Call Us 888.476.1881
Call Us 888.476.1881
Click the Twitter icon below to tweet the selection as a twote (tweet quote).
Tim Ash: One of the most common problems is visual clutter. Landing pages are dresses up with large graphics, Flash animations, and pictures of people. Usually these page elements have nothing to do with the conversion goal on the page. Visual design needs to be very restrained and minimalist in order to subtly focus the eye on the right parts of the page. It should not be a crowded bazaar with everything competing for your attention. In other words, everything can’t be equally important. It is your job as a marketer to help me prioritize. Another great tool is ClickTale.com. It provides very actionable web analytics that help you diagnose conversion issues. You can record user sessions on your site, see which form fields people having trouble with on your online forms, and create mouse-movement "heatmaps" of people’s interactions with your page.
But even if you have a lot of traffic, multivariate is not inherently a better way to go. We often start with a "radical split test" to create very different versions of a landing page. Often the split test produces the big conversion improvement because it is competing against a bad page, and because we address all known problems in our alternative designs. The messaging of the resulting winning page is then fine tuned through multivariate testing. This allows us to get the right headlines, copy, and calls to action for the intended audience.It is not so much about having the right keywords, but rather about making a seamless experience from the keyword, to the search result, and through to the landing page. If I am typing in "best digital camera", I expect a landing page that has comparative information about different models and am in the research stage of the process. So do not try to sell me something and tell me you have the lowest price and free shipping. I have not chosen the product yet, so I don’t care about those things. If my search involves a product model name, then I am further in the buying process and may care about those things. So you basically have to properly manage my expectations and put yourself in my frame of mind to determine the appropriate content for the landing page.
Keywords are a gateway to understanding how a market thinks, acts and buys. They’re also the common language for most SEO and PPC teams, and a clear way of connecting revenues with their work in the eyes of upper management. This all makes keywords a natural place to begin discussing – and designing – a link building campaign.
(Note: To thank early adopters during the launch of their new Link Building Toolset, Ontolo is offering a 25% discount that ends today at 9pm PST on 4/27/2010. They’ve let us know that they will never be offering a discount like this again, and that the pricing is good for all future upgrades, price changes, etc.)
Money Keywords vs. Market Defining Keywords
First, a note on the disctintion between money keywords ($KWs) and market defining keywords (MDKWs). Most SEM teams are familiar with $KWs – those are the terms that they bid on and optimize for because prospects use them when looking for solutions to their pains. However, $KWs are not always as useful when analyzing a market for its link building opportunities. This requires market defining keywords, which are the highest-level terms used to describe a market. So, for an online golf retailer, the money keywords would look like [brand name, model number, driver]. The market defining keyword is, simply, golf and possibly golfing.
1) Identify Your MDFK and $KW SERPs Dominators
SERP dominators are the websites that consistently rank well in the SERPs for your $KWs as well as your MDKWs. Though you may think you know your primary search competitors, you’ll be surprised at the true SERPs dominators when you do a comprehensive analysis. Start with reading our guide to SERP dominator analysis here >> We created a worksheet and occurrence counting tool to help out (there’s also source code available for a tool that automates this process). The SERP dominators in your keyword market space are also excellent places to start pulling competitive backlink data, should you choose to develop a link prospect list that way.
2) MDFKs for Industry Link Opportunity Analysis
What link opportunities exist in your market? Your market defining keywords are an excellent place to start gauging opportunity. You can look for blogs: [MDFK blogs], news sites: ["MDFK news"], guest posting opportunities: [MDFK "guest post"], interviewers/ees: [MDFK intitle:interview], niche directories: ["MDFK Directory"], niche forums and community sites: [MDKW community], and industry associations if you’re in the B2B space: [MDKW association]. Search for each of these in Google and compare the number of relevant hits in the top ten. The query with the most relevant hits could be an area for you to query more deeply and begin developing a specific campaign.
3) MDFKs for Competitive Link Analysis
While surveying your industry for opportunities, keep an eye out for your competitors, as well as any of the SERP dominators you previously identified. Are their hostnames appearing in any of your result sets? Are they mentioned in the news sites you find? Are they the subjects of interviews? Track them carefully and you’ll uncover the PR and content-based link building moves of your competition. Most importantly you’ll get some great ideas on what’s working.
4) Connecting Existing Linkable Assets to Keywords
We wrote recently on link building assets, which are pages and resources on your site – and people within your organization – that are the most linkable to your market. This could be a PDF collection, a jobs listing page, coupons, or even your CEO (for interviews). The important thing is going from assets to the keywords that will help you turn up link opportunities. Start with your list of assets and then brainstorm their keywords. Then combine these keywords with your MDKWs and you should start to turn up some places to submit your assets or request that someone check them out for consideration.
