Any manager given the task to analyze a budget will be forced to look at where the bulk of its sales came from and look where other sales originated. This means zeroing in on lead sources.

Where did your online traffic come from?

Where did your phone traffic come from?

Where did your social media traffic come from?

Knowing where your customer traffic came from is only a piece of the puzzle. Thousands of people could come to you because of an offer.

What did your online traffic buy?

What did your phone traffic buy?

What did your social media traffic buy?

It gets even more detailed when you look at what type of online traffic (SEO, PPC, Link sites), phone (yellow pages, website, etc) and social media (ads, pages, etc)

The problem is that there are many ways for a customer to contact you that it starts to blur. A person could see a billboard with phone number or URL and type in anything it saw in a search engine. A magazine ad could lead to a phone call but they mention the website as prompt. If the magazine generated the largest sales potential, a manager would be in danger of cutting the magazine ad and diverting the budget to online efforts. If the online efforts were generating smaller sales, this would create a massive amount of frustration because they didn’t look at all the factors on HOW they made the sales. Cost-benefit analysis has to be analyzed. If online ad spending is about to outpace newspaper ads, what is the revenue generated by that switch?

SEO could stand for Search EFFORT Optimization because the search engine as we know it is expanding to include many different attributes feeding and supporting one another. There are many distractions and coming technologies, but remember to keep focused on what your clients and customers want.

1. Be aware of your spending in time and money in regards to your ROI.

2.  Review the terms the people use to describe your business.  Try to stay away from industry-speak.

3. Be aware of how people want your business to interact with them.

4. Keep an eye and ear to your offline and online reputation and that of your competitors.

This year is a time to see how these toys and tools can enhance what you have already – not abandoning them.

Successful copywriting is an art form and a skillful copywriter conveys a brand or product message with wit, creativity, and unequivocal purpose. The task, which seems effortless when conducted by the most talented writers, requires not only a strong understanding of English language mechanics and techniques, but also a foundational background in persuasive marketing communication. The copywriters themselves agonize over proper word use and placement (both within the sentence and aesthetically on the page). Thus, a talented copywriter is an incredible team member, and to elaborate on my earlier assertion, successful copywriting is an art form, which is not to be interfered with…

Enter the Search Engine Optimization Specialist.

Just as every company needs a confident and capable copywriter, the organization could use an equally confident and capable SEO specialist. Unfortunately, while a copywriter considers the form, mechanics, and design of text, an employee trained for proper and efficient SEO is concerned with keywords, relevancy, and page rank. Thus, there is a high potential for miscommunication between these two marketing tacticians.

Therefore, it is important to recognize where on a webpage the skills of a copywriter or the skills of an SEO expert should take priority. Below is a guide on how to best optimize a webpage so both machine and customer are able to read and process the page contents.

Research – Pick a Partner and Stay Together

Both team members (the copywriter and SEO specialist) will conduct intensive research phases before producing any content for the webpage. The copywriter will research the company’s internal marketing materials, both online and offline, as well as the messages of competing brands and products. The SEO specialist will carry out keyword research and build a primary and secondary target keyword list. It is important for both of the experts to keep aware of the other’s research, as it will significantly help in the content creation process.

For example, a thorough understanding of the company’s products along with a quick review of offline marketing materials will aid the SEO specialist in the keyword brainstorming and review session. On the other hand, having keywords in mind before the copywriter’s first draft is a great way to start the SEO process early during content creation.

Content Creation – Give a little, Get a little

The Headline

Lead: SEO Specialist

Teamwork is key, but when writing the headline of the page it is absolutely vital to insert a primary keyword.  Thus, if it comes down to it, a copywriter must sacrifice a clever, eye-catching headline for a strong keyword. While integrating a keyword into a great attention grabbing headline is a plus, I’ll warn copywriters to not fight this battle with the SEO specialist.

Extra Notes:  Use the HTML <H1> tag. While form is important, the <H1> tag is a key indicator for relevance when a search engine crawls your Web page. Also, match the title tag keyword with the H1 tag keyword.

The Content

Lead: Copywriter

For the crawler, keywords are important, but for the human visitor, the page’s message is king. If you haven’t captivated the visitors with a catchy headline, it is essential to get to work early in your page copy. Thus, don’t start pushing keywords if you cannot fit the terms (or phrases) naturally within the page text.

