The Easier It Is To Find Information, the Higher Your Conversion Rate

Accessibility:

It’s What A Web Site Is All About

Accessibility, when discussing web sites, includes a number of factors: easy navigation, understandable site text, no dead ends requiring a browser back click to escape (lots of users don’t even know browsers HAVE a back click).

Let’s start with the bottom line- yours: the easier it is for a site visitor to perform the most desired action (MDA), the more times that MDA will be performed.

Let’s Start With Navigation

Whether you go with a navigation bar at the top of the screen or a menu list in the first column far left, your navigation must be:

• simple
• unambiguous
• truthful
• always available
• always in the same location 

Avoid numerous tabs, drop-down or flyout menus. Keep it simple. If visitors are faced with too many choices too soon on arriving at the site, chances are they’ll bounce.

Keep the navigation unambiguous. It’s routine to have a "Contact Us” page on a web site. If you label the contact link “Company Authority,” visitors are going to be totally confused. And again, bounce.

Truthful is just what it says. If the link says “Product Descriptions,” don’t make the visitor read through another landing page of sell copy. Deliver what the link says and go directly to the products.

Always available is an aspect of keeping visitors on site longer, and the longer they stick around, the more likely they are to perform the MDA. So, the navigation bar or menu should be available from every page so the visitor can surf at will, unencumbered by what YOU think the visitor wants to know.

Finally, keep the nav tabs in the same place. Don’t move them from bar to menu and back to bar. The last thing you want is a visitor trying to figure out how to return to the contact page to make contact.

Keep it simple. The fewer clicks required to get the visitor to perform the MDA, the better. So, go through the process and eliminate every unnecessary side road, dead end and yet another landing page.

Accessible Content

If your client site is for a professional medical dispenser, you can assume that the visitors have some knowledge of the subject, i.e. you don’t have to start from square one. But you still have to stay on target pointing out the benefits of buying the client’s medical products.

On the other hand, if you’re writing text for a hearing aid retail outlet, accessible text is understandable by the reader. So first, toss the thesaurus. Find the simplest, shortest way to say what needs to be said about products and services.

Be helpful and supportive to the new visitor. Make things simple to find, simple to learn and simple to bookmark. Returning visitors are gold. Eventually they buy something so earning a bookmark is a very good thing.

Skip the hype. Educate the visitor using simple terms, no jargon and listing benefits rather than features. This is the stuff site visitors want to know.

Finally, lay out the text so it can be scanned rather than read. No big, long paragraphs. Visitors scan from upper left to lower right so put your most important info upper left on the screen.

The easier it is to buy something, opt-in for a newsletter, or to complete a form, the more often those MDAs are performed. So make it as simple as possible (why do you think Amazon offers a one-click checkout? How easy can it be?).

Accessibility benefits both site owner and site visitor – a win-win. Also a no brainer.

More good information at webwordlsinger.com. Cya there.

HERE'S WHAT YOUR COPY WRITER NEEDS TO KNOW

How To Talk to Your Copywriter:

Here’s What We Need To Know

Copy Writing
Shouldn't Be a Puzzle.
Just Tell Us What You Want.

As soon as search engines became relevant, copywriting changed. Maybe you didn’t notice it. Content quality took a back seat to SEO and today, copywriters have to understand the basics of SEO/M so the content they produce appeals to spiders and humans.

A lot of SEOs sub-contract this facet of a job to professional copywriters who can produce optimized copy that doesn’t sound like spider snack gibberish. Keyword placement in headers, density of 1-2%, judicious use of bolded, underlined or italicized text and you have yourself some fine, SEO text. No sweat, right?

Well, that depends. The more the copywriter knows about the SOW, the smoother the content development. Here’s what a copywriter wants to know from any client, you for example:

What is the purpose of the content?  Content can be used to explain, clarify, persuade, inform, direct, motivate and, on occasion, even inspire. What is the MDA after the reader has finished reading the words?

To whom is the text targeted?  Experts don’t need explanations. They talk the talk so the content can contain “insider” references that create a feeling of “us” as in you and the site visitor.

What is the product, service or message? If you can provide a good copywriter with a product spec sheet or a web page recommended by the SEO’s client, the writer can convert specs and hard data into client or consumer benefits, and that’s what sells. How does this make me more productive, successful, richer, more famous…more anything.

What is the USP? The unique selling position (also sometimes called the UPS – unique positioning statement within a market sector) is what sets the SEO client apart from the competition. A good copywriter researches the competition and “steals” the best ideas. Ideas can’t be copyrighted. 

What is the site’s content architecture? If you’re a copywriter, you don’t want to blow your wad on the home page and have nothing more motivational on deeper pages. A good copywriter ensures that informational content is spread liberally across a number of site pages.

Consider your copywriter a valuable asset in content architecture development. These men and women understand the “need-to-know” flow on site so visitors never encounter content that hasn’t been explained.

Can the content be used in more than one way? Home page text may make great text for a four-color tri-fold with a couple of word changes. The copywriter – a good one – can add value to the SEO’s consultation by producing content that serves more than one purpose, thus amortizing content development costs.

Finally, remember: copywriters are highly-caffeinated, neer-do-wells who want the project to go smoothly. These sellers of “words by the pound” want in, out, done. Hey, that’s the same thing the SEO wants.

When you find a good copywriter who can transcend audiences and topics – from the mundane to the highly-technical (quark theory?), keep them on a leash.

We tend to wander off.


Stop by www.webwordslinger.com for more tips on how to get the most from your SEO copy writer. Advice is always free.

WORDS BY THE POUND: BOYCOTT CONTENT SPAM

Content Spam 2.0:

What This Means to SEO

Weird email requests lately.

