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SEO & PPC Articles |
Web Design and SEO: The Debate
Web design focuses on appearance and aesthetics. SEO focuses on text quality and quantity. Web designers don't really like to clutter their designs with text. They prefer to see the images stand out on their own. SEOs on the other hand don't like images that much. Sure, an image can be optimized for the search engines by adding relevant alt attributes and titles, but this is not enough for a site to be properly optimized. Page copy still plays the most important role in website optimization for SEO.
As a business owner you are caught in the middle of this conflict. For your website to convert you need both design and optimization. There is no middle way. You cannot have a little bit of this and a little bit of that and still be competitive. You cannot have just one of the two either. Without optimization your site is invisible to the search engines, hence to your potential customers. On the other hand, without a good design your site, although not invisible, will get nothing but hits. Web users are picky and if they find nothing of interest on your site they will just surf to the next site.
Having a beautiful website no one can find is like having a store and keeping the doors locked. You know it is there, you've done a great job decorating it, the products are waiting for the customers, yet no one comes in.
When you pay for web design don't automatically assume that by paying thousands of dollars on a layout you'll be a hit on the Web. The Web is a highly competitive place. There are already thousands entrepreneurs who, just like you, invest in design and hope to become the new "it." Without online marketing (SEO being an important part of the discipline) all these entrepreneurs will remain in the shadow, with their beautiful websites closed to the world.
SEO is the key to that virtual door you need to open for your customers. It is important that you consider this tool when you first conceive your site. Web design and SEO don't need to be enemies. There are enough professional agencies that employ both web designers and SEOs who work together to develop a good business website, a site that is SEO ready, accessible and readable with any browser. You just need to take your time, research and send a few inquiries. Then choose the company that answers your questions in a timely manner, basically choose the company that proves a clear ability of designing with W3C standards and a clear understanding of the online trends and realities.
Then balancing content with visual appearance shouldn't be such a difficult task. Aside graphics and artwork you have to choose proper font types, in a readable size, with colors that harmonize with the layout of the site and so on. If your site is not SEO ready from the first stage of the project you'll face additional costs after you launch. SEO ready means a site that is properly coded (errors in the HTML code might stop some search bots from crawling and indexing your site correctly), with good navigability and good internal linking structure.
On the other hand, SEO and appearance are not the only traits of a good site. Brand conscious companies should look at the broader picture: instead of debating what is better online entrepreneurs should ask themselves what works best to convert visitors into clients.
Studies show that an over optimized page might hurt the user-experience of people with disabilities. For example, many SEOs stuff the image alt attributes and their alternative titles with keywords. Blind and other visually impaired people who use screen readers to access the Web and read the pages cannot see the images and, instead of listening to a relevant image description, they'll hear... nonsense.
Usability and accessibility are equally important as design and optimization. Strangely enough images are better for usability. They give focus to the design and when properly optimized they provide for less cluttered website content. The problems appear when the images slow down the loading times, but with the use of CSS loading times should not be a big concern.
As search engines prefer fast loading sites, it is easy to understand why good coding and optimization are so important. Poor coding raises many other problems aside loading times and might increase costs when you need website updates, especially when your website administrator is not the one who created your site.
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5 Steps For Taking Your Product To Market
Getting your product on the market requires exceptional product knowledge, creativity, imagination, persistence and energy. Here are five steps that can be implemented with low, or no cost. Now, in some cases, your "product" may be you! Are you a professional speaker? Success coach? Entertainer? Take these steps and get your product on the market in record time.
1. Create a Marketing Plan - An excellent marketing plan is essential and serves as the blueprint for your business success. Begin by confirming that there is in fact a market for your product. Many overlook this and end up making one of the most expensive mistakes of their lives. If there is a market for your product, get the most recent market synopsis for your business. Do your research online and at your local library or bookstore. There is a plethora of information and literature available to help you succeed. Speak to individuals who operate businesses like yours.
Next, do your homework. Write down your specific goals, objectives, and desired outcome for your business. After you've done this, you're ready to create your marketing plan. Be sure to include your:
- Product description
- Target market
- Customer demographics
- Price
- Competition
- Promotion
- Advertising
- Profit percentage
- Product Guarantee
- Product/liability Insurance
- Budget
2. Set a Launch Date - What is the exact date your product goes on a shelf, in a rack, in front of an audience, or online? Write it down. Your launch date not only gives you something to aim at, it helps keep you accountable. Your Launch Date is considered your debut, or grand opening. It is the day your customers line up throughout cyberspace -- or around the block -- to be the first in line to buy your product.
The launch date is typically set far enough ahead for a full-steam ahead marketing effort. Setting a launch date six months in advance is the minimum I would suggest for a strong marketing campaign. Anything less would compromise your efforts and results. Six or more months out increases the likelihood for great previews, reviews, blurbs and other publicity mediums. And be sure to arrange radio phone interviews and personal appearances with radio and television stations.
3. Work With a Business Coach or Small Group - Everyone can benefit from the guidance and support while putting their product on market. A business coach or a business support group can help you reach your destination. You can't help but benefit from the shared experience and knowledge of others. These resources can also help you hold yourself accountable for reaching your daily goals and objectives. The primary goals include helping you grow -- and stay -- in business. You can meet once a week, once a month, or even once a quarter. It's up to you.
