Little Known Tips For Free Google SEO Traffic

photo credit: kevinmarsh

After you’re done reading this post, you’ll understand the importance of copy and and persuasion thinking, both on your website, and off. You should also recognize that there are many variables that can and will imply specific user actions externally, and on your page – from the brand itself, usability, navigation, page layouts, offer, pricing, site design, shopping process, the competition and more. Start with the basics though, get your copy down tight. Using a simple guide – AIDAS can help you. (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action and Satisfaction).

A robust SEO strategy uses multiple ways to drive traffic to your web site. Relying on keywords for search engines to find your web site organically (your first step), is a must – and, optimizing a web site or page relies on understanding the relationship between effective copy and how it is presented – both on the page (what the viewer sees) and what’s in the code (what the search engine sees). Fast loading pages is another potential “signal” now used by Google.

The key to writing effective copy and driving traffic, repeat visitors for SEO is creating content that is both relevant and value-driven. Relevance refers to matching what viewers are looking for to what you have to offer. This is accomplished by implementing keywords in the title of each web page, variations in the URL, Metadata, page description, and image and video descriptions, if it’s included – and we suggest you do. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, and it’s a straightforward process to add an “embedded” video on your page.

Additionally, keywords in the content need to be placed in prominent positions, early on the page, such as in titles of pages, subtitles, and within leading sentences of paragraphs. This not only helps determine relevancy, but also can structure the content into a more organized and presentable format for users and search engines.

Value-driven content focuses on the legacy of the copy, which will determine how useful and re-usable the copy is for readers. Part of that is formatting the copy into shorter paragraphs, structuring the content with bullet points and sub-headings, using active and not passive words, and providing descriptions for graphics, charts, and other multimedia. This is also where structure influences SEO, as creating easy-to-follow content adds value to your site and can help promote traffic to other pages within your site.

In order to effectively provide value, you should structure links to other pages within your site and organize them in a way that is easily accessible and readable. Adding links within your copy makes it easier for readers to go from one page to the next and acts as an open door to the other areas of your web site. Getting quality and slowly built merit-based citations will add tremendous value, and over time. Search engines make adjustments all the time, and Google allegedly, daily.

Don’t simply add directories, for example, but use a combination of press releases, blogs (don’t just mass-comment), articles, syndication of custom content (to partners), email marketing, ad swaps and social media platforms (no spamming).

Think about where the user is coming from, and what their mindset is. You have different visitors coming to your site, from the ones who know what they are looking for, to those more in a “browse” mode, and do have a general interest, to those looking for something, not sure what they want, to the visitors with no interest at all. If you provide quality and consistency, these visitors will share content and link to you. Don’t miss this important point.

If performed diligently and accurately, the combination of these factors will create an effective SEO strategy that will result in increased traffic levels to your site.

Here’s How To Create Successful Web Landing Pages in 24 Hours Or Less

Once you have your website up and running, and once you have some traffic & attention to it, you must think about some ways you can get folks to take action on your pages.  Traffic to your website with no/little action serves nobody well.

A good landing page tries to convey (quickly) to the user; a clear action step. You can think of it this way: “what is the one thing I would like them to do next?”. We call this the most-desired-action (MDA) on the page.

Top Five Tips for Creating Effective Landing Pages

1. Relevance. Design landing a page(s) that is directly related to the link or ad that brought the visitor here.
2. Credibility. Establish credibility and create trust through a clean, professional appearance. Eliminate all grammar, spelling, spacing, formatting and design errors.
3. Navigation. Provide minimal or no navigation buttons. Every link is a temptation to leave your landing page.
4. Brevity. Keep text brief, simple and to the point. Text that is technical, confusing, long-winded, or gets sidetracked will bore visitors and drive them away.
5. Call to Action. Tell the visitor exactly what to do and how to make a transactions. If they can’t figure it out, they’ll leave.

Please note – while these are great starter principles for good website landing pages, you must always test this. For example, we often see simple designs outperforming flash, complex ones. Why is that? Answer: you let your users tell you, by testing the pages. (Tip: Try Google Web Optimizer!)

