I just had a client come by and say thank you.

Every business owner loves to hear that they are doing a good job, but we typically don’t get the feedback often enough.  My client was at a conference where they had a speaker talking about Internet Marketing and local SEO for your business.  The speaker had done his homework and had researched every business that was in attendance.  He put together a report about the ease in which your business could be found locally.

As he went through the points he revealed that only one company present was found in the city in which their offices reside.  Only one business!  That is incredible!  So my client had to come by and tell me how proud he was to be able to stand up in front of his peers and accept the honor.

If you were at this convention would you be able to stand up and say “Yes I can be found!”?  This is how you find out, how long does it take you to find your company without using your company name, address or phone number?  Do you show up on the fist page?  How about the places page?  The google “10 Pack”?

Use your keywords and your city, do you show up?  If you have a smart phone, go through the same exercise.  Many of your customers may be driving nearby and want to find you with their smart phones, but they can’t find you if you’re not there to be found.

Internet Marketing is for real and you need to pay attention or your business will suffer.

Until next time, be a rockstar and dominate your niche.

Dale

As an SEO firm, we see it all.  Our clients want to get to the top of the page, the first page of course.  Keyword terms are researched, target markets are explored and customer surveys are completed, and at the end of the day we have a plan that we can work to achieve the goals of our clients.

Who is looking at your site and for how long?

But here is the rub, what good is all of this work, this SEO or even arriving at the top of the first page of SERP’s?  Statistics tell us that the first position on the first page will typically get 56% of clicks, but what good are those clicks if they just bounce right back off of your site?

An image just came to mind that might be a good visual.  Think of your business/website like a brick and mortar store.  You have a good location and people are coming to your store, but the door is locked, so they just bounce on down the street to a competitor.  How would you feel if you were in the store looking out and seeing all of these people grabbing the door handle and trying to open the door and then just turning around and going somewhere else?  My guess is you wouldn’t let that happen for long before you get that door open and let the people in.

SEO doesn't help unless your site delivers

When it comes to internet marketing, your customers can move on to another site faster than you can move your mouse. So you have to ask yourself what are your visitors looking for? One very important issue is to make sure your site offers a call to action with great “bait” for your visitors to be motivated to make the click. If you know what they are looking for, then you know what to offer as bait.

Another very important element is to have multiple ways for your visitor to contact you and for them to be able to see those ways quickly and easily. For instance, put your phone number in your header, that way every page will have your phone number and they can call you. Or you can have a chat and email button in the header or on one of your side panels. Three easy to access channels for them to reach you, no matter what page they are on.

We’ll talk more, give me some feedback and write a comment below.

We often forget that our websites are just as much a “physical” storefront as our actual physical locations. If you do have a physical location you tend to have it set up one way and it stays that way for a long time. Of course, that does help when your customers come to your store or your site they are familiar with where things are and can find them quickly.

With a physical site it can be difficult to track where your customers are going and if they are finding what they are looking for. With the power of web analytics that can be loaded on your site, you have the ability to track your customers’ moves throughout your site. If you take the time to read the reports available to you, the information can help you determine what needs to be done to drive more sales or actions within your site.

So what do you need to ask yourself when you are reviewing your site to make sure it is functioning the way you want and need it to. Below are 8 key questions to ask yourself, or better yet, have a friend sit down and ask them for their feedback with regard to these questions.

1. Where do your eyes go first?
You only have a few seconds to capture the attention of your audience…make sure they’re seeing something important. Many studies have been conducted that show a “heat map” of where our eyes go when we first look at a page. These maps show a pattern that resembles a large letter “F”. Starting at the top left of the page, our eyes will typically scan down the left side and then across the top and then another scan across the middle from left to right. So what do you have in these areas that you want your customers to know about you and your products.

2. Can you tell what the website is about?
Again, you only have a few seconds to communicate your unique value, so be clear and compelling. Headlines should be in larger fonts, and you should use subheads that capture their attention. Use colors and test to see what is working and what isn’t working so you can maximize your impact. Do you have something that will create a desire in your visitor to stay on the site? What is it?

3. Is important information above the fold?
Make sure your opt-in forms and Unique Selling Proposition are available without scrolling down. The “fold” comes from the newspaper publishing industry where the paper was folded in half and what ever was “above the fold” was the most important, and the best information to compel you the reader to buy their paper. Your website it is no different. The “fold” is what you see without scrolling down your web page. This is the most valuable real estate on your site. Are you making the most of your content above the fold?

4. Are the benefits highlighted?
Your visitors want to quickly learn “what’s in it for them.” Spell out the benefits clearly on the homepage. This is when knowing who your customer is, what they looking for, and why they have come to your site comes into play. If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then how will you know what benefits you need to highlight? And are the right benefits highlighted?

5. Is there a clear call to action?
If they like what they see, prospects need to know what to do next. It can be to buy now, start a free trial, or simply download a free report. Choose one and then “bait the hook” with something that is really juicy and very desirable for your visitor to compel them to take the action you have placed before them.

