How to tune your website to get business results

Have you already paid a lot for your website but not getting the business results you’d like? It’s not easy keeping up with developments on the internet as well as staying on top of everything else in your business.

Successful website optimization is not just about getting high Google rankings. It’s about sales – or some other outcome like subscriptions, bookings, or enquiries.

Attract more visitors by getting your site ‘recommended’ by links

The best known aspect of website optimization is “search engine optimization” (SEO) which gets as much traffic as possible to your site from the likes of Google. One aspect is getting links from other websites which are like ‘votes of confidence’ to your site – e.g. if you had a backpackers business, it could be listed on your town’s business directory:

You can pay for directory listings like in Finda or Yellow Pages, or place ads on the right side of Google’s search results page.

You can also leave comments on social media sites, forums, and blogs – with your ‘signature link’ pointing back to your site:

Quality is more important than quantity. Links are most effective from pages with high ranking themselves – and directly related to the subject of your website.

Now we look at the other aspect of search engine optimization….

‘Onsite optimization’ – getting the right search words in the right places

You need to connect with the language of your target audience – the phrases they use when looking for your kind of product or service. These can be found on the Google Adwords keyword tool.

To optimize for good search rankings, we need to concentrate on just a few phrases. Then we need to embed these phrases in the right places on your web pages:

• ‘Title’ meta tag – the title searchers see in the Google results page (and showing at the top of a browser)
• ‘Description’ meta tag – the paragraph they see straight after the page title
• Page headings – the main and sub-headings on your web page
• Main text – the detailed text on your web page (especially the first paragraph)

Narrowing down to longer, specific, phrases is more effective than using short general phrases. You need to find a niche where you can compete – where your page won’t be lost amongst thousands of others. e.g. “second hand Cajun cook books” is better than “cook books”.

Don’t over-saturate with key words or it will be unnatural and difficult for viewers to read – plus search engines may penalize you. Also, don’t duplicate the same content onto multiple web pages, or search engines may ignore all but the original page.

Now that we’ve got people to your site, we need to ensure we don’t lose them…

First impressions can make or break success

The visual presentation of your website is the first thing to hit people – either drawing or repelling them. There should be a balanced layout of visual elements – with enough white space to give viewers’ eyes a rest to avoid sensory overload. Images need to be of good sharp quality and well designed.

A consistent recognisable look is important across all pages to avoid confusion going from page to page – including a clear and simple menu structure. Once they’ve got this far, it’s a matter of…

The critical element for sales ‘conversion’

Text has the final say on website success, but many businesses just don’t get this. They typically give ‘DIY’ text to their web designer to dump on their website as an after-thought to the design. It’s often poor English or dry product information which viewers have to wade through to find what they want.

The text needs to be optimized for the customer – meeting them right where they’re at. Getting them to take desired actions on your site once they get there is what we call “conversion” – the ultimate aspect of website optimization. Here are some key factors…

• Get first things first…prioritize text clearly to avoid information overload, by using bigger text only for important information vs mere details
• Make text ‘scanable’ with plenty of headings and bullets to give the gist of your message easily at a glance:
• Talk in terms of customer interests – offering benefits directly related to their needs, fears, dreams, and questions – not just a bland list of product features
• Earn credibility by keeping claims realistic and believable – supported by testimonials, guarantees, qualifications, and industry memberships.
• Include a clear ‘call to action’, with clear benefits, making it easy to do business with you:

Payback on website optimization within weeks

Effective website optimization can double your sales. Addressing both conversion and search engine optimization will get the best results. These are quite different skills so you’ll need a good sales (“copy”) writer who understands SEO, plus maybe an SEO specialist for link building.

Have a look at how Spectra can help you optimize your website…

Search engine optimization – without getting too technical!

So you want your website to get lots of attention from online searchers? To appear on the first page of Google? Did you know that search engine optimization (SEO) can return $23 for every dollar spent on it? You’ll find the essentials on it here…

Search engines are getting smarter – so provide real value for people

In the past, web designers used various tricks to pull-in search traffic – like invisible text and repeated pages. They won’t work anymore – in fact you’re likely to be penalised for any attempt to deceive search engines.

