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What Makes A Credible Website
What makes a website credible?
With an increase in competition in search engine ranking and a rise in PPC prices, conversion rate optimization helps marketers get more out of what they already have.
Credibility -- People believe messages from sources that appear credible, so if a website is considered credible, messages will be more persuasive. Take mainstream media for instance, such as CNN and FOX News. They appear credible yet propagate lies and twist opinions in line with political agendas.
By and large, the reporting is based on credibility factors such as "an official said" or "experts from this field say" etc, with little or no proof to back up the claims other than "he/she said." People perceive officials as truthful authority figures and lies fly undetected.
The web works in a similar fashion. Once you have credibility on your side, your message is trusted more than a less credible competitor. Compare buying a plasma TV from Amazon or an unknown website. Which one has more credibility and trust?
Research shows that websites perceived as credible have a professional look and feel. They have well-structured content and easy navigation. Those websites also have a clear unique selling proposition that clearly states why they are better than the rest.
Credible websites also download quickly and focus on "you" language instead of "we." They steer clear of an aggressive sales pitch, but state the benefits of their products/services.
Credibility Factors
Brand - Brand is your biggest credibility booster. Once you have the brand, customers will find you more credible than an unknown.
Professional Design - An ugly design scares people off, even if you have a good offer on the table. Apart from being appealing, professional designs load very fast. If a website is slow to load, visitors will simply click the back button without waiting. There a hundreds more sites; why wait for yours?
Another aspect of a professional website is a mistake-free text/presentation. It includes no coding errors, no misspellings or incomplete content. Errors reduce the perception of quality, and with it, credibility. Even small errors can become big issues for your visitors, such as a misspelling in your text or unfinished pages.
Navigation - Users often state they cannot find the information they're looking for. When this occurs, they abandon the website and head back to the search engines. The design must allow visitors to get where they need to be in a minimum number of clicks, no matter which page they land on.
One of the ways to make navigation easy is to rely on content links and guide users to appropriate pages as they read content. Make sure to style links in a distinct color (and make them bold, preferably) for easy scanning.
Logo - The logo is one of the first things users see on your website, thus it is vitally important to present a logo that helps to reinforce your credibility and professionalism. Hire a professional to craft a logo if you want a good one.
Slogan or Unique Selling Proposition - The logo, slogan/USP are the key elements that identify your brand. Together they create weight and help you differentiate your company from competition that has no clear slogans/USPs.
A unique selling proposition, often used as a slogan, tells visitors in one sentence why they should pick you instead of other companies. For example, Avis: "We're Number Two We Try Harder" or Fedex: "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." It sets the frame and sparks light bulbs in visitors' minds in a manner that makes them think: "that is something I appreciate."
Successful slogans and unique selling propositions can increase conversion rates by two to four times, thus there's big money in those short tag lines. Good slogans should communicate biggest benefits, be simple, easy to remember, use an active tone, link to your brand name and differentiate.
Other Conversion Rate Factors
Link Length - Studies show that action-oriented, active tense, long links get more responses than short links. Sometimes, due to SEO constraints, long links are not an option.
However, if you're linking out to a form or order page which has ranking value, then it's okay to create a 5 - 8 word link with a clear call to action. For example: "save on plasma TVs and get free shipping."
Content Positioning - Make sure to position your most important content above the fold. Studies show that nearly three-quarters of users click on links, fill out forms, and read content located above the fold.
Sales Copy - Persuasive, benefit-oriented copy crafted by a professional copywriter can double and triple conversion rates. Online copy writing is a craft of its own and cannot be covered in two, three or 10 articles.
Images -- Images significantly improve conversion rates for merchants who sell physical products. Service providers also benefit by demonstrating an end result and making a website more alive, as sites without human imagery lack the "human touch."
Use only high quality pictures; poor images lower credibility. Try to keep the image on the right side, because it's uncomfortable to read text on the right. Make the image clickable, with an option to see higher resolution versions.
Practice Slow?
Is your practice slow at the moment?
Some of you have listened to these instructions over the last 60 days and have told me it has helped so here they are again.
Take this slow time over the next 60 days and get your Website and your SEO ready and strong for the people that are looking and for the better months that are around the corner.
1. Work on positioning thru content, links, outside sources to your website, and so on.
2. Blog, do a blog post every day or at least every other day if your slow. It will pay off.
Blog often and strong.
Use titles that people may type in and search for.
Use lots of searched for content.
Create some home made videos done nicely
Use lots of links in your blogs
Link some of your blog posts to outside sources.
3. Write some new fresh articles for your website and have your webmaster post on every 3 weeks instead of every month.
4. Create some question and answer forms for your website and either post them as PDF forms or even better for SEO as pages.
5. If you can financially build a few small specialty websites (feeder sites) to go out and grab more attention
6. Expand your comfort box, go out and grab more market share, further away, or different media avenues, thru social media or thru
areas you have not been doing or have not been putting much effort into.
7. Create some programs to involve the people that know how good your are like your former patients.
8. Make your website more fun and interactive.
Remember use the slow time to make your around the corner future even stronger as well as the distant future.
