More recently marketing consultants have been using content outsourcing services to get the job done and attaining pretty favorable results from the technique. Typically the content generated from these outsourcing services isn’t really that great, containing generic coverage of their subject topics at best, while receiving almost no social recognition or circulation. With Google’s new algorithms considering social aspects of web content, the days of increasing your pagerank by purchasing a bag full of articles from an outsourcing service are coming to an end quickly.

The content quality issue arises primarily due to the lack of research/education on the subjects the content authors are covering.  They typically spend a few minutes researching the topic beforehand and firing away at your articles in machine gun procession.  Most readers can easily identify low quality content, and therefore usually have no interest in sharing it with their friends or linking to it from their blogs.

In-House vs. Outsourcing

The most efficient method of generating high quality content for your web presence is to hire a handful of guest bloggers to create the content for you on a daily release schedule.  Having multiple bloggers allows you to push content out every day – and not just a random blog post here and there when you get around to it.

Some weigh the importance of blogging enough to hire an in-house writer to release new blog articles on a daily basis.  This method can be just as rewarding as finding remote guest bloggers, however the costs involved in carrying a writer as an in-house employee can sometimes exceed the costs of paying multiple bloggers to write the articles on their own time. In most cases I’ve found it quite cheaper to have five bloggers write one article per week, than one blogger writing five per week.

When the search engines analyze your content output frequency and sees that you’re constantly publishing socially appealing articles that generate backlinks from quality web sites, your pagerank will soar at the top and stay there.  You will no longer have to worry about one of your black hat tricks becoming obsolete and penalizing (or eliminating) your page rank.

Locating and training your bloggers

As stated above, one of the most important aspects of your sites content authoring is authors education and experience within your specific industry or niche.  Using social media networks like LinkedIn will make it easier for you to locate an affordable blogger that has some experience writing in your field, however you’re still going to need to spend some quality training time with each of the bloggers you recruit to ensure they understand your business model.

It’s also extremely important that you make sure the blogger understands your business model well enough to write authoritive articles about the subjects to be covered. You’ll have to expose a good bit of your business model to them and possibly some of your trade secrets for their content output to make any real impact on the social networks.  Be sure to have them sign non-disclosure/non-compete agreements to protect your trade secrets.

Attacking your competition with targeted keyphrases

While high quality content may be one of the most important factors of your search optimization efforts, making sure your articles are linking to your content appropriately is just as important(read my article covering on-page search optimization techniques if you’re unfamiliar). I find it highly effective to attack a small handful of keywords that generate the best traffic in both volume and quality. Using the Google’s free keyword tool to determine which key phrases generate the most traffic can help you pick the ones that best match your particular product or service.

Once you’ve identified your primary keyword list(try to keep it under 5 keyphrases), distribute this list to your guest bloggers to build links within your articles.  Using only a small handful of keywords within your articles as links will increase your pagerank faster for those specific keyword varations.  This technique is much more effective as opposed to attacking a long list of different keyword variations, as the value of your links (both internally, and externally) will increase at a faster pace as the volume of your content increases.

As a result of practicing the above mentioned techniques your rankings should go through the roof. Existing visitors will keep coming back to read your content, increasing both the authority value in your content, and exposure to your call-to-action components, ultimately resulting in more sales.

Should any of you have any questions about the techniques mentioned in this article, or any other web marketing topics, feel free to shoot me an email! I enjoy getting feedback from my readers and answering any questions they may have.

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Their sales were dropping at double digit percentages each month, fewer members were signing up for new subscriptions, and none of the brilliant minds at the table had a clue as to why this was occuring, nor what to do about it.  There was an endless list of improvements they assumed would help get the site get back on track, ranging from a complete web design overhaul, to more huge advertising investments – all of which wouldn’t have put a dent in their actual problem, and would have driven them further into the hole.

After reviewing their site and doing some simple 10 minute tests on their conversion process, very obvious and in some cases ridiculous issues became clear.  Most of which could have been solved and avoided very easily if some simple tests were done more frequently.

You might find some of these tips obvious or even irrelevant to your business, but surprisingly I’ve come across all of the issues listed below in both small businesses and seasoned corporate machines. Failure to address these aspects of your web projects will almost guarantee you a great deal of grief at some point down the line.

