Competitor study

Closely observe your main competitor’s websites to see how they attract their targets through their USP. Also, study their positioning on search engines, the keywords and URL they use. This study is not meant to be an end in itself, rather it should serve to enable you to identify how you can position yourself differently and draw competitor traffic to your website.

Keyed on target

On the face of it, getting the greatest number of hits vis a vis your competitors in the hope of drawing higher sales, seems the wisest thing to do. However, in reality it doesn’t work that way. You need to target as many people as you can from a specific target group by offering a product or service that is customized to them. It’s possible that your target market is geographically determined by region. In that case you must consider optimising your keywords for local search.

Supposing you have created water-proof socks through the use of breakthrough technology, you wouldn’t want to sell it to just about anyone, but rather to people who would best use it like mountaineers, trekkers, people living in damp environmental surroundings and such like. However, to do that you need to populate your website with appropriate content. Your web copy must include relevant information and keywords that will appeal to your target audience. Use long key phrases to increase your scope of being found in search engines when users search for information on your product or area of expertise.

Active forum participation

Search for online forums that are relevant to your product and join them. Be an active participant by engaging in discussions that will give you feedback on what your target audience is saying, their grievances and expectations. Transform yourself into a respected and authoritative subject matter expert by giving advice and sharing tips. Another means to further advance your objective involves including a link to your website in your forum signature to attract qualified traffic.

Once you have discovered your target audience and those who have the greatest need or affinity with your products or services’ your battle is half won. To fully win, you must continually work to engage these prospects and convert them into avid customers.

A good Press Release should have a solid news angle, well written and followed by a targeted distribution. In the earlier times lengthy press releases were written mainly targeted to be distributed through mass media including newspapers, TV channels and radio stations. In the present day brief Press Releases are written in the reverse pyramid format, giving the most important information first followed by other details. Now Press Releases are distributed to the online media as well - News Sites, Niche Websites, Blogs, Online magazines, E-zines, Newsletters etc.

With the growing trend of publishing Press Releases on the Web, many sites and online businesses get the SEO benefit from it. The issuing website that distributes a Press Release gains Valuable One Way links, placement in the news search engines and increased traffic to the featured website etc.

Mainly due to the SEO benefit and popularity measure, many sites issue a Press Release.

Generally a Press Release is written in the following format:

Release Time: Mention the Release Time; e.g. For Immediate Release OR Embargoed until Date

Headline: It is the Title of your News Story.

Subheading / Summary: It’s a 2-4 sentence summary of your Press Release.

Dateline: It contains the date when the news is being issued and the hometown of the person / company launching the Press Release.

Opening Paragraph: It should answer the 5 W’s of Who?, What?, When?, Where? and Why?

Press Release Body: Contains the details of background information, statistics etc.

Boilerplate: It contains “About Us” information regarding the issuing person / company.

Call to Action: For getting complete information mention complete Contact details & Web Address of the media person at the end.

A Press Release can be distributed by following methods:

1. Manual Distribution: You will have to search for media contacts yourself.
2. Hiring a Professional PR Firm: If your budget allows then you can opt for a professional service.
3. News / Press Release Distribution Sites: Such sites are often free but some good ones charge you for distributing each Press Release.

Media Contact Databases:

• Burrelles
• MediaMagnet
• Bowker’s News Media Directory
• MondoTimes.com

Paid and Free Distribution:

• PRnewswire
• BusinessWire
• MarketWire
• PRweb
• WebWire
• EmailWire
• PR.com
• PRurgent.com
• Free-Press-Release.com

An estimate of Press Release Viewership:

As reported by http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm there are 1,463,632,361 internet users around the world. Therefore you may well imagine the scope of viewership your Press Release has on the Internet.

Carve your niche

Big businesses have big requirements to cater to and larger markets to target. You can transform your small business size into an advantage by focussing on a niche market and profit from it. First, identify the niche you are able to best service. This makes your life much easier as you can rank for keywords that are directly relevant to your narrow niche. Even if your niche is already a competitive one, you can still figure ways to attract traffic to your website.  Take for instance the entertainment industry, which is by far a very competitive arena. However, were you to market your rock fest within a clearly-defined geographic area, the level of competition would be much less.

