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Why Your Website Needs A Blog

Posted By Meagan Mills in Content Writing, Search Engine Optimization on February 24, 2010
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Blogging is very important for almost every website. There was once a time when blogs were personal diaries written by individuals, but that time has passed. Today almost every website has a blog, from the smallest freelance workers to the largest companies. Even the White House has a blog!

But why are blogs important for your business and your website? There are many reasons.

First of all, a blog helps connect your customers to your company. It allows you to regularly update your visitors with company news, information and changes. The comments section of a blog allows your users to interact with you. They can provide you with feedback, ask questions and make suggestions. This sort of connection with your clients will build loyalty and strengthen your brand.

Secondly, a blog is a great way to spread information. Many people read blogs and their very nature makes them easy to share. A blog post about a new development in your organization can be emailed, linked to, shared via social media and promoted on social news sites such as Digg and Reddit. You don’t need to call a press conference to provide some information to your clients.

And the best part is that the information will reach your audience unfiltered. You can write exactly what you want to write and not have to worry about the media distorting your message or your story being changed by word of mouth. There is no “broken telephone” with blogs. Every person that reads the blog will read the exact same message.

Blogs are also great search optimization tools. Google and other major search engines love frequently updated content and there is no better way to add this content to your site than through a blog. You can blog about your industry and add keywords to your text. This will make you much more likely to show up for certain search terms.

Finally, having a well written, frequently updated blog is a great way to gain loyal customers. If what you are writing is interesting and informative, people will return to your blog on a regular basis. They will read your website just like they read the newspaper. These loyal visitors will be much more likely to become repeat customers.

Blogs are very important for businesses of all sizes. They serve as a promotional tool, they build customer loyalty and they increase your client base. If you want your business to grow and prosper, you should consider adding a blog. Remember though, having a rarely-updated blog is almost as bad as not having one. If you decide to start a blog, spend some time on it and develop it properly. It will pay off in the long run.

Your Website Needs A Hook

Posted By Nathan Hughes in Search Engine Optimization on February 23, 2010
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In any given niche, on any given topic, there are hundreds of thousands of web pages. Even if you have the best search engine optimization and your site ranks number one for every important keyword in your industry, your site could still be doing better. You need a hook.

Today’s web surfers move quickly. They may click on your page if it is ranked highly, but if they don’t find what they are looking for, they will click away and head to the next search result. You need to have something that keeps people on your page and turns them into customers.

A good place to start is with your website design. Your design should be attractive but not overwhelming. It should also be easy to navigate. You want your visitors to understand the site structure immediately and not be confused. This will increase the likelihood that they remain on your page.

Another hook is the site’s written content. You don’t want to overwhelm your visitors in this area either. There are few things online that are more intimidating than a giant block of text. Very few people will read several long paragraphs online. You should structure your text so that it is easy to read. This includes breaking up the content into smaller sections, separating sections with relevant headings and using lists whenever possible to display important points.

You also need informative content.

People visit web pages with a purpose. They usually want some sort of information and it’s important that you give them what they want. If you write clearly and in a way that people can understand, they are more likely to stay on your page.

The best way to hook someone into your page is to give them something they can’t find anywhere else. Maybe your page has an in depth comparison of your product against the major competitors. Maybe it explains the benefits of your service in greater detail than others do. Maybe your page makes it easier to communicate with your staff or share ideas. All of these unique features are hooks that will make you stand out from the competition and turn your visitors into customers.

Once you’ve found your hook, you will usually see an increase in business. Your web page can be a very powerful persuasion tool and it can definitely boost your sales. Don’t overlook this valuable resource.

How Website Design Can Help SEO

Posted By Nathan Hughes in SEO, Website Design on February 22, 2010
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Many people consider website design and search engine optimization to be two separate, independent things. Web design is performed by web designers and SEO is done by SEO people. Both things are necessary, but for different reasons and they do not cross paths. This is not true.

