The X-Factor Blog

People arrive at a website with a specific intent. This could be to learn more about a problem or a product. Some come ready to take action and buy.

Start by answering the question, “Why are they coming?” What problem are they trying to solve? People do not come to learn about your company or even your products. They come to learn how to solve their specific problem. What you have is the answer to their problem.

Think about your website from their point of view. Once you understand their questions then you need to answer and address their needs. Just provide the answers they are searching for.

Different keyword phrases will indicate different levels of buyer intent. Use keywords to get insight into buying behavior. Understand how people think about your products. Learn what questions people are considering as they are preparing to buy.

You want to identify buyer keywords. These are phrases that show intent to take action. These are different than information seeking phrases. Simply focusing on attracting visitors that are motivated buyers will improve your website’s conversion rate.

These are phrases that are more specific and show intent to take action. These are different than information seeking phrases. Buyer phrases have more words, are more specific such as make and model and will frequently include city or other local terms.

Buyer intent is an important part of conversion rate optimization. Create your website and its content with your best buyer in mind.

Go to your competitor websites and see what keywords they are using. What phrases are they using that apply to what you sell? Look at the keywords they list in their Meta Tags. If you go to their web page and click on view source in your browser, you can look at the keywords they list in their META Tags.

You can also go to sites like keywordspy.com, spyfu.com or compete.com to uncover which phrases they are targeting. One of my favorite tools to use is SEO Digger

SEODigger is an excellent tool for doing competitor research. It will list out keywords that are in the top 20 results that their website is currently ranking for as well as their current search volumes. It also lists out other competitors as well as a keywords cloud.

Picking the right keywords is part art and part science. You need to understand the psychology of how and why people search. People search the web to find information, answers and a solution to a problem. Sometimes it is best to get the help of keyword research services to set the right foundation for your search engine optimization.

Your goal is to get arriving visitors to take action. You need to answer their unasked question and then guide them toward a specific action.

1. Audience: Are you attracting the right visitors to your website? The best website won’t convert visitors if you’re targeting the wrong keywords. Use keywords centered on the answers visitors looking for when they arrive.
2. 3 Second rule: Your website needs to communicate your central message within 3 seconds. Your unique selling proposition and your opt-in forms need to be easily seen without scrolling down.
3. Initial Hook: Grab their attention with a compelling headline that includes the phrase they were searching for. Your objective is to grab their attention and pique a potential customer’s interest. Your opening paragraph should address the need they came to satisfy.
4. Benefits: Visitors want to know what’s in it for them. How will you make your customer’s life better? Spell your benefits out clearly on your home page. State the advantages of your services over your competition. Save your product features for later steps in your selling sequence.
5. Compelling Copy: Effective copywriting attracts targeted visitors and begins the selling process by attracting attention and building interest in what you have to offer. Website visitors come looking for answers to their questions or problems. Merely giving information or logically presenting your products is not enough.
6. Call to Action: Drive your visitors toward a desired action. Make it clear and highly visible. Place your primary call to action where it can be easily seen without scrolling down. It needs to be highly visible to arriving visitors. Examples of calls to action include- “Buy Now”, “Order Now”, “Join Today”, and “Sign Up For a Free Report”.
7. Placement: The upper right quadrant of your web page gets the best response. Place your phone number in upper right with email sign-up forms just below.

Tips are from SEO coaching and conversion expert Doug Williams

In SEO, the goal is to bring relevant visitor traffic. To do this, we need to increase search rankings on the regular Internet search engines such as Google as well as the blog search engines.

Select Keywords: Use keywords to get insight into buying behavior. Understand how people think about your products. Learn what questions people are considering as they are preparing to buy. Identifying your keywords for your website goes beyond search engine optimization (SEO).

Building these keywords into every facet of your website forms the messaging that allows you to better connect with your prospect. This translates into higher conversion rates. Keywords should be built into page names, page headlines (H1 tags), navigation and the content on each page. The keywords should be worked into the call to actions.

