Break Through the Frustration of Optimization

"I am an artist," the man proudly proclaimed. "I don't care," the critic proudly responded. "The frame is too large, the colors are dark and it will not match my furniture," the critic further explained.

Many times web developers experience a similar scorn but not always from humans. A site has been designed with an interface that pops with beautiful GIFs and JPEGs, dazzles with Flash and functions like a charm with JavaScript. The search engines do not care. The content, the keywords and the tags do not correspond with the criteria of the search engines. Therefore, you are ignored.

It is a struggle between art and science that frustrates many. The responsibilities of web developing -- the art -- clash with the role of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- the science. That is why some companies and development firms are designating web developer and optimizer as two distinctive jobs.

Yet many smaller companies and shops still have the web developer fulfilling both roles. The problem is that optimization is becoming challenging and competitive. So here is some information to help start the optimization before, after or during the developing.

Content

It's all about the text.

Remember that optimization is all about the text. Search engines are text driven but there are still some basic HTML tags to keep in mind (i.e., h1, h2, meta tags, title tag). SEO helps improve search engine results but does not guarantee top ratings.

Patience and realistic goals will keep the frustrations low. Search engines have to crawl a site to determine what a site is about. This takes time, usually about a month, before crawls and indexing are completed by the various search engine spiders.

Take time to think (a lot) about the purpose of the website. Write down a lot of stuff in a word processing program even if it sounds silly at first. Then edit what you wrote. Edit some more, get some feedback and then start working on the keywords and keyphrases that identify the unique quality of your website.

Keywords and Keyphrases

Keywords used to be easy. Those days are gone. Keywords are highly competitive. Using two-word or three-word, maybe even four-word, phrases makes optimization less frustrating. A keyword phrase (keyphrase) helps identify the uniqueness of a website.

The keyword "game" will generate about 1 billion(!) results. The keyphrase "card game" will generate about 50 million results. That is a difference of approximately 950 million. The keyphrase "magic card game" will generate about four-million results. Time will need to be spent finding unique keyphrases but the benefits of narrowing the results, with multi-word phrases, provides a better chance of being noticed.

Keyword Density

The density formula is D = WC/KC (D = density; WC = word count; KC = keyword count)

For major keywords target 3-7% density
For minor keywords target 1-2% density

Keyword density measures how relevant keywords are in a page. The formula density = word count divided by keyword count will provide a general idea of the density percentage. For major keywords try to keep the density between three and seven percent. For minor keywords keep density between one and two percent. Try to optimize between five to ten keywords per web page.

Avoid the unethical practice of keyword stuffing. You will be penalized and possibly banned from the search engines which is worse than doing no optimization at all. Keyword stuffing uses various techniques but it is basically stuffing a page and/or meta tag with several occurrences of a keyword or keyphrase.

Keyword stuffing will result in being banned from the search engines.

Meta Tags

The meta tags are important although some will disagree. Meta tags have fallen out of favor because these tags used to be the magic solution to optimization. Not anymore. Keywords and content are more beneficial in getting a web site in top rankings. However, meta tags are still important. Meta tags are a part of the HTML and are used by most search engines to find a description of your website.

Therefore, no question about it, use the meta tags for description and keywords. Place these meta tags below the title tag on your page.





The keyword meta tag helps you keep track of the keywords and having these meta tags give a small boost to search engine ranking. While it is true that meta tags do not perform the magic they once did it is better to have the tags than to have none. Think of meta tags like vitamins. Vitamins are not necessary for being healthy but vitamins do provide a healthy boost.

Title Tag

The title tag should be unique for every page because every page will or should have different information regarding your website. Therefore, some pages will have some but not all of your total keyword list. For example, let's say that your web site provides information about card games; one page has data about magic card games and another discusses bridge card games.

The title tag of the page with information about magic card games could have a title like Magic Card Games available at ourwebsite.com. The bridge card games page would likely have a title of Bridge Card Games at ourwebsite.com.

The name of pages should also have keywords like magic_card_games.htm or bridge_card_games.htm.

Developing websites is fun. Optimization can be a chore. Yet by focusing on content, keywords and tags you have a good start to decreasing the frustration of optimization. Granted there is more to optimization than the items addressed in this article but these are the items that can be and should be tackled first.

About the Author
Lawrence Roth in an independent web developer who owns and maintains rothline.com. Lawrence has worked on various e-commerce and website projects. Lawrence writes articles and stories to submit to online publications.

7 Steps to Building a Successful Web Presence

Doing business in the 21st century will eventually require every company to have a website in one form or another. Whether your site is interactive or simply informational, there are steps you can take to ensure you're on the right track to creating a successful web presence, seven to be exact (at least from our humble perspective).

While following these steps will not guarantee a successful website, it is certainly an intelligent place to start.

1. Perform a Business Analysis.
What is a business analysis? Simply put, review your business requirements and your objectives. What do you want to accomplish? How does your website fit into your overall business plan? What... no business plan? Develop a business plan first before you go any further into the process.

Your business plan will be your roadmap to success, so make sure the objective of your website fits into your overall business plan. I'll say it again, BUSINESS PLAN, don't have one? GET ONE!

2. Perform some research, also known as, the Research phase.
Research your competition and industry sites. See what kind of competition is out there. What kind of marketing does your competition engage in? Don't look to "reinvent the wheel", take a look at how the current market works; develop a list of pros and cons about your competition and then make your web presence work better.

3. Develop a concept and a design.
Finally time for the creative and fun stuff! This involves the selection of specific content, the layout of the site structure and navigation and the overall "look and feel" of your website.

Remember to pay special attention to your navigational structure!!! If visitors can't navigate your website or feel lost when doing so, your "pretty" site will have been a waste of time; don't go there, keep the navigation simple and for SEO purposes, make sure your navigation is text based. Although Flash driven websites look cool, they are not SEO friendly and can create more problems than the "coolness" factor they express (we'll discuss Flash sites in another article ).
4. Develop your website.
When considering which technology to develop your website, think cutting edge technology, not bleeding edge. Make sure the technology you use, such as ASP, PHP, HTML, CSS, will be useful for the next three to five years.

Database driven website are ultimately the easiest to maintain through the use of a content management system, but make sure the CMS you use is SEO friendly. An SEO friendly CMS will utilize real URLs, not strange looking query strings with lots of strange characters and question marks. Search engines despise query strings and rank these site accordingly.

5. Choose a host provider and implement your website.
When deciding on a host provider, make sure the host is not only reputable, but has been in business long enough that you can be sure they will be in business next year. Also, ask about site uptime. If your site is down for any reason, this will not only affect your potential and current customers, but the search engines as well. If the search engines decide on a given day to spider your site and it is unavailable, it could cost you your rank.

6. Promote and market your website.
Register your site with the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Initiate other marketing activities such as an email blasts to prospective customers. Consider "Pay per Click" advertising with the major search engines and don't forget about a long term SEO campaign to drive targeted traffic to your site. 7. Finally, maintain your website.
Probably the most important long term step is continuing to provide current and relevant information on your website. Keep your site content current to encourage return visitors and give them something to return for! Related to SEO, search engines just LOVE sites which provide new content on a regular basis and rank such websites accordingly.

Overall, remember, your website is not just a marketing tool, it's a business tool, and it should be generating a revenue stream for your business.

About the Author Matthew Mckernan - About the author, Website Design, Search Engine Optimization/SEO, Web Development.

Web Design in a World of Change

When it comes to web design one of the things I really like to see for a more hands-free experience for visitors is self-updating code.

In some cases this information is free. In other instances you may have to pay something to use it or allow the information to be ad supported.

Let's say for instance that you sell replica NASCAR vehicles. You might want the latest NASCAR news on your website. You can search for sources that provide the information either as scrolling text or in a side box.

There are sites that can make customizable content for your website for things like recipes, news, gardening as well as music and entertainment news. You can paste the code they supply into a webpage and watch as that information is updated on a regular basis.

This can be an important element for those who don't want static information on their homepage and can utilize information relevant to the primary business website.

It is likely that if a visitor clicks on a link within the text of this information they will be taken away from your webpage, but if they are used to finding that information with you they will likely come back for more.