1. Test your payment processing / product delivery mechanism frequently

One common problem eBusiness operators fail to keep in mind is that components of your sales process will break at random.  Spawning from changes made by third party payment processing systems, expiring SSL certificates, all the way down to automated software version upgrades, there’s an endless list of components that comprise your sales process that can change with virtually no notice to you, leaving you without a clue as to why your customer base is taking a sudden nosedive.

When running the conversion test on the ArtistsSignatures.com sales process, I was hit with two minor, easily solved issues that composed their “major problem” – they couldn’t actually accept payment from their customers!

The first, and more obvious issue was an expired SSL certificate.  When most modern browsers land on a page with an expired or misconfigured security certificate the browser will usually prevent access to the page with a notice stating something along the lines of “This site is not trusted, and your identity is at risk” in bolded red text, accompanied by a big red stop sign graphic.  Basically, a few pages into the payment process (and no sooner) this site was telling its own prospects not to trust the web site it was attempted to make a purchase from, and to leave now to avoid a security/identity threat.

This act of negligence came solely as a result of the site managers failure to update the email address on file with the SSL certificate provider, eliminating the possibility of receiving e-mail notices when it came time to renew.  Unbelievably, the site still managed to make a few sales here and there, even with a scary notification in place convincing their prospects to leave the “untrusted site”. Now that’s a motivated purchaser!

2. Configure your payment processing solution for international purchases

The second, and less obvious issue was that the site’s traffic consisted of almost 50% international traffic while the payment processing system was designed specifically for US billing addresses addresses, phone numbers, and zip codes.  International visitors would input valid credit card and billing information, only to be rejected by the payment processing component for information it perceived to be invalid.

International customers are becoming more common among US-based web businesses, so make sure you know where your traffic is coming from and ensure that you can cater your billing system to their available payment methods.

3. Too many steps in the payment/product delivery process

It’s very common among ecommerce sites to have interview/upselling mechanisms in place during their payment process that may be silently killing their sales volume, as the bulk of your average consumers are procrastinators with short attention spans.  If a prospect has to survive ten pages of options or questionnaire fields in your payment process, they’re more than likely to jump ship before you get a chance to capture their payment.  If you have an upsale or questionnaire in place, try moving it to a point after payment has been processed and you’ll reduce the volume of cart abandonment by leaps and bounds.

Every opportunity you take to shorten the amount of effort and time a prospect has to put forth to pay you will make a huge positive impact on your sales volume. A great example on this practice are ecommerce giants Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble, both crediting their “One Click Checkout” option as one of the biggest advancements they’ve made to their platforms since inception.  Reducing cart abandonment should be one of the primary focuses to increasing your conversion rates.

4. Make your Call-To-Action components accessible

Although not one of the issues this client faced in particular, quite a few sites get this wrong and it costs them big time so I put it in here anyway.  While some of your visitors may be motivated to purchase your products after reading your primary sales letter, there are probably just as many that will be motivated by your client testimonials, and even some after being convinced by a bloggers review of your site.  All of these areas are located at different parts of your site, while many web designers place important call-to-action components like “Buy Now” or “Quote Now” functions in the more obvious areas such as the bottom of their sales letter or home page.  Since these buyers are motivated from different areas of your site (or someone else’s), there’s no telling when your visitor is ready to pull their credit card out.  The solution?  Place important call-to-action components like Buy Now buttons, and lead capture functions(free quote forms, question boxes, etc) on almost every page that it could possibly be relevant to a prospect.

To avoid causing any harm or confusion to your sales process, it might make sense to to place it in a prominent location on the side bar of your pages and blog entries.  The moment your prospect is ready to make a purchase, they’ll be presented with the option to do so without any guesswork.

Process Testing & Improvement Practices

No matter how compelling your sales letter, how stunning your web graphics, or how great your products are, your web presence is worth nothing without most of basic conversion principles in place. Frequent tests and improvements will usually always keep your sales process up to today’s standards whether they’re done once each week, or once each month.

Visit Excedra’s Web Marketing Blog for free tips and tools you can implement now to increase your web sales and improve your overall marketing efforts.

