The webinar was presented by Kim Krause Berg, Search marketing and UX (User Experience) Manager of LiBeck Integrated Marketing, and founder of my favorite forum (where I am also a moderator), Cre8asite.

Kim began by telling a true story about a job she held 11 years ago. That company developed hundreds of websites for different verticals, and Kim’s job entailed doing exactly what she was told to do on those sites, such as, “put this button here”, “place that color there”, etc. Kim’s instincts told her that the tasks she was carrying out weren’t very user-friendly, both from a design and code standpoint, but she wasn’t allowed to voice her opinion on that. One of the sites contained an application, and after it was built, Kim was asked to do some QA on it to test the app. It didn’t take long to realize that this process should have happened before the app was built, not after! The key takeaway for me in this story is that from the very beginning of the process of creating a new site (or a new page or section of a site), the user experience must be a top priority. “It’s all about your end user”.

Key Takeaways

Kim then discussed three key takeways. I’ll list them here, with my own thoughts injected after each.

1. Everything placed on a web page has a reason for being there, and if not, remove it. (Me: I’m as guilty as the next person for not taking this seriously enough, but it’s probably the best advice anyone can give regarding site design or site content. I should record this sentence and play it at high volume randomly during each day, to remind myself of its importance).

2. Stakeholders and management have different and sometimes conflicting priorities for company websites such as ecommerce, services, corporate information and software application based travel sites. Your goal is to always be the end-user’s advocate. (Me: I assume the “your goal” part is because she is speaking to people who are in primarily user experience job roles, but it can be universally applied as well. No matter what our role in a site’s functionality might be, if we become advocates for the end-user, then we’ll very likely make better decisions and we’ll likely reach our goals faster).

3. Holistic search marketing includes usability, information architecture, search engine optimization, social media marketing, mobile web site design focused on marketing, accessibility and content development. The integration of user centered techniques offers trackable ROI benefits. (Me: While I agree with this statement, I’m not sure specific examples were given in this presentation to really explain it. Or maybe I just missed them. But while I definitely agree that adding user centered techniques offers ROI benefits, I’m less sure how to track that. Maybe I can get Kim to come here and give us some tips on that).

Next, Kim reminded us that online marketers and user experience designers have the same goals. Both want to increase conversion rates, and both want to satisfy their customers and site visitors. By following some of the suggested techniques she discussed next, and applying those techniques to home page, landing pages, product pages, navigation, and apps, those goals can be met. Keep in mind that Kim, like me, believes in testing different techniques. The following are just suggestions to help you get more creative with your own sites, and meet the needs of your particular target audience. You don’t have to follow them exactly; just use them as a guide.

Start With Navigation

Begin by looking at your site’s navigation. The navigation (the menu) should immediately establish a “sense of place” when users arrive at the site. Each link in the navigation should give both users and search engines a clear idea of what that link really leads to. Let’s take the example of “Services”. Many site menus have a link with this text. “Services” on a menu is generic and non-descriptive. It gives no motivation to click. That word is a missed opportunity to communicate what the user or search engine will find when they reach the page it links to. By making this link text more descriptive, you can enhance both the SEO value and UX value of the link. She mentions considering using a drop down menu for that item, which is broken down into subpages, with each devoted to a separate category of service. Each services subpage will be a landing page that is specific and focused, and enables you to have more opportunities to take visitors directly to the tasks they are looking to find.

In addition, she strongly recommends using verbs and adjectives in your links. So instead of just “Services” as the link text, consider some options such as “Explore Our Services”, “Affordable Marketing Services”, “Competitive Internet Marketing Services”, etc. Each of these is not only more descriptive, but these verbs and adjectives are additional motivations for the users to click through.

Another tip is to avoid words in navigational links that merely confuse the user. The example she used was a link on their own site with the text of “Thought Leadership”. She looked at that link and thought, “what the heck is that all about?” I agree. I wouldn’t have a clue where that link would lead me if I clicked on it. As it turns out, it’s actually a very important page on their site that lets users receive free information, newsletters, ebooks, whitepapers, etc. None of that is conveyed by the link text of “Thought Leadership” is it? Instead, they plan to test a few different ideas for that link; perhaps something like “Marketing Resources” or “Keep Up With LibeckIM”, etc. The answer isn’t necessarily cut and dry. Testing is key, but anything that helps users understand what’s behind a link is better than text that only confuses them. By testing, you’ll find out what works best for your site, your industry, and your users.