They’re getting smarter all the time because their popularity depends on giving searchers the most relevant and useful content possible. We’re talking about the main ‘organic’ listings you see after you type-in your search words.

They also have paid listings (ads) to the right and above the organic listings on Google. Just like radio and TV, Google attract people by offering valuable content and slip in ads around it to make money.

It’s all about keywords

You need to tap into the language of your target audience. What phrases are searchers using when looking for your kind of product or service?

An easy way to find out is to use the Google keyword research tool which generates a whole list of terms that searchers currently use. You just enter some ‘seed phrases’ – your initial guesses – and out pops all sorts of terms including some you wouldn’t have thought of!

The list below came out of the seed words “dog food”…

The next thing is to go through the list and select the most relevant terms to attract the prospects you’re actually looking for. For example, if you were a top-end organic petfood supplier, you could use the terms ‘organic dog food’, ‘premium dog food’, ‘healthy dog food’, and ‘natural dog food’.

You’d avoid terms like ‘cheap dog food’ which would attract the wrong sort of people to your business and waste your time and theirs. The phrases most frequently searched for, but not well served by your competition, are the most profitable.

Once you’ve sorted your key phrases, you have a foundation to work with…

The two main areas of search engine optimization

Search engine optimization has many facets, but it mainly comes down to:

• off-site optimization – getting links from other websites
• on-site optimization – embedding the right keywords in the right places on your website.

Off-site optimization – getting quality links from other places

Links from other websites will boost your site’s status in search engines and draw traffic. The ideal way is for people to see valuable content on your site and link to it without having to ask them.

Another way is to approach owners of websites in related businesses or business clusters e.g. if you are a photographer, ask for a link from a wedding services site. You can also pay for business directory listings or place search engine ads e.g. Google Adwords (“Sponsored Links”).

Thirdly, you can create links yourself by leaving comments with your ‘signature link’ on social media sites, forums, and blogs.

These links are most effective when they:

• come from websites with high search engine rankings,
• are relevant to your website content, and
• have link text with relevant keywords included.

Here’s an example:

The yellow highlight shows link text that points to another page optimized for “content writing”.

One-way links to your site are more effective than reciprocal links (doing a swap with others). Links are less effective from pages having lots of other links on them – so beware of people with ‘link farms’ who want to swap links with you.

Links from emails are also effective – such as newsletters or e-zines.

On-site optimization

The rest of the article deals with on-site optimization…

A focused niche for each page

Search engine optimization works on individual pages, not your whole site. To get good rankings, each page needs to be focused on just a few phrases – rather than a wide scattering of words.

You can rank higher with longer specific phrases than shorter general ones e.g. “second hand tennis technique books” versus “tennis books” where your page might be lost amongst thousands of others.

The right words in the right places

An optimized page needs to have search words and phrases sprinkled through it liberally in key places:

• Page ‘Title’ meta tag – the first thing people see of your website in search engines like Google, and visible at the very top of web browsers when they’re in your site
• ‘Description’ meta tag – a concise description of your page content appearing in search engines straight after the page title
• Headings – the main and sub-headings in the body text
• Body text – the main text viewers see on a web page (the first paragraphs are especially important)
• Domain name – eg xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.co.nz
• Page file names – that viewers see in their browser address windows after the domain eg xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.co.nz/xxxxxxxxxxx.html
• Image ‘alt’ tags – these are the words inserted in the HTML page code summarising what each image is about (only seen if images are slow or fail to download).

The example below shows page optimization for key words “web writing:

Don’t overdo it

You want a strong keyword density – ie saturation of keywords in the page. But it mustn’t be overdone or it will be difficult and boring for viewers to read. It may even penalise you with search engines because it’s not ‘natural’ language.