One guy wanted a bid on 1,000 articles – all about apartments. I doubt there are 1,000 things you could even say about apartments, much less write 1,000 articles on the subject. And if tasked with such an assignment, any self-respecting copywriter would gouge out her eyes with a spork after a day or two. Tops.

Another request wanted a price for a weekly newsletter on work-at-home jobs. Didn’t care what I wrote as long as it contained this list of 25 long-tail keywords. This isn’t writing. It’s a jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces are gray.

The move to content-driven sites, and the endless need for green content, has been good for word grinders who can crank it out by the pound. But there’s something in the ether-sphere. A change in the digital wind.

Elance.com: Lots for Cheap

I’ve been getting writing assignments through Elance for a little more than four years. And in that time there’s been a rather dramatic shift in what buyers in the writing and translation category want.

“500 articles on pig farming. Willing to go as high as $1 per article.”

“200-page ebook download on FOREX strategies – Budget > $500”

“30 press releases; various technical topics – Budget > $250”

Occasionally, buyers are actually more concerned with quality than quantity but those buyers are a shrinking pool. And this despite Elance’s behind-the-scenes efforts to improve the quality of its job posters.

Still, those cr@pfests of work get bids – out sourced to word factories where text by the kilo is produced by (1) machines (virtually unreadable) or (2) non-native English speakers who get paid in canned goods (humorously unreadable). A client sent one of these outsourced pieces for review and in it was the following quote: “American corporations are up to the business of the monkey.”

I read that 10 times before my wife figured out that the writer (or machine) had interpreted “monkey business” as “business of the monkey.” So, the sentence, when reconstructed would read: “American corporations are up to monkey business” and even that totally sucks.

Content Spam 1.0

Sure, this kind of junk has been around for years and there have been bottom feeders on Elance since the site started operations. So, admittedly, the use of content spam has been around since search engines (1994).

But early content spam was simplistic. Cram the words sex and porn into every keyword tag and you’d show up. Keyword dense gibberish (“Can you give me a 40% keyword density across the site?”) could be ground out like hash (and not the good kind).

But now, because search engine algorithms have gotten more sophisticated, content spam has taken on a new look.

Content Spam 2.0

The days of stuffing “blue pill” in between real text are over (except for that guy in the Philippines, and I’ll get you, you bastard!). Today, search engines want solid, informational content – something of substance, of use to the search engine user. The problem for copywriters is simple. Search engines know informational content. But they don’t know good content from a steaming pile of verbs and nouns.

This limitation has led to a huge number of posts on Elance and other freelance sites for words by the pound. Quality doesn’t get any extra credit. It’s sheer volume and plenty of it.

The Impact on SEO

This content spam 2.0 is used by site owners and SEOs to create sign posts that point back to the mother site – the center of the marketing bull’s eye. So the content ends up on blogs, on content syndication sites, on content-based sites, on sub-domains – it’s like putting up posters on construction site walls in New York City.

And though SEO has always involved creating identifiable targets for bots and eyeballs, this off-site aspect of SEO seems to be growing in importance. Why else would some guy want 1,000 pages on apartments? He’s going to place that content spam every place he can – or you are.

Based on the number of requests for content spam posted on Elance and showing up in my inbox, I suggest that SEO is going to employ a great deal more off-site activity in the future.

Anybody know anything about apartments?


webwordslinger.com

REAL WORLD MEETS WEB WORLD: MARKETING CHANNEL INTEGRATION

photo courtesy of alles-schlumpf

Business and Website Synergies:

Real World Meets Virtual World

There are plenty of brick-and-mortar business owners who don’t recognize the value of a store web site. They’re doing well, lots of foot traffic, improved margins every year – so why take on the headache and expense of a web site? It’s just one more thing to worry about, right? Wrong.

A web site that promotes your real world store can not only boost profits, it can eliminate routine chores that currently eat up a lot of time. When you own your own business, time is money.

The Costs

The cost of a fully functional, secure, commercial web site aren’t what you think they are. With a little help (actually you can do it all by yourself) you can have a web site up and running in just a few hours – a web site complete with a secure checkout, a blog, product pix and all of the other bells and whistles you expect from today’s web sites.

The costs are surprisingly low if you go with the right web host – the company that will rent server (computer) space that’ll hook you in to the world wide web. Prices as low as $7.00 a month get you plenty of disc server space and a box full of free site building tools – free. So, for less than $100 a year, you can have a web site open 24/7 selling your goods and services. Cost should not be a factor when deciding on whether to build a site or not.

Saving Time

Working in your store each day takes up a certain amount of time for administrative chores. You process credit card orders, make deposits at the bank, keep track of inventory and expenses – all activities that take away from the one thing you should be doing and that is taking care of your customers.

With a web site, payment collection is automated, order print outs can be printed for fulfillment, deposits to the business account are automatic – it’s not exactly passive income, but it certainly won’t double your real world workload. It’ll save time.

For example, let’s say you plan a “special customers” sale available to your most highly-prized clients. A computer can help you get the word out quickly and inexpensively. That’s what auto-responders do. They notify customers by e-mail of this special sale or special event. No postage, no running to the post office and no expensive ad in the local newspaper. Instead, you send out a personalized invitation to your best customers to notify them of the impending sale.

Save time and money through the automation of many administrative functions. On-line purchases can be completely automated so that purchase price is deposited into your business account, a shipping bill and label are printed automatically and, if you use drop shippers to handle order fulfillment, all necessary information to process the order is sent to the shipper. You don’t have to do a thing.

