We Do Search Engine Optimization.

Your landing page on your website has an important job to do: Convert Traffic

The objective is to keep new users focused and have them complete the desired goal. A landing page is tailored for a specific visitor and should only contain information directly relevant to them. A successful landing page will have one prominent call to action and use every text and image element on the page to direct the user to completing this goal.

Landing Page Goal Examples

1. Newsletter Signup
2. Subscribing to a Service
3. Purchasing a Specialized Product
4. Filling out a Form
5. Making a Comment
6. Giving you their e-mail/phone
7. Calling for more information
8. Send to a Friend

Your site visitors could arrive at your landing page from these online sources

• A banner advertisement link prepared to appeal to your specific niche audience;
• An optimized link contained in your Pay Per Click (PPC) ad from the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Microsoft;
• A related affiliate sales page or an offer to subscribe to your mailing list,
• An internal link contained in your email campaign,
• A blog post or comment, forum posting, or social media link;
• Organic search engine results.

Maximize Your Investment

Design the page so that your visitors can immediately find your offer and any additional information about your product or service that helps them take action.

Optimize Your Landing Page

Once the visitors arrive at your landing page, they must immediately see the keywords that relieve their pain. Use keywords on your landing page to provide a customized solution that makes your visitor accept your offer.

Make Your Landing Page like Plymouth Rock

Keep your visitors on your website long enough to hear your elevator pitch.

Learn more about the design and testing of landing pages. Know the essential elements of successful landing pages.

Go beyond search engine optimization. Let your landing pages do a better job, convert more traffic and encourage repeat visits. Find out how other people have increased conversions 100%.

More Landing Page Resources

Let’s Talk Landing Pages

Top 5 Best Worst Landing Pages

Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies

Convert Customers With a Perfect Landing Page

11 Ways to Improve Landing Pages

The Art of the Sign Up Page

Aligning Keywords and Landing Pages

Organic Landing Pages: A Case Study

Google Website Optimizer

25-Point Landing Page Optimization Review

Create Different Landing Pages for the Same Product

10 Factors to Test that Could Increase the Conversion Rate of your Landing Pages

The Landing Page Design Toolbox: 100 Tools, Tips and Resources

Not a bad job for a SEO. This guy has put a lot of time into creating a search engine optimization rhyme.

The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) has created a marketing rap. He describes how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site. It is basic online marketing and web design information, but all good advice.

Discovery Is The New Cocaine – Going Beyond Engagement. Learn the science behind creating a sticky website that users won’t be able to leave.

Interaction was the promise of web 2.0 and new services must allow for user feedback if they hope to survive. Let users become the focus of your online activities, talk with your visitors, not at them.

• We are programmed for scarcity and can’t dial back even when information is abundant.
• Addictive websites present new information that your user must interpret. Give someone a fun, challenging mental task.
• Triggers a chemical reaction i that makes us feel good

Humans have a natural tendency to want to be a live node on the network, people want to actively participate.

• We are always scanning the peripheral, motivated not to miss opportunities.
• Intrinsic desire for recognition by others, want to feel important.
• Winning websites help us protect, filter, create meaningful connections.

SXSW presentation from Ming yeow Ng at Discoverio. “The Science of Designing Interactions”

Matt Cutts gives his State of the Index recap for last year.

Topics include

• Google Chrome
• voice recognition
• OCR for PDF’s that are not text
• SearchWiki
• Google Trends – this is an amazing tool that shows us a taste of the massive amount of data Google holds on us. This allows SEO’s to compare trends, keyword searches and brand recognition.
• Blackhat Spamming & Hacking

See the original search post on GWC.

Do you want your message to go faster than the speed of sound, and reach all of your valued readers? If you don’t follow these common rules, your newsletter will crash and won’t be heard.

Using email to communicate with your current clients and potential customers is essential. Email is still the best way to deliver relevant messages to your most interested audience.

If you are going to be sending multiple issues to your trusted clients, you must make your e-blast unique and compelling otherwise it will go into /dev/null (linux shorthand for the trash folder).

5 Keys to a successful Secrets to a Successful Email Newsletter

1. Be Relevant Nothing is worse than receiving email that does not relate to your business or is something you are not expecting. Write for your audience and give them specifics. Whenever you sit down to write remember your high school english teacher telling you to be precise and direct.
2. Be Concise Your offer or information should be clearly stated in the header of the email. Don’t make your prospects hunt to try to figure out your offer or engage in extra scrolling. Have you ever received an email that reads like a novel and has 2 dozen images? Yeah, I immediately delete those too.
3. Be Useful Instead of talking about yourself, talk about your readers favorite thing: THEM. Your newsletter should be a mirror of their needs and concerns, and they should feel that you understand them and have helped them. Think karma – if people believe that you are going out of your way to help them, they will unconsciously do the same for you.
4. Be Semantic Use good code and HTML email best practices. Nothing will ruin clickthroughs faster than poorly formatted email. Basic rules to creating email: simple css, few tables, small images, max width 600 pixels, minimal images, large font, similar theme as your website. I have seen messages that blow up when viewed in online email programs, making them unreadable.
5. Be Polite No one likes to be spammed. Your customers have entrusted you with their most precious asset: their email address and time. Don’t abuse this high privilege and send excessive email. As a general rule, the less you email the more likely your subscribers will read it. Respect your prospects time and you will be rewarded.