She then tackled the next ubiquitous navigational link – the “About” link. Everyone has one, but that word “About” is boring and overdone. Jazz it up, and again, use verbs or descriptive text. “Meet the LibeckIM team”, or “Learn about us”, “Read more about history” might work well, for instance. And like the “About” page, we all have other supplemental pages such as Contact, Press, Privacy, etc. You need to determine the priority of each of those pages and place them appropriately within the navigation structure.

The last point she made about navigation is to avoid the popular minimalistic approach. Minimalism often works against SEO and persuasive design, so be more descriptive and give search engines and users a better idea of where each navigational link will lead them.

Content Optimization

After discussing navigation, Kim moved on to optimizing your site’s content. She stressed this point:

“Remember that the goal of your web site visitors is to find the object of their desire.”

She begins with focusing on a site’s tagline. Do add a text tagline to the header of each page that includes keywords and describes the purpose of the site or page. The tagline should be in text and contain a clear description what this page or site is about, or a clear solution that this page or site solves. The tagline should concisely explain and address who the site is targeting. This one short line is an opportunity for your users understand the purpose of the site/page and an opportunity to get your message across in seconds. When crafting your tagline, consider ideas such as:

• What solution do you provide?
• How (using what tactics) do you solve a problem?
• Who benefits from this?

My tagline, for example, is “making a living online … and sharing information so you can do the same”. Hopefully, it gets the message across. If you don’t think it does, please feel free to give me suggestions.

While your tagline is a quick concise message, your site’s content will need to get many more messages across to your users. These messages might be on your home page, your product pages, your landing pages, your contact page, etc. Always be cognizant of the types of messages you should be including within your content. You need to address the:

Who, Where, What, Why, How, and When

You can address these by answering questions similar to the following on the various relevant pages on your site.

• Who are you?
• Who are you addressing?
• Where are you located?
• Where are you selling?
• What are you offering?
• What do your visitors want the most?
• What makes you so special?
• Why are you doing what you do?
• Why should anyone believe you?
• Why is your company so special?
• How do we contact you?
• How old is your company?
• How do we subscribe/order/signup?
• How long is this sale?
• How do you pick your products?
• When can we order / call / signup?

Why is answering these types of questions important? If you address the questions that users typically have, you save them the trouble of having to look for the information. How many times have you wondered if an online store would let you use Paypal as a payment method, for instance? When a site shows me that kind of information right on the product page, or in the footer of every page, I’m a happy user. When I have to search around, clicking here and clicking there, hoping to find the answer to that question, I’m usually frustrated enough to leave the site and never return.

How do you know what questions to answer? Kim focuses on tasks. Think of the tasks your visitors will likely need or want to accomplish on your site. If you can guide them to pages that help them complete a task, such as a filling out a sales lead form, browsing categories, purchasing a product, etc., your users’ experience is made easier, and your conversion rate is likely to go up. Fail at making common user tasks easy, and you’ll fail to meet the goals you’ve set for your site.

Next, Kim showed us a screenshot of a web page that she had marked up with some comments as she did an audit of the page. Some of the nitty gritty details that she pointed out on the page involved moving things around, keeping various elements consistent, and making sure users know what’s clickable and what’s not. More tips included:

• Treat product pages as landing pages by making sure they contain content in addition to cart elements.
• Add text captions to your images.
• Use descriptive link text to guide users to important pages deep within the site.
• Use heading tags (H1, H2, etc.) as signals to search engines that you consider this particular information on the page as most important.
• Play with verbs! Use words such as “go”, “find”, “order”, “buy”, “search”, etc. And When using phrases such as “read more”, expand them so they are more descriptive. Use “read more about [blue widgets]” instead.
• Incorporate trigger words in your content, such as “free”, “new”, “limited time special”, “for sale”, and “lowest price”.

Finally Kim gave a list of resources, which I’ve listed below. I’m really happy I took the time to listen in on Kim’s webinar. It rocked! I recommend you follow Kim on Facebook and on Twitter.

Resources:

Customer Focus Calculator – The WeWe Monitor Tool – This free tool analyzes your web page to see how customer-focused it really is. For example, I ran my eBusiness coaching home page through the tool, and it told me that my customer focus rate is 61.45% and my self focus rate is 38.55%. It also let me know that the page talks about my customers about twice as often as it speaks about myself. It graded the page as Excellent! While that’s great, I can see that I could improve upon that score, and I need to run all my main pages through the tool, so I can enhance each one. Thanks to Kim for sharing this cool resource.

Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become by Peter Morville

When Search Meets Web Usability by Shari Thurow

Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg

Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success by Greg Nudelman

Audience, Relevance, and Search: Targeting Web Audiences with Relevant Content by James Mathewson, Frank Donatone, and Cynthia Fishel

Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions by Tim Ash

Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? by Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.

Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day by Matt Bailey

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Post tags: Search engine optimization, Usability, User experience, UX, web design
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1. Start with an idea for a new website.
2. Find all the relevant themes within that site’s niche.
3. Click a button to discard the only-slightly-relevant themes.
4. Click a button to discard the themes that don’t bring in good traffic.
5. Click a button to discard the themes that have too many competitors.
6. Click a button to discard the themes that are relevant, have good traffic, and have acceptable competition – but don’t have enough monetary or commercial value to you.
7. Click a button to see how strong the top 10 competitors are for any particular theme that’s left in your filtered list, so you can determine which of the remaining themes are the best to target.
8. Click a button to find an excellent domain name for this niche.
9. Click a button to find products you can promote within this niche.
10. Click a button to research and find the authorities in the niche and the subtopics that are popular within the niche.
11. Click a button to compose and publish content on your new site.
12. Click a button to find promotion and backlink opportunities for the content you create.
13. Click a button to track and analyze the rankings increases you receive over time.
14. Repeat a similar quick and easy process to find and use additional long tail keywords to augment and enhance your site’s content.

I’m an old SEO who has been doing this for years, so over time, I’ve come up with my own ways to handle most of the processes above. It all takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and frequently ends in me forgetting some vital tasks. When I forget something, the site I worked so hard on, ends up with the rest of the failed sites on the ‘net.

Now, I’ve known that a tool existed for about a year now that claimed to do all of the above. I even tested it a while back (for about 5 minutes, and then something distracted me, and I forgot to test it further). I may even be the last internet marketing person on the planet to have really latched on to the awesomeness of this tool. Still, just because I’m late to the game, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t rave about it. Just in case there’s anyone out there who doesn’t already use it, ya know. I know my tedious process has been forever changed for the better, since I bought this product. Maybe yours will too.

So what is this amazing product, and does it really live up to its claims? It’s called Market Samurai, and yes, it does. Ah, see? I knew most of you had already heard of it!

So for the few who haven’t tried it yet, you should know why I think Market Samurai is currently the best tool on the market to ensure that you don’t waste time creating sites that bring no traffic and make no money.

Yes, I’ve created sites that made no money. And I may still do that occasionally, but I bet it won’t be nearly as often anymore. Market Samurai finally gives me all the info I need and all the tools to implement the info in one place.

Let’s look at a summary of the modules that Market Samurai includes.

Keyword Research

This module goes beyond just spitting out a list of relevant phrases. Clicking the Analyze Keywords button will check various factors about each, such as SEO competition, and you can then filter the results based on whatever thresholds you set. This is a powerful way to quickly find the sweet spot of phrases to target. Want to know how much traffic you can expect if you rank #1 for a phrase? The tool gives an estimate of that as well, and much more.

SEO Competiton

One of the things I love is the color-coded competition chart. At a glance, you can see which keywords are the easiest or hardest to rank for, so it’s the perfect next step after keyword research. It gives a ton of info such as anchor text distribution, number of backlinks, PR, cache info, and domain age.

Domain Tool

If you’re researching a new niche, you’ll want to use the domain tool that’s provided. It not only helps find domain names related to a keyword, but it also shows aged, expiring and for-sale domains that are already ranking well for the phrase! That’s sweet! (A free account at domainface is all you need for the aged domains list. If you want extra info on the aged domains, you’ll need to have a paid domainface account. But since the free version of domainface does provide the aged names, it’s still a great feature).

Monetization Tool

Ok, so you know what phrases to target, you now have a perfect domain to build on, so what’s next? How to monetize it? Yep! Fill in your various affiliate details (such as username for cj, amazon, clickbank, etc), and the tool finds products related to a keyword that you can promote. In addition, it will generate dynamic ads for you, such as Google’s contextual Adsense ads or Amazon content-relevant ads. Need a landing page or sidebar ad? No problem. The tool will create them for you by displaying relevant images, headlines and sales copy from the affiliate sites. Just drag and drop the headlines and sentences you like most into a blog post, sidebar, or banner generator. The ad can also use your short url account (like your bit.ly account) to generate a short link to the product. Any ads you generate, dynamic or affiliate, can easily be published to your self-hosted WordPress blog with the click of a button. If you don’t have a WP blog, you can simply copy/paste the content or ad code into your site as you normally would. This module of Market Samurai is unique. I’ve never seen this done in another tool of its kind.