Extra Notes: Incorporating both primary and secondary keywords (maximum of 2-3 terms per page) within page copy is of high importance, especially within the first 100 words. While you do not want to force the terms into the text, do write with keywords in mind. Try using keywords early in sentences and passages to aid in delivering the message.

The Form

Lead: Copywriter

Sentence form implies sentence length and structure in addition to text format (e.g. bold, italics, etc.). For sentence structure, keep your text grammatically sound. In the past, I have found concise sentence structure to provide the best results for two reasons.

1)    Better control of the page message and overall reduction in grammar mistakes.

2)    Easier to insert SEO target keywords at the front of a sentence rather than integrating in the middle or end.

Extra Notes: For search engine optimization purposes, bolding and italicizing keywords does carry a little weight with the search engine crawlers. However, the influence is no where near what it needs to be to forcefully incorporate it to your page copy. It is easy to use this strategy ineffectively, and this method can really make sentences look (and read) awkward for page visitors.

The Page Design

Lead: SEO Specialist

Obviously, a graphic or Web designer should be involved in this process, but beware the pitfalls of beautiful web design. Copywriters and designers produce gorgeous templates for company webpages, but considering SEO is too often an afterthought. Keep SEO in mind through the entire process and I suggest always leading with your page headline and content.

Extra Notes: Be weary of Flash designs and other applications on pages. Never hide an important product or brand message under an image, especially a flash image. While regular, non-flash images contribute to overall page optimizations, page content will deliver the most influence on a search engine results page.

Consider the Rest – Bits to leave you with

- External Copy – While this post has only discussed online page content, it is good practice to make keyword insertion a uniform procedure across all marketing materials (e.g. print materials, social media, etc). Therefore, if an offline, print catalogue should ever need to be reproduced on the company website, much of the content will already be optimized for page rank.

- Localize – If you run a small, local business, use the name of your city often in your SEO keywords and website ad text. Not only will this aid in your page rank, but also the incoming SEO traffic will be significantly more targeted and relevant.

- Update your copy – Today’s Internet is personalized, instant, and fresh. Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook are leading the way for instant communication, and this new way to process information isn’t lost on the major search engines. Fresh, relevant content is king!

-   What’s Next? – This is never a question a webpage visitor should be asking. Thus, when writing copy or worrying about SEO, always force another action from your visitor. Moreover, make that action valuable for both the visitor and for your business.

Hopefully, this guide will help to balance our practical SEO mindsets with our appetites for creativity. Do you have any web copy best practices I didn’t mention? Let me know in the comments.

…beatbox outro…

The war room is the room where strategic decisions are analyzed, discussed, proposed and made. The war room exists for every company because your company is in competition with another company – it just depends on its quality.  Everyone needs a strategy. I always prefer to do a rundown list on competition. It starts this way…

Someone wants to start a small business – something they love to do – and they want to see if they can make a little money of off it. They ask me, “what could I do to increase website visits.” After I give a punch list, they start backing away. More often than not, they have a fear of getting in over their heads and want to keep it small. Two months later, they come back “ok, let’s do it.” At this point, I wish I could pull down maps out of nowhere and get an expandable pointer. Why? Because there’s no time to waste.

Here’s my initial punch list to develop a war room strategy:

1. SERPs
Search Engine Results Pages. Your keywords. What are they? What are people typing to find you if they don’t know your name? The top results in your keywords and key phrases are your competition. Search less popular terms and take note of any opportunities.

2. Competitor Websites
Visit each website and take note of the following of how their information flows and the direction it takes you.  Does the information make sense? Are you guided to make a decision? Does it prompt you to make a decision now or some nebulous time in the future?

3. Links
Are other sites linking them? Which ones are they? Are they quality sites?

4. Social Media
Are they on Twitter? Facebook? Are they actively using them?

5. Local Results
Google Place Pages, Yahoo and Bing Local. Did they claim their listings? What info are they sharing?
What are they NOT doing?

6. Blog & Forum Chatter
Search on their name and URL – see what people are saying about them. Do they have a blog? How often do they update it?

That’s the short list right there. Once you profile your top competitors, you then look for holes in each instance to “do one better.”