ACTION: Go to your page/website right now. Can you make some changes as per the list above? Do it – and you’ll have results in by tomorrow.

For even more tips, check out “Web Design for ROI” by Loveday and Niehaus, or “The Landing Page Handbook” by Marketing Sherpa Publishing.

P.S.

Here is a list of great landing page examples that you can get started with.

Amazingly Simple PR SEO Link Building Tips

Think of link building as Public Relations (PR), not Page Rank (the other PR).

When you do this, you are thinking about quality for your brand and online presence. But, none of the link building effort is worth it, or frankly, matters – if you don’t have a relevant page and strong offer/content to provide to your visitor that is searching for that information. If you do this right – you will get rewarded *everywhere*, from Google, user stickiness, sharing of your information, and opportunity for link reputation, while providing value.

To prepare, ask these questions below – about your page content, about your service, about your product and overall positioning. Can you offer a unique value (or sales) proposition? Are you clearly calling this out in every content piece? (without spamming, of course)

1. What can your product / service do for me? And, that nobody else provides?
2. What can you guarantee me, that nobody else can?
3. What is unique about you, as compared to your competition?
4. Why should I do business with you, and why should I trust you — and nobody else?

These are important questions to ask, and creates a solid foundation for everything you do. Not easy to answer for most, but a necessary discussion along with a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats). This will help keep more visitors on your website, and keep them coming back too.

So, here are reasonable tips that anybody can do.

Controversy tends to work well, but you’ll be amazed how well this can work against you as well. As Matt Cutts (thanks for tips here) at Google says, “it can be okay to uncork a good rant sometimes” but don’t  use this as a norm. You’ll be like a boy who cried wolf, hey, look at me,  pay attention to me, over here, etc – be careful.

You can use humor or bring something original to the table, that’s a lot better. (Dilbert comic strips are classics)

A great way to get links, is to participate in the community. Answering questions on LinkedIn, for example, can work really well for you. If you know the answer to something and say: “hey I know that – I can help you!”. People will be more receptive to clicking to your site and seeing what you’re up to. Answering questions to help other people is really cool. Try Yahoo Answers and even groups in the social media space.

Original research is another great way to create hooks to your site. Danny Sullivan created a comparison of all the spam out there for about 30 days of different e-mail providers and he documented that. He blogged it and a lot of people linked back to him.

You can go out to Google groups, Yahoo! Groups, and other places in the social media space where people are discussing your topic to see what they’re asking.

Social media is really cool. You can enjoy a participation on friendfeed and twitter and look  where people are spending their time. Perhaps it’s more on the Facebook and Twitter – then spend time there. If you have a video and you spoke at a conference, for example – you can you can list that and people will see it.  It helps to create trust and visibility.

The ‘ol “Top 10 lists” are are good, but they have been overused and lost some of their their allure – so you might want to look at that sparingly.

Make sure you get yourself a blog. I set this one up WordPress from an open source download. But, you can try either on WordPress.com, Blogger.com or download the source to install it on your own domain. Update it a couple times a week at first. Then, make sure you join the community and share your blog as appropriate. In the social sense, it’s more about “them” than you, remember that. Your blog can also be a great asset to establish yourself as an authority and thought leader in your business.

How to and tutorials are always great. People are looking for information on the Internet. Your site can be a great way to get awareness to you and your business. And, keep in mind –  if you build this out as useful, quality content pages, you don’t have to think too much about top keywords only – but long tail keywords – that tend to draw really quality traffic  can help you tremendously.

You can make a product or a widget and give it away for free, like a Firefox extension or a WordPress plug-in. Those types of things can be really good. People tend to link back to you as a thank you. You do the work once, and then lots of people can access it and download over time w/links.

Make sure that you have easy access to your site both from a search engine perspective and from user perspective. The site architecture, navigation and structure are very important. Make it easy to get to and links within it. 2-3 link depth is good.

Make sure to create a couple of videos. Short how-to tips or information about your space uploaded to YouTube and others – easy to do.

That’s it!