Blogging Tips
I have had 36 questions about Blogging in the last 10 days because more and more of you are using the slow time to build it up better so here is some help/
More Blogging Tips: Cooking with Gas
Yesterday I covered four great lessons we can learn about blogging from watching the movie "Julie and Julia." I promised you a total of 11. So what can you do to make your blog memorable, besides being passionate about your subject, having a goal, being reliable and finding your niche? Keep reading.
Just in case you haven't seen the movie, "Julie and Julia" told two true stories, the first one about how Julia Child became a chef and wrote her classic cookbook, and the second one about Julie Powell, who one day undertook the task of cooking her way through the entire book in just a year, and blogging about it. She went from nothing to having publishers (and Hollywood) knocking on her door.
Following all these tips might not make you rich and famous, but it should help you improve your blog, increase your readership, and maybe even grow your bottom line. But let me pick up from where I left off.
Track your visitors
Julie's first comment was from her mother, but we all got excited right along with her when one day she exulted that she'd received 65 comments, and none of them from people she knew. She eventually became the proud owner of one of Salon's most popular blogs.
By tracking your visitors, you can see whether you're on the right track. Is your readership increasing or decreasing? How popular was a particular entry? Should you write more on the same subject? Tracking your visitors gives you valuable feedback; it can help you figure out what changes you need to make.
Be proactive in responding to comments
We don't see this in the movie, but who can doubt that Julie not only read every comment to her blog, but jumped in and responded? Blogging is essentially interactive; readers want to know that authors read their comments, and often ask questions to which they expect to see a response.
In a sense, they're entitled to one. Think about it. If someone put the effort into reading a blog entry, thought about it, and posted a perceptive comment or asked a good question, that's work of a sort, and deserves a reward in kind.
Interaction encourages interaction. If you respond to comments, you'll get more comments. More people will visit, read, and comment on your blog when they know you're actively involved.
More Blogging Tips: Cooking with Gas - Write in ways that encourage comments
In the movie we saw Julie end a few of her early posts wondering if her readers were out there. That's a little extreme, and not recommended if you write a company blog, or any kind of blog that you want to look professional. But there are ways to entice your readers to respond to what you've written without begging.
Try summarizing an entry in which you relate your opinion of something, and then adding "What do you think?" with a suggestion to leave a comment. You'll no doubt find other ways to encourage comments that work particularly well with your blog's topic.
Be persistent in achieving your goal
Julie came close to giving up once or twice, but to judge from the movie, she never threw in the towel completely. Early on, her own mother didn't understand why she was doing it, but she kept it up anyway. Persistence pays; in Julie's case, it paid off quite literally.
Whether or not you've revealed your actual goal to your readers, you should be persistent in achieving it. This might mean changing your tactics based on the feedback you get. It might mean thinking outside the box and doing things you've never done before (like killing a lobster, or holding contests on your site).
In an extreme case, it might mean changing your goal, if your original goal turns out not to be realistic. But that shouldn't be your first instinct. If you took a look at your goal originally and outlined a path to achieving it that seemed reasonable at the time, stick with it unless you later found out that your first analysis was completely unreasonable.
Remember, some goals simply take a long time to achieve. As one example, it's taken me 17 months to lose 47 pounds, and I have another 5 pounds to go before I achieve my goal. I plateaued twice for so long that it was tempting to give up, but I persisted with what I was doing and made it this far. You can bet I'm not giving up. If your goal is reasonable, or even requires you to stretch a little, you shouldn't either.
More Blogging Tips: Cooking with Gas - Patience isn't its own reward
Reward yourself when you achieve your goal
In the movie, Julie went to a special exhibit on Julia Child when she finished cooking her way through the cookbook. This isn't just a good thing for blogging; it's a good rule for life in general. Reaching a major goal deserves a celebration. In fact, it can help to set smaller "landmark" goals along the way and treat yourself with smaller rewards, to keep your enthusiasm up.
These rewards should be things you enjoy, and that are appropriate to the goal you're trying to achieve. If you're trying to lose weight, you wouldn't reward yourself with a hot fudge sundae when you've lost 10 pounds - but you might celebrate with a pleasant walk in a colorful park you haven't been to in a while.
Match the size of the reward to the size of the goal achieved. Reaching your goal weight deserves a new wardrobe if you can afford it (you'll need to buy one anyway, but you can at least make the shopping trip fun). And yes, blog about getting your reward; if your readers have been following your struggles this far, they deserve to celebrate with you!
Don't expect to achieve everything all at once
Julie didn't start her cookbook odyssey by trying to debone an entire bird; she saved that for last. She didn't start with bisecting lobsters or creating aspics either. She started with pan-broiled steak, whole boiled artichokes with lemon butter, and rice. As she said in her blog, it was easy.
Do the easy stuff first, and then build up to the harder things. You'll be more willing to stick with what you're doing when you have regular successes under your belt. Just don't stick permanently with the easy stuff or you'll get bored - and so will your readership.
More Blogging Tips: Cooking with Gas - Be human
Let me expand on this point. You need to develop a voice. You need to be personal, but not too personal, especially if you're writing for a company blog. You need to consider the image you want to project, and stick with it as long as it works. Julie actually used a fair bit of profanity in her blog; she could get away with that, because it was a personal blog. One could even argue that it was expected, since she was trying to do something fairly challenging, and one of the stereotypes of New Yorkers is that they're rather loose with blue language.