A. SERPs
Place your keywords and keyphrases in places where they matter most.  Optimize for the “not as competitive” keywords to circumvent a bloodbath of fighting.
Example: Three Competitors fighting for “Home Windows.”  Instead of joining in the fray, I optimized for “replacement vinyl.”  It worked, but then the other sites caught on so I changed it again.

B. Websites
Arrange your web pages to flow to increase conversions by giving strong call to actions and empathizing with prospective clients.  Example: After researching a year on the top problems a potential client would face to bring them into my “store.”  I changed the flow of the homepage to those problems with quick solution paths.  Conversion percentages were staggering.  Company information was moved way out of the way to the “About Us” tab.   I have never seen a commercial starting off with the history of the company, why should your website?

C. Links
Seek out better places to link to you. Example: A competitor had 3 times as many backlinks as one client.  They were going for quantity rather than quality.  By getting links from the local TV station, Better Business Bureau and the local university and a government website. It made a difference and it didn’t matter if the “no-follow” link attribute was used because of number 1.

D. Social Media
Do it better.  Example: We started a client with both a Twitter and Facebook account.  Facebook was a lot more popular.  We were able to acquire fans with an offer, a contest and other promotion.  However, it started becoming problematic to retain and engage the “Fans” without annoying them but serving a purpose.  The direction was changed quietly as competitors started to blast their fans needlessly … and still do.

E. Local Results
Fill out your local profiles and use them to the fullest.  Example: Using coupons and mimicking the working language from your website that works, a lot of lead sources and phone calls were tied to the local SEO.

F. Blog & Forum Chatter
If there’s anything you can capitalize on – a mood within the industry, a PR flub, take note and move wisely. Example: Google Alerts were set up for competitor names as well as the client’s name.  This was able to bring in alerts where people were talking about us positively and negatively.  Seeing the negative aspects of a competitor’s customer service allowed us to enhance the client’s.

Hoowah! Don’t get intimidated. Size up your competition and know their weaknesses. Remember, knowing is have the battle.  Scouring this site is a place to build your war room for the above steps.  What tactics are in your “war room?”

Many factors play into SEO efforts including the competitive search landscape of the industry in question, the current state of a website’s SEO foundation, and the overall flexibility of a site’s architecture. Thus, as a marathon runner, search engine optimizations can take months of basic website adjustments and enhancements before significant improvements in search engine rank can be reported back to the client. In the meantime, like a high school senior waiting by the mailbox to see if they have been accepted into the university of their choice, clients impatiently wait to hear back how many of their target keywords are ranking on the first page.

Ultimately, the beginning of a search engine optimization process is an exciting time for both the client as well as the SEO agency.  For the client, there is the promise of an increase in website traffic, new relevant customers, and an opportunity to get a step ahead of the competition. Therefore, the first step in the process is to manage client expectations and provide them with measures, other than search engine rank, that they can easily understand and report back to their teams. For me, this is when I usually call on my old friend, bounce rate.

Bounce Rate for the Client

Bounce rate is a wonderful metric because for a client, it is easy to understand and very important to their brand in the online setting. Furthermore, for the SEO agency, bounce rate is easy to monitor, easy to report on, and something tangible the client can put their interest into while the site is being optimized to rank in higher search positions.

Additionally, bounce rate serves as a very effective introduction into the world of website optimization, especially for a client that is a little less knowledgeable on the subject area. To briefly elaborate, clients can quickly identify bounce rate as a good evaluation of their overall site design, architecture, and content (all key components in the SEO process) and then translate that statistical information to a consumer’s initial experience to the client’s brand, service, and company. In the end, this will present the ideas of relevancy and consistency in the mind of your client and should aid in explaining some of the SEO processes to them (for instance, building a keyword theme throughout a single webpage).

Defining Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a statistic available in almost all website analytics applications. Basically, a “bounce” consists of a searcher landing on a webpage and then leaving that webpage before ever visiting any other pages within the site. Google analytics does a pretty adequate job when explaining the term:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

In the case of SEO, the “ad copy” can be merely thought of as your organic search result. After entering a search query, a searcher is enticed by your organic search title and description, and upon clicking, they are taken to a landing page. Similar to PPC, this first introduction to your website/company/service/brand/etc. needs to be not only user friendly, but also relevant to the searcher’s initial search query.

