If Internet Marketing Was a Football Team: Position-by-Position Breakdown

September 2, 2010 By Dan Bischoff Leave a Comment

College Football is back tonight with Utah vs. Pittsburgh. Other local games this weekend include BYU vs. Washington and Utah State vs. Oklahoma. Everything is right in the world again.

In honor of college football’s return, here are the position-by-position starters if Internet marketing strategies made up a football team:

Head Coach – Analytics and A/B Testing

The head coach analyzes everything and makes changes to improve. Analytics and testing gives you the stats, tells you what is working, where people are coming from, how long they’ve been on the site, what is bringing traffic and what converts best. Through analytics and testing, you can tweak strategies to be more successful.


Assistant Coach – Competitive Analysis

The assistant coach often scouts out the competition to know how to beat the bad guys. A detailed competitive analysis will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors so you can know how and where to strike.


Offensive Starters – Building the Brand, Getting Exposure and Outbound Marketing

Quarterback – SEO

Arguably, the quarterback position is the most important position on the field. Top quarterbacks win games despite weaknesses in other areas of the team. If you get top rankings for the right keywords, you will get more website traffic and sales. All-Pro SEO services will almost instantly make you a major player in your industry. Quarterbacks are also the face of a team. Similarly, organic natural results act as the face of your company


Running Back – Conversion Optimization

There are crucial times in any football game where a team needs 1 yard for a first down or a few inches to score a touchdown. A dependable running back will get that extra yardage almost every time. Conversion optimization plays that role for your website. Once you get that extra website traffic, you need dependable website conversion principles to take that visitor into the end zone.


Fullback – Web Design

Fullbacks are often the lead blocker that clears the way for the running back to get that extra yard. Good SEO Web design clears the way for everything else to work right.


Wide Receiver — Social Media Marketing

Fast wide receivers can change the game with one quick-striking score. Good social media marketing using viral video, infographics, blog posts, etc., can quickly send a lot of traffic and create a ton of exposure in a short period of time. Social media can be a game changer just like a flashy wide receiver that blows past the defense.


Tight End – Online Public Relations

Tight ends are instrumental in blocking for the quarterback and running backs. But they also consistently score touchdowns and get first downs in tight situations. Tight ends are critical in clutch moments whether it’s a run or pass play. Online public relations have the same dependability. Online PR doesn’t always results in a home run, but it does consistently bring good traffic quality links. And sometimes online PR scores a touchdown by getting the attention of big blogs and publications. Online PR is the go-to weapon in tight situations when you need good links, and more traffic and exposure.


Offensive Line – Keyword Research

The offensive line is the foundation of every football team. They give the quarterback time to throw and open holes for the running backs. Games are won and lost in the trenches, and they are similar won and lost with the right or wrong keyword research. Every search strategy revolves around picking the right keywords to target. Targeting the right keywords will make you a lot of money. The wrong keywords will keep you guessing and will lose you money.


Defensive Starters, Protecting Your Online Brand

Defensive Line – Reputation Management

The defensive line is the literally first line of defense. Any offense will roll over a team with a pansy D-line. For online marketing, this is similar to reputation management. It’s the foundation to defending your brand online.


Line Backer – Link Building

I chose this mostly because linebackers and link building have the same abbreviation: LB. So, you can come up with your own analogy on this one.


Corner Back – Social Media Profiles

Corner backs protect the pass and are sometimes the secret weapon on a corner blitz to reach the quarterback. I compare this to social media profiles. An active profile that provides valuable information and brings in fans, is a big part of protecting your brand and company. Social profiles are usually found high in the search engines for a company’s name. Plus, social media is all the buzz right now. In the sports world, corner backs are usually the guys with all the hype.


Safety – PPC

The Safety position is self-explanatory. The Safety has a lot of roles, but is there to basically defend wherever things break down. That’s what PPC is for. A good mix of PPC with your SEO will make sure you get the right exposure and traffic while you work on getting your SEO rankings where you want them.


Kicker/Punter – Local Search and Maps Optimization

A good kicker can nail a field goal in clutch situations or pin a team near the end zone on a good punt. Local Internet marketing places your website in the right spot for local shoppers to find your business and buy your products.


Filed Under: SEO, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

18 Simple SEO Items Commonly Missed in Web Development

July 21, 2010 By Dan Patterson Leave a Comment

Web Development SEO TipsOne of the things we constantly have to do as SEO experts is give recommendations to companies on how they need to change their site so that they can be better optimized.

The sad thing is that a lot of the things we recommend should have been done during the Web development phase the first time around.

No matter how much the SEO world tries to get the information out there, a lot of Web developers don’t understand the basic concepts of SEO. This in turn leads to sites being developed that an SEO team will later have to tear apart and fix.