Personalise customer interaction

Mainly because of the enormity of the scale of business, big businesses tend to lose touch with their customers, who more often than not end up being dissatisfied because of poor customer service. As opposed to a small business, where customers can connect directly with decision-makers. You need to capitalise on this facet of personalised service, instead of shying away from the fact that yours is a small company and trying to impress your customers by portraying the image that you are way larger than you are. Use your advertising copy and title tags to emphasize the benefits your customer gains because you are a small enterprise viz. ready availability, personalised service, accountability, etc. If you take pride in your business and walk the talk, you’re bound to succeed.

Innovate and adapt according to market trends

It’s much easier for a small business to change their plan-of-action based on market dynamics, compared to a large business. Try to gain the first-mover advantage in spotting the latest trends through which you can target new markets and gain new customers. Make use of keyword tools and other research mediums to gather insights in markets that show great potential.

Self-fund the business

Generate a self-sustaining business process where the growth is aligned with your revenues. Looking at this approach from the lens of SEO implies focusing on revenues. In a pay-per-click optimisation scenario, you research your profitable and weed out the unprofitable ones. Following which, you pay only for keyword clicks that draw in revenues even as you cut back on clicks that don’t attract conversions. Based on the research output, you can confidently launch an SEO strategy that focuses on profitable keywords.

Partner to progress

While big businesses face several hurdles like legal hassles and indefinitely prolonged tie-up procedures, small businesses because of their lean framework are the ideal candidates to partner with. There are manifold advantages such alliances can deliver on the SEO front - link to their website, issue a press release to announce the partnership, join forces through common sales literature to market joint offerings. Get proactive with your partners, respond to their needs and they will more than happily link market for you.

Working at staying small can actually be a profitable business strategy - With agility, speed and personalisation on your side, there are things you can do which a large business would find great difficulty implementing. Eventually, size does help make a positive difference if you’re a small business with a smart SEO Strategy.

It is in our interest to ride the wave of optimism despite the current global financial meltdown that’s trying its damndest best to turn us into pessimists.

We should take a lateral view of our SEO strategies and demonstrate the clear value that can be derived through them. For instance, unprecedented but regular shifts in ranking algorithms by major engines are passé for most of us; however it’s time we took a closer look at the shift in the search audience’s criteria during a downturn and in general.

Searches focussed on price-sensitivity and value

You must think like a searcher and understand that your customers are bound to tighten their wallets across all sectors. Consumer searches will shift dynamically, making price sensitivity a popular focus on search engines. Thus it makes better sense to optimise for phrases that incorporate terms like ‘special sale’, ‘20% discount on A’, ‘cheap B’; especially if you are in the commodities space. Other sectors can modify searches by incorporating terms like ‘compare’, ‘recommended’, ‘best’, etc to get more eyeballs. Top ticket items like luxury goods will take a backseat on searches for a while.

Stress on measurable results

As against traditional advertising which lacks a viable measuring mechanism, search engine marketing offers a tracking system that’s bang on target. Be it PPC, email marketing, SEO, listings, etc; online marketing gives you detailed metrics on how your customers can find you, what they’re doing on your website and whether they are making purchases through you. You must take these RoI benefits into consideration when you have to make a choice between traditional and online advertising.

Negate risk

Even a small element of risk can turn customers away from you, doubly so during a recession. You can overcome this by gaining your customers trust in varied ways, reassuring them by showcasing certifications, awards and favourable reviews on your website. As well as through customer testimonials, expert opinions, whitepapers and case studies on your product or service that validate the fact that you are a trusted, safe bet during a crisis economic situation.

Strengthen surrogate marketing - drive traffic to channel partners

A lot of B2B products and solutions are marketed through channel partners, like distributors and representatives. However, during a financial crunch most of these partners don’t feel compelled to make any investments in the partnership. It makes prudent investment sense for you to drive qualified traffic to your partner’s sites. A cost-efficient measure, it is a smart online marketing strategy.

Bear in mind the changing industry horizon while optimising or revising pages for channel partners. Focus on targeting prospects who are seeking to purchase your products and services by including buyer’s guides, FAQs, checklists and consumer evaluations.

Let me know if you experience an upswing in sales after incorporating these recession-friendly SEO suggestions. Till then, hold the fort!

