Many webmasters, business owners and marketing folks are sometimes more concerned about saving money than making it. Ever heard the expression, “Penny wise, pound foolish?” Save a buck today, lose two or three tomorrow. That’s what happens when you try to optimize your own website and don’t know what you’re doing. You’re likely going to fail or you won’t be patient long enough to wait for the results you hope to get. Often many times I have seen people that don’t take the time to truly understand how search engine optimization works, try to rush it or have unrealistic expectations and then vow that SEO does not work. I can assure you that search engine optimization is one of the most cost effective and best return driven mediums to drive targeted visitors to your website.

But is there a time when you can, and should, optimize your own website? Yes. There may be times when performing the SEO work on your site is to your advantage.

The obvious time to optimize your own website is when you have taken the time to learn it on your own and have ample time to perform the on site optimization and ongoing link building and reporting efforts. You’ve studied it long enough and you’ve experimented enough with the tools that you can make it happen. I’m not talking about having read one e-book written in 1995. I’m talking about having actually tested some of the things that you’ve learned and you understand SEO well enough to employ its mysteries without giving up when things don’t go right. Because, inevitably, your first efforts are going to appear to fail; they actually may be succeeding, but you just won’t see the results for a while.

But is there ever a time when performing the SEO work on your site might be to your advantage even if you are not familiar enough with the principles at work? Maybe. It’s OK to perform small tweaks to your website’s SEO when you’ve gained enough knowledge to understand what those tweaks mean. For instance, if you see that a page is missing title attributes on its internal navigation links. If you understand the value of those attributes then you can add them to your links and be done.

Before you try to fix any optimization issues with your own site you should have it evaluated by a professional SEO firm and determine which tweaks you can do yourself and which ones you should pay a professional for. It’s possible that hiring a professional SEO firm to handle the big issues with your site will also lead you to have that firm take care of the smaller issues at the same time. You may be able to handle those yourself, but since you’ve got the mechanic under the hood you can have him change the oil too.

It is very simple – more revenue! The return on investment on landing page optimization is significant.  Take a look at the example below to understand the magnitude:

A $10K a month media buy generating 50K monthly landing page visitors converting at 3% will generate revenue of $52,500 (based on a $35 Life Time Value).  Let’s assume a 20% improvement which will increase the conversion rate to 3.6%, and will increase revenue generated from the media buy to $63,000.  A $10,500 monthly revenue lift over one year will lift total revenue to  $126,000!  

In many optimization projects we frequently experienced revenue boosts ranging from 15% to over 100% with the majority of improvements in the 20-60% range.  So if we want to be optimistic with this example, and assume a 40% lift we could generate an additional $252,000 a year! That isn’t small potatoes…

Walk Before You Run

Landing page optimization can be complex but once you get the hang of it the results start becoming addictive. Like anything in life you need to walk before you run, and practice makes perfect.   Landing page optimization or any page or flow optimization can be confusing as there are many variables to take into consideration:

1. Should one start with split testing or multivariate testing?
2. What page elements should I test?
3. How many versions of each page element should one test?
4. Do I have enough traffic to reach statistical significance?
5. Should tests be segmented by media source, geography, day of the week etc?
6. Do I need to use a new technology or service provider for testing? If so which one?

If an organization does not have experience testing, it is recommend to start with a simple split test of the main element on a landing page such as the layout’s (template) unique selling point (USP) or pictures. It is very important to test the main elements as they will most likely have the highest impact on the conversion rate.  Make sure each element version in a test is visibly different from each other, if the changes aren’t bold enough and the versions are only subtly different then most likely the results will not be significant.

Once you get the handle of split testing you should use more advanced methodologies such as multivariate (MVT) and traffic segmentation. These techniques will enable you to test hundreds of combinations of landing pages as well as traffic sources and other sub segments such as Geography, Browser type, time of day etc.

Success Will Come

Persistency pays off. Make sure you persist, as it can take a few tests until you get the handle of what page elements are the most impacting.  Also, guiding your creative team to design and write ideas outside of the box might take some practice. Remember that you are testing, therefore it is important to experiment outside stringent brand guidelines as you never know what will make a user respond and take action.

Test in Waves…

As traffic is usually limited and testing many page elements can be a daunting task, I recommend testing in waves. Your first wave of testing might be only for the page layout (template) and your second wave can be for the main graphic and USP. Your third wave might still be for the main graphic or image but this time you will test bolder images. In each wave you should strive to learn something, and even if you don’t gain a lift in conversion rate you can still learn. If your conversion rate dropped you learned that the tested elements do have impact, therefore you should continue to test these elements but make sure to create versions that are different. If the tested elements had no impact (the conversion rate didn’t change) you should test different elements in your subsequent waves. Basically each wave provides an opportunity to build on the results and conclusions of your previous waves until you’ve reached satisfactory results.

The single most important aspect of optimization is patience and persistence – it will most likely take you a few tests to see first successes but as shown in the above example it pays off big time.

The answer to that question is YES, you do need one, if you want to practice social media optimization and grow your online business.