So whether you’re designing a new site in-house, using some kind of template site-building system, or hiring an outside firm, here are 18 things that you’ll want to make sure are in place before you launch your site. It will keep us SEO guys from giving your site an overhaul later. By following these guidelines you’ll have a much more search engine friendly web design from the beginning.

1- Perform Keyword Research Before Developing the Site

SEO starts with keywords. And if you’re planning to market your site in the search engines, you should know what keywords you want to rank for before you even start building the site. Make sure this is done FIRST.

Here are some other posts that talk about how to properly do keyword research:

2- Put Non-www to www Redirects in Place

It amazes me how many sites load with and without the www in the URL. The problem with this is that it creates an automatic duplicate of your site, and can waste a lot of link value as people link to both versions. Decide which version of your URLs you want to use, then 301 redirect everything else to the preferred version.

3- Use a Static, Keyword Based URL Structure

Dynamic URLs can cause a lot of problems if not handled right. So rather than going through all of the headache that they cause us SEO-types, just set your site up with good URL rewrites so that you don’t have dynamic URLs in the first place.

More posts about URLs:

4- Have Unique URLs for Each Product/Service

Even if a product or service can be found multiple ways on the site, make sure that there is only one unique URL for each product or service your company offers. This helps to eliminate unnecessary duplicate content problems.

5- Include Redirect Capabilities

You never know when you’re going to want to take a page down and redirect it to something else. The mistake a lot of sites make is that they just take a page down when they don’t need it any more. When this happens you lose the link value that page may have gained while it was live. So do yourself a favor: make sure you can 301 redirect that old page to a new page that can use the juice.

6- Create a Custom 404 Page

Having a custom 404 page makes it so that if someone lands on a 404 page, they at least know they’ve reached the right site. Without a custom 404 in place, they may just assume the site is down and move on to your competitor’s site.

Here is an example of a custom 404 page:

Custom 404

7- Include Keyword-Rich Alt Attributes

Alt attributes are very easy to overlook. But if you use them the right they can be another signal to the search engines to tell them what a page is about. One quick tip on this one: don’t abuse this attribute by using a keyword phrase on every single bullet point image or stuffing a bunch of keywords into the attribute.

8- Make Room for Sufficient Content

Sometimes designers and developers get carried away with the look and feel of the page and forget to include room for text-based content. That’s what the search engines read, so you have to make sure there is a logical place for that content. Ideally, plan on having at least 150-200 words of optimized content on any page you want to rank well.

You should also make sure that your content is structured right. Have one H1 tag at the top of the main content, and then break out other sub topics with H2-H6 tags as appropriate. Make sure to use your keywords in these headings and in the content, but once again don’t overdo it.

9- Set Up Internal Linking Structure

I think that internal linking is one of the most commonly overlooked things for most sites. In fact, Ken Lyons wrote a great post about it that goes into more detail than I can in this post: Want More Link Juice? Here’s an Easy Way to Get It

10- Decide on a Consistent Title Structure

A site should use the same title structure throughout the site. Pick your convention and stick with it. A good format to follow is to have a phrase that includes main keywords for the page and describes what the page is about, followed by a separator (- or | are common), and then your brand name. For example, “Professional SEO Services for Organic Website Optimization | SEO.com”. Keep these titles to under 65-70 characters so they don’t get truncated in the search results.

11- Include Meta Descriptions on Every Page

Since most of the search engines can choose to use your meta description as your snippet in the search results, you should have a unique one written for every page. Include the main keywords and a call to action to encourage clicks. DON’T just make this tag a list of keywords.

12- Allow Inclusion for Other Meta Tags (canonical, robots, etc.)

If you’re using any kind of tracking codes or other things on your site that create duplicate URLs, you’re going to want to be able to include a canonical tag on those pages. Also, depending on how your site is built you may need to include other meta tags like a robots tag and others. Make sure your site’s back end allows for this when necessary.

13- Incorporate Social Media Sharing Buttons

In case you missed it, social media is a pretty big thing right now. I’m not a big fan of the generic ShareThis button, but you need to have some kind of social media sharing buttons on your products and other important pages. Do some research to decide which social networks are best for your site and then stick with those.

More general information about social media:

14- Install Analytics Tracking

If you don’t have any kind of analytics tracking installed, you have no way to tell where you traffic is coming from, what’s working, and lots of other crucial information. Pick a solution and get it installed. Popular ones include:

Make sure that the software you go with will allow you to block your office IP address, track conversions, ecommerce revenues generated through different online sources, and anything else that will help you to understand what is actually affecting your bottom line.

