Web Design & SEO For Small Businesses

If you have read most of my blog post, you might have noticed that give more importance to search engine optimization and conversion improvement for a website. In today’s world if you want to compete with your competitors to out rank your website you need a well knowledgeable SEO consultant to achieve the results. Gone are the days where you can achieve top ranking with simple directory submission and meta tags.

So Online Marketing involves a combination of search engine optimization website conversion improvement, social media marketing and analyzing of analytics of your website.

If you have website for your business and it needs internet marketing or if you need to start a new website and need the right kind of visibility, contact me through any of the following channels.

Email : info(at)digitallabz.com
Phone: 713-884-5102

Here are the services I offer.

Custom Search Engine Optimization

Custom Website Design

Social Media Profile Creation and Social Media Consulting

SEO consulting Services

In House SEO Training

PPC Campaign Management

Website Analytics Consulting

Website Conversion Improvement

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.

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.

In my previous post A landing page guide to Affiliate Marketers, I promised to get into more details about increasing landing page conversion for affiliate marketers. As I outlined in my previous post some of the strategies for landing page optimization. Today in this post I am going to say about the main elements which increase you’re landing page conversion by more than 15%-300% if you test it.

Improving your website conversion is continues process to generate better results from your website visitors. Optimizing your landing page also increases your sales and has a great ROI for each penny spend.

Below are some of the main elements which can increase conversion on the landing page after testing it in different ways according to your requirements.

1) Heading of the page: – Each landing page should be structured with a Heading which is very important since it is the first element each visitors see it, So It should be catch and draw the attention of the visitors The heading should be most relevant to the keyword search by the visitors If it is irrelevant the visitor might leave soon and your bounce rate increases which also affects your Quality Score with Google Adwords programs if you are using that as your PPC marketing effort.

2) Call to Action: – The location of the Call to Action makes a big difference on the landing page if you put up your call to action on the page where it is not prominent then it will reduce your conversion of the landing page, because it doesn’t stand out. Don’t confuse the visitors with too many call to action, I would advice to have more than 2 call to action on a landing age to avoid confusion, it can be a phone or a simple RFQ (lead) form. Use a lot of White space around your call to action to offset or highlight the call to action. You call to action can be an image or text but all it need to be prominent in the eyes of the visitor.

3) Copy of the Landing page: – Content is the key for any sales copy including for your landing page. The content of the landing page should have the ability to transforms words into a sale or a lead conversion. Let your copy of the landing page be more detailed in simple word which a layman can understand, with good amount of whitespace and bulleted point to highlight the benefits and features of your product and services. Copyblogger has a nice blog post about 10 tips for writing a ultimate landing page.

4) Graphics impact on landing pages:- Images create a big impact on your landing page conversion rate. The best method is to portrait an image which is relevant to your products or service offers that you re giving to your customers instead of using non-relevant graphics. Also make it a point to add a caption to your images these powerful words under the images can tempt the visitor to click on the image so make sure that the images are clickable and take to the conversion area such as a signup page or what ever action then visitors want to do for you.

5) Optimize your buttons :- Color and the size of the button matters in your conversion rate, Usually Red or Green convert better with a call to action on the button like click here, download or signup these text on the button is key for a better conversion. Also the location of the button is a very important issue because if the buttons are placed where it is not able to notice you are not going to get any click on that button. The size the bigger the better since it stand outs and you are asking the visitors to do some strong action on the landing page where chances are more than 60 % click on those big buttons. Urgency is what makes people to take action on the page so focus on the call to action on the button for high conversion rate.

6) Trustworthy testimonials and security: – People like to believe what other people say about the products and services before they buy. This part of winning of the visitors trust can be achieved by add testimonial on the page and try to make it a trustworthy one which people believe that is a genuine and win your trust and can increase your conversion overdoing the testimonials can hurt as well. Testimonials don’t need to be highlight or stand out; all you need to do is that it is visible on page so that before they do some action they are happy and satisfied that they are buying from a trusted place. Equally important is the privacy policy of your website even though not all visitors won’t read the privacy policy page but still it is good, since some really targeted visitors might go through your privacy policy which should at the footer which is the standard location and every visitor knows about it where it would be located.

7) Pricing:- What most of the affiliate marketers ignore about educating the visitor about the price of the products other related expense occur if they are proceeding with the checkout. Don’t try to hide the price with small fonts and make the visitor to buy the product or service. Make it clear to the visitor on the main landing page that how much it cost and if any additional costs like sales tax or shipping charges. This not only helps you to win the confidence of the visitor as well as increase conversion since the price are prominent next to the call to action either the product image or signup button.

Study shows that most of the online sales are lost on a site due to the lack of implementing the critical element that builds value and trust with your website visitors.

Every affiliate marketer faces several challenges today to make money online. I started out my affiliate marketing in the year 2000. But those days promoting other people products you had only a few option there where aren’t much affiliate merchants to promote. But today you can find affiliate merchants in each and every niche. But then why you still find affiliate marketing is a challenge.

In this Blog Post I am going to address this issue each new as well as expert affiliate marketers are facing:

1) Find time for your projects – Finding time for affiliate marketing is one of the biggest challenge each affiliate marketer faces. Weather they are a newbie or a super affiliates finding time is very hard. One of the best solutions for this is outsource. How I solved this problem of finding time for my projects was hiring people for certain tasks. If you are promoting a affiliate products it needs several task like writing, marketing, link building and of-course if you are doing paid marketing then you need the skills of PPC as well. Today you have several channels where you can find people to outsource, some for the source where I find people for my projects are cragislist.org, elance, scriptlance and getafreelancer. These places is an excellent source to find people as well as reliable and economical too.

2) Find the right Network - Most of the affiliate marketers are confused about to join which networks. You will hear several pros and cons about each network. For each affiliate marketer only few of the networks really works for them rest of them won’t work for them. Identified that network is a huge task you must try almost all of them and stick to the work which give you more ROI and gives you affiliate support. I tried almost a ton of networks but some of the most successful networks are neverblueads.com, Shareasale, LinkShare, Hypermedia and CJ. Once you find the right network you need to look for the products which will resonates with you websites or writing skills.

3) Sticking to one Niche – Often Affiliate marketers are greedy they need to get into each every possible niche they can. And they end up earning nothing. Also a huge waste of time and money. Just focusing on one particular product and slowly diversifies or leveraging that strategy to other related offers is want an successful affiliate marketer do. But it doesn’t mean that you need to keep all your eggs in one basket. You can monetize your affiliate site with other related offers one the site. But if you are planning to promote your affiliate products through PPC it is always good to stick to one product on your landing page rather than distracting your visitors.

4) Traffic – Most of the affiliate marketers face the problem of getting traffic. PPC is one of the best way to start off with your online money making venture. You need to spend some money in the beginning. Once you go through the learning curve you will realize that you need to spend money to make money. There are several other ways to get traffic too. Getting relevant traffic which converts as a sale is very hard. Some of the other methods to get traffic is optimizing website for search engines to gain search engine traffic, Social Media marketing to get social media traffic, Email Marketing, Article marketing etc.

5) Manage your time – Most often affiliate marketers doesn’t manage time properly. The productive time of each affiliate marketers is mismanaged because of too much time is spend on reading and sending emails, checking stats and other non productive things. Managing your time is key to any successful affiliate marketing and making it profitable is very important.