The Importance of Your E-Mail Subject Line
Written by: Nick Hantge
Writing A Good Subject Line
One of the first things I do when I pull up my email is try and delete as many of the “junk” emails I can. I usually find myself looking at who my unread emails are from and what the subject line is to help me do this. If you get anywhere near the amount of emails I get each day, chances are you do the same. If there is anything that looks like it is from a company I don’t know or some type of advertisement or spam, it gets deleted before I even open it up.
What is the deciding factor?? Usually people will look at who the email is from first as it is always listed first and then our eyes make their way to the subject line if we don’t recognize the sender. “The subject line is usally the deciding factor. It is essential that your email subject line not look like ad copy” says Susan Sweeney, the author of 101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site.
It is important to never leave a subject line of an email blank as it will look non important or empty. It is also important to keep your subject line short with the most important keywords written first. You do not want your subject line long as people now days view their emails on their phone which allows fewer characters in the preview on the phone email display. Read the rest of this entry »
Blogging Is a Huge Waste of Time
Most small website owners feel like blogging can be a huge waste of time
Is blogging a waste of my time? It doesn’t seem to matter which organization or company that I speak to about blogging, the importance of it seems to be lost in translation. I can tell you that blogging for our Denver SEO company isextremely time-consuming, and a task that we have definitely not invested as much time into our blogging projects is I think we should have.
When it comes to e-mail newsletters, or Facebook our search engine optimization customers do not seem to have any issue reaching out to their customer base this way. Imagine if you could take an e-mail blast, discussion board mixed with a little viral marketing to communicate with your customer base. Unlike a newsletter that often times is deleted, a blog is more permanent nature and can be referred to not only buy organic visitors but by your customers as well. Then take all of that (e-mail blast, discussion board, viral marketing) and wrap it up into a very low costs extremely easy to use dynamic website. That is effective corporate blogging.
Many of the customers that I talk to and prospective customers that I talked to complain about the ability to update their website, yet most have an issue investing the time once per day or per week to blog. Blogging is perhaps one of the best way to build links back into your website and offer your customers and the search engines up-to-date information on your products and services while adding more value to your website. Of course I’m not referring to any type of internal blog for your company, I’m talking only about your corporate public blog.
Will that’s all great and good, but how many courses will you have to take to learn how to blog properly? I guess when it comes down to learning anything new we are all hesitant to invest the time that it takes to learn about it. The fact of the matter is that I have been able to teach most of my clients to blog with and about one hour. Now I’m talking about the actual technical part of blogging. What will they write about? That is a question they must answer on their own. It is perhaps the second most popular question I get asked about. My answer to this is:
What questions do you get asked every single day by your customers?
What prices that you just change in your menu of services?
Is there a sale coming up that you’d like to discuss?
What problems have passed customers have with your services or products? Read the rest of this entry »
How to Set Up Your Goals In Google Analytics
By: Cade Lee
Colorado Internet Marketing
This post comes a little late. In our excitement about multi-channel funnels, I now realize that we had never post about setting up Goals in Google Analytics. So although it is a little late, I hope that you will find the information useful.
So in this post we will explain what goals are and how you can set them up in your Google Analytics account. We will get more explicit about setting up goals in future posts, for now we just want to cover the basics so you can get started.
Generically, Goals are a way that you as a website owner, SEO, conversion specialist, whatever your title is, you can track the objectives or desired outcomes for your web property in Analytics. When you look at conversion and tracking conversion of your visitors on your website, there is a measurable action a desired outcome that you are looking for. Goals will correspond to these actions which are to be performed by your site’s visitors. So perhaps you have a web design business and your ultimate goal is to receive inquiries through the contact forms that you have strategically placed throughout your website. So your ultimate goal is to have the contact forms completed successfully by those visitors that would like to know more about your Denver web design services. Your goal will start with actions that are directly associated with the end outcome. So each action a visitor takes to successfully complete the desired outcome will be part of the “Goal Funnel”. Read the rest of this entry »
Tracking Conversion With Google Analytics
written by: Cade Lee
A couple of years ago we attended a social networking speaking engagement at The Denver Athletic Club, it was given by a local public relations company here in Denver. Of course I was excited to attend as I had only opened my Twitter account about six months previous to the event and I wanted to get some ideas on how to use this new tool more effectively. At the time I had been reading about social networking and really trying to figure out how to track the results from my efforts, but I had no real idea how to do this except look at the referrals from Twitter or Facebook to my website. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Quick Ways to Promote Your Website
Written by: Nick Hantge
If you are trying to get more visitors to your website, there are many different approaches you can take. You can direct traffic through links, increase your search engine rankings and gain organic traffic or pay for ads through banners or AdSense. Increasing your website traffic is great but you first need to understand what kind of traffic you want.
Here are some questions you need to ask yourself about the kid of traffic you are looking to get:
- Are you trying to just increase your overall visitors or do you want people who are looking for your products or services?
- Do you want the visitors to be new?
- Are you reaching out to existing customers?
- Do you want to pay for the traffic?