15- Set up and Verify Webmaster Tools Account

Through Google Webmaster Tools you can find out a lot about how Google sees your site, and can give them indications on how to handle certain parameters, submit your XML sitemap, and be notified of problems they find with your site. Bing’s Webmaster Center is coming along, so it’s worth it to go ahead and verify that one as well.

16- Follow Web Standards for HTML, CSS, and Database Programming

The more you follow standards, the easier it will be for someone else to come along later and make changes or modify the site. It’s a real problem when a site’s backend code or database is so complex that it has to be rebuilt later in order for it to be changed.

17- Generate an XML Sitemap

It only takes a few minutes to do it, but once the site is live make sure you create and XML sitemap and submit it to the major search engines through their webmaster tools accounts. It’s even better if you can set this up so that it automatically updates and pings the search engines whenever a change is made.

18- Create a Robots.txt File

When you create your robots.txt file make sure that you are disallowing any pages or directories that you don’t want the search engines crawling. Standard examples would be login pages, search results pages, and shopping cart pages. You should also include a link to your XML sitemap as well. Also, make sure you test this file in your Google Webmaster Tools account to make sure it is working correctly.

Here’s a great site that talks more in detail about how to create a robots.txt file: About /robots.txt

If you follow these 18 guidelines you’ll launch a site that is in great shape as far as SEO is concerned. If you’re an SEO, feel free to add anything else to this list in the comments.

Filed Under: SEO, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Convert More Leads With a Cleaner Website

March 23, 2010 By Nathan Blair Leave a Comment

A big part of marketing is putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Business owners should likewise take a step back occasionally and look at their website from the customer’s perspective. Let’s take a look at the home pages of two websites so you will see exactly what I’m talking about.

As you look at these sites, act like you are the customer and you have no ties to either one. You go looking to buy Widget X online and you find this website listed first:

Exhibit A

cluttered website

How user friendly is this site?  In other words, how easy is it for a customer to look at this website and know exactly what they are supposed to do in a few seconds time?

Now, you return to the search results and you find this website:

Exhibit B

UGMONK

What you see above is a clean, orderly interface. You know exactly what they sell, and they make it easy to buy. The design is excellent, and the checkout process is simple.  I actually went through the process of buying a shirt on this site, and I was done after a few easy steps.

Why you should care

Sometimes website owners get so used to their website that it becomes hard to see past the usability flaws. Before they know it, the site starts looking like Exhibit A when it should look as good as Exhibit B. Hopefully you don’t have a site like the first one up above, but I’m willing to bet yours could still use some improvement. Here are a few areas where your site might be suffering and what you can do about it.

Too much text distracts from the call to action

Don’t get caught in the trap of cramming too much text onto your homepage. Unfortunately, if you try to give readers all the information at once, you risk boring or confusing them. That leads to high bounce rates and less conversions. Bounce rate refers to how many site visitors leave your site from the same page they came from, without exploring any other pages. Obviously, you want to keep your bounce rate as low as possible.

How to do it right

All you need on the homepage is what leads a customer to buy now. If you want them to buy a t-shirt, put up a big picture of a t-shirt. Put the price right underneath it. Then either make it clickable, or put a big bold button to the right of it that says something like “buy now”. If you don’t sell t-shirts, apply this advice to your product. Simplicity will work anywhere.

Make your content to the point

When you have to include text on the homepage, it must be clear and to the point. Consider the what, why, when, where, and how, and answer it as concisely as possible. Test out your site content by getting somebody else to read it. If they get it the first time, and it’s perfectly clear (avoid industry jargon), you’ve got something to go with. Also, don’t forget the navigational text should be simple, too. Avoid having a top menu, left sidebar menu, right sidebar menu, mini menu, bottom menu, etc. Just put it up top or on the left side and be done with it.

Color and size matter

Pick the area on the page where you want to direct the most eyeballs and make it stand out. If it is a “Sign Up” or “Buy Now” button, color it in stark contrast to the background so it’s easy to see. Make your main call to action button larger than your intuition tells you, and put it in a prominent and clean area of the homepage. You have unlimited options, but the concept of bold and obvious remains.

You might need a redesign

Most of you would agree that the red and blue thing at the top of this post needs a website redesign. The hard part is acknowledging that your site needs one too. Moving buttons around, changing colors, and cutting out text is enough for a lot of websites, but some are too far gone. If you’re there, start from scratch with a designer you trust. Just make sure that your designer knows how to design a site that converts into sales.

Conversion is an essential part of search engine marketing because it deals with what happens after the customer has clicked on your search engine listing. Make sure you are balancing your resources between search results and conversion, because nobody will purchase your amazing product if they can’t find it on your site.

*Exhibit B is the totally rad Ugmonk.com. Buy one of their shirts.

Filed Under: marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,