People Don’t Read Your Website… They Scan it.

Make it Easy to Scan your Information, and They’ll consume it.

Anyone writing copy for web needs to understand how to write web copy. The reason is that copy writing for the web determines how and what of what your write actually gets read.  If you write to have your copy scanned, then you are writing good web copy!

Headlines

A page’s headline needs to interrupt and be relevant. It does not need to be descriptive, explain or introduce anything.  It just needs to stop people and get them to the Sub-Header.

Sub-Headers

A Sub-Header needs to engage a website visitor while expanding on the headline and its relevance to what the subject of the web content.

Image Captions

Following reading the headline and Sub-Header of a page, people will turn briefly to images and then read the image caption. This is why it is so important to write the best image captions possible, as this is what people are reading to determine if going further is going to be a waste of time or not.

Bullets

Write in bullet form;

• As much as possible.
• When appropriate.
• When a paragraph is going to be too large.
• When you want it read.

Paragraphs – short and start bold

Keep your paragraphs short.  I suggest 6 lines or less. It really helps to bold the first part of your paragraph (no more than 1/2 of it), and place the most "to the point" copy there.

Use your Colours

Use your website colours as the colours for your headline and Sub-Headers. You don’t have to use the exact colours, but doing this will help your copy stand out a little.

Calls to Action

Calls to Action (what you want people to click on to fill out a form, become a sale or go further in the sales or lead process) should not be copy unless it is also accompanied with button that repeats or expands on the text link.

Perfect Example

Just look at those image captions! This comes from www.eightbyeight.com , the website of an excellent eCommerce optimization company.  I have met Amy Africa who is a partner at Eight by Eight and knew I would fine the best practices she and I both advocate.

I hope this helps!

A lot of people do not understand Internet marketing fundamentals . So, for the local, niche and small business people reading this blog, I think it is vitally important to cover the fundamentals around internet business strategy and make sure they are understood and valued, as successful internet marketing strategies will not happen if each Pillar is not given its due attention.

The 4 Pillars of Internet Marketing Success

When I do internet strategy consulting, developing a client’s best internet marketing strategy, there are 4 Pillars of Internet Marketing Strategy I consider.

#1 – Good Web Design

#2 – Good Website Coding

#3 – Driving Relevant Visits

#4 – Maximizing Conversion Rates

Good Web Design

My 1st Internet profession was as a Developer. After 5 years of programming, I thought I knew something about good web design.  I KNEW NOTHING! It was not until I moved to the business side and was charged with increasing conversions, in that case B2B leads, that I started to really consider what good web design is.

Good web design is not making things look pretty .  Good web design is achieving the objectives of the site or page.  Normally the objective is to drive conversions, and the disconnect is on this point.  Sure, things need to look good and professional or they hurt convertions, but this is only part of the Web Design equation.

Business objectives need to drive the design of a website or landing page. There has to be careful consideration of what information is present where, and how it is presented.  The information that the use wants to know must come first with anything you are trying to sell or tell them being secondary.  Good Web Design can place focus of the user better, but its primary role is to answer the immediate questions, and get them where they and you both want them to go.

Take a look at the following website for a curtain shop in my area of Denver, Co. The design is good as far as look & feel goes. I know EXACTLY what this site does and if I am looking for curtains, I get the all important "ah ha!" a visitor needs to stick around a site more than 8 seconds (its like riding a bull). Not only is the top navigation clear, but so is the sub navigation. I could dig deep and pick on the "scent" of the site due to it not telling me "where I am right now" , or the page title not following the same font style as the top menu, or the menus not changing state when mouse over them. I could, but won’t because the architecture of the site, the layout of the pages, and the presentation of the navigation options make this site better than  80% of other sites right off the bat.

To learn a bit more about Web Design, and the importance of it beyond (or better said, before) "look & feel", see Nail a Niche with Landing Pages and Homepage Strategy & Tips .

Good Website Coding

As a former developer, this is the area I mastered early on, but was all I really knew .  Not only do people have a hard time following things like navigation "image maps" (several links in one menu), but so do search engine "bots".

