Title Tags

The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings, and is just one of three things that are given algorithmic weight by the search engines. Equally important is your visible text copy and the links pointing to your page. The title tag is often overlooked when attempting to optimize Web sites for targeted search engine traffic.

Title tags should contain specific keyword phrases. Be sure to do your keyword research to find the best phrases. If you provide products or services that are strictly local, you can be even more specific by adding geographical modifiers to your title tags, such as "New Prague Auto Repair". Try to use 2 or 3 of your most important keyword phrases. I find that using 10 to 12 words works best.

What format do you use to put your title tag together? Does your company name and/or phone number belong in the title tag? These are both common questions. It's fine to place your company name and/or phone number in the title tag. If your company is already well-known, then it's essential. This doesn't mean that you should put JUST your company name; even the best brands will benefit from a few good descriptive phrases.

There is not one right formula for writing it. Don't make yourself crazy trying to create the perfect title tag, because there is no such thing. The best thing to do is to test different ones to see which brings the most traffic. In the end, it's really a personal choice.

Here are some examples that will work just fine:

• Words separated by hyphens:
  New-Prague-Auto-Repair

• A complete sentence:
  We provide auto repair services in the New Prague, MN area.

• Strictly a list of factual keywords in order of importance:
  auto repair new prague mn 555-555-5555

• Written like an ad (my preference):
  Need your car fixed? | Call 555-555-5555 | Quality Auto Repair New Prague, MN  

How your listing appears in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is crucial. After all, if you have a high ranking but visitors are not clicking through, it won't do you much good. My preferred method is to write a title tag like an ad - with a compelling headline and a description that contains a call to action. Let's pick mine apart (from above):

Compelling headline: Need your car fixed?
It addresses the searchers' problem and asks a question.

Contains a call to action: Call 555-555-5555

Contains important keyword phrase - quality auto repair

Contains a geographical modifier (if applicable) - New Prague, MN

Don't worry if some of your visible title tag gets cut off when the search engines display your information; they are still indexing all the words.

Last, (but should really be first), use your visible text copy (the text on your page) as your guide. Create your title tags after the page copy has been written and optimized. It's much easier to see how the keyword phrases have been integrated into the text, giving you a better place to begin. If you've done a good job writing, you should find all the information you need on the page. Choose the most relevant keywords from the copy and write a compelling title tag. If you can't get a handle on the most important key phrases or words, then you probably need to rewrite your page content. Or better yet, hire a professional web copywriter; one that knows how to write for visitors as well as search engines.

Keep these things in mind when you are gathering information from your copy -

• don't use an exact sentence pulled from your copy;

• don't use the exact wording of your page's headline; but

• do use a unique sentence that contains keyword elements from your copy.  

If you are using software that automatically generates the title tag, in some instances the default is the exact same title tag on every page. This is the best way to kill your rankings because the search engines will only see one page. Remember: search engines index pages, not Web sites; each page has the ability to be displayed on the results pages. If the exact same title is on all pages, the search engines will think you only have a one page site. If you have a unique title tag for each page, then each page has the chance to be indexed. If you cannot customize your tags easily, then you'll want to find new software or a new Web developer.

Optimizing a Landing Page

A landing page is the first page a visitor to your site sees. I find myself reminding small business owners to keep their pages focused to one (2 at the most) things you want your visitors to do on a page. Since Seth Godin says it better than I, read the full article here.

Top 11 Emotional Triggers That Convert Prospects Into Customers

I listened to a teleseminar yesterday that went covered the top 11 emotional triggers in the sales process by Sue Painter of ConfidentMarketer.com

Sales are made on emotion, not logic. So MANY times, I write my Web copy from a logical perspective. I'm such a logical person that I think others are the same as me. That's a mistake! You need to put yourself in your customers place and find out what motivates them to buy your products/services.

Your sales approach or Web copy should include 3-4 of these triggers. So before you begin to write, sit down with a piece of paper and identify/"answer" 3 or 4 that apply to your target market, then write your copy so that it provides a solution for these.

There are more than 11, but these are the top in order of importance. Your customers can be motivated by:

1. Saving time
   
2. Saving money (wouldn't you have thought this would be #1?!)
3. Making money
4. Avoiding effort - they want EASY
5. Increasing their happiness
6. Finding success, accomplishment
7. Being pain free or in better health
8. Having fun
   
9. Gaining praise
10. Feeling safe and secure
11. Feeling liked, loved, popular
    

Identify your customers passion or pain and tell them why your products/services can help them.

All of us have a tendency to sell the "features" of our business rather than the benefits. Features are your credentials, trustworthiness, testimonials, etc. These do play an important part, but they are NOT what makes a sale. Benefits answers the "What's in it for me?" question for your customer. Bottom line, that's what they want to know - how it's going to solve my problem?.

