Web Design & SEO For Small Businesses

Getting a better conversion from your website is very important. Why? Because your conversion rate is measured by the number potential visitors who are going to buy your products or services. Many website owners focus solely on to bring a lot of visitors to the site but they hardly focus on making that visitors to buyers. This problem can be solved by making some simple changes to their existing site or layout which will have a huge impact on overall conversion rate of the website.

Below is 10 techniques to improve your sites conversion with minimal expense.

1. Make it easy for Users – Make it easy for the user to use the site. It sounds pretty simple but there several elements in the design which make the visitors difficult to use the website, like for example, accessibility of your website, browser compatibility and finally the usability of the site. A potential visitors always look for more information about the products and services before they make a purchasing decision. Things like these can reduce the chance reduced sales from your website.

2. Value your Users Time – Time is important for everyone. If you website have too many complicated questions and hard to find things what the visitors is looking for is making the visitor to waste their time. This means scaring your visitors away. Some of the common mistake are asking too much information which is not required, having several steps to take action, important information are not able to find it easily etc.

3. Be honest to the user – Most people are very cautious about online transactions and giving out information online. So you need to keep them honest to increase your conversion for example having physical address, a valid phone number and some online trust certificates will increase the credibility of your website in the eyes of the user and increase your conversion rate.

4. Have a clear Return Policy/Privacy Policy – As I said above online customers always need to trust you so make clear everything in your return policy if you are having a e-commerce kind of site or privacy policy if you are collecting a lead. Online visitors don’t like their personal information being distributed to others. Also make these link to these pages easily accessible for example on a product page you can find return policy easily it can increase conversion as well as on the contact us form if you have privacy policy prominently placed can increase the conversion rate.

5. Multiple ways to reach you – All online visitors are not alike they are different in their approach as well as the online behavior is different too. They user different ways to reach you or find information on your website. Some online buyers like to talk before they buy other prefer email communication etc. So user multiple ways like live chat, phone number in all pages, contact us page easily accessible, forums if they want to discuss about your products and a blog as well to community with the user. Offering multiple ways to communicate increase your conversion rate.

6. User Reviews – This technique applies to ecommerce sites if users can provide honest opinion about your products through user review it will help the new users to read these opinions and make a decision. As testimonials increase your credibility users review will increase the chances of increasing your conversion rate. Provide a place for users to give their feedback about your products.

7. Discount Codes and Coupons – Discount coupons are not a new concept, shopper offline has always been enthusiastic about discount coupons because it helps them to have a substantial saving on their budget. Recently online discount coupons and promo codes has gain rapid importance. Today most of the ecommerce sites uses promo codes to increase their sales. Also there are several places online where you can promote your online discount codes. If you use Google local listing they also allow you have promo code for your business. These extra steps with online discount codes can increase your conversion as well.

8. Pricing Strategy – Again this is more relevant to ecommerce related sites because most of the online buyers are not aware of their shipping and handing cost until they reach the check out stage. If you could offer shipping calculators or a page specifically for shipping with all the cost details the customers would have a clear idea how much it is going to cost them before they buy. A good pricing strategy will always increase the conversion rate of your ecommerce site.

9. Tracking with Analytics – Imagine a football team coach, coaching a team without keeping a track of which strategies worked and didn’t work to beat the competition. This is the same with if you didn’t use a web analytic tool to track the activities on a website. Several website owners loose many opportunities to increase leads and sales because they fail to track and have a strategy to increase their ROI. In addition tracking the site through analytics will also tell why they are buy and why they are not. Web Analytics are also the key to reducing shopping cart abandonment rate. Use web analytics to measure the drop off in the sales funnel or buying process.

10. Website Testing – Not all websites are perfect it takes time and effort to make a website work. Now a days there are tools to test your website to find which one works and which didn’t work. Using tools like Google website optimizer you can test each every page of your website and see which layout or changes in design element got your the maximum sales. You can test anything on a website using these tools and see which one work better for you and increase your ROI.

There is no better way to increase your conversion of your website than doing nothing. Start right now, the more you experiment with your website the more you will learn and more opportunity to improve the conversion of your website. Testing these techniques on your website and constantly tracking them will see improvement and increase in your ROI.

Which conversion techniques worked for your websites? Please feel free to leave that in the comments.

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Ranking your website above the SERPs for relevant keywords is key to any successful search engine optimization. Especially if you need to optimize for local search results getting your domain listed for the top 10 local search results will make a big difference. Local internet marketing is a very affordable method where you get targeted visitors for your business. Compared to organic ranking, local search marketing can achieve results much faster.

