Search Engine Marketing Spot

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I am sure you have read how important getting your website listed with DMOZ, well that was true years ago, however things have changed. In today’s marketing world, it is all about the content of your website, the links pointing back to your website and of course the on page optimization factors. 4 or 5 years ago everyone wanted to be on DMOZ because it would help there ranking on Google. Today however there are plenty of websites ranking very high and have no DMOZ listing. The directory is still edited by humans, just not very many who do the job of an editor. There are also editors who take there title and make money with it by offering to list your website for money, in some cases thousands of dollars. Google still uses DMOZ, however they do not update there system very often. I would think that with Google doing so much these days, they would dump DMOZ all together and create there own directory. Back to the topic though, do not stress out over not getting listed with DMOZ. People have waited years after submitting there website information and to this day have not seen a link or even got a response back of any kind. Worry about marketing your website by other means, stressing out and thinking a DMOZ listing is a crucial factor in your marketing campaign will only slow you down.

On a side note, Jeremy over at Shoemoney.com wrote a post about a recent experience he had with a DMOZ editor, check out DMOZ Extortion

Lee Davies - Email Me

Company Name: WebPageOne Solutions Ltd.
Position: CEO

Search Engine Marketing Company

I became interested in the subject of Search Marketing back in 2003, and still study the various methods of Organic SEO Techniques today. I reached the conclusion that SEO is about providing Relevant information and Quality Content, not just to the search engines, but to real visitors. An effective SEO Service should always provide the Client with a good return on Investment.

WebPageOne Solutions has been established formally as a limited company since February 2007. Having looked into the various aspects of Internet Marketing, I decided that the main focus of the Company would be Organic Search Engine Optimization.

I am also fully conversant with Local Area Network Design and IT Infrastructures, having spent around 21 years working as a Consultant within the IT Networking Industry. The Client based ranged from large Blue Chip Corporations to SME Company’s.

WebPageOne Solutions has grown organically, and now has a good client base that would provide potential new customers with testimonials to our Quality of Service. We offer web design and web hosting services through our business partners, which allows us to focus strongly on the Promotion of our Clients products and services.

The Search Marketing industry although well established within certain sectors, remains little known to the Global Business Community. Therefore I believe that the growth factor within the Search Industry is enormous. Established Search Marketing companies providing quality services and products, will certainly benefit over the next 5 years.

The Search Industry needs high levels of promotion and advertisement. Our joint venture or mission as Professional Search Marketers should be to build awareness and educate.

If you would like to featured On The Spot, please email steve “@” semspot dot com   There is no charge for being On The Spot so please contact us today.

1. Remove All Distractions

The viewer has come to your site from one of your ads and is looking for something specific that you are offering. Remove any item and or text that is not related to what you are talking about or that could confuse the viewer. Good was to convert that viewer into a sale or lead is by not confusing them.

2. No Navigation Menus

Get rid of them, you want to convert that viewer into a sale or to lead so why give them the option to leave and browse around? Now if you have a custom navigation for the conversions process then yes keep it. However some people will use a navigation system to show the viewer more information or to give them contact information. If need be, put your contact information on the bottom of your landing page. You want to convert the viewer, not give them reasons to leave your landing page.

3. Short Text and Simple Graphics

To have the maximum conversion rate try and keep your text to a minimal. Give the viewer enough information that will make them want more information or still be interested in buying what it is you are selling. Using graphics is a must for any landing page, people are more visual and want there answers fast. Do not make off the wall crazy graphics that can distract or cause the viewer to leave. There are those E-book landing pages that read just like a book, I am not sure how well those do in today’s market buy they sure were LONG.

4. Landing Page Is Not Your Home Page

As simple as this sounds, it is still over looked by people and even companies running an online marketing campaign. Yes your homepage is the face of your company and what you are about. It is not however the face of the marketing campaign you are running. You want to convert the traffic you are getting, having them go to your home page gives them too many choices and reasons not to fill out your form.

5. Make Your Call To Action Clear

Click here for more information, fill out the form below for more information, click here to purchase now. Whatever your call to action is, make sure it stands out and is easy to find. Do not make it the focal point of your landing page, but at the same time to not keep it in the same size font or color that you are using for the rest of the text.

