Ever wonder why you’re not making more money online? In “Prescriptions for Online Success” The URL Dr. will cover why no one can find your website. From web design to simple search engine optimization, there are things that anyone can do to help their website get found online.
But can your website sell a visitor once they are there? This seminar also covers best practices in web design and usability to make sure you’re converting visitors to customers. Learn the latest best practices and proven strategies to:
Get Found
Implement on-page search engine optimization (SEO) elements
How to do keyword research
Index your site with Google and Bing
How to do off-page link building and why it’s important
How to use content and why “Content is King”
Convert Traffic
Learn web design elements that convert
How to appear trustworthy and credible online
How to set yourself up as an authority.
“Your Baby is Ugly” and what to do about it
From Kim Butler, The URL Dr.
2. Contact Information
Kim Merritt-Butler
The URL Dr.
kimbutler@theurldr.com
facebook.com/theurldr
@theurldr
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmerrittbutler
www.theurldr.com/events
Upcoming Seminars
Visit: www.theurldr.com/resources
8. Keywords
Multiple Word Keywords
•two, three, and four word
keywords are more specific
•have less competition.
•often used by searchers who
know what they want and are
ready to make a purchase
10. Keywords
Why Do Keyword Research?
• Drive qualified traffic to your website
• Write web pages that address your prospect’s
needs and wants
• PPC Campaigns
• SEO Campaigns
• Market research
11. Keywords
How to Make a Seed List
• List words that describe your company
• List words that describe your product or service
• List product names, model numbers, brands
• List category words that describe what you do
• List words your customers use in describing your product or service
• Look at competitor’s websites and see what keywords they are using
• List synonyms that your customers may use
• What words have visitors searched on your site
• What words have visitors used to reach your site
• Consider the questions your potential customers are asking
– What are they trying to accomplish?
12. Keywords
Keyword Research Tools
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool & Traffic
Estimator:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• WordTracker: https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
• Keyword Discovery:
www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool:
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
15. Keywords
Keyword Research is Ongoing
• Continue to check keyword traffic counts on a regular basis
• Add more keywords to your website and online marketing programs
• Track the performance of your keywords with Google Analytics
18. Hosting
Google Has Stated:
That although page load times and Google’s
page speed algorithm impacts search
rankings, it accounts for less than 1% of
search queries.
19. Hosting
Webmasters Have Stated:
• Keri Morgret from SEOmoz reported that a site with load time issues
saw “quite the drop in organic referrals from Google” when the page
speed algorithm was pushed live.
• Work Coach Café reported a 40% growth in traffic after addressing
site performance issues.
• Smartfurniture.com reported that rankings for 7 of its top 10
keywords improved after speed was increased.
20. Hosting
Page Load Time Tools:
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytics Site Speed Reports
• Pingdom Website Speed Test: tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
21. Hosting
What Can I Do?
• Don’t use a shared hosting account
• Upgrade your hosting to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a dedicated
server (if you are a larger company)
• Use a dedicated IP address
• Optimize your images so they aren’t holding up the page loading
– sixrevisions.com/tools/8-excellent-tools-for-optimizing-your-images/
• Use Google’s and Yahoo’s suggestions:
– https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/
– developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
23. Website Planning
Just like you have a
business plan for your
business…
You need a web plan
for your website.
Website Planning
24. Website Planning
If you don’t have a
clear idea of where
you’re going…
Good Luck getting
there.
25. Website Planning
What is the Goal of your
Website?
•To sell products online
•To schedule appointments
•To drive people to a store
•To collect leads
•To educate
•To ask for donations
Make goals specific and
measurable so it’s easy to
tell when you’ve achieved
them.
26. Website Planning
How to Plan a Website Redesign
Download my Free eBook about website
planning at www.theurldr.com/resources
30. Website Design
Basic Website Design Do’s & Don’ts
Download my Free eBook about web design do’s and don’ts
at www.theurldr.com/resources
31. Website Design
From the Time a Visitor Lands on
Your Website, You Have 5 Seconds:
•To tell visitors what you do
•Convey you are credible and trustworthy
•Lead them in a direction to what they want
to know
•Convey you are an expert in your field
33. Website Design
Landing Pages
A landing page is a website page that allows you to capture a visitor’s information
through a lead form that is targeted to specific traffic.
