Your Image: Your website needs to portray a professional and credible image. This includes the design, colors, fonts and the organization of your home page. Avoid dark oppressive colors; instead use light, bright and inviting colors. Avoid a wide variety of fonts, placing text in all CAPS or reversed out fonts. You want a professional design to instill confidence. Avoid strong colors.

Use Images: Images are processed much faster than text. If you offer free shipping, create a simple graphic that includes the words “free shipping.” Free shipping is an excellent incentive to get people to purchase. Also use to build your email list with free shipping for first time customers when you sign up on our mailing list.

Right Keywords: People search for answers. People arrive to your website with a specific intent. This could be intent to learn more about a problem or a product. Others come looking to take action and are ready to buy. Different keyword phrases will indicate different levels of buyer intent.

Call to Action: Drive your visitors toward a desired action. Make it clear and highly visible. This could be to sign-up, join, call or buy now. Place your primary call to action where it can be easily seen and above the fold. It needs to be highly visible to arriving visitors. Examples of calls to action include- “Buy Now”, “Order Now”, “Join Today”, and “Sign Up For A Free Report”.

Many keyword phrases have a distinct seasonality within the year such as Christmas lights or graduation gifts. Other phrases are seeing growth year after year and others are shrinking in use. Google has a free tool that allows you to research these trends… it is called Google Trends

Google Trends: View popularity of topics over time. Based on Google search data, graphs of search volume are available. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Graphs show the relative popularity of each search term over a specified period of time – (data since 2004).

Picking the right keywords is part art and part science. You need to understand the psychology of how and why people search. People search the web to find information, answers and a solution to a problem. Sometimes it is best to get the help of keyword research services to set the right foundation for your search engine optimization.

1. Message: Make your central message clear. You have only a few seconds to communicate your benefits, how you are better than your competition. Use your page headlines, your graphics and your navigation to communicate your message.
2. Call to Action: Drive your visitors toward a desired action. Make it clear and highly visible. Place your primary call to action where it can be easily seen without scrolling down. It needs to be highly visible to arriving visitors. Examples of calls to action include- “Buy Now”, “Order Now”, “Join Today”, and “Sign Up For a Free Report”.
3. Placement: The upper right quadrant of your web page gets the best response. Place your phone number in upper right with email sign-up forms just below.
4. Build Trust: Show visitors that you are trustworthy. Show prospects there are no risks. Build trust at every step. Show your phone number and address. Post a guarantee. Have a no-risk returns policy. Show your privacy policy. At an action step such as a sign-up for, reassure with an excerpt from your privacy policy.
5. Compelling Copy: Effective copywriting attracts targeted visitors and begins the selling process by attracting attention and building interest in what you have to offer. Website visitors come looking for answers to their questions or problems. Merely giving information or logically presenting your products is not enough.
6. Subscriber Sign-up: The best way to convert a visitor into a customer is to convince them over a period of time. Grow your email list via an opt-in or subscriber form on your website. The idea is to keep inviting people back and to encourage the repeat buyer.
7. Incentives: Provide an incentive to sign-up. Your incentive needs to make an impact. Something that causes them to say “wow” I need more of this. The key is start by delivering something they really want in your initial incentive.

Hint: Start strong and finish strong. Grab their attention when they arrive, and astound them with your finish. Put your best material at the beginning and the end.

Tips are from SEO coaching and conversion expert Doug Williams

For more helpful SEO tips, go to the Doug Williams SEO Services Company website.

You can choose from many different types of symbolic recognition program awards. In fact, any crystal award can be transformed into a sales incentive award. Traditionally, eagles, and stars awards are popular because they symbolize the flight to success or a star performance.

E Recognizing your employees is not always on the top of your priority list. expressing gratitude to your employees helps you make a personal connection with each person. Showing appreciation builds a bridge between you and your sales team.

Meanwhile, your employees sit back and watch you. Although they will never admit it, they are always looking for your feedback and positive praise about their contributions. Presenting corporate awards is a powerful team building tool.

When selecting employee awards, you should always keep the unique characteristics of the recipient in mind. Match the award to the achievement and personal style of the recipient, carefully taking color, shape, and size into consideration. We have outlined a series of sample questions that you can use to gauge which employee awards your recipients would prefer.