Another mistake is drop down menus (this is poor web design as well since people can’t "see" the options without having to take an action based on the limited information they get from a main menu title).  Drop down menus are often done with Java Script and search engines don’t read this type of coding and with therefore not follow the navigation.  With the search engines looking at internal links as a factor in ranking a site, sites with image map and java script drop down menus miss out on being more attractive to search engines and the result is less inbound traffic from the search engines. aka, You’re not being found.

Take a look at the site above again. Windows Dressed Up has image navigation. That is killing the site’s search engine rankings. In fact, I was searching for the site, but could not remember its name and tried a few searches like "Window Coverings Denver " and "Drapes Denver " and could not find them.  They did not turn up noticeably in the search results.

These searches could have turned up Windows Dressed Up by this business doing 3 things.

1. Make the navigation images into text links.  You could make them look identical with HTML.
2. Optimize the navigation links names  for search.  To learn more about this, see Know Your SEO.
3. Optimize for Local Search .

There are also so other opportunities to improve search engine rankings.

1. The images to the right could be separated into separate images, each with its own ALT tag providing a keyword rich description of what the image is.
2. They could use better page title tags, and add keyword and description tags, focusing on a Local SEO strategy .
3. They may also want to submit to all the Local Search Engines, Directories and Data Providers since currently they don’t have any incoming links to their site, this would at least give them a start, not to mention help being found by those people using those sites to search locally.

Drive Relevant Visits

This is the one Pillar most businesses focus on despite really needing to first handle Good Web Design and Coding first .  Nonetheless, it is a key Pillar when considering strategy and internet, and where I spend a lot of my time as an internet strategy consultant.  Driving people to a site that is converting poorly is a waste of money if the traffic is paid and a waste of effort if the business is engaging in social media or SEO efforts.

Once a site is ready to recieve traffic and can convert well, it needs to start driving relevant traffic to it. To drive relevant traffic, a business needs to know it audience, where they are online and how to best engage them.  For instance, if you know your audience is interested in "home decorating", are women between the ages of 30 and 60 and reside in the Metro Denver area ( in the case of  Windows Dressed Up ), then you could target them with Pay per Click, Online Advertising, Social Media Ads and a few other tactics that allow you to target by demographics and geography.  You just want to make sure your traffic is relevant and highly targeted, as Internet Marketing is very unforgiving to those who don’t target well.

Maximizing Conversion Rates

To achieve success online, you need more than good Web Design, Good Website Coding and Relevant Traffic. You need to to focus on convertions.  You’re site has at least one objective.  It might be to generate a lead, to make a sale, or have someone donate to your cause.  Whatever the site objective, you need the following to start achieving them;

1. Make it easy – Don’t have too many steps to achieve something.  Registration for example should only collect essential info.
2. Keep it simple – Don’t overwhelm people with too many options.
3. Relevant Offerings – If someone is seeking information about cooking, don’t try to push lawn equipment on them.
4. Good Placement – Make offers
5. Clear Calls To Action – Don’t have a button that says "submit".  Make the button have meaning like "Book your package today".
6. If possible, offer things that are unique and valuable, preferably both.
7. Have special or free offer your site audience would really want.  See #6 above.   This is related to nurturing business and something we’ll go into at a later date.

Streaming

Streaming is identifying an audience and taking them through your site in the way you want them to proceed , but more importantly, the way they want to proceed.  Lets say Windows Dressed Up in Denver had Interior designers as an audience.  Calling out to them and leading them into a part of the site that addressed their needs, separately from regular customers would be streaming.  As long as you provided all the information the audience wants, they will be where you can offer them relevant offers and in a place dedicated to your selling to them.  Streaming audience types to areas meant for them will increase conversions.

Test & Tweak

All the best practices in the world will not make the best website.  You need to analyze your site statistics, talk to your customers, learn from it and try new things.  Try a new Headline or image.  Move an offer up.  Take out offers that are not performing.  There is always better results with testing. I think what and how to tweak is a future post as well.