6. Keep Your Forms Short

When people see a long form to fill out, quite a few will leave the site. Those long forms have a way of scaring people away from your page, so keep them short and to the point. Only ask the most essential questions that you need to know. Do not ask for a second phone number, work number, cell number, zip code (if you already asked for city/state), middle name, apt. number, etc.

7. Testimonials Work

Give the viewer something more positive to read about what it is you are offering. What is more positive to them then reading a testimonial from a happy customer? If you do not have any testimonials you can always make up your own. Some will argue that it is not ethical, but you want to make money and convert your traffic so do what you must.  

8. Important Information Above The Fold

Above the fold is the part of the website that the viewer can see without having to scroll down. You want to convey your message above this line so the viewer can see it right then and there. Making them have to scroll down to read what your selling message can be the difference between a conversion and them leaving the page.

9. Spelling

You have to make sure that every word is spelled correctly on your landing page. Viewers will catch the misspelled words and this can be a turn off to them. Why should they request more information or purchase something when they cannot even spell correctly?

10. Testing

Do not use just one landing page, create several of them and test to see which one converts the best for you. Using just one landing page in your marketing campaign is a detrimental practice that many people still do. Just because you have spent the time or paid to get it done professionally does not mean it will produce the best results. Test, test, test, test and test some more. After this you will see which landing pages had the highest conversion rates and can only use them in the future.

 

I know some out there will disagree with me about making a false testimonial to put on your landing pages. Seriously though, how many websites out there do the same thing? I bet if they were to admit to it, even large companies have testimonials posted that were written by someone in house or there marketing company. You want to convert your traffic to the best of your ability, using a false testimonial might make the difference to some of your viewers making the call to action or leaving your site. Some might call this “blackhat marketing” but I consider this just another marketing tactic to use in your aresenol of weapons.

Exampes of a testimonial you could use for a lead generation landing page:

Mary Smith: I filled out the form and was contacted with 24 hours with great customer support to help me out.

Now if you were selling something like a rain coat. You could put down:

Mark Smith: This is a great rain coat at such a good price, I take it almost every time I go camping or to a outdoor event.

If you know your rain coat is good and you are selling it for a good price then that is fine. I am not saying go out and say the worlds greatest product, or so an so bought this and is now making $5,000 a month. Use common sense, adding a positive testimonial will help.

Spot On Tuesday Tip Of The Day

With the amount of marketing forums and blogs on the internet today, there is a plethora of information for you to go through and read.  For the most part, there is just too much to keep up with, that is why most people have a set of websites that they visit and read on a daily basis.  These sites help them keep up to date on the world of search engine marketing and optimization.  While reading through your daily websites you need to keep in mind that not everything you read is necessarily true.  Rumors and false marketing methods are put out there like bait, to see who is going to bite and it and try it out.  If you take the bait and start to incorporate the false information into your marketing or optimization then you could be setting yourself up for a big disappointment and possible disaster.  The disappointment being you see that the idea or tactic did not increase your traffic and turned out to be a large waste of time.  The disaster being it could have ruined your domain name and your website has been penalized by the search engines. 

When reading about new marketing or optimization methods please do a little more research on the topic if you can.  This way you are not going into at full speed with no real answers for yourself.  Now I understand that coming up with your own marketing and optimization techniques is what we all strive for and that involves taking risks and not knowing the outcome.  That situation is totally different because you didn’t read about it anywhere, it was thought of by you and only you can find the answers through trial and error.  However reading it on a forum or blog you should be able to read up on other people who have tried that strategy to see how it worked for them.  Keep in mind that some techniques work better for some niches and are horrible for others.  This is where I ask you to try and do a little bit more homework.  Doing this can save you from possible wasted time and money.  Just because you read it on the internet, doesn’t always mean it is true.  Like I said before, it could just be bait being tossed out there to see if that person’s competition will take the bit and waste the time, effort and money.  Please do not make that mistake with your marketing or optimization campaign. 

