The first step of your SEO (after you have optimised your website for customers) is to make the best keyword list possible. A keyword is a word or a phrase people who are looking for products type in Google. For example, one of your keywords may be “your”.

However, it is better to focus on specific key phrases that will get more highly targeted people to your site. That means, do not use just “your”, as there are many people searching for this word, but many of them might be actually looking for a job in your, for example. Also, the competition is usually much stronger with these words, so it will take more time to get ranked on the first page.

Instead, go for longer keyword phrases and combinations such as “your [YourTown]”, “your company” etc.

Moreover, I would advise you to apply the following methodology to choose the right key words:

1. Organize a brainstorming with your co-workers, business partners, friends, relatives or even customers to find keywords relevant to your your business. Focus on the needs of customers, what they would type in when looking for products.
2. Check out your competitors’ websites for ideas. View the source HTML code and take a look at keywords in their meta tags (you will learn below how to do this). They could be a good tip for yours!
3. Try to make a list of 100 keywords minimum. It’s recommended to use a search term suggestion tool (such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool). It will give you an idea what your phrases have been searched for recently. Just make sure that you pick the appropriate location.

There are three critical situations you might come across when you track your Google Adwords campaigns regularly – and here we also provide solutions to the possible issues:

1. Problem: You are getting low/no impressions.

Solution:

a/ Check in “My Account” whether your billing options are set up correctly. Google will notify you of any issues, anyway.

b/ Check your minimum bid and daily budget settings and if you want to have your ads shown more often, make sure the budget per day you have set is enough to cover the cost of all clicks you are getting.

c/ If a/ and b/ are not the issue, you probably want to expand your keyword list to make sure it consists of keywords that are being searched a lot. Google Keyword Tool will help you do this – and you will find it in your Campaign Management in the section called “Tools”.

2. Problem: You are getting lots of impressions but low/no clicks.

Solution:

a/ Modify your ads, make sure they follow the structure as given above and check they include your main keywords.

b/ Make sure that your keywords are not too general, so that they are being searched for quite often, but not so often in relation to your offering.

3. Problem: You are getting lots of clicks but low/no conversions.

Solution:

a/ Check that your conversion tracking code is in place – when you go to your Thank You page and view source, you should see it there.

b/ Optimise your landing page better – as described above – make sure that within the first fold of the screen you can see a clear call to action, benefits and that everything is as simple and clear as it gets.

This part of marketing can be one of the most challenging, since many people find it difficult to put their thoughts into words. With clearly defined marketing messages, customers will be able to clearly identify the benefits, in their terms, to enable them to make a buying decision.

But don’t worry, with the information from previous chapters you really can do this, just make sure you follow these rules when creating marketing message for each of your products:

• Use the language of customers
• Mention the benefits of your products
• Set the time to benefit
• Give customers a clear reason to act now

Your marketing message must stir up emotions! You can do this by making customers who want products feel that they can justify it with a need, and by presenting them with the downside of non-ownership or a continued pain.

Sometimes it might be a good idea to outline goals you would like to achieve in marketing. By answering the following questions, you will start seeing your your company from a slightly different perspective – and this will help you focus on the right things.

This exercise is meant to bring you to the planning mode – so that based on the past, you can plan for future. However, only if you take action in present, will you be able to see successful results.

So make sure you answer the questions below honestly.

1.       What was your dream when you started (to work for) your your company?

2.       Your key successes to date:

3.       Your key challenges:

4.       What one thing, looking back do you wish you had done differently?

5.       What would be the ideal outcome of sales and marketing in the next year for you?

6.       If you were able to wave a magic wand and everything was perfect, what would your company look like now in terms of ~

• Sales:
• Profit:
• Employees:
• Locations:
• Partners:

7.       What has prevented you from getting this?

8.       When do you want to start seeing real results from your marketing?

9.       How would you define success for your your company?

10.     If you knew how to get this success, what makes you believe that it is realistic?

11.     What could stop you from getting the results?

Knowing answers to these questions will make it easier for you to create a winning marketing strategy.

How could your your business benefit from marketing partners who add value to your products that massively increase your sales at no additional cost to you?

What do you think that having better partners could do for your company?

What if some of your existing partners are costing you business?