But that doesn't mean she let it all hang out. In the movie, we see Julie have a fight with her husband; he walks out in a huff, and tells her that she'd better not blog about the fight. In that night's entry, she starts to write about it - and then stops herself, highlights the sentence, and hits the "delete" key.
The fight wasn't something that made sense to include in the blog. Yes, the Julie/Julia Project was a personal blog, but it was really about the cooking, and talking about the fight would have revealed way too much.
Remember, once you hit "publish," it's all over the Internet; complete strangers can read it. So give some serious thought to what your entry will look like to people who know nothing else about you, and might not even have read previous entries. If you're doing your job right, you will get exactly that kind of reader every week. Will they stick around to read previous entries? Will they become regulars? Or will they shrug and move on? The answers to these questions will depend very much on the kind of image you project.
What I've said so far about being human may seem contradictory. "Be personal, but not too personal"? Readers will try to picture the person behind the words. Give them enough pieces to get the skeleton of a picture, and they'll complete the rest of it themselves.
For example, when a novel writer describes a restaurant scene in a book, he may mention, for instance, grimy red-checked tablecloths, but he doesn't have to mention the shaky table legs; you, the reader, have been in greasy spoons before, and can conjure an entire image of the place from just a few short sentences of little details. You mentally fill in the rest.
Your blog readers will do the same for you, if you give them the right details. You don't need to look perfect, but you should be honest, sincere, and serious about achieving your goal (though not so serious that you don't have any fun with it). In short, as I said, you should be human. Blog readers are people, just like you, and relate to humans, not faceless companies. So give them something to relate to. Good luck!
More Blogging Tips: Cooking with Gas
Yesterday I covered four great lessons we can learn about blogging from watching the movie "Julie and Julia." I promised you a total of 11. So what can you do to make your blog memorable, besides being passionate about your subject, having a goal, being reliable and finding your niche? Keep reading.
Just in case you haven't seen the movie, "Julie and Julia" told two true stories, the first one about how Julia Child became a chef and wrote her classic cookbook, and the second one about Julie Powell, who one day undertook the task of cooking her way through the entire book in just a year, and blogging about it. She went from nothing to having publishers (and Hollywood) knocking on her door.
Following all these tips might not make you rich and famous, but it should help you improve your blog, increase your readership, and maybe even grow your bottom line. But let me pick up from where I left off.
Track your visitors
Julie's first comment was from her mother, but we all got excited right along with her when one day she exulted that she'd received 65 comments, and none of them from people she knew. She eventually became the proud owner of one of Salon's most popular blogs.
By tracking your visitors, you can see whether you're on the right track. Is your readership increasing or decreasing? How popular was a particular entry? Should you write more on the same subject? Tracking your visitors gives you valuable feedback; it can help you figure out what changes you need to make.
Be proactive in responding to comments
We don't see this in the movie, but who can doubt that Julie not only read every comment to her blog, but jumped in and responded? Blogging is essentially interactive; readers want to know that authors read their comments, and often ask questions to which they expect to see a response.
In a sense, they're entitled to one. Think about it. If someone put the effort into reading a blog entry, thought about it, and posted a perceptive comment or asked a good question, that's work of a sort, and deserves a reward in kind.
Interaction encourages interaction. If you respond to comments, you'll get more comments. More people will visit, read, and comment on your blog when they know you're actively involved.
More Blogging Tips: Cooking with Gas - Write in ways that encourage comments
In the movie we saw Julie end a few of her early posts wondering if her readers were out there. That's a little extreme, and not recommended if you write a company blog, or any kind of blog that you want to look professional. But there are ways to entice your readers to respond to what you've written without begging.
Try summarizing an entry in which you relate your opinion of something, and then adding "What do you think?" with a suggestion to leave a comment. You'll no doubt find other ways to encourage comments that work particularly well with your blog's topic.
Be persistent in achieving your goal
Julie came close to giving up once or twice, but to judge from the movie, she never threw in the towel completely. Early on, her own mother didn't understand why she was doing it, but she kept it up anyway. Persistence pays; in Julie's case, it paid off quite literally.
Whether or not you've revealed your actual goal to your readers, you should be persistent in achieving it. This might mean changing your tactics based on the feedback you get. It might mean thinking outside the box and doing things you've never done before (like killing a lobster, or holding contests on your site).
In an extreme case, it might mean changing your goal, if your original goal turns out not to be realistic. But that shouldn't be your first instinct. If you took a look at your goal originally and outlined a path to achieving it that seemed reasonable at the time, stick with it unless you later found out that your first analysis was completely unreasonable.
Remember, some goals simply take a long time to achieve. As one example, it's taken me 17 months to lose 47 pounds, and I have another 5 pounds to go before I achieve my goal. I plateaued twice for so long that it was tempting to give up, but I persisted with what I was doing and made it this far. You can bet I'm not giving up. If your goal is reasonable, or even requires you to stretch a little, you shouldn't either.