1) Keyword placement – Using the right keywords of your business. When you list your business for local search engines instead of using your business name use you main keyword phrase in the title of the listing. Also use major keywords in your description of the listings as well as under specialty or expertise fields.

2) Use you local address – Also use the local address while optimizing for local search marketing. One of the particular attention that search engines likes is the proximity of the address used in pages you are listing. Try to use your local telephone number for your local search marketing link building. emarketingmatador.com has a great list of directories for an effective local search marketing link building check them out.

3) User Review are important – Reviews always helps increase your conversation of your website. I don’t suggest to get fake reviews. Once you have successful completed your project of your clients ask them about giving an review for you in local search engine listings. Don’t try to fake user reviews. Visitors can easily identify a fake review from an genuine one and smart enough not to buy from you.

4) Display Images/Videos – Now local search engine listing allows you to have images, logos and even videos. Take advantage of these features while listing your business with google local and yahoo local. Logos and images will increase credibility  and branding. You can upload of your business premises picture as well. If you have a good marketing video upload that as well. Online videos spending has increase because online video drives engagements which will help you to accomplish your primary marketing objective of showing your unique selling proposition to increase your online leads and revenue.

5) Linkbuilding with local directories – Link Building is key for local search marketing, because local search listing is based on the weight of the backlink each site is gained. Check out your competitors in the local search listing and identify from where they are getting their local link juice identify those pages and try to get listed there. Try different cities and different niches and see from where they are getting those listings and get listed there.

6) Keep you business information up to date - Update your address and phone number in the local directories up to date. Most often we don’t keep track of directories/website where we submit the website, It is always useful to have a spreadsheet and add the listing when ever you make a submission.

If any of you have any other tips on local search marketing please provide that on the comments.

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25 Best ways to Promote your Website Online

Competitive analysis is a form of evaluation of your competition directly or indirectly with your business. The Good Advantage of Online competitive analysis is because you have access to your competitor’s business information and their website online which might not be able to gain similar information offline. This gives us a better opportunity for marketers to analysis the competitive data for their advantage.

Some of the benefits of conducting a online competitive analysis is it help to identify with whom you are competing against in the market and also to find what’s your strengths and weakness. Through Competitive analysis you can identify your unique selling proposition which your competition is not offering.

Here are the 10 best ways to identify your competitive analysis:-

1. Using a variety of resources to find where your competitor is bidding on Pay Per Click. If you think your competition is bidding on certain search engines and not on all then they are getting a good ROI from that pay per click, may be because of low competition in that particular pay per click search engine.

2. Identify who is coming up in the natural search results, because for a site to come up under natural search results means they have a well optimized site. So you need to focus in the same area they are focusing on your website from the optimization point.

3. Identify whether your competition is utilizing partnerships, outsourcing, and relationship with other websites and is it beneficial for your business to have these kind of relationship with other websites.

4. Need to find your competition is a member of business and trade associations, and registries and join them if it benefits and if possible to get a referral link on their websites which helps in your link popularity and online visibility.

5. Identify how your competition is making money from the website and their revenue model. Also look for more potential area where your competition is not targeting tap those areas.

6. During the course of analysis Use Practical method by ordering online and make use of your competition services to find how good is their customer services, how is their online sales process and identify what they are doing right or wrong and take advantage of their mistakes.

7. If your competition is offering free mailing or newsletter subscription join them to identify their marketing strategies.

8. Using search engine analysis from where they are getting backlinks, any bookmarks in social media sites. After identify from where they are getting these links try to get link on those web pages.

9. Analyze your competitors PPC ads which will give you how to modify your PPC campaign ads.

10. Use different online tools like Alexa, Compete, Ranking tools to find what are their rankings and ratings are and do that on a regular basis to find who they are doing compared to your website.

An effective competitive analysis gives you a lot of information about your competition and will discover your business strengths and weakness and improve your rankings online.

Google Recently started showing authority listing for some sites for search phrases either for their business name or keywords relevant to that category. Recently Nate Whitehill posted that his blog gained an authority listing. There are several factors which determine for Google to list your site as an authority. Till now nothing is clear about it, some evidence that links and relevant content could be the factor to be deemed as an authoritative.

If you are running a sitemap and have a Google webmasters account you can see weather you site has gain authority listing. Under Google Webmaster Tools on the right navigation you can see a link called links under that category you can see Site Links.

Some of my evidence shows the following factors determine a authority listing.

1) You domain name or business name used in link pointing to your website. Also the same term being using inside the content of the web pages.

