Before your visitors reach your shopping cart, call your 800 number, or click on that submit button—in fact, from the second most visitors land on your site—they’re probably in a relatively receptive mood. They’ve landed on your site for a reason, but it’s up to you to persuade them to act.

But this isn’t the 1950s. Today, consumers are less gullible. They’re exposed to a daily barrage of the Internet’s “amazing offers”, catchy slogans, and empty promises.

There’s no one “right” way to engage readers in your effort to promote or market online, but there are several wrong ways. Here are some of the more commonly seen ones:

1. Fluff
2. Negativity
3. The passive voice
4. Feature-oriented content
5. Marketese
6. Me-oriented content
7. Keyword abuse

1. Fluff

There’s loads of this on too many small, medium and even corporate business sites:

• “Welcome to our website, here you will find…” (Help them find it, don’t tell them they’ll find it)
• “SuperWidgets are one of those things that most people (and businesses!) have, but aren’t thought about a lot – until they break, that is!”
• “Once again, thanks for checking out our website. We hope that you enjoy looking around!”
• “SuperWidgets aren’t on the forefront of everyone’s mind, but making sure that your SuperWidget is in top shape is important.”

Visitors know why they’re on your site; they want the info and value without the fluff.
Solution: If it doesn’t add value, remove it. If you can say it in fewer words, do it.

2. Negativity

Even when writing copy for a repair company, accentuate your solutions instead of potential problems.

Try “Our patented widget lubrication system will keep your widget in perfect running order in every weather condition“, instead of “Our patented widget lube will prevent your widget from malfunctioning in nasty weather“. The difference is subtle, but the first example creates less stress, and focuses on feel good solutions instead of stressful problems.

Accentuate solutions instead of problems in your copy

Other examples of focusing on problems instead of solutions are:

• “These SuperWidgets are loaded with doodads and gizmos that can easily snap or break, which is why it’s best to let one of our professionals install them”.
• “Since many SuperWidgets are now electronic, shorts and breaks in electricity are often a problem. But we can do so and so to achieve…”
• “As you can see, there are many reasons why a commercial SuperWidget would stop working. We can be there when it does”
• “Make sure to inspect your SuperWidget regularly (once per year), so that you do not wind up with a major problem…”
  

Wow, SuperWidget problems are numerous and overwhelming. How depressing, maybe I’ll go lie down on the couch and stare at the ceiling instead of taking action!

Solution: Highlight benefits and solutions, not problems. Do not write statements in the negative form. Write statements in the positive form.

3. The Passive voice

Copywriting should subtly–and at times explicitly–persuade. Persuasion works best with the active voice. Think “Content drives traffic“, not “Traffic is driven by  content”. Calls to action can be appropriately understated:

• “Let us help you with your xyz” instead of “We can help you with xyz“.
• “Have us repair your SuperWidget so that you don’t have to xyz” instead of “We can repair your SuperWidget so that you don’t have to xyz“.
• “Targeting local consumers can be easy” is less powerful than the direct, active voice of “Target local consumers with ease”.

Notice how the active voice is a great way to shift attention from you to your visitor? This is where the attention should be.’Target’, inspires more action than ‘targeting’ in the example above.

Solution: Use verbs, that instruct, instead of weak adjectives that describe. The passive voice is to be avoided. Avoid the passive voice.

4. Feature-oriented copy

A common copywriting mistake is a focus on features instead of benefits. Copywriting isn’t technical writing, it’s promotional, and the best way to promote is by discussing benefits. “Features tell, but benefits sell”. Corny catchphrase, but accurate.

Benefit-oriented content resonates with readers, and ideally produces a desirable emotional response. Technical writing informs, whereas copywriting persuades. As the famous Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt used to say: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”..

Instead of “Our boots have rubber shell and outsole protection with traction ribbing, and sealed seams that render them waterproof”, go with “Your feet will stay dry in these boots”. Back up your claims with features at the bottom of the page if you have to.

Solution: Emphasize benefits over features.

