Archive for May, 2009

Writing web copy requires that you understand what your intended message is and keeping in mind this simple phrase BLUF. Bluf stands for

Bottom
Line
Up
Front

Web users are quick to move on to other sites if they can not quickly find the information they are seeking on your site. It is key to turning visits into sales to keep your copy short and to the point and avoid wasting your customers time with unnecessary fluff.
Here are a few key points in structuring and displaying your web copy.

1. Know your customers – Create a customer profile if possible covering the following areas:
   • Age Group – Pre-K, Adolescents, Teenagers, Young Adults, Middle Aged or Senior
   • Sex – Are they mostly male or female
   • Finances – Are they secure financially or not
   • Interests – What interests do they have and what about your products or services brought them to you
   • Concerns – What are your customers most concerned about when purchasing the services or products you and your competitors offer
2. Be concise and make sure content is easy to read
   • On the web, less is almost always more. Write your copy for the impatient, internet reader. Here are some guidelines for the length of your content:
     • Headings: 8 words or less
     • Sentences: 15 – 20 words
     • Paragraphs: 40 – 70 words
     • Page word count: 250+ words
   • Get rid of pompous words and fancy phrases. Effective writing is not about impressing the reader with your extensive vocabulary. It’s about getting your point across simply and effectively. Remember, BLUF and use short, simple words. Get to the point. And then stop.
3. Content Needs to Call to Action
   • Content is about getting the reader’s attention and keeping it. Content is about selling. Your content must tell your customer what actions to take.
4. Write for how people search
   • If you want your site to be found when people search the web, use words your target readers use. Before you begin to write, sit down and think carefully about the keywords you’re going to use. Then carefully weave those words and phrases into your copy. Here’s two Web sites that will help you find the right keywords and phrases for your site.
     • www.overture.com
     • www.wordtracker.com
5. Check it, Check it and then Check it again
   • Mistakes in web copy are temporary and can be fixed, but if you’ve noticed your error potentially thousands of others have also. Have as many people as you can proofread your copy before release. Check it yourself one last time even when you are certain it is correct

Statistics say that 80 – 85% of surfers use a search engine to find what they are looking for on the web. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is preparing your website so that it can be found in the millions of websites out there.  So if your website is about your dog grooming business, SEO helps to make sure that when someone is looking for a dog groomer, they can find your site. The better job of optimizing you site you do, the higher your site may rank in a search engine increasing the chance of bringing traffic or customers to your site and business. SEO is not about tricking the search engines. It is about understanding what things the search engines look for in order to help determine what the page is about and what search terms might be used to find it. Understanding what the search engines take into consideration will help you place your pages higher in the search engines and for the right search terms.

What should l optimize? When you are working on optimizing your site you need focus your efforts on the key Search Engine Ranking Factors – SERFs. SERFs are the things that affect where a web site’s pages are position on the results page of a query or search  I list some of them below.

Organic Search Results: This term refers to the results that come from the search engine’s index of web pages. They are called “normal” or “organic” results because they are not paid for or have any outside influences on them. These results typically garner between 60-70% of user clicks on the search results page. These are the results you are working to try to move up in.

Search Engine Ranking Factors:
Reference – http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

1. Keyword Use Factors: The following components relate to the use of the user’s search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.
   1. Keyword Use in Title Tag: Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header
   2. Keyword Use in Body Text: Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page
   3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords (Topic Analysis): Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords
   4. Keyword Use in Page URL: Including target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase (Tends to help with CTR – Click Through Rate – Ends up bolded in search results )
   5. Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag: Utilizing keywords in the meta description tag in a webpage’s HTML header
2. Page Attributes: The following elements comprise how the Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords
   1. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure: Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page
   2. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages: Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?
   3. Age of Document: Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant
   4. Amount of Indexable Text Content: Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page
   5. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically): Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating
3. Site/Domain Attributes: The factors below contribute to Google’s rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.
   1. Global Link Popularity of Site: The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity)
   2. Age of Site: Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership)
   3. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site: The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword
   4. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community: The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world
   5. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site: The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain
   6. Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query: The topical relationships between the full content of a website and a user’s given query
4. Inbound Link Attribute: These pieces affect Google’s weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page
   1. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
   2. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
   3. Topical Relationship of Linking Page
   4. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community: The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world
   5. Age of Link
   6. Topical Relationship of Linking Site
   7. Text Surrounding the Link:
5. Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes: These components may negatively affect a spider’s ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.
   1. Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
   2. Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index
   3. External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
   4. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages
   5. Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming)
   6. Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
   7. Very Slow Server Response Times