The truth is that nothing exists in a vacuum. Your website design can go a long way to helping out your SEO efforts. Sometimes a few minor tweaks to your design will be enough to help you out a great deal. Other times an entirely new design is necessary. Here are a few reasons why website design helps SEO.

Better website design makes your website more straightforward

◦ Over time, many sites become convoluted. You add pages here and there. You create whole new sections out of no where. You unlink pages you no longer find necessary. This makes your website structure hard for search engines to follow. Having a brand new design will definitely help this. You can start out by taking a look at what you already have on your site, come up with a plan, and create a whole new structure. This is a great way to use your website’s design to your advantage.

Better Positioning of Keywords and Headings

◦ If you’re changing your website design, it’s also a great time to reevaluate your SEO plan. Maybe you’ve decided to target different keywords than the ones you chose when you first set up your site. Your new design can start with these in mind. Structure your page in a way that allows you to place your keywords and headings in areas where search engines will recognize them.

A Good Design Attracts People

◦ If your website looks good and is easy to navigate, people will spend more time on it. The longer someone stays on your site, the more likely that person is to read the content. The more content someone reads, the more likely they are to share or link to your page. When more people share or link to your page, your traffic increases.

Some people may link to you just for the design

◦ There are many websites that have sections on “featured website designs.” These pages give exposure to websites they feel are well designed. If you can get your page featured on one of these sites, you’ll help out your SEO efforts.

Finally, and this isn’t SEO specific, but well designed websites have lower bounce rates. People like to visit pages that look nice and are easy to navigate. Having a good website design is a great way to make visitors stay on your web page longer.

Online Marketing is Cost Effective

Posted By Sara Bergeron in Pay Per Click, Website Promotion on February 20, 2010
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The most important aspect to any marketing campaign is your return on investment. If you’re spending money to market your product or service you want to get as much of a return back as possible. The good thing is that online marketing is incredibly cost effective. The ROI from an Internet marketing campaign exceeds that of many other forms of marketing.

With pay-per-click marketing campaigns, you only pay when someone actually visits your website. Unlike print, radio, television or direct mail advertisements, you don’t pay when people ignore your ad or simply glance at it. You don’t pay for unrelated traffic either. When you participate in a pay-per-click advertising campaign, your ad is only displayed when someone searches for terms related to your website. You’re getting targeted traffic.

Pay-per-click advertising campaigns only reach customers that are actually searching for your industry. Rather than telling people what they want, you are approaching people that are already interested in your industry. Once someone types a related phrase into a search engine, they are already much more likely to be interested in your website than a passive user looking at an unrelated ad. People searching online are actively looking for information and those searching for products and services are likely doing so with the intent to purchase. This is the best possible time to advertise.

What you end up with are qualified customers that are willing to spend and you only pay when one of those customers makes the decision to visit your website. The visitors you end up paying for are much, much more likely to be interested in your company and your chance of making a sale will be much greater.

Another positive aspect of online marketing is that it is very easy to monitor your return on investment. If you mail out fliers, there really isn’t any way to know how many people throw them away. There also isn’t a way to know exactly how many people read your print ad or pay attention to your television or radio commercial. Yes, you can estimate the effectiveness of a marketing campaign by watching for any increases in business following one, but there is now way to know with 100% certainty.

With pay-per-click online advertising, you know exactly how many people click your ads and visit your site. Using website analytics in conjunction with advertising, you know how many of those visitors stay on your site and for how long. You can figure out exactly which keywords are performing well and which are not. This sort of specific tracking isn’t possible with other forms of advertising.

Being able to track your website promotion and fine tune your efforts based on the data you receive is just another reason why online advertising is so cost effective and important.

Your Website Could Be Your Most Valuable Asset

Posted By Sara Bergeron in Small Business Advice on February 19, 2010
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Businesses own and manage many assets. Some assets are used in day-to-day work, such as machinery or computers. Some assets are used for the production of goods or the delivery of services. And some assets are there to make you money and grow your business.

