The Pragmatic Marketer

My last few postings have focused on paid search and how landing page best practices can help improve conversions. So I thought this week I ‘d change it up and take a look at some basic best practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), specifically:

1. Identifying the right keywords
2. Optimizing your content correctly
3. Paying attention to keyword density

Optimizing a website to improve search engine rankings actually involves two key activities:

1. Embedding appropriate search terms in your website content, so that Google sees the association of your content with those terms, and includes you in the organic results it returns.

2. Developing as many (appropriate) inbound links to your website as possible, so that Google views you as being highly relevant for a given subject.

I’m going to focus on keywords this week. I’ll cover off link-building in a separate posting sometime in the near future.

Selecting the Right Keywords
To effectively optimize your website you must first establish which keywords and keyword phrases are most relevant to your business.

If you haven’t already done so, the best way to achieve this is to kick off a paid search campaign, coupled with an intelligent landing page program, to see which keyword phrases perform best. This will yields three key benefits:

1. You can track actual conversions vs. simple clicks, which is a much better measure of keyword value.

2. You get empirical evidence of what real people are actually searching for, vs. making educated guesses about which keywords to optimize against.

3. You’ll generate real inbound leads en route that you can hand off to your sales team.

Optimizing Your Content Correctly
Once you’ve generated a list of priority keywords, you should optimize one or maximum two keywords/ keyword phrases on each page of your website. First and foremost you must ensure that these keywords are included in your headings (H) tags, as Google pays a lot of attention to page headings, and reflects this in your search rankings. To do this, make sure your site pages are coded in such a way that main page headlines are H1 tags and subheads are H2 or H3 tags, and incorporate your keywords appropriately. You should also incorporate keywords into your main body content and you can also add them to alt and comment tags - but don’t overdo it. Google will penalize you if you have too many keywords in a page, and this will be reflected in a lower page ranking.

Keyword Density
Research indicates that keyword density on any given web page should ideally be 3% to 5% of the total text on the page. So calculate the keyword density on each of your key pages to ensure you don’t exceed these optimal levels.

To calculate keyword density, don’t just focus on the page content that you can see. Google doesn’t differentiate between page content or meta content, so you shouldn’t either. When you’re calculating your overall word and keyword counts, be sure to include Title tags, Description tags and Alt tags. It’s widely agreed that Google no longer pays attention to Meta keywords, but Yahoo does, so include these in your counts too.

Of course, there are many other things you can do to maximize the success of your website optimization program, but these three items are so fundamental, you should really place them at the top of your task list.

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Sean O’Donovan is the owner of  FunnelBuilders, an internet marketing consultancy that helps technology organizations develop and implement intelligent internet marketing programs to generate actionable in-bound sales leads  -  www.funnelbuilders.com  

I was watching a very compelling webinar from Ion Interactive a couple of weeks back and was pleased to see that this cutting edge internet marketing agency is very closely aligned with my own thinking on landing page best practices.

 Like me, they preach four best practices for landing page programs:

1. A landing page is not a web page – avoid superfluous navigation

2. In your landing page headline, include the keyword searched

3. Entice the visitor to register by “selling” your value added content

4. Don’t let the registration form be a roadblock to conversions

 However, the webinar focused on a fifth best practice that intrigued me no end. They call it “pre-conversion segmentation.”

 The idea is to have a “pre-landing” page that helps you segment your visitors into different categories. You present this page immediately after someone clicks on your Google AdWords ad, before you serve up a landing page itself. Once visitors have segmented themselves based on this page, you can then serve up  landing pages that speaks most effectively to their needs.

 For example, you might have a Google AdWords campaign to promote an ERP solution.

 You run a pre-conversion segmentation page that has two big buttons on it and asks:

“Are you: An SMB or An Enterprise?”

 This is clear and easy to understand. It causes very little friction for the visitor, who self segments by clicking on one of the buttons.

 Now that you know something about the size of your visitor’s organization, you can serve up a landing page that is tailored to speak to particular needs, including access to value added content that’s business-appropriate– e.g.  for the SMB you might offer a whitepaper on “Ten Things to Look out For When Selecting an ERP for Small & Medium Businesses,” while for the Enterprise visitor you might offer one on “Deploying ERP across the Enterprise - Ten Tips to Assure Success.”

 By including pre-segmentation conversion in your landing page programs you can create significant improvements in conversion rates. Ion Interactive’s own research shows that it can increase conversions by 20% or more. That’s a very nice improvement for a fairly modest adjustment to a program.

