Want to increase your sales?
I’m willing to bet the answer’s “yes.”
After all, that’s what SEO (search engine optimization) and getting traffic is all about. But if your visitors aren’t buying once they arrive at your site, your hard work’s going down the tubes!
Use these 6 SEO conversion secrets to convert your visitors into sales…
SEO Secret #1: Create a compelling listing
Your site’s description in the search results is your first chance to make a good impression with prospective buyers. So make sure it grabs your visitors by the eyeballs!
Rewrite your title tag and meta description tag– the parts that show up in the search engine listings. Experiment with new ways of describing who you are and what you do. Repeat until you hit on the combination that persuades the most people to click through to your website.
Just make sure your main keyword phrase appears first in both tags.
SEO Secret #2: Create a powerful headline
The average visitor to your site will spend just FOUR seconds deciding whether your site has what they’re looking for.
A headline that intrigues, excites, or inspires will leave your visitors in no doubt… so they’ll stay long enough to see what else you have to offer.
Start by stating the main benefit of what your page is offering. Will your customers learn money-saving tips, for example? Then frame your main benefit with a power statement like “How to…” or “Discover…” or “Uncover the Secret to…”
(And don’t forget to include your main keyword in your headline and subheads!)
SEO Secret #3: Create keyword-specific pages
Create groups of related keywords for each page or section of your website (e.g., an article, blog post, or salescopy).
When people land on a page that focuses on the keyword they searched for, they’re much more likely to stick around — and buy your products!
Just include a lead-in or link somewhere to your main sales page. Sometimes just a keyword-rich link is enough, especially when you’ve impressed them with your content.
SEO Secret #4: Use images and multimedia to your advantage
The best images help your customers understand what your website is all about. The more directly they relate to your product and content, the more they’ll reassure your visitors they’ve come to the right place.
Audio and video can also be great sales tools when used correctly… so long as your listeners are ready for them. Turn off the auto-start feature on video or audio you include on your site.
If you can create an optimized page for each video or podcast, your conversions will be even better.
SEO Secret #5: Include an internal search box
Adding a search box is an easy way to help your visitors find what they’re looking for. (And according to MarketingSherpa’s Ecommerce Benchmark Guide, 43% of consumers use an internal search box if it’s there.)
And a search box offers a prime SEO opportunity, too! Using tools like Google Analytics, you can find out the exact words your market is typing to search for things they expect to find on your site.
Use these keywords to optimize other pages of your website, and to test using pay-per-click.
SEO Secret #6: Encourage immediate sales
A call to action is what’s going to get your customers to buy today. But is yours full of keywords that will reassure your visitors that their problem will be solved?
There you go – six SEO secrets to help you turn your visitors into customers. Try them out and watch your sales soar!
Posts Tagged ‘ Title Tag ’
I look at a lot of sites on a daily basis. There is a lot of common problems I see on the sites. Some people may have tags establishment or misuse of tags that have no real purpose. I have compiled a list of the top 5 do-it-yourself SEO mistakes. It is safe to say that many do-it-yourselfers can have at least one of these errors on their sites. These should help you avoid these costly mistakes and often pull you in the ranks.
1) Keyword tag – Seo Services
A keyword is the beacon of keywords, but not for keywords. You can not just stuff this tag with keywords that your entire site is related. The tags must reflect the keywords only on that particular page, not the entire site and not all of the keywords you think your site could be searched. Also, you should not have more than 20 words in the tag. You should not repeat any word more than 3 times. If you sell tickets, for example, do not write: Broadway tickets, the circus tickets, hockey tickets, boxing tickets, and so forth. Do use Broadway, the circus, hockey, boxing, tickets and so forth.
2) Description tag – It is sometimes used as a replacement for or combined with a description tag. However, more and more people are using these keywords to stuff. Search engines like Google are interested in what is on the page. More specifically, what visitors can see. In my opinion, the abstract tag has no place on a site.
3) Description Tag – The idea behind this tag is to describe what the “page” is about. Keywords related to the page should be implemented as well. The limit on words should be 20 to 25. I see a lot of site owners stuffing this tag with keywords, or having a description that is just as long. Stay within these guidelines and you will be fine.