More Blogging Tips: Cooking with Gas - Patience isn't its own reward
Reward yourself when you achieve your goal
In the movie, Julie went to a special exhibit on Julia Child when she finished cooking her way through the cookbook. This isn't just a good thing for blogging; it's a good rule for life in general. Reaching a major goal deserves a celebration. In fact, it can help to set smaller "landmark" goals along the way and treat yourself with smaller rewards, to keep your enthusiasm up.
These rewards should be things you enjoy, and that are appropriate to the goal you're trying to achieve. If you're trying to lose weight, you wouldn't reward yourself with a hot fudge sundae when you've lost 10 pounds - but you might celebrate with a pleasant walk in a colorful park you haven't been to in a while.
Match the size of the reward to the size of the goal achieved. Reaching your goal weight deserves a new wardrobe if you can afford it (you'll need to buy one anyway, but you can at least make the shopping trip fun). And yes, blog about getting your reward; if your readers have been following your struggles this far, they deserve to celebrate with you!
Don't expect to achieve everything all at once
Julie didn't start her cookbook odyssey by trying to debone an entire bird; she saved that for last. She didn't start with bisecting lobsters or creating aspics either. She started with pan-broiled steak, whole boiled artichokes with lemon butter, and rice. As she said in her blog, it was easy.
Do the easy stuff first, and then build up to the harder things. You'll be more willing to stick with what you're doing when you have regular successes under your belt. Just don't stick permanently with the easy stuff or you'll get bored - and so will your readership.
More Blogging Tips: Cooking with Gas - Be human
Let me expand on this point. You need to develop a voice. You need to be personal, but not too personal, especially if you're writing for a company blog. You need to consider the image you want to project, and stick with it as long as it works. Julie actually used a fair bit of profanity in her blog; she could get away with that, because it was a personal blog. One could even argue that it was expected, since she was trying to do something fairly challenging, and one of the stereotypes of New Yorkers is that they're rather loose with blue language.
But that doesn't mean she let it all hang out. In the movie, we see Julie have a fight with her husband; he walks out in a huff, and tells her that she'd better not blog about the fight. In that night's entry, she starts to write about it - and then stops herself, highlights the sentence, and hits the "delete" key.
The fight wasn't something that made sense to include in the blog. Yes, the Julie/Julia Project was a personal blog, but it was really about the cooking, and talking about the fight would have revealed way too much.
Remember, once you hit "publish," it's all over the Internet; complete strangers can read it. So give some serious thought to what your entry will look like to people who know nothing else about you, and might not even have read previous entries. If you're doing your job right, you will get exactly that kind of reader every week. Will they stick around to read previous entries? Will they become regulars? Or will they shrug and move on? The answers to these questions will depend very much on the kind of image you project.
What I've said so far about being human may seem contradictory. "Be personal, but not too personal"? Readers will try to picture the person behind the words. Give them enough pieces to get the skeleton of a picture, and they'll complete the rest of it themselves.
For example, when a novel writer describes a restaurant scene in a book, he may mention, for instance, grimy red-checked tablecloths, but he doesn't have to mention the shaky table legs; you, the reader, have been in greasy spoons before, and can conjure an entire image of the place from just a few short sentences of little details. You mentally fill in the rest.
Your blog readers will do the same for you, if you give them the right details. You don't need to look perfect, but you should be honest, sincere, and serious about achieving your goal (though not so serious that you don't have any fun with it). In short, as I said, you should be human. Blog readers are people, just like you, and relate to humans, not faceless companies. So give them something to relate to. Good luck!
Mobile SEO- You Still Don't Believe?
So you think that Mobile SEO is not for you yet? That’s ok fall further behind.
Mobile SEO Has Become A Major Importance;
The online world is going mobile, and everyone’s getting involved with the popular trend. Mobile Web browsers and smart phones have turned the mobile world into an entire universe of online sites and stops, advertising and extras. The online world is going mobile, and that means your site should, too. What is mobile SEO…and, do you know how to use it?
Mobile SEO is often treated like a very different animal when it’s compared to the more standard SEO practices we’ve come to accept when creating online content. Now that you’ve started to master search engine optimization practices for the Internet, it’s time to master a whole new skill named mobile SEO. How does it differ, and how do you use it to make your mobile site a success?
Mobile Web Sites
Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and many, many other sites you find on the Web can also be found on the mobile Web -- mobile-enabled versions of the sites you’re probably already familiar with using.
There is often a distinction between mobile sites and their computer-viewable counterparts. For instance, Google has two versions of itself - the one you’ll find on the Internet, and the one you’ll find on the mobile Internet.
There is often a distinction between mobile sites and “regular” Web sites, and this is misleading in a way. Though many sites choose to create a mobile version of themselves (mirror sites), it’s absolutely possible for mobile as well as computer users to find the exact same Web sites even when they’re using two very different types of devices.
Now, all you have to do is learn how that works, and learn how to apply the principles of mobile SEO to a site that might already be rich in standard SEO. Sound confusing? It doesn’t have to be.
Creating a Mobile Site
Many, many mobile Web sites are written in a code called XHTML, which is sort of like a simplified version of the HTML which is commonly used to create Web pages on the Internet. The domain .mobi is often used for mobile sites as well.