Sue says "...if you can't identify any emotional benefits, you don't have a business!"

Are your sales where they should be? If not, then your message or your Web copy isn't connecting with your customers. Triggers change over time - evaluate constantly to see if you are feeding your customer's emotional triggers.

Join me as I continue to change my thinking process in an effort to grow my business. If you are logical like me, it will be a challenge and a learning process! But one I look forward to.

Ciao, Paula
Links to my other Web sites are in the side bar to the right of this post, under the Blog Archive section.

If you are on Twitter, you can see more of the conversation around this subject and teleseminar at #clientconversion.

About Sue:
Sue Painter, The Confident Marketer - Everything you need to conquer fear or uneasiness over marketing and networking for your business is right here. You’ll learn the how-to’s, answer the what-if’s, and create marketing strategies that build your business and your bottom line.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Make sure your SEO strategy includes these 2 main components - making sure your site is search engine friendly and building relevant links to your site.

Before we get to those 2 components, you must target the keywords your customers are using to find your business. Many small businesses target the wrong keywords. Ideal keywords and/or keyword phrases should represent 3-4 focused terms that are not too general. For example, you sell widgets - widgets by itself is probably too general and too competitive a term. Try a more focused version like 'blue widgets' or 'widgets for small business'. Make sure your keywords are highly targeted to your audience - matching the right offer to the right audience - yours.

Keyword research tools:
Beginner (free) - Google search-based keyword tool
Advanced (fee-based) - NicheBot

One note about these tools - don't rely solely on them. You know your business and customers best. Gather a list of general keywords that your market would use in a query and use the tool(s) to uncover more targeted terms that you may not have come up with on your own.

Choose a combination of keywords. Choose some with a fair amount of searches/competition, as well as terms with low competition. The terms with low searches will help you easily rank for these lesser searched keywords.

Search Engine friendly web site
If you are using site builders like WordPress, Drupal, or GoDaddy your sites will already be search friendly when they are hosted.

If you are maintaining your site manually (or using a web master to do so), implement these 2 things.

1. Make sure the keywords you chose are included in the META title, META description and META keywords tags. The title and description tags are used in compiling and displaying your listing in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Since this mini listing is the first thing a visitor sees, these 2 things need to be as effective as an advertisement. Use the title as your headline and the description as your call to action. The goal is for them to click-through to your site.

2. Make sure you use keyword-rich file names for your web pages (ex. www.mysite.com/keyword-here.html)

Remember your primary goal is to make it easy for the search bots to find your web pages and easily determine the overall content/subject. It's also for your customers to easily navigate your site. Simple is better! Don't overcomplicate things.

One other note about navigational linking - be sure you have text links that lead to other pages on your site. Graphical or flash based menus are not easily read by the search engines and may be not be seen by your users if they have chosen not to display images while browsing.

Other formatting - the actual content on your page should always be written for your visitor. Your content should include your keywords in the most natural, appealing way possible. And make sure you deliver what is promised in your title and description tags or they won't stay long. Now's the time to get them to convert to customers.

Building relevant links back to your site
There are SO many ways to build links to your site. You have to review your options and choose what's best for YOUR business. You need to choose something that you know you can continue to maintain. Here are some starting points:

Blog - use regular blog updates to keep your content fresh. These are some free blog templates to get you started fast:
Google Blogger
WordPress

Press Releases - write and distribute press releases. These are usually fee-based.
PRWeb
PRNewsWire

Article Marketing - Write and distribute articles. Many free sites are available for you to distribute your articles. Here are a few:
ArticleMarketer
EzineArticles
GoArticles

In the search engines 'eyes' every link from an external source to your site is a 'vote'. The more links you have pointing to your site, the better your site will rank in the search results. Keep in mind that these links have to be relevant - they need to be links from authority sites with relevant web pages. Linking to unrelated resources will not count as a 'vote'.

In all instances of link building I've referenced above, write on topic and include your keywords as anchor link text back to your site. This is another way the search engines determine the theme and relevancy of the content of your web site.

Don't expect this SEO process to be a quick fix and don't expect miracles right away. Consistent and steady improvements/actions over time is what will help your site rank for the long term. Do your part by giving your visitors valuable content, great products, and excellent customer service and you'll soon be enjoying the rewards!

Ciao, Paula
MarketYourBizOnline.com
PaulaBonelli.com
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Avoid these 9 SEO Mistakes

Take time to be sure your web pages are created so that these important things are avoided and your site will be search engine-friendly. DON'T assume your webmaster knows how to do this - there are SOME (very few) web designers that are also search engine optimization (SEO) experts. But most DO NOT design sites that are SEO-friendly. Do your own research or hire an SEO specialist to help you. You want to have control over these important parts of your site.

1. Search engine-friendly URLs
If possible, your domain name and subsequent page names (URLs) should contain keywords. This is good for your visitors and will help you rank better with the search engines.