Most small business owners do not want to become Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts, nor should they. You need to concentrate on your core business and keeping your customers happy. You do need to bring more customers in though and that’s what your website should be helping you with. There one problem. If your site does not get the SEO basics right it may not help you at all. So if you have to do it, what are the basics that your website needs to get right?

Step 1 Keyword Identification: Figure out what people who are looking for you or your services will search for. If your company provides lawn care, what will people looking for you or lawn care services type in to the Google search box? Is it lawn care, lawn service, lawn mowing Seattle WA or bush trimming or something else. You need to know what people may try to use to find you or your service. Try finding a company with your services in Google and write down the different terms you tried and which ones gave you results that were useful.

Step 2 Visit & Edit Your Site:

1. Review the Page Titles. Look at the very top of this browser window in the bar at the top. That’s where your page title is. Does it describe the page? Search engines use the page titles for your web pages to help determine what the pages on your website are about. It’s similar to books in a library, if there were no titles on the binder of the books, how would you know what those books are about? How would the librarians know what section to put the book in? It’s the same for search engines, if the title doesn’t tell the search engine what it’s about it won’t know what to do with it.
2. Check your site navigation:
   • Format — text or image? image map? javascript? drop-downs? Text is best for search engines to be able to follow them and find all of the pages on your website. If you are using flash, javascript rollovers or some other navigation to create a dynamic user experience, your site should include a sitemap page that has text based links to all of your pages so the search engines can find them all.
   • Are keywords used being used in text links or image alt tags? Remeber those words you were using to find sites with your services earlier? They need to be on your site.
3. Review page content: Ideally, if you can identify what each page on your site is about and map that to one of your keywords/phrases, then you can optimize that page for a specific keyword.
   • Adequate and appropriate amount of text? Ideally use at least 250-500 words of text.
   • Appropriate keyword usage? Use keywords throughout the copy. Write UNIQUE content. Don’t just reuse a manufacturer’s product description or you will create duplicate content issues on your site.
   • Use a H1 and H2 tag, for titles on the pages and make sure they include keywords.
   • Title and Description tags NEED to be different for every page.
4. View source code:When on the page  in your browser do a view source.
   • Check meta description (length, keyword usage, relevance).
   • Check meta keywords (relevance, stuffing).
   • Use keywords in image Alt tags. – You know that little box that shows up on images sometimes when you rollover them with your mouse? That’s called an alt tag for your image. It allows you to describe what the image is to people and the search engines.

Step 3 Register Your Site: Your website needs to be registered with the search engines in order to be found.

1. Search Engine Registration
   1. Google – http://www.google.com/addurl/
   2. Google Local Submission – http://www.google.com/local/add
   3. Yahoo – https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
   4. Yahoo Directory – http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/suggest/suggest-01.html
   5. Yahoo Local – http://listings.local.yahoo.com/account/
   6. Ask -  http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.sitename.com/sitemap.xml
   7. DMOZ – http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
   8. MSN Live Search – http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx
   9. MSN Live Local – http://webapp.localeze.com/bizreg/add.aspx
   10. Local.com – http://advertise.local.com/search_buslisting.aspx
   11. Truelocal.com – http://www.truelocal.com/BusinessSuggest.aspx
   12. Jayde B2B Search – http://submit2.jayde.com/
2. Yellowpages Registration
   1. Superpages.com – http://advertising.superpages.com/spweb/products/business-listing
   2. Yellowpages.com – http://www.yellowpages.com/advertising
   3. Yahoo Yellow Pages – http://dbupdate.infousa.com/dbupdate/yahoo1.jsp

These are just some of the minimums that need to be covered in order to get your website in the search engines and findable by your customers