Archive for June, 2006

Dave Child just wrote a nice article called "Ten Ways To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate"

My favorite is #8….just today I was looking at one of my clients "suprise redesigns" where they actually thought it was a good idea to make someone get an account in order to view the store….doah!!!

8. Don’t Waste Time

One of the biggest mistakes sites make is asking for too much information. Your conversion process may be sale, or it may be a request for information. Either way, don’t waste the user’s time asking for things you don’t need to know. This is, of course, doubly important when it comes to asking for information the user deems private, and that they don’t want to give out without good reason.

You don’t need to demand the user’s email address before letting them download a PDF. You don’t need their phone number when they fill out an email enquiry form. A user may not want to buy from you twice – so why make them create an account so they can buy again later before processing their first order? You can give the user the option to do all of these things by all means, but make sure it’s not compulsory.

Read Dave’s other 9 great points on his post.

—————————————-

On a related note, William Slawski also just published a "related" article called "Content Planning for Search Engine Optimization"

Bill’s got a lot of great info packed into this post…but here’s some great points Bill gives

• What are the products or services offered on the site?
• Is it selling goods or services directly online?
• What are the strengths of the products or services to be presented?
• What are the weaknesses of the products or services to be presented?
• Are there opportunites envisioned in the sale of these goods and services that may not be met online presently?
• Do any threats to the sale of goods and services exist? What are those?
• If the site is intended to generate leads, is there a preference that people call, email, fill out forms, visit a location in person?
• Are there any unique challenges to offering the goods or services or information, such as legal restrictions based upon age of visitor, distribution of goods, subject matter of the site, protection of visitors’ privacy rights, protection of trademarks (those associated with the organization and others), copyright of materials used, or others?
• Are there some related goods offered by others? If so, what are they?
• Are there some related services offered by others? If so, what are they?
• Who are those others who offer similar goods or services online and offline, and what else do they do?
• Have there been others who provided the site owners with online marketing services, and if so, what types of efforts did they make?

Read Bill entire article here.

also, have you heard that Neil Patel is a princess?

| Digg it | Add to Slashdot | Add to Y!

Popularity: 1% [?]

7 Good reasons you might want more content for your website.

Your homepage has lots of backlinks, but few words on it.
(You’re loosing out on your most powerful page. It’s really hard to rank for phrases that don’t appear on the page.)

You’ve got 50,000 pages, but only 100 have more than 50 words on them .
(You’re risking going supplemental, if you haven’t already).

You’ve got the same content on your pages as 50 other sites have.
(Google will try to choose the 1 page it thinks is the "real" one, will it be yours? or will yours go supplemental?)

You’ve got hundreds or thousands of product pages that only have a small description.
(It’s hard enough to keep these from going supplemental, let alone rank for anything (with little content)).

There’s nothing on your site that’s "link worthy" from your peers, or from anyone else.
(Having quality researched content can garner you natural backlinks (gets you backlinks w/o asking for them).

You’ve been targeting 3-4 "big phrases", but have been ingoring all the other phrases.
(Having content pages covering lots of 3 and 4 word keyword phrases helps pick up related long tail phrases.  Also, focusing only on a few "major phrases" isn’t good "insurance", and is getting harder).

Google tries to rank "resource pages" high, and "resource pages" tend to have lots of original content.
(Agree?)

Any other reasons you feel people might need more content for their website?

PS – I’ll be out Friday – Monday (going to see my Grandmother in Florida with Mary and Sam).
Stay tuned for the new WeBuildPages.com coming out next week.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Today just seemed like a good day to bring up this post again….not sure what inspired me

.

.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’ve been blogging for 10 months now, and have yet to do a CEO Post (A "Sales" Post). I’ve been happy not having to "push" my services onto other people, but to rather just "give" information "freely" (and as a side result, it’s brought be more qualified leads than even webuildpages.com brings in – really a Very pleasant suprise!).

But We Build Pages has 2 new services that we’re about to be coming out with, so I thought I’d do my first CEO Post and show you one of these new service. I’ve got a page with a rough draft of writing I’d like to show you (maybe with your imput I can write a good sales page that answers questions people might have) (can you help me out by at least adding a "sales" suggestion for me?)

We Build Pages will "officially" be offering "SEO Content Creation Services" in the coming days. (So as a blog reader you’ve got the chance to get in before it gets crazy busy, ensuring you the best service )

So I’ve got a first "rough draft" of the writing – perhaps you’ve got ideas or questions.

You’ll also get a peek at the new design (still under construction) of the new webuildpages.com (coming in a few weeks).

Here’s the SEO Content Creation Service we’re about to be "officially" offering. We’ll also be advertising on many other SEO sites, piping up this service so the world knows that We Build Pages is not only the link guys, but also has the best content writing services on the web, at the best prices.

Stay tuned for the Threadwatch ad where I’ll also be giving away some content writing packages so we’ve got some public reviews.

Hey, our name "We Build Pages" now makes sense again!

————–

Technorati Tags: SEO Content, content creation, webuildpages, we build pages, content writers, content writing, website content 

Popularity: 1% [?]

Sorry I missed the SEO Poker Tournament put on by Quadzilla. I had one of the bussiest weeks at work that I’ve ever had, and ended up sleeping for 12.5 hours last night. By the time I got online today I had missed it.

I heard that Dan (Kloakit, I hate Google) won.

I also heard that Abhilash was razzing some "Jim" who was playing (thinking it was me), but it sounds like that Jim got the best of Abhilash in the end. (next time Abhilash, and I’ll be the "Jim" talking smack back )

I’ll make sure next time not to oversleep, and I should be able to donate some content creation (publically being released Very soon (watch threadwatch.org for ads soon)) for the next tournament as well.

Again, sorry I missed this one – next time!

Congrats again Dan!

Read about the game here.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I just cleared 100 replies in the "Introduce yourself" area.

Did you introduce yourself here yet?

If not, what are you waiting for?

Introduce yourself – Who are you?

Thanks!

Popularity: 1% [?]

John Scott wrote an interesting post called "Google’s Moral Superiority".

John certainly makes a point with a few picture searches.

http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen
Compare to:
http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen

John also adds some strong words with:

That’s not evil?
The fact that they can pretend it’s nothing more than a business decision is not only evil, it’s racist.

Read John’s whole post here.

Popularity: 1% [?]