5) MDKWs + Link Building Query Operators
MDKWs are crucial when conducting a thorough dig for ALL the link prospects in your keyword space. You conduct this dig by combining your MDKWs with link building queries, designed to root out opportunities based on their "footprints." We recommend the following tools for this:
The Ontolo Link Building Query Generator
6) Getting Your Money Keywords in Anchor Text with Guest Posts
One way to use your money keywords in linkbuiding is when you’ve decided on a guest post campaign, in which you write articles for publication on relevant sites that accept content submissions. In most cases you’re allowed a snippet of description, along with a link or two. Depending on your relationship with the publisher, you may be able to have more control over the anchor text. In some occasions they may allow you to even add links within the body text, especially if there’s a value-add reason for the links to be there.
7) Getting Money Keywords in Anchor Text with Outreach Requests
When conducting outreach you can request that people link to you with particular link text. However, unless you’re paying them, it’s not highly-likely that people will respond to your requests. It doesn’t hurt to ask, though you’re probably better off focusing on building high-trust editorial links to your site and letting your onsite SEO handle the rest!
About the Author:
Garrett French is the co-founder of Ontolo, Inc., creators of the Ontolo Link Building Toolset which uses your target keywords to find and grade link prospects. The Link Building Toolset reduces link prospecting and qualification time, letting you focus on the most valuable part of link building: relationships.
A great way to celebrate Earth Day is to think of ways that you can help the environment. To get you started in the right direction, here are some ways companies can help the environment and themselves in terms of saving money and more.
Newsletters to PDF
Instead of printing out your newsletter or flyer, convert it to a PDF (for free using Primo PDF) and send it via email instead.
Business Benefit: You will save a lot in printing costs, especially if you do regular newsletters.
Online Seminars
Instead of hosting a class, conference, or seminar everyone has to travel to for attendance, host it online like the upcoming Social Media Success Summit.
Business Benefit: More attendees can afford the registration fees and come to your event because of the savings in travel costs.
eBooks
Instead of publishing a hardcopy book, report, or training manual, make it an eBook instead.
Business Benefit: Free eBooks can help you build your email list, as well as be distributed and updated easily.
Resumes by Email
Instead of having job applicants fax their resumes, have them email it instead.
Business Benefit: Review resumes on your PC and keep them organized for future reference while keeping your desk clutter free!
Work at Home
Instead of having employees who live far from the office drive into work, let them work some or most days at home instead.
Business Benefit: Save on in house office supplies!
Digital Business Cards
Instead of giving out a lot of business cards, setup a bluetooth business card that you can share with others between smartphones.
Business Benefit: Your contact information will go directly into someone’s address book as opposed to being lost in a pile, plus you can include more information without cramming it all on a small card.
Online Invoice Delivery
Instead of mailing or faxing invoices, why not email them?
Business Benefit: Invoices get delivered the same day and usually with the added bonus of having a delivery receipt from Outlook so clients cannot say they did not receive it as an excuse to delay payment.
These are only just a few ways businesses can help the environment – tells us how your company helps the environment in the comments below.
Learn more about ways you can help the environment in your personal life, as well as great deals and freebies you can get today!
Click the Twitter icon below to tweet the selection as a twote (tweet quote).
This week’s interview features Jeff Quipp, the founder and CEO of Search Engine People Inc (SEP), one of Canada’s largest search marketing firms. Jeff is an online marketing strategist, and has over eight years of search engine marketing experience.He is a frequent speaker at internet marketing panels and conferences worldwide and is recognized as one of the pre-eminent authorities on search and social media marketing. As you may know, this month’s Vertical Measures Webinar is centered around Analytics and Conversions and I thought it perfectly fitting that I speak with an expert such as Jeff, to get some straight answers on the subject.
Elise Redlin-Cook: Hi Jeff! As you can tell, I’m really anxious to get to the bottom of this. So, What is the most common mistake you see on landing pages?
call to action. It’s such a simple thing to implement, and can have such a tremendous impact, yet its overlooked a large percentage of the time.The highest converting keywords are those nearer the end of the buying cycle, meaning more specific terms. Someone searching for “cars” as an example, is very early in the buying cycle, if at all. They haven’t yet decided on a make or model, and in fact may not even be looking to purchase at all, so we’re not sure of their intent. On the other hand, someone looking for 2010 Nissan X-Terra Dallas is much more likely to be looking to buy. If they take it one step further and query “purchase 2010 Nissan X-Terra Dallas”, then we’re very sure their intent is to purchase a Nissan X-Terra. So typically it can be said that the more specific the search query, the further along in the buying cycle the searcher is. In addition, words like ‘purchase‘ or ‘buy’ are buying signals, and generally mean that the searcher is at the all important ‘take action’ phase.
line or offline), and compare them against one another. Clients can make it as generic or as granular as they wish. They can track individual Yellow Pages ads, newspaper ads, and even Google keywords and the like if they wish, or campaign level performance such as newspaper in general, radio in general, television in general. AdTracks tracks phone calls, form submissions, emails, and more, all in one convenient interface. AdTracks even gives credit to those media that assist with a sale (eg. a television ad that drives people to search for it via Google).
For the past two months, Vertical Measures has secretly been developing an exclusive training program meant only for those that can withstand copious amounts of valuable information and endless hours of fun.