5. Marketese

Just as content shouldn’t lack persuasiveness, it can easily be over the top as well. Cheesy stock imagery (handshakes, jigsaw puzzle pieces lightbulbs, etc) aren’t the only marketing clichés that can suck the life out of your message; copywriting itself has its own share of notoriously overused fallbacks:

• Best in the West: ‘Best’, ‘greatest’, ‘incredible’, ‘unbeatable’. (Usually preceded with the 6th copywriting sin; ‘We‘. Don’t tell people you’re the best. Give them your pitch and let them make up their own minds.
• Buzzwords: Don’t leverage if you can use. Don’t synergize if you can combine. Keep it simple instead of using wordy abstractions that only double copy length and detract from readability.

Solution: There’s a fine line between avoiding hype and being boring. Find that line.

6. Me-oriented copy

Don’t focus on the  ‘I’, ‘we’, or ‘us’. Instead, construct sentences using ‘you’ and ‘your’. You-oriented copy attracts readers, keeps them interested, and cues them for action. It’s not about you, it’s about them, so focus on what your readers want, rather than what services you offer.

Solution: Put the emphasis on your readers instead of on you.

7. Keyword abuse

Copywriters sometimes take it into their own hands to please you with “keyword rich” content, or “SEO copywriting”. Search visibility isn’t about repeating keywords. If keywords aren’t naturally appearing where you’d like them to, rethink your content strategy and/or information architecture, and move on to more technical and social aspects of SEO.

Solution: Think content strategy before last minute tactics.

These are the usual suspects of sub-par copywriting. Remember them to keep you on the road to writing content that’s both useful to visitors and persuasive, and you should achieve better results.

If you enjoyed this post, check out my popular 10 steps to writing better web content.

PageRank, huh, yeah. What’s it good for?! Absolutely nuthin! Say it again. PageRank!

Okay, it makes a good song, but I still haven’t ditched this once be-all-end-all SEO metric. Here’s why.

Do you notice sometimes how when almost any type of resource falls from being the king of the hill to having far less inherent value than it once had, that the masses are all to eager to burn it at the stake—almost out of bitterness? “I resent that you no longer give me a simple formula for success. Go away now, I don’t need a reminder of a time when it was that easy”.

Yes, well. Let’s keep things in perspective. Throwing baby out with the bathwater? Bad, mmkay?

PageRank – From Important Metric to Useful Metric

So Google’s toolbar PageRank no longer solves all the Web’s search visibility riddles for you. No problem (and what a relief; yet another easy-to-game metric has that much less weight as a ranking algorithm), that’s good news, in my book.

But in a largely non-exact science (which loosely translates to not a science) such as SEO, you need as many good troubleshooting tools as you can find. And in my opinion, Google’s toolbar PageRank is a great troubleshooting tool.

Now I may have lost some of you with that last bit. You know, about the science. Many aspects of SEO are scientific in nature: statistics, research, analytics, etc, but many aren’t. (The last time I checked, Google still hasn’t put their ranking algorithms up in a live Google Doc for us).

Websites have many layers that work with one another: information architecture, content, back-end and front-end coding, link popularity, and the list goes on. Some of the art of SEO involves paying close attention to each layer while ensuring that the others are complimented, not interfered with.

So yes, much of search engine optimization centers around details, but sometimes the most valuable tools are the ones that allow you to step back a bit to assess a site’s health up and down its hierarchy.

Google’s PageRank Tool can be one of the best alerts that something is hurting a webpage’s health.

Toolbar PageRank Can Help You Find That Structural Needle in the Haystack

Often, the first stage of optimization is an audit. Content, keyword targets, structure, you name it, it needs to be documented and evaluated. Some of the first considerations of a structural audit should be an evaluation of how the site’s architecture is affecting the health of its most important pages (if not all) across the site.

If you have 100 pages to optimize, you’ll likely have a spreadsheet documenting each page: it’s title, internal links, what needs fixing, which pages are complete, etc. Let’s say for example, most of the site’s internal pages have a PR of 4, but somewhere along the hierarchy, a group of pages have no (greyed out) PageRank—and you know the pages aren’t new. In fact they’re just as old as the rest of the pages in that section and just as important. Boom, instantaneous sign that something is up in this corner of the site. 9 times out of 10, if those pages aren’t new, it’s an immediate sign that there’s either:

1. A serious structural problem preventing link-juice from flowing to those pages.
2. Duplicate content issues preventing search engine from respecting and indexing those pages.