It is sometimes difficult for business owners to keep up with every aspect of their industry and this type of updating tool allows comprehensive and current information to flow without intervention from the site owner.

One site that seems to do a good job of listing lots of free content for websites is http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/. Categories include cartoons, education, entertainment, sports, news, maps, weather, tips and advice to name a few.

Most online sites look for relevant and changing content. The use of a free article directory can help you locate very specific content for your website, but for news and current events it can be difficult to broker individual agreements to cover the use of current content. That's why finding self-updating source code can be important to your web design.

You can even segment small portions of your website to include things like a quote of the day, this day in history, unusual facts, daily questions and even games.

These elements can add some personality to your website as visitors become used to intriguing content that never seems to stay the same even when other content might.

You should know that not every html code you place on your website will match the look and feel of your website. There may be some adjustment you can make to help this. It is also possible that the code may interfere with your website design and you may need some help from a code expert to either fix the coding issue or find something else that may be more suitable.

Some individuals are also using RSS feeds to accomplish a similar goal. The point is that no matter the method you use to obtain the information the addition of content that remains in a state of flux can help in providing an improved user experience for your regular site visitor.

About the Author
Scott Lindsay - Make A Website in minutes with the Website Builder at HighPowerSites.com. Start a Home Business and Sell Ebooks at BooksWealth.com.

5 Tips to Designing Your at-Home Business

When starting an at home business, there are several important facets you will want to focus on. You want to create fresh and enticing content, promote your web site consistently, and give each visitor the time of day they deserve. Another facet that can sometimes get overlooked is the design of your web site.

Here are five tips to designing a visually appealing at home business.

1. Header
The first thing you want to focus on is the header because this is the very first thing people will see when coming to your web site. You want it to be professional, but make sure that it stands out at the same time. You can do this by making it bold, much larger font than the rest of the page, and perhaps making it a professional looking color. In addition, it can be smart to add a logo of some sort next to or behind the header.

2. Above the fold
When people come to your web site, you have to know that not everyone is going to read through your entire web site. Because of this, you want to give them the most important information first. Above the fold means placing all of your important information toward the top so the reader does not have to scroll down. As soon as they have to scroll down to read, they have gone below the fold.

3. Highlight key concepts
In addition to placing your most important information above the fold, you can also help the reader by highlighting key concepts. You can highlight specific words or an entire sentence if need be. You can highlight by bolding the word or phrase, or even separate the word completely into its own line.

4. Balance
One of the most important parts to making a web site visually appealing is to create balance between your graphics and content. The last thing you want is to have all of your content on the top and all of your graphics on the bottom, or vice versa. Interchange the two to make it easier to follow along.

5. Eliminate clutter
While it is important that you place video, audio, and graphics on your site, you want to do it in a professional manner. There are far too many sites that think the more flashing banners and graphics they have the better. But all this will do is take the focus away from your content and make it difficult to find things on your site.

There are several important facets to an at home business, including the design. Take the five tips listed in this article and create a visually appealing web site that will keep visitors coming back for more.

Italics - When you should use them

by Paul D Kennedy

The purpose of italic typefaces is to aid comprehension by separating off certain words and phrases from their surrounding text. But when exactly should you use italics?

The basic purpose in typesetting a story or article for a book, newspaper or periodical, for print or online, is to enhance understanding of the text and thereby make the reading an easy, pleasant experience.

Roman type is the straightforward, upright type we read everyday in our newspapers, magazines and books, and on our monitors.

Italic is the 'handwriting' equivalent of whatever roman font we are reading. It has a sloping cursive quality that reminds us of the manual writing we learned in primary school.

Bold type is roman or italic font that has been emphasized by thickening and making it darker than the surrounding text.

The question is: when should we use which version of a particular typeface - roman, italic, or bold? The answer must focus on the reader's needs and the reading experience.

It is obvious that for most copy the roman version of the chosen font should be used. This is because, having an upright face, it is the easiest to read and it is what readers expect.

Because the bold version of a font makes text stand out strongly, it is used for highlighting important words, phrases and sections. Thus headlines, decks and subheads set in bold will, along with pull-quotes and other tricks of the typesetter's art, provide the casual scanner with clues as to what your article or story is all about. The judicious use of bold in this way will induce him or her to read the main story.

Bold however is too strong to be used, except very occasionally, within body text. To set off words from surrounding text is the main function of italics.

So when should you use italics exactly? Here's a sort of check-list, a mixture of accepted practice and my personal opinion.

Most of these when-to-use-italics rules apply equally to words in body copy, head-lines and captions, and whether you are typesetting books, articles, stories or web-pages.

[1] The names of ships and aircraft; eg: The Caribbean Cruiser sank yesterday. This is the oldest when-to-use-italics rule. It allows the reader to quickly grasp what is being referred to in the message.

[2] The titles of poems; eg: As You Go Dancing by James Stewart is famous among the literati of the Arabian Gulf. This is another very traditional use of italics that enables quick reader-uptake.

[3] Foreign words; eg: We turned left and found ourselves in a cul de sac. Another very traditional use of italics that makes for quicker reading.

[4] The titles of books, newspapers, articles and stories occurring within a sentence without further explanation; eg: The Saturday edition of the Limerick Leader was always on the streets by Friday afternoon.

However titles that appear within larger works are not italicized but are set off in quotation marks; eg: 'An Irishman's Diary' in the Irish Times is sometimes interesting.

[5] Latin phrases used to classify living things; eg: Many people wonder why mankind is referred to as homo sapiens. Another use of italics that has been around ab aeterno.

[6] Where a word is used as an example rather than for its meaning; eg: The word Kennedy is a proper noun. This is neater than setting the noun within single quotes as in: The word 'Kennedy' is a proper noun.

[7] For introducing new terms; eg: In Freudian psychology reference is made to the ego, the super-ego, and the id. This is a neat solution to highlighting words that will probably be explained later.

[8] For the subjects of definitions; eg: An odd number is any number that cannot be divided by two. This is useful for the reader as, should he or she wish to refer back to the definition later, a word in italics among a sea of roman letters is easy to find.

[9] For mathematical symbols: eg: The standard acceleration of gravity g is 9.81183 metres per second per second. The symbol does not need to be surrounded by commas or single quotes which would be required if it were set in roman type.

[10] For emphasis; eg: Janice wasn't the only girl at the party. The use of italics for emphasis is less intrusive than bold and more subtly suggestive.

[11] To indicate a character's internal reflections in stories; eg: This just does not seem right, Janice thought. However many writers prefer other ways of expressing inner thoughts.

[12] Using a letter or number as a noun; eg: He was vexed because they had left out the d in his name. However many writers would prefer to put a letter or number used in this way between quotes: eg; He was vexed because they had left out the 'd' in his name.

That's about it for the when-to-use italics rules. Except, what should you do if you need to use italics within italics?

If some word or phrase that should be italicised is already within a run of italics, the trick is to switch back to roman type for that word or phrase; eg: I'm in a really weird situation, Janice thought.

This italics-within-italics solution works best when italics are used to highlight internal reflections; eg: Why can't we just look up Wikipedia for the answer? he wondered to himself.

Of course, you don't have to follow these when-to-use-italics rules. However most of them are in current use because they do aid reader comprehension.

Indeed, most of us have an instinct as to when the use of italics is appropriate. Perhaps you can devise better rules of your own. If so, let me know.

About the Author
Paul D Kennedy (paulkpg@yahoo.ie) is a freelance writer of articles and stories. He offers a complete service - research, writing, editing and proofing - for corporate newsletters and commercial magazines on http://www.writingservices.eu.

Web-Content Conundrum

by Jerry Bader

The Web consumes content like a teenager at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Lots and lots of content makes you more search engine friendly, helps establish your knowledge and expertise, explains in detail what you offer, and justifies that offer with all the explanations, statistics, and rationale you can muster. The problem is no one reads it.

Well that's not exactly true: some people read every scrap of information on your site; they just happen to be the tire-kickers, the people looking for ways to get stuff they don't have to pay for, or they're competitors looking for ways to copy what you do, or worse find something wrong. This is definitely a dilemma that needs to be addressed.

