Posted on August 4, 2011 by Hans Riemer
Who wants the worst website award?
In our previous post about the Google Panda update, we mentioned that inbound links, while still very important, are not weighted as heavily as a ranking signal as they were previously. What has gained in importance is website quality and user experience. As far as inbound links are concerned, they are still extremely important as a ranking signal but Panda now enables Google to analyze links more carefully. Unnatural linking patterns are now more likely to harm your rankings than before Panda.
Let’s talk about website quality and user experience. Imagine that you’re Google and you want to present only the best sites at the top of the search results. But how do you rate website quality via software? Quality is really something best left to a human being, or many human beings, to gauge.
For several years, Google has provided the public with a dizzying array of “free” tools and applications. These include Google Search (a tool so ubiquitous that it has become a verb), Google Analytics, the Google Toolbar and lately a number of social apps including the Google +1 button.
Google doesn’t charge for these applications. However, we all know that the popularity of Google Search is what drives Google’s core revenue business, namely, keyword sponsorships via AdWords. If everyone switched to a different search engine overnight, Google would lose 2/3 of its AdWords revenue. (The other 1/3 is derived from AdWords clicks on non-search related websites, which Google calls the Display Network.)
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Posted on February 4, 2011 by Hans Riemer
place your effort on the overall goal
Improve Conversion Rates Through “Reverse Engineering”
Whenever we have been asked to troubleshoot an online campaign that isn’t working, the #1 problem we see is that most of the effort has been placed on driving traffic rather than the overall goal. In other words, instead of focusing on keywords or ads, you should begin by defining the desired result of your marketing activity or campaign. Is it a highly qualified lead? A sale?
Start at the end and work your way backwards. That’s what we mean by “reverse engineering.”
Let’s break down the process into a sequence of logical steps you can follow.
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Posted on January 20, 2011 by Darryl Delong
Question: What’s the quickest way to get people to leave your website?
Answer: Having a BORING headline on the entry page, also known as a landing page, that doesn’t grab the visitor’s attention or persuade them to take further action.
We’ve all seen websites that simply don’t present their product or service in a way that gets us to take further action. In fact, most websites are like that. Visitors bounce right off of them faster than you can flip a switch.
You may be getting tons of traffic to your site, but if your website doesn’t convert, it’s like putting coins into a broken coke machine over and over again, hoping to get a drink that never comes. What’s worse, if you’re paying for that traffic, it hurts your bottom line.
Having a high conversion rate allows you to outspend your competitors on advertising and still make money, which puts you at a tremendous competitive advantage and allows you to dominate your niche. Persuasive copy can help you accomplish this.
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