Saving time by automating routine functions via a web site is a great way to improve your margins – additional sales without additional labor.

Using Your Website to Promote Your Business

The critical factor, here, is to create synergies between your store and your web site. And there are lots of them.

Use your web site to conduct polls and surveys to see what your real-world customers like and don’t like about their shopping experiences. Low cost promo with high end potential. After all, real world or virtual world – the customer is always right.

Develop sales leads using an on-line form. If someone in town is looking for a good price on a new furnace, you’d want to know about it, right? Well, a web site can give you name, address, telephone number and even the customer’s needs. How convenient is that?!

Use give-aways to collect e-mail addresses. These are called “opt-ins.” You give the site visitor a free pamphlet, a downloadable e-book or a printable 20% off coupon and all the visitor has to do is give you his or her e-mail address. As your e-mail list grows, so, too, does your potential customer base. Each one of these opt-ins has a relationship with you and you can stay in touch with auto-responders, keeping your company’s name and services in front of the customers.

Promote special sales and events on your site’s home page. Provide “how-to” information to keep customers coming back. The possibilities are endless. Think of a web site as a salesperson who never sleeps, never calls in sick and never complains about your management style. And all of that for less than $7.00 a month? Talk about a bargain.

Use Your Business to Promote Your Website

A web site has a certain cachet – it’s an indication that the store owners are sharp business people. And because the cost of building and operating a web site are so low, a web site is a low-cost, badge of prestige and you want as many people as possible to know you’re on-line.

Once your site is functional and all of the bugs have been worked out (pretty easy to do) it’s time to use your business to promote your web site, developing synergies that lead to sales.

First, make sure your web site URL (address) appears on all business stationery from letterhead to business cards and from invoices to adverts in local, traditional media. By telling people where to find more information about your business, your web site becomes an on-line billboard along that ‘Information Highway’. Customers who see your URL in a newspaper ad may choose to make a purchase on-line rather than drive clear across town or across state.

Design an on-line campaign to drive more people to your web site. Announce in your local newspaper advert that customers will receive a printable coupon for 15% off when they visit your web site. Of course, while they’re on-line visiting your site, entice them to make an on-line purchase, as well.

And don’t forget giveaways. T-shirts, bumper stickers, pens and other free stuff that display your web site’s URL will all generate more site traffic and, therefore, greater business efficiencies.

Explain to real-world customers that all transactions can take place on line or in person. Your web site should be a seamless extension of your actual business, enabling buyers to make purchases and payments, ask questions and even process returns. There’s plenty of software that will enable you to do this – free checkouts, free inventory managers, free shipping software – it’s all there making your job and your customers’ buying experiences easy.

Another reason to maintain a web site? Let’s say you run a local deli offering specials of the day. Your regulars will appreciate the ability to log on and see “what’s cookin’” today. Web sites are very easy to update, so use your site to keep customers up to date on daily specials, menu changes, new product lines and other helpful information. If your URL appears on all business-related paperwork, more and more people will find their way to your site. And, if they find useful information on the site, they’re more likely to visit your store one town over.

Selling Pizza in Zimbabwe?

A web site provides a world-wide presence so if you run a pizza place in Dayton, you won’t have much interest in orders from Zimbabwe – even if they want the super-deluxe special. How are you going to get it there in 30 minutes or less?

If you’re business is strictly local (it doesn’t have to be, by the way) you can use various search engine filters so that only people within a certain range will actually visit your web site, which will cut down on questions from Zimbabwe regarding the status of their order.

Localize your listings with Google and Yahoo so you’re reaching those customers who might actually visit your store or order something because they’ve been to the store before and know they can count on your quality and service.

However, don’t rule out expanding your little enterprise globally. Let’s say you run a small town hardware store. Most of your business comes from local residents looking to buy a wheelbarrow or a hammer. That doesn’t mean that you can’t ship a hammer to Zimbabwe. In fact, that’s one of the coolest things about having a web site.

One web user was looking for those plastic cases used to protect baseball cards. They’re called “screw downs” in case you didn’t know. So, instead of driving from one sports memorabilia store to the next, the buyer Goggled “screw downs” and found just what he was looking for eight states away. The buyer never would have even heard of Ed’s Sports Collectibles, or made the purchase, if old Ed hadn’t built a web site.

So, a web site can save time by automating routine tasks – everything from processing sales to answering FAQs. This frees up your time to devote to in-store customer care.

Next, you can build marketing and promotion synergies between your brick-and-mortar and your virtual on-line store, using one to promote the other.

Finally, you can do all of this for very little money. You don’t need a big, fancy expensive web site design firm and the cost of hosting a feature-rich web site are low – often less than $7.00 a month.

Now the question is – what are you waiting for? Promote your business and your products around the corner and around the world by building synergies between real and virtual worlds. You’ll be amazed at the jump in sales and  just how easy it is to do.


Webwordslinger.com

Will Your Website Take Off Like a Rocket?

3…2…1…Launch

The Dos and Don’ts of a Successful Site Launch

 

photo courtesy of NASA1fanMSFC

You’ve selected your template, your palette of colors and written your site text so it’s irresistible to any visitor who happens on your site. Good for you. Unfortunately, if you don’t prepare for a successful site launch, not too many visitors will happen upon your site. They won’t even know it’s there.

So how are visitors, potential buyers or clients, going to find you among the millions of other web sites covering the cyber terrain? Well, the answer, at least in part, is SEO – search engine optimization – making your site more easily recognizable to search engine spiders.

It can take weeks, months and even years to have a site indexed by Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines – unless you go proactive and make your site spider friendly. It also helps if you invite these crawlers to stop by for a look. So, here are some dos and don’ts to ensure your site launch doesn’t go unnoticed.