I hope this offers a foundation on Internet Marketing.  It is important to understand the value of each Pillar and approach your web presence from the 1st to the 4th in order to save time and money.

Local SEO for Local Niche and Small Business.

I know this Local SEO guides have been written many times by others, so I’ll try to cover it well enough so readers don’t feel the need to read more Local SEO tips and waste more time.

Local Search Keywords

The first thing you need to do is nail down the local keywords you want to target. Lets go back to the Red Trolley Ice Cream Shop in Denver as an example.  The Red Trolley would probably come up with a list of Local keywords phrases including;

1. Ice Cream Denver
2. ice cream denver co
3. ice cream in denver
4. Ice Cream Highland (the neighbourhood it is in) Denver
5. Ice Cream 80211 (zip code)
6. Ice Cream 32nd (the street it is on) Denver
7. Organic Ice Cream Denver
8. Local Ice Cream Denver
9. Address
10. Phone number.

That is the basic list we’ll work with.  You will see all the places we get to put this in, in a moment.

Meta Tags

There are 3 places "behind the scenes" of the page , where only search engines read, where keywords need to be placed.  They are

1. Title Tag. This is the big one.  Right now it has "Red Trolley".  This is fantastic if they sold Red Trolleys, but I think we’re about a 110 years too late for that in Denver.  A Title tag is what shows up at the top left of your browser.  Here, an improvement would be "Ice Cream in 80211, Denver Highlands | Red Trolley".
2. Keywords .  Although not as "key" as in past years, keywords are still important and I have "observed" that Google is again using them in their super secret algorithm a bit more now (Just a hunch).  The keywords here are the 10 listed above.  Yahoo! & MSN still look at them a bit more.
3. Description . This is the text that shows up as the result listing description in search results.  This needs to be written to entice people to click on the local, organic result to the site.  Red Trolley’s description might look something like this; "Local Denver Homemade Organic Ice Cream and Fair Trade Coffee  in Highlands".  The description needs to be kept to 160 characters for Google

Local SEO Copy Writings

Now that we know our keywords, and have added them to the behind the scenes content, its time to add them to the content of the site where people can actually read them.

To start, here are some places you should have your local keywords.

1. In the website footer. This allows your local information to appear on every page.  This might look like "The Red Trolley Ice Cream Shop, 282 32nd Street, Highlands Denver Co.  80211.
2. On every Page .  I don’t mean to get all Amy Africa about this, but YOU HAVE TO HAVE YOUR ADDRESS ON EVERY PAGE, and it should somewhere it can be easily seen.  At the top right is a good place to consider.
3. In your Site’s Copy . Your keywords need to be in your text, in a clear and relevant way.  Lets go back to The Red Trolley and grab some text to optimize, just to sh0w how simple it can be.  Here is some homepage copy;

"Our flavors constantly change because as the seasons change, we change. Everthing your tastebuds experience  in our shop is made with passion and integrity, on the premesis."

This could be

"Our ice cream and food flavors constantly change because as Denver’s seasons change, we change. Everthing your tastebuds experience  in our ice cream shop is made with passion and integrity, on the premesis in Denver Highlands ."

That wasn’t very hard was it?  Now, what they should really do is create a Flavours (or without the "u" since it is in Denver and I’m the only Canadian in the Neighbourhood, opps, there I go again) page, and link the "ice cream" references above to a page filled with ice cream content.

By the way, I just want to mention, although Hours of Operation are not normally high of on SEO radar, they at least have to be right.  The Red Trolley’s are not, by about 20 hours a week, ouch!

Incoming Links

A big part of Local SEO is number and importance of the sites that link to you .  Think of it like high school.  You are only as popular as your friends.  You could have known the entire band, AV & Glee Clubs but you likley would not have been as popular as if you knew just one jock and one cheerleader.

One way to get incoming links, although not "cheerleader" links, is Local Search Directories .  Check out the list of local Search engines, directories and provider s I have assembled on this site.  That should get you started.  I can see I’ll eventually need to write a post on how to get people linking to you site.