Title Tag: The only META tag that is still important is the Title tag. Place your keywords into the beginning (for prominence). Place your company name or website at the end of the Title tag. Title tags should be 65-70 characters. They can be longer, Google just won’t display over 70 characters.

H1, H2 Heading Tags: H1 Tags are the main web page headline. They should contain your most important keyword phrase and grab an arriving visitor’s interest. Many sites that have H1 headings, waste this important real estate with a very prominent WELCOME showing on their home page. H1 tags should include the primary keyword phrase for the page. Additional keywords can be placed in the H2 tags.

Internal Linking: Link to other pages within your website using phrases such as “learn more.” It is common for internet marketers to overlook the power of keywords in anchor text when directing visitors to deeper pages. These internal links are powerful SEO tools. See chapter 11 for a more in depth discussion.

For more helpful SEO tips, go to the Doug Williams SEO Services Company website.

Corporate awards motivate employees and build corporate pride. Reward the things that employees do to meet the business goals that drive your organization. Recognize your employees when they do what you want them to do.

Sales Incentives: Salespeople thrive on meeting their goals. A great sales recognition program combines a monetary bonus with a symbolic award. When paired together, these two items create an attractive gift of appreciation that salespeople will strive toward.

Leadership: Awards that recognize leadership can be given to any employee who goes above and beyond the call of duty in your organization. Examples of leadership awards include taking initiative to solve problems or offering new ideas to make your business more efficient or effective.

Attendance: Any employee who has exceptional attendance is a person you count on to make your organization work well on a daily basis. Recognize these people so that they know their contribution is important to you and the success of the business.

Team Achievement: Team recognition shines the spotlight on a group of individuals rather than just one person. The most profound difference between individual and team recognition is that team recognition honors multiple contributors and individual recognition does not.

Years of Service: In today’s business world it is rare to find an employee who is committed to one organization for an extended period of time. Therefore it is important for an organization to recognize the employees who are committed to the business year after year.

Corporate Awards: Showing appreciation builds a bridge between you and your staff. It opens the door of communication and helps them see you as a person, not just the boss. Corporate awards of any type helps instill company and team pride. Use corporate awards to build your corporate culture.

Go to your competitor websites. What phrases are they using that apply to what you sell?

You need to attract traffic to your web page. You need to optimize around the best keyword phrases that describe what your buyer needs. People search the web to find information, answers or a solution to a problem.

1. Competitor keyword Tools: Use tools like keywordspy.com, spyfy.com or ispionage.com to uncover which phrases your competitors are actually getting ranked for. Most of these tools will show organic and PPC phrases. The value of PPC phrases is they show the phrases that they want to get traffic for.
2. Visit their site: Look at their titles, keywords and description tags. Look at their page headlines. This will show which phrases that they are trying to rank for.
3. Anchor Text: Which phrases are your competitors using in their link building? These are likely the most important phrases that they are investing in. Use the opensiteexplorer.org backlink analysis tool to uncover which phrases they are using.
4. Keyword Research: Use a keyword research tool such as Market Samurai to find which phrases that your competition is using will be the best for you. You may be better off using a reliable keyword research service and benefit from their experience and insights.

Crystal awards are beautiful in design and offer a brilliance that can’t be found in other types of awards like medallions or sculptures. They add that special luxury.

Recognition planners often choose crystal awards for recognition occasions due to their broad appeal and unique characteristics. Unlike other rewards, such as travel, merchandise, or gift cards, a personalized crystal award is not something that your employees would typically purchase for themselves. That’s what makes them so special to the recipient.

Why Crystal? Crystal Awards bring prestige and a touch of class into any home, office, or workplace. Recognition planners can select from several types of crystal awards, including lead crystal, jade crystal, and optical crystal.

According to our research, the most popular type of award for a recognition program is optical crystal. It is completely flawless and is available in a variety of different shapes and sizes. More on selection of crystal awards.