I’d like to share with you some smart and simple tips to improve website conversion rates that have succeeded for my customers. A common error that most website owners indulge in is to focus only on attracting traffic. But if little efforts are made to rectify simple website issues, it can lead to huge improvements in conversion rates. Listed below are my 5 quick tips to take your website visitors to the next level.

Easy accessibility and navigation

As soon as a visitor lands on your website, he must immediately be able to identify who you are, i.e. what business you are into and how you can benefit him. Use bold headlines and short paragraphs to catch his attention, as readers online tend to quickly scan text instead of reading through word-by-word. In this way your website is accessible and easy to attract attention to anything that is relevant rather than distract visitors away from your site.

Time is money

This adage works well for you as well as for your customers. Don’t waste your visitor’s time by trying to extricate irrelevant information, especially something that would involve the discretion of the user and impinge of his right to privacy. While it is prudent to collate critical information like shipping address, payment terms, etc; give your visitor the option to fill in less important information if he wants to instead of making it compulsory.

Initiate interest with information

Any credible eCommerce website will do more than merely function as an online catalogue. It will include relevant information on the product the visitor shows interest in purchasing. This information could be in the form of articles, customer testimonials, product reviews and the like. It will serve to aid him in the initial stages of his product purchase decision-making process.

Honesty, the best policy

Be direct, don’t beat around the bush as far as your product and pricing is concerned. If a product of yours will not be available in stock for a while, be honest enough to mention it. Rather than incurring the loss of a frustrated user who after having read all your product details, adds it to his cart and proceeds to the checkout payment process, only to discover that the product is out of stock.

This is true even for pricing, when visitors discover that delivery or shipping pricing is an added expenditure in addition to the cost they will incur on the product purchase. Ideally, it makes sense to display approximate delivery costs of countries your products are most often delivered to.

Clear Call to Action

If a user decides to buy a product from your site; he needs to add it to a shopping basket by clicking on a button or a link. However, this crucial button needs to be visible to him without the need to scroll, as several visitors are uncomfortable with scrolling. You should have an ‘Add Product xyz to your basket’ button, bold and around the top of the page. It need not be ‘in your face’ type of attention-grabbing call-to-action, rather an evident and visible one. This helps in a definite increase in sales as your visitor feels guided into the next step in the buying process.

Above all, make a concerted effort to differentiate yourself from your competitors by defining your product USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Because, finally this is the basis on what you target visitor to your site in the first place - converting them into customers is a matter of great attention to detail in creating a memorable customer experience.

Defining web success

I believe defining website success is a very subjective issue and consists of what success means to you and your company. It can imply different things to different businesses and institutions. While, in general, success for most businesses is more often related to the profits they derive through their website, in reality it is not the case for everyone. For instance, a banking website can measure success on various fronts, from enhancing customer service, to increasing online transactions and product sales. However law enforcement agency’s website would exist to simply disseminate essential public information, while a news portal may target traffic to justify its advertising rates. Therefore, for your website to succeed, you need to develop it with the desired goal in mind and figure out the most appropriate way to measure its success.

Now let us consider the other metrics you can incorporate to effectively ensure your website’s success.

Page-views versus time-on-page

Visitor page-views per visit are an indicator of how attracted your visitors are to your website. If you’re selling products through your website, a 1 to 1 ratio is bad unless the purchase button is clicked. The amount of time people spend on your website can help you discern if they are merely skimming through your content or reading your entire editorial. Though a longer duration cannot always be taken as a guarantee of your website’s effectiveness.

Lead-in versus web views

Your website’s aim may not be product sales, but possibly you are a service company where you’d like to disseminate service-based information through your website. Based on the information visitors discover on your website, you’d like them to contact you. In this case page views will be of no consequence unless they translate into leads. You should then focus on an SEO campaign that will probably bring you 50 potential clients rather than a 1000 page views that give you no leads.

One-time versus repeat visitors

If your website draws visitors back over and over again, it implies that there’s something that attracts them to return. Casual, one-time search visitors and stumble-upon social media draws cannot be considered as a yardstick of website success.

Traffic versus bounce rate

The bounce rate is a critical usability metrics and the best part is its available free through Google Analytics. This means if your website attracted 100k visitors from StumbleUpon with a bounce rate of 95%, in reality only 5.000 actually visited your site. Therefore, a website with reduced, but targeted and quality traffic combined with a low bounce rate would prove to be more effective than a website with huge traffic numbers.

