Forgetting about your goals

The purpose of your website is to boost business. This should be the only reason that you redesign your website. Deciding on a website redesign because you are bored with the design or just want to change the color can be a disastrous decision. Every though you have about the site should be centered around whether or not this will increase visitors leads and sells. Focusing on cool features a slight change of a color will not have the impact on business that you think.

Getting rid of what your customers valued

Have you ever been shocked by a site that you use frequently launching a massive website redesign over night. The features that you use the most have either been disabled or moved. What aout the simple idea of familiarity? Often website redesigns have a negative effect on visitors long before the positives are seen. Make sure you are prepared for this by examining what your visitors value and ensuring those things stay intact.

Focusing on a unique design instead of great content

Visitors come to your site for your content. Yes they will notice that you have a nice site but that is only a split second thrill experienced by first time visitors. What they are really looking for is the solution to their problems. What you want to ensure is that you not only show that you can solve their problems but that you also have a way of building a relationship with them

Building a static website

Search engines and your visitors value up to date content. If you are redesigning the look of your site but don’t include in that redesign an ongoing content strategy you are failing. The easiest way to increase the amount of content available for search engines to crawl and for your visitors to find useful is to blog. Use your blog to answer common questions, offer advice and discuss industry related news.

Not experimenting

Converting more and more visitors to leads and customers requires ongoing experimentation. This means that you need a plan to test the effectiveness of calls to action and landing pages. You will never know what improves conversions unless you change details of your page copy, layout and colors. Using a content management system like WordPress makes this easier for you than having to hire a webdesigner every time you want to change a word on your site.

Missing RSS feed, landing pages and SEO strategy

An RSS feed allows your visitors to subscribe to your updates. This means that when you write a new blog post they will be sent your update in their rss reader or by email. This leads to a long term relationship that you can nurture. Your site should be designed to drive visitors to take some sort of action. The action they take should lead them to a landing page where they either make a purchase or give you their information. Not having a SEO strategy to rank in search engines is putting your website out on a large empty island with no way to be found. Make sure before conducting a website redesign you identify the keywords that will get you ranked in search engines.

Ignore your analytics

The only thing that matters are visitors, leads and sales. If your website redesign reduces the amount of visitors you convert, it is failing. Your website is a money maker for your business. Don’t let your web designer focus on making artwork for his portfolio instead of using his skills to increase your revenue.

Courtesy of Painters of Louisville

Unfortunately most Internet marketing strategies consist of writing professional corporate speak to customers. Small businesses have this desire to seem big and professional, but miss the opportunity to be personal.

What you get is the same information that all of your competitors are saying about themselves. Of course you are innovative and have great customer service. That’s also what your competitors say on their web site and social media profiles.

So lets examine some ways you can get out of the boring corporate speak

I Don’t Like You, You Talk Funny

People like people who remind them of themselves.  This is why despite being rich and highly educated political candidates often work to appear like the everyday man. You can listen to how your target market speaks on social media profiles, blogs, forums and review sites. Ignore sites and competitors in your industry.

#ThisEventIsBananas!

These days millions of people talk about the events they are experiencing in real life, online. Many event organizers will create a hashtag on twitter for attendees to use when talking about the event like #CES for the Consumer Electronics Show. Follow the events in your industry on Twitter to see how people speak about it.

I Hate Stock People

When I first started blogging in 2006 I used a stock photo of a lady that looked pretty nice. I chuckle whenever I see that photo used on major site and publications. It’s hard to seem authentic when you say you have happy employees and show a picture  a stock photo. Use your own photos and people whenever possible

He who has been cursed out is wise

Your customer service department is a good resource for how people speak about your products and industry. Also ask your sales and tech support. If you use twitter for customer service study the interactions you have with the public

Its 2012 but I still want to see your face

Research (fun spying) is nice and resourceful but nothing beats person-to-person interviews.  Learn about their needs, how your products meet them, and hear how they speak first hand.  Interview across all of your target markets often to discuss relevant problems in detail.  You can ask your followers on Facebook and Twitter to volunteer to be interviewed. You can also use a PPC campaign to reach some people that may not already be fans.