Sure, there are other ways to troubleshoot for duplicate content and structural or other problems and penalties, but few are as quick and efficient at spotting critical issues, quickly letting you know something is up right from the start.

Mix in the fact that the API is available, and you can roll your own first-pass structural audits that include PR data.

Compare Google’s Toolbar PageRank with SEOMoz’s MozRank, and you get even more value. For instance, if any given page has a Google PR of 3 and a MozRank of 6, Google has likely passed the page a penalty, since MozRank uses a very similar algorithm as PageRank, but can’t incorporate Google penalty data.

PageRank isn’t dead in my book—it’s just different.

Just as well structured content adds to the user-experience for your site’s visitors, semantic markup, in my opinion, adds to your website’s user-experience for search engines.

No, it isn’t the end all be all of on-page SEO—not by a long shot—but if you’re like me and believe that well structured information architecture can help indexing and rankings by adding context to your content, then remember to cross your semantic t’s and dot your semantic i’s.

Semantic ailments to avoid

Divitis

Divs are used to divide layouts into logical segments; when no semantically appropriate tags exist. Pre-HTML5 there were no <header> or <footer> tags, so, when using an HTML 4 or XHTML doctype, think IDs for these sections as well as for sidebars, main columns, and other logical sections of your layouts. Don’t lose opportunities for semantic goodness if they’re available.

Multiple H1s:

In XHTML and pre-HTML5 (which, by far are still today’s most widely used versions of HTML) one of the most common semantic markup errors is the use of multiple H1′s on a single page. The H1 tag is used for the primary heading of a page (usually referred to as the page’s title or headline in the offline world), and is meant to be used only once, right before your main content.

A new dimension to HTML semantics is the fact that the HTML5 specification now recommends what was once a poor semantic choice in HTML 4.01: more than one H1. Multiple primary headings make sense with HTML5, since pages are more—and differently—segmented, but regarding H1′s pre-HTML5, “There can be only one“.

Missing heading levels:

If you have H4′s in your markup, you’d better be using H3′s. Don’t skip heading levels. If you need smaller font-sizes for your subheadings, open your style sheet and make the appropriate changes.

Table layouts:

I like to think this one almost isn’t even worth mentioning over a decade into the 21st century. HTML tables for tabular data, i.e., spreadsheet type stuff?, yes; for page layout? Not so much.

CSS positioning isn’t as difficult as it seems at first—especially if you have an experienced, helping hand to get you through common browsers inconsistencies with 2 or 3 easy and elegant fixes.

A key point to remember regarding CSS positioning: 90% of your positioning can be taken care of with floats and margins alone. Littering your style sheets with an over-abundance of explicit positioning properties isn’t necessary for most layouts, and will only make your styles more difficult to understand later on.

Block elements within inline elements:

Often a source of confusion for those new to HTML is the difference between inline and block-level elements.

BR abuse:

If you’re throwing a line-break, or <br>, into your content every few words, chances are you should be using HTML lists. If you’re using multiple br’s in a row, chances are you should be adding styles

But how does semantic markup affect SEO?

“The right words in the right places” alone isn’t enough to help your human visitors get the most from your content, and neither is it for ranking algorithms. I’m over-generalizing here to make a point.

Which is:

While structure is a visual concept usable for humans, search engines get contextual cues from semantic meaning embedded within your headings, subheadings, definitions lists and all other semantically rich HTML elements.

Semantics, SEO, and the future

If you aren’t up to speed with manually coding your own HTML and CSS, you might want to jump in now. Why? With Schema.org, the controversial Semweb power-play made by the 3 search giants, the semantic Web is on the verge of becoming more of a reality than the ideology it’s been for the last decade+.

The semantic Web is the next level of semantics affecting search (as well as most other things Web) so don’t get left at the gait with your divs between your legs.

Mixing proverbs? Bad. Semantic HTML? Good.

They come to you when you’re working on building value; into your website, or, the the case of happiness, into your life.

Get busy creating value.

Build something worthwhile, i.e.,

• That fills a need
• Is user-friendly
• Is marketable

Then—and only then— should you look at creative ways of acquiring worthwhile links.

What goes around comes around.

Not that deep, but important.

