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Why My Website Isn’t Working

Authority SEO — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:04:52 +0000

So your website isn’t creating the traffic or revenue that you thought when you got into this business. There can be many different reasons a website fails to reach its potential. It could be that major issues like unclear direction for the website, some can be issues you are unaware of like broken links, or it could be that you utilize too much flash that distracts both your visitors and the search engines. The following is a look at common issues that keep your website from achieving success.

If you are reading this article for the latest search engine optimization tips then you are on the wrong article. The goal of this article is to take a look at your thought process and approach to your website that may be leading your astray. Your website is like fitness, the people who struggle with there weight are always reading the latest diet tip on the newsstand while the fit people understand that success is about a lifestyle more than any one technique.

We are going to approach this topic from the angle of starting a new website. This works fine for those who already have a website to take a break and start from the beginning of why you started your website to begin with.

Your website has to have a purpose. Right now if I asked you what the purpose of your website is could you answer quickly in a shot and to the point response? The following are examples of purposes for websites.

1. Informational: the website is designed to offer articles, videos, news, and more to inform people on a certain topic or topics.
2. Ecommerce: the website offers services or products for sale
3. Lead Generation: the website’s goal is to capture future customers for another purpose

Websites can obvious course have a combination of these purposes. You have to decide on the purpose of the website before you can adequately structure it. Just think how confused your visitors will be if you don’t know the purpose of the website.

Once you have a purpose you have to understand who will be interested in your products, services, information, or lead generating abilities.

Now is time to make your target audience more specific. I know you are on the web because you want to reach everyone. Well getting just anyone to your site might look great from a traffic stand point though it doesn’t mean anything if they don’t convert into your purpose.

Does your website cater to your target audience? If your website is designed to sell women’s clothes do you have a site that appeals to the wants and needs of women? Often most websites are designed not around who the audience is; they are personality of the owner or the IT guy that developed it.

Going into keywords and how to use them in your website is a longer discussion then the point of this article. I have a question though would you like 1,000 visitors that don’t convert or only 50 visitors that convert at a high percentage? You might think that the question is obvious since the 1,000 visitors didn’t get your any traffic. So, often people are count up in large words that can drive lots of traffic either organic or paid instead of clearly defined keywords that are targeted to their purpose and audience that have less traffic though more conversions.

What are digital cobwebs? What is the first thing you think of when you read the word cobwebs? If you are like me I think of a rustic old attic full of cobwebs and haven’t been visited in years. As it relates to websites it is using old techniques to achieve modern results. The most common is flash intro to a website. They look great in the beginning only to totally annoy the second time you visit. Plus, search engines hate them as they don’t have anything to index. You will not find a highly optimized websites that achieving its purpose and converting its target audience that has a flash intro or flash video as its main message on the home page.

Google takes into account your site’s structure especially broken links as it rates the importance of your site. Just think if you have two options one with tons of broken links and one with not which site would you rather visit to get your information? This is also important about links to external websites where they may have changed a page to make it no longer available.

Both of these issues and more means your site is not being updated or cared after on a current basis. The web is about current. If your site sits dormant no matter how great it once was it will be come irrelevant.

When updating and writing the content you have to keep your visitors in mind instead of yourself. Keep in mind you want your visitors to read your content and follow your path to converting into your purpose. Visitors don’t convert for your reason they convert for their reasons.

This is often the case because in many circumstances you are the expert in your field as it relates to your website’s content. What you consider to be information everyone understand I can promise you they do not. I am not saying to write the content to insult the intelligence of your visitor only when you use jargon and thoughts that people have to be in the know to understand you are going to lose your visitor.

How you organize your content is essential. This is all based on your target audience and your purpose. Yes, everything alphabetical makes it easy for you to find the information though alphabetical only supports those who already know what they are looking for. Most people think in categories of information like home or business, men’s or women’s, ect. Your visitors have a purpose too, and the greater your website is setup to match their purpose the more success yours will be too.

The last thing and probably the best part of websites for those who take advantage is the ability to change rapidly. It is ok that you may not have every answer to the items listed above though you need to start. Testing is an essential part of your website. If one item isn’t working then you need to make changes until you get your desired results. This also goes back to #1 if you don’t know your purpose how do you know it isn’t working?

Why is My Advertising and Marketing Failing

Authority SEO — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:44:24 +0000

So your site is getting traffic though people aren’t buying. What is the problem? Think about how many times you have attempted to raise your profits by increasing the advertising or marketing even though you know that you are not getting the conversions for your efforts. The true answer to the issue may lie deeper in how your marketing strategies either work with or work against your product or service.