Here’s what you need to know: it’s not absolutely necessary that you have a .mobi domain or a site written in XHTML to create a strong and striking online mobile presence. Sites under the .com domain (and all the other extensions you might obtain) can be found just as easily by mobile search engines. However, it is best -- though not mandatory -- to use the XHTML code when creating mobile pages. This simply makes pages a bit more accessible for a larger variety of mobile users, making it possible for a wider audience to find your mobile site.
Learning XHTML, or converting pages of your site to this language, doesn’t have to be a difficult or drawn-out process. There are many online tutorials which will help you learn, create and convert XHTML code as needed. One very user-friendly tutorial at w3schools can help you learn more about XHTML and how it’s used on the Web, both in mobile- and computer-based versions.
Mobile SEO
The right code isn’t all it takes if you want to achieve mobile SEO for your site. Remember that mobile users, the same as computer users, visit a search engine when they’re hunting for something specific on the Internet. You want these people to find your site whether they’re accessing that search engine from their home computer, traveling laptop or mobile device.
If you have an online presence, you should already have search engineoptimization in place on your existing site. Now, how do you add mobile SEO to your existing pages?
First and foremost, make sure your site is definitely open and available to mobile search engine scans by the mobile search engines. When creating pages for the Internet population at large, you include a special META tag that makes your pages available to search engines for scans when users enter keywords. When you want recognition from mobile search engine scans, however, you have to take an extra step that doesn’t involve any sort of special coding at all.
You have to let those search engines know that you’re ready to receive mobile traffic, only you don’t do this through a special tag. The most-used mobile search engines at this time include Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL Mobile -- not surprising, considering these are among the most popular sites used by computer Web surfers. Want to gain their attention? Then you’ll have to submit your site to get it.
Yahoo (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mobilesubmit) provides a user-friendly link that allows you to paste your site’s URL right into a blank box. Hit submit and you’re ready to start receiving mobile Web traffic from Yahoo. This sounds simple, but remember that you may have to take special pains to make your site viewable (and attractive) to mobile users. Once you’ve submitted, however, you can focus on a larger goal: mobile SEO.
Google (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=9346) offers a good deal of reading material to help you make your site ready for their mobile search engine, including directions to help you submit a site for their scans.
No Special Secrets
But submitting your site to the major mobile search engines is only half the battle when it comes to mobile SEO, isn’t it? Now that you’re using the right code and ready to receive traffic, it’s time to make sure your pages are optimized both for the mobile and the “regular” Web. It’s time to learn the secrets of mobile SEO.
Here’s the good news: there’s nothing new to learn. Mobile SEO, insofar as keyword usage and content stylings, is really no different from the search engine optimization practices you’ve probably already learned to adopt to boost your Web presence and Internet traffic.
Every piece of content, such as blog posts and articles, should revolve around two main keyword phrases which consist of two to four strong keywords. You’ll want to include keyword-rich titles and subtitles with every piece of content, images with captions that are equally keyword-focused and a few links that highlight important words and phrases.
In this, mobile SEO and standard SEO vary not at all. Keywords are still king, and content is still the placeholder for those all-important phrases.
Take care of the technicalities of mobile SEO, and you might already be done with the work. Keep basic SEO practices and principles in mind no matter what type of online content you’re creating, and your site will be optimized for computer and mobile users alike.
Video Google
Optimizing & Ranking Videos In YouTube –
PubCon Review
I’ve been intrigued with video marketing and video optimization for almost two years now. That is why I attended a session yesterday called “Best Practices: Video Creation, Integration & Marketing”.
There were three really great speakers, but one of them, Gregory Markel from Infuse Creative, had some awesome information about ranking factors in YouTube.
Since video marketing and driving traffic to websites via YouTube is so exciting to me, I thought I would share some of the main takeaways from his presentation.
The very first thing that Gregory spoke about is what it takes to do well in YouTube. Most people think that by quickly shooting a video and putting it up on YouTube that they will be an instant star, or be able to drive millions of unique visitors to their website. This may have been the case in the past, but times are changing.
To do well at YouTube, you have to be focused in three different areas.
Building and participating in the YouTube community in which you desire to do business in.
Focusing on keywords that you would like to rank for and build authority.
Obtaining links back to your video and having your video embedded in your site and other websites.
In the past, ranking in YouTube was as easy as simply optimizing the video for your main keyword. This was as simple as optimizing the title of the video and description. If you were good at that, you would probably be successful. If not, your video would quickly slip away, probably never to be found again.
Today, ranking well in YouTube is more complex. YouTube’s algorithm takes in to account many different factors. There are many different factors that Gregory talked about; I will touch on the few of the most important below.
Title, Description, Keywords, Links, & Tags
In order to rank well in YouTube, your video needs to be highly optimized. This means having your keywords in the right places (title, description, tags) and building links back to your video. These can be text based, anchor text links, or simply embeds.
View Counts / Frequency
The number of views your video has received shows that people are interested in what you have to share (if not manipulated). This helps build your authority and trust in the YouTube community. Also, YouTube looks at how often your video is viewed to make sure that your video content isn’t stale and outdated.
Comments & Thumbs Up and Down
YouTube loves when videos create interaction among its members. When you have a video with lots of comments and lots of thumbs-ups, this also shows that your video is interesting, provides value, and isn’t outdated or stale. On the other hand, when you have a lot of thumbs down, this can negatively influence your rankings in YouTube.