Avoid These Common SEO Black Holes

Search engine spiders aren’t smart. They don’t think and they have to be led from place to place within a site. They’re unable to “read” certain kinds of information and they don’t make connections between that body of text and the image associated with it.

Black Hole #1

Spiders can not read text in graphics – any kind of graphics. So, if you’ve loaded up your site with Flash animations or graphics frames to appeal to human eyeballs, these images won’t appeal to spiders. They won’t even be noticed.

Black Hole #2

Spiders don’t bounce around a site randomly (thank goodness), they track links from page to page. Links can be embedded in site text to direct spiders to each page of your site to ensure that it’s completely and accurately indexed. No links, or too few links, and you won’t get the recognition you need for long-term site success.

Black Hole #3

Keywords still count, though not as much as they once did. Spiders crawl text strings looking for repeating words and phrases. They count up the number of keywords per block of text to determine keyword density. You’ll need keyword dense text that also appeals to human readers.

Don’t select keywords willy-nilly. Search engines employ a taxonomy – a system of classification – to place your newly-launched site into one category or another. Select keywords that spiders don’t understand, within the context of the entire site, and you’re sure to have search engine problems.

So, remember, no critical text in graphics, add some embedded links and select keywords with care to avoid being sucked into an SEO black hole.

Take These Positive SEO Steps

There are lots of low- and no-cost steps you can take to gain the attention of search engine spiders – even if your marketing budget is the change you find in the sofa.

Link Up

One thing search engines like to see is links from other sites – especially from sites with page ranks (PR) higher than your site. Page rank is measured on a scale of 1 – 10, 10 being the highest. So, Yahoo – the most visited site on the W3 – has a page rank of 10. The Open Source Directory has a PR of 9.

By submitting your site to various directories and portals like these, you gain prestige in the “eyes” of SE spiders. Now, some directories, like the Open Source Directory at www.dmoz.org are free – a good thing. Google’s directory is free as well, but it costs you $300 to get listed in Yahoo’s directory of “selected” sites. It’s a great way to get some respect right from the start. Link up with directories. To find a listing of free and paid directories visit www.stronglinks.com/directories.php.

Spread the Word

The world wide web requires a ton of new content everyday. Think about it – there are a lot of site pages to fill each day, so many sites are looking for free content. And you can give it to them.

Press releases, keyword optimized without sounding like gibberish, will get you noticed as more sites post your release with links to your site – a wonderful thing in the eyes of a spider. There are on-line companies that distribute press releases. Some do it for free, others charge for the service. Some companies to look at are: www.pr.com, www.prleap.com and www.clickpress.com. There are lots of others.

Another way to spread the word is through article syndication. Are you an authority on the products or services you market on-line? If so, you can write 10 or 20 articles on various aspects of your expertise and put them out for syndication. These articles will be picked up by sites and displayed with a link back to your site. You get to establish your creds as an authority first, then provide a link back to your site. It works.

Link Exchanges

Good, but time-consuming and a bit humiliating. Links exchanges are simply asking sites related to yours to exchange links. “I link to you; you link to me.” This creates various pathways for web users to find what they’re looking for. However, do note that if you’re linked up to any old site, sites unrelated to your own, SEs will lower your marks because these aren’t links helpful to visitors. So, stay within your field with links exchanges and always try to link with a site that has a higher PR than yours.

Blogs and Forums

A lot of sites have blogs today – places where visitors can post articles and other useful information, or respond to articles that have been posted by the site owners.

Contribute to these info outlets if you can string words together into sentences. It doesn’t have to be great art (though well-written and without mistakes is nice), it just has to be relevant, useful to readers and written with authority. The one problem with blogs is that they’re updated regularly on big sites so your insightful analysis of long-chain polymer molecules might disappear quickly into the blog’s archives.  On the other hand, because blogs and forums are updated frequently, they always need new content, some of which could be yours.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

You know those sponsored links you see on search engine results pages – Ads by Goooooooogle? Well, somebody paid money to have that ad and link placed there. Google’s Adwords program allows advertisers to bid on different keywords. The highest bidder for a given keyword receives the most prominent placement on the SERPs. You can bid as low as five cents for some keywords (not the best of them) and many bucks for really good keywords in hot market segments.

Of course, this requires some marketing capital. If you can afford programs like Adwords or Yahoo’s Search Marketing, you can give your site a running start with PPC marketing. The good thing is you only get charged when a web user clicks on your paid link. The bad thing is you pay every time a user clicks on the link whether s/he buys something or not.

Google Sitemap

Log on to Google, click on Business Solutions and follow the path to the Google Sitemap service. Here, you can upload your own sitemap, basically “telling” Google to come take a look at you.

Spiders love site maps because that’s where the links are and they can find a lot of information quickly all in one spot. By uploading your site map to the largest, most popular search engine within the known solar system, you’ll get noticed faster. And just as importantly, your site will be completely and accurately indexed from the start.

It takes much more than a good looking website to find success on the web. It’s a lot of hard work and it won’t happen overnight. But, by following some of these steps your site will start showing up in SERPs, generating “organic” visitors – the best kind to have.

So, even if you’re working with a non-existent promotion budget, there are plenty of free steps you can take to move your recently launched site closer to profitability.

Good luck,

Webwordslinger.com

BANDWIDTH BACKLOG WITH TOO MANY GOODIES

photo courtesy of docsplatter

Tightcasting:

On-Demand Site Communication

Today, site designers offer a variety of tools and features to help visitors navigate a website. Flash demos greet visitors and sell the products. Flyouts and dropdowns provide directions within the context of the entire site. There are all kinds of bells and whistles including avatars, icons and other forms of visual and text communication.