Evaluating Bounce Rate

Are you excited, yet? Me too, but, before we venture out and start exploring the value that bounce rate can provide, it is important to keep in mind that bounce rate is a rather unique and potentially misunderstood metric. Therefore, there are a few details that both an SEO professional and a small business owner need to comprehend before evaluating success from this analytics stat.

Bounce rate vs. Exit rate

First, and most importantly, bounce rate is not the same as exit rate. As a general rule, I tell clients: Everyone needs to exit your site, but nobody needs to bounce. By definition, exit rate is the percentage of users that leave on any particular page during their visit based on the number of visits to that page. So, where a site visitor who bounced has only seen one page on a website, an exit counts as a visitor who may have seen two or more pages on your site and then navigates away from your site.

To continue comparing, bounce rate is very useful for evaluating landing pages. A high bounce rate on a landing page can mean a site visitor is determining the webpage to be irrelevant to their needs or too hard to navigate and find what they need. On the other hand, a high exit rate on a page may call out a particular page on your website that is distracting the from the user’s experience with your website.

Do not compare your bounce rate with other sites

It is also important to keep in mind that bounce rate is not a measurement that is often best compared with other websites, including competitor websites.  A number of factors could cause a particular company to have a much higher bounce rate than any other companies. For example, if your company shares the same name with a different company, your site has a higher chance of attracting irrelevant, unintended traffic, thus causing more bounces and a higher bounce rate. However, your competitor that has a unique name that no other company uses. Theoretically, they would have a lower bounce rate average because they see less irrelevant traffic.

Blogs

Finally, blogs also deserve a measurement system of their own. Many times, users may visit a blog from an outside source, read the blog post that peaked their interest, and then, bounce off the page that they landed on. Thus, for a blogger, the goal was completed because the reader read the entire post, but the site’s bounce rate was negatively impacted due to the reader only reading one blog before leaving.

General Rule for Bounce Rate

Due to the above intricacies of bounce rate, there is no general rule for quality bounce rate scores.  Obviously, every website needs to establish its own quality bounce rate and aim to maintain that percentage. Personally, for most of my clients, I evaluate my non-paid search bounce rate as follows.

< 25% Great

25 – 35% Good

35 – 50% Okay

50 – 60% Worrisome

> 60% Concerned

Keep it in Perspective

Bounce rate is a wonderful metric to monitor for both SEO professionals and the clients looking for tangible results. It can provide a lot of value to your website optimizations and give a client a perspective to look at other than their search engine rank.

Finally, the rubric above satisfies most of my bounce rate needs, but it may not provide the best results for your client or company website. This guide as a whole should help you wrap your head around how you can use bounce rate more effectively in your SEO campaigns.

Okay, you be careful out there!

SEO Boy’s own Jennya has written pretty comprehensive list of tools to reset your SEO for a new Bing world. It’s a must-read, and I’m going to use it as a checklist. But there’s something strange to this “Microhoo” deal – this Yahoo!/Bing “arrangement:”

What’s intriguing is that of all the offerings, Yahoo! choose to sub out their bread & butter in order to stay afloat.

Search Engines, though initially made with pure attentions, don’t stay afloat because they make money off the results. Search Engines make money off the advertising they can sell via the traffic they generate.

If I had to guess, I would have to say that the cost of keeping the search engine technology relevant – upgrading hardware, code and establishing vendor relations – while at the same time keeping and in step with the new sources of data – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs… – was overwhelming. I can’t imagine what it cost Google to do the same. Or Bing.

But unlike search engines in the past, Yahoo!’s aces up their sleeve will probably keep them around longer, keep them relevant. And with the deal, Yahoo! will probably have the capital to free themselves up for additional R&D projects. And if Yahoo! has been good with anything, it’s been user experience tools.

User experience tools that will keep Yahoo! Relevant

Flickr - I forget that Yahoo! owns Flickr (until I have to login). If you were to math out the traffic from Compete.com, you’d find that Flickr adds 20% to Yahoo’s overall traffic. Who couldn’t do with another 20 million hits a month? And Flickr’s popularity continues to grow. It’ll be great to see what Yahoo! plans to do with the site to keep it current.

