s in season? What are the trends right now? Are there any special deals? Sites like Macy’s do a great job of relaying this information to their visitors. Customers continually return to the site to see what great deals are available today. Learn how to manage promotions with BigCommerce.

3. Generate User Reviews/Consumer Interactions

In today’s complex market, word of mouth is still the best form of marketing. Regardless of how good or bad a product is, the retailer will describe it in the best way possible, so you can see why consumers might be hesitant to listen to these product descriptions.

Sites like Best Buy do a great job of letting shoppers post reviews of products they have purchased, so potential buyers get an idea of what the product is really like.

4. Publish Press Coverings

No matter how great your products might be, if you are a relatively obscure and small business consumers will always be think twice before purchasing from you. A great way to overcome this hurtle is to publish any positive press about your company.

Georgetown Cupcake simply devoted one page of their site to all the latest press coverings on their company.

In order to get the most out of  your website, it is important to think of it as just another salesman. Besides a list of all your products, your website should help inform the customer what is going on with your business and create a sense of dialogue between the two interacting parties.

Most importantly a nicely developed website can help expand the reach of your business from the store to the customer’s home. No longer is the customer required to make a trip to the store every time it wants to make a purchase or learn something; rather, the online extension of your business will suffice.

In this article, you will see a compilation of local businesses who are using a website to market their services (some only locally and others globally).

Georgetown Cupcake – This DC area pastry shop allows customers to submit orders directly from the website. The website also does a good job of sharing media mentions and shares what the company has done within the community.

Bethesda Florist – This local florist in Bethesda, MD allows customers to create and send orders directly from their website. They have also grouped and recommended items based on various occasions.

Real Estate Agent – Real Estate Agent, Roberta LaRocca, has created a website that not only showcases her skills and listings, but also shares some tips, guides, and other helpful information on Las Vegas real estate for both buyers and sellers.

Nick and Sam’s Grill – As a local steakhouse in Dallas, TX, this steakhouse has created a sense of sophistication through the flashy pictures and ambience of the website. A Google search for “Dallas steakhouse” brings up this restaurant and potential customers can view the menu and create a reservation directly from the website.

GreenTree Landscaping – This Los Angeles-based landscaping company details it’s services and pictures from previous projects. The website also lists it’s design process and how to find the right solution.

Johnny CupCakes – This Boston-area clothing company has use their website to help build and grow their unique brand, while fostering a following all along the way. On the website, users can shop for clothes and stay up-to-date on all the latest company news through the website blog.

1. (BEFORE) Gather requirements and needs of the project.
2. (BEFORE) Create a full mockup of the design.
3. (DURING) Develop website using clean code optimized for best search engine results.
4. (AFTER) Make sure design is displayed correctly across all web browsers.
5. (AFTER) If project is for a client, make sure they know how to properly use all features of the website.

The offset of each of these tasks are making sure the website is structurally sound, while ensuring an optimized product. While they all seem like obvious tasks, many design firms skip or rush past checking any of these items, which can lead to a broken finished product and one not suited to the client ‘s business needs.

Right off that back there were a couple things we wanted to attend to:

• Make archive content easier to access.
• Easier ways to change ad banners from admin panel.
• Liven up the website with color.
• Create a “Trading Handbook” that lists all resources, articles, and products good for traders.

As part of any redesign/face-lift project, there is a flow that ASANT Media always follows:

1. Requirement gathering – lists exactly what needs to be done.
2. Archival of previous design – package code snippet of different features for use on future projects.
3. Wireframe - mockup a layout in Photoshop. Basically the blueprints of the new design is created here.
4. Coding - Ensure the design is created as specified while paying attention to search engine optimization standards.
5. Implement – Publish design, make sure design is supported in all popular browsers, and make any tweaks as needed.

As part of the redesign, new features include:

• Enhanced admin options to change look and feel of website directly from the admin panel and no need to dive into the actual code.
• Use of jQuery to display Trading Handbook.
• Increased usage of the Menu functionally released in version 3 of WordPress.
• Turned current Archive page from list format to calendar display.
• Added more green color to the design, emphasized sidebar content, and freshened up logo.
• Added individual information pages for affiliated programs. In progress
• Create “bookshelf” page to display all book reviews. In progress

Some before and after screenshots can be seen below:

What about you? How can we help you with your redesign?

For this particular project, I have a website, a Twitter account, and an email list. In the survey I asked the email subscribers do they visit my site more than once a week and do they follow me on Twitter. The responses were 60% don’t visit my website more than once a week and 80% of list doesn’t follow me on Twitter.

What does this mean?

Don’t assume your visitors know about all your services and actively visit the ones they know about.

Promote, promote, promote.

Somebody who signs up for your email list may not know anything about your Twitter account. Somebody who follows you on Twitter may have no idea you have an email list. Make sure you actively engage and notify all mediums of any new content otherwise you might leaving a big bulk of potential customers in the dark.

Learn more about email marketing.