Take Away

1. Replace boring corporate speak
2. Listen to how your target market speaks online
3. Follow industry events on Twitter
4. Don’t use stock people!
5. Get help from employees that deal directly with customers
6. Conduct 1 on 1 interviews

Google Santorum and the first site that appears is spreadingsantorum.com. The description of the site is a definition of Santorum 1. (too nasty to type here). 2. Senator Rick Santorum. This is not a real definition from Webster’s though

Rick Santorum pissed of the Homosexual community in 2003 and columnist Dan Savage launched spreadingsantorum.com in his outrage. Initially it was just a contest to come up with a definition for his name but grew into a site that tracked the meme as well as Santorum’s political positions.

You don’t want something like this to happen to your business so here are 5  things you can start doing write now to protect your name.

Register your name before you need it

The spreadingsantorum.com site has been around since 2003. Google likes older sites with the thought process that age and wisdom are linked. Newer sites take a little longer to gain authority in the search engines.

Links

The site is linked to from a ton of sites with high authority like popular blogs and news sites. Quality links from relevant and popular sites are one of the strongest determinants in search engine optimization (SEO).  Make sure you create great content that others will want to link to.

Anchor Text

So instead of typing click here, whatever you link to should always be the text of the link. Many of the links to the site have Santorum as the link text, which tells Google that this site is really about Santorum (See what I did there?)

Domain Name

So we have already discussed the age of the site but the name of the site is important as well Santorum is actually apart of the sites title. This adds to Google’s trust that this site is really about the subject. Be careful here if you are selling someone else’s products.  I sell WordPress powered websites but I’m not allowed to put WordPress in my site title. (Without fear of lawyers!)

Content

I tell my clients to blog about their topic because it helps create hundreds of pages on their site about the topic that they are trying to rank for.  Google knows people are searching the Internet for information so relevant content is of the utmost importance.  This site has way more content about Santorum than his does.

Take Aways

1. Register your domain now
2. Get Links from sites with authority
3. Use link description as link text
4. Use keyword for domain name
5. Create relevant content

Which of these do you need to work on?

Blogging is central to any inbound Internet marketing strategy so finding a process to keep up is critical to success.  Your interesting and useful content attracts visitors that you can then convert to leads. But without the content no one is attracted. Here are 5 ways small business owners simplify blogging.

Keep it Short

If you are strapped for time take 30-45 minutes to write a 1-3 paragraph blog post that teaches your audience something beneficial.  For inspiration look at your FAQ’s, customer complaints, and recent situations. Your customer pain points will bring them back for more info.

You can also have regular short features like a fit Friday tip. This could be a short weekly 3-4-sentence tip to help customers maintain their fitness goals through the weekend.

Repurpose content

If you are doing inbound marketing correctly your blog post have a call to action at the end of them. This leads them to give you their email address in exchange for access to something useful like an eBook, webinar or consultation.  Re-purpose your blog content for your email newsletter and social media profiles. I could take this post for example and expand on each of the 5 points and treat each one as a separate email. I could also take a snippet and use as a status update on my social networks.

Hire Help

You want to focus on creating quality content for your audience. To do this hire a freelancer to do your graphics work when needed and maintain the sites overall appearance. No need to bother your self with trivial technical details that don’t add to your Internet marketing goals.

Allow Guest Posting

Although you want to maintain consistency with your readers, from time to time allow guest post from other professionals. These professionals can be partners, vendors, customers and even competitors that you have a good relationship with. Many people will be willing to write a guest post provided you allow them to link to their site.

More Ideas for Post

Use Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to get pitches from companies that would like to be featured on your blog. This is also a good way to attract attention to your site. Also feature stories from your customers and how you helped them achieve success.

Takeaways:

1. Keep it Short
2. Repurpose Content
3. Hire Help
4. Allow Guest Posting
5. Use HARO

What reasons do you have for not blogging for your business?