Bonus Local SEO

When your site does ger linked to, here are some things to help your Local SEO when that happens.

1. Keywords in Links – Get any links to your site to have as many keywords as it can.   This – Red Trolley – is not as important to search engines as -  Red Trolley Ice Cream Shop in Denver Highlands .  Especially when the site linking to yours is relevant (which eMarketing and Ice Cream in this case are not.  Sorry Red Trolley).
   
2. Press Release – If you every do a press release, you have control over #1.
   
3. Landmarks – Optimize for landmarks and surrounding neighbourhoods as well if applicable.

Summary

If you cover the basics of Local Search Engine Marketing mentioned above, you should  find your site will get local search traffic. This traffic will be low cost (free minus the resources to make the Local SEO changes). Once completed, you will need to make sure you handle that traffic properly!

To learn more about Local SEO and Local Search Marketing.  Head over to the best blog on the subject at www.GrowMap.com.

Cause People Under 40 Don’t Use the Yellow Pages Book Anymore.

With most local business searches happening online through local search engines and local search directories, local search marketing and local search advertising are more important than ever. A huge part of local search optimization is the local search directory. There are now dozens of places online to find local businesses, so knowing the best local directories for local search and how to submit to and get listed with all of these local search engines and directories is extremely important to today’s local business.

The Local Search Engines, Directories & Data Sources below are listed in order of importance to a local business, and it is critical to be in as many of them as possible , especially those ranked near the top. That’s why the list below was compiled.

Losing Business? Perfect Example

I was doing some research on Twitter.com , a place where people give short updates of what they are doing etc, and I came across this perfect example of a local business losing business because they were not listed well locally.

In this case, a local franchise of Kona Grill lost business because this person could not find its location via MapQuest.com or her GPS unit. From reading this article, you’ll learn how this incident could have been avoided.

Where to Start Listing Locally

Submitting to all these directories will take about 13 hours, which is a lot of time! Even worse, its tedious.

So start with Universal Business Listing (UBL).   I don’t mean this to be a review of Universal Business Listing, but they are the "big one". They feed listings to almost everyone else online, as you can see in the Notes area of the table below. Plus they also get you in 411 and GPS directories. The cost is nominal at $30, and included in that is the cost of listing with other paid directories like the Yellow Pages, Super Pages, Dex. You also don’t have to wait 4-6 months to get into InfoUSA which is all important online and off. Do the math and you’ll realize that its well worth it, plus , it gives you one place to make updates with in the future, not 26.

After submitting to UBL, hit at least the top 5 local search directories not covered by UBL. Do the rest too, but you’ll be leaving a lot "on the table" if you don’t hit at least those top 5).

Get Listed With These Local Search Engines, Directories and Providers

The above list was compiled by using a formula based on the popularity of the Local Search Engine/Directory, its recent increase or decrease of popularity, the significance of the sites it "feeds" and where it get "fed" its information from.

The Importance of Online Local Listings

Besides the fact that over 75% of searches for information on local businesses &services occur online, there are other compelling reasons to get listed on as many Local Search Directories as possible:

User experience – People tend to start with a general search online, then go from there. Eventually they locate the information they need, and if they have a good experience, will seek out that information resource (site) again. What this means for local business searches online is someone who searches for "Ice Cream" with a Zip Code, will end up a map of results from the search engine (why you need to be in Google, Yahoo and others) as well as results from local search directory sites like Merchant Circle, City Search and others (see the list above). If a user knows where they want to go already, they will use the map feature, if they are looking for reviews and opinions from others,they will go local search directory instead.

This is the current user experience today. It is not flipping through the Yellow Pages. Yes, the fingers are still doing the walking, only now its more like a tap dance on the keyboard, so you need to be part of it.

Reach – From the above ice cream example, you can see the reach you get from being listed. But data collected and managed online now goes a lot further. Not only is mobile local search picking up steam with the iPhone and similiar devices, but I often find places with my GPS while driving as well. (Gas, Food, Florists, Coffee Houses). Being online as well as on everyone’s GPS is pricless. Its being right where people are already looking.