Yahoo! Analytics – Matt Lillig, Sr. Analytics Lead at Yahoo! & Yahoo! Web Analytics just tweeted my employer’s account to tell me that Yahoo! Analytics will still very much be around after the merger is complete. It will be interesting to see what the pricing will be for Yahoo! Analytics once the merger is complete. With real time results, Yahoo! Analytics could become a traffic-catcher if it becomes completely free.

Email & Fantasy Sports – Say what you will about them, but it comes down to what the users want. And given that the tools are supported with Twitter, Facebook as well as Yahoo! News and Sports, Email and Fantasy Sports will continue to be traffic-catchers.

In the end, most users will only care about their user experience. It’s the industry that will be more snobbish about where the search results come from.

Either way, Google will be watching down from Mt. Olympus, supporting Microhoo’s every move in hopes the merger will keep the monopoly police off their backs.

How?

There are theories to work from and a lot of ratios to share to generate leads, but I wanted to take the opportunity to ask an actual customer.

Actually, he couldn’t remember what it was but overall he preferred to call us. The site fit for what he wanted to do.

When I hear that type of statement, it tells me that the path was intuitive to the customer and it was very natural to use the site and continue down the conversion path. You don’t necessarily remember how you use stairs. You just do. If there’s stairs, you know how to go up them. You don’t think about the height of the step, which leg to lead with and what momentum you use to thrust yourself against gravity while heading forward to continue up the stairs. A website should aim to have that type of intuitive nature in usability.

For something to be intuitive it has to have a connection with a person’s problems not with the company itself.

For SEO purposes, it is the keywords that play into this type of web architecture. Keywords are the words the customer would use to describe their problem. Keyphrases are the most common sentences that people use to describe their situation.

Several companies seem to prefer to optimize on their company name. That type of thinking results from a lot of branding strategies. However, when people don’t know who you are, you are left with what you do.

So now your site speaks to your customer.

For SEO purposes, it is the conversion formthat speaks the value of your Internet marketing. If your website has just one way to contact your company, you need to put a form on every page you want to measure. This helps track all your efforts and how people use your site. You’ll be able to see how to change your site and enhance as more people use it … or don’t use it or still can’t find it.

Now your site is a tool for your customer.

For SEO purposes, your site should be a part of a group of websites of similar industries or groups supporting a cause you work toward. Linking to and from websites that support each other help establish credibility as well as bringing each other higher in the search engine results pages.

Now your site establishes a sense of security for the customer.

Keeping your site in a very usable form for your visitors will make your site increasingly relevant against your competition and will naturally bring your site higher in position over time.

Oh the joy!

The situation:

This client is wanting to build a niche site on his pet photography business. As a professional photographer on several topics, he was wondering what niche generated the most revenue. He had decided that the pet industry was lucrative.  If dog costumes have a thriving industry, then photographing them is right behind it.

This client is also an avid Apple product consumer. Any iProduct is bought at time of release and thoroughly broken-in before the general populace reads about it online. Because of this, he was willing to adapt his life to the iPad, but there proved to be a problem.

He has his site built in Flash. He told me “I know you don’t like flash, but…” I countered saying that I actually like Flash. It’s fun! But Apple hates Flash. Google doesn’t crawl flash. That’s two heavyweights against one.

All it took was to see that tiny little blue box in the middle of his new productivity tool to see that he wasn’t going to get a visitors.

If you want to see how Google sees your site, type in your url in the search box, hit enter and click “cache.” You’ll see the latest snapshot of what Google sees. A flash site will show up a gleaming blank white.

So now the redesign begins, but how do you design that capitalizes off your SEO campaign?

First, there is something every company needs to consider. One site cannot be everything to everyone. Having multiple sites with different focuses will help, but if you just want one site, lets look at some best practices.

1. The F
People tend to read in an “F” pattern as they scan a website. This means, the top left corner is a prime spot. Some people put a click-able logo that always leads to the home page, but why not a very succinct call-to-action with the logo: “Download Now” “Schedule Now” “Get Fixed Today” “$25 off coupon!” It’s a prime piece of real estate to not utilize.  The “F” is probably the most important part of this list.

2. User-focused content
Your site’s main purpose is to generate leads and sales. It is not to tell people your story. A story doesn’t pay the bills, a sale does.