1. Visible Web Page Hit Counters

Once used as a way to both track your page views and illustrate your site’s popularity to its visitors, hit counters prove no value whatsoever to your brand name or image, and in most cases will make you look bad if your site doesn’t receive an excessive amount of traffic. Hit counters were exciting little gadgets to have on your site during their time, but any current usage of them should remain completely invisible to visitors and should be used only as a way to monitor the behaviors of your sites’ traffic. The most popular evolution of hit counters used today are Google Analytics, and StatCounter- both providing an indepth look into the behaviors of your visitors.

2. Visitor Guestbook

The Guestbook was once an effective way to let your visitors interact with web site owners and leave feedback regarding their experience on your site after they’ve viewed your pages. The Guestbook was also a good way to capture leads as anyone that took the time to fill one out was usually interested in the sites’ content. As modern blogging emerged, social components such as user comments and ratings have succeeded the purpose of the guestbook forever, although it seems like there’s still a few web developers out there that haven’t made this very obvious realization yet.

3. General Discussion Forums

Although forums have not been rendered completely obsolete when implemented on some niche web sites, general discussion forums have been rendered almost completely useless for the purpose of retaining visitors as a social component, due to advancements made by social media giants like MySpace (now nearly defunct), Facebook and LinkedIn. You now have the option to allow visitors to discuss your web site and related topics on these popular social networks (in effect generating more interest in your offerings) without the need to maintain a proprietary solution for this purpose.

In some rare cases it may be necessary to implement a discussion forum if the sole purpose of the web site is to discuss a particular subject. For example, the science and engineering site ScienceForums.net maintains an active user base of influential people in different fields of science that discuss very particular aspects of their industry. These types of sites offer a great deal of benefits to their visitors due to the collective of brains that contribute to the content, and the general willingness of the community to help people overcome issues in fields where people aren’t interested in socializing about general topics. Bottom line, if you implement a conversation forum on your web site for the purpose of general socialization, it will more than likely fill itself with content spam and worthless conversations that will do nothing more than damage your brand to visitors that might’ve otherwise taken interest in your offerings.

4. “Under Construction” Pages

Nothing can make yourself look more unprofessional to your visitors than indicating to them that you’re missing something important. If you don’t have content for certain pages on your web site, don’t link to them. Web sites with few pages can still be effective with regard to converting traffic into paying customers. Having one of these on your site is like building a road block between you and your customers.

5. Scrolling “Marquee” Text

I don’t need to say much about marquee text other than that you probably shouldn’t use it on anything other than a billboard on the Vegas strip. The attention span of your average web surfer is poor enough, and no one wants to wait ten (or more) seconds to see a crucial part of your message scroll in at a turtle’s pace. In addition, scrolling marquee text has been removed from a lot of web site design standards due to its poor cross-platform compatibility. I don’t think many people will miss this effect.

6. Over-Theming & Map-Based Layouts

Is your page layout in the shape of a coffee cup, or look like the dashboard of a space ship? If you’re using an image map for much more than plotting links on an actual map, the design of your page layout is more than likely headed in the wrong direction.

In addition to the general tackiness offered by these types of designs, there’s often structural issues with navigation (especially if you’re looking to change anything down the line) and the way your content is presented across different platforms and browsers. Nowadays people are surfing the web on everything from their smartphones to their web-enabled televisions, so it’s imperative that you ensure your content is being displayed properly to everyone.

Well that about does it for this edition of pre-historic web design components. If you’d like to make a suggestion for a next edition (that’s if I’ve left anything out at this point) feel free to shoot me an email, I’ll be glad to cover it and give you credit.

Have a question about conversion optimization or internet marketing in general? The marketing professionals at Excedra are standing by right now to help you. Get a Free Marketing Evaluation Report in seconds at www.excedra.com.

Visit Excedra’s Web Marketing Blog for free tips and tools you can implement now to increase your web sales and improve your overall marketing efforts.

Are you really doing everything you can to increase your traffic and conversion rate?

If your web presence doesn’t contain most of the components illustrated below, the answer to that is more than likely NO!

1. Product Landing Page

Landing Pages (otherwise referred to as “Landers”) are the web-based doorstep to your sales team.  Whether you’re launching a ppc marketing campaign, an organic search optimization, or a social media effort, you can see by looking at the topology above that all of the external components of your web marketing infrastructure exist for the primary purpose of driving visitors to your landing page to drive the purchase. Landing pages differ from conventionally designed web pages as the objective is to remove any and all distractions from the visitor and persuade them to either make a purchase or commit to your message by completing form fields or a web-based application on the page.