The Answer Lies In The Questions

The answer is obviously not to eliminate all the good stuff you've worked so hard to create, or to bury it where no one will ever see it. When it comes to Web-content ask yourself:

1. Is our content meaningful and relevant, or is it just hype and bunkum?

2. Is our content understandable by our audience, or is it so inarticulate that people just give up, even when they are desperate to find out what you have to say?

3. Does our content hold our audience's attention? Does it just explain, or does it engage, excite, and entertain while at the same time persuade on both a rationale and emotional level?

4. Is our content so intimidating and technical that it leads to more confusion and questions than answers?

5. Is our most important content buried in volumes of extraneous information or advertising copy, making it difficult to access and understand?

If any of these questions describe the text-based information on your website, then perhaps you need to find a way to make that important information more useful to your clients, not just search engines spiders.

When it comes to website content there are five things you need to keep in mind in order to make that content meaningful: Relevance, Clarity, Effectiveness, Memorability, and Personality.

Relevance: The Appropriateness of The Material

The material on your website has to be relevant, it is good for search engine indexing and it is good for establishing your expertise and trustworthiness, a quality that is an absolute necessity in a Web-based business environment, but exactly what constitutes relevant content?

In order for content to be relevant it must serve your overall marketing agenda and at the same time it must be useful to your target audience.

If your goal is to generate long-term clients by establishing a relationship with your website visitors then that relationship has to be symbiotic, that is, it must benefit both you and the your prospective clients. There are far too many websites around that are based on the P.T. Barnum principle that everyone is a sucker and can be conned. At the other end of the spectrum there are also way too many sites that are nothing more than catalogs, a kind of, here it is, take it or leave it approach. Then there are the sites that provide pages and pages of specifications and features that confuse more than clarify. And finally there are the websites that are nothing more than business cards or display ads, an approach that says to the visitor that you are too cheap, too lazy, or too unimaginative to bother creating an appropriate marketing website.

The fact that search engines seek out relevant content is merely a positive by-product of good content, it is not the ultimate marketing objective, which should be to open up a communication with your audience and start a productive and profitable relationship.

Clarity: The Ability To Be Understood

Is there anything more important than being understood? I assume you have a website because you want to promote and expand your business, but if visitors do not understand who you are, what you do, and why they should pay you to provide them with a product or service, then exactly what are you doing?

Being understood sounds like a simple thing, but it is not. Ask yourself, to whom am I trying to communicate? Is it a search engine robot or a real person? If your main concern is the ever changing search engine indexing machinery then you risk the danger of not being completely understood by the people who visit your website.

There is a certain comfort in dealing with the illusion of certainty that speaks to the mechanics of search engine optimization: all you have to do is follow the rules and you'll be successful. The problem is the game is fixed and the rules keep changing, and more importantly it's the wrong audience. Any order you ever generated was from a real person and if real people don't understand your marketing message, then all that traffic to your site is wasted.

Effectiveness: The Ability to Serve Your Marketing Objectives

Being clear and to the point is important but it doesn't necessarily make your site effective. Dragnet's Sergeant Friday may have wanted, 'just the facts, nothing but the facts' but in the real world people need more.

People are busy and they do not want to waste their time on things that have no meaning for them, and that is the key. Things become meaningful when they engage while they enlighten, educate while they entertain, and persuade while they present. People spend hours upon hours on the Web doing things that could be considered a waste of time and non productive, so the idea that people will not invest their time on your website is just plain wrong. If they won't spend the time, then they aren't really interested or your presentation stinks.

What makes the Web such a powerful marketing tool is its multimedia capability, the opportuníty to communicate using text, images, motion graphics, video, and sound (audio) design. And of all these delivery options the two most effective communication techniques are video and sound (audio) design.

Memorability: The Ability To Stick In Your Audience's Minds

Clarity and effectiveness are vital but if people don't remember who you are, all your hard work will be lost. Maybe you've convinced your audience that your way is the answer, but if they don't remember it was you that told them, then you've wasted the opportuníty.

There are lots of sites around that expect instant response. They present their material and expect you to press a button and give them money. It's not that this can't happen, but it certainly is not what usually happens.

How many times have you wished you could remember that website that had that thing that you didn't need then but you need now? Not every potential customer is ready to buy right away, and if they forget who you are, someone else will benefit from your effort.

Let's put it another way, sales is like sex, while marketing is like a seduction. If you're not prepared to invest in romancing your audience, they'll immediately forget you exist and the sale will go to the business that gets remembered.

In order to create that memory, your website has to be an experience, an experience that resonates and entertains by delivering your marketing message with style and flair, using real human beings, analogy, and the classic story format in a professionally executed performance.

Personality: The Ability To Distinguish You From The Competition

Every business has a personality, an image, an identity that is the sum total of every experience anyone who has ever had contact with your company has ever had. Success online and offline depends on how well you manage that personality.

Your website is part of your public face and in many cases it is your only public face. Your business is not what you sell and it is not you, it is a separate and distinct entity that needs to be treated like a precocious child in need of care and feeding, and development.

Personality starts with a point-of-view and an attitude strong enough to make an impact. And the more mundane your offering, the more important it is to make a statement. Victoria's Secret has little trouble grabbing people's attention, but if it's sandpaper you sell, you better try harder. We especially see this identity crisis with distributors, whose own personality often gets sublimated to the major brands they carry.

Perhaps you remember the J. Peterman character from the old Seinfeld television show. The character was played by, actor and voice-over specialist, John O'Hurley, who is nothing like the real J. Peterman. But the characterization was so strong, and so memorable, that O'Hurley was able to single-handedly rescue the company from financial trouble.

If you're looking to create a Web-personality as effective as John O'Hurley's J. Peterman, you should consider adding a video or audio host to your Web-presentation, one that engages your audience's attention and captures their collective imagination.

A Final Thought

At the end of the day there is one thing about websites that should guide you in your decisions as to what you present and how, and that is simply, websites are for people not search engines. If the people coming to your website don't hear what you have to say, understand what you're offering, and remember who you are, then your website isn't doing what it needs to do for your business.

About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Website Content - It's All About The Why?

By Jerry Bader

Every week I get asked to look at business websites and tell the owners why they're not getting the results they want. Some of these sites are straightforward brochures, others are e-commerce catalogs, and some are those direct-mail-style pitches reminiscent of old mail-order magazine subscription schemes ported-over to the Web. Some have incorporated do-it-yourself audio and video and some even had this media professionally produced; still the results stink. Why?

'The Close' Is Always Found In 'The Why'

Certainly part of the problem stems from a very narrow definition of what a website is: by casting your site in terms of a brochure, catalog, e-commerce-site, blog, or portal, you are falling into the trap of concentrating on 'The What' rather than on 'The Why'.

This focus on 'The What' is exacerbated by some search engine optimization techniques intended to drive traffic, not to brand product, sell services, or convert traffic into customers. Don't get me wrong, traffic is important, but converting that traffic into paying customers is more important. Even the best and brightest search engine optimizers will tell you that their job is to deliver traffic not orders - closing the deal is your job, and anybody who tells you that closing can be done by means of some automatic never-touched-by-human-hands method is just plain nuts.

What you want to be careful of is search engine tactics and second rate media that actually gets in the way of effectively delivering your marketing message, of telling your business story, of creating a memorable brand image, and above all of generating profitable business clients.

Web-Video is a Presentation Marketing Strategy

If you pay any attention to what's going on, you must be aware of the shift in Web-thinking and the acceptance of Web-video as a fundamental Web-marketing tool. But like most things, there is a right way and a whole bunch of wrong ways to do it.

Web-video is a presentation marketing strategy thats strength and power comes from its ability to overcome the Web's natural sterile, isolationist environment, by incorporating verbal and non-verbal human elements that effectively deliver bold, well-crafted memorable messages. Can a Web-video campaign cure everything that's wrong with your company, or even your sales departments deficiencies? Of course not, but the right message based on 'The Why' using appropriate cost effective presentation techniques can position your business, brand your product, and generate sales leads.