4. Take Action Every Day - This tactic requires discipline and is one you cannot afford to overlook. You must do something everyday which moves you closer to putting your product on the market. Be sure you are advertising and utilizing both online and offline resources to do so. Go out and network and establish business relationships in your community. Join your chamber of commerce. Approach your niche market everyday with the intent to advance. Be creative, daring and tenacious. Pick up the phone and tell the people about you and how your product can change their lives for the better.
5. Sell, Sell, Sell! - Sell, sell, sell. - But not without a specific strategy. Depending on your product and respective marketing plan, you may want to focus selling to individuals first, then small businesses. As you reach your goals, you are more than likely to open up to retail or wholesale. Business-to-business selling is fundamental in the success of many products. Todd Mogren, a successful Internet Marketer says, "We began selling to individuals. Lots of our growth today is coming from businesses, including IBM, UCLA and Ford."
Illustrate the low cost and benefits of your product. Break down the price to its smallest increment and make the benefit clear. For example,
"Enjoy delicious, high quality, coffee delivered to your home for less than 80 cents a day."
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11 Tips for Pay-Per-Click Success
This list details some very important points to keep in mind when creating or managing any pay-per-click campaign. Is this all there is to know about pay-per-click advertising? Absolutely not, but for those new to PPC it should serve as good place to start. Additionally, pay-per-click veterans or at least the moderately-seasoned will want to touch upon these points now and then to brush up on their fundamentals.
1) Do your keyword homework - Use Google's free Keyword Tool or sign up for a WordTracker account to find out which keywords are the most competitive. The more competitive the keyword, the more expensive your clicks will be. While you're finding out which keywords are too expensive you'll come across some that aren't being targeted heavily by advertisers. Take a good look at these - they may be your keys to a successful niche campaign.
2) Don't bunch your ad groups - You should be striving to separate your ad groups by keyword. Whatever your target, separate your keyword lists into closely related groups containing the same target words and write ads geared specifically to those words. Your ads will show up higher in results based on their quality, and search terms show up bold in results - a click-through rate booster.
3) Drive home your selling point - What's your offer? Why are you better than the others? Remember that your ads are going to display with your competitors. The difference between a user clicking your ad and clicking a competitor ad is about 100 pixels on the screen - or a millisecond of time. You need to convince them that you are the one they want. You are better. Grab them.
4) Don't send users to your home page - This is perhaps one of the worst things you can do to your Pay-Per-Click campaign. Internet users are notoriously impatient. Send them to your home page when they were searching for a specific product or service and see how fast they leave. Don't waste your advertising budget - send them to optimized landing pages.
5) Optimize your landing pages - Your landing pages need to drive something home immediately for your users: "you have landed in the right place." They need to know that, yes, this is what they were looking for, here it is, here is why it is better than the rest and here's the easy thing they need to do to get it. In most cases you'll need to create multiple landing pages based on your different ad groups and keywords, but look at it this way - if your users aren't landing at pages geared exactly to their search phrases they'll leave and take your advertising budget with them.
6) Don't lie in your ads - People aren't dumb. If you promise something in your ads you had better well deliver. Otherwise you'll not only waste advertising dollars but damage your brand. Be honest, and focus on points that make you stand out from the competition. Grandiose ad text might bring in clicks, but if it isn't the truth it won't bring in conversions.
7) Your domain name counts - In most cases you can display a domain name that you own as the "display domain" but point the ads to a page on a different domain. Why does this matter? If you own a domain name that contains the keyword text it will show up bold and increase conversions. Enter the optimized domain as the displayed domain, point the ads to your landing pages and you can expect higher CTRs in most cases.
8) Utilize negative keywords - Google has a new Negative Keyword Tool that will allow you to find negative keywords that you should specify for your ads. Negative keywords are those that you don't want your ads to display for. For example, if you're selling "blue widgets" you don't want to display your ads to those users searching for "free blue widgets." If you don't use negative keywords you are missing out on a chance to get more targeted traffic to your landing pages, and this can really hurt your conversion rates.
9) Test, test, and test some more - The greatest thing about internet advertising is the ability it grants you to measure your success. It's easy to create A/B split tests with Pay-Per-Click advertising. Change one word, add a comma, include a value proposition. . .just make sure you only change one thing for each split or you won't know which variable it was that made the difference! You'll find out right away that this is a great way to optimize your click-through rates - just don't forget that clicks aren't everything!
10) Don't focus too heavily on CTRs - Getting tons of clicks isn't always the name of the game. In fact, if you aren't using proper techniques to ensure that you're getting targeted traffic and sending it to well-optimized landing pages you can blow through your advertising budget in no time flat. Remember that the success of any advertisement is getting back more than you put in. It's an investment, not a cost - so do all that you can to better your rate of return!
11) Don't pigeonhole yourself - We all know that Google AdWords is the most popular Pay-Per-Click service out there. Your competitors know it, your users know it - even your grandma might know it. It would be foolish to ignore Google as a venue for advertising, but don't forget that there are other search engines out there who offer similar services. Yahoo!'s new Panama search system is catching on, and Microsoft's adCenter is nothing to sneeze at either. Both companies are currently offering sweet promotional deals to new Pay-Per-Click advertisers to stay competitive so take advantage and diversify!
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