A well constructed landing page should have a clear definition of the product you’re offering, along with the product’s  key features & benefits.  Another component of a good landing page design is a well constructed product guarantee that compels the visitor’s commitment.Here’s an example of a simple landing page that does a pretty good job of covering the fundamentals.  Take notice to the streamlined approach – A headline, brief sales copy, a call-to-action message and my favorite addition to any landing page design – the arrow.

If you’re in the process of Landing Page Design, be sure to check out my article “Three Killer Conversion Enhancements For Your Landing Page Designs“.

2. Auto Responder System

Recent innovations by email marketing software providers like iContact and InfusionSoft have opened doors around the globe to small business owners that was once restricted to larger enterprises due to the costs and complexities of implementation.  Auto-responders are used pretty often as e-mail marketing tools that allow business owners to generate very personal, automated follow-up emails that can be delivered according to a schedule that’s predefined. For example, you could set your delivery schedule so your prospects(or existing customers) receive an email instantly after “opting in” to your list via your web site, one email the following day, and an email every six days thereafter.

Many people get email auto-responders confused with tools used for SPAM. This is a completely false perception of email marketing as there are a few mechanical differences between a SPAM campaign and a legitimate email marketing campaign. One of the primary differences between the two email campaign types is the receiver’s consent- the visitor of your web site or blog actually requesting (or allowing themselves) to be apart of your mailing list and auto-responder sequence via a form on your web page.

Auto-Responders play a crucial role in the development of trust between you and the prospective customer.  A web page without an auto-responder input is a page that must do a masterful job of gaining the prospective customer’s trust, in addition to persuading them to make an actual purchase or complete the page’s desired action. If you were to illustrate that in a real-life scenario, it’d be like walking up to a person you’ve never met, shaking their hand, and then immediately hitting that person with a sales pitch. There would be little to no trust in the message you convey, nor the product you’re offering them.  An auto-responder will allow you to hit your subscribers(prospects) with multiple exposures of your message, in addition to increasing your readers’ trust over the course of multiple interactions, and ultimately deepening the relationship between you and your prospects.

The end result of a well constructed e-mail campaign is usually a pretty significant increase in the volume of web traffic that converts into hot leads and paying customers. An effective, easily implementable strategy for the content of your email marketing campaigns are the repackaging your existing blog posts into multi-day “eCourses” that contain your call-to-action message.  The length of a typical eCourse is between three and seven days on average (3-7 blog posts).

3. Lead Capture

The lead capture, or “capture point” on your web site is a mechanism that requests information from the visitor (typically basic contact information such as their name, phone number, and e-mail) and captures it through an HTML form on your landing page design for the purpose of lead generation.  The information captured is usually then sent directly to their sales department via email or piped into their lead management application where it’s categorized, sorted, and approached by a specific salesman for that product. Every page you include a capture point on is one more shot at getting the prospective customer to compel themselves to you, so finding creative ways to implement them into mostly all of your web pages and blog posts could drastically increase the amount of leads generated. Be careful not to ask for too much information from your prospective leads as doing so could discourage them from completing the form fields. An example of a simple (but effective) lead capture, is the form on the right column of this example landing page.

4. Paid Search Placement

Paid Search Placement, otherwise referred in the tech industry to as PPC Marketing, has been given the title by most marketing professionals as the most important direct marketing innovation of this century. And it’s easy to see why: never before has it been possible to advertise to people while they’re looking for what you offer. PPC advertisements are typically displayed in the “sponsored advertisements” area at the very top above the fold, and far right column of search results for most popular search engines including Google, Bing, and Yahoo. As paid search placement is billed on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, you are required to bid against other web sites in an auction format for your ad position.  If appropriate time and resources are invested in keyword research and well written ppc advertisements, a PPC campaign can unlock markets populated with millions of monthly searchers looking for you, resulting in an explosive opportunity to capture new qualified leads and customers that can be successful within minutes of being turned on.  I don’t know of very many advertising venues that can get the ball rolling that quick.