35. Website Design
Why Use Landing Pages – The Story of Ashley
This is Ashley.
Ashley is an 11th grader that
needs help with English.
Ashley’s mom goes online and
does a search for English tutors.
She finds TakeLessons.com
64. SEO
Title Tag Elements:
• Every page needs a unique title tag
• Less than 70 characters / 5 to 12 words
• Most important keywords first
• No more than 3 keywords or keyword phrases
per page
• If the brand or company name is used it
should be at the end
• Remove filler words (and, a, an, the)
68. SEO
Title Tag:
Email Marketing
Software Solutions from
Constant Contact
Other On Page Elements:
-H1, H2, H3 tags
-content on the page
-anchor text in hyperlinks
-image names
-alt tags in images
-url address on the page
77. SEO
Find Linking Opportunities
• Search Google for blogs: “top bike blogs”
• Search Google for news, media sites and online magazines
in your industry or geographic area
• Social media sites
• Directories and review sites
• Shopping sites
• Who is linking to your competition?
• What reference sites are in your industry?
• Are you a member of any local or industry
organizations: BBB, chamber, trade assoc.
• Where are your customers spending their time online?
78. SEO
Rules for Making a Link Request
• Choose a good subject line – avoid using the
words “link request”
• Be brief and to the point
• Highlight the benefit to THEM
• Show you’ve read and understand their site
• Find the name of a real person to approach
www.wordtracker.com/academy/link-building
81. Content
What Should You Right About?
• What you know that they don’t
• What you have access to that they don’t
• Original isn’t required
• Be interesting and relevant
82. Content
Ideas for Starter Content
• Information, tips, tricks, practical advice
• Questions asked by your customers
• Links to:
– Product or service reviews
– Blogs (yours and others)
– Websites (yours and others)
– Relevant videos, photos, podcasts
– Thought provoking discussions
– Relevant news in your industry
83. Content
Ideas for Writing Content
• Keep it short – Less is more
• Focus on one main topic
• Write one piece of content and
repurpose it
• Make content easy to scan
– Break up long paragraphs
– Use bullet points
– Use relevant images
93. Measuring Success
Measuring Success
• Cost Per Acquisition – how much it costs to acquire a customer
(cost of online marketing divided by number of leads that become customers)
• Cost Per Lead – how much each lead costs (cost of online marketing
divided by total number of leads)
• Conversion Rate – percentage of visitors who take your desired
action: purchasing, filling out a lead form, registering, etc. (total
number of visitors divided by the number of visitors who complete an action)
• Average Order Size – average gross sales of each order (total
dollar volume of orders divided by total number of orders)
• Lifetime Customer Value – average gross dollars an individual
customer spends with your company over the lifetime of
being a customer (total gross sales of a single customer over months or years)
95. Contact Information
Kim Merritt-Butler
The URL Dr.
kimbutler@theurldr.com
facebook.com/theurldr
@theurldr
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmerrittbutler
www.theurldr.com/events
Upcoming Seminars
Visit: www.theurldr.com/resources
Notas do Editor
By performing keyword research, we’re going to have a much better idea what keywords our prospective customers are using to find products and services like we offer. This will drive more qualified traffic to our website.When we know what keywords to use, it will help us write web pages on our site that address what our prospects really need and wantKeywords help us build a PPC campaign and an SEO campaignAnd keyword research is a form of market research that will give you more information about your industry, potential new products and services to offer, and what kinds of questions people are asking about what you do
If you’re paying less than $10 a month, you’re most likely on a shared hosting account. Blue Host, Host Gator, 1 & 1, Go Daddy, are all examples of shared hosting accounts where you are on a gang server with hundreds or even thousands of other websites. Unfortunately what those other websites are doing (and what’s being done to them…like a hack or attack of their site) can impact you.