Don't fool yourself: you and your sales staff have to close the sale. Do not expect to sit back and count your profíts while your website runs your business by default. Automatic pilot may work for sites that sell commodity items and nationally branded merchandise backed by millions of dollars of advertising, but unless you fall into that category, it's time to get real.

A New Web Paradigm

Here's a new way of looking at your website and if you 'get it' you will be able to refashion your site and reinvent your business in a way that gets you remembered and initiates action by your target market:

Start thinking of your website as a stage and all the content on it as players you direct in order to deliver your message and tell your story in a memorable manner to a relevant audience. So let's breakdown this Web-presentation model and analyze how it meets your marketing needs.

Your Website Is a Stage

Businesses who want to use their websites as a marketing vehicle have to get past thinking of them in terms of merely digital print media.

Just as damaging is the over-reliance on search optimization or IT technical solutions that have little or no relationship to marketing's primary goal of delivering a memorable message that initiates action on the part of the audience.

Knowing the age, sex and hat size of the last ten thousand visitors to your site may impress some, but reams of statistical information on your visitors doesn't necessarily mean you know what that data means or how to use it effectively. In the same vein, tons of traffic generated by the latest SEO manipulation doesn't necessarily translate into business.

Start thinking of your website as a stage, a presentation and performance platform that allows your company to present your message to your audience in an entertaining, informative, and memorable manner.

Tell Your Story In A Memorable Manner

There are many ways to present what you do and why your audience should care, but the most effective way is to deliver that information in a story format. When people come to your website they are putting you on trial, judging everything thing you present to see if it is relevant, convincing, and if it resonates with their needs.

The article, "Evidence Evaluation in complex decision making," in the 'Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,' by Pennington and Hastie explains when prosecutors tell their version of events to a jury in story-format they are able to achieve a 78% conviction rate, whereas lawyers who do not use a story-format to communicate to juries only get a 31% guilty rate. When visitors come to your website they are putting you on trial for your Web-business life.

Memorable Communication is All About the Performance

Effective communication begins with the campaign concept. If you don't have a well-defined, focused concept that deals with 'the why anybody should care factor', your communication will be muddy and irrelevant. Far too many marketing campaigns try to do too much, and in an effort to get your money's worth say everything and anything that comes to mind. Unfortunately, all you're really doing is confusing people and your core message never gets heard, let alone understood or remembered.

You need professional presenters who know how to use both verbal and non-verbal performance to get your message across, and of course you've got to give the presenters a script that is well written, entertaining, and informative.

Professional actors and voice-over talent bring infinite subtlety, nuance, and meaning to cleverly written scripts. Add sound effects, custom signature music and a few post-production enhancements and you have a memorable presentation.

What you don't need is complicated sets, props, and locations that íncrease the cost of production. The Web is not television, and there is no need to absorb inflated expenses based on ad agency cost-plus-pricing fees that bare little relation to effectiveness.

Expensive movie-style productions are just not necessary and lose their impact when delivered in relatively small Web-friendly formats that need to be easily integrated with additional collateral material used to present more details and to answer frequently asked questions.

Last But Not Least

We can learn a lot from children, not the least of which is their relentless quest for the answer to 'The Why' of things. We often forget that this is the central issue in our lives, and it is only after we've been told by parents, teachers, bosses and numerous other authority figures to shut-up and do what we're told, that we sublimate this need and replace it with the far less meaningful and convincing 'What.'

But if we as marketers can put our faith in delivering 'The Why' using the most people-friendly techniques of verbal and non-verbal digital communication, then we will have learned how to present a convincing memorable Web-marketing presentation.

About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

MRPwebmedia delivers clients' marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design.

Optimizing Your Site for Both Google and Yahoo!

by Michael Fleischner

Search engine optimization techniques for Google and Yahoo are quite different. Many websites rank well in one search engine but not the other. This is the direct result of each search engine having its own unique ranking algorithm. For example, the Google algorithm predominantly values the anchor text of in-bound links. Yahoo places more emphasis on keyword density and meta tags.

The primary reason for the difference in ranking algorithms is that Google owns the patent on Page Rank (PR), named after Google's founder Larry Page. As a result of owning this patent, other search engines need to place more emphasis on different optimization factors including website URL, keyword density and so on.

What are the greatest differences in search engine algorithms?

Google places a significant amount of emphasis on inbound links to your website. The value of these inbound links are measured based on their Google PR. The more links you receive from high Google PR web pages, the better your search result placements will be for a given keyword or search term.

Yahoo places emphasis on website URLs, meta tags, and keyword density. These factors can be analyzed on any website with a limited amount of effort, allowing Yahoo to quickly and easily rank websites properly.

How you can optimize your website for both Google and Yahoo!

The challenge all website owners face is making the most of their optimization efforts. When thinking about search engine optimization, you need to cover all the bases. To do so, pay particular attention to the following guidelines.

Keyword Targeted URL. If your website URL doesn't contain your keywords, consider purchasing a new one or creating a new page off of your root directory (ex: marketingscoop.com/internetmarketing.htm). Having your keywords in the URL helps improve both your Yahoo and Google search results. Yahoo weighs the website address as an important ranking factor. Google values a keyword rich URL when third party websites place a link to your site using nothing but a web address.

Meta Tags. Although not as important as they once were, Yahoo still uses meta tags to help align search engine rankings and appropriate website pages. Make sure that your meta tags are complete and include your keyword phrases in the title, description, and keyword tags.

Keyword Density Between 6 - 8%. Although much has been written about the importance of keyword density remaining between 2 - 3%, Yahoo looks for sites with keyword densities as high as 8%. Don't be afraid to include your keywords throughout your webpage content. Make sure however, that your keyword density is not more than 8%.

Link Building. This is the most important factor for increasing Google search result placements. Develop a link building campaign and give other sites a reason to link to your site. This may include free downloads, tools, or other valuable resources.

Site Map. Publish a sitemap. This makes it easy for search engines to spider your website and access all of your most important web pages. Site maps should be accessible from your home page and kept up-to-date.

Optimizing for both Google and Yahoo can be challenging. Following basic seo principles and working to develop incoming links can help you reach the top of the largest search engines. Apply these techniques regularly to see the greatest results.

About the Author
Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert with more than 12 years of Internet marketing experience. Learn how to improve search engine rankings with his latest ebook, The Webmasters Book of Secrets at http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com.

40 Simple Ways to Build Trust in Your Website Visitors

You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Building trust for your online visitors cannot be achieved by just a single action. Trust is achieved by many little actions you do throughout your website and when its taken together, give users a sense of stability, honesty and legitimacy for your business and services you provide.

Another good or bad news is that only few website owners focus on building trust in the minds of their visitors. So, if you do it well, it can become a real and sustainable competitive advantage for your business and you can keep your competitors away.

Here are 40 simple actions you can take to get started.

1. Your website design is the first impression. Make sure it is professional and relevant to the subject matter.

2. Navigation must be intuitive. If visitors can't find what they are looking for easily, they will question your competence in providing what they want.

3. Make the website personal by giving it its own tone and voice. People buy people.

4. Follow the HEART rule of creating online content. (Reminder: HEART stands for Honest, Exclusive, Accurate, Relevant and Timely.)

5. Use language that is appropriate to the audience. It will build empathy.

6. Regularly add new content to your site. It shows that the business is alive and kicking.

7. Review all links. Doubts will quickly form in your visitors' minds if links don't work or, worse still, take them to error pages.

8. Good grammar and spelling matter. Errors give the impression of sloppiness and carelessness.

9. Don't make outrageous and unbelievable claims, like "Read this blog and you'll be a millionaire by the end of the week." People are used to scams, get-rich-quick schemes and rip-offs.

10. Publish REAL testimonials and third-party endorsements. Try to always use real names and link to websites where possible. Some sites show images of letters sent by happy customers.

11. Publish case studies about customers you have helped, who use your product, etc.

12. Don't put down, curse or insult competitors. It's unprofessional. It is better to offer an objective comparison of competitive services or products.