Here’s an example:

Are you looking for a holiday in Sweden? Bonaventure Tours offers the best holiday in Sweden available. Our prices are affordable so you can have a quality holiday in Sweden without breaking the bank. Feel free to select the best option below according to your needs for your holiday in Sweden.

This is monotonous to read, right? But what’s worse is many websites have poor English as well (grammar and spelling etc). Not good for sales!

Disguised by variety

Web page content that’s attractive, reads well, and draws prospects to buy requires good sales writing (called “copywriting”). Content that ranks pages well in search engines is another thing. Combining these is quite a skill that few have. Some search engine optimization experts just dump search terms adnauseum through the text, irritating readers.

Clever SEO writing can create variations of a search phrase to avoid monotonous repetition, eg “sailing trips in south pacific”:

We can also combine individual key phrases into bigger combined ones. So, “second hand books” could be combined with “book sales” to make “second hand book sales”.

The more content the better – but not waffle

The more keyword-rich content on your site, the bigger the target it’ll become for search engines – optimizing the ranking. Search engines record the click history of visitors to your site, to see if they find useful information and stay there, or give up and leave!

Content needs to be concise. People generally browse websites quite impatiently, unlike printed material where they’re happy to relax and read more at leisure. It needs to be to-the-point to hold viewers’ attention.

You can have lots of pages covering a range of sub-topics on a search theme. e.g. a Wanaka backpackers may have a page themed on ‘things to do in Wanaka’ showing entertainment venues and ski fields, and another page on ‘places to see in Wanaka’ showing walking trail maps and driving times.

Watch content duplication

Ensure you don’t copy too much of the same content onto different web pages, or search engines may penalise all but the original page. Make sure you have at least 20% unique material (at most 80% common). There are online calculators to compare pages and tell you these figures.

Make it easy for people to see where they’re going

Search engines, like viewers, can get lost searching on a website and give up. It’s good to keep the menu simple and consistent throughout the site. It helps to include a Site Map which shows the pages and structure of your site.

Submission to search engines

Optimization requires first notifying search engines of a web page’s existence, such as on the Google URL submit page. Search engines tend to read off each other, so the more of them you submit your site to, the better. However, the major search engines are the only ones really worth the effort – Bibg, Yahoo, etc.

Technical stuff

There are other factors that can improve your optimization – which your web designer should be aware of: putting scripts and CSS styles in separate files, multiple domains forwarded with permanent redirects versus temporary, avoiding websites built totally with Flash.

Getting it to work for you

That’s search engine optimization in a nutshell. There are more advanced technical aspects to it, but they aren’t as important as what’s covered above.

If you apply these principles well, you’ll get good rankings, depending on the level of competition in your field. Actually, it’s not that easy to do yourself! You’ll probably need help to get the best results.

There are plenty of SEO specialists around – some who know what they’re doing and some who don’t. To get the best sales results from your website – your ultimate goal – make sure you have a good SEO writer on the job. Ask them for writing samples, search results, and sales outcomes achieved for clients…

 

(Earlier version published in The Channel magazine and Homebizbuzz newsletter)

Attract more enquiries and sales with website text that really hits home

You are the expert on your business, so your ‘DIY’ web writing may well cover all your product details adequately – but it may be unpersuasive, unclear, or unprofessional to your customers, without you realising it…

Web writing will make or break your sales – an often overlooked reality

Graphics are really important for first impressions but web writing has the final say on the success of your email or website. Many sites look nice enough, but their professionalism, credibility, and sales appeal are let down by their web writing.

In the technological world of the web, writing skills and discipline are often overlooked. Web development companies, though usually skilled in graphic design and programming, may lack ability in web writing and information organisation.

Confusing or tedious language, jargon, or bad grammar can put people off. And they won’t respond much to a bunch of boring company facts.

So what is it about web writing that will bring sales in for you?

First things first – priorities

We need to guide a person’s eye directly to the most important information first – a basic principle of design. Many websites dump so much information all over the screen that it’s hard to know where to look first – losing readers in a busy world of information overload.