What I like about Raven Tools

• Raven does keyword tracking really well. This is 90% of what I use my account for.
• The reports are elegant, clean, customizable, and brandable, i.e., I can use my logo instead of theirs—this is important for any business.
• Raven pulls data from multiple sources (SEOmoz, Majestic, SEMRush, Google Adwords, etc).
• Support is phenomenal.

Raven Tools does a good job of giving us the choice of meaningful data to track, and making it easy to populate, easy to customize, and easy to output.

How could Raven Tools improve?

I’m adding my suggestions here as to how they could easily improve certain features. (If I didn’t like their product, I wouldn’t bother). BTW, Raven, I’m hoping you don’t mind my “open letter” suggestions; I’m hoping others that use your product will comment here.

Suggestions (Only worth reading if you’re familiar with Raven Tools)

Here are a few items I think would be nice additions:

• Numbered rows: Result rows such as in the ranking report (and in the dashboard as well), would be more user-friendly with numbered rows. When discussing the report with a client, I had to describe where the row was, instead of just telling him the row number. Not the end of the world, but a bit distracting.
• Left-aligned column text: Personally, I wouldn’t have chosen to center the text in the keyword column of keywords reports; the general consensus from a usability perspective is that centered text in tables is harder to scan than aligned. Again, not a huge deal.
• Multiple “side-by-side” competitor comparisons: Allowing more than one competitor to be compared “side by side” in ranking reports would be a big improvement. As it is, if I want to provide side by side competitor comparisons in reports, I need to add additional SERP trackers for each competitor which creates a lot of redundancy (identical ranking reports with only the side by side competitor being different). This is confusing and impractical for both my clients and myself. Here are some possible solutions to the side-by-side competitor display issue:
  • Since space is an issue, maybe allow a certain number of columns in a ranking report. If I decide to remove global Adwords KW total searches from my report for example, I could add an additional competitor. A notification could let me know how many column selections I have left for my output combination.
  • Substitute competitor names with numbers that correspond to a legend.
  • Display competitor websites vertically in their columns.
  • Allow reports for the campaign website and side by side competitor rankings only. All the detailed columns could be reserved for the main ranking report; a separate one for competition comparison only would be really nice.

  With all this being said about solutions to the side-by-side competition comparison, in the reports I’ve generated so far, there’s actually been enough room for another couple of competitors, the option just isn’t available unfortunately. I’ve been tempted to export my .csv’s from my Raven Tools’ dashboard and make my own reports, but I’ll wait until the option (hopefully) becomes available.

  Until then, I’ll continue with Raven tools, great product.

My first reaction last week to schema.org was pure excitement. “Finally. the semantic Web is going to make a real difference in the world of search” I gushed.

I’ve been spicing up my markup with Microformats for years. Any chance I have to add more semantics to a webpage, I’ll take.

A couple of months ago—impatient with the wait for the semantic Web to hit search—I started playing around with SPARQL to query RDFa datasets from DBpedia. I’ve known for several years that the semantic Web is the future, and I’m beyond psyched that I can start incorporating more semantics–real semantics, on a macro level–into projects I work on. Woohoo!

I just have to forget about RDFa if I want the VIP treatment from Google,Bing and Yahoo.

But wait.

What about my beloved DBpedia; the jewel of semantic data knowledge bases? How are they going to deal with this? According to Christian Bizer, DBpedia might begin publishing Microdata with it’s next release, mapping DBpedia’s ontology to Schema.org’s with OWL.

What about Wikipedia itself though. How do they feel about these changes? It certainly affects their vast implementation of structured data.

And why the proprietary format again?

Granted, the W3C moves slowly

Yes, we’re all aware of the W3C’s painfully… slow… process of going from drafts to recommendations and standards, but to be fair, certain browser vendors (do I need to name names) are even slower to adopt them. It’s difficult to observe the adoption of Web standards in wild if a huge chunk of the market doesn’t even implement the specifications.

Internet Explorer. Okay, there, I said it. Like I had to. How ironic is it that that they’re 1 of the W3C’s 324 members? Discuss amongst yourselves ;)

But seriously.

Stepping away from my enthusiasm for search 3.0—at least for a minute or two—because something deserves attention:

As great as it is that structured data will really get some recognition in the world of search, wouldn’t it have been a good idea in the spirit of the open Web to get some public opinion on what to include/not include in schema.org?

