The folks over at Axandra.com have published a new article today about “Mosaic Cloaking” and how search engine optimizers are now using it to “game” the search engines.

Mosaic Cloaking (the basics)
It’s not much different from regular cloaking, except that instead of serving completely different pages to the search engines, clever marketers are now just serving different parts of their pages via cloaking.

For instance, you might have an E-Commerce site selling bikes. To the average visitor, you’re going to present them with a great photo, bullet list of the bikes features & an easy way for them to purchase. For the search engines, you might swap out that entire product section and fill it with an optimized article about that particular bike.

While this new Mosaic Cloaking is certainly a twist on the original, I would be willing to bet that those of us reading about it now are months (if not years) behind the game, in terms of keeping up with other SEO professionals.

This new method may work for some sites, for an undetermined amount of time, but with it now out in the light and more people talking about it, you can bet that Google and the other search engines will be creating a way to detect it and penalize those sites that are using it.

I’ve never used cloaking personally and our company, MorePro Marketing, has never employed that practice either - something I’m rather proud of. We’ve been able to acquire top search engine rankings for our clients without resorting to that level of “black hat” optimization.

I was reading an SEO newsletter this morning and they had mentioned a number of important SEO strategies to consider when undertaking the optimization of your website on your own.

A number of the SEO tips were quite common and should be practiced by all SEO strategists, not only those working on their own sites, but also those working for agencies and an actual SEO company. Some of those tips include:

• Navigation and internal linking
• Titles & Meta tags
• Unique content
• Relevant backlinks & continuous linking programs

There were two other SEO tips that I feel are generally disregarded or not implemented on a frequent basis:

• Your site’s Value Proposition (Find out how to craft your site’s Value Proposition)
• Code bloat / Site download time

The Value Proposition (VP) issue isn’t always that easy to resolve quickly, because it takes a lot of constructive thinking in order to determine what sets your business apart from your competitors - especially how to communicate that to your potential customers. A good VP can make a world of difference on how your website converts visitors to sales (or leads).

The other item was the “Code bloat / Site download time”, which I strongly feel is overlooked on a regular basis.

The concept is simple… reduce the size of your pages (code & images) and they’ll load faster, enabling better usability from your site visitors, as well as allowing the search engines to spider your pages more quickly. There are a number of rather easy ways to reduce your code bloat & increase your website’s download speed:

• Convert all inline JavaScript to external files and call them as separate files
• Convert embedded font styles & formatting to an external CSS file and reference it as a separate file
• Optimize the size of the images on your pages - For some industries/markets, having crystal clear images is important and those visitors should be willing to wait a few more seconds. For most industries, however, they’re not going to wait, so your fancy, slow loading image is actual a friction point that will hurt your chances of converting that visitor.

There’s nothing that I’ve mentioned here that’s “new” - it’s common knowledge. Use these SEO tips on your website and you’ll see improved results.

It doesn’t matter if you sell widgets, get real estate leads or have a full-fledged store on your domain… if you’re thinking about redesigning your site or adding new features, be sure to do your homework first.

Big-time programming & service companies are missing the boat when it comes to preparing for the search engines, specifically the consequences of not being SEO friendly to an existing website.

Case in point…

SitStay.com, an online retailer of goods for dog owners, grew steadily since its began in 1996. It now operates from a 20,000-square-foot facility in Lincoln, Neb. The owners of the 13-employee company, Darcie and Kent Krueger, invested slightly less than $100,000 in new Web site technology from I.B.M. that, starting last month, allowed them to more quickly post sales and product recommendations, among other things.

But because the new technology required SitStay to replace all of its old Web pages with new ones, search engines no longer rank the site’s products near the top of the results. Because few consumers click to the second or third page of search results, the effect was significant. Bigger merchants like Petco and Petsmart, meanwhile, can easily outbid SitStay for prominent ads.  Read the full story here

This is a great example of a big company, IBM, developing a great storefront interface for it’s customers.  I seriously doubt SitStay.com would’ve invested such a great amount of money if the technology & features of the new site were not superb.

Unfortunately, IBM dropped the ball on the SEO side and SitStay.com is paying the price.  When they switched to the new website, they forgot to map all of the old pages to the new pages (using 301 redirects).  The result… Google and the other search engines lowered their rankings and their traffic died.

SitStay.com will slowly work their way back up the rankings if the new site contains as much quality content as the old one, but they could’ve transferred all the value from the old site to the new one much more quickly w/ the 301 redirects.

You could fault IBM for this one (alone), but at least half the blame for the oversight has to go to the web guys over at SitStay.com, who didn’t prepare fully for the site migration.

If you have not started already; NOW is the time to prepare your PPC Campaigns for the Holiday Shopping Period.

More and more people are turning to the internet to doing their Holiday shopping. Need more incentive, last year during the Holiday season consumers spent $24.4 billion online according to comScore. So you need to get your PPC Campaigns ready and loaded to take advantage of the increase in internet shopping for the Holiday Period.

Your campaigns should already be up, but if not you need to get them up soon.