13. Focus on building your long-term reputation, not on making quick sales.

14. Write articles for humans, not search engines.

15. Make your 'About Us' page personal and comprehensive. It plays an important part in making visitors feel comfortable that real people are behind the site.

16. Publish your photo or the photos of the key people involved with the site. Again, this reinforces the fact that there are real people behind the screen shots.

17. Clearly identify who is behind the site. Nothing creates more suspicion than a site that tries to hide the identity of its publishers.

18. On the 'Contact Us' page, provide an email form, telephone number, fax and address of the company. In Europe, it is a legal requirement for sites taking funds, but even sites driven by advertising will benefit from openness.

19. Provide a telephone number that people can call and talk to a person.

20. Provide Web addresses linked to the website domain, not addresses from free web mail services such as Hotmail and Gmail.

21. Think carefully about reciprocal links. If your site is about organic food and you have links to Party Poker, people are going to question your integrity.

22. Think carefully about the adverts you display on your site. Ensure that they are relevant to your subject and audience.

23. Write and publish your privacy policy. Be clear about what you will and will not do with any personal data you collect. State that you adhere to all data protection laws. Make it easy to read and don't use legal gobbledygook.

24. Write and publish a security policy. State what measures you take to ensure that all transactions are secure as well as how well you handle customers data.

25. Ensure that you have a security and privacy policy which is linked from the footer on every page. Make the link more prominent on all the order pages.

26. Clearly publish your guarantee. I would recommend making it a 100% money-back guarantee if possible.

27. Clearly state your refund and returns policy.

28. If you use PayPal, put the PayPal logo on your site. If you have a merchant services account with a major bank like Citibank or HSBC, put its logo on your site.

29. Use Google search on your site for two reasons. First, it is a great search solution which will help your visitors find what they are looking for. Second, having the Google name on your site instills trust.

30 If there are well-known industry associations for your subject, join up and put their logos on your site.

31. Have a forum on your site and respond quickly to questions. Have the attitude that you are happy to help others without receiving immediate reward. As the old saying goes, 'Givers always gain.'

32. Allow people to comment on articles. Interactivity and an exchange of views build community and a sense of involvement.

33. If people provide constructive criticism or comments in the forum, don't delete them, but respond with your point of view.

34. Use the words 'secure website' whenever you try to get any information from visitors, including newsletter sign-ups, forum input and payment.

35. On every page, state, "We take your privacy and security very seriously." Link the statement to the security and privacy policy.

36. If you are selling a subscription, offer a low-cost, entry-level option. This could be a one-day taster, 'a week before billing starts' or a monthly trial.

37. Only ask for information from customers that you really need. For example, for an email newsletter sign-up, the only information you REALLY need is an email address, so that is all you should ask for.

38. If you have pricing on your website, make it transparent. I recently went to buy a book which was advertised for $10. When I checked out, they added tax, post and packaging, and the final bill was $19.50. I didn't buy it as I felt they had deliberately tried to mislead me.

39. Start a small newsletter of your company/services & circulate it among your clients/employees. Also, publish it on your website regularly.

40. Allow people to “unsubscribe” from your mailing list. This may sound very obvious, but I have found that many websites still don’t follow it.

If you want to know how your site ranks (in terms of building trust online), then visit: http://www.alexa.com and know where your site is ranking.

To ensure that you are continually improving your trustworthiness, every time you go to a website, ask yourself whether you trust it or not. Then ask yourself why you have formed the opinion you have.

Quick Domain Names - Important Facts about Domain Names

Domain Names are very important if you are making a business online.
Whatever your purpose for buying the name, you are sure to have endless earnings. You can earn from them by selling them or by choosing the right one that would best help your business. And it is for this reason that choosing the right name is very critical.

Here are some tips on how to choose the right domain names:

1. Define your purpose for the domain name. If you are planning to use the name for the website of your company, you need to make sure that you will choose a name that is close to the name your company. If you would be using it for a squeeze or sales letter page site, then you might as well relate it to the content that you are promoting. This then will help you in your internet advertising process.

2. Choose a domain name that clearly indicates what service you offer, what problem you solve, and what products you sell. This will give the readers then a clear idea of what you offer by merely staring on your name.

3. You should also consider search engine optimization ahead of time when choosing a domain name. Make sure that the keyword that you are optimizing will be part of the name you chose. This can help you site fare well in the search engine page ranking.

4. Stick with shorter domain names. If you want people to remember your site, then stop thinking of using very long names. It should be short and catchy - that's all you need.

5. You can buy a domain of your given name. This might be hard to believe but if you have established your name and that many people already know you then it is advisable that you buy such domain name. If people search for your name in the Internet, they would easily be directed to your web site.

Web-Video Campaign Creation 101

By Jerry Bader

Everyone knows what television commercials are, how long they are, and what the various formats and styles consist of, ranging from the hard-sell detergent ads to the soft-sell feel-good stuff.

Most people, especially those addicted to late night television also recognize the standard infomercial format with the familiar over-enthusiastic host, obnoxious pitchman, the ebullient paid shills, and the fabricated, fantastical demonstrations. And of course, let's not forget the ever-present "But wait there's more! Call now and get even more..." There are many ways to effectively deliver a marketing message and this is not one of them.

What's a Web-video Commercial Anyway?

Maybe it's just us but I'm finding more and more clients open to the idea that Web-commercials need to be something different, something entertaining, something informative, and most of all something memorable. It isn't about creating something viral for the sake of being viral but rather something that is worth the time and effort to sit through.

If you start your video project with a television mindset, you are going to waste a lot of money on bad ideas and expensive production costs that add nothing to the delivery of a memorable message.

Big production costs may enhance the reputation of the video producer or feed the ego of the executive suite but they rarely sell more stuff. And worst of all elaborate productions generally cause the client to cut back on the number of videos created for the campaign. One video doesn’t have the same lasting impact as a series of videos with a similar theme and message. To use poker legend Scotty Nguyen's favorite expression, "It's about the campaign, baby!"

So without further preamble here is Web-Video Campaign Creation 101.

Web-Video Campaign Creation 101 - The Plan

1 Define Focus

Your marketing message must be focused on a single idea. If you try to cram everything you can do, or provide, into one video presentation all you are doing is diluting your core marketing message, the element that makes you different and superior to your competition - you are superior to your competition, aren't you?

One reason some companies have such difficulty with this concept is that they have been trained to focus on the old feature-benefit rationale. This is a game that I guarantëe you will loose unless you are the biggest, best financed, and most ruthless cutthroat company in your industry. Maybe that describes you and your business, but that's unlikely.

For any small or medium-sized company that thinks this is the path to success, read Sergio Zyman's book, "The End of Marketing As We Know It". Mr. Zyman is the former Chief Marketing Officer of the Coca-Cola Company and the guy responsible for New Coke. It's not that Mr. Zyman doesn't know what he's talking about but rather, there is only one Coca-Cola and I dare say most businesses don't fall into the same category. Unless you're a multinational corporation, trying to run your company like one is a prescription for disaster.

So, if you shouldn't be reciting a bunch of facts and features, what should you be focusing on: emotional value-add. It's the key to hitting a nerve in your audience's psyche. Focus your marketing on the psychological advantage you provide, and your competition will be left in the dust.

2 Build A BME Structure

If you want viewers to remember what you are saying and hopefully respond, then your videos have to tell a story that paints a picture in the viewers mind that they'll nevër forget. Without beating a dead horse, you just can't throw up an animation with a bunch of bulleted points or a series of stock royalty-free images that have been used more times than the ladies in the local red-light district and expect it to be effective.

In order to effectively deliver your core marketing message you must structure your videos around the BME story format. Simply put, a story must have a beginning, middle, and end.

This is not rocket science, but nevertheless it is a simple method that seems to elude a lot of entrepreneurs and business managers. Your story must begin with a problem that you can solve; proceed to a level of frustration or exasperation; and end with a solution; a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?

3 Create Signature Personality

Why do you watch certain programs on television and not others. Sure certain genres appeal to some and not others, but the success of any television series is based on the connection that the audience has with certain characters. If you like the characters on 'CSI' (Las Vegas) I dare say the characters on 'CSI Miami' are a complete turn-off and perhaps vice versa.