Age
Just like search engines love websites that have some age behind them, YouTube loves aged videos, as long as the video content isn’t outdated and stale. If you have a good video that is still relevant, and has been around for a long time, this will help you rank better in YouTube.
Video Responses
Video responses are above and beyond the normal responses that you might get on your video. Many times, comments on your videos are just spam. Just a few seconds of typing and you can pump out comments that have no real value behind them. Video responses are a bit different. Taking some time to shoot a video and responding to another video, shows that you have something real to share. Because of this, the video responses help rank your site better in YouTube.
There were many other things that he mentioned, but for the sake of us all not having to read a full discourse, I will stop there. Next, I want to discuss how to find good keywords and tags.
Optimizing Keywords & Tags
Before you even think about uploading a video to YouTube and turning it loose, you need to do some research to understand what people are searching for in YouTube.
First, you should research your competition thoroughly. Take a look at the videos that rank well for your desired keywords. See how they craft their titles, descriptions, and how they set-up their tags. You will want to follow closely, but not copy.
Second, you will want to use YouTube’s very own keyword suggestions tool. I’ll bet many of you didn’t know that YouTube had a suggestion tool. If you start typing slowly in the search box, you will see a populated drop down list of variations of other searches that are popular in YouTube. That is a good list to consider when trying to pick your keywords.
As with any SEO campaign, picking the right keywords from the very beginning and optimizing well for those keywords are key to your success.
Community Factors
One very important factor to ranking well and having success in YouTube is what Gregory calls community factors. I will list the most important community factors below.
Make Great & Unique Videos
Today, anyone can create a video and post it on YouTube. However, not many can actually produce videos that are unique and full of great content. These are the videos that have staying power and can truly help people with what they are searching for.
Include Call To Actions Early In The Video
As with any piece of promotional material, you want a clear call-to-action to guide your viewers to what you really want them to do. Include your call to action early in your video for maximum effectiveness.
Post Video Responses To The Most Popular & Relevant Video At YouTube That Day
Posting video responses to the most popular video in your industry will not only help you gain trust and authority in the eyes of the community, but it will help your videos get more views.
Use Some, But Not All The Same Keywords As Your Competition In Your Titles
Using some of the same keywords in your titles that your competition uses will help land your video in the “related videos” area of your competitors. This will help you get more views and build your authority.
Post Your Videos On Thursdays or Fridays
Believe it or not, most of the video views that YouTube receives are on the weekends. Uploading your videos on Thursdays or Fridays will help your video get additional views and help boost your video to the top of the YouTube search results.
Video marketing is going places. The web is evolving. Search is evolving. Adding video to your other methods of search engine marketing can really add a huge boost to your business.
Keyword Research Gems
Keyword Research Gems
November 10, 2009
I love keyword research and taking time to figure out which keywords will not only bring a large amount of traffic to a website, but, those keywords that will convert and bring additional revenue to a company.
“Organic Keyword Research & Selection”. I wanted to take a few minutes to share with you this keyword research wisdom.
Keyword Research
When researching different kinds of keywords, you will want to take a look at a few different factors.
Popularity of the particular keyword
The click-thru rate of the keyword
The quality of the keyword (conversion rate or engagement)
The competitiveness of the keyword
Your current ranking for that keyword
When analyzing each of these factors, you will be able to easily decide which keywords will be best for you to target to get the maximum return on your invested time or money.
Keyword Expanders / Variations
When doing keyword research, one of the best ways to drive organic search traffic to your website is by focusing on expanders and variations of keywords. These expanders or variations will help you take advantage of other, less obvious ways rank for particular keywords. You will want to focus on expanders such as best, online, buy, cheap, discount, wholesale, and accessories. Adding these to your keywords allows you to potentially rank for less competitive keywords and drive very targeted traffic to your site.
Another way to drive traffic to your website using expanders or variations is by adding reviews to your website. Allowing your customers or site visitors to comment and write reviews can help you easily and quickly add new content to your site that is very relevant. Not only that, but more people are starting to search for products services reviews. If your review pages or sections are highly optimized, you can easily show up in the search results when searchers are trying to find what you offer.
Keyword Selection
When doing keyword research, one really great way of finding keywords that will work for you and your business is by setting up and running a ppc campaign and collecting data solely for the purpose of selecting your keywords.
The first thing that you need to know about running a campaign for the purpose of collecting data is that you want to set your campaign up with no daily limit and make sure that it is on the 1st page of results. I know this might get expensive, but the data that you will glean is well worth it. You shouldn’t have to collect more than 72 hours of data to get a pretty good idea of what direction you need to go.
When setting up your campaign, you will want to make sure to set up two different campaigns, one that is targeting the exact [keyword] and another that is targeting the broad match.
Some metrics that you will want to analyze are the number of impressions or queries that keyword generates. This will provide an accurate number of how many people searched for your exact keyword and how many people searched for some variation of your keyword. You will also want to analyze the click-thru ratio, and the conversion data. Doing so will help you find the VERY best keywords for your business.
Another way to help you decide which keywords to select for your SEO campaign is by analyzing your analytics data, both ppc and organic traffic. You will want to analyze the conversion rate of your site visitors.