With the rise of the Internet, competition from small firms to large corporations can be at instant access to the consumer. This high level of competition forces people that are going to be successful into smart marketing and advertising campaigns, as well as, what happens once they land on your site.

No matter how successful your seo efforts, tv commercial, or paid per click advertising are nothing is as important as the product or service you are offering. The best way of looking at is that your product is more important than your marketing wit.

A different strategy to take to your marketing is making your product or products the focus of your advertising instead of how flashy the advertisement is. A new goal that can make a world of difference is getting your product’s name imprinted onto the minds of your future customers. To give an example of the opposite; have your ever talked about how funny a certain commercial was only to not know the product or company that was selling the product. Sometimes the more boring commercial is a winner because at the end of the day you remember the products name.

Does your product or service have an unique selling proposition? What separates your product or service from the next website? In some cases there really isn’t any difference, though in the proposition you associate with your product that people can see and remember can make the difference from them buying it from you.

So lets say that you have done all of that and you still got low conversions into sales for your products or services. Does your website’s message clearly backup and enhance the message that got people to your website to begin with. What if you claim to have fast shipping? When people are then reading about your products do they see fast shipping and follow up terms like ships same day or within 24 hrs on the page. You may have this information in a shipping policy page though not everyone reads those. If fast shipping is what separates your company from the rest than you this should be instantly available on every page of your site. You have to remember that people land all over your site and you want your main message communicated instantly.

Online where are real profits made, when people return to repurchase again. This probably the most overlooked aspect of online sales and marketing. We are always so worried about more traffic and higher conversions we forget to take care of our customers and make it easy for them to return and repurchase.

When comparing two companies conversion rates we often study the landing pages, keywords that drove the traffic, or the price of the product to determine how to increase our own conversion rates. After looking at this and beating your brains in as you believe everything you are seeing online you have a better offer without better results. You forget the repeat customer and the high conversions of direct traffic back the website. Getting repeat customers is more than just good customer service. Do people even know who you are? Have you ever bought something online only to later not know what website it actually was? It is important to continually brand your website with your unique selling proposition so people remember both not just the slogan.

The last thing about your website’s success is the value of your product or service. If you want growing repeat business the product has to be good once the customer receives it and uses it. In some cases our products may be personal to us so it may be important to get outside opinion on the real value of your products. No company sustained any consistent growth and success without a really good product in the end.

Sample SEO Proposal

Authority SEO — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:41:19 +0000

Objectives

Authority SEO is an online marketing and search engine optimization company specializing in driving site specific traffic to websites. Authority SEO takes a comprehensive approach that achieves short term and long term search traffic that converts to sales.

The goal is to reach search and web traffic specific to customers who are interested in your products. Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your site, your website will generate web traffic that converts into sales.

Authority SEO creates a personalized plan for each website. Every company has its own goals, budgets, and resources. Authority SEO works with you to maximize your results based on your situation. No website is too small or too large for effective search engine optimization and increasing sales.

4 Core Tactical Elements to the Plan

1.    Website Needs Analysis
2.    Link Building
3.    SEO Continuity
4.    Online Community

Why Hire an SEO Specialist

People are now using the web as their new yellow pages. Now with a few clicks on the web a person can find a list of custom card websites to make a buying decision. People searching Google and Yahoo are 90% of all web traffic. 99.7% of all search traffic clicks the websites that are on the first 10 listings of a search page. Fifty percent of all people searching keywords enter website #1 on the search listing for that keyword.

Keywords/ Traffic Monthly (Google)

Authority SEO creates keyword tracking lists that focuses on keywords specific to your site. Through a complex comparison test, Authority SEO ranks the keywords to target based on traffic, competition, direct relevance to sales, current rank, and more.

The most important thing to understand about keywords is that people search a variety of different terms for the same thing. Most people search questions like “how do I,” “I want to,” or “looking for.” It’s important to find out all the different variations and which ones have more traffic. It is Authority SEO’s job to find as many keywords as possible and then get your site ranked for them. Authority SEO also uses tools to find out what your competition is ranking for.

Services

Authority SEO will work with your website as its online marketing partner to implement short and long term online marketing campaign.

Website Needs Analysis

The Needs Analysis is broken down into two parts. The first being the internal structure of the site. This relates to how the website is structured for navigation, intralinks, text, and setting up analytics software to track conversions and traffic.

Quick examples on some sites

Authority SEO noticed that your entire home page is a photo. Google picks up text, so as it stands right now Google has no keywords off your homepage to rank in its search engine. This is true for all search engines.