And though these goodies sing and dance, they can’t be customized by the user who must sit passively, listening to the cartoonish, computer-generated “human” make the same sales pitch each time the user returns to the home page.

But things are changing rapidly thanks to increased multimedia opportunities and the explosive expansion of broadband. In the future, sites will become unique broadcasting platforms tailored to the needs of each visitor. This variation on broadcasting has been called narrowcasting or tightcasting – and it’s time to get on-board and turn your web site into a truly customizable, multi-media experience.

The Multiple Problems of Multi-Media

The reasons we aren’t seeing tightcasting across the world wide web have to do with both costs and technology.

Cost

To provide a more humanized appearance to its website, a non-profit organization paid a design firm to create a human avatar to answer common visitor questions so when you arrive at the home page, you’re greeted by a cartoon rendition of a women who blinks, looks around and even follows visitor cursor movements.

Visitors type in common questions and the on-screen “personality” does her cyborg best to provide the right answer to the visitor’s questions. Problems arose when questions were entered using different nouns and verbs – too many variations to deliver accurate results. So, often visitors received answers to questions that weren’t asked. Or, they received the “I didn’t understand you. Please re-enter your question” message which got pretty tired after a few go-rounds. Finally, the mouth movements of the avatar never synched up to the audio words that were being played so most of the time the avatar looked like she was chewing celery.

The cost for this abomination? $5,000. And that was just for the answering avatar. The rest of the site cost a whole lot more. And while this site is still active today (talking cartoon lady and all) the site owner figures she spent the $5k so why not use the feature – even it doesn’t work!

Multimedia – Flash animation, videos, music and other multi-media experiences are coming, but we’re still in the early stages of development here and how you spend your site development dollars may not require a talking, cartoon head to maintain interest. A simple PowerPoint presentation can accomplish the same thing (even better) for a lot less money so shop around for affordable multi-media solution.

Technology Incompatibilities

Not every application seamless syncs up with HTML coding to produce an attractive, interactive site, leading to the use of “work-arounds” – fixes that get the job done but not in the most efficient fashion. If a multi-media feature is a round peg pounded into a square hole, it may work – but how well? What’s the failure rate? And will the multi-media features run equally well on AOL’s browser (the worst) to Google to Firefox? (FYI, Firefox is well ahead of the curve on usable multimedia applications. And you can download it for free. Very cool. Very simple.)

Search Engine Limitations

Search engine algorithms – the formulae used to assess, index and rank a site – are pretty primitive even after 12 years in development. SE spiders are confused by Flash and they think avatars are alien life forces that have infiltrated the site.

The fact is that current search engine technology is limited in what it can read and can’t read. First, any text in a graphics format (gif, jpeg or other formats) is invisible to the spiders crawling a site. So you could have a really expensive, screaming-mimi homepage filled with avatars, Flash animations and cool videos of products in use…and search engines won’t pick it up – at least for the time being.

Recognizing the trend toward multi-media sites, search engine designers are working to correct this problem, and though the much-touted Orion algorithm,  purchased by Google from a grad student in Australia, attempts to address some of these technical limitations, expectations have been adjusted downward as Orion is being refined and ready to launch in 2007.

With the popularity of Youtube.com (recently purchased by Google for $1.6 billion after less than two years on line), myspace.com. facebook.com and other social and personalized sites, the trend toward more user-defined content and site application is just around the corner.

Now, we just have to wait for SE technology to catch up with the demand for more interactive multimedia to customize each user’s onsite experience.

The Future Won’t Wait

With customizable, on-line user experiences, niche sites or larger sites with niche products will be able to highlight these products to motivated buyers. Instead of getting lots and lots of “just-looking” traffic, sites can be customized dynamically based on the user’s keywords.

This allows for demonstrations of products, easy assembly instructions for the technology-impaired, narrowcasts targeted at a very narrow demographic saving bandwidth and visitors’ time.

Tightcasting isn’t broadcasting (obviously). Broadcasting via traditional media, i.e. radio, TV newspapers, etc. must appeal to the broadest demographic (and, all too often, to the lowest common denominator). With tightcasting, the message, the product, the information can be targeted with laser specificity, meeting all of the needs of the reader.

Even more beneficial is the way information (product descriptions of otherwise) is delivered and assimilated by site visitors. Today, we read site text. The average American reads at an eighth-grade level which severely limits the words and terms used in site text. Ask the average guy on the street what an avatar is and he’ll guess it’s Toyota’s latest SUV or Taco Bell’s newest offering.

People learn best when they receive information in both visual and auditory forms. Readers can read at their own paces, turn off the sound, or turn up the sound and skip the reading altogether. The delivery of information is best accomplished through multi-media, fully-interactive means. And that’s what tightcasting is all about. And that’s where we’re all headed as site owners and webmasters.

Tomorrow’s Tightcast Platform

It’ll look better and sound different from the websites today. Think of your website as a little TV station. You can narrowcast everything from crocheting to swapping out an engine in a 302 Mustang – while you’re selling the products to do those very things (though probably not on the same website).

You’ll be able to offer viewing options to visitors that haven’t even been invented yet, though they’re coming on fast.

Traditional websites, with sections on products, the company, spec sheets and other standard fare will soon give way to a more personalized tour of the site, directing visitors with verbal and visual cues, providing additional information at the request of the visitor, delivering how-to videos and product demonstrations.

Why not televised testimonials from happy customers? (Nothing sells like a happy customer.) Video documentaries form numerous for-pay and open access sources. It won’t be too long before the television and the world wide web will become one, with TV watchers actually able to buy products seen in a show. It’s coming and fast.