The burdens of PPC Management mostly involve frequently comparing your existing highly performing ads against newly created ad concepts for the purpose of finding “the winning message” (defined as A/B testing). One of the biggest problems business owners face when launching a ppc campaign is the competitive advantages larger companies have in lucrative markets. For example, one of our clients is in the insurance industry.Entering the car insurance market via search marketing is a tough move from the very beginning, if not one of the toughest. Advertising on search engines (PPC) under keywords “car insurance quote” could cost you many thousands per day for a relatively small amount of traffic. In addition, your competition isn’t just the local car insurance salesmen; they’re the huge fortune 500 machines with deep pockets and talented personnel (sometimes). Today, most open marketing venuesonline like Google Adwords, and Yahoo Search Marketing are dominated by these competing companies purchasing ad space in bulk (or bidding very high on a cost-per-click basis in this case), essentially rigging the minimum costs to advertise on a good bit of generic search keywords and keyphrases.

This harsh outcome leaves the raw costs to enter most markets so high that small business owners have little or no room for error when entering the marketplace, provided they can even make it through the front door.  Solution? Learning everything you can about your target market, the costs to enter that market, and most importantly the behaviors and monetization strategies of the top competitors operating in the market as that information could be the secret to how that competitor is able to place such high bids with a return on their advertising spend.

5. Organic Search Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of positioning your landing pages or other web page content to appear in the natural search results for search queries containing keywords related to your product or business. This is both an incredibly difficult, and inestimably valuable skill to master. According to SEMPO, over 75% of all search traffic comes from the natural, organic results. Interestingly, over 85% of the world’s search marketing budget is spent on pay-per-click (PPC marketing). There’s a very good reason for this – SEO is much more difficult to get right than a PPC campaign.

There are two different but equally important approaches for SEO; on-page optimization, and off-page optimization.  On-page optimization techniques require you to add/modify elements of your web page’s code such as the title, meta tags, header tags, bolded keyphrases, links, and text to a format that crawlers are able to identify, ultimately improving your page rank.  Off-page optimization mostly consists of generating inbound links, or “link building”, which is essentially convincing the developers of other relevant web sites to link to your desired pages. Some black-hat optimization techniques including purchasing inbound links from content sites built for the purposes of fabricating search rankings. These types of sites are called Content Farms and could get your site banned from major search engines pretty quickly.

One thing to keep in mind when preparing to optimize a site for organic search results is that Google and other major search engines are constantly changing their algorithm and criteria for what they consider a “top ranking” web site to be.  This poses a problem for both search consultants and web developers as they’re constantly forced to learn new strategies and standards to keep favorable rankings.

6. Social Media Networks

With Facebook preparing for a $100 Billion Dollar IPO, it’s safe to say that social media is sticking around for awhile.  Once used primarily by teens and musicians to chat, and share media like music, news, and photographs online, social media has evolved into a networking standard for almost any age group and profession. In recent years, communities like Facebook and LinkedIn began assembling the personal data you add to your profile into databases that allow advertisers to target very specific demographics with laser precision and deliver relevant ads based on interests, preferences and choices made by the user.

Social Media Marketing can be accomplished at least two different ways, with both having their pros/cons.  The first (and traditional) way, is by purchasing ad space on the social network.  Most popular social media communities sell space on a cost-per-click (CPC) compensation structure similar to Paid Search Marketing. The second technique can increase traffic and search rankings at the same time.  This technique involves writing catchy articles that are improved with on-page optimization techniques, and distributing them on the social media networks to your desired market. Many have implemented both strategies with great success, however in my experience the frequent creation and distribution of fresh content to your audience seems to be the formula for a winning Social Media Campaign.

7. Re-Targeting

Re-targeting is a fairly new advancement in advertising technology that allows your banner ads to chase your prospects around the internet for repeated bites at the apple after they’ve left your web site. The process of re-targeting begins when a visitor lands on one of your pages and the re-targeting cookie is placed on their PC instantly.  When the visitor leaves your site and visits any of today’s popular web properties (ESPN, CNN, Facebook, YouTube, AOL- you name it), the page reads the re-targeting cookie on your PC and displays your ads to their visitor. This not only deepens the relationship with the visitor due to repeated exposure to your message, but usually increases conversion rates with little additional effort.  Re-targeting is pretty much universal with regard to its compatibility with other components of a web marketing system as it targets traffic that has already left your web site.

