Hear what the web marketing expert says about attracting your audience with words. Learn the tricks and tips for putting movement into your copy. Ignite conversations and reel in your readers by joining us for this special event hosted by MSPtv.net.
Please visit: Jennifer Wing of Web Marketing Partners discusses the art of writing internet copy
Don’t Miss it!
1. DOMAIN NAME SELECTION – (LACKS KEYWORD)
Exact match keyword domains are worth their weight in gold. It’s the sure thing to acquiring a top spot. The second best is getting one that has the keyword somewhere in it. I don’t recommend buying a domain name that doesn’t have your keyword in it. You will be making things a lot harder on your self. Many people think they have to buy the domain name of their company? Why, so people who have never heard of your company can find you? That was a joke. Unless your company name is Coca Cola or unless your company name already contains your keyword sure buy the domain but also buy a keyword domain related to your business. This will be the domain your site is hosted upon and you will direct the other domain that is your company name to the keyword domain. So when all your fans and customers type your business name into the browser “yourcompanyname.com” they will be taken to your site at “yourkeyworddomain.com” So those who aren’t familiar with your site/business ie, YOUR MARKET, can find you easier when they search using keywords related to your industry.
2. SITE IS NOT BLOCKED DURING THE DEVELOPMENT STAGE
I learned this the hard way. When you are in the developmental stages of your website design it is very important to block all search engine access to it using either a robots.txt file or if using wordpress you can do it from the backend under “privacy.” Failure to do so could negatively affect your performance long term in the SERPS. It will make an already difficult project even harder.
3. TARGETING GENERAL KEYWORDS WITH MASS SEARCH VOLUME
This is fairly self explanatory and very popular mistake. Here is an example. Someone searching for “shoes” probably doesn’t know what they want, or have any intentions of buying, they are “browsers” also known as “tire kickers”, “time wasters” or in this landscape “bandwidth wasters” Sure you may drive more traffic to your site targeting general keywords, but it’s useless traffic and will probably cost you more in the long run, since their presence on your site is not completely cost free. These tend to be the ones that like to call and ask you thousands of silly questions. They start eating into your soft costs after a while, and your nerves. Someone searching for “high heels” is a much more targeted market and maybe still a bit on the general side. You get the idea.
4. POORLY WRITTEN OR NON EXISTANT META TAGS
I cannot stress enough how important Meta tags are for many different reasons. How they are written can also heavily influence your ranking. Don’t attempt to do these yourself, and don’t look to the internet for information on how to write them. It’s an unsolved mystery as to why there is so much inaccurate info on Metas or why no one has stepped up and announced the correct way except for me and maybe one or two others. Understanding the dual purpose of Meta tags ie what they are used for, will help you to better understand how to write them.
5. FAIL TO DO COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
Chances are your competitors know something you don’t if they have been online for more than a season. Use that to your advantage. Mostly, just learn how to do it better.
Yep I know, there is supposed to be 10 critical mistakes….and there is! Stay tuned for Part 2. Want a reminder sent when the next post is published? Subscribe to my feed.
.
Some good advice, especially in a down economy and in lieu of the war zone that has become the internet, is your reinvention or reevaluation of offerings. As mentioned by Aaron Wall in a post I read today on SEO Book- Small businesses stand a good chance of getting trampled in organic search and due to their size will never win against large businesses who can offer prices much lower than the smaller guys. Competition is getting fierce and larger companies are at an even greater advantage in this economy. How does a small business compete? Very carefully!
So often in our business we are spread very thin. With the hustle and bustle that becomes our lives we have little time for extended focus on one or two projects. Spending more than 30 minutes on an singular event to us seems like hyperfocus.
Do you actually get more done by operating at speeds that keep up with light. Hmmm? Maybe, but is it done well? Doubtful.
Do you ever get recognition praise or reward for this tail spinning. NEVER! in fact probably the opposite since the quality of our output severely suffers in EVERY thing we do.
In a market where competition is fierce you better be good at something because if you aren’t you don’t stand a chance. Start thinking on a micro level. Easier said than done I know but pick something and become an expert at it, even if it means giving up other parts of your business permanently. In this market it’s not about how many things you know, but how well you know them. Gear up for some brutal competition requiring polishsed skills and your focused attention.
In the long run you will fare much better being good at something, instead of good at nothing. Later after you have mastered one area of your business to it’s maximum efficiency, then start on mastering something else. You’ll get there trust me and when you do, you’ll be the best!
I am writing today to speak of an exciting project I am involved with for an online magazine that is all about managed services. I was asked to participate not only as an editor of the magazine but also as one of the featured managed services providers. SEO /Web Marketing is not typically classified as a managed service but in actuality fits the defintion of that term quite closely. After first being asked to be the editor a decision was also made thereafter to represent the category of SEO and Web Marketing as an Expert for their “Ask The Experts” section of the magazine. Here, visiting traffic can ask questions to experts in the fields of Managed IT, Telecommunications, Call Center Services, Offsite Data Storge, and now SEO and Web Marketing. Amongst the exciting featured sections are: “Tip of the Day”, Executive Interview, Featured Article and Featured Provider.
