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.

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

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.

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.

Don’t put up a website just to have one. You need a real business reason, or why spend the money? A website should be designed to help you reach your business goals. Here are 5 reasons to have a business website.

1. Old Methods aren’t working. Yellow pages, newspaper ads and magazine advertising are more expensive than the sales they bring in. Websites are the new media and are cheaper and more effective.
2. Find Customers: Use your website to generate new business. Entice the visitor with free items in exchange for their name and e-mail address. A lead generation website needs a flow of interested visitors with a strong call to action.
3. Transact Business: Create an ecommerce website that closes the deal and collects the money online. Your web store can sell products or services. Products can be delivered digitally. Your web store is open 24/7.
4. Serve Customers: Tell current or new customers about your business. What you do, your business hours. Answer the questions your customers are asking through great content and a strong FAQ area.
5. Educate: Use text, images, video, blogs and email to teach a skill or connect with your audience. Offer useful information which is education based marketing. Establish trust and credibility. People will listen with enthusiasm when they are not receiving a sales pitch.

Before you create a website, decide your business goals and objectives. Then craft a website that will help reach your goals. Otherwise your website will just end up sitting there serving for no real purpose.

Does your business website just sit there without producing any leads or sales? Do you have visitors coming to your site without buying or taking action? If your answer is yes, then you need to apply our 3 step formula.

For your offer:

1. Make it compelling
2. Make it visible
3. Get them to trust you.

Compelling: Do you understand why your visitor is coming to your site? What problem are they looking to solve? Your goal is to present a website that clearly solves their issue. Focus on the benefits and answer your visitor’s question “So, what’s in it for me?” Other questions that need answering include: “What am I doing here,” “How do I do it,” and “Where can I go next?”

Visible: 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. You want your targeted best buyer to see and then take some specific action such as sign-up, request a report or buy now. The “offer” must be valuable to your targeted best buyer.

Trust: People arrive to your site suspicious and thinking “Can I trust these people?” They will look for signs of whether they should trust you before they are willing to buy or even sign-up for a newsletter. Show your phone number and address. Post your privacy policy, shipping procedure and your refund policy. Show social reviews and testimonials.

The most important thing is to anticipate what your visitor might be looking for and deliver that information… and more. Work to exceed their expectations.

Your About-Us page is there to build trust and credibility. Visitors want to know the business or the person behind the website. They want to know to know your story. They immediately want to know more about you. In their mind, they are asking: “Why should I trust you?” The job of your about-us page is to answer that question.

These pages should help people learn more about who you are, what you do, and why they can trust you. The about-us area for a website can be a single page or a section of pages, depending on your website.

Include things like your press releases / press room, an organizational profile, an investor relations section, disclaimers and legal information, careers and employment opportunities, public relations, affiliate programs, green initiatives / sustainability, community relations, frequently asked questions and sometimes the contact page.

Tell when your company was founded and how long you have been serving your industry. People enjoy reading the story on how a company got started and what led the founder to launch the business.

One definite trend is the increasing use of video to add a more personal engagement with the visitor. This can bring in the personality of the CEO or to highlight community and sustainability initiatives. Short videos of 2-4 minutes are best.