Hiring the right SEO firm can greatly impact your business. Will they help attract website traffic? Will they attract the right visitors that are interested in what you sell? This all starts with the SEO quote.

A SEO services company should always begin with a SEO website assessment. This will become the basis for recommending what type and strength of SEO that should be performed on your website. This should include a thorough analysis to see if there are any technical problems with your website.

Keywords: The SEO services company will need to know what keyword phrase or phrases that you will want to be found for. They will look at searches per day, competition level, should local terms be used, etc.

Website: The website itself is looked at for number of pages, current traffic volume, Title tags, H1s, and the number of pages that could be optimized. The number and quality of inbound links as well as what anchor text is being used to link back the website.

Technical Problems: These are things that would prevent your website from getting top rankings. This could be an all Flash website, a site built in frames or a website that is all graphics with little or no text. There could be spamming methods such as hidden text (white text on a white background), cloaking, keyword stuffing, etc.

The SEO services company is now ready to recommend the SEO needed for your website along with the price. SEO should include both an initial SEO (on-page) as well as monthly SEO. The SEO recommendation should include keyword research and selection, optimization of pages, content growth strategy and a linking strategy.

Brand new domains are great, but it can take one to two years to get top rankings for competitive phrases. It takes this long before Google will trust a new domain enough to reward it with page one results. Some call this the Google aging filter.

You can purchase pre-owned domains that are already aged for as low as $20. You do this by purchasing expiring domains from one of the registrar auctions. These are domains that people have let lapse and you can purchase them before they are deleted. This deletion resets the age to zero. One of my favorites is GoDaddy Domain Auctions. Look for the expiring auctions.

Tips for selecting domains

1. Backlinks: Many times you can find domains with hundreds or even thousands of existing backlinks. This is a very important factor in selection.
2. Age: Domains should be at least 2 years old… ten years is ideal.
3. Indexed: Does Google have indexed or cached pages from that domain? Do a Google search for site:yourdomain.com. Note which URLs are indexed. You will need to know these when you create a new website.
4. Google PR: If it already has Google PR, great. If not, it may quickly return once you put a website on it if it has age and backlinks.
5. History: Check what kinds of websites have been on that domain by looking at the WayBackMachine. Has there been a website on that domain continuously? Stay away from sites that have had gambling, porn or pharmacy websites on it.

If you have checked these factors and all looks good, then buy your new domain as a platform to launch your new venture. These older domains respond well to SEO.

Optimization Tip courtesy of the SEO Services Company, Doug Williams, SEO services.

Many factors go into writing web content that really gets people to take action. Writing for the web is different than writing for print. It is shorter, simpler and to the point. Writing content for your website is brief and to the point with shorter paragraphs, shorter sentences and fewer words.

1. They need something: People are looking for solutions and answers rather than to learn about your company. Focus on the benefits and answer your visitor’s questions “So, what’s in it for me?” “What am I doing here,” “How do I do it,” and “Where can I go next?”
2. First Impressions: Make your headline eye-catching. When they first arrive, they need to immediately see your sales pitch, your offering and even your order button. Don’t make them scroll down or switch pages.
3. It’s about them: Spend less time writing about your company and answer how you will solve their problem. Remember, your primary duty is to give them what they need.
4. Be brief! Use shorter sentences, words and paragraphs. Use one idea per paragraph and use about half the words than you would use in writing for print.
5. You have just 3 seconds! Internet users are active, not passive. If they don’t immediately see what they are looking for, they are gone within 3 seconds. First impressions are critical.
6. How will you impact their life? Write about the benefits. Benefits are what sell. Benefits are what features mean. Features are what products do.
7. Scannable: Your reader wants to scan down your web page and get the gist of it before reading. The main points should stand out in sub-headlines, lists, images, colors, italics and indented text.

Good content writing entertains, educates and convinces your audience. By skillfully weaving in keywords, content writing also gets the attention of the search engines.