Why do you need a blog?

Well, for starters, one-fourth of the most popular websites on the World Wide Web are blogs.

That should tell you something.

People like blogs. In fact, the collective blogosphere is enormous!

Based on research by ComScore MediaMetrix, in a report issued August of 2008, in 2007 there were 77 million visitors to blogs, compared to 44 million visitors to Facebook.

So, blogs are certainly a force to be reckoned with on the internet, and a very useful tool for social media marketing!

Here are just a few of the benefits of having a blog for your online business:

Helps you to establish yourself as an authority or expert within your niche

Is a fantastic social media and Public Relations venue

Lets you create a whole community based on your business

Gives you immediate invaluable feedback

Allows you to interact with your customers and potential customers

Provides great social media advertising through back links

As a rule, blog posts make it to the search engines faster and with higher ranking

Helps you to establish and build your brand

Helps build your business through increased traffic to your website

Generates Buzz that will keep you “front of mind” amongst your competitors

Helps you to troubleshoot problems and contain damage from problems or potential problems with customers

By combining SEO with Social Media Optimization on your blog, you can incorporate keywords that will help you rise to the top in search engine rankings.

There are some fabulous FREE resources available on the internet to start your business blog.

One of the best known is the much acclaimed WordPress, which provides everything you need to start your own blog absolutely FREE.

Click Here to go to get a WordPress Blog for Free

If you would liek a WordPress blog installed & configured for less that $50 click here to contact me – I do several installations a week

Another great FREE resource to start your blog is Blogger, a free publishing tool from Google.  It’s FREE but unlike WordPress it is not installed on your site

Click Here to go to Blogger

So, what are you waiting for?

Get your ecommerce blog up and running today, and harness the power of social media marketing while you improve and grow your online business!

Posted by Madison Claire on Sat, Nov 21, 2009 @ 11:47 AM

The goal of landing page is to cause your visitors to take definite action. You don’t want your visitors to leave until you get them to do what you want them to do. To click on the buy button, to sign up for an affiliate program, to download a free ebook or software, to sign up for a course, or to subscribe to your free newsletter.

The landing page is a direct marketing copy. Your visitors landed here through a link on your webpage, an ad, a keyword search, pay per click advertising, banner ads, and now you want to convert them.

Here are some tips to design a good landing page…

1.Content Relevance

Your landing page content must be relevant to what people were looking for when they applied the click through. The closer the match is the higher the chances of conversion.

2.Be Concise

Net writing is different than offline writing. Generally, when people surf the Internet they give short attention span to what they are reading. So be concise. When visitors arrive at your landing page they are already predisposed to buy, or they want to get more information of your product or service. By all means give them information but be concise. Don’t use more than three sentences to communicate a point. Think through and concise what you want to say. Use bulleted list to communicate the benefits of your product or service.

3.Get straight to the point

The landing page is a highly customized marketing copy for your product or service or affiliate product or service. Don’t distract your visitors with advertisements, links to other web pages. Don’t let your visitors wade through a whole bunch of hosh posh before they get to want they want.

4.Focus

Dedicate one landing page to only one product or service. Don’t try to promote multiple products (unless they are of the same product group)or services on one page. Create separate landing pages and campaigns if you have multiple products or services to promote. Focus on one product or one product group on each landing page.

5.Be Factual

Use facts and figures instead of generalities.

General: Prices Reduced
Factual: Prices Reduced by 20 percent

6.Clear Call to Action

Tell your visitors what you want them to do. Buy now, click here to download, fill in name and email address to subscribe or whatever. Keep all call to action text in bold.

7.Readable Text

Sure, there’s nothing much to look at a page with white background and black fonts. But it’s definitely easier to read the text than a red background with black fonts. Remember, it’s the words that sell. Your website visitors must be able to read your text with ease.

8.Navigation Links

Not at all, if you could help it. The only link you want your website visitors to click on your landing page is the call to action link.

9.Graphics and Images

Keep visual effects to a minimum unless you are running an online audio or video business, real estate business, or selling holiday destinations. Keep in mind that for direct marketing it’s the words that sell. Graphics and images serve only to enhance your text communication, not cloud it.

10.Grammatical and Spelling Errors

Check through your text and correct all grammatical and spelling errors. Otherwise it gives your website visitors a negative impression of you and the company you represent. Once visitors have a negative impression, it becomes difficult to convince them of the product or service that you are promoting. First impression counts a lot.

11.Make it personal

Make it personal to connect with your visitors. Use a lot of You and Your in your text.

12.Make your text clear and simple to understand

Avoid colloquialism or jargons. Use terms and phrases that people readily understood. Use short sentences. Phrase them in the active voice.

A good landing page will always sport good conversion rate as compared to a poor one. Take the time to think and rethink, work and rework your landing pages. Don’t make the mistake of just optimizing for the search engines. You need to optimize your landing pages for humans too. Ultimately, it is humans that give you the sales.

Gerrick W mailto:gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
Information and Software Tools You Need
to Effectively Promote Your Online Business.
Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com