Why Google wants control of the semantic Web

My observation is that with Google’s attempted (and many failed) advances into the world of social media, now is a good time to have some control in the semantic web. The social space opens up a whole new application for semantic technologies. Their also-ran +1 button will probably benefit from a ubiquitous schema.org and help in their competition with Facebook.

The schema.org news is sudden, and though I’ll gladly play along with my new Web 3.0 toys, Im really hoping that Mr BYG (Bing, Yahoo & Google—you heard it here first folks ;) ) will listen to the dev community, and take public opinion seriously.

Remember Web 2.0—2 way conversations—before quickly moving on to Web 3.0

What to avoid: keyword spam and content-farmed backlinks

A closer look at the websites of many SEO companies—and their clients—shows that without keyword spam, they’re often left only with massive—and often weak—backlink campaigns and exaggerated search visibility guidelines taken out of context as their main strategies.

Also watch out for:

• Monthly maintenance plans: These default plans are usually much more beneficial to SEO companies—not their clients. There are exceptions, but that’s what they are; exceptions.
  
  If you continue to make payments, be sure to know what you’re paying for—and make sure it isn’t content farm linking campaigns.
• Mini-sites: Mini-sites drive traffic from one or more exact-match domain websites to a main company website.
  
  This is frowned upon by Google, and according to Matt Cutts, exact-match domain names will be losing more search result favoritism in the near future.
  
  There are legitimate uses for mini-sites, but driving traffic from exact-match domains isn’t one of them.
• Other tricks such as passing off HTML validation as an SEO benefit and other lies that SEO salesmen love to tell.

Why do the overwhelming majority of SEO companies use tactics that are below par? Because doing it right takes more time, staff, and know-how, and doing in wrong “justifies” what they love to call monthly maintenance.

Why avoid the cheap SEO tactics?

Getting to the top of the rankings is important, as long as you aren’t sacrificing your website’s content or brand reputation.

While spammy, “over-optimized” sites might rank for their keyword targets (for a while), often the results are achieved with some collateral damage: Content modified with unnatural, keyword-repeating text and unintuitive and user-unfriendly navigation structure can kill the user-experience, and scream “unethical company, run!“.

Results are also often short-lived, as sketchy backlink strategies typically involve content farms passed off as “article marketing”, which expose reputation-damaging associations with what amount to as basically Web spam.

What to look for in an SEO company (or any company working on your website)

The areas of Web development that should never be ignored or tarnished with any search visibility initiative are the following:

• Web content strategy
• User-centric content marketing and copywriting.
• Web usability
• Information architecture
• Conversion optimization
• Web standards

Look for a company that demonstrates proficiency in these areas—they have profound effects on competitive search visibility, and if focus on them is lost, eventually, so might be your search rankings.

Google has to get past one main sticking point if they hope to stop sucking at social media. They need to think about user experience before trying to figure out how social signals can best improve search.

If the main motivation for creating a social platform is to improve organic ranking algorithms through social signals, it’s destined to fail.

It’s as if Google is so desperate to get into the social media game that they’re choking from performance anxiety.

From one failure to another, they just can’t seem to get it right: Google Wave, Google Answers, Orkut, Knol, Google Buzz, Dodgeball, and many of their other platforms have failed to make the grade.

Google +1

Google’s latest foray into the social milieu is Google +1. It’s similar to Facebook’s ‘Like’, and votes for websites are intended to improve the quality of Google’s search results. Social votes are popular, but who wants to share a search result before they ever click on the link to begin with?

After striking out in so many areas—including search—Google should be concentrating on giving their users a great social experience. They need this now more than ever.

If Google could develop just one social media platform that pleases its users first, with less focus on retrieving user data, raking in more Adwords revenue, or search integration, they’d be halfway there.

With all the money Google has poured into dead-end social strategies and misguided acquisitions, you’d think they could afford a loss-leader.

External links

• Straight from the source: Google’s +1 official +1 page.
• Google Experiments’ official instructions on how to enable Google +1.
• For an in-depth overview of Google’s new +1 extension, check out Danny Sullivan’s take on Google’s Answer To The Facebook Like Button.