The point is your brand, whether represented by your company or by a particular product, must have a defined personality. That personality like the difference between the Las Vegas and Miami CSIs is sure to generate both positive and negative reaction, and that is good.

If you think you should only generate positive reactions from your marketing, then you will nevër be a successful marketer because you'll nevër say anything memorable or interesting. Some people absolutely hate David Caruso but that doesn't stop the people who like him to make his show a consistent top ten ratings performer.

4 Create Dialogue that Resonates

If you want a web-video marketing campaign produced for an affordable production budget, you have get past the old bromide followed by the traditional movie and television industry - show it, don't tell.

First of all, showing is always more expensive than telling and it doesn't have the nuance and sophistication of communicating through the face and voice of a real human being. With apologies to all aspiring John Woo's, words have meaning, speech has impact, people sell product. We are making a commercial, not a feature film or television show. There are similarities but there are also differences.

The script is the critical element in making your point, delivering your message and creating that elusive brand personality we've talked about.

5 Add Appropriate Memory Prompts

So now that we have our focused psychological value-add, our story structured with a beginning, middle, and end, our signature personality, and a dialog scripted to present it all, we now need a few enhancements.

A successful web-video campaign is definitely not a PowerPoint presentation ported to video nor does it have to be one of those overly produced television ads the car companies like. Delivering the message is all about connecting with your audience, that is why the script and choice of presenter is critical, which brings me to the point of using the company president or sales manager as spokesperson - forget it. It is a bad idea, a very bad idea. First of all your sales manager will probably be working for the competition in a couple of months and other than the president's spouse, no one really wants to listen to, or look at him or her let alone be convinced of anything they have to say. Actors and voice-over talent know how to look, and how to deliver a line, that's what they do.

Depending on what the particular scenario being presented is, there are certain techniques that can help a campaign connect with its audience.

Music can be a major factor in enhancing memory retention but only if it is used properly. The caveat that I expressed for royalty free imagery applies to royalty free music. One of my favorite Web-campaigns is the Wayspa.com Christmas gift series. This series of video commercials is extraordinarily funny and I think effective, but its tagline incorporates the infamous "F-word" and that will definitely turn some people off. The music that they used as their signature theme recently cropped up on a new Christmas ad campaign for a local jewelry retail chain. As I was watching this commercial play twelve times during the evening, all I could think of was the Wayspa.com tagline. Not exactly what the nice middle-of-the-road, don't offend anybody retailer was trying to achieve.

Music has an enormous psychological effect on the viewer, it provides mood, enhances personality, and if scored to the presentation can stress certain key points that get embedded in the viewers memory because of the musical emphasis.

Another key use of music is as a signature logo-tag, like the familiar Intel tag that accompanies every appearance of their logo or the famous three-note NBC sound-tag.

Voice-overs are another way to create character, personality, and memory enhancement within a video presentation. Cutaways of appropriate images or montages, or on-screen text prompts are also effective ways of enhancing the memory retention of a presentation. All of these techniques enhance and emphasize if used properly, but if they are misused as is so often the case, they get remembered for all the wrong reasons.

6 Be Bold or Save Your Money

This is the Web we are talking about, an environment where it is critical to standout if you expect to get heard, let alone make an impact. You can not, I repeat you can not, be coy. Be bold or forget it. Unless you are some deep-pocketed multinational with more dough and market share than ideas then you have to make a statement, clearly and decisively. It is the only way, if you want to be successful on the Web.

Being bold may seem like it's alienating some potential customers, but what it is really doing is qualifying leads.

7 Create Campaigns Not Ads

How do you know if you've come up with a good concept that will make an effective Web-marketing advertisement or commercial? If the concept 'has legs' meaning that you can roll that idea out into a minimum of at least six similar but different presentations then you know you've got something.

It is taken for granted that everyone understands that you can't just present an advertisement once and expect it to be successful. It should also be understood that you have to present your concept in varying configurations in order to maximize its ability to be remembered and to penetrate the Web's clutter, not to mention the need for the investment to be cost effective.

After all, the hardest part of developing a marketing campaign is to come up with one that has legs. Why waste a great idea on a one-shot effort, when you should be milking it for all it's worth.

The End

So there you have Web-Video Campaign Creation 101: seven simple steps that will give you a shot at having an effective marketing campaign.


About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads,
http://www.136words.com/ and http://www.sonicpersonality.com/. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Web Usability and Accessibility Are As Important As Search Engine Prominence

by Eugene Mulligan

So you've optimised your website, done the keyword research, got the backlinks and everything is ethical. You're sitting proudly on the first page of the search results. Or you've set up a pay per click campaign, bid on your keywords, created some ads and performance tracking is in place. Again, you're at the top of the pile. Either way, you're visible and people are visiting your website. But visitors aren't converting into leads, prospects or customers. What's going wrong? Well your website may be visible, but is it connecting?

Having attracted visitors to your website through prominent search engine placements, it is vital not to lose them by failing to connect. Different visitors will have different priorities and levels of satisfaction. In order to reach and retain as many as possible and to maximise the chances of conversion, you should consider your site's usability and accessibility.

Web usability

Usability is all about providing your visitors with an effective, efficient and satisfying experience. It's common knowledge that visitors tend to glance at, and scan, pages rather than study them in any great detail. If the message and options are not clear, they may leave. If they don't leave, the chances are that they will click on the first link that seems to be most relevant - it may not be the right one. Repeat the process a few times and soon a visitor can be lost, confused and frustrated. Either way the result is the same - missed opportunity and little likelihood of a return visit.

The more self-evident your pages are, the greater the chance of converting the visitor into a prospect or customer.

12 simple tips for a more usable website

1. On the home page make it clear what the site is all about.
2. Make the purpose of each page obvious.
3. User hierarchical headings to give clear structure to the copy.
4. Make the navigation and links obvious.
5. Use clear unambiguous wording.
6. Make the options and next steps obvious.
7. Remove any wording or imagery that is unnecessary, confusing or distracting.
8. Use consistent conventions throughout.
9. Include site search and a site map.
10. Make information such as contact details, pricing and delivery charges clearly accessible.
11. Make the pages printable by including a cascading style sheet for printing.
12. Don't allow careless errors to make your site look unprofessional.

Browsers create their own set of problems

One more tip - just because your website works fine in your browser of choice, do not assume that it will work equally well in all browsers. In fact it is not even safe to assume that it will work equally well in different versions of the same browser. Web designers who have had to cope with the incompatibilities of IE5, IE6 and now IE7 will no doubt testify to this point. It is vital to be sure that your website works on all the popular browsers. As well as IE and Firefox, don't forget Netscape and Opera on Windows and Safari on the Mac. And just to muddy the waters a bit further, Apple have recently announced Safari for Windows.

So now your website is usable, but is it usable by everybody? For some, usability is just a small obstacle when compared to the barrier of accessibility.

Web accessibility

All businesses in virtually all countries have a legal obligation to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities, otherwise they are discriminating. Given that something like 15% of the population have some sort of disability, that's a sizeable market proportion. If you're not reaching them, your competitors probably are.

One of the many myths surrounding web accessibility is that blind people are the only ones who need to be catered for. Whilst blind people and their use of assistive technologies to read web pages are an obvious and important example, consider also people with other visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive and neurological impairments.

How does a colour-blind person cope with page colours?

How does someone with a mobility impairment manage without being able to use a mouse?

How does a deaf person gain access to auditory content?

How does someone with attention deficit disorder make sense of the pages?

Web pages should be accessible to all of them. And it's not just disabled people who will benefit. Older people, people with low literacy levels, people who are not fluent in the website language, people with low bandwidth connections, people using older technologies and people with short-term injuries and illnesses will also benefit.

9 tips for a more accessible website

1. Provide all images with an alternative text description. If the image does not convey any information, provide null (blank) text rather than no alternative text at all.

2. Provide transcripts of audio content.

3. Ensure that the contrast between text foreground and background colours is sufficiently strong.

4. Do not use colour alone to convey information. There should also be some other form of visual indicator such as additional characters, images or font changes.

