Web Design — Page 2

Today, I am excited to present an article written by Eren McKay. Eren is not only a wonderful friend of mine but a marvel in the SEO world. I’ve learned so much from Eren over the time I’ve known her and I was honored when she agreed to guest blog for me!

In this article, Eren presents some fascinating information on what NoFollow Links really are, what they mean to your website’s rankings, and how to test for yourself the influence of NoFollow links .

Thank you Eren. Thank you for being so open and sharing this kind of valuable information with me and my readers.

Be sure to visit Eren’s website! Links are provided below.

Enjoy!

Leigha

How Does a Nofollow Link Influence the Rankings for Keyword Phrases?

Anyone who has a blog or website knows that creating great content is only a piece of the puzzle of getting noticed and consequently attracting more business on the internet. Even if you have the best content in the world, it won’t really matter if people don’t see it. So the other (and more important piece) to the puzzle of making it online is to promote that content.

Occasions when it doesn’t matter if the links are nofollow:

Of course when you start to market and promote your pages, you will be linking to them from places outside of your own website. If your goal is simply to create a marketing campaign, then you shouldn’t care whether the link has the nofollow tag or not. The goal of that kind of link is not to help you rank in the search engines but to leverage off of the traffic that the other websites already have. So even though that link is “nofollow” it still adds value to your marketing campaign. The nofollow tag shouldn’t stop you from creating a campaign for exposure.

Thinking more about the long term.

However if you would like to have consistent traffic from the search engines (such as Google), then you will want to create a campaign that not only leverages traffic from other sites but at the same time adds value to help you rank for your targeted keyword phrases. If ranking matters to you then you will want to obtain links that don’t have the nofollow tag on them. There are people that believe that nofollow links will still help you rank. However the head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts openly says on his blog that they will not help you rank.
Here is a portion of what he said: [Read more…]

turning visitors into buyers Many online website owners have the impression that all they have to do is attract more traffic and sales for their business will rise. As a result, website owners with this mentality will often increase marketing spending in an effort to drive more traffic to their websites. They soon find out that the effort did indeed generate more traffic, but resulted in no more sales and thus their advertising dollars were wasted.

They can’t help but ask questions like “why isn’t this working?” or “what’s missing?” Turning website visitors into buyers isn’t always about the traffic and it’s never JUST about traffic. It is a combination of the right traffic mixed with the proper onsite alterations that actually generates the sales. Here are four strategies to help you turn those visitors into buyers.

#1 Building Your Website’s Foundation

The following points will mean nothing if you don’t have a solid foundation. A solid foundation consists of an RSS enabled website, search engine optimization, and social media integration. A solid foundation is the most overlooked aspect of the websites I run across yet it involves some of the most basic and necessary elements. Once the framework of your foundation is in place, you can begin focusing on the design and your target market. Things like easy navigation, an easy to use check out process, readily available customer service links, and quality content all help build on your foundation and all these things together, enable your customer to buy your product. A weak foundation won’t make for a successful site, and before long, the business owner will begin to think that the internet just isn’t for them. Before you do anything else, step back and ensure your foundation is built to address your ideal customers needs. Doing so will ensure future efforts get rewarded.

#2 Website Analysis & Analytics

I’m a big fan of analytics. My philosophy is: if you can’t track it, don’t do it. You cannot build a lasting business without knowing exactly how it is performing. Analytics provides the data you need to make informed decisions. Just having analytics in place, is not enough. You must gather data you can act on and implement into your website to improve the performance. I see too many website owners with a desire to make changes to their website based on what they “think” is going on. They have no real reason for suggesting the changes, just a hunch that making them different in some way will hopefully alter the current course of their business, preferably for the better. This is not good business

Using a tool such as Google Analytics, will allow you to find out what keywords visitors used to arrive at your website. You can drill down even further to determine the sales generated from each keyword. In this way, you can make better decisions on using keywords within the website to attract even more visitors.

#3 Provide Optimized Landing Pages

In this instance, it’s not search engine optimization on the page but instead optimizing the page in such a way that the visitors who will arrive at the pages are better able to take the action you want them to take. The action could be adding an item to a shopping cart, starting the checkout process, reading information they need to make a buying decision or deciding to sign up for your newsletter.

Optimizing page titles for example, is a commonly neglected task in page optimization. Doing this increases relevancy in your visitor’s mind and relevancy is a key to making them take action. Landing page optimization is critical. You can read more about Landing Page Optimization here.

#4 Engage Your Visitors

Any shopping cart can deliver a product page and any store owner can provide a product description. That being said, how do you provide a product page that contains the necessary content to persuade the visitor to make a purchase? Engage them! An engaging product page offers information to the visitor that helps them make an informed decision. A product description merely listing the features and specifications of your product just won’t make the grade.

Make sure all descriptions don’t just list the features and specifications of your products, but list the benefits of the product. A benefit gives the visitor the information that they need to know to convince them that using the product will help them solve the problem that made them search for the information in the first place. For example, the feature/spec description might be ” 132 page Dog Training Guide”. The benefit description would be “Easy dog training guide that will help your dog learn all the obedience basics plus how to stop barking, digging and pulling on the leash”. It’s easy to see if this is what they are looking for from a description like the latter.

Another way to engage the visitor is to use customer reviews. Amazon is amazing at this. By letting your visitor know what others think about your product, they feel secure in their buying decision.

These four strategies are just a small sampling of the many option you have in turning visitors into buyers. Because all markets and businesses are different, ideally you should develop a strategy that fits within your overall objective.

If you are serious about turning more visitors into buyers, contact us today to schedule a free, no obligation, consultation and find out how e-Edge Marketing can help you develop an internet marketing strategy that works for your business.

To Your Success,