Try to take these steps now:

1. Find out which partners you currently work with have the most potential for marketing your company
2. See whether your contracts are favouring maximum marketing performance
3. Know how to refocus your channel partner strategy to grow your marketing and sales
4. Uncover new possibilities of win-win marketing cooperation

When you have your 7 keywords for every of your main pages, the next step is to place them on your website, in the correct way.

There are a few places where you definitely should have them – some are pretty obvious, some are slightly hidden – so let’s make sure you get them all right!

Title

<Title> is one of the most powerful SEO techniques you have, so make sure you use it creatively! When search engine results are displayed, e.g. on Google’s search results page, the title is the first thing people see as a link to your website.

You can also see the title of the website you are just viewing on the top of your browser window.

Thus each page should have a different <title> with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. The title should explain in a few short words (your keywords) the intent of the page. Don’t put your company name first – place your keywords first and if you feel you absolutely must have the company name in the title, add it second.

Despite its importance, rather do not overdo it with the length of the <title> tag; 50-150 characters including spaces should be appropriate, even though some SEO gurus recommend 70 max. You also should make the title enticing, so that the viewers of search engines listings will click to see your website.

Description Meta Tag

Below the <title>, there is usually the description meta tag which is considered by Google as the first sentence on a page.

The Description Meta tag is also fairly important. Your description should have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning and so should your first sentence on the website. Just like the <title>, reflect the content and try to keep there no more than 200 characters including spaces. Change the words around enough so that you can hit various typings of your keywords.

Compared to title, description meta tag should be rather a sentence or two, not just a list of keywords. Make sure you use speech marks correctly as appropriate.

You should have a different title, description and a first sentence on each page. You may also want to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance.

Keyword Meta Tag

Although many people rely on them so much when performing SEO, meta tags have decreased in importance recently, but are still worth using for clarity and search results. Their initial purpose was to help search engines find out important information about your page which they might have had difficulty determining otherwise.

The Keyword tag is now the least important but is still used by some engines. As you never know when the rules of the search engines will change, or a new engine will want them, so take the time to include these tags in all your web pages. We recommend you do not overdo it with keywords as well; your keyword meta tag should not exceed 250 characters including spaces.

When performing SEO, you should take the exact same keyword phrase from your keyword meta tag, and use it in the copy of your page, title tag, meta description, text content of the page etc. Any keyword phrases which are only used in your keyword meta tag, will not have enough prominence to help your listings for that phrase.

Now upload these meta tags to the web pages. You might need a hand from your web designer – it should be a very quick issue for them.

Many your website owners do not make it easy, clear and secure for people to contact them – if you want customers to contact you directly from your website, keep the process simple.

In general, over 60 percent of online shoppers abort the ordering process once they’ve entered the shopping cart. It’s a pity that after gaining their attention, interest and desire you can still lose them due to a complicated, unclear or unsafe contact form. To prevent this, try to follow the advice:

• Tell your visitors upfront about what they should do in order to get in touch with you.
• Make sure that your contact pages and forms are easy to understand. Test them with your customers or relatives even if they don’t browse the Internet very often.
• Make sure that your contact page shows an understandable notice if the customer forgets to enter the email address or any other required field.
• Make sure that your contact pages work in every geographical area you target. Some countries don’t have postal numbers or their regional structuring can be different from yours.
• It’s very important that your contact pages are secure.
• Test your contact pages regularly in order to make sure they work.
• Also make the contact form easier to fill in – in most cases, all you probably need will be name, phone, email, and the comment field – they don’t need to be mandatory.

After you implement the above steps, you might see that your online marketing has moved to the next level.

Providing that your keywords fall below the 0.5% CTR for the first 1000 impressions, they might get disabled. That is the first reason you need to track your keywords performance and modify them regularly. Remember, change your words around, use new keyword matching options, try out different capitalisation and spelling variations, use singular or plural versions as well as different punctuation and grammar tenses…

You can decide if you want to receive daily, weekly or monthly Google Adwords reports.

With Google Adwords, you can also create your personalised reports in only a few minutes. Click on the tab “Report“ => “Create a report now”. You can create a report to track the performance of your keywords, text ad, image ad, URL, ad group, campaign or the whole account.

In order to save money, you can delete keywords from your list which do not convert into sales. It is also recommended that you “peel” those keywords that get low CTR and “stick” them to a new campaign or ad group with an ad specifically targeting them.