So, look to the future and prepare yourself for the multi-media, fully interactive web site of tomorrow. In fact, you can get a running start by adding some features like Flash and video easily. Download course lessons, take a test drive from home, try it on-line before you buy it.

Oh it’s coming, all right. The question is, will your site be ready for the next generation of interactivity. If not, you won’t be able to take advantage of all of the different media that visitors will expect when they stop by your site. Ultimately, you’ll be the black & white, 12-in screen TV in the age of 64-in, hi-def, flat screen TVs.

And, no doubt, it’s going to hurt your bottom line.


Later,
webwordslinger.com

SHAKESPEARE WOULD'VE MADE A TERRIBLE WEB WRITER

SHAKESPEARE DIDN'T GIVE A HOOT

ABOUT KEYWORD PLACEMENT:

WORST WEB WRITER EVER!

Five Can’t Miss Web Writing Tips

Writing for the web is a little different from writing for the local newspaper or writing your autobiography. Different things are important to both search engine spiders and to site visitors.

As a web writer, you have less than 10 seconds (6.4 seconds according to one study) to capture the attention of a site visitor before s/he bounces – that is, leaves without exploring the site further. So, your headlines better be attention grabbers. And remember, not all visitors will enter a site through the home page. Almost any site page can be the entry way in to a site so each page has to have an attention grabbing something – headline, picture, chart – something that keeps the visitor on site.

So, in no particular order, if you’re writing for the web, take these tips to heart.

1. Write like you talk. Even the best web writers miss this one.

You don’t say “I will go in to the kitchen to cook supper.” Too stiff. Instead, you and everyone else would say, “I’ll go cook up something for supper.” More casual.

Use contractions to make your writing more engaging and “listenable.” Getting rid of that stiff ‘writers’ tone is easy if you just say the words in your head and type what comes out, i.e. write like you talk.

2. Feed the beast, aka search engines. Your web writing not only has to maintain the interest of human eyeballs, it also has to appeal to search engine spiders. So, some of the ways to do this include:

- using keywords in headers (but no header stuffing, please. All things in moderation.)

- embed text links to other site pages to provide spiders with a clear path to all pages of

your client’s site

- keep keyword density to no more than 5%, i.e. within every 100 words of text use five

keywords. Work them in naturally so that humans don’t find the text awkward.

- make sure on-site and HTML keywords synch up. If it doesn’t make sense to a spider

(dumber than dirt) you won’t be indexed, or properly indexed, within the search engine

taxonomy (sorting system).

3. Use a lot of bullet points (see #2 above). Think about it. You don’t read big chunks of text on line. Bullet lists of everything from product specs to service features are more easily scanned than detailed, paragraphs of product descriptions.

4. Don’t use abbreviations. When describing a place, spell out the state name. Not NY but New York. Same with lbs, in, km, etc. Bots aren’t real good at figuring out abbreviations, though they are getting better.

5. Every word you write is sales text. If you’re writing a piece on using a hearing aid, you sell the concept of a hearing aid purchase. Cars, health insurance, divorce mediation – whatever the topic, you’re selling something in a subtle way.

This is also true of site text. Typically, you’ll write an About Us page, a Contact page and other “administrative” pages within a web site. Don’t waste these opportunities to sell the product, service or company. For example, which is better:

Contact Us:

XYZ Manufacturing

123 main Street

Anywhere, Vermont, 12345

((802) 555-1234

or

At XYZ Industries, we’re here to help you in any way we can. You can reach us in different ways so getting answers to your questions or placing an order is a call or click away.

At XYZ, you’re always first in line.

XYZ Manufacturing

123 main Street

Anywhere, Vermont, 12345

((802) 555-1234

http://www.xyzindustriesllc.com

customerservice@xyzindustriesllc.com

Web writers take note. It takes a good storyteller to keep a reader on site. So tell your clients’ stories. Keep it casual, cut the hyperbole and engage your reader like an old friend.

Why? Because that’s what you want your readers to become – old friends.

When you need some quality copy for your site, call me. Google likes quality writing.

Later,

Webwordslinger.com

INVITE GOOGLE OVER FOR TEA

Using Google Sitemaps:

Show ‘Em What You Really Got

Search engine bots have long relied on site maps to simplify their mindless collection of letter strings. Site maps make it easy for spiders to assess the nature of the site, the accuracy of HTML tags and to detect new content faster and more easily. So, the development of a site map has always been useful to bots and to site visitors alike.

The importance of developing a site map has increased recently with the introduction of Google’s cool feature – Google Sitemaps, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Today any webmaster or site owner can quickly develop a site map for submission to Google’s SE for indexing. The benefits? Many.

Help Google. Help Yourself.

The proliferation of new websites has caused the Google gods to rethink their current processes used to spider and index the billions and billions of new pages of text coming online each year. It can’t be done, not even with all of Google’s resources. “Too much information.”

The solution? Let webmasters index their own sites. That’s what’s behind the new Google Sitemaps program. It’s a wonderful opportunity for e-biz owners to ensure that their sites are assessed and indexed properly on Google’s big ol’ hard drive, in effect taking ‘botness’ and placing it into the hands of site owners – humans with the ability for rational thought – something no SE spider brings to the table.

How Hard Is This?

No very. To get the most out of Google Websites, you’ll need an XML generated file on your site. XML stands for extensible markup language and you can find XML tutorials everywhere. Just Google XML and you’re on your way.

If you don’t know a thing about XML and writing code, no worries. This is something your programmer can develop in less than an hour, delivering better SE results and more highly-qualified visitors to your site.