Find and Publish Content

Although you’ll be creating your own content, Market Samurai makes it easy to find the most popular content related to a keyword, so you can determine what types of content your visitors will love. The tool does a great job of letting you find specific types of content (blog posts, videos, etc.) to help you research the niche. Once your research is done, you can use the Publish feature to easily compose and add content to WordPress blogs right from the tool. (And yes, you can choose to easily publish articles from article directories too).

Promotion

This section helps you find backlink opportunities and niche authorities, letting you filter by type (blogs, forums, q&a, etc), and then analyzing each (just use the Analyze All button) to determine the best ones to promote to. You can then choose to participate in those conversations, and promote your site to them, which can generate traffic and backlinks, or you can reference sites by adding links to other relevant sites that except pingbacks to blog posts you’ve previously published right from the tool, which will ping those sites, notifying them that you linked to them. Any pingbacks created are backlinks to your site.

Rank Tracking

Again, this goes beyond the standard tracker that merely shows where a phrase ranks; it also lists the particular page url that ranks for the phrase, what it’s PR is, and gives the number of backlinks that page has. Because it keeps this history, you can always see a graph of how well your efforts are paying off over time.

More Info

Price: Forget monthly fees. Pay one price, one time and get use of the product for life. If you work it right, you can get 35% off as well. Just try the free trial of Market Samurai to get that opportunity.

Cross-Platform: Runs on PC, Mac, and Linux. Double-sweet!

The only drawbacks for me are:

• Managing multiple projects isn’t as smooth as it could be, but I wouldn’t doubt that this is a feature they’ll improve upon at some point.
• I’d also love to be able to print a nice report that shows me a basic to-do list based on all the information gathered. It would be very cool to have a tree diagram showing the main theme keyword at top, category keywords next, and long tail keywords last. From there, a content research and creation plan could be listed so that I can easily build the site using the plan as a guide. The various modules do have a .csv export feature, but I’d love to see a nice human-oriented report that sums it all up for me.
• Some parts are slow. Startup, for instance, can take a couple of minutes. While you stare at a blank gray window, you might think the program has died, but it hasn’t. I use these slower bits of time to grab a diet coke or a snack.

Summary – Marketing Samurai answers the following questions:

• What keywords should I target? (most profitable / least competition)
• How hard will it be to rank for the phrase(s) and what will I need to do to compete?
• Who are the authorities in this niche?
• What type of content do visitors in this niche prefer?
• What products can I promote?
• How can I create compelling ads for those products?
• How can I create and manage targeted content?
• Where can I find backlink opportunities?
• How well are my efforts working?

Try it. You can actually use it for free for a while. After the trial period is up, guess what? You can still use the keyword research module freely forever! For that reason alone, you should try it. They don’t snag your credit card info or paypal info just to try it. Really. You won’t have to worry about some stupid automatic charge that you didn’t remember to cancel. Nothing like that will happen. Just try it for free. No risk, no hassle.

By the way, I strongly recommend using the free tutorials offered. While the product isn’t overly complex, the tutorials will ensure that you don’t miss some important steps that can make a huge difference in your success rate. For example, the first tutorial looks at the relevancy of your keywords, and why it’s so important, how to filter out the useless keywords guaranteed to cost you time and money, and how to slash the number of people who leave your site because they can’t find what they’re looking for. Missing out on any of that because you decided to just “wing it” would be a mistake I don’t recommend. Even if you quit using the product, watching the tutorials will be an education into smart internet marketing!

Try it for free. Actually watch the training videos. Really. Don’t skip that step. Actually USE the free version after watching the videos. Don’t make the “5 minute test and move on to something else” mistake that I did. Give it a real solid test. I think you’ll be glad I bugged you to do so. Even if you still can’t part with the cash to get this product, you’ll have learned how to go through the process and can do what I’ve done all these years – putting all this into practice using various free tools and lots of manual labor. Either way, you’re probably better off than before.