Example of search engine-friendly URL: mysite.com/keyword-rich-page-title
Example of Dynamic URL that can't be followed or indexed: mysite.com/?p=abc123

2. Common Title Tag Mistakes

a. Same title text on all pages
Every page on your site should have a unique META title tag with your most important keywords in it. If you have the same title tags on every page you are telling the search engines that every page is about the same topic and one isn't more unique than another. Don't forget, search engines index PAGES not SITES. So make sure each page has unique content and unique META data (page META title and page META description).

b. Exceeding the 65 character limit
Don't use long titles. Search engine result pages use your title tag as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including spaces). Any more than that will get cut off. Think of it as a headline - you only get one chance to make an impression to a person perusing lots of search engine results. Make yours count!

c. Keyword stuffing
Don't put too many keywords in the title tag. This will look like spam to the search engines. Use the most important (not more than 3) and use them in different ways if they have repetitive terms. Ex. "Search Engine Optimization for small business" and "small business SEO" - repetitive terms used in different ways. Your visitors may use either one when performing a search query.

3. Splash Pages
You've seen this mistake before…people put up a banner image and a "Click to enter" link on their main or home page. Worse yet, the "click to enter" link is embedded in a Flash object. This will make it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.

I've seen this commonly used for creative sites (like photographers). This is fine ONLY if you don't care about what a search engine knows about your site and if you don't care if you get placed in the search results. Your main or home page is most likely your highest ranking page and has the potential to get crawled frequently by search engine web spiders. No internal pages (pages beyond the "click to enter") will appear in the search engine index unless they have been properly linked so that they can be followed.

Your home page should have the keywords for your target market in the links to your other pages. All links to your other site pages should be within 1 or 2 clicks of your home page. Don't bury them too deeply or they might not be able to be followed by the spiders.

4. Don't Use Vague or Non-descript Link Anchor Text
I KNOW you've seen this and maybe you are guilty of it - using "Click here" or "Learn more" as link text. This is great if you want to be ranked highly for "Click Here"! What you want to do is tell the search engine what your page topic is by using the topic keyword in your link anchor text. It's more relevant and descriptive to use "learn more about {keyword topic}". Be careful not to use the exact same link anchor text everywhere. This can be seen as search engine spam. Instead, use variations of your keywords; it's more natural that way and the search engines are smart enough to make the relevant connection between versions of keywords.

5. Flash Menus that the spiders can't follow
Flash menus, links like fade-in or animated menus might look really cool, but they can't be seen by the search engines therefore can't be followed. Use text-based links.

6. Heavy with Graphic Images and/or Flash Content
Web spiders are text-based. They can't read text that is embedded in a graphic image or in Flash content. Don't embed your most important content and keywords in Flash or images.

7. Image Alt Attribute
Rarely do I see this being used! Always describe/name your images using the alt attribute that has a keyword in it. The alt attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user and this is the only way a search engine can 'see' images. This is an additional way for the search engine to determine the topic of your page. And it will help your images rank in the search results since images are indexed and made searchable by the major search engines.

8. Overuse of Dynamically Created Content
Some sites with many products choose to use this function because of the number of items they have to sell. But dynamically loaded content cannot be spidered or indexed by the search engines. Another disadvantage is that the URL (page address) is also dynamically created and doesn't reload. This doesn't allow the current page to be bookmarked or sent as a reference to someone.

9. Theme Design Versions in Subfolders
Don't put your design versions into sub level folders (Ex. yoursitename.com/v2, v3) and redirect to the new folder. Continually changing the main root location may cause loss of backlink counts and ranking.

Whew! That's a lot of stuff, but the more often you do it, the more naturally you'll remember it the next time you create a page or a new site.

Ciao, Paula

A better explanation of optimizing your web site (SEO)

Seth Godin does a better job than I've been doing......
He offers 2 common ways to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Synopsis -

Step by step:

1. Make an incredible product, offer a remarkable service.

2. Associate a unique term or trademark with it. (Something that isn't generic, and preferably, not a crowded search term already).

3. Assuming that you do #1 and #2, you'll end up owning that word in the search engines. If you don't, revisit the first two steps.

Read the full article here so you can see the background behind these steps.

Ciao, Paula

Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, seo, website optimization, website promotion

More Web Writing and Usability Tips...

OK - so I talk about this a LOT! But I can't tell you how many web site owners I still see that are not writing for their users when they write their content, links, etc.

We've talked about the content copy in general, but what about the micro-content on your site - your navigational links, headings, etc.? - the elements that help your visitors find their way around.

The article I'm sharing (from author Jakob Nielsen) digs into this. He shares a test he performed to see what parts of a web page users really see/interpret when scanning quickly. His results show that users only saw the first 2 words (or what he calls nano-content) of the micro-content items . It's really fascinating and it will give you some good direction and food for thought for the next time you sit down to write. :-) Read the full story on Jakob's site.