3. Horizontal Navigation
Main navigation across the top makes it easy for your site to be used.

4. Three columns of content or large quick links
Again, user-focused content comes to play here. Instead of “who we are” and “where we came from” and “where we are going” have “Problem X? Solution X!” “Problem Y? Try Solution Y!” “Problem Z? Solution Z!”

5. Vertical Navigation
I call this “Expert Navigation” I would use for more long-worded solutions that are common to your clientele like:
- Spring Tips for your Home
- Freeware Alternatives to Commercial Software
- Solution Y Testimonials
- Solution X Student Discounts

6. Header and Footer Optimization
A header and footer of your site are consistent across every page. Think about what you want to be known for in there and you’ll help it index correctly.

7. Every link goes to its own content
If you have a link about car stereos, then that page needs to be all about car stereos. It doesn’t need to mention other accessories. Keep each page hyper-focused.

8. Entry forms on every page
Every page should have a form for a visitor to fill out. The home page, the content pages, even the about us page. You’ll see very quickly how people respond on which page.

9. Don’t go too deep
It’s astounding to me that sites I have measured have 50+ pages and yet those pages are rarely seen. The conversion forms from item #3 and the contact us form are the biggest converters on one client’s site. In fact, the people who don’t necessarily fit into the “3 main categories” go to the “contact us” where i have less required information and a big enough text area for them to spill out their problem.

Keep the customer in mind, make it easy for them to contact you, make it pleasing to their eye motion and you’re on your way to building a great lead generation site.

Review your top content pages

What are the pages that people are using the most? How long are they staying on them? How are they using them? You may be shocked to find that some people don’t read every page on your website. With the pages that are rarely visited, or never visited, take a look at where they are placed on your site.

Are they more than one click deep into your site?
Is it focused for one message?
Do they have strong calls-to-action on it?

Expand opportunities by adding more content akin to a top performing page on a new page with alternate title tags and keywords. Even though Google can pick up on some synonyms, it’s not perfect.

Review your returning vs. new visitors

Low numbers of returning visitors may point to a lacking website or it might be a sign of growth. Sounds vague? Well, it depends on the type of site you have. If you are a content-providing site and your returning visitor number is non-existent, you could theorize that people are not thrilled after seeing your site and moved on. If your new visitor number is low, it could mean you have a loyal fan base, but you aren’t growing as much as you could.

Review your focus

Your website needs to reflect your business model, not emulate the latest in Internet fads. Some things may make sense to add, but others make no sense and can distract your visitors from buying something from you. So make a strong case on why you should add extra content like a weather forecast, sports scores, headline news feeds, stock tickers, funny pictures, social buttons, games and affiliate advertising. Keep your visitors on a path to an answer they need. Don’t turn your site into another Yahoo or iGoogle.

Review your customer paths

Take a hard look at your website and map out where each customer-type you have would go on your site. Match that to your site overlays and hot spots and see if you need to corral visitors into a tighter path. Remember, you want people to make a decision on your site – to use you now or use you later for each path on your website.

As you continue in your SEO campaign, increasing the conversions of leads from your SEO efforts will become a win-win for you and your customers because you are focusing on giving them what you want.

How do SEO results compare to PPC results?

Both are measured differently, so you can’t really say one is better than the other. For quick fast results, PPC can get clicks to your site, but retaining visitors is tricky. For Organic SEO, repeating customers and clients is outstanding, but the road to get there is longer. You can see how both can be applied for an immediate successful marketing campaign.

One Website’s tale in Organic SEO

There was once a nice little website of a local contractor that touted the wares of its vendors. Shiny images of machinery filled the gallery with text of the company’s history. The average email contact was about 1 a week on various types of client’s needs. The business relied heavily on mail drops, radio and outbound calling.  Success was moderate, but there was a slight downward trend.  So they turned more energy to the website – uncharacteristic for their industry.

Usually, a website redesign could boost the visits and email contacts, but SEO would enlarge the pool of web surfers to come into the site.

The Redesign List
1. Dumped the vendor products to focus on branding the contractor
2. Focused content on what the end-user wants hitting the pain points
3. Segmented the website with different paths for different customers
4. Contact forms for all customer paths and products

Why the fuss?

For #1: To show why they are the choice, rather than a shelf for a vendor product
For #2: People need a solution to a problem they have, not a success story
For #3: To show how people are using your site and what people are wanting most
For #4: To make it hard for people to leave your site without making a decision

Of course they could have left it like that, but they wanted to enlarge the pool out there to capture those people searching for solutions they could provide.