4) Title tag – This, I believe, is the most important tag. This is the first tag the search engine bed. He tells what the search engine of the “page” is about. Do not put your web address here. Do not add your company name at the beginning of this tag either. It should not exceed 60 characters.
5) Content-If you notice, I received comments on the relevance of the “page”, not your entire site. Each page has its own keywords. Tag the title tag, description and keywords. All these keywords should be the same. Add it to your content as well. Now your page should be fairly well optimized.
Why is it that the sites fall short? Simple, the content is not optimized. Search engines are, for the most part, pretty basic. You enter a search term and it retrieves sites containing those terms while also taking a number of other factors into account. So if your site does not have these terms, how will you find it? You will not. More to do with keywords and you will experience the same result, but for different reasons. Sometimes, while reading about SEO can be bad. Try too many tricks, tips or methods is like too many cooks spoil the soup. At the end, they may do more harm than good. These rules are very easy to be followed by all. And the doubt? Always consult or hire a professional SEO Expert.
Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to domain.com and internal links go to domain.com/index.html. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket! Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results: Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if htdomain.com is your preference, then domain.com should redirect to it. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link. If you absolutely MUST use Javascript drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link. videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts. Check your server headers? Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this? You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects? If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.
Maybe one of the biggest misconceptions in SEO is that the ranking at Google and Yahoo is all that matters in the search engine optimization. Potential clients come to Seo Services with a single goal: “Get me a top-ten ranking on Google.” Some will also mention MSN, and a few will rhyme off a list of search engines and want well placed at the top of 200 of them.
It is time to separate fact from fiction. Yes, your SEO consultant can give you a top-ten placement at Google. But
1. If the placement is for “dirty brown shoes”, it will probably not help your shoe store one bit, even if I tell you first hand. Few people are actually searching on the term.
2. Number ten perhaps not much either, depending on the term. People in search of “Essential Nectar liquid vitamins”, will probably click on the first result they see, or at least on one of the “above-the-fold” results that do not require scrolling. On the other hand, someone searching for “liquid vitamins” might check through two pages of results to become familiar with the available options.
3. If your title tag reads like a cheap list of search terms, it will not be attractive. For example, if it reads: “vitamins, liquid vitamins, multivitamins, multi-vitamins”, you can skip over it in favor of the next result that reads “Liquid Liquid vitamins of vitamin supplements Store.”
4. If your description tag is a mess, people will more likely skip over your list, even if it does rank number one, in favor of one that resembles what they are looking for. Google and others use the description tag usually when the term is found in it, so be sure to include your key search terms in a description tag that actually reads well.
Lately, I have responded to a forum question, which goes something like this: My site ranks number one for this term at this engine. The term is sought on numerous occasions per day, and the engine, this percentage market. Can I expect this many visitors?
This is not an SEO challenge is a matter of mathematics: market research x = visitors
I answered with a little outweigh the factors that mathematics in the SEO game, including the site’s title tag and the description tag, as well as whether the term lends itself to scrolling. I also pointed out that it depends on the title tags and description tags of the competition, too.
Another factor that makes it difficult to forecast traffic is the abandonment factor – how many people click on none of the results because they get interrupted or confused, or abandon the search for a new because they find themselves off – topic or searching too broadly.
It also depends on how many listings there are and how they are marked. Often, Yahoo and Lycos, for example, there are so many ads that the average user may never scroll a screen or two to see the organic (natural) results.
And, of course, it also depends on the color of the walls in the room since the user clicks, the weather outside and how well they slept last night. But there is little you can do about it.
What you can do is to work with your Seo Services consultant to choose the search terms are most effective for your business and make sure he develops a title tag and the description tag that sell to both humans and motors Research. Then, make sure it is not only followed the rankings of your key search terms, but also the description used by each of the search engines.
A good ranking in Google and Yahoo is just one measure of your success SEO consultant. A more complete evaluation is that he is your partner in building long-term, targeted traffic.