8. Affiliate Networks

Affiliates carry many labels- referral partners, eRetailers, authorized retailers, etc.  A long proven performance-based referral model, Affiliate Marketing allows web developers, and search marketing professionals to link to landing page design via a banner ad or link, and receive a commission for the referral.  Affiliate Networks typically work off of a Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) compensation model whereby the affiliate receives a commission only when a sale or lead(if you’re generating leads) arises as a result of the referral.

There are many affiliate networks and third-party applications, but most of your real players stick to the more popular ones such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, and PepperJam due to their cutting edge interfaces, and tracking technology. Popular affiliate networks also has a good network of affiliates to start and grow your efforts. I’ve experienced success working with affiliate programs for businesses of all sizes ranging as small as a local t-shirt designer, up to as large as a Fortune 500 insurance company.

You should only launch an affiliate program once you’ve gotten the important components of your system in place as any errors,  issues, or glitches with your web site could cause affiliates to drop participation in your program and never re-join.  One thing you have to take into serious consideration when launching an affiliate program is the overall quality of your product, including your branding, customer service, and any other aspect that could irritate or disrupt the consumer.  Most affiliates that take their work seriously will only work with popular brands, offering high payouts on quality products, so if you don’t have a good balance of both you should consider fixing that before launching a program.

9. Media Placement

Media placement or “media buying” on the web typically refers to purchasing banner advertising space in bulk from high-traffic web properties like NFL.com, YouTube, CNN, and AOL.  Media placement can also refer to other mediums such as Television & Radio commercials.  I’ve come across a lot of unsuccessful media buyers out there that thought they were smart enough to guess the winning ad for their media buys without proper A/B testing of their sales copy and ad text (which usually takes place in much earlier phases such as ppc management), and spent a fortune in the process before achieving even mild success.  When done properly, media buying could be the golden faucet that takes your traffic and revenue to new heights.

I hope some of the components mentioned in this article prove valuable in the growth of your business. I invite you to contact us with your toughest marketing challenges.  The marketing professionals at Excedra are standing by right now to help. Get a free instant marketing evaluation report for your web site now.

Visit Excedra’s Web Marketing Blog for free tips and tools you can implement now to increase your web sales and improve your overall marketing efforts.

1. Preliminary Keyword Research

After doing a little bit of Keyword Research you’ll  find a good number of high search volume keywords you’ll need to focus your optimization efforts on.

There’s still a few bloggers out there that completely overlook the Keyword Research phase of creating their blog and page content. A groundbreaking research tool released by Google gives you deep insight into behaviors of their searchers. The Google Keyword Tool gives its users the ability to calculate the volume of estimated monthly search inquiries there are locally(United States) and internationally for a specified keyphrase. The tool also makes suggestions for alternative variations of your keywords and keyphrases that may have some healthy search volume. After assembling a group of at least 20 different variations of a keyphrase, identify the small handful of keyphrases that generate the highest volume of monthly searchers, and store these in a text file titled “Primary Keyphrases”, with your lower volume keywords being stored as “Secondary Keyphrases”.

When writing your blog pieces, keep your keyword list nearby and implement different variations of both the primary and the secondary keyphrases into the copy of your blog post a few times. At least once or twice each paragraph. Search engines crawlers perceive any emphasized text to be important with regard to the context of the page’s content.  Any header text (html tags <h1>,<h3>,etc.), bolded text(html tags <strong>, and <b>), and text within hyperlinks are considered to be emphasized content and will be taken into consideration by the search engine when indexing your site in their search results for the keyword or phrase you’re targeting.

2. Bolded Keyphrases

Include one of your Primary Keyphrases once or twice in an article with bolded text per the example below.

3. Keyphrases as link text to Products Pages

Link to your products or services pages from within your blog posts using one of the Primary Keyphrases as the link text.  For example, in one paragraph I used the keyphrase “unsecured business lines of credit” as my link text, and had the link point to the Unsecured Business Credit page, and in another instance I used the keyphrase “Small Business Credit Lines” as my link text with the link pointing to the Unsecured Business Credit page as well.

Search engines’ crawlers identify link text as one of their primary means of indexing a page for a specific keyword so it’s important that you use multiple variations of your primary keyphrase as link text throughout the blog post in a few different paragraphs.

It’s best to space out links with similar context pointing to the same URL by at least a few sentences. If you take a look at the screenshot below you will see keyphrases similar in context referenced multiple times within the document, linking to the same products page. Search engines don’t mind a good bit of links in a blog, so don’t be afraid if you’ve got a few more than just the one or two minimum every other paragraph.  One other important thing to consider is that if the reader clicks one of these links from your blog post, they will land on your product page at the doorstep (hopefully)  of your sales funnel.