If you have a storefront or an office you know that it’s not just used to hold your employees and conduct work. An attractive storefront draws in customers off the street and a professional office can be used to hold meetings and impress clients. Most business owners know this and devote time and resources to creating a good atmosphere at work.

But many people do not do the same for their websites. The days of simply having a website for the sake of having one are long over. However, there are a lot of companies that treat their websites as nothing more than contact pages. We see several website that still consist of only contact information and maybe a bit of background on the company. This is wasting a valuable resource.

Your website is not just your business card. It is not just your storefront or your office. It is not just a marketing vehicle. It is all of those things and more. Your website could be the most valuable asset you own. And it has the greatest ability to generate profit.

Think about how much your website cost you for a moment. The domain name was probably around ten dollars. The web space is likely a few dollars a month at most. Even if you had your website professionally designed you’ve probably only spent a couple thousand dollars at the absolute most. When you compare those costs to the cost of renting an office or owning a company vehicle they are negligible. And yet your website is incredibly powerful.

Today people search the Internet more than ever. They spend more time online than ever. People have web browsers in their phones and their music players and their entertainment systems and when they want to find something they almost always look online first. You can take advantage of this fact by having a well-designed, frequently updated, functional and search engine optimized website.

You should consider a potential client visiting your website as a client visiting your store or your office. You wouldn’t dream of having a client visit an outdated, disorganized, amateur-looking office, so why are you letting them visit a sub par website?

Once you start to see your website as a sales tool and a marketing device, you will understand the need to make it presentable and representative of your brand.

How To Improve Your Bounce Rate

Posted By Meagan Mills in Google Analytics, Pay Per Click on February 18, 2010
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One of the main stats webmasters are frequently concerned with is a web page’s bounce rate. When a visitor clicks on your page and then immediately clicks to another page (either by clicking the back button, typing in a different address, following a link that takes them away from your site or closing the browser window) that visitor is considered “bounced.” They went to your site and didn’t stick around.

Obviously this is a problem. Every website has a goal. Either you want people to fill out a contact form, or purchase a product or read several pages in order to get hooked. Bounced visitors usually do not turn into customers. Sometimes a person visits a page, finds a phone number and calls, but that happens rarely. Most people click around a bit if they are interested in the site.

This issue becomes more of a problem if visitors are coming to your page via a PPC campaign and then immediately leaving. You end up paying for the clicks but not receiving any additional customers.

Here are a few ways to improve your website’s bounce rate.

Position links and navigation elements in easy-to-find areas.

◦ Where do you want your visitors to go? If you want them to contact you, the “CONTACT US” link should be easy to find and in a highly visible area. If you want them to navigate the site you have to make it easy to do so.

Keep it simple

◦ This refers to both design and text. If your website is too cluttered or confusing, people will click away. If a visitor ends up on your site and sees nothing but a wall of text, they’ll likely move on. Tone it down and only include what is necessary.

Make your page relevant

◦ When someone clicks on a search engine result they expect to find what they are looking for. If your page title is “Blue Widgets For Sale” someone that visits your page expects to find information on how to buy blue widgets. If that page is about why blue widgets aren’t as good as red widgets, most people will click away.

Use your analytics

◦ How are most people finding your site? If most of your bounced visitors are coming from organic searches, look into the keywords they are using to find you and tailor your site towards those keywords.

Speed up your site

◦ Very few people will wait more than five seconds for a web page to load. If your site takes longer than that a lot of visitors will assume there’s a problem and click away.

If you follow the tips above you should be able to reduce your bounce rate and increase your sales.

Landing pages can help you lower your bounce rate when using PPC ads. You can target your ads and your pages for specific terms to increase their relevance with searchers.