With the needs analysis, Authority SEO looks at everything on the site from meta tags, titles of pages, all links on the site, urls, and everything else on the site to find ways to make what you already have indexed better in search engines.

The second needs analysis is external. This is creating a profile of who the target audience is for the your site’s products and the keywords associated with that target audience, and analysis of competition on major keywords to create ongoing strategy for keyword optimization. During the analysis period, a 90 day plan of the keywords that we are going after is created. This allows for a tangible result to the progress of your site.

Also, extremely important is that immediately analytics code is installed into the site. Then through conversion tracking, you can determine how the keywords and traffic is working. A million visitors doesn’t mean anything if they don’t covert into sales. There are many ways to get poor traffic to the site that looks good from a volume stand point that never converts into sales.

As part of the needs analysis, Authority SEO will create a blog optimized for information and your site. The blog serves three purposes. The first, being a way to communicate with future clients. The second, a way to support the link building process explained below, and third, it is one of the easiest ways to get new content complete. Blogs have the ability to get instant traffic as they are listed by time in blog search engines.

Competition Sites

As part of the needs analysis, I create a profile for who your competition is. It is important to understand how optimized the competition is and to find keywords that we can rank faster that have good traffic. I also use a tool where I can see what keywords they rank for and the traffic they get. This works great in creating our list of keywords we are targeting. To be successful in SEO we have to optimize each keyword better then the competition for that word so we need to know what keywords are worth going after.

Link Building

Link building is the most important aspect to search engine traffic and rankings. Proper linking building delivers high conversion traffic and is considered up to 80% responsible for website traffic. Link building is how search engines determine your site’s importance. Also, through link building we are telling the search engines what is important on your site.

The text that is linked (anchor text) is just as important as the link itself. If we want to rank for birth announcements than we want to create links that have the text birth announcements to the optimized page for birth announcements. One common problem is people may link the word birth announcements to multiple pages which confuses search engines as to which is the most important page to rank for birth announcements.

Link building will be an essential ongoing feature of website optimization which is needed on a monthly basis.

Baseline stats related to link building

Authority SEO starts a baseline looking at key stats associated with your site. Authority SEO looks at a variety of key performance indicators and creates a chart for you to monitor your sites progress. The baseline demonstrates quantitative results that support the understanding of how Authority SEO accomplishes its goals. Stats consist of indexed links, pages, rankings, and more.

Don’t get too caught up into Page Rank and Alexa Ranking as they mean nothing when compared to search traffic specific to your site. They are more just good references.

SEO Continuity

Authority SEO will work on a monthly basis to optimize new and old content, meta tags, and market trends. Any new information will be optimized to make the best difference on the web. Also, every month we monitor tracking of keyword rankings and competition. The goal every month is to increase the number of keywords that your site ranks for and increase traffic. A constant increase in traffic can be shifted due to market trends like less people searching on the web in the summer.

Important to understand with site rankings and traffic is that Google and Yahoo like new content. For a site to continue to rank no matter how good the SEO work was the site has to be updated on a regular basis. Once a site stops with regular updates the site will start to lose it rankings.

Community

The better the content on your site, the more this allows yourself to be seen as an expert in your specific area. This is important as people search social bookmarks, blogs, message boards, and other sites that create a good reference to you.

High Number of Potential Customers to Your Business

Authority SEO — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:12:47 +0000

There are 213 million searches per day with Google and Yahoo accounting for 90% of all web traffic. Though you probably won’t have all 213 million visit your website, you can achieve massive amounts of targeted visitors to find your website on a daily basis.

Authority SEO works to place your website in as many as possible keywords that will drive traffic that represents searchers looking for your specific services or products. What most businesses don’t understand is that 70% of all search engine traffic is unique search phrases.

“What that means to you is that there are thousands of different ways people are searching your business right now that you don’t even know about.”

You probably know 5-10 major keywords that would be important for your business to rank for. Authority SEO takes those keywords and creates an ongoing data base of keywords to target. Our goal is to compile and then implement consistenly your website ranking for more and more of these different keyword phrases. What drives tons of targeted is traffic is ranking for the thousands of different keywords people are searching for your business right now, and not finding you.

Authority SEO has real world results of clients who now received in just the last month of April 15,915, 27,280, and 27,325 different keyword phrases that delivered targeted traffic to their websites. That is what seperates Authority SEO from its competition it is the complete online visibity for thousands of opportunities to generate greater sales.

Contact Authority SEO about a free consultation