Category for the ‘Website Design & Conversion’

Think Before You Launch

DON’T DO IT: Careless site redesign. Before you redesign your company site, work with your SEO firm to identify how the new design will affect search visibility. Many web designers are great at making sites look nice, but they are always not as well seasoned in SEO and conversion disciplines.  Everything from page layout, to content and keyword usage, navigation, links and redirects have a major impact on your SEO.  Launching a new, “prettier” site may be exciting, but if the site isn’t designed with SEO considerations in mind, you may actually get LESS from your website than you were getting before the redesign.

DON’T DO IT: Install a new CMS without a plan. A change in your content management system means a change in the templates that format Web pages, navigation, and often the URL structure of pages.  If your site is ready for a complete overhaul and every piece of it can comfortably be a thing of the past, by all means.  But, for example, if some of your current site pages are ranking very well with the search engines for competitive keywords, tweaking those URLs or the page copy could compromise the integrity that page has built up over time – that integrity that is causing it to rank. Don’t put yourself back at ground zero if you don’t need to.  Make sure you have an SEO migration plan in place, including an outreach program to your top sources of inbound link traffic.

DON’T DO IT: Allow inbound links to dwindle. Monitor fluctuations in inbound link counts and identify ways to minimize link loss through active content creation, promotion and social participation. Keep in mind, you will need to contact inbound link sources should your site pages not auto-redirect.  Don’t leave them sending interested visitors to a 404!

DON’T DO IT: Create duplicate content. Regarding press releases, RSS feeds or articles that are syndicated, always make sure the original is published on your site first. Then be sure to clearly link any duplicates back to the original.  Duplicate content is, to put it nicely, frowned upon by search engines, like Google.  Don’t use dupe content on pages throughout your website and don’t “buy” copy from companies that are willing to sell it to multiple others.  Content marketing doesn’t work if everyone else is saying the same thing.

DO IT: Cover all redesign bases. If you are redesigning your site, you are investing a lot of time, money and resources into its development.  So do it right.  Explore your existing site and figure out what needs to be migrated along with your domain name.  Seek out help from SEO and conversion experts to ensure your new site is designed and coded for success.  Equip your site with great, original and targeted content.  Be engaging and interactive.  Be fresh.  Obey proper usability and accessibility standards. Have a migration plan.  User test.  User test again.  Sleep on it.  And never be afraid to consult the experts.

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Posted by Rob Reed August 6th, 2010 at 9:52 am to Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design & Conversion

Is Your Online Video Dressed for Success?

Online Video Should Be Dressed For SuccessImplementing video on your website is no longer a new idea – and I am sure you have noticed more and more video interaction on the sites you visit in your everyday web crawling.  But no matter how much time or money spent on your web video, or how proud of it you are; if people can’t find it, it won’t meet its business value potential.

To ensure your videos offer the utmost value online, follow these rules:

Maintain high quality: We have all seen those poorly produced videos and know how painful they can be to watch.  High quality video is essential, and with the HD technology of today – it has come to be expected.  Shaky camera handling and poor resolution will reflect poorly upon your organization, and people may laugh at you.

“To, to, today Junior!” – Keep video under 2 minutes: Encourage views, links and comments with short, sweet and compelling content and be mindful of your site visitors’ time.  If it can be said well in two minutes, film it – and if it can’, perhaps consider another way to convey the message. And be sure to use a high-resolution thumbnail image to represent your video in search results.  People do at times just books by their covers.

Place relevant keywords in a video’s title, description and tags: Search engines can’t read video content directly like they can text, or images equipped with alt tags.  It is for this reason, you need to tell spiders and site visitors what your video is about by describing the content in the YouTube fields.  Use full sentences when writing your description, and be sure to begin with your company’s URL so that it displays in YouTube’s search results.

Choose the most liberal YouTube settings: If you have ever added a video to YouTube, you know you have the option to make your video private and to disallow comments and video responses.  You can also prevent people from voting on comments, rating your video, and embedding it on their site.  But don’t do any of these things.  Rude feedback may sound terrifying and threatening – but it is simply a reality with the interactive landscape.  If you make a good video, people will acknowledge it.  So breathe, grow thicker skin, and equip your videos with less restrictive settings.  It will make for a much greater interactive rewards later.

Promote your video offline: Be sure your sales people, and marketing team are promoting your new video through all communication channels.  Blast out an email singing its praises, or push it out through social media outlets.  Videos are made to be watched.  Get eyes on them!

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Posted by Rob Reed July 12th, 2010 at 1:33 pm to Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized, Website Design & Conversion

The Grass is Always Greener on Both Sides of the SEM Fence

While most online marketers agree that SEO and PPC are an essential in search engine marketing, many people are on only one side of the fence.  There are chest thumpers of the SEO lands, and a proud army of equal size in the lands of PPC.