5. Place column headings in the first row of a table and place row headings in the first column. If headings are ambiguous, use the HTML scope attribute to clarify.

6. Never use the HTML blink and marquee elements. For animated GIFs or other moving objects, the flicker frequency must be less than 2 Hz or greater than 55 Hz. But better to have no moving content at all.

7. Link text should clearly state the purpose and destination of the link. Phrases like Click Here may mean nothing to someone listening to a screen reader.

8. Provide an option to skip navigation on all pages. This will save screen reader users from having to repetitiously listen to the same navigation, and keyboard users from having to repetitiously tab through every item. Use hierarchical headers to provide the same benefit and to enable navigation through copy.

9. On forms, always associate prompts with controls so that each control is adequately described. Use the HTML fieldset and legend tags to give structure to complex forms.

The importance of web standards

Usable, accessible web pages can only be achieved through strict compliance with the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium. They provide a platform for consistency, compatibility, stability, flexibility and extensibility. Implementing standards throughout a website's design will address many usability and accessibility issues by default.

Last and certainly not least

Usability and accessibility alone will not suddenly convert all your visitors into customers. Content is vital to a website's delivery capability. But at least those visitors may now stick around long enough to look at the content.

About the Author
Eugene Mulligan is a search engine marketing consultant based in Somerset, UK. Operating through his company, Egn Webcraft (http://www.egnwebcraft.co.uk/), he provides search engine optimisation, pay per click management and web development services to organisations seeking to improve their website's visibility and capability.

The Impact of SEO Web Design on Search Engines

by Moe Tamani

SEO web design is a concept which emphasizes great architectural design principles based on how the search engines determine relevance and site information. The design should be able to give out the information that the user is seeking and at the same time be easily navigable. This is part of search engine optimization because the SEO web design should also be able to satisfy robotic crawlers and spiders in their quest for information regarding the website and other data.

SEO Web Design and Site Optimization

Search engine optimization is more than just a trend nowadays. It is used and applied by almost all sites on the internet that aim to make money and reach online popularity. Among the many strategies of optimizing a web site, SEO web design is one of the topmost priorities.

The impact of the design of the site on search engine robotic crawlers or spiders can help raise the ranking of the site. This is where SEO web design comes in. There are many ways to make the web site more attractive to robotic visitors and human visitors alike. Actually, spiders and crawlers from search engines do not mind the overall aesthetic value of the site. All these robotic crawlers need is the information it can get from the site. The tricky part is how to put relevant information in the site in order for the crawlers to properly index the site due to its relevance. SEO companies who specialize in optimizing web sites must also know how to put a site in front of others in order to bring it to the attention of the Internet users. The search optimizers who will handle your site must be able to know the right strategies to place the web site ahead of others in its field through accepted methods of optimization.

SEO web design is a competitive area where web designers, or what I prefer to call website architects, work hard to come up with ideas and designs that are aesthetically appealing and relevant at the same time. There has to be consideration for ease of getting around the website, being appealing to a wide range of visitors and finding the right place for the website. Making a basic, visually appealing site is easy with the many technological advances available today, but the problem with these advances is that they are sometimes quite tricky to use thus making your website difficult to navigate. SEO web design should be easy to use and friendly to both human and robotic browsers.

Easy navigational access can be done by making the pages of the site easy to navigate to and having easy to understand and use button or labels to click on. The pictures and images on your SEO web design should be just the right size and scale to enable users to see them promptly after clicking instead of taking a very long time to download. Waiting for images and other graphics to load can be off-putting for most visitors and will eventually lead them to another site which is more optimized and easy to view. Even spiders and crawlers will give up on a site which is not easy to navigate and get into.

The overall appeal of the SEO web design should not only be focused mainly on the niche that it is targeted to but also for Internet users who might have stumbled onto the site. SEO web design should have a universal appeal even for the most specialized type of sites on the Internet. Some webmasters or website owners could opt for specialized SEO web designs and these can also be done with the targeted audience in mind. It will also benefit the site if it is indexed as it should be. You might want to have a specific SEO web design which is built around the entire concept of your site and this can add to the ranking if you are quite specific with what you aim to sell or market. If you are marketing a specific product or information, SEO experts can focus on this product or information and build the SEO web design around it.

Another aspect of SEO web design that needs to be considered is what your competition is doing. The saying "know your enemy" is the key here. You do not want to have the same boring marketing strategies as the competition. Why? Because it is a good idea to keep abreast with what they are doing and how well they are doing in this field. There are many site optimization tools that can help analyze and determine what is needed for the site. Hence, in regard to the SEO web design process, content is one of the prime needs and tools of making the site rank high in searches. Finding out or identifying the right keywords to integrate into the site can be crucial in making the site among the top ranking ones. Keyword search tools and having keyword rich content and titles can help to optimize a site efficiently.

SEO web design experts should also bear in mind that there are web strategies that may be unacceptable for search engines. Using these underhand or black hat tricks to perpetuate a site in rank can cause the search engines to ban the site and also the SEO web design company that did the search engine optimization work for it no matter how well the SEO web design is.

About the Author
Moe Tamani is a Marketing expert with a leading SEO Company specializing in Organic SEO.

The Two Most Important Factors In eCommerce Design.

by Philip Bennett

OK, so the title isn’t strictly true there is one important factor in ecommerce design and two things you have to do achieve it. The goal is to make people purchase your product. The two things you have to do to make them buy is to help and persuade.

When you design a site you need to pay serious attention to it’s usability and it’s persuasive abilities. The aim of a good eCommerce solutions is to gently (or not so gently) persuade the sites user to purchase the product they want. In order to make sure they find this as easy as possible, you need to make sure your website is as usable as possible. There are thousands of usability and persuasive design methodologies and we don’t intend to cover them all in this article. We have identified a couple of the most important factors in both areas and provide some tips and guidance to help you tailor your site to increase sales.

Usability Design

When a customer lands on your internet store they will only have a certain amount of patience, once this all runs out they will give up and leave your site for one of your competitors. The easier your site is to use and the less they have to think about how it works, the longer they will stay on your site, and the more likely they will be to purchase from you.

With the increase in the use of CSS and the increasing accessibility of graphic manipulation packages people are able to completely customise the way the ‘things you click’ on their web-site look, the limit it pretty much their own imagination. Unfortunately this can lead to some confusion for users who have to think about what is clickable and what isn’t, this will cause them to get frustrated.

With text links it’s best to follow HTML tradition, keeping links in a contrasting colours and keep them underlined. Users also like to know where they have been, so keeping links that have been visited in another colour is good practice.

The best course of actions with buttons is to … well… make them look like buttons. I know it seems patronising but a lot of people forget this when they’ve spent a lot of time making sure the buttons on their site fit in with the design. Raised looking buttons are difficult to make look nice and clean without them looking a little ‘2001' but it’s really worth spending a little time thinking about your buttons.

One of the easiest way to lose customers is to actually lose them. If you customers can’t find their way around your store, or can’t find their way to wherever they want to be they’re not going to buy from you.

What’s the best way to achieve this? Well it’s probably by using tabs. they give a good idea of where the user is, and how they can get to where they want to be.

Tag Lines are frequently dismissed from modern website design in order to make at design look less cluttered, and certainly there are situation where removing a tag line will do no harm but generally there are useful. It is important that a customer know as quickly as possible if your site will sell the product they are looking for. A good example of this is Amazon; when they first launched they used a tag-line similar to ‘Online Bookstore’ because when customer landed on their page they would have had to think a little to work out that a company called 'Amazon' was in fact selling. However as Amazon is now so well known they have removed it as it's no longer needed.

Persuasive Design

Once you've addressed the Usability of your store and your visitors can find their way around your site easily and find their way to where they want to be, you must then consider the second important part of the design. You need to make then go to where YOU want them to, the order confirmation page. Below are 3 tips for making this happen.

Once the user has put some items into their cart and clicked on the checkout button there is a good chance that they really want to buy something. So whatever you do, make it as easy as possible for them to put their credit card details in and click the confirm order button.