Layout

1. Remove unnecessary navigation elements. In some cases—as with landing pages designed for promotional email marketing campaigns—it can be wise to omit your site’s main navigation. Members of your mailing list already know about your webite, and the presence of your main navigation can make them lose focus of your offer.
2. Keep important content above the fold. Your landing page’s key points should be in clear view without the need for scrolling. If visitors don’t immediately see what’s in it for them when the page loads, the chances are pretty good that they’ll leave.
3. Minimize noise. Don’t overwhelm your audience with too many options or links to choose from. Too many choices create anxiety and result in lower conversions.

Forms

4. Don’t use captchas. Audio and visual captchas frustrate visitors, resulting in form abandonments. My favorite weapon against spam bots are user-friendly and just as secure as captchas. Since spam bots fill fields automatically, a simple script can prevent a form’s submission when a hidden text field is filled. I’ll describe this method in detail in a future post.
5. Keep required form fields to a minimum. Don’t make the phone number a required filed unless it’s absolutely necessary. Gather other non-crucial information at later stages in the relationship with your clients.
6. Add email privacy information directly next to email input field. Instill trust where it matters most instead of near the submit button.
7. Remove ‘clear fields’ button from your forms. Having a button that resets form fields next to the submit button is useless and can be accidentally clicked.
8. Take advantage of your form submission confirmation page. Once a visitor has hit the submit button to request contact or a whitepaper download, they’ll be in a receptive mode. Don’t waste this opportunity with a standard ‘thank you’ or ‘submission confirmed’ message; instead, use this window to promote your newsletter, blog, or other webinar.

Copywriting

8. Match your headline to its lead source. Match your landing page’s headline with the anchor text or main idea of the page that leads to it. This helps your visitors confirm that they’ve arrived on the page they expected to. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this point.
9. Keep your copy focused. Don’t stray from the offer your making on your landing page—this isn’t the place to talk about your company’s qualities or achievements.
10. Let go of the words. Trim away excess words, and unnecessary sentences from your copy. If you get the same compelling point across with half the text, do it.
11. Keep your focus on your reader, not on you. Minimize the use of words like ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘our’. Stay focused on the needs of your readers with the ‘you’ and the ‘your’.
12. Write benefit-oriented copy. Your readers want to know how they’ll benefit from your offer, so address that before getting to features. Make your very last paragraph benefit oriented as well; people often read the first and last paragraphs on offer based pages before anything else.
13. Keep your paragraphs short. A paragraph should be no longer than 4 or 5 lines. A wall of words is a great way to lose the attention of your visitors.

Typography

14. Drop the caps. We have a tendency to read words whole when they combine upper and lower case letters, but letter by letter when they’re all caps. Using all capitals for passages of text will only frustrate and slow down your visitors. Big no no.
15. Dark text on light backgrounds. Black text on a light (or close to it) background is much easier to read that the other way around. Unless you’re designing an official motion picture website, think dark text, light background.
16. Keep paragraphs under 60 characters wide. Lines of text longer than this make it difficult to track back to the next line, hurting readability.

Graphics

17. Add captions under your images. People read captions as a result of being drawn to images; don’t miss out on this short yet valuable piece of copywriting real estate.
18. Make offer-related images clickable. Clicking on a product image should result in additional product information or a higher resolution.
19. Make your call to action button obvious Your landing page’s call to action button should be big and in clear view where your copy is the strongest.
    • Use enough contrast to make it stand out from the rest of your design. Some studies show that red is best, but if, for example, orange stands out on the page, it’ll work.
    • Place your call to action buttons above and below the fold.
    • Be descriptive with the button’s text. ‘See plans & pricing’ works better than ‘click here’ or ‘learn more’.
20. Choose real people over stock photo models. If you have receptionists and sales reps, use pictures of them in action instead of stock images. “Real people” look real, and help instill trust.