The XML generated file is the ‘transmitter’ that sends site changes, updates, new content and other data to Google. No doubt, you’ve seen the ubiquitous red XML logo on the most up-to-date sites. Kind of a status symbol to those in the know. These XML-enabled sites provide more accurate SERPs, though it’s important to note that an XML generator won’t do a thing for your page rank. That’s another whole story.

XML Syndication

XML coding is used by most blogs because it’s a language that adapts easily to syndication. RSS – remote site syndication – employs XML to deliver your site’s content to other interested, like-minded sites in the form of XML/RSS feeds. It’s all part of the new dynamic of Web 2.0 – content syndication with lots of arrows (links) pointing back to your site.

In the case of Google Sitemaps, all the webmaster is doing is syndicating content directly to Google’s SE. This puts more control in the hands of webmasters to ensure that their sites are crawled accurately and frequently.

Even better, this program gives site owners control over several key weighting factors – variables, XML tags, attributes and so on.

Your XML Generator

It’s important that your XML site map be kept up to date since that’s going to be an important consideration when bots come calling. So, you need an XML generator. A what?

It’s easy. An XML generator simply spiders your site, identifies new content, lists URLs and notes any other changes and reports this data to the Google index. There are a slew of XML generators, some free, all low-cost, available on the w3. Just Google XML generator and take your pick. They all do the same basic thing and there’s one for every level of programming expertise.

Which Generator For You?

http://enarion.net/google/ is a php generator that you install on your host server. Once installed, your site is spidered and an XML sitemap automatically produced. Upload the new sitemap to your server. Then, run the generator to have your site map indexed by Google. It’s easy, even for the digitally-challenged.

But there are dozens of XML generators available – from pick-click easy to more-than-most-of-us-need-to-know-in-a-lifetime. So, to make things even simpler, and to encourage more self-indexing, Google has developed a list of 3^rd party XML generators that configure nicely with Google’s data hook-up. To see Google’s list of XML generators, simply click here.

Telling Google What You Want It To Know

The XML file created as part of your site will provide Google with lots of useful information that you submit only after every letter and symbol has been checked for accuracy. This information includes:

The location of your web page, i.e. your site’s URL. (Hello, I’m over here!)

Dates of content modification – what was added, deleted and/or changed since the last time you were spidered. This is very important for sites that change content frequently – especially informational or editorial content. Spiders love fresh content, as long as it isn’t page after page of hype.

Frequency of Content Change - SEs may view frequent content changes with suspicion, “thinking” that changing content may indicate gray-hat marketing tactics. Problem solved when the webmaster can indicate how frequently content changes from page to page. You can indicate change frequency from never to hourly, giving the bots a heads up.

Site Page Priority – Some pages of your website are more important than others. Obviously the homepage ranks high in importance, but so do high profit pages, opt-in pages and, of course, ordering pages.

Google’s Sitemap program allows webmasters to determine the importance of each page on the site! Pages are prioritized on a scale of 0.0 (least important) to 1.0 (most important). The higher the importance you assign to a page, the higher importance Google will assign to that page. No bump in page rank, however, since your priority rankings are only relative to the pages of your site.

Extreme Trust

Extreme trust is a new www concept, sort of like the honor system. Wikipedia, the online, ever-evolving encyclopedia is a project based on extreme trust. Anyone (even you) can make an entry to the Wikipedia site. Other readers can then go in and add, update and edit your information. It’s a means of harnessing the world’s knowledge in real time and it’s one of the most exciting uses of the web currently underway.

Now back to Google. Google has a well-established reputation for protecting its reputation and the quality of its search results. Sites have been gray-barred (banned) for seemingly minor infractions – sometimes even unintentional infractions. You don’t mess with Google. Period. Even big-time car maker BMW got penalized for less than exemplary reporting to Google. If it can happen to BMW, it can happen to you.

Banned from Google and you might just as well start over. Recovering your previous Google rank is all but impossible.

Now, apply this hard-edged business philosophy to the new Google Sitemap program. Believe this – you don’t get carte blanche. Spiders will still spider and bots will still bot. And if the information in your XML site map is out of sync with site text, purpose, components, tags or any other aspect of site descriptions, you better believe that you’re site is going to be slammed – and there won’t be a thing you can do about it.

Play It Straight

The black and gray hats out there are always trying to beat the system but the system grows more sophisticated with each passing minute. That’s why it’s best to use the Google Sitemap tool to your advantage – to ensure that your site is presented the way it should be and the way you want it to be.

To learn more about Google Sitemaps, click here.

And remember, when it comes to Google and every other search engine, play it straight. It’s the only way to go.

Haven't been indexed in two years? or just launching your new e-biz. yeah, well you want a little of that search engine love so submit sitemaps to all major search engines and show 'em what you really got.

Later, gator,

Webwordslinger.com

Keep Ém On Site Longer: 10 Tips

10 Tips To Lower Your Bounce Rate

A site’s bounce rate is a measurement of the number of visitors who stopped by the site but immediately clicked off to another site, aka, bounced. There are lots of reasons web users boing from one site to another, which means there are lots of things you can do to lower your bounce rate and keep visitors on site long enough to convert.

Here are ten tips to help you take the spring out of your web site.

1. Don’t assume the visitor lands on the home page. A visitor can enter from a number of access points. For instance, by conducting a search for a A324 converter, the visitor might land on the product page for said converter. (There’s no such thing, btw.)

This means that many different pages may be the doorway to your site so treat each page as a home page. Read on for design suggestions from your web host.