Some Tips For Choosing Keywords

Posted By Meagan Mills in SEO, Search Engine Optimization on February 16, 2010
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One of the most important things you can do when setting up your website is choosing the right keywords. These words will be the basis of your entire search engine optimization plan and they will ultimately be the words that visitors (and potential customers) will use to find your website. Many people overlook this step and they will have problems attracting traffic to their website.

Since keyword research is so important, it’s a good idea to spend some time on the process. It doesn’t make sense to just whip off a few keywords and get started. Proper keyword research takes a bit of time, but ultimately it’s worth it.

Here are a few tips that will help you with your keyword research:

Write down as many words as you can that have something to do with your website. This is the “brainstorming phrase” so don’t worry about the quality of the words and don’t filter yourself. Just write down as many related words as possible.
Think of key phrases as well as key words. Most people type several words into a search engine at a time.
Think about what you yourself would search for if you were looking for your own website. Most people have learned how to search and they usually type only the words they are looking for into a search engine. For example, you might type “blue widget company” into Google instead of “Company than manufacturers blue widgets”
Edit your list down to 15 or 20 key phrases.
Now perform those searches online. Type the list of words and phrases into Google, Yahoo! or Bing and pay attention to the websites that come up. Are they the kind of sites you expect? Are they similar to your own website? They should be.
Also pay attention to the number of sites that show up for your chosen phrases. The more sites that are listed, the more difficult the competition for those phrases.
Revise your list as necessary.

There are a number of sites online that can help you with your keyword research. Google’s Keyword Tool is a popular one. These tools can sometimes give you an idea of how many people have searched for those keywords in the past.

The keyword selection phase of your website development is definitely an important one. You need to choose keywords that represent your site, words that are not too competitive and words that people are actually searching for. If you choose the right keywords for your website, you’ll be off to a great start!

Why Google Analytics is Important

Posted By Nathan Hughes in Google Analytics on February 13, 2010
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If you spend any time at all working on a website, you’ve heard of Google Analytics. You may have even signed up for an account and looked around. At first the Analytics page looks confusing and even a little overwhelming, but it’s something that’s worth spending some time on.

There is definitely a learning curve to Google Analytics but, once you’ve figured out how the service works, you’ll soon find the information it provides you with invaluable. If you do not have the time needed to fully understand and learn how to use Analytics, you may wish to hire someone with experience to monitor and report on your page’s data for you. The information provided by Google Analytics is excellent and every website should have someone responsible for handling it.

What Google Analytics does is give you detailed, relevant data about your website traffic. The information you get is far superior to a basic hit counter. You’ll be able to find out so much more than simply how many people visit your website.

Google Analytics can tell you the number of visitors your site gets during any given period. It can break those visitors down into returning visitors and unique visitors. You can find out which pages those people are viewing, how long they are staying on your site and how they ended up on your website in the first place.

You can even break your visitors down further. Google Analytics will help you determine what country your visitors live in, which web browsers they are using, what their Internet connection speed is, what operating system and screen resolution they have and much, more more.

Depending on the goal of your site, some of this information can be more important than the rest but, no matter what type of website you are operating, Google Analytics can give you crucial information that will improve your web page.

How?

There are many ways to use Google Analytics to improve your website.

First of all, Analytics can tell you which pages your visitors are clicking on and how long they are staying on those pages. This information can help you structure your site. For instance, if you want people to click on the “CONTACT US” link on your site but you’re finding that no one is doing so, you may need to move that link to a more noticeable area of the page. If you find out that people are visiting your site but then leaving almost immediately, you will probably want to improve your site’s layout or content. This stat is called the “bounce rate” for your site. It tells you how many people only read one page of your site before leaving.

Another way that Google Analytics can help you is by telling you where your traffic is coming from. You can use this information to track the success of your online and offline marketing campaigns as well as to determine which terms your visitors are searching for to end up on your site.

Installing Google Analytics, monitoring it regularly and making website changes based on the information it give you can greatly improve your website. There are a number of companies out there that can assist you with this vital task. First2Search are experts in Google Analytics and we can help.