 I have recently ‘published’ a handy reference presentation on post-click marketing best practices, including pre-segmentation conversion pages. You can download it here:

www.funnelbuilders.com/post_click_mktg.pdf

 
If, you want to start (or improve) your own landing page program but don’t have the bandwidth, expertise or resources, do feel free to call me. I’d love to help you build out a carefully crafted approach that delivers actionable inbound sales leads.

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 Sean O’Donovan is the owner of  FunnelBuilders, a consulting company that helps technology organizations develop and implement intelligent internet marketing programs to generate actionable in-bound sales leads -  www.funnelbuilders.com  

My last posting included some thoughts on how companies could be enjoying better success with their paid search programs by following some best practices in landing page design.

 For this post I’d like to focus on what happens after the prospect has completed the registration form on the landing page and clicked “Submit”?

 Many companies seem to think that all they need to do is the bare minimum to respond efficiently to the prospects request.

 First they throw up a short thank you page stating “The whitepaper that you requested has been sent to the email address you provided.” Then they follow up with a simple email, “Dear John, the whitepaper you requested is attached, thank you for you interest in XYZ company.”

 Apart from lacking creativity, this completely overlooks on two great selling opportunities.

 Your thank you page and associated email confirmation message provide two additional prospect touch points that you should leverage to your advantage. They both represent perfect opportunities for some online selling - to a prospect that’s already entered into a dialogue with you by completing a registration form.

 So, don’t just inform them how they’re going to receive the content they’ve requested. Take the opportunity to offer them access to other value added content, so they can become more engaged with your service or product offering.

 How do you do this? There are all sorts of ways:

• Offer them access to your complete whitepaper library - in exchange for additional contact information
•  Offer them access to an online demo – again, in exchange for additional contact information
•  Provide them with links to web site content that’s relevant to their original search term
•  Offer them a personal one-to-one demo over Webex, in exchange for more contact details
•  Offer them access to your complete case study library, again (you guessed it) in exchange for some more contact information
•  Provide them with access to an email newsletter sign up

 The bottom line is clear. Once your landing page visitor has shown a willingness to provide their contact information in exchange for some value-added collateral, the dialogue has started. All you have to do is be a little creative and take advantage of the selling opportunity that this represents.

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Sean O’Donovan is the owner of  FunnelBuilders, a consulting company that helps technology organizations develop and implement intelligent internet marketing programs to generate actionable in-bound sales leads -  www.funnelbuilders.com  

A couple of nights back I was wrapping up a presentation for a client pitch. I just needed to jump on the Internet and find a couple of examples of landing pages. One good and one bad.

I knew the bad one would be easy to find and I wasn’t wrong. Within ten minutes I had half a dozen doozies to choose from. The good one proved more elusive.

My Google search was extensive. I threw in term after term. Asset Management, Business Intelligence, CRM, EIA, Business Process Automation, Content Management, ERP, ITAM. I clicked and clicked and clicked. I must have racked up hundreds of dollars in click-through charges. Yet none of the ads I clicked took me to where I wanted to go.

I checked out pages from CA, HP, OpenText, NetSuite, Sybase, Information Builders, Oracle and IBM. All leaders in their fields, with vast marketing budgets and resources at their disposal. But it seemed that the marketers masterminding their paid search campaigns didn’t really understand the fundamentals of good landing page design.

So what were they missing? Well, in my world, a B2B landing page has just one objective – to get a visitor to register. And there are a few best practices that companies need follow to achieve this:

1. Immediately reassure visitors they are in the right place by:

 a. Repeating the search term they used in a compelling landing page headline
 b. Briefly articulating that you understand their pain and demonstrating how your solution can help resolve it

2. Don’t give them any options to click away from the page (other than possibly a home page link under your logo and a privacy policy link in your footer)

3. Make your call to action compelling by ’selling’ the value-added content you have on offer on the landing page

4. Make it easy and painless to register (just 2 or 3 manadatory fields - not 10 to 15!)

A few of the landing pages I looked at got most things right but then fell at the registration form. When a site visitor faces the prospect of filling out a dozen or more mandatory fields, many will beat a hasty retreat. And that’s going to have a really negative effect on response rates.

The solution is to simplify your landing page registration. If you present your prospect with four or five key information fields, with just first name and email mandatory, your conversion rates will soar. Then all you need to do is feed these leads into a nurturing program and gently move them along to sales readiness.

At the end of the day, the landing page is just the starting point for a conversation with a prospect. Make it easy for them to respond and who knows, it could flower into a beautiful relationship.

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Sean O’Donovan is the owner of  FunnelBuilders, a consulting company that helps technology organizations develop and implement intelligent internet marketing programs to generate actionable in-bound sales leads.