1. 3-5 words: Buyers will typically use phrases with 3-5 words or even longer. Buyer phrases are very specific and will include things like make and model or specific locations or details as searches get refined.
2. Singular: Buyers tend to use highly specific phrases as well as singular rather than plural forms. A person looking for new furniture is more likely to type in “leather sofa” rather than “leather sofas”
3. Local: If you are a general dentist in Portland, Oregon, don’t target “Oregon dentist” if you only have an office in Portland. People will only travel a few miles to a dentist from where they work or live.

Buyer phrases are action oriented and very specific. Usually it is best to hire out keyword research services if you are going to optimize your own website.

Employee recognition programs are often used by organizations to reward employees for exhibiting positive behaviors. By offering positive praise, such as a personal award or message or gratitude, the recipient is rewarded for their accomplishments and is encouraged to practice positive behaviors. Due to this reason, employee recognition is the #1 tactic that organizations use to motivate employees.

Employee of the month plaque programs provide recognition and improve company spirit. Programs are credited for increasing sales and productivity. Studies show that when your employees are happy at work your customers are also happier! Not only are your employees more productive, you’ll end up making more money as a result.

Still not convinced? Click on this employee recognition programs article for a full list of reasons why your company should start a recognition program.

Website Stats: The website itself is looked at for current traffic volume, number of pages, Title tags, H1s, number of pages that could be optimized. The number and quality of current links as well as what anchor text is being used to link back the website.

Keywords: The SEO services company will need to know what keyword phrase or phrases that you will want to be found for. They will look at searches per day, competition level, should local terms be used, etc.

Technical Problems: These are things that would prevent your website from getting top rankings. This could be an all Flash website, a site built in frames or a website that is all graphics with little or no text. There could be spamming methods such as hidden text (white text on a white background), cloaking, keyword stuffing, etc.

The SEO services company is now ready to recommend the SEO needed for your website along with the price. SEO should include both an initial SEO (on-page) as well as monthly SEO. The SEO recommendation should include keyword research and selection, optimization of pages, content growth strategy and a linking strategy.

This 7 step process is a focused approach that works on sites of all sizes and all levels of competition. Follow this step-by-step guide.

1. Plan: What products or services do you want to promote? What are your most profitable products? What are your highest volume products? Who do you sell to?
2. Keyword Research: Start by creating an intuitive keyword list of phrases that you think your customers might be searching for. Then do in depth research using a keyword research tool like Market Samurai.
3. Competition: Using your top 2-3 keywords, look at which websites are getting the first page rankings on Google. How many pages do they have? How many links does each site have. This will give you an idea of the level of competition you will be facing. Look at what SEO strategies they may be using (blog, types of inbound links, etc.)
4. Website Evaluation: Evaluate your website against your plan and your competition. Are there any technical issues that need fixing? Do you need to add pages or change your content to highlight your targeted keywords? Create a page plan for your website and assign 1-2 keyword phrases to each page of your website based on your research.
5. On-Page SEO: Apply your keywords to each page of your website according to your plan. Use the keywords in your Title tags, H1 tags, visible body text, hyperlinks that link to internal pages, etc.
6. Link Building: Build links to your pages using web directories, articles, blog postings, etc. Links back to your site should use the targeted keyword(s) for that page. Link building works best when you have a long term consistent rate of new links coming in. You can also use a quality link building service.
7. Measure: Set-up your measurement systems in advance so you can evaluate the success of your SEO efforts. This can include rankings, numbers of visitors, number of visitors coming from organic search (excluding company name) or number of conversions.

This process can be as simple or comprehensive as you want to make it. You can also hire a SEO services company to do the work for you.

Keywords are at the heart of SEO. You need to select keyword phrases that are highly relevant and that have a good traffic volume. These are the phrases that people will actually type in and search with. People will search for answers to problems or to satisfy some need.

Keywords are much more than how search engines classify your website. They are how people think about the products or services you provide. Building these keywords into every facet of your website forms the messaging that allows you to better connect with your prospect. This translates into higher conversion rates.

What happens when SEO is not planned deeply into your website? When it is added later the keywords cannot be as deeply integrated into the fabric of the website. You may be successful in attracting traffic, but its conversion ability is lessened.

Keywords should be built into page names, page headlines (H1 tags), navigation and the content on each page. The keywords should be worked into the call to actions.

For maximum effectiveness, SEO and keyword research should be started in the earliest phases of your website planning. This allows you to best connect with your prospects needs and with the search engines.