--Paula

Take a second look at your call to action

Drive consumers through your website and down your sales/conversion funnel by being clear and telling them exactly what you want them to do - your call to action.

A call to action is defined as any action which your customers take that completes your selling process. Don't be stuck in the traditional, non-specific "buy now", "add to cart" or "click here to order". Give your customers the information they need to make a better buying decision.

Combine an imperative verb with an implied benefit. Try these better alternatives:

* Buy today and get free shipping
* Save 10% now!

Look at your existing calls to action and see if there is even a call to action present. Is your call to action an image or text? Where is it on the page? Review the effectiveness of yours and make improvements right now!

There is no substitute for testing. Put aside your perceived notions about what you think your customers will do and try different combinations of text, image, placement, size, etc. All web sites are different. What will work for one business may not work for your sales process. The only way to know is to let your customers tell you. If you don't get a ton of traffic, you may have to test one version for 30 days (or more) to get enough conclusive evidence to tell you which version works better than another.

Happy testing =)
Paula

Action-Oriented Copywriting for Your Website

Before writing content or copy for your web site, keep these things in mind to get the results you want. Help your customers find and get exactly what they are looking for when they visit.

You can increase the likelihood of visitors getting what you intended for them to receive (or going where you intended to have them to go) by writing your web page copy (content) so it's focused on one goal or action.

Before you write, ask yourself "What do I want my visitors to do?" Do I want them to click through to another page on my site, purchase right away, sign-up for something by giving me their contact information--there are many possible actions. Give some thought as to what one action you want them to take once they arrive on any given page of your site. Then write your copy with that one goal in mind and include clear verbal steps along the way to help your visitors prepare to take action when the time comes.

If you are offering a free sample, sprinkle 'free trial', free sample', etc. throughout the text. Motivate them by telling them why they need it, why it's important to them, - solve their "problem". As they are reading, you are preparing them to take action and they are saying to themselves--Where do I get it? What do I do next?

Now tell them how to take action. Buy here, get your 'free whatever' here, give us your name and email and we'll send you.....get the idea? Your copy should guide, nudge, and lead your visitors in the direction of the action you want them to take; then call for that action.

Once you give your copy a single focus with a defined goal/action--then your visitors will find what they are looking for and you'll have a web page that is clearly defined for your users to take action!

Happy copywriting :-)
Paula


Paula M Bonelli | ASAP Web Site Promotion
"Helping small businesses find customers online."
http://www.MarketYourBizOnline.com

Copywriting Best Practices for your Website

You need to take steps for your users to find your website. Studies show more than 80% of Internet users begin their time online when searching for products and services. You want to increase the likelihood that your site will come up near the top of the search results.

The sophisticated algorithms of Google, Yahoo! and MSN match the best websites for each search. The search engines are looking for the content that matches the search most closely. The words you use on your web page(s) tell the search engines whether or not your page is relevant. Taking time to focus on good keywords will likely increase the traffic to your page.

Choosing Keywords/Keyword Phrases
Think about how your target audience is searching for you. What phrases would they enter into a search engine if they were trying to find a business/product like yours? Choose 3-5 keyword phrases per page that fit your business and also would likely be common phrases that people would use in a search. Here are some free keyword research tools:

-Google AdWords keyword tool
-NicheBotClassic.com
-GoodKeywords.com

Create Relevant Page Copy
It's essential to create relevant copy by spending time researching keywords and keyword phrases that match what visitors are searching for. Examples of relevant keywords and keyword phrases could include:

-Your company and/or product (ABC widgets)
-Local attributes (New Prague Minnesota widgets)
-Special attributes (Minnesota blue widgets)

In the examples above, the keywords would be relevant or "optimized" keywords or keyword phrases. Use these relevant keywords/keyword phrases in your web page copy, photo captions, links, etc.

Quick Tips About Page Text
1) Search engines place strong emphasis on the first words on your page; place keyword phrases at the beginning and in order of importance.
2) Avoid repeating them more than 3 times.
3) Be sure text is related to the overall theme of the page and organized in logical sentences or bullet points.

Other Details to Remember
1) Use text-based keyword phrases in headings. Avoid using only images/graphics as headers because search engines cannot "read" them. When posting photos or videos to your pages, add text descriptions/captions nearby that include a keyword/keyword phrase.
2) Search engines weigh link text more heavily than plain text; use keywords/keyword phrases in on-page links.

Bad Advertising

As a small business, I have to make the most of my advertising budget. So when I'm driving traffic to my website I need to be sure it's effective. Here's a great article from Mark Widawer. He specializes in effective landing pages (the page you send traffic to with your advertising).

This reminder from Mark is an absolute MUST if you're running a small business and you want to have the most effective advertising on- or offline.

Read more here.