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Get Your Visitor Experience Right

On May 16, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis

Have you ever visited a website and got frustrated because you either couldn’t find the contact information or had a hard time locating the path needed to be taken to make it through the website correctly? It is called user experience and if you get it wrong and forget to really apply it to your [...]

Have you ever visited a website and got frustrated because you either couldn’t find the contact information or had a hard time locating the path needed to be taken to make it through the website correctly? It is called user experience and if you get it wrong and forget to really apply it to your website than your SEO is going to go down the drain. Optimization means all aspects of a website not just search.

Before you think about launching an SEO campaign to drive targeted visitors have you stopped and taken a long hard look at your website? If you are not aware of how your user should be engaging with your website you might want to have someone do a really thorough conversion audit before you start driving traffic to it. The last thing a website owner wants to do is spend a great deal of money trying to drive visitors to a website only for the visitor to arrive and leave due to a poor user experience. Your website visitor needs something to do in order to stay on your website. You don’t want them leaving due to boredom or lack of direction. Lead them down a path to your ultimate business goal. Remember that user experience is just about converting that visitor into a lead or a sale. It is also about creating an emotion for that user so that they engage with your website a bit more than normal.

Your website needs to pull some sort of emotion out of your visitors whether it is from an engaging video, blog or you guessed it, your content!. It is not just about launching a campaign and trying to dump targeted visitors and crossing your fingers hoping they might call or make a purchase. Give them something to do and smile about. Create a community type feeling around your website and give people a reason to bookmark it.

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Don’t Forget to Market Your Blog

On January 7, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis

People blog for different reasons. Some people have an idea for a blog and they want to turn that idea into a real moneymaker. There have been real successful bloggers who have done this, but most attempts that I have encountered have failed. They had an idea and turned their blog into a business model. [...]

People blog for different reasons. Some people have an idea for a blog and they want to turn that idea into a real moneymaker. There have been real successful bloggers who have done this, but most attempts that I have encountered have failed. They had an idea and turned their blog into a business model. Nothing at all wrong with that. How you can tell if a blog has failed is if you see it ranking well in the search engines and have not seen any new posts for months. I can’t tell you how many blogs I have seen, really great ones that get abandoned due to lack of advertisers or poor monetization strategy…that is another blog post topic all together. Others have taken a blog and used it as a marketing tool for a business. Is there a different strategy involved?

Yes. A blog as a business model is different than a blog as a marketing-tool model. But, in reality, both types of blogs require a marketing strategy all to themselves. The key is to drive targeted visitors to your blog from many different sources and which ever type of blog you have – business or marketing tool – you’ll need to market the blog. People often forget that a blog (especially a stand alone one) is a website that needs to be marketed.

There are a variety of ways to market a blog, but it all starts with the blog itself. The most basic form on online marketing is search engine optimization. This is the beginning. By optimizing your blog for search engine traffic you are giving your blog the basic building blocks to act as a business on its own or be used as a marketing tool for your existing business. In some cases, you can even do both. Without a solid SEO strategy for your blog, however, success as either will inevitably allude you. Don’t forget to SEO your blog.

Search engine optimziation is one really good source for targeted visitors however there are many other great ways to drive targeted visitors to your blog, they include:

1. Search Engine Optimization – Make sure your blog has excellent content and is naturally optimized.
2. Online Publicity – Publish newsworthy press releases online to drive relevant visitors and good inbound links.
3. Social Networking – Become active in the top social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and talk about your blog.
4. Social Bookmarking – Submit your blog posts to good social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon.
5. Guest Blog Writing (on other blogs) - Over time develop your credibility in your niche and write for other related blogs.
6. Opt-In Email Marketing – Build a list through your blog and send out newsletters that drive people back to your blog.

The bottom line is blogging is a useful and long term approach that really works. If you are launching a business as a blog or using your blog to market your business, either way take the time to develop a long term marketing strategy. Believe me, it will be worth your time!

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What Great Content Really Means

On January 6, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis

You’ve heard the entire search engine optimziation world repeatedly talk about how you need to create compelling or “great” visitor focused content. We all have heard many times that once you have great content then you will magically make you a lot of money or boost your search engine rankings like a magic carpet [...]

You’ve heard the entire search engine optimziation world repeatedly talk about how you need to create compelling or “great” visitor focused content. We all have heard many times that once you have great content then you will magically make you a lot of money or boost your search engine rankings like a magic carpet ride. :) Well, there may not be any magic involved, but you should always produce the best possible content for every page of your website. If you spend the time writing (or hiring a great content copywriter) content for every page of your website, generally speaking it can help your website achieve great results.

These results are not only from the search engines but having great content on your website helps in several key ways, including the following:

  • Great content helps deliver your message to the audiences of your website.
  • Great content (with excellent call to action) helps generate your conversion (leads, sales, etc).
  • Great content keeps people on your website as long as possible.
  • Great content keeps them coming back.
  • Oh yeah, great content can be naturally optimized to generate the right type of targeted visitors from the search engines to your site.

Keeping clients coming back does not necessarily mean to your website, but it does mean to your business. Once you’ve sold them you’ve just got to keep them and that means good customer service (that’s a different blog post). Keeping people on your site means closing the sale. But you have to keep them long enough to make your case (or sales pitch) by having great call to actions on your website.

Another question that I always get asked is, how much content do I need on each page of my website? The answer to that question as far as I am concerned is quality over quantity is the best policy. If it takes 200 words to accomplish your goals and deliver the message on a particular page then so be it. If it takes 100 words of great content to describe a product, then that works too. Be in tune with your audience and understand what is too much or too little content.

Great content is no magic trick. It’s just good copywriting. If you can’t do it yourself, hire someone who can!

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Is SEO Your Bottom Line Or A Sideline Activity?

On November 3, 2009, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis

Different online marketers achieve success in different ways. But I’d be willing to bet that most of the ones who hit it big do so by using search engine optimization as a primary internet marketing tool to drive targeted visitors that lead to sales. Why did I come to that conclusion?
Besides having been [...]

Different online marketers achieve success in different ways. But I’d be willing to bet that most of the ones who hit it big do so by using search engine optimization as a primary internet marketing tool to drive targeted visitors that lead to sales. Why did I come to that conclusion?

Besides having been in the internet marketing industry for 12 years, I have seen almost everything (believe me NOTHING surprises me at all! :) Also, social media marketing is still struggling and learning to find its groove with companies from a marketing perspective. A recent survey by CitiBank and GfK Roper reveals that most small business owners don’t rely on social media (in fact 63% of all small businesses surveyed said that the social networking component of social media marketing was not helpful at all!). As a result they get more sales and leads out of their own websites and search engine optimziation efforts. Even without that survey, however, I’d still say the same thing.

Most people, even today, if they want to find information, go to one of the search engines. A few people Twitter a question or head to Yahoo! Answers. But most of them will still attempt to search through one of the search engines. If they don’t succeed in getting the answer to their question on the first search query, they’ll send another query. The same search with a twist.

In other words, search is still the major factor in website success. A few years ago, no matter which website you were looking at, about 80% of the traffic was coming from a search engine – and most of that from Google. In fact, I think at one time about 80% of all Web traffic came from Google. Now it’s probably around the 70% range. The other 30% comes from various social media websites and third-party referrers.

This tells me that you can’t really succeed online without search engine traffic. Most social media traffic still doesn’t convert. That is, a low percentage of social media traffic converts compared to a higher percentage for search engine traffic, which includes organic search and paid search.

That’s why I think online marketers who make SEO a major factor in their online marketing campaigns will do better than marketers who make SEO a sideline activity. Which one are you?

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