Adding to the blog with be posts from the experts themselves on their respective topic. Our goal with this project is to initiate interaction and create an environment that opens up the communication lines. Anybody intererested in getting information on any of the 5 mentioned managed services, nows your chance to get it free from experts. As some may know, since the conception of managed services they have found this service model to be a growing need for the small business owner as oppossed to the Enterprise business model that is started from. The magazine is due to launch on September 9th. Check it out if you’re interested at Managed Service Providers
When searching for information, via written content on the web, one must learn to create their own ideas from what they absorb and give their best effort at remaining objective to the content being read. Unlike encyclopedias or dictionaries, web content is not regulated nor weeded through for accuracy. On the internet, anyone can post anything, any time of the day. The answer to your question on the internet’s great world wide web, is, most conveniently, whatever you want it to be. You might say the internet is starving for accurate information; fact based statements on subjects that can be supported by either scientific evidence, experimental trials or some other means of credible measurement. Something we can rely on to tell us not just a viewpoint, but something concrete, sparing the “I thinks, or most likely’s or In my opinion’s.” While this type of written content becomes more scarce it naturally becomes more important in the eyes of the only “regulators’ of content currently existing - search engines, namely google. As google strives to be revered as a legitimate deliverer of quality content, it will favor those sites whose data is more of the objective nature. Content Writing that is opinionated or subjective in nature will likely fall in a category below that, regardless of SEO, keywords and other tactics once used to gain popularity in organic search. Ranking will have more to do with quality and reliability of information than it will amount of backlinks from high page rank sites.
Isn’t this what the internet needs? Maybe so, but what does this mean for SEO professionals and many others, who have clearly, or rather unclearly created what I like to call Gray Hat SEO, a hybrid nickname I coined from the popular Black Hat vs White Hat oppossing technique types. Referring to anything that is SEO related as black and white seems out of character, even humorous considering the amount of unknown associated with its very practice. I am not sure what color you get from your web investigations. I most often get grey, which appears to be the area of vast majority!
What affect will this demand for straight forward provable content have on the internet as a whole? Will it stifle the many brilliant minds that although offer mainly subjective content, have a gift of initiating action or provoking thought and ideas in groups of people? The limited intelligence of the sub human search engine will most certainly lack the ability to spare such a crop. Will they be lumped in with the other conversationlists found on every corner? Probably not, when considering their daily flow of worthwhile ideas that change to the tune of algorithims, we will most likely find them gracefully chaired when the music stops.
If you’ve done any research on the internet, you’ve likely heard oppossing data on your topic of choice no matter what the topic might be, especially if you were thorough in your research. Did you come to a conclusion about your topic? Were your questions answered most definetely? The reality is, probably not! For every yes there is almost always a no. You get the idea! And that’s really all you’ll get. It’s up to you to form your own answer. How do you see the future of web content?
I will not lie, I just read one of the better articles found on the internet giving unsolicited advice on better strategies for your business growth. Digital Business by Will Hawkins is a must read found here: http://digi-business.co.uk/2009/04/07/how-to-win-focus-and-speed/
Practicing Micro-Focus for Effectiveness
While thinking through his strategy for attacking all the elements involved in marketing your business online, I imagined of the many out there, like me, that this advice could save from the dreaded “macrostrategy” we currently operate with. The key to strategy and effectiveness in business, as stated by Mr. Hawkins, is concentrating efforts into smaller sections and perfecting those before moving on to the next. Just typing those words, I suddenly feel relieved, possibly saving myself from a panic attack or two.
Practicing Microfocus
While microfocusing ourselves into the smaller yet important regions of our business we become experts in those areas; while continuing a desperate unfocused path allows us to become experts at nothing and even bad, or at best, average, at many things. Simple tips like this can make a huge impact on ones success.
Signs of a Macro-Strategizer:
1. A feeling like you are constantly in a race against time
2. An impatience or anxiousness of always being one step behind your competitors
3. Having an incessasnt mental monologue playing of “what I need to do” or “what I haven’t done yet”
4. Having several very important things to do on your list and getting very little if any of them accomplished.
5. Grabbing as many things as possible to do at the same time in a frantic and unsuccessful effort to “catch up”
6. Increased heart rate after reading this.
How to stay Microfocused or How to ”get something done”
Good news! Help is on the way. Here is what to do:
1. First, Take two deep breaths
2. Now with your eyes tightly closed take one very small thing from your pile to work on.
3. WITH EYES STILL CLOSED, BEGIN STEPPING AWAY FROM THE PILE.
4. Now shut the door and finish what you have chosen from the pile – and finish it right this time
Web Marketing Partners – Building your business on the web