You should see how much revenue each visitor is bringing to your business.
You should also look at how each visitor engages with your website. Take a look at how many pages per visit your visitors are looking at. Take a look at your bounce rate. Take a look at the pages they are visiting (terms of service and about us pages are engaging pages). Each of these things can help narrow your huge list of keywords related to your business.
Keyword Competitiveness
In terms of selecting keywords to target in your SEO campaign, you always want to look at the competition for each keyword you are considering. You definitely don’t want to go after keywords that will take you years to rank for (I know from personal experience). You want keywords that you will be able to rank well for in six to twelve months.
Some of the easy ways to determine the competitiveness of your keywords are by using certain tools like the SEO Quake. I think everyone here at the office uses the SEO for Firefox plugin for our competitive research for our clients. One of the most important things to look at with that plugin is the number of unique external links to your domain. This number will give you a good idea of how many unique domains linking to your competitors for any given keyword.
You should always remember that keyword research is more than just looking at the popularity of any given phrase.
There are many different factors to look at and study to ensure that you are targeting the right keywords now, not when you realize that you have been doing SEO on the wrong keywords six months down the road.
It's All About SEO All The Time
5 Steps to the Perfect Elevator Pitch
November 5, 2009
The last time I was in Seattle visiting a client, I was walking back to my hotel room after dinner when I was stopped by a homeless man. He was sitting outside my hotel and struck up a conversation. He was homeless but not hopeless. He prided himself on his musical talent and his unique songs on YouTube. I was immediately intrigued and wanted to hear more. He proceeded to inform me that he has two years worth of daily uploads to YouTube and how to Google his somewhat common name to be sure I saw all of them. I handed him my leftover dinner since it was likely headed for the trash and we parted ways.
The following day, I tried to look him up on YouTube to hear his unique music and see his accomplishments. I only remembered part of his name and couldn’t find him online so I waited until dinner time and went searching for him. He was in the same place as the night before and recognized me as I approached him. I asked for his name again and wrote it down. I handed him the $7.00 I had in my pocket and wished him well.
When I pulled him up on YouTube, I saw several videos of him working his magic on his homemade instrument and discovered that he writes his own lyrics. His music is truly unique and his style is surprisingly confident for a man down on his luck. You’ll have to take a few minutes and check him out for yourself.
Glen (Pops) Freeman a.k.a. Glenn (Pops) Freeman
How does your elevator pitch compare to Glen’s? Do you intrigue strangers immediately? Do you get people asking for more information after your pitch? Do they follow up and Google your name to experience or purchase your product? Do they blog about you?
To loop back to the basics and renew your elevator pitch, the following steps will be helpful to get you there:
1. Define your goals – when you sit around dreaming about getting a break, what do you want that break to ultimately get you?
2. Know your audience – pitching the wrong people is a waste of time. Put yourself in front of your ideal audience but don’t be afraid to practice on anybody.
3. Intrigue people – you care about and understand your product but strangers need a reason to pay attention.
4. Be consistent – make sure you’re consistent in delivering your message, filling in the pitch with additional information where
necessary, follow up on the message you’ve presented, make sure the experience is the one you’ve described.
5. Be ready to close – after all, your pitch is a means to an end so be ready to give them more information and potentially get the sale. Once your elevator pitch is complete, try it out on a few people. Review their feedback and make any adjustments that will improve
it. Then repeat.
Branding For Your Website
Brand Your Competitors Into Irrelevance
November 4, 2009
We, in the SEO business, usually tell our clients that a good website is made up of two things: on-page optimization and off-page optimization. On-page refers to your titles, descriptions, and so on. Off-page refers to how many links point to you, engagement in social media, and so forth. We can get your site some awesome results by working in these two areas. But there is another area that depends more upon you. It is an area that will make the work we do 100 times more effective.
We count on you to establish a magnetic brand and deliver killer content.
My purpose is to help you understand how a site with great branding will kill the competition every time. I am only partly referring to your logo by itself – the logo is an important component of your brand but is not everything. Your brand is defined by how well you can engage a viewer. It is what they remember about your site that keeps them coming back for more. It’s the experience you offer your viewers.
Think about three websites that really resonate with you. Why do you like them so much? Why do you keep going back? What have they ever done for you? I am willing to bet that your favorite sites really take some time writing content you enjoy. They spend hours on the layout of the site so you will have an easier time finding what you are looking for. They almost always have employed a designer who can create pretty things. Lots of attention is paid to what the customer expects, and not so much what the company’s chief thinks is best.
Now think about your site. What have you consciously done to make viewers remember you? What is that one thing viewers just rave about that keeps them coming back? Is it your unparalleled return policy? Is it your wicked awesome graphics? Is it your uncanny humor? Don’t forget that it’s not what YOU think is your site’s best quality. It’s what customers say is the best quality. What you think doesn’t matter much.
Here’s an easier way to break it down in your mind. Ask yourself these four classic branding questions, and be honest:
1. Does my brand excel at delivering benefits my customers truly desire?
You first have to know what your customers truly desire.
2. Is my brand relevant?
You must understand current trends to see how you stack up.