Before a website project ever starts, whether you’re building a brand new site or redesigning an old one, the fundamental question of “What is the Goal of Your Website?” needs to be asked and answered.
Before a website project ever starts, whether you’re building a brand new site or redesigning an old one, the fundamental question of “What is the Goal of Your Website?” needs to be asked and answered.
This seems like an easy enough question, but it’s the single biggest problem I see in small business websites. You get to a site and it’s not obvious what the site owner wants you to do when you get there. There’s no clear path. There’s no clear answer.
How can you design a website before you know who your customer is? And remember, you’re not designing a website for yourself, or your boss, your designing a website for your customer.Where do your customers come from? (online and offline) You probably have more than 1 type of customer. You need to keep this in mind when designing your site. You may have different needs, questions, and solutions for different types of customers.
It’s pretty hard to gain new customers if you don’t know who you’re competing against. Knowing your online and offline competition is crucial to your success. The best website in the world won’t sell your product if your competition is eaps and bounds ahead of you. A great website will not make up for you sucking. Don’t suck!When you know the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, you know what you’re up against and can plan accordingly. Craft your website and your message to address points that the competition is missing.
Often called your value proposition, this is a hugely important part of the planning process for your website. You should be able to answer this question in 10 words or less.Your value proposition should be conveyed clearly, throughout your website. Keep it in mind when you create your content, tag line and calls-to-action.
You’ve defined the overall goal for your website. You’ve answered all the questions a prospective customer might have. Now it’s time to outline your website objectives. The same way your business plan lays out a direction for your company to follow, setting objectives for your website gives you a path to online success. The most important part of developing website objectives is that they are measurable. If you can’t measure them, you have no idea if you are succeeding in your efforts.You could have one website objective or several. Keep it manageable. Also keep in mind these objectives can change over time.
Now it’s time to take your website goal, the answers to all your questions, and your website objectives and craft a series of strategies that will guide you through the design process. Let’s take a look at some examples of what your website strategies may be:
Now it’s time to take your website goal, the answers to all your questions, and your website objectives and craft a series of strategies that will guide you through the design process. Let’s take a look at some examples of what your website strategies may be:
WordPress is the easiest way for small businesses to launch and manage a website. At The URL Dr., we exclusively use WordPress for all of our non-ecommerce websites.
WordPress is the easiest way for small businesses to launch and manage a website. At The URL Dr., we exclusively use WordPress for all of our non-ecommerce websites.
We’re going to talk about the two most important pages of your website. I find that most small businesses don’t even know what these two pages are and what the difference is. So the two pages we’re going to talk about are the Home Page and your Landing pages.
The goal of the home page is to get people off the home page. Fast.Tell what it is that you do. – This site makes animated videos. I can instantly see thatThere’s a video to show me how it works.I can Get Started Now! – My Call to Action – Sign Up – Make a VideoWithout scrolling I can also see that the home page is divided into the 3 main types of customers Go Animate has – individuals, schools, or businesses. I can instantly go to those areas of the site and find out more information about the service that fits me.
Too many companies send their advertising, email, ppc, or social media traffic to their homepage. This is a huge missed opportunity. When you know a stream of targeted traffic will be coming to your website, you can increase the likelihood of converting that traffic into leads by using a targeted landing page.
What am I supposed to do here?
What am I supposed to do here?
You do not need all this information.
You do not need all this information.
What am I supposed to do here?
What am I supposed to do here?
What am I supposed to do here?
You do not need all this information.
You do not need all this information.
Don’t use rotating banner images.
Boring is better. Don’t compete with the call to action on the page.
Don’t use rotating banner images.
When potential customers are searching for your product online, they enter keywords into a search engine like Google. Google scours the web to display the most relevant search engine results.
A search engine results page has paid PPC listings or pay per click at the top and down the right hand side of the page. It has Organic listings which are free and are your natural search engine placement listings. Then it also has Local Search listings which are also free and are pinpointed on the maps and associated to Google Places accounts.