Hamza Shams - Email Me

Xyber 3D Studios

Hey I am a Student Graphics Designer. I always admired the way I saw things on the web, and in its anticipation i started making somethings of my own. Starting from making Computerized E-Cards to Flash Animations later. It was about 3 years back. I would test my skills every now and then. But then in this summer, I finally decided to start my own Web Designing Company. A company with a Difference, though not at a large scale, i was still determined to start a small organization, I hired some people, but they eventually turned away because I was not able to pay them, come on I am 16 and I wasn’t able to market my services that much. So I decided to sell Virtual Credit Cards Instead, so now after just 2 Months, I stand with a Domain, a Website and a Team of 4 Professionals. Plus I am hired by a Virtual Credit Card Company as a Reseller. And now I am also buying domains now and then.

Starting this week I will begin another new segment called “Spot On Tuesday Tip Of The Week”.  I have watched Hells Kitchen for the past three years and always hear Gordon Ramsey refer to things needing to be near “Spot On”, which is slang for perfect.  So starting this week I will do my best to post a near perfect tip of the week in reference to search engine marketing.  Nobody is perfect, however I will do what I can to give you near perfect advice each and every week.  I hope to see some feedback and interaction from the readers on these tips.  If you have tried them in the past, let us know the out come.  If you think a change is needed or have an idea to make it work even better then please by all means say something.

I will not be flying out to San Jose, California to attend SES.  I have my daughter attending her first day of first grade tomorrow and two projects that need to be completed by this week.  I would love to be able to attend the event this week but I have to put my main priorities first.  Don’t get me wrong, attending conferences is a great way to learn what is going on in the industry and to meet new people.  However they are also like a small vacation which I do not have time to take currently.  To everyone reading who will be attending, I wish I could be there and meet all of you but maybe next time. 

Jeremy over at Shoemoney.com normally runs a free shirt Friday article on his blog where readers of his can send him free shirts in hopes of getting picked. This Friday was a little different then the normal, it was free tatoo friday where a reader sent in a picture of two tattoos he had put on his arm. Joe Tamargo, aka Sundaybrew has one tattoo of Digital Point forum and the other being Shoemoney.com. Each tattoo had the logo and name of the website on his arm. Talk about some dedication on his part, or maybe just a little crazy? I wonder in 30 years if he will regret ever getting those tattoos done? I don’t care how much I like a website; I personally would never do anything like that. That however is one hell of a permanent link; I wonder how long it will take Google to index his arm.

 

UPDATE

Tom over at SalaryMap reminded me that Joe had a third tattoo added to his forearm. GrownUpGeek is the third permanent link that was tattooed by Joe, man I have to say I think that is still a crazy idea to do something like that.

Ok so maybe the title is a little strong, but if you do not know me I speak my mind and normally don’t hold back my thoughts. Consider that my disclaimer for this article. 

You hear the phone ringing, knowing that your sales person is more then capable of doing the job, you keep working on your projects. On Friday you have your week ending meeting as normal to go over what projects need to be finished for next week and which others need to be started. Afterwards you chat with the employee’s about what they think of the internet marketing industry and the role search engines play. After about twenty minutes your sales person brings up the fact that they have been getting quite a few phone calls with some potential clients and now new clients asking about placement guarantees. They had either read an email, website advertisement or heard a sales pitch promising first page rankings, rank number one on google after a month for any keyword, increased traffic, more sales and the bucket of crap that company sits on. So this day we all stayed a little bit later and endulged on the topic of search engine optimization and search engine marketing companies who are full of shit and just take your money and run.

A client called in through a referral to inquire about our services, pricing and how it works. This is all fine because almost anyone who calls in will ask common questions like this, or at least I hope they do. Well this caller had received an email advertisement offering search engine optimization, guaranteed first page rankings or your money back. Here are some red flags to watch out for and hand back to that company to wipe the crap off there ass because they are full of it.