2. Keep critical information above the fold. Above the fold is an old newspaper term that described the newspaper’s front page “above the fold.” This is where the most important (or sensational) news is placed in newspapers today.

In website terms, above the fold is everything seen by the visitor without the visitor having to scroll – prime site space. Your most important information should appear here. A recent study on how different groups of people use the web showed that the 50 and older crowd don’t scroll as much as their web-wise grandkids so if you want it read, keep it above the fold.

3. Web users scan your site pages from upper left to lower right. So, what visitors first see in the upper left corner of their browsers will often determine if they stay or boing, boing, boing.

4. Create compelling headlines. “Who else wants to make a million dollars before bedtime” and other web clichés do not compel visitors to stick around to read your long-form, Dan Kennedy template sales letter. Headlines create interest among human readers and search engine spiders who recognize headlines as important text. So make your point in and add keywords to headlines.

5. Layout your home page in a three column format. Using three columns, you can create three headlines above the fold. If two headlines don’t capture the attention of the visitor, maybe the third one will.

Again, also useful in optimizing your site so make sure to build keywords into your headlines to keep everything in sync and max the utility of both the site text and your top tier keywords.

6. A picture IS worth a thousand words. A visual image (not just text) above the fold naturally draws the eye and attention of visitors so a small image or an image banner is helpful in breaking up blocks of text, and starts off the visitor slowly. A walloping pile of text, no matter how compelling, isn’t going to appeal to those “on-the-fence” visitors looking for a specific service, product, message or arcania.

A couple of points. First, if you’re using a photo, make it a photo worth seeing – a photo that instantly delivers your site’s message. Google “pre-fab homes.” You won’t see innocuous clip art. You see beauty shots of the prefab on a snowy evening with a warm fire going in the fireplace. So don’t waste pixels. Maximize every one.

Charts and graphs are a terrific way to transmit a lot of information in the blink of an eye. You can write pages of text testifying that your stock picking formula is the best, or you can create a chart showing your online portfolio delivering gains of 150% a year. A chart showing rising value (whatever the product or service) makes a strong statement very quickly.

Charts and graphs are also useful in making complex information more accessible to the reader. Your typical visitor won’t read through pages and pages of company financial statements but s/he will make a buying decision based on proof in image form.

7. Make navigation simple enough for a well-trained chimp. If the visitor is confused, even for a moment, you’ll see a bounce. Life is too short to “figure out” how this works. We’ve grown extremely impatient in the digital age and if it even LOOKS hard, boing.

Keep your navigation bar in the same place throughout the site and provide the option to return to the home page from every page of the site. A visitor may get lost and want to start over, learn more or use the links on the homepage to further explore the site.

8. Appeal to the drives of your ideal buyer. Needs-driven buyers have already determined that they’ll make a purchase and pay a lot if the purchase meets their needs. For example, there are a million books for sale on the web telling you how to avoid foreclosure “even if the sheriff is knocking on the door!!!!”

Okay, now that’s a needs-driven buyer. Facing foreclosure. Sherriff at the door – that site visitor will pay $99 for an e-book download if s/he believes the product provides (or is) the answer to his or her foreclosure problems. That’s a needs-driven buyer – a prospect who needs what you market – products or services. These buyers are less concerned about how cool and stylish your site is, how many interactive features it has and so on. These people are looking for solutions and benefits.

Other on-line shoppers are more casual in their buying habits. For example, many browse the web to comparison shop for prices and then run off to the big box store to make the actual purchase. Or, they just may bounce to a competitor site to make their online purchase. It’s a very fickle marketplace. But…

… if something catches the eye and addresses the drives of your demographic bulls-eye, your bounce rate decreases quickly. This means:

• Know your target demographic. Describe your perfect buyer.

• Know your products – inside and out.

• Know the motivations of your ideal buyer – need, the desire for prestige, acceptance, to be part of something larger (to belong) – what motivates your buyer? Example? A site selling acne cures should appeal to the consumer’s natural drive to improve his or her appearance in order to better “fit in.” The human desire to belong and to be accepted is what fuels the cosmetics industry, the fashion industry and other “personal signature” industries.

So, the owner of the acne cure site can create three distinct headlines that address the drives of buyers of skin care products and place them above the fold: (1) Look Better The Natural Way, (2) Why Dermagel Really Works and (3) Stop Covering Up – three headlines aimed with laser precision at a site selling acne cures and other sensitive skin care products.

9. Real information. Not sales hype. If site visitors discover useful information that will directly benefit them on each search engine accessible page of your site, they’re much more likely to stick around and learn a little something.

Sure, if you’re operating on razor-thin margins and “Low Cost” is your prime selling point (WE BEAT ANY PRICE ON THE WEB) then that needs prominent, “can’t-be-missed” display on the home page – somewhere. But to lower your bounce rate, add a little informational content or a big link to your site’s information bank, blog or archives. There’s plenty of opportunity to make a sale once the visitor has begun to explore your site for additional, useful information.

10. Don’t follow the herd. 6,000 new websites hit the W3 each and every day. There are over one billion active websites worldwide. And if your online sporting goods warehouse site looks like every other sporting goods warehouse site you’ll continue to see a higher than acceptable bounce rate. You’ll never get your bounce rate to zero. All you can hope for is to lower it.

One last humbling fact: the average web user decides whether to stay on a site or move on in less than six seconds. Six seconds!!! That’s how long you have to compel the visitor to stay on your site before bouncing off to some other site.

Six seconds. How can your site grab attention in just six seconds? That’s the challenge we all face as site owners.

If your site visitors are bouncing like ping-pong balls, give me a call and let's find away to keep them on site long enough to close the sale.

Webwordslinger.com