3. Is my brand consistent?
Your brand experience should never fail deliver on its promises.
4. Do I understand what my brand means to my customers?
This is so important! If you don’t understand this, you are the chicken, and you have no head.
I mentioned earlier that a site with a great brand will do better than its competitors.
I hope it is now easy to see why. The branded site not only looks better, it also understands you. It gives you something exciting to read, then allows you to interact and share. It delivers great customers service and doesn’t annoy with advertisements for Viagra. Why? Because it’s all about bringing you back again.
Now is the time for a serious introspective examination into your branding strategy. We understand that you want to get to the top in the search engines. We’ll work our rear ends off to get you there. But you want a great site. You don’t just want the number one position; you want to kill number two. With our SEO skills and your commitment to a customer-oriented branding strategy, together we will be unstoppable.
Content
The Value of Fresh Content
November 2, 2009
Hopefully, we should all know that websites need good, relevant content in order to be successful at SEO. The better your content is, the more likely it will be to show up in search engines and naturally attract links to your site. Additionally, fresh content is a major factor that plays a role in search engine rankings (which was recently confirmed by Google’s patent application).
Perhaps it would be best to explain using an example. In one of the websites that I own, I noticed a huge drop in my traffic from organic search (note the graph from my Google Analytics account). It wasn’t a slow progressive drop, nor did I see it coming. It was just a simple, out-of-the-blue loss of traffic. I researched a bit, and it only took a couple minutes to find out why. My #1 keyword for generating traffic was no longer ranking on the first page.
Naturally, that’s a huge concern as a website owner. Fortunately for me, I don’t really use this site beyond the occasional SEO experiment, but for a site owner that relies on organic traffic to generate income, it could be nothing short of catastrophic.
Nevertheless, it provided a powerful example of the need for fresh content. This particular website was a blog, and I hadn’t updated for almost 4 months. I have no doubt that other sites competing for my keywords were updating more regularly. I went into my site and submitted a blog post a few days after the sudden drop. It wasn’t much – just a “sorry I haven’t posted anything lately” post. It was a simple effort to put in something new.
The result was a complete return of the rankings and traffic (and then some):
Of course, not every site is a blog that will need to be updated weekly. Some sites could possibly go for years without actually needing an update. Nevertheless, don’t neglect your site. Here are some final points and bits of advice for making sure your content is fresh:
- If necessary, regularly perform a site review of all the content on your site. Does it still make sense? Is it up to date with any changes in the industry?
Make sure that you have a blog and that you update it regularly.
Don’t make small changes just to keep the search engines pacified. They look for sites that are more “fresh”, and small changes might not be enough.
Making changes does not mean building a new website. Just add a page, or update a couple pages.
Make sure to watch your competition. You want to get a sense for how often the industry updates so that you can make sure to stay with the trend. If you update less than other websites, you run the risk of losing rankings.
Online Video-Should You Care
Online Video – Should You Care?
October 14, 2009
If you could gain the top spot in Google’s search results in a matter of 10 minutes, would you want to know how to do it? Anyone who says, “No,” is either a liar or lives by the old adage, “If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.”
I don’t blame you for being skeptical, but it is possible to obtain the #1 listing in Google in a manner of minutes. How? Video.
Video is one of the fastest growing forms of content on the web. Ironically, while the hours that we spend watching video on the web continues to increase, so also are the hours we spend watching TV. This may one of the reasons that search engines rank videos highly. Search engines have always been about giving the public what they want. Apparently, the public wants video. As internet marketers, we need to shift our paradigm of search so that we are playing ahead of the game and not behind.
First, before we dive further into online video and why you need it on your site, let me make one thing crystal clear. You do not want to abandon the written word in your internet marketing efforts. I am simply pointing to video as a means of content generation that you cannot afford to ignore, because the snowball is gaining speed as it rolls down the hill.
What should you take away from the fact that although internet video consumption grew over the last several years, so has TV consumption? We are becoming more wired as a society. We are so wired that some people cannot resist the urge to reply to a text message while they are driving. We use our phones to write and check email everywhere we go. How many videos have you seen where someone walks into a pole because they are looking at their phone and not where they are going? We spend a lot of time online while we are in front of the TV. We use any means available to stay connected to every little piece of information that we can get our hands on – ah…wait a second. Maybe that’s it. INFORMATION!
We always talk about being on information overload so why would we possibly want more? Though I could theorize why that may be the case, it is irrelevant for now. The important thing is to understand that the facts all point to a society that wants more information and they want it on their terms.
Understanding this, why wouldn’t you want to give your audience what they desire? Give people a reason to stay longer on your site because you have video. Some of the most successful internet business launches to date have happened through video content. Ask yourself this: “Do more people prefer to watch TV or read a book?” There is no question that we prefer to watch TV. While we are a society that craves information and we are willing to get it however we can, we prefer watching over reading when given a choice.
That being said, you should consider video in your content building strategy. It will not replace all of the text on your website, but it will certainly add value and lengthen site visits. If you market your videos correctly they will likely attract new visitors that will become loyal followers of you and your business.
Now that you understand why you should care about video, you should make sure that you know how to perform SEO for video so that you get the most out of every video you produce. Watch for a follow up post with tips on how to accomplish this.