Using search engine optimization or SEO techniques, you can help your listings move up in the rankings. Then you have a better liklihood of getting clicked on and sending traffic to your website.
But what makes someone come up #1 in the rankings vs. #6 vs. 154th? It’s actually a sophisticated combination of many elements that are on the page of your website and off the page of your website. Google and other search engines use an algorithm that involves many mathematical calculations to determine which website comes up at the top of a list. But keep in mind that who shows up #1 in Washington, DC might be completely different than who shows up #1 in Frederick, MD. There might be a different #1 result on my page depending on my computer’s settings and personalization vs someone else’s. We can’t control everything, but let’s discuss a couple of major factors that we can control.
Title Tag – title of the page – tells Google what this web page is all aboutMeta Description – call to action – doesn’t really have a lot of value for search engine placement, but it’s your calling card or your neon sign to entice people to click on your link.
Food service company that specializes in campus dining services. Although, from their home page you wouldn’t know that’s what they do. The title tag of this page is
When searching Dining Service Company, I get search results forWhat I don’t get search results for is Sage Dining Services. They actually are on the second page for this keyword, but it’s the only food service management keyword that I used in 10 searches that got them any placement above 50th place, in some they weren’t even listed in the top 100.
What keyword do they have top placement for?How many people do you think are searching for a dining services or food management company with the keyword: “The Flavor of Things to Come.”
Meta Description:Email Marketing from Constant Contact makes it easy for you to build email lists and create email newsletters that get great results. Start your free trial today!Page URL: www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing
In #1 and #2 positions.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
In years past you could trick Google with “black hat” or not quite on the up-and-up practices that would put you in a better position. A lot of black hat SEO practices revolved around poor quality links (link farms). Panda is change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was released and continues to have editions released that penalizes websites that are not using quality links and best “white hat” SEO practices.
Subject title: Great pen resource to add to your listIf you’re writing really good content, websites will link to you without asking
Subject title: Great pen resource to add to your listIf you’re writing really good content, websites will link to you without asking
Subject title: Great pen resource to add to your listIf you’re writing really good content, websites will link to you without asking
Subject title: Great pen resource to add to your listIf you’re writing really good content, websites will link to you without asking
Subject title: Great pen resource to add to your listIf you’re writing really good content, websites will link to you without asking
Subject title: Great pen resource to add to your listIf you’re writing really good content, websites will link to you without asking
You’ve spent a great deal of time planning out your website. Now you want to measure your progress. The day before the new site is launched or even today if your site is already live, go through your current metrics and write down your starting numbers. This is your baseline. You should also be measuring the metrics you established when creating your website objectives. You can easily keep all this information in a simple spreadsheet. Record weekly or monthly and monitor what happens over time. You might want to record this information per category, per page, or per online marketing effort to get more detailed results.
You’ve spent a great deal of time planning out your website. Now you want to measure your progress. The day before the new site is launched or even today if your site is already live, go through your current metrics and write down your starting numbers. This is your baseline. You should also be measuring the metrics you established when creating your website objectives. You can easily keep all this information in a simple spreadsheet. Record weekly or monthly and monitor what happens over time. You might want to record this information per category, per page, or per online marketing effort to get more detailed results.
Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic. It tracks where your website traffic comes from and what visitors do on your website once they arrive.Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions but also gives you fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, and how you can keep them coming back.You’ve spent a great deal of time planning out your website. Now you want to measure your progress. The day before the new site is launched or even today if your site is already live, go through your current metrics and write down your starting numbers. This is your baseline. You should also be measuring the metrics you established when creating your website objectives. You can easily keep all this information in a simple spreadsheet. Record weekly or monthly and monitor what happens over time. You might want to record this information per category, per page, or per online marketing effort to get more detailed results.
Unique VisitorsBounce RateAvg Visit Duration% New Visits
Ecommerce view with revenue
Goals and goal completions for non-ecommerce websites
Be on the lookout for our new book book, How to Use WordPress for Small Business Websites.