Making tiny changes to your ad can have a strong impact on your CTR. Keep changing your ads around regularly. After a few weeks, you will be able to detect your best performing keywords. Your ad should include these keywords. In the same way, if you detect any under performing keywords, delete them from your ad.

Google also has a built-in “conversion tracking” tool that’s linked to AdWords.  You put their code in the “success” page on your website and along with your CTR statistics, Google will then show you the percentage of visitors who opt in or buy in your weekly, monthly or daily report, or contact you, or take any action you set as a conversion.

This is the crucial point of tracking your Google Adwords performance. Since conversions are what you are aiming for, you should always check that their number and value is growing from week to week.

When you know the purpose of your website, you should give your visitors a REASON to move towards the goal. Remember, it is not your goal that they will follow; in fact, people are always looking for what is in it for THEM.

Below follows a list of the vital elements of successful website content.

1. Benefits

To give customers what they are looking for, always list benefits (see Chapter 2) of your products rather than features.

Nobody cares so much about what procedures you used when creating your internal services manuals, or for how many years you’ve been around. Usually, what matters to them is what problems you can solve, and more importantly, how they will benefit from using your product.

In addition, websites offering services that managed to fix a problem usually get highest conversion rates.

It is also essential to make sure that your you:we ratio is high enough, which means that you use the word YOU more than WE, speaking about your customers, not yourself.

Remember again: customers don’t care about you at all. The only thing they are looking for is what is in it for them.

2. Call to Action

Once you have decided what you want your visitors to do and after revealing all the benefits they can get, it is crucial to tell them what to do next. It must be crystal clear what they need to do:

- Click here to contact us now!

- Sign up for the Free Newsletter with your Tips Here.

- Press Enter to continue. Etc.

In order to make a call to action more catchy and attention gaining, there is one smart trick: use the red colour every time you want to highlight something so that people will click on it. However, do not overdo it, since when your website is red on its whole, the particular spots will not stand out.

3. Testimonials

Add testimonials to your Testimonials page, and spread them over all the pages in an appropriate structure.

Be as specific as possible and make sure you use relevant testimonials on pages where you speak about individual services.

Always get the customer to allow you to use their testimonial in your marketing materials. For more on testimonials, read Chapter 12.

4. Privacy Policy

As soon as you collect any data from your visitors, you should create a privacy policy (you can use this free privacy policy generator or any other you find on the Internet). Add your privacy policy to the bottom of your pages.

5. The Best Website Structure & Navigation

There is nothing worse than arriving at a website and having difficulty to understand where to go for the information you are seeking. Have an easy to use, clearly marked navigation so that your visitors click-through instead of click-away in frustration:

- All your web pages should be no more than 3 clicks away from the home page.

- On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

- Make your logo at the top of every page clickable and going to home page.

- Structure your menu on the top in a way that will be clearer and more effective.

- Make it easy to contact you from any page.

You can use this structure or come up with your own – whatever you feel will work best for your customers and prospects.

6. Motivate customers to Come Back Again with Fresh Content

To attract your first time visitors to come back and to keep coming back, you must always have what to offer: nobody will keep returning to see the same pages all the time.

We all know that the more involved customers become with you, the relationship matures and builds: this could be done using an online discussion forum, blog, or just a simple option to post a comment. More on this towards the end of this part.

7. Attractive Design

They say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, it is actually words that sell. This means that you should use a good mix of both – pictures with highly relevant and interesting content.

8. No Distractions: Keeps Your Visitors Focused

In order to keep your visitors focused on the steps you want them to take, keep all unnecessary distractions away.

If you are paying to bring your visitors to a particular page, so called “landing page” (because they “land” on that particular page from their search in Google), make sure this page is not stuffed with links that will direct them away from the page.

The only links your landing page should contain are those in line with your goal: links to your enquiry pages, newsletter sign up forms, etc.

While many online marketing handbooks would start with telling you how to drive lots of visitors to your website, we chose a different approach. There is no point in driving millions of visitors to your web pages, when nobody will do what you would like them to do – either contact you, or sign up for your newsletter or do anything else you want them to do.

Therefore we think the first step is to focus on optimising your website for customers, with relevant website content writing, and then you can look at how you can use search engines like Google, to bring more visitors to the website.