Your company is unique and you have special qualities that differentiate you from your competition. Use this to your advantage and create a memorable piece of email that your targeted prospects will look forward to receiving each month.

65 percent of marketers say they plan to increase their use of email newsletters.
Source: Intermarket Group

Statistics may be misleading, but the inbox does not lie. More companies are using email marketing because the potential is bigger than Googles Boeing 767.

Global toy conglomerate TOYS R US have purchased the Toys.com domain for the reported 5.1 million dollars, making it the biggest sale of 2009 so far, as well as one of the ten biggest sales ever reported.

The only problem was that this destroyed the SEO for the existing domain, causing Toys R Us to loose a ranking for the keyword ‘toys”

Now, instead of holding position #1 and #4 they only have one.

Corporate IT simply redirected the new domain name to the
Toys’R'Us home page. Toys.com no longer had its own site so Google delisted
it. They will still receive type-in traffic, but all the extra traffic from the additional Google ranking has disappeared.

Normally I recommend focusing your energy on one website and trying to build a single site into a dominant entity. However, for a large corporation with a limitless website that has the potential to rank for multiples of competitive keywords, using multiple websites can be an effective strategy.

This is the worst however. Toys’R'Us has registered the typo
domain ToyRUs.com (missing the first ’s’) but has not
forward it to ToysRUS.com. This is a huge blunder, and is causing this mega retailer tons of sales.

Toys R Us needs to contract out their search engine optimization or they will keep loosing ground to amazon.com.

I love seeing what other webmasters do to try to improve their rankings. This SEO technique (used extremely loosely here) demonstrates why SEO’s have such a bad reputation in the online marketing industry.

This webmaster makes no effort to hide the keyword stuffed text, and trys to direct search engine spiders to his special content.

I give this is a search engine optimization blooper a 10.

Please excuse me while I increase our chances of getting to the top of the engines. I will repeat myself.

see this in action (warning do not try this SEO technique on your own website)

http://www.bajabigfish.com/

Many people like to predict the end of search engine optimization and online marketing as we know it. SEO will change and evolve as the web becomes more advanced and desktop oriented but it will not disappear.

As Mark Twain would say, the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Here is a quote from a popular web forum

“SEO as we know it will be dead within the next 2 years – true or false? With the wealth of info at their fingertips combined with localized, customized search to name but a few Google will no longer need to do what it does now to determine rankings?”

Google and the search engines that follow their lead will adapt and change, morph and mature while the engineers create new a variety of metrics in order to determine relevance. SEOs will adapt and change, trying to work out what these metrics are.

To succeed in merit based SERPs you must use a holistic strategy. The goal is to provide something of quality to humans: an opinion, service, information, product, or tool. Getting traffic will result from having a solid website with good content, an aesthetic design, usable navigation, solid site structure, and relevant content. If you solve problems in an elegant way people will love you and reward you for it.

All SEO efforts must resulting in an improvement of your website and directly increase the financial position of your company. Quality sells and people will always pay for quality.

Anyone can be successful at online marketing, traffic generation and search engine placement specifically, if they stop looking for ways to trick search engine spiders and focus on connecting with real users.

Some people seem to get all the luck. In an article about the new Tesla Model S Sedan electric car, the New York Times blog author links to Mahalo founder and controversial tech blogger Jason Calacanis twice as much as any other source.

A link from NYtimes.com is very valuable and the only thing Calacanis has to do with the new Tesla sedan was to put a down payment on one.

Outspoken online media figures tend to get the most exposure, and therefore the most links. This is a great example of how to use your popularity in social media to expand your website, get high quality links, and improve your reputation. Many people resent Mr. Calacanis for this, but his online force is undeniable.

Original Blog Post

10 Tips for Writing Powerful Website Copy

1. Follow the 3 P’s: Preview > Proof > Post. Preview your content as it will look on your site, proof the text, then post with no errors.
2. Use compelling headings. This makes websites easy to skim and can lure the reader deeper.
3. Immediately answer the visitor’s first question, “Am I in the right place?” You only get 12 seconds to make a good impression.
4. Use hooks to draw the visitor in. Action words and verbs will create interest.
5. Carefully Create a Call to Action. Ask your visitors to perform a specific task such as signing up for a newsletter, completing a contact form, registering for a contest.
6. Be personal and easy going. Include visitors in your website’s conversation and make them be a part of your story.
7. Use pronouns such as you, you’re, your business. People love to read about themselves and will connect with you if they feel you care about their problems.
8. Promote benefits not features. Benefits are about them, but features are from your website. This is repeated again: say you not we.
9. Proofread with multiple editors. Always have more than one person review your copy.
10. Never assume your visitor knows who you are or what you are offering. Explain in plain, clear, basic english what you sell and how it works and why they need you.

Writing good copy can be the difference of a successful website and a website that does not make money. Channel your inner wordsmith to make your online content sing and I guarantee good things will happen.