4. Link Density

Your links should be spread almost evenly throughout the content of your blog post.  A good rule of thumb is between 1-2 links every other paragraph or so.   On the Hawkeye Management “How It Works” page shown above, I attempt to give you a good visual as to how far apart your links should be.  Links should be weaved into the contents of your blog in the same natural order. View the actual “How it Works” page shown above. (Opens in a new window)

5. Blog Post/Content Interlinking

Usability is a big concern for search engines like Google, so inter-linking your blog posts and pages based on the context of page content is important.  For example in the second paragraph of the Hawkeye Company page(included below) you will see the phrase “banks approve fewer than 10% of the loan applications”.  The page links to a different blog post that explains loan application failures and mistakes made by business owners.

[infobox]Its important that the content of your blog post draws the readers to other pages within your blog and web site, so you should include content interlinking on every blog post.  Remember, the longer a person stays on your site and keeps reading, the warmer they are as a lead going into your sales funnel.[/infobox]

Content Interlinking Example: Hawkeye Management Company Page – Paragraph 2

It’s common knowledge that banks approve fewer than 10% of the loan applications they receive from small business owners. That isn’t a coincidence. Most of these business owners are making the exact same mistakes which prevent them from getting approved.

View Hawkeye Management’s Company Page »

Have a question about search engine optimization or search marketing in general? The marketing professionals at Excedra are standing by to help you. Get a Free Marketing Evaluation Report Now.

Visit Excedra’s Web Marketing Blog for free tips and tools you can implement now to increase your web sales and improve your overall marketing efforts.

1. Button with Repeating Light Glare

The eye catching light glare over the call-to-action button has time after time proven to be major in the conversion optimization process. It doesn’t matter where you put it on your page, you can be certain your visitors will be aware of this button. It should be used only for the purpose of compelling your visitors to make a purchase or complete the page’s desired action so not to annoy the reader.  Make sure that the button’s appearance and animation are smooth so not to look cheesy.  The repeating glare effect can be achieved in most newer versions Adobe Photoshop via the Image Ready animation panel.  I’ve also created a sample animated Light Glare Button Template in Photoshop (PSD) format.

2. Moving Arrow

Another eye catching  enhancement thats guaranteed to get the attention of your visitors is the moving arrow. Aside from capturing their attention, the arrow also provides direction and helps aid the reader into making the decision of completing the desired call-to-action. I typically only use a moving arrow for Purchase & Lead Generation buttons.  I’ve included a sample(shown to the left) of a Moving Arrow Template in Photoshop (PSD) format.  The motion of the arrow is controlled by the amount of frames in the animation panel of Adobe ImageReady.

3. Wrap-Around Arrow

The “wrap-around” arrow is usually situated at the very bottom of your message, overlapping the content area of the page from the background, and usually points toward the page’s final call-to-action button(add to cart, or app submission).  The arrow’s three-dimensional appearance immediately demands the eyes of the visitor, and should be placed after the crucial sales components of your message (so not to distract the reader before they’ve read important sales copy). The wrap-around arrow image to the right is transparent in PNG format, so feel free to use and modify it for your designs.

Practical Uses for Conversion Objects

It’s probably not a good idea to use all three conversion objects above on the same Landing Page Design because at some point your pages will appear too pushy and drive your visitors away. I’ve seen a few pretty good uses of the three combined conversion objects so it’s not entirely impossible to pull off without annoying the visitor.  When deciding where to place the objects, consider the overall flow of the page and make sure that you’re driving your readers in one direction effectively- with both your message, and your images. Before developing a landing page for a search marketing campaign or social media effort be sure to spell your objectives out on paper and use the enhancements sparingly.

Now that you’ve seen some of the things that can improve your conversion rate, I can show you some of the things that can damage it. Be sure to check out my last blog post titled “Six Ways to Tell Your Web Site is Stuck in The 1990′s“.

Have a question about Landing Page Design, or Conversion Optimization? The marketing professionals at Excedra are standing by to help you.  Get a Free Marketing Evaluation Report now.