Ranking – The better your search ranking with search engines like Google, the more often your site will be found, bottom line. When you are listed oline, you have a web reference to your site. The more references that are relevant the better. The more popular the site referencing you, the better. Listing with Local Search Directories provides you a way get popular and relevant sites linking to yours. Things are never really this simple, but you get the point, these links have value to your site ranking, and therefore to your business.

Writing for Local Search Engines & Directories

Steven Brier over at Local Internet USA brought up a good point to me recently, in that the focus on submitting to Local Search Engines and Directories is not so much about the time it takes to submit to them all, but rather the work it takes identify your keywords and create some compelling and attractive copy that will draw your target audience in from these local search engines and directories.  This obviously comes from a professional who see the results of well thought out copy.

Before submitting to search directories, your website should be optimized with your keywords.  You’ll want to make sure these make it into your listing copy where appropriate.  Here is more information on Local SEO for your website .

Note: This list does not cover local niches. If you are a restaurant for example, you will want to list with local directory sites like UrbanSpoon for instance. If there are niche directories with local listings, get in them as well! I’d put such a directory near the top of my list.

Now that we’ve discussed how to do SEO properly and how to get listed locally everywhere online, I’ll put some time into local online advertising (and not the useless opportunities you’ve been approached with by some sales guy).

Learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing

Everything you need to know about SEO is right here.

SEO Marketing is the thing I push for the most when speaking with any small business owner about their website. SEO Marketing is making sure your site appropriately comes up in the results for searches that your potential customers are making online while looking for a product or service your business offers.

Over the past few years Pay-Per-Click (PPC) got most of the attention, and most recently all people want to talk about is Social Media. For me, I have always kept my primary focus on SEO. Now, with top Internet Marketers reducing their PPC budgets, and online readers losing interest in Social Media Blogs, it appears my focus was well placed.

So, with SEO Marketing being the most powerful factor in the eMarketing (actually, User Experience is the most powerful, but SEO rules in terms of getting quality traffic to your site), I think it is key for any niche, local and/or small business to know how to properly optimize their site.

SEO Marketing Break-Down;

• Keyword Strategy – Make sure the keywords you use target the right people at the right time.
• Site Structure – Make sure the website architecture & taxonomy itself is SEO friendly and well organized
• Content – Make sure it is keyword relevant and rich.
• Incoming Links – Get as many popular and relevant sites to link to you possible.
• Analysis -  You need to know what is working and what is not.
• Fine Tuning – Learn to capitalize on your opportunities.

I decided to put the new eMarketing Search Engine on this site to the test by searching for "Start SEO", as that is what I need to do with this new site and sure enough, within the top 3 results was the best resource I have found to date.

The thing you need to remember is that, although information online is often free, and plentiful, it is not always "all the information" or is just wrong or misleading. When it comes to a topic like SEO you can search and search and search before you realize anything you need to do of value.

For my own SEO efforts, I really just use one resource. Its the one that forces me to do things right, and is one of the reasons I have been #1 on Search Engine for terms like "Belts" and "Caps" in the past (check out the volume on those keywords!).

If you are starting SEO, or want to re-optimize a current site, the only resource you really need is SEO – Fast – Start . I suggest you stop surfing around and reading Blogs for SEO tips till you’ve read this eBook.

SEO – Fast – Start offers a free eBook most would sell for around $50, and it really sets the record straight for SEO. The passion for SEO Marketing is evident and the owner, Dan Thies, is an eMarketing veteran like myself who hates the bull. You don’t even need to register to download the eBook! (Which is where I got the diagram above)  I suggest you stop whatever other eMarketing efforts you are doing, read it and do it. Seriously, in 4 months you will glad you did.

I hope this helps others as much as it has me.

REMEMBER: You can do this!

Now that you can been giving the resource you need for properly doing Search Engine Optimization, I will get busy compiling the list of Local Search Directories that any local business needs to submit to.