‘Levels’ of information based on relative importance is the answer. Text needs to stand out for vital information and stand back for mere details. If too many things are highlighted, nothing gets special attention. Like they say… “too many priorities is no priorities”.

So, what are the most vital things you need to get across in your web writing?…

Talk in terms of customer interests, not just product features

The first thing to get across after you show viewers what you’re selling is why they should buy from you – what’s in it for them. Many websites just have bland facts dumped on them like “we are…we do…our products…”.

People get tired of wading through it all to find what’s important to them – their needs, fears, dreams, and questions. They’ll give up, moving on with one click.

Do car buyers care about ‘double overhead cams’ or ‘alloy wheels’ unless they know this means better fuel efficiency and acceleration? We’ve got to talk real benefits to their life.

State your main selling points, differentiators, and unique value proposition – what you offer customers that competitors don’t or can’t do as well.

Concise and relevant

Viewers usually browse websites quite impatiently, unlike printed material where they’re happy to sit down and take their time. To hold attention on the web, writing needs to be concise and to the point – relevant to your readers’ interests.

This is even more important for email newsletters.

Short versus long?

There’s no point in text dragging out longer than necessary to get the main points across clearly and convincingly. In advertising they say “the more you tell the more you sell”. A contradiction?

We’re talking about giving lots of solid reasons to buy your product. But long-winded waffle that doesn’t actually say much only bores people.

Accurate and realistic claims

Web writing needs to be truthful and down-to-earth. Any claims you make need to be backed up with facts or figures. Exaggerated hype like “best offer in town” or “unbeatable value” only raises doubts for the commonly sceptical Kiwi.

Credentials that build trust – a biggy these days

People are hardened by so many empty claims, hype, and scams out there. What evidence can you show your viewers of your trustworthiness and competence to deliver the goods’?

Tell them your qualifications, experience, industry association memberships, and guarantees. Your customers’ raves about you will carry a lot more weight than your own trumpet blowing, so testimonials are powerful – if they’re done right…

Surnames and company names will carry extra believability, and photos are great if your customers aren’t too shy. Interviewing customers with the right questions can produce testimonials that are specific and strategically support your selling points.

Scanable – getting the gist at a glance

Meaningful headings are important for content on the web. Writing needs to enable viewers to quickly scan over it to get your gist. Most people don’t want to wade through a sea of text to find what they’re looking for, like the old ‘needle in a haystack’. They’ll get impatient and bail out.

Lists are also good to stand things out of the body text.

The personal touch

On the web, writing with a personal one-to-one manner can make a good connection and build trust, versus an impersonal ‘broadcast to the masses’. Encountering a real person builds rapport with a viewer. Remember the old adage…“people do business with people”.

This is especially true for services – more so than for commodity products where viewers only need to see a brand, photo, price, and guarantee.

Attracting the right searchers through Google

Optimisation of website pages to attract search engine traffic relies much on web writing. It requires key search words and phrases to be weaved into the page titles, headings, body text, links, and hidden meta data.

Articles providing useful information can draw lots of search engine traffic, if sprinkled with relevant key words and phrases. Can you see the key phrase I’ve used for this article? I’ve used some subtle techniques to vary the appearance of it so it’s not over-saturated. Find out more.

Links from other websites, especially using those same key words, will raise your site’s profile too.

Clear call to action

You need to be clear on the intended purpose and outcomes for your website. Do you want to sell products, take bookings, get newsletter subscriptions, or what? To this end, web writing needs to persuade and give a clear call to action.

Make it simple, easy, and attractive for people to do business with you!

Getting it right to bring in the sales…

Does this all sound common sense and easy? It seems most people struggle to put words together that achieve all the above aims. Finding someone with good web writing skills is important – a friend, business associate, or professional.

An objective outsider can often see things that you can’t and write more to your customer’s viewpoint, reaching them more effectively. Good professional web writing can more than pay for itself through increased sales.

Have a look at how Spectra can help you increase your online sales…