2) The Domain name is been used as an anchor text while linking.

3) You Domain name or Business name has links from local directories and sites like Better Business Bureau.

4) The term people searches and the destination pages has a strong relevancy.

5) A search Query which has been searched for several times to reach that destination.

6) Link from higher Page rank web pages.

The bottom-line is relevancy and links of your web pages and anchor text of your business.

Most people when they think of website promotion, they think about search engine marketing. But actually there are different ways to promote a website without depending on just search engines to get targeted traffic. All you need to do is thinking in a creative way, try innovative ideas and different way how to promote it. Online Marketing is not just all about SEO it is all about Creative Marketing. If you can do it right, there is more waiting for your website to come out of sandbox, link popularity and dependency on Search Engines.

I have put together 25 different ways on how to promote your website online absolutely free.

1) Web Content optimization – Content is key to any website. If you website is optimized for search engine it will definitely going to be noticed and started getting traffic and links.

2) Link Building – Links are so crucial for online visibility not only to the search engine eyes but link from good relevant sites can bring you targeted traffic and get noticed.

3) Article Distribution – Article syndication is one of the best and cheapest way to promote your website. There are hundreds of article directories out there to promote.

4) Online Press Releases -Online Press Release or press statement is a perfect way to attract media attention or publicity for products and services of your business.

5) Freebies – Giveaways and Freebies can attract a lot of attention as well as links from other websites. If you can create a unique tool or useful free product online it can get noticed and drive traffic to your site.

6) Unique Ad Creation – Pay Per Click Campaign is all about how you create a good ad, the more unique the better, A well written ad gets attention of the search engine visitors and will click on your ad.

7) List Building Email promotion – List building or email list building is a good way to bring visitors to your website, if you provide a newsletter subscription or free advice on your niche you have the right to ask for the visitors email address and name which can be used for future promotions.

Blogging – Blogging is a newest buzz word out there every business are getting into this new web2.0 marketing technique. Blog commonly knows as web logs where visitors can engage in a conversation.

9) Sponsored Reviewing – A review about your website is another way to promote your website or blog. There are several blogs and website that does this.

10) Commenting – Comments on review sites and blogs is a another way to do a promotion. If you comment and engage in a conversation in blogs which is relevant to your industry chances people will visit your website.

11) Social Media – This is the new craze among marketers Place like Facebook, Myspace, digg and stumbleupon can bring in tons of traffic if you promote it properly.

12) Online Contests – Facilitate and run contests on your website can get viral if people willing to participate in contest will spread the word through their website and blogs.

13) Forum Posting – This is the place where like minded people hang around, So to get noticed you need to engage in threads asking question and answers related to your topic.

14) Video Marketing – Videos are an effective way to promote your website. If you can broadcast relevant videos related to your industry visitors will folk to your website.

15) Affiliate Marketing – affiliate, reseller, and associate programs will allow your products and services to be listed on other websites which increases sales.

16) Mobile Media Marketing – can be mobile advertising, mobile search, mobile messaging, ring tones… and this is still in its early stages.

17) E-books Marketing – E-book marketing is a great way to achieve popularity of your website, If you can offer free tips and ideas via e-Books which can be downloaded for free it can create a viral effect.

18) Joint Venture - Same Target Customers and Partner Up With other online marketers who share the same niche you can sell your products to their list as well visa verse. But doing joint ventures you can get targeted traffic.

19) Banner Advertisements – One of the oldest forms of online advertisement to get noticed online still it works if you can create a eye-catching banner ad.

20) Sponsored Links – Search Engines hate this but still you can get a sponsored link weather it is do follow or no follow on high traffic relevant website it is a great way to promote a website.

21) Testimonials – A strong guarantee makes it safe for prospects to give you a try. A customer who is indecisive about your product or service may go ahead and give you a try if there’s no risk. The guarantee will push many customers “over the edge” when there’s doubt about making the purchase.

22) Podcasting – Podcasting your website content is another way to promote your website. Your digital media files which are distributed over the web would be downloaded into media players and listeners will follow your website.

23) Classified Ads – Classified ads online through Craigslist.com, usfreeads.com, Squidoo, Hubpages is another way to promote your website.

24) Local Search – If you website is local based then you can submit you Local Search databases like Google, Yahoo and MSN local as well as other local directories.

25) Interviews – Finally if you an expert in your niche you can offer interviews in different websites and blog which will give more exposure to your website.

Hope these techniques if implemented in your online marketing to-do list you can see success in your online venture and also I think this atleast motivates you to start. If you feel that there are other different ways please, feel free to comment.