You should start by making sure your Holiday PPC Campaigns contain all the holiday keywords appropriate for your products and don’t forget to make sure your ads are relevant and contain as much information as possible on your specials. With all the completion for the holiday shoppers you will need to be creative with your Ad content to draw attention to your Ads. You may want to make smaller Ad Groups where you can be sure to include Products in the Ads and any special prices you may have on those items. Also, remember that offering Free Shipping and including that in the Ad is advisable if possible.

Another must do, is make sure that in December as pace really increases to monitor you Campaigns more closely. The increase competition will mean that you may have to adjust your bids more often to keep your Ads in positions to get noticed. Also, don’t forget to have multiple Ads to allow you to do Ad testing and to continue to make tweaks to the Ads to draw more visitors.

Good Luck and Happy Holidays.

Conversion, when used in the context of internet sales/leads, is the process of compelling a site visitor to take a desired action. These desired actions, or conversions, can manifest in many different forms. Some examples include sales, contact information left, catalogs ordered, membership registrations, and newsletter subscriptions…just to name a few.

Having a high conversion rate can depend on several factors: ease of site usability, a good value proposition, driving qualified traffic to your site, appropriate length and tone of content, and many, many more variables. Your conversion rate is easily calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of unique visitors in any given time period. For example, if a site gets 1,050 visitors in a month and 26 people sign up for membership (if that’s the objective), the site’s conversion rate is 2.5%.

26 ÷ 1,050 = 2.47%

Obviously, you will need to have some type of tracking system set up on your site to know your unique visitors. People often ask what a “good” conversion rate is. It has been said that if you’re converting at 3 - 5% you are doing well. This standard should be taken with a grain of salt, though, because it can vary greatly by industry. Some high-commitment, complex sales may only convert at less than 1%, while some others may convert visitors at 33%.

If you feel that you are not converting enough of your visitors, you may want to look into having a conversion analysis done on your site. This can provide some valuable insight into your site and you will surely learn some things that you may be doing wrong without realizing it. A conversion analysis typically involves an expert in the field “peeling back the layers” of your site by exploring the navigation, testing your shopping cart system (if applicable), conducting surveys, persona development to look at your site from several perspectives, and possibly multi-variate a/b testing. The depth of your conversion analysis will vary depending on what you opt for and the price.

MorePro Marketing, Inc. has a fantastic offer for site owners not looking to spend much money, but want to get some really great pointers. This is a great way to start figuring out where your site is really lacking and what services would benefit your site, your sales, and your bottom line the most.

Give us a call today for more information!

(866) 249-2432

Ask yourself in, at most, 10 words: “Why Should People Buy from My Website?” This is the start to finding and expressing your value proposition.
 
A value proposition is a statement that expresses the key reason why a prospect should buy from you or leave his or her contact information.  It should leave an impact on your visitors and be displayed prominently on the landing pages. Continuing on within your site, it should be expressed somehow (with logos, images, etc.) throughout.
 
A competitive analysis will help you identify your value proposition by uncovering your company’s strengths and weaknesses. By differentiating yourself from your competitors’ offers, you will excel in at least one element of value; thus, becoming the best choice for some customers. But…you cannot determine what the best choice for your customers is unless you know and understand your customers. It is important to discover your market’s motivation, perceived risks (or concerns), and obstacles they have about purchasing your product/service or leaving their contact information. Once you understand your market, you can address their needs and concerns in your value proposition.
 
Touch Points for Assessing your Value Proposition:
 
a.       It shouldn’t contain too much promotional language.
b.      It communicates who your market is, what you can offer them, and why they should accept your offer.
c.       It is articulated in 1-2 sentences.
d.      It differentiates you from your competitors.
e.      You can really deliver what you’re promising.
 
Lastly, one thing to keep in mind, the creation of your value proposition may be an evolutionary process. I recommend using A/B Testing to determine which versions have the greatest impact on your potential customers. If you would like more information on A/B testing, Multivariate Testing, or Conversion Studies feel free to give us a call!

866-249-2432

Welcome to the first set of tips from MorePro’s Conversion Corner. Rebecca is a conversion analyst, based out of Phoenix, specializing in consulting with website owners on how to convert more of their visitors to customers. Certified through Marketing Experiments, she uses the most recent techniques and up-to-the-minute research to find the best layout for a site.

Below are some free pointers from Rebecca on how to improve your site’s conversion rate:

Create a sense of urgency with stimulating copy, bold action statements, and special promotions. Effectively communicate how visitors can benefit from the product or service. The next step is to tell your site visitor exactly what you want them to do.

For your site: Add action statements, or call to actions, that speak to the visitor and their needs throughout all of the pages, for example:

• Call Today
• Get Your Quote Today
• Need Help Choosing?
• Questions? Contact Us
• Contact Us for More Information
• Compare Cases
• Buy Now
• Learn More
• Add to Cart
• Get Organized!
• For a short time only
• Act now – offer expires August 31st

In order to give the visitor the option to read the content on the page or just take action, the call to actions should be located at the top of the page and at the bottom. Use clear actions statements at the end of every topic and consistently throughout the site. However, be careful of not overdoing it as you might come across as being overly pushy, but being too conservative won’t produce strong marketing results.  You need to find a balance.