But why are we putting SEO up against PPC, and warring, when really they should be working together?  We ask that you understand that PPC should complement SEO and vice versa, and the two should be nothing less than the best of friends.  And here’s why:

Keyword Tools Are Not Perfectly Accurate

We want to believe them and entrust in them, but unfortunately, they aren’t infallible.  How many times have you looked up keyword information through a tool, optimized your site, gotten the number one position for that keyword only to find that you are getting more traffic from the 4th or 5th most popular search term in the keyword database?  PPC allows you to get the raw data -assuming there is minimum skew from invalid clicks. If you run a broad match campaign over a set period of time, you can mine the REAL most popular keywords from your server logs.  Nice!

Not All Keywords Convert

Having ten thousand unique visitors a day come to your site using a search term is all well and good.  But if they don’t convert, you could just be exhausting your bandwidth. (Assuming you are not just running a branding exercise). But for many, web traffic is only a good thing when it converts – and that is the way it should be.

We all know SEO takes time. How does spending six months optimizing your site for a search term, getting the number one spot and finding out none of the traffic converts sound?  So here is where friend, not foe, PPC comes in. With a PPC campaign you can find out what keywords convert BEFORE pouring your time into an organic SEO campaign. Your PPC activities can inform your SEO strategy.  Now SEO, say thank you.

First Page Monopoly

We have all seen it.  We have all searched for a term and been directed to a results page with the top completely flooded with one company, or brand.  Yes, one brand is in the paid search results, and that same brand is monopolizing the prime real estate of the organic results.  What does this say to us/a searcher?  Well, my friend, only good things.

Meta Descriptions Are Quintessential

Meta descriptions are the little snippets shown from your site in the search results. These snippets are essential to getting users to click through to your site in organic listings.  Now which is better: a meta description with the text of your navigation links, or a meta description with a tested call to action and successful click through rate? With PPC, you can optimize your call to action and description to maximize your CTR on organic listings.  It may even be possible to get a higher click through rate in the second or third organic position if you have the perfect meta description. Searchers don’t rely on titles alone.  With PPC you can split test many different descriptions and see which performs best. Then add the best performing PPC creative to your meta description tags.

Relevance Is Bliss

All search engines share one goal.  They want to provide relevant results in the organic search results. Knowing and improving your quality score for certain keywords can reveal how relevant Google thinks your site is for any given keyword. Although this quality score is fairly subjective, it offers a good indication. In Google, keywords used in the query are bolded in the title, meta description and URL of the search results. With PPC you can find what keywords work and what keywords don’t and optimize your organic listings according to that data.

Landing Pages Can Be Optimized Quickly

When you reach that number one organic position, you can sit back and relax, right? Wrong. Getting the visitor to your site is just one phase in the online marketing mix. Once that visitor reaches your page, you need to convert that visitor. With PPC you can split test different landing pages and use multi variant testing to create the ultimate landing page experience. So when you reach that coveted number one position, be ready to convert that visitor. Landing page testing can help to inform changes you may want to make on your site.

In Closing

It is important that you see the synergy that can be created when SEO and PPC work together for a common goal.  Terrakon sees that the grass is equally green on both sides of the fence and we ask that you do too.

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Posted by Rob Reed April 9th, 2010 at 7:15 am to Marketing, Pay Per Click Advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design & Conversion

Surviving a PPC Dry Spell

Anyone who has been working on a PPC account for a while- probably reaches a point of inspiration deficiency.  A new PPC account can be like a new toy: fun to set up, play with, show off and watch how it behaves.  But like any toy, your PPC account can become no longer new, shiny and exciting – and can even eventually come to bore you.

Tragically, this boredom can lead to neglect, and neglect will eventually damage your account’s overall profitability. So how does one rekindle the old flame with their PPC account?  Get a little creative and find new ways to improve your accounts.  Here’s how:

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Posted by Rob Reed April 2nd, 2010 at 7:30 am to Marketing, Pay Per Click Advertising, Website Design & Conversion

Button Up

At Terrakon, we are conversion minded.

A website, or landing page can be beautiful, breathtaking and bring a tear to one’s eye- but if it doesn’t convert, all that emotional strife may be for nothing.  If you want your site or landing page to convert, you have to be of the philosophy that you must tell your visitors what to do, and how to act.  [I have used the metaphor before, lead the horse to water and tell it how to drink.]

However, some businesses choose to use graphic designers to design their site – who are less conversion-minded and instead prefer to design something that looks amazing and flippantly artful.   As a result, they don’t like buttons.  We, in the internet marketing world call them call to actions and they are a HUGE

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Posted by Rob Reed March 28th, 2010 at 7:00 am to Pay Per Click Advertising, Website Design & Conversion