Just try it for free to find out:

• What markets are worth targeting;
• What markets are worth avoiding;
• Which keywords you should focus on for fast results;
• Which keywords should be avoided;
• Which markets have weak competition;
• Which markets show impossible levels of competition;
• What are the chances of achieving front-page rankings for a keyword;
• What topics you should write articles on for your website;
• Where to find quality backlinks;
• How many backlinks you need;
• What quality backlinks you need;
• How to determine the quality of a page for a backlink;
• …and so much more!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Keyword research, Marketing, Search engine optimization
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Every marketer that has a website has learned about bringing visitors to their site through SEO. He knows that a proper SEO campaign takes a lot of time and patience, but in the end, he’s rewarded with great rankings. Conversion optimization is also a patient task and is another never-ending process. But through constant testing, you’ll be able to dramatically improve your conversion rate.

If you offer a service of some sort this will more easily apply to you, but many of these techniques can be applied across the board no matter what kind of niche you are in. Conversion rate doesn’t only apply to selling a product or generating leads from a website. It can be applied to anything that you want a visitor to do when they get to your website/blog.

Perceived Authority and Trust

No one will use a service from someone they don’t trust. Building trust is crucial in getting a customer to complete a transaction. I’ve found (and many agree) that including customer testimonials, press mentions, secure website certificates, a physical address, and a picture, as well as maintaining a personal tone within your web content are all instant solidifiers in capturing the trust of an impatient web visitor. In order to complete the trust picture, you should make sure that you are keeping the search results clean with online reputation management.

Speed of Service

A potential customer doesn’t like wasting a lot of time, so don’t give them junk they don’t want or care about on a landing page. For example, when searching for [surety bonds], people want to get in and out as fast as possible so we keep a clean layout and short, concise content that gets to the point. If you run a fitness site, you may want to have a lengthy article that gets the reader emotional before deciding to buy your service/product. It all depends on your niche, so you’ll have to test to see which method works best. Either way, make sure to show your visitors what you want at the top of the site as you only have a few seconds to grab their attention to start them down the conversion process.

If you offer a service, be sure to have a fast follow-up. Through our bonding site and other experiences I’ve had, I’ve found that the more quickly we follow up with a web site contact, the more likely they are to turn into a completed transaction or customer. It’s important to immediately contact users whether through a live customer agent or even a simple email system to let them know that you received their info and will act on it shortly.

Testing, Testing, Testing

A major aspect of conversion rate optimization is testing. You need to find what works best and what just doesn’t make the cut. An easy way to do this is to use Google’s website optimizer. This allows you to send half of your traffic to one version of a page and the other half to a different version. Not sure if ‘Military Housing‘ converts better than ‘Military Homes‘? This will let you know. Then you can test it against a different phrase and keep the one that works the best. After repeating the test for a while, you will eventually find the phrase that always gives the best conversion.

Test form layouts, test different pictures, test everything. This is the biggest advice I would give people. You may not realize it, but a different picture or even a different background color can increase your conversion rate. With the proper dedication and a little time, you can turn visitors into customers.

This guest post was written by Kevin Kaiser of Surety Bond Co., a surety bonding agency.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Conversion optimization, Conversion rate, Marketing, online reputation management, Search engine optimization
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What is the SEO Dojo? It is a closed door, gated community which gives search professionals and those wanting to learn more about search engines a safe haven to study and collaborate.

There’s some serious educational material within the walls of the community (really, I kid you not, there’s lots of stuff there to fill your mind with). And of course, there’s a strong community of Seriously Obsessed Search Geeks (SOSG) discussing search issues.

The SEO Dojo is ideal for:

• Individuals who want to increase their SEO knowledge
• Professional SEOs looking for a quality community
• Webmasters and site owners seeking advice from top professionals
• Finding cross-site (and vertical) promotions and opportunities
• SEOs who want to learn more about how search engines work
• Anyone that needs to learn MORE about the world of search marketing
• Search geeks looking to interact with other SEO addicts

I recommend reading more about it here. It not only outlines more about the community itself, but it also tells you about all the extras you get – including free access to awesome tools (like Raven SEO tools, for example, plus tons more).

Another cool thing is that I’ve been given a special code that you can use to get 25% off of the price of membership (which is already reasonable) for the first 25 DD readers who choose to use it. Dave (the dojo leader) assigned my code to be “DonnaRocks”, so just use that coupon code to get your 25% discount. (Dave likes to embarrass me, I think).

If you are at all interested in search marketing, you should check it out. Dave’s done a bangup job of making a great community.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet Marketing, Search engine marketing, Search engine optimization, search engines, search marketing, search professionals, SEOs
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