Trust

21. Include client testimonials. Testimonials increase your brand credibility and can and substantially improve your conversion rates.
    • Display randomly selected testimonials in your sidebar each time a page is loaded.
    • Place your sidebar’s random testimonial within view of either a contact form, phone number, or any other call to action.
    • Use real testimonials Keep everything legit. If you only have 1 testimonial, use it by itself, or wait until until you get more.
    • Add a link under your random testimonial to a page with all your testimonials once you have enough of them.
22. Add a phone number. A prominently displayed phone number on a landing page can instill a sense of security from the fact that there’s a real person available to talk to if needed.
    • If you’re promoting local services, add a phone number with your local area code to show that you’re not actually a call center in Timbuktu (Unless of course, your business actually is in Timbuktu).
23. Display trust seals. One or more legally obtained trust seals located near the top of your landing page is a good way to boost customer confidence, as they can help lend credibility to your business.
    1. Data security seals validate that your website uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protection for transmission of sensitive data via Web forms (McAfee, VeriSign, Comodo, GeoTrust, etc).
    2. Privacy seals signify that your company respectfully uses the personal information visitors provide. Privacy seals are the most difficult to obtain, as they require an extensive certification process (TRUSTe, Trust guard, etc).
    3. Reliability seals vouch only for the basic identity of your company (Shopzilla, SquareTrade, BBBOnline Reliability, Comodo Authenticity, etc).
    4. Consumer Ratings Seals link to reviews and ratings left by your customers (Shopzilla, Shopping.com, etc)

Video

24. Video can help engage visitors, especially on landing pages for software. Screencasts give an immediate peak at your software along with a stimulating voice-over.
    • Keep your videos as short as possible. 30 minutes is a good length for a commercial style video, but sometimes longer is necessary. Experiment with additional calls to action midway through videos that are 60 seconds or longer.
    • For screencasting software, take a look at Techsmith’s Screencast.com. You can export your screencasts directly to YouTube in great resolution, and delete them from the Screencasts.com server’s if you want to.
    • Put the video controls into the visitor’s hands.You can test auto-playing video, but a/b testing will usually have you switching back.
    • Have the play button in the middle of the video screen, opposed to the bottom of the player where it’s less compelling.

The most challenging aspect of landing page optimization can be making it all work without your landing page looking like the Web version of an infomercial; clichée, over-aggressive, and too loud.

Loud can be okay, if it’s in the right place—as in your primary call to action—and if that “loudness” is in balance with the other elements that make up your landing page.

Once you get more comfortable with optimizing your landing pages, you’ll want to begin A/B testing them, because nobody’s a better judge of how compelling a call to action is than your visitors.

Remember that the more you consider the Web usability implications of your landing pages, the more naturally they’ll come together.

SEO is not the problem, people that use SEO to index garbage content of no value are the problem.

2011 SEO ≠ 2004 SEO

According to Chris, high-quality content is losing the battle of the SERPs because of the tens of thousands of blackhats working to “game SEO”.

Yes, we know many that claim to be SEOs are selling nothing but links, keyword spam and directory submissions, but anyone that equates SEO in general with the spammy blackhat demographic is obviously more than a bit confused.

When you criticize SEO as being a “dark art” or snake oil, you’re confusing the shady work of internet hustlers with skills of search visibility professionals that work on a daily basis with content strategy, Web usability, Web standards, content marketing and Web analytics.

Dixon goes on to condescendingly offer that “Some of the SEO industry is “white hat,” which generally means consultants giving benign advice for making websites search-engine friendly” (my emphasis). This is where his lack of knowledge regarding search visibility becomes crystal clear.

SEO isn’t just about keywords and anchor text anymore.

Before you accuse SEO, take a look at yourself

There is a lot of garbage on the Internet. Sharing that same garbage heap—you know, that one with the shady, spammy Internet hustlers—are members of the media that sniff out current news items, take them out of context (usually without understanding the subject matter) and run with them around their pathetic little sensationalist race track. This is even more damaging than black-hat, spammy, snake oil SEO, because at least the stench of the latter is obvious, unlike editorial FUD disguised as fact.

Criticizing SEO because of spammers is just as silly as criticizing journalism because of wannabe-relevant authors and their misguided editorial efforts.

I was happy to see some recognized search professionals chime into the comments on Chris Dixon’s piece; including Laura Lippay, Alan Bleiweiss, Dharmesh Shah, Andrew Shotland, AJ Kohn, Ross Hudgens, Terry Van Horne, Doc Sheldon, and others. All good examples of people in the industry that know the difference between adding value and pretending to add value, à la blackhat.