Conversion ratio

There are times when you want visitors to recommend your website, participate in a survey or campaign, subscribe to your online newsletter or merely join your mailing list for future marketing opportunities. In this case, it is essential to measure this subscriber list as it can transform from a prospect to a customer evangelist in the near future. Ensure that you keep them on your radar through possibly including an RSS feed to track, inform and convert them to customers.

There are several ways to track your website’s effectiveness - it all depends on your business goals. If you have any interesting analytic techniques that may have worked for you, feel free to share it.

A) Strategize

Do a thorough analysis of your current website design and marketing strategy and establish the areas you need to focus on. You must source information or ideas that will help in future website ranking efforts. Without an initial analysis it can be difficult in the long run to establish the outcome of your efforts.

B) Competitor analysis

Understanding your competitor’s niche is critical in enabling you to create your unique selling proposition. Study the varied keywords your main competitors are showing up under on various search engines. This will help you determine how you want to position yourself as well as select additional keywords or phrases to use on the search engines.

C) Keyword research

Everyday millions of keyword queries are carried out on search engines. Analyse different keyword and phrase combinations that are apt to include within your site copy and design elements. You can collate keyword data using industry keyword tools like Wordtracker, Overture Suggestions, Google keywords etc.; as well as through site query statistics and actual search engine queries that users use to search websites.

D) Design basics

A fulfilling online shopping experience is a fundamental requirement for an eCommerce website visitor. Visitors should be able to access the appropriate page in a minimum of one or two clicks. The focus of an eCommerce web design should primarily be about the layout. It is crucial to catch the visitor’s attention and the areas that attract them when accessing a web page. Research on this topic suggests that the middle left side area draws great attention, followed by the portion at the centre of the page. These layout techniques create a simple navigation path for the visitor.

E) 1) HTML Sitemap

Create an extensive HTML sitemap for visitors to navigate as well as for those who are disabled or use text-based browsers. Sitemaps are web pages consisting of your most important and content rich pages. A sitemap will also assist search engines in discovering all your website content, so that they can scan it to include within their search results. Large eCommerce sites have several pages that need indexing and can really benefit from a sitemap.

2) XML Sitemap

You also need to include an XML sitemap to enable search engines to regularly track your content and product updates. These sitemaps are special files that contain links to the most important sections and pages of your site. XML sitemaps can be transmitted electronically to major search engines. While dynamic sitemaps are optimal, manually updated sitemaps can also be useful. eCommerce stores that require updates of their catalogues at regular intervals must consider incorporating an XML sitemap to enable search engines to find new products and the updated old ones.

Finally, ensure that you include simple and clean navigational elements and a site search that are easily accessible. Link all your pages back to your homepage and help pages like FAQs, forums, blogs, etc. Cross-link your topical content across your website so that search engines can pass the value to other content rich pages and users can easily find the content they are looking for. Google transfers the Page Rank (PR) to other pages on a site if you link one page with PR to another page with related content.

While it is essential for your website to be visually appealing, it is even more important for it to be search-engine friendly. Let us explore visitor and search engine friendly design tips that you can incorporate while creating websites.

Unique IP address

Every website must have a unique IP address. However, if your website is hosted on a shared platform, ensure that you have a unique IP address. Most search engines block websites that try to manipulate rankings. Thus if your website is hosted on a shared server that utilizes a single IP address for all websites on that server and a website using that address is blocked, then your website will be blocked as well.

URL keywords

Your webpage names should reflect the content of the page. You must keep page names within a reasonable length and avoid using special characters unless they form part of your keyword. URLs are a great place to showcase keywords. If you utilize a sub domain structure, sub domain names should also reflect your selected keywords.

Graphic relevance

Effective website designs balance HTML-formatted text and graphic images. Be prudent about how you use graphics. Ensure that they are relevant to your content and insert an alt tag with relevant keywords for search engines to understand, as they cannot read graphics. Do the same for your visitors, so that they can view something while waiting for the graphics to load.

Standard software use

Create the website using standard HTML. As software like FrontPage, Dreamweaver or a WYSIWYG editor will add unnecessary scripting codes enlarging the page size, making it difficult for search engines to crawl. At times such software adds codes that are unreadable by search engines, resulting in the website not getting indexed. In case you need to use these web page creator software, exercise discretion and manually avoid or delete unnecessary scripting codes.