A design practice that we implement is removing all unnecessary links from the order process. For example all links to the ‘home’ and search boxes are removed. If the user goes searching for other products then it’s possible that they’ll get side tracked and forget that they were going to buy your products. But make sure that the user still has access to the information about the product that they’re buying, we try to implement this by including all the information on the shopping cart page, or by linking to pop-up with the info in, we don’t link back to the original product page as this could lead to further distractions.

Long checkout processes with multiple pages is also something that should be avoided. Only ask the customer for information that you really need.

One of the main ways that people will look for products on your site is by using the search box. Rigging (or Mapping) your searches will allows you to map products to keyword, so when a customer searches for a word related to a product that does not include the keywords in the title or the product text you can make sure the products show up. This is just like a customer asking a shop assistance for a product when they know what they want the product to do, but are just not sure of the name of the product.

You need to make your product descriptions and products images as descriptive as possible, don’t ever assume that your customers are as well versed on your products as you are. If there is something they want to know and you haven’t covered they will do one of three things:

* Ask you, which happens a lot less than you would imagine.
*Go and look on a competitors web-site, if they have the information then it’s likely you’ve lost a customer.
* Give Up.

Also the more information that you include the more ’spider food’ there is for the search engines, so when you write a product descriptions. this is a good time to focus on Search Engine Optimisation.

Following a couple of these simple guidelines you should see a marked increase in the conversion rate for your store. There are also many other usability and persuasive design models that you can apply and we defiantly recommend you to get to know them.

About this author
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software is a one stop shop for all the information you need about shopping cart software and ecommerce solutions. This site is brought to you by Bennett Enable eCommerce Solutions

How To Create High Conversion Lead Capture Pages

By Gabriel Aguinaga

In today's competitive marketing arena, it pays to have an edge. Any business, big or small must be absolutely committed to obtaining a fresh flow of exclusive, interested and responsive leads.

In order to remain competitive in the highly sophisticated and intensely competitive Internet Marketing Niche, savvy entrepreneurs must rely on a dedicated networking scheme. One of the most successful ways to garner a piece of the market is through a lead capture page (sometimes referred to as a squeeze pages).

Lead pages are one-page web sites designed to provide only enough information to attract a users attention, arouse their curiosity and inspire them to opt in to your designated opportunity.
Effective lead capture pages can be built with relative ease and their primary function is to highlight the benefits of your offer, provide an online information form that interested parties fill in and allow you permission to contact them directly with subsequent information. In the industry, this is referred to as an opt-in lead.

You may be asking, why should I bother with constructing and maintaining a one page website whose only purpose is to give users the option of continuing or not continuing with their search? Extensive Market Research has proven what Internet Marketers have known for ages, Users do not always commit to a product or service in their first encounter online. Therefore, providing just enough titillating information on your lead page to pique additional interest will often inspire users to request supplementary information.

Creating lead capture pages from scratch is not hard, but there are several tried and true components that are essential in your design:

Your lead page must contain a synopsis of the most pertinent information relative to your product, while having enough pizzazz to grasp a readers attention.

Bulleted points extolling the benefits of the next click (either by use of a proceed, continue or submit button) will serve to whet a users curiosity, thus bringing the desired traffic to your site.

Employing an auto-responders function is essential at this point in order to expedite immediate response. The follow-up e-mail should be comprised of interesting and compelling data about your product and/or service and should be designed to make YOUR product or group stand out from the crowd, thus generating business back to you.

Easy to use software is available to assist first-time marketers in their production of lead pages that look professional and personalized. Your primary goal is to develop a positive rapport with potential clients, so providing some insightful, personal information about yourself, such as your pets, hobbies, family, etc., can create an aura of bonding with the reader.

Establishing this type of mutuality with the reader intimates that you are a person who is likeable, friendly and able to be trusted, which, in turn, can go a long way in swaying a reluctant buyer over to your side.

Once a visitor provides their contact information, you will immediately receive it. You can then employ your marketing skills to their maximum via email or telephone, where you now have a prime opportunity to promote your particular offer.

As a marketing tool, the lead page performs as a multi-tasking agent for your company. It serves to entice prospective buyers, allows you to elaborate on your product and provides you with information on who visits your affiliate site. Most importantly, you will now have legitimate contact information, which can be used to communicate directly with your intended clients.

About The Author
Gabriel Aguinaga is a professional online marketer and the owner of a very popular website, LeadCapturePageCreator.com. To grab a free list-building course or to grab a copy of his famous lead capture page creator software, visit: LeadCapturePageCreator.com

Cornerstones of an Effective Website

by Patrick Schwerdtfeger

Just about everyone has a website today. Certainly, if you're in business one way or another, you have a website. And people have different objectives behind their sites. Some are content-driven. Others provide an online service and have sophisticated user interfaces. Others still are designed to entertain and amuse their visitors. But regardless what your website is designed to do, there are a few primary objectives you should keep in mind before you start building.

This first website objective is FOCUS. Your site needs to have a narrow and specific focus. Why is this? Because there are literally millions of websites out there and the visitors you're lucky enough to attract will only take a few seconds to decide whether they'll stick around or whether they'll simply click the back button and continue browsing elsewhere. Within those few seconds, your site needs to communicate exactly what it's designed to do so the visitor can decide if it meets his or her needs or not.

One of the best exercises to enhance the focus of your site is to establish a 15 to 25-word positioning statement that guides all your development activity going forward. Think about it like a mission statement. It should articulate exactly what your website does in just 15 to 25 words.

Another way to look at it is to do a Google search for a keyword in your field and see what comes up in the results page. Under each listing, there's a short description of what that site is all about. As it turns out, the search engines get that description from the meta tags on those websites but it's exactly the same thing. What do you want YOUR description to say?

Once you've established a positioning statement, you should display it prominently on your homepage. It should be one of the first things visitors see when they land on your website. And as I mentioned above, the same statement should be included in your meta tags as your site description. That way, the search engines know exactly what your site is about at the same time. And if your site shows up in a search results page, that description will show up as part of your listing.

The second objective is DEPTH. Again, this objective serves your visitors as well as the search engines. Build a massive amount of content all about your narrow business focus. That way, if a visitor lands on your website and decides in the first few seconds that they need what you're providing, they'll go on to find a ton of resources all about that topic, satisfying their need and establishing trust along the way.

Depth of content helps your website with the search engines as well. Google uses complicated algorithms to assess value to different websites and one of the biggest things they look for is content. If your website has a narrow focus and lots of content about that focus, it will get ranked higher within your area of expertise. Google will consider your site a good resource for people searching for your narrow focus.

The third objective is to make your site STICKY. This is a relatively new term that describes a website's ability to keep a visitor on the site. A lot of sites do a fairly good job of attracting visitors but many of those visitors take one look at the site and leave within a second or two. As I mentioned earlier, the positioning statement can do a lot to help someone understand what your site is designed to do. But you need more than that to keep them browsing.

The visitor needs to see immediate value when they visit your site. They need to see something that will benefit them right away. They need to see something they can use to make their own lives better. This is the foundation behind today's value-first marketing moniker. People have been over-marketed and have become skeptical in clever marketing slogans. They want to see the value. They want proof that you can deliver. They want to sample your product or service before they buy anything.

You should spend some time and think about what you can offer your website visitors as soon as they land on your site. It could be information. It could be a tool or calculator of some kind. It could be a free subscription. It could be an entertaining video or an interactive game they can play. Whatever it is, you need to capture your visitor within seconds and guide them to something that will benefit them.

Once they've received one piece of value, give them a second and then a third. Guide them through a maze of value, encouraging them to continue browsing and discovering even more. This is the key to a sticky website and you can get a good idea of your progress by measuring your average time on the site through your analytics platform.

There are a million different websites out there and they're all designed to achieve different objectives. But each one of those websites can be a bit better by incorporating more focus, depth and stickiness. All three improve your website' effectiveness and all three offer benefits with the search engines as well.

About the Author
Tactical Execution with Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a strategic company focused on growth marketing and program implementation across business markets. Visit the website for actionable guidance for revenue generation.