1. Email advertisement offering search engine optimization could be considered a red flag by some people because if they are so good they why do email advertising? If they can guarantee first page rankings for there clients, why not get first page rankings for there own website and get there clients that way, oh wait they didn’t put a website in there email. All you see is a gmail.com, redirected URL to a landing page or an out of country phone number.
2. In that email the company states they work with major search engines first hand to get you better results. There is no search engine marketing company that I know of that has employees who work for any of the major search engines. Maybe they know people and get some information, but nobody has an insider that can change the SERP’s to boost your clients website. (if you do, please let me know so we CAN TALK) 
3. You can not guarantee any type of results to a client for competitive keywords. You could probably guarantee first page rankings for a keyword that has no competition and a very low monthly search volume. Why would you want to target those low keywords though, that will not bring any good traffic to your clients website. Oh wait, you don’t call them clients, you call them loan defaulting individuals because your taking there money and not doing anything for them.
4. “We submit your website to thousands of search engines.” Everyone has either heard or read this famous claim. They do not submit to thousands of search engines, its more like they submit to 30 search engines and thousands of FFA link sites and free directories. So the directories are fine, any backlink you can get is not a bad thing. However there is no need to submit to search engines anymore and the FFA sites are nothing more then spam sites and link farms. Your website will fall off of those type of sties before any search engine spider comes to crawl there pages. Any company offering this service to you I advise you just walk away and keep your money.
5. Companies who give you nothing but reports, either via email, fax or postal mail. So these reports tell me where I rank for keywords, what keywords still need to be targeted, monthly traffic volume and traffic estimation reports. Then there is the famous submission report that tells the client that hours and hours of work was put into submitting there website. The average person would have no idea that the submission report is all automated submission and does not take much time at all. Companies that do no work to your website, or make very small changes to your website have no clue as to what they are truly doing. So you guessed it, take most of those reports, crumple them up, send them back and tell them to use it as toilet paper to wipe there butt because there full of shit.
6. Guarantee number top 3 on google but will use PPC to do so. This one is where it can get very expensive for any website owners paying a company to do nothing more then open a PPC campaign. PPC is a great way to draw extra traffic to a website if it is a company’s budget. What these marketing companies will do is find out what keywords you want to target and set the minimum CPC to whatever will get the site in the top 3. Depending on the industry and keyword, that bill can and will get extremely high. These companies normally do very little keyword research, and do not test out which ads produce a higher CTR or ROI. If a company is guaranteeing top 3 google, chances are they are using PPC and stay away.

It is the companies that use tactics like I have listed above that give the search engine marketing industry a bad name. Companies who have been burned in the past by a bogus SEO campaign or a PPC campaign then resulted in a huge bill and no real results. If you have experiences or stories of your own please post them here so others can read them and see what else to look out for.

Lori Eldridge Email Me 509-443-8693

Lori’s Professional Web Design

I went back to college several years ago to get a BA in English/Creative Writing, intending to become a writer and meanwhile worked parttime in the college computer labs for 4 years, taking several computer and Internet classes. After graduating I decided I preferred promoting the writing of others instead of my own so I started volunteering my HTML services on websites for a few years while working for temp companies. I learned to write HTML by hand and have never used a WYSIWYG program so I’m able to fix the code when it’s “broken”.

In 2000 I had enough clients to set up business as a professional web designer. Having an artist’s eye (being an artist in oils and an amateur photographer) helps with website design and layout. I’m still in the writing profession but now I write in code (HTML/CSS). Having a knowledge of SEO also enhances one’s skills as a web designer. My goal as a web designer is to design websites so they will rank well in generic searches without having to PayPerClick.

What I lacked by not getting a college degree in computer science I have made up through experience. A lot of my early clients had problems with crooked hosts , webmasters registering their domains in the webmaster’s name, or they were under attack by 302 redirects or other problems so I was quickly exposed to verious forms of fraud on the Internet. Google has pretty much eliminated the 302 redirect problem but other ways of ripping off the uninformed are still prevelant on the Internet.

I eventually set up a website evaluation service which I started about 3 years ago and have written many articles on 302 hijackings, how to stop content theft, getting good ranking in the search engines, graphics tutorials, etc. A lot of my clients come to my site seeking information on what is wrong with their website and end up asking for help.

One of my favorite pet peeves is so many companies promoting site builder programs or crooked “SEO” services that rip off the uninformed because they produce websites that are essentially crippled and then they need someone like myself familiar with SEO to fix their website.

I’m so busy now I turn down several jobs per week and refer a lot of jobs to others web designers I trust. I’ve had several offers to work for big firms but I prefer to help small website owners fix their websites instead.