Ensure quick downloads

It is important to make use of external Cascading Style Sheets and Java Script files in order to reduce the page size and quicken the download time. This will enable search engines to index your web page faster as well as improve your rankings.

Don’t get framed

Avoid using frames as major search engines don’t list websites that utilize frames. Try creating standard HTML non-frame companion pages that are search engine friendly. Also, input relevant text containing keywords on your FRAMESET page between NOFRAME tags for search engines to parse. It isn’t uncommon for search engines that index frame websites to link to individual, non-relevant frames. To avoid displaying individual frames, provide JS in each frame to call the parent frame when a child frame is selected. For instance, if (top == self) self.location.href = “default.asp”;)

Link back

Ensure that every page on your website links back to your homepage. Several search engines estimate pages based on the depth level within the website. Root-level pages are considered more relevant to the website by search engines than pages in subsequent levels. Create a site map page to help search engines find your content and post a link to it on your home page. Dynamic websites that don’t hardcode page links should always provide a site map.

Link colours

In general search engines read tags and are not bothered by what colour you use to define the link unless you create a transparent user link. This means that the colour used for the link is the same as the background colour. Most search engines are equipped to recognize a transparent link and will lower your page ranking for their use. So be careful not to use transparent link colours.

Customer focus

Websites must be created with designs and words that your target audience types into search queries. As meeting the target audience needs is the main reason for the origin of your website in the first place. The needs could be varied: branding, direct sales, customer retention, trust, communication and online visibility. Your site must gain the user’s trust and be persuasive enough to address those needs.

The advent of Web 2.0 and new media is witness to a plethora of corporate organisations today out there blogging, trying to give a personal touch to an impersonal business organisation. However, keeping in mind the premise of the Web 2.0 platform as a forum for building relationships, I’m not sure everyone is doing it right. I have noticed several companies using blogs to wax eloquent about their products and services, doing the very same thing they are doing on their websites.

At the very outset of creating your corporate blog, you must realise that a blog is not a sales tool. Rather, look at it as a customer experience enhancement device to understand your customers and prospects better, which can serve as a catalyst to future sales. Your organisation’s financial success will be guaranteed if you focus on bonding with your customers and prospects through shared experiences, building a community of individuals who value your domain expertise and appreciate your resolve to solving their problems.  Taking that into consideration let us focus on how a corporate can avoid blogging blunders and the measures it should incorporate to improve search engine rankings.

Define your blog raison d’être

Most organisations join the blog bandwagon simply because their competitors are on it. While blogs have transformed into a me-too phenomenon at most companies, there are others who use blogs as a disguise to market their products and services. Just as you set goals for your business, your blog too must be driven by specific business goals. Carefully think through your raison d’être, the goal you need to attain through your blog. It could be a platform to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, function as an online resource help or generate leads.

Set basis blog rules

Ones credibility takes prime focus within the blogosphere. Fool around with it and you stand to face ostracism from social media communities, something you won’t be able to undo for a very long time. As a corporate, is it even more pertinent for you to set some basic rules of conduct like acceptable topics, tonality, dos and don’ts, etc. Set accountability parameters and benchmarks to ensure that your blog attracts the right audience and functions as a productive resource. Circulate the blog rules in advance to employees who will double up as bloggers so that they can abide by them.

Create frequent posts

Blogs must be updated regularly and frequent posts are the norm. However blog update frequencies must again be set from within the company. A standard recommendation for blog updates is a commitment of at least two per week. Irregular posts can result in a vital loss of readership as people will stop visiting the blog if new posts are unavailable.

Get interactive and social

You don’t want your blog to function as a boring extension of your website. Based on the goals set for your blog you can invite participation from users through various means. Liven up your blog with sound and video bytes. Research indicates that blogs with interactive media, especially video and podcasts attract repeat visitors because of the ‘sticky’ user experience they deliver.

Make the most of social media channels; add social bookmarking buttons like digg, del.i.cio.us, Facebook, LinkedIn and others to your blog. Empower your readers to bookmark your content and share it through their networks. Enabling these influencers to spread your content across the web is a proven and effective method to gain prominence across online networks and rank high on search engines.