The SEO List
6. Getting a list of prominant keywords in their industry
7. Claiming their local business listings online and filling out the profiles
8. Installing Google Analytics
9. Incorporate Keywords into title pages
10. Adding more pages based on the keywords with contact forms

What’s the purpose of those steps?

For #6: To find out the words people are actually typing in to find the stuff you provide
For #7: To be listed in local listings
For #8: To track your website’s traffic and where people come from to get to your site and how they use your site
For #9: Letting the search engines index your pages according to your keywords rather than “home” or “welcome.”
For #10: Maximizing the amount of opportunities for your site to be indexed as well as spreading a large net for potential customers.

The results after a year:

Astounding. Since there were no analytics with the first website, the redesign clocked in at bringing in an average of 30 visits a day. Through different calls to action, the 1 email contact a week grew to an average of 3 a day. After 1 year of SEO and Local SEO efforts, the average visits increased to 80 visits a day and an average of 7 contacts a day. Because of the results, the company is cutting down on direct mail drops and look to more internet solutions.

Could it have been more? Absolutely, there were many SEO methods that could be implemented, but the local competition didn’t change anything on their sites so the high placement was acheived quicker than average.

As you look at your site, just ask “what do you want it to do for you?”

Flash has been a favorite of web designers for years and the bane of SEO experts for just as long. The argument of whether or not content organized within a Flash object (such as navigation menus) seemed to find a somewhat compromise. Google stated that information within Flash objects can be indexed and are working on it, but the whole point might be moot with Apple’s reluctance to have Flash run on its devices.

I had two instances where flash was causing me trouble:

1. I had an ad built for me and it was put in Flash. This ad was going to be on a highly trafficked site where ads did really well on conversions in the past month. But now I had a choice. Anyone with an iPhone or iPad would not see this ad. Is it worth it? I didn’t think so, so I had them change the format.

2. While reading a blog, they wanted to share some content – a “hey, check this out” piece of viral content. Since I was reading it on my iPhone, I couldn’t view it. At the speed of social media and blogging content, to ask myself to go back and find whatever that was seemed counter-productive.

What’s this have to do with SEO? Visibility

The point of SEO in marketing it to get your service or product that’s represented by your website in front of the most relevant eyes as possible. Let us assume that Google was able to index Flash object and all the content they contained just as fast and accurate as they do with regular text. Besides the thousands of skills of graphic designers becoming hotly desired, the level of effectiveness suddenly changes to the power of Apple’s market share. If the iPhone was the only Apple device that didn’t support flash, that segment of the population could be ignored. Now with the iPad launched as a mobile-computer-type-thing, it increases the possibility of people who didn’t want an iPhone and get an iPad.

Ok, two devices now … really popular devices, not supporting a particular platform. Content and websites are not only not search-able, they don’t even come up. I was once thinking about letting flash objects on my sites, purely for decoration, but now I’m not so sure. Mobile versions of sites are fine, but an iPad allows for a full site to be seen. This guyditched the Facebook app for the iPad for the actual Facebook site.

What’s this have to do with SEO? Volume

Where is your target audience? How can you get the most people in that demographic? What are their computing habits? When I was designing CD-ROMs back in 199x, we had to design the programming that could be handled by the slowest possible computer in our targeted demographic. I still do this today. Right now my target demographic is strictly surfering compatiable. They don’t update their flash players, adobe readers or browsers. They may or may not have broadband. And they are completley paranoid about pop-ups. So my sites look “older” in the terms of web standards. I use a lot of text, hypertext, no java or flash and my sites rank high and people here like them. They’d get blown out of the water in another region (maybe) but it’s all about serving the needs of your target audience in the way most relevant to them.

I don’t know how this will all end. Will Apple grab ahold of dominant market shares and throw Flash into obsolesence? Will Adobe make flash so ubiquitous that Apple will have to continue to ignore it or allow it? Will Google swoop in with a killer app that will catch both Adobe and Apple off guard? Since this an SEO blog, I’m keeping my eye on what Google is doing.  And if you are wondering how your site can be seen by the most relevant people to increase your sales, I’d suggest you do the same.