6. Are the colors and font distracting?
Jarring colors, quick animation, and gaudy fonts can really be distracting. If your visitors are distracted, they’ll click away. Too often we as site owners and site developers want to focus on the super cool things that we can do with our website without asking whether we are driving the visitors toward the desired action or driving them away before they take action?

7. Do they feel personally connected?
Consumers want to buy from people, not machines. Connect with your prospects by being honest, straightforward, and using a conversational style. It is so easy to forget that machines aren’t buying anything, humans are needed to make any real transaction and humans still yearn for the relationship with those they are transacting with. They want to feel safe. There are many ways to do this and often it isn’t with a quick type of sales pitch but starting slowly and building that relationship of trust to allow the customer to move ahead with confidence. So how are you connecting with your customer?

8. Are there links to social media?
Many people want to do a little more research before buying. Linking to social media sites gives your potential customers another glimpse into your company (and perhaps a few testimonials from other customers). This is the component of social proof and ties into the preceding question in making your customer feel safe in making their decision. Social proof speaks to the deepest emotional component of decision making and confirms the decision the consumer has already made.


Once you determine a few areas where you can improve, develop a plan to start implementing changes. You don’t have to do them all at once – just do a few at a time until you have a website that really converts.


Have an epic week.

Dale

Now let’s transition to your website.

Last week we talked a little bit about how to catch google spiders “eyes” and put you at the top of their results. But what happens when the “human” lands on your website and starts to look around? Does your site “pop”? Does it motivate your visitor to do what you want them to do? When was the last time you asked yourself the question, what do I want my visitor to do when they land on my page? If you can’t answer this question easily, then you are missing the boat.

As with any great landscaping plan, you want to draw the eyes of the visitor to those areas that will create enough passion, emotion or desire to take a specific action. So often we think we “have to sell our product”. When in reality the best action that you can have a visitor take is often to enter their email address and join your list. Then you can start the real process of marketing to them. Using a drip email process, or go offline and send them a direct mail piece if you have their information to do so.

So as you think about your SEO plan, remember that the landscaping must be in line with your desired outcome and that your SEO gardening is the way to get them to your site and must be kept up on a regular basis.

If you would like to discuss your SEO plan or your SEO landscaping, please contact us by calling 801-473-2300.

Until next time,

Now this is not all, he also harvested rocks, all with the proper permits from the proper agencies, but he did all of the work himself. I am more than impressed! He says that it is therapeutic for him to do this back breaking, time consuming and incredibly hard work. For me to go out and mow the lawn is a couple day mental discussion that usually ends when my wife says, “you can’t put it off any longer, just go do it”!

So why do I tell you this story? Well SEO work is very much the same. If you love it and your good at it, then you can do it yourself and reap the rewards. But if you are like me with gardening, and you don’t really know all there is to know about how to put together a killer SEO campaign, then you are better off having someone else that does know how to do the SEO work, loves to do it, and will get the results that you want. Like hiring a professional landscaper to dress up the outside of your home. They make a plan, price it out and then once you have approved it, execute it in a timely manner.

And when you drive down my street I can tell you that everyone can tell which of our two houses has been done by someone who really knows and loves landscaping and the one who has to drag himself out to take care of it. Google’s spiders are experts at knowing who has done all of the right stuff to have their website be found and those who, like me and landscaping, don’t really have a plan and just do the bare minimum to keep the grass from turning brown and dieing on the spot.

So ask yourself, what am I really good at? Doing SEO? or Running my business and taking care of the customers that come in the front door or through your website? Either way Google will know if you’ve made the right choice by rewarding you with great rankings in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP’s).

This can either take the form of an email which is an advertisement in itself or a message which has some of publicity attached to it. There are some big advantages and also some disadvantages to this form of marketing, so let’s have a look at them:

• Advantage – Effectiveness. Email marketing is not only one of the most effective ways of reaching out to people; it is also one of the easiest to track and repeat.
• Advantage – Volume. It simple isn’t possible to call or to visit anything like the number of people whom you can send an email to in a day. To maintain quality levels a good technique is to ask existing customers to opt in to, so that they choose to receive emails which may be of interest to them, rather than sending the messages to everyone on the firm’s database.
• Advantage – Popularity and speed. These days the vast majority of people have email accounts, and over 50% of people who use the internet look at their email at least once a day. This means that email marketing can reach out to huge numbers of people and get a very quick response.
• Disadvantage – Rejected messages. Not all the emails will get to the intended recipient for one reason or another.
• Disadvantage – Annoying and impersonal. Not everyone likes to receive emails from companies who want to sell them something. The two best ways to try and get round this drawback are; using the opt in clause mentioned earlier and including some genuinely useful or interesting information in each email.

The advertiser: If a website owner has the resources to pay for the generation of more traffic to their site then they can simply pay a search engine to place their adverts in strategic positions on the results page and on the sites of other people. The name is due to the fact that it is not billed as a set fee but rather on the basis of a small amount for each internet user who clicks on the link in the advert and ends up on the advertiser’s site.