Focus on the right metrics

You must monitor your blog using web analytics to gain further insight into the credibility of your blog - to understand what content is popular with readers and what is not. However, while analytics are important, you must be careful not to focus on the wrong metrics. Most bloggers end up obsessing upon how many people are linking in, who’s mentioning their name and what their Technorati rankings are. While it’s ok to get excited about these things, it would be prudent to sideline metrics that are not in sync with your blog’s business goals.

For instance, a focus on lead generation should attract different metrics as against a blog focused on gaining advertising revenues.  Thus to increase your search engine rankings, your blog needs to attract the right metrics viz.:

• Domain expert blogs - media feeds, links from prominent bloggers, subscribers, inclusion in ‘lists’
• Advertising revenue blogs - unique visitors, page views and subscribers
• Lead generation blogs - inquires, duration on site, repeat visitors
• Blogs aimed at SEO - keyword rankings, links, referring traffic

While common metrics like RSS subscribers, unique visitors and page views are relevant to any blog type, focussing on metrics according to your blog goals will ensure significant improvements in your content creation and promotion effectiveness.

Turn influencer for maximum online visibility

It’s all about inclusion in the online community. Thus, while you follow all the rules and do a pretty good job of handling your corporate blog, you must maximise your online visibility and reach by simultaneously researching what other popular bloggers within your industry are saying on their blogs. Post comments on their posts and engage them in conversation. There’s a possibility that they could link up to your blog even as your extend your online community reach.

Remember, your blog will always be work in progress; you need to continually figure out ways to add value through it to your users. As you blog, ensure that your posts utilize search-engine friendly titles, keywords and links. These small SEO additions will surely ensure your blog gains top rankings, lending further credibility to your organisation.

Out of the several scores of myths that make their way into accepted SEO practices, I will focus the most popular top 5 myths.

Guaranteed! Top Search Engine Rankings

You better be on your guard if someone’s guaranteeing you no.1 rankings on Google, Yahoo! and other search engines. Such SEO companies focus on creating vague and long keyword phrases that most users will never use to search for your company, but are easier to rank for. When instead they should work on delivering rankings on competitive keywords that are relevant to your business. No one, but the search engines can guarantee top results in organic search listings. Even Google, in its ‘help center’ mentions that ‘No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.’ You must always verify the SEO company’s results for other customers to ensure that you’re not being had for.

Meta Tag Mania

Meta tags were incorporated at the dawn of the internet to assist webmasters as well as to enable search engines figure out what a website was all about. Soon enough, its original intent was abused as people started incorporating useless keywords into their meta tags hoping to trick search engines into ranking them higher. Search engines soon got the wind of this and now place less importance on the presence or absence of meta tags and don’t spider or index them anymore.

Multiple Domain Dominance

The most abused and dangerous SEO strategy is the folly of owning multiple domain names in the belief that it helps maintain high search engine rankings. If you own multiple domain names which point to the same site; search engines will penalize you, as according to them they are ‘mirrors’. It is advisable for you to build sites corresponding to each separate domain name, if you have multiple domain names and desire high search engine rankings. However, if you own a large business, based on your company strategy, you could have a main website devoted to the overall company and used the balance domain names to focus on your various product or service offerings.  My take on domains is focus; concentrate all your efforts on improving SEO for one website rather than doing it for several.

Lowdown on Frequent Site Updates

Updating your site so that it has fresh content and will ensure that you rank high on search engines is a myth perpetrated by some SEO’s. While regularly updating your pages can increase the search engine crawl rate, it does not necessarily increase your search engine rankings. Statistics are testimony to several high ranking sites on Google that were not updated for a long time. Thus, what serves to increase your website rankings are the inbound links to it. However, if you have quality content, feel free to update your website - it will encourage search engine bots to crawl it regularly.

PPC versus organic SEO

There is a lot of confusion on whether PPC improves your search engine rankings much better that organic SEO. The fact is that while PPC can rank your website high on search engines in the short-term, in the long run, if your organic SEO ranking is good, users will definitely visit your website. Besides, most users trust organic listings as compared to sponsored website listings.

My advice, test any SEO technique several times over on various websites to see if it really works or whether it’s still another myth that is effective because of a host of other factors.