Search Engine Ranking Specialists

Search engine ranking is set by the organic result location of your website. If you have read the search engine results post, this gives a visual explanation of the difference of result types. Meaning, a local listing is not part of a page rank, they have their own ranking structure. Paid listings also do not factor into this. When it comes to search engine ranking, you need to be on page 1 to get real benefits from search engine traffic. 90% of people who search for a website using Google, Yahoo or Bing, do not go beyond page 1 before either clicking a result or typing in a new keyword phrase.

While no one at the search engines will tell you what the equation is that determines where you rank, I can tell you that site popularity plays a big role. The sad truth is that a bad site that gets a lot of traffic and a large quantitiy of backlinks will rank higher than a great website with little traffic and few backlinks. At least when going against the same keyword phrases.

Google analytics is a very good resource for helping make some sense of all the chaos, but if you are more comfortable with another analytics provider, by all means stay with them. If you have no source for analytics, then you really should start or hire someone to assist you with this. Yes this is in self-interest, but I will say it over and over again, it is more cost effective to outsource your website and emarketing services than trying to add these job tasks to yourself or an employee.

To have a clear "call to action," is not about a protest or support group, but rather laying out a web page so that the visitor does not have to think. Thinking is equal to confusion and confused people do not usually take an action. I will give some examples and guidelines.

When you began to read this post, did you look at this large picture before you began to read the words?

Most people's eyes are naturally drawn to a large contrasting image, so remember this can be good if used properly, but can also create a distraction if used poorly.

PLANNING

Before you begin to make changes to your website, you should first begin with a good plan. Having a good plan can save a lot of time and headaches. If you have and know how to use a graphics program like PhotoShop or PhotoScape, I would recommend doing a mock-up of the page.

LIMIT OPTIONS

Limiting options will make it easier on the visitor. It is good to limit the overall choices to under 3. This even applies to your products you offer. See the home page of my website and you will notice that I only offer 2 search engine ranking programs. Yes there are many variables that I could have offered and given unlimited changes and selections, but simplifying it makes it easy for you and your site visitor and hopefully new customer.

CREATE A SENSE OF URGENCY

When planning call to action, it is a good idea to use wording that creates a sense of urgency. A call to action should clearly tell users what you want them to do.

They should include active words such as:

• Call
• Buy
• Register
• Subscribe

These encourage users to take an action.

To create a sense of urgency and a need to act now, the above words used alongside phrases such as:

• Offer expires May 15th
• For a short time only
• Order now and receive a free gift
• Will help create the urgency you are looking for.

BIG AND CONTRASTING

This concept is very simple. Make the button, you want them to click to do the action you desire, big enough and contrasting enough so they do not have to look for it. White and gray do not contrast, but white and red do and red stands out very clearly from white.

WHITE SPACE AND LOCATION

To make your action button stand out, do not place the item in a location that the person has to hunt for it. Even big buttons get lost if you do not place them in an easy to find location. The center or near center of the page is good, but if the page is long, you may want to include the action button at multiple locations.

White space provides a visual barrier around your large/contrasting button and makes the item easier to find.

POST ACTION EXECUTION

The above basics have been about the page, but the last item to make sure to think about is the post action results. So the visitor clicked the button to register for your newsletter, but is the rest of the process easy, or are they just going to leave the site after taking the action? So the only way to know is to test it. Have you and others you know take a few minutes to try out your process and see if it is smooth or if it needs to be reworked.

The most basic website goals are traffic and conversion.

Traffic is the simplest to explain, so we will begin with that. Traffic is simply the number of visitors your website gets on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

While many people will also track traffic to each page, and various statistics like bounce rates, it is ultimately the goal to get a lot of traffic to a website because your website is useless if no one looks at it.

The second goal of conversion is still fairly simple, but the term conversion is generally confusing. It would be called sales, but conversion does not always mean selling the visitor something. Conversion can be a visitor signing up for a newsletter or submitting a contact request. In other cases it very much means a sale. If you are marketing a shoe and a visitor looks at the shoe you sell, do they buy it? Whether the answer is yes or no, it applies to your conversion rate.

The general rule of sales is you will get no 10 times before every yes, and while you will strive for a better conversion rate than that, you want to make sure that you are at least converting some visitors to sales or the desired result of a page.