The displayer: A technique to make money from a website without doing very much is by placing PPC ads on it and getting paid by the search engine for each visitor who clicks on them. This sounds like an ideal way of earning money, although it has to be borne in mind that it only works if there are people who visit the site and who are willing to click on the displayed ads on it.

On the search engine results page these types of ads sometimes show with the name “sponsored ads”, and Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are among the biggest names in the industry.

PPC is an instance of an internet relationship which works for everyone concerned. The search engine firm charges a fee for placing the ad, the advertiser gets relatively low cost publicity and knows that those who have clicked on the advert has done so because they wanted to, while the person who displays the announcement in their own site makes a hassle free profit. The customer also gains something, as they can choose to enter into the ads which interest them and catch their attention.

When someone sits down in front of their computer and types in a phrase the results they get back from the search engine they use aren’t produced at random or by art of magic. The firms whose offers come up at the top of the list are those who have mastered the techniques of search engine optimization (SEO) better than their rivals.

So, how can a business go about using SEO techniques to improve their online sales? The way to start is by looking at the words and phrases which their potential customers use when they are searching for something. There are plenty of tools which can help with this process and it is advisable that this is completed before moving onto the next stage of the process.

It pays to find specific words or phrases which are used by a lot of people each month but which don’t have a huge level of competition. This is obviously easier said than done but it can be successfully carried out with a bit of time, creative thinking and effort.
The next thing to do is use those words and phrases – which are known as keywords – in order to let the search engines know that the site has information or products which will interest anyone who is looking using those keywords.

This means moving onto the next stage of the SEO process and writing blogs, press releases and articles around the subjects which the site relates to. It is extremely important that this is done in a sensible and honest manner, as search engines penalize those site owners who use unethical tricks to attempt to improve their ranking.

However, what is missing from many firms’ plans is a solid internet marketing strategy to go along with this and to complement their more traditional forms of advertising. With so many potential customers now looking online for the products and services they need it is extremely important that some sort of concerted effort is made on this front.

The breadth of resources available for this type of campaign is growing all the time, and a successful internet marketing strategy could include emails, use of social networking sites, affiliate marketing and a whole lot of other tactics and techniques. This makes it vital to work out the correct and most profitable approach in each specific case.

The first point to consider is what kind of market there is for the company’s sales to be increased through a better online presence. There are, of course, some areas which are more suited to internet sales and advertising than others, but in general terms a huge amount of people now look for just about everything on the web these days.

Once it is clear that there are already people looking for the product online the next step is to work out what kind of internet marketing would be the best fit for the business in question. This usually means working out what kind of person might be interested in it and how to attract their interest.

The most successful type of online marketing tends to follow a simple but catchy formula, not unlike other types of advertising. Appealing to the needs, fears and hopes of potential customers is generally a pretty sure way of attracting their attention.

Here are the best 5 reasons why investing in SEO specialists is worth it:

1. You can have more time for yourself.

Contrary to popular belief, opening and managing an online business is just as tough and exhausting as handling a brick-and-mortar store. It is going to eat up a lot of your time and even capital.

Working with an SEO team, however, will allow you to get back time and use it for whatever reason you deem fit. You can go out with friends, spend a holiday with your family, or even open up another business to further increase your profits.

2. You can rely on other people’s expertise.

Internet marketing is certainly not a walk in the park. Search engine algorithms may change, SEO rules may be modified, and the things you thought would work may no longer do so. In the end, you have to keep up with the changes if you truly want to succeed.

One of the main responsibilities of SEO teams is to ensure they keep themselves up-to-date to Internet modifications. This is how they can provide utmost service to their clients. By choosing to work with a team, you can take advantage of their experience and expertise. You can skip the trial-and-error method of doing online marketing.

3. They can help you keep track of your success.

SEO specialists possess all the right tools to allow them to monitor your online success. These programs can monitor the number of visitors you have, what pages are often checked out, and what types of keywords Internet visitors use to look for your website. Most of all, the data they can gather will help them provide you with the soundest Internet marketing tips.

Moreover, SEO specialists these days can immediately send accurate reports to you by e-mail or fax. In fact, they can update you anytime, anywhere, by giving you private access to control panels or sending alerts through your mobile phone.

4. They can personalize their services.

Not all Internet marketing ideas are ideal for your business. Fortunately, SEO specialists can customize their services according to your needs and preferences. If not, they can offer you a wide range of packages at very reasonable prices.

5. You do not have to do business alone.

With an SEO team at bay, you do not have just a service provider. You also gain a partner, and it makes running a business so much easier. You do not have to make decisions on your own, and there is a group of elite people who can give you the right kind of support you need, especially if you are starting out.

Spare yourself the burden of doing online business all by yourself. You can definitely count on an SEO team to be with you every step of the way. They can give you superior technical support and impeccable customer service.