Feel free to reply with comments, ask questions, or just give me a quick call toll free at (866) 249-2432. We’d be glad to give you pointers for improving the conversion rate of your website.

One of the top site analytic/measuring companies in the world, Nielson/NetRatings, announced plans to shift from reporting Page Views as the metric of how popular a site is, to using how long users spend on a website (or Time Spent on Site).

With the continued emergence of AJAX, dynamic content, online videos and other new technologies, the “page view” has lost it’s accuracy, which has led marketers to rely on other metrics like “time spent on site”.

There’s a lot of talk about how this affects where Google ranks among other sites… The talks are trivial in my opinion, since Google is primarly a search engine and visitors aren’t suppose to spend a lot of time on the site.  The visitor is suppose to quickly find what they’re looking for and go to another website.  Spend time worrying about non-search engine sites, not Google.

“Just got a job with someone in town who found me in the top spot on Yahoo. FYI!”

Thanks!

Janet Ault
Female Voice Over Talent

In an article published in the SEO-News newsletter this morning, Kanga Internet’s Chris Diprose details 10 of the most common SEO mistakes that you’re bound to make on your website. Whether or not the mistakes are done on purpose, are done because of a lack of SEO knowledge, or you had someone else build your site - these SEO mistakes should be avoided. Some of the mistakes that Chris mentions were covered back in January, when we published our “Common SEO Blunders… Must read for web designers” post.

If you find that you’re guilty of any of these mistakes, take the action now to correct them so you can start improving your search engine rankings.

Here are Chris’ Top 10 SEO Mistakes:

1. Bad Titles
2. Filename of the Page
3. Duplicate or Bad Content
4. No Links
5. Incoming Link Anchor Text
6. Bad Internal Page Links
7. Live Links
8. Impatience
9. Keyword Selection
10. Keyword Spamming and Stuffing

I certainly don’t have any objections to the list that Chris prepared. I might rank Impatience (#8) higher on the list, only because becoming impatient with your SEO can lead to more problems down the road. You’re more likely to try an SEO tactic that’s untested or engage in some type of questionable SEO practice if you don’t plan out your strategy properly and if you don’t give it time to work.

1. Bad Titles
A survey of top SEO professonals on SEOMoz.org a couple months ago ranked the Title tag as the most important aspect of SEO, so it only makes sense that bad titles are probably the worst mistake you can make when optimizing your website.

2. Filename of Pages
This one is a little off-base, at least in naming the mistake. This should be URL structure or “dynamic URLs vs. static URLs”. Certainly, having a site with long, dynamic URLs is a problem. Use Mod_rewrite or the Windows equivalent to rewrite your URLs to be more friendly. This is not a necessity unless your URLs have more than 2-3 variables on the query string in my opinion. We’ve had plenty of experience and success w/ single variable query string URLs.

3. Duplicate Content
We’ve covered this topic several times in the past and it’s probably one of the hardest mistakes to effectively communicate to site owners and content managers. They just don’t see the value of writing unique content for their products or their stores, when they can get a completed data feed from the manufacturer and plop it right into the site… unfortunately, that just won’t yield any long-term results.

4. No Links
This is a no-brainer… a site cannot rank on content alone.  Every website should have an ongoing backlink strategy.

5. Incoming Anchor Link Text
See previous mistake… Just make sure your backlinks use keywords.  Many site owners and marketers will try to use the company’s name and/or just the domain name as the anchor text.  This is much less effective than using keyword-rich anchor text on all backlinks.  Be sure to vary the keywords also - your incoming links (backlinks) shouldn’t all be the same. 

6. Bad Internal Page Links
A site w/ poor navigation or linking structure will struggle to compete with sites who have good navigation and structure.  Be sure to categorize your pages properly and to use keywords in the anchor text.  Another common problem w/ internal page links is the use of images for navigation instead of text - always go w/ text unless you already have a full text menu elsewhere on the page.

7. Live Links
Broken links hurt… check your site frequently to make sure you’re links aren’t broken.  If you find broken links, fix them ASAP.  Setup a custom 404 error page if you have pages that no longer exist and if you can’t get the links changed (from backlinks for example).

8. Impatience
This can kill an SEO campaign.  Do the work and use the methods that have been proven to work over time.  Allow sufficient time for all the work you’ve done to take affect (several months).

9. Keyword Selection
Selecting the wrong keywords is almost as bad as not selecting keywords at all.  Be sure that you’re optimizing for the keywords your target audience is using, not the keywords you think they are (yes, there is usually a difference).  Use keyword research tools like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker or Google Trends to find out what your visitors are using, what’s most popular, and what keywords are slowly fading into oblivion.

10. Keyword Spamming and Stuffing
This is just plain dumb… Your website shouldn’t be stuffed with keywords you are targeting, let alone keywords you’re not (that’s a whole other story).  Common keyword stuffing takes place in site footers, comment tags, meta tags or other typically hidden areas of the site and/or the HTML coding itself.