The following symptoms are prime indicators of a pre-historic web site:

1. Irritating and Uncoordinated Color Schemes

This is usually one of the most common illnesses among outdated sites.  As the web progressed, interfaces became more standardized and “natural”.  The web somehow managed mesh together a set of color combinations that seemed to work.  It seems that a few designers still haven’t recognized the standards.

In nature the existence of light and shadows prevent every object from having a solid undiluted color. As a result, the human eye is at always slightly irritated by the sight of a solid color.

Examples of Solid Undiluted Colors

The eye-irritating effect of the solid color instinctively draws your eyes to the vicinity, making use of irritating colors appropriate only for the purpose of conversion elements such as arrows, buttons, and other call-to-action objects that need to stand out well beyond the other elements of the interface.

Examples of Natural Diluted Colors (which represent the web 2.0 era)

Keeping your color scheme “natural” and soft on the eyes (using light gradients, and soft/diluted colors like the ones shown in the palette above) improves the visitor’s ability to focus on what’s important- your content and ultimately the call-to-action message that invokes a purchase.

Bottom line, If your visitors start going blind when they visit your site at 2 am, it’s going to be pretty tough convincing them to make a purchase, so invest some time into selecting an appropriate color scheme.

2. Distracting Background Colors & Patterns

Not really sure how this was ever really a good design concept, but seeing sites with strong background patterns in content areas somehow reminds me of the old wallpaper in my grandmother’s kitchen.   Strong patterns cause distraction, and could discourage visitors from continuing onto other pages of your site.  You’d think this was another extremely obvious design principal, but still some have managed to completely ignore it. An extreme example of this negligence is the web page of Yale’s School of Art (pictured above) and featured as a contender in the Worst Websites of 2010.

3. Choppy Gif Animations

I can’t believe I even have to mention this, and fortunately most of the world actually knows (at this point) that you shouldn’t add choppy, repeating 3 frame animations to your web pages. Somehow there’s still a few of you left, and I’m hoping this will change that. If you’re going to use animation on a page, keep in mind web sites in this century are capable of deploying smooth high resolution graphics & animation as well as high definition audio and video.  Choppy animations are now eyesores, and could damage your conversion rate.

4. Bloated Site Navigation

One of the more common symptoms still found amongst dinosaur-age web sites is the bloated navigation menu.  Try keeping your primary navigation bar at a range of between 5 and 8 main navigation links. If you must have more, try exploring the usage of sub-menus/pages. By now most browsers support JavaScript out of the box, and it has become much easier to implement well structured, multi-level navigation menus that are both easy to use, and pleasing to the eye.

5. Low Quality & Over-Compressed Images

We’ve entered an age where even our cell phones are capable of downloading clear high-resolution images pretty quickly. Furthermore,  industry demographics have concluded that most web surfers have adopted broadband internet connections. Take advantage of high quality images to properly convey your company’s message.  Going cheap on your graphics could cost you tons of prospective customers.

6. Flash Intro Pages

While not necessarily a 90′s thing, dedicated Flash intro pages are dead. Like my friend Jay once said “It’s like a glass of water to the face”.  When visitors are on the hunt for information, running into a cheesy flash animation full of jargon with goofy background music could do much more damage than good. Flash has a bad reputation lately by some of the bigger tech companies like Apple, but it’s still a very useful tool when used sparingly, in a contained manner such as a homepage splash image or a banner advertisement.

Okay so my site has some outdated features, so what!?  It still works!

The one common issue that seemed to be the real downfall of 90′s web layouts was their complete lack of focus on conversion or engagement from the visitor.  With the exception of ecommerce sites, you would hardly see web pages actually asking for something from their visitors- every page was full of text and images like a book, with either an email address or phone number at the top.  During a time when most sites had interface issues it was much less of a problem to attract customers, but in the web 2.0 age, it’s important that your web site and landing pages exist for the purpose of conversion.

I’d like to thank Dan Martell for sharing his great collection of old 90′s web sites that managed to remain  standing from the dinosaur days. Also check out webpagesthatsuck.com for a library of old & bad web designs.

Have a question about conversion optimization or internet marketing in general? The marketing professionals at Excedra are standing by right now to help you.  Get a Free Marketing Evaluation Report in seconds at www.excedra.com.

Visit Excedra’s Web Marketing Blog for free tips and tools you can implement now to increase your web sales and improve your overall marketing efforts.