Turning Visitors Into Customers

Posted By Sara Bergeron in Pay Per Click, SEO, Website Design, Website Promotion on February 12, 2010
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Webmasters spend a lot of their time trying to increase traffic to their websites. So do SEO professionals, PPC marketers, social media marketers and website copywriters. And it’s obvious why.

You can’t sell a product or service without people knowing your company exists. In order to get noticed, in order to spread your message to as many people as possible, you need to increase traffic. There aren’t many website owners that can honestly say the don’t want more traffic and there are even fewer than would say they want less traffic.

But you don’t just need traffic, you need to convert that traffic into sales. If you run a website that makes money off of ad revenue, having a lot of traffic could be good enough. But if you’re selling a product or a service, you want to increase your sales.

So how do you turn casual visitors into paying customers?

There are a few ways. First of all, having a clear call to action on your website is important. You may want your visitors to fill out a contact form, or call you on the phone ,or purchase a product ,or request a quote or something else entirely. The bottom line is that you have to make this easy to do and you have to make the link that starts this process stand out.

A good call to action is obvious. It is the most obvious link on the page. It should be larger than the rest of the links on the site or use a different font or text colour. It should be positioned in a place where it is easily seen. A visitor’s eye is naturally drawn to certain areas of the screen and your call to action should be placed in one of those areas.

Another way to convert visitors into customers is through well-written website content. Your content should be persuasive and informative. It should give the user the information that they are looking for and it should also sell your company and promote the products or services you offer.

A well-designed website with quality content and good calls to action will convert more visitors into customers than a badly designed one that does not clearly point the user in the right direction. Sometimes the best way to test this is through trial and error. Move elements around the screen until you’ve found one that converts well. You’ll be happy you did.

Tips For Launching A New Website

Posted By Nathan Hughes in Pay Per Click, Website Promotion on February 10, 2010
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Launching a new website is a difficult and stressful thing to do. There are so many factors, so many little nuances and so many challenges that the task can sometimes seem overwhelming. Today we have a few tips for people that have decided to launch a new website.
First of all, there are a two different definitions of “a new website.” The first is the most literal: a brand new website from scratch. The second is a newly designed website. The tips below will help you when launching a brand new site and many of them will help when you want to launch an updated site as well.

Launching A Brand New Site

A ridiculous amount of work goes into a new website launch, far more than most people assume. There are many, many aspects that must be taken into consideration. Here is a helpful list that should make the process run a bit smoother.

Do your keyword research.

◦ This step is vital. The keywords you choose will affect your domain name, the URLs and names of the pages of your site, your title tags and descriptions as well as the direction that your written content goes. Keyword research is a crucial step.

Come up with an easy-to-navigate, scalable site structure

◦ Your web page shouldn’t be convoluted or difficult to use. Make sure all pages are easily accessible and it’s a good idea to think ahead at this point. What pages might you add later on? Where will they fit into your structure? This will help avoid problems in the future.

Create unique, relevant page titles and descriptions for each page

◦ Don’t use the same page title and description for each page and it’s a good idea to incorporate your keywords into your titles and descriptions.

Test, test, test

◦ Before you announce the site to the world, make sure it works. Check all of your links to make sure they work. Proofread all of your written content and eliminate typos or anything that is difficult to understand. If possible, have someone else go through the site and let you know if they have any issues.

Promote the page

◦ Once the site is launched, you’ll need to let people know it’s there. There are several ways to do this. You could start a blog and share your posts with others. You could create a profile on Facebook or Twitter and use that to promote your website. You could issue a press release about your company. Do whatever you think will get the word out.

Consider a PPC campaign

◦ Pay-per-click campaigns are very valuable for new websites. Since the site it is new, it will likely not rank very highly on the major search engines for a while. Instead, you can use PPC ads in order to bring visitors to your site.

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