Once you realize the type of traffic you are looking for, you then can start planning your strategy to promote your website. There are hundreds of techniques to driving more visitors to your website. Each method has its pros and cons. Here are 5 quick ways to promote your website and gain more traffic:
1.) Article Directories: You may have heard about people using article directories to build back links to their website to support their search engine optimization campaign. Article Directories are a great way to build credibility, improve your SEO campaign and drive traffic to your website. Read the rest of this entry »
Targeting Your Customers Expectations
Written by: Nick Hantge – Follow on Twitter Denver SEO Professional
Customer experience could be the most important element to succeeding online. If your website visitors get bored, confused, or feel like the information they are looking for isn’t there you will lose them. Confusing or conflicting ideas make good customer experience impossible. With so many websites providing good information out there, it is even more important to capture the attention of your visitors in the first 15-20 seconds than ever before.
What is Customer Experience?
The customer’s experience is a strategic part of all major areas of your business; sales, marketing, customer service, project development and support. If you were to add up all of the experiences, thoughts and opinions a customer has with a company over the duration of their time together you’re left with customer experience. So when we think about online customer experience, we are talking about what the customer thinks and feels about the information on a website.
How to Improve Customer Experience
The key to successful customer experience is to create expectations that your company can provide. Inform your visitors of what to expect and exceed the promise. Keep in mind that not all customers want or expect the same out of a website. Some like to read and some like to scan images to get to the information they are looking for. Some want answers from you right away and some want to find their answer themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
Google Is Cracking Down on Black Hat SEO Methods, Is This New?
Content farms have been the buzzword of all the most recent SEO blogs and posts that I’ve stumbled upon lately. Most recently a post from James Mathewson titled “Google Gets Tough on Black Hat Seo” was 1 of the much more fascinating posts I had come across. James Mathewson is the author of, “Audience, Relevance, and Search: Targeting Web Audiences with Relevant Content” which according to the Post offers real-world examples of how Google beat out the competition by punishing and eliminating black hat SEO.
Ultimately Mr. Mathewson is really a representative from IBM to the Google Tech Council which is actually a consortium of B2B technology firms which get together every single quarter to share the very best practices and also share practices in an effort to perform better with the search engine advertising campaigns that they’re implementing at their respective firms. Ultimately Mr. Mathewson states that at a most recent meeting, 1 of the members of this group stated that the greatest difficulty in dealing with content farms is buying advertising around search terms that his company finds crucial for their search engine advertising campaign. The issue is that he does not want to appear or have his business appear on pages which are full of links to content farms, in the end these content farms are just “junk sites”. He doesn’t want to have his business connected with these “junk sites”.
Content farms or “junk sites” are internet sites which aggregate links along with other content from all over the internet which are related to the same theme or identical key phrases. The owners of these sites make income by obtaining traffic from Google and then selling Google AdSense advertising on these web sites. What makes these sites content farms or junk websites is primarily to do with the way that they are optimized which typically consists of black hat SEO tactics. Since these internet sites are making use of unscrupulous tactics so that they can obtain high rankings for challenging keywords, often times those firms or websites associated with such “content farms” can be penalized by Google. It is the general census that users or searcers dislike content farms because they’re just a collection of links which are usually extremely loosely relevant to the keyword being searched for. I’m positive that you have searched for one thing on the web at some point in time and come across one of these websites. In the end what did you do? More than likely you hit the back button and moved on. Like several other users, you decided that the page was not relevant to your search, nor did it deliver what you were searching for. This leads to a greater bounce rate which is exactly what Google desires to prevent for their users. If Google delivers outcomes to its users that are not beneficial then ultimately they may possibly lose that visitor to a competing search engine which is precisely what they wish to stay away from. Read the rest of this entry »
Hiring A SEO Company
Posted by: Denver SEO Professional
Search engine optimization is currently ruling the world. Everybody who has a website is running to SEO companies that can help them achieve success and reach their online goals. Internet marketers usually look to make their sites popular and they want all the users to throng to their site no matter what they are looking for. But one thing all these marketers should get into their heads is that, search engine optimization is no child’s play and it takes a lot of homework. If at all you are in Denver then getting the services of a Denver SEO will be a cakewalk. Even before you hire the company, you should know the basics of the concept and should know how it helps your site.
If people are unable to get a command over the terminology, then you should surely take the help of a Denver SEO company which is simply unbeatable when it comes to the services it provides. If you think you can divert traffic to your site without anybody’s help it would be sheer folly. Hiring a company is mandatory and their constant support is what makes your site popular. It is important for you to identify the keywords and key phrases required for your site’s content. Usage of such keywords in the content will increase the page rankings. Though this will take time, it is sure to bring results.
Denver SEO services can be found on the internet and there is a plethora of websites that offer their services to you. It might not be all that easy to find the best services and you need to be patient. But once the Denver SEO services are found, you can relax. You can make a list of the websites and choose the best depending upon various factors. Look for the company’s products, their experience, cost of the services, client base, professionalism and their expertise in planning the search engine optimization strategies. If you find all of these to be good, you can ask the Denver SEO for assistance.
Always remember that an online business can run successfully only if you get the right kind of help. That can happen only if you have enough time to spend. You will never find a good Denver SEO company in a jiffy. Homework is necessary for it. Newbies who start their online businesses are usually hasty and they look for success overnight. That can be great trouble and that will never happen. It is important to understand the strategies and beginners should pay close attention and be careful. It might take a couple of months before your site picks up momentum. Choose a Denver SEO company that offers plenty of services, knows your requirements and works hand-in-hand with you.
Turning Your Visitors into Leads
Written by: Nick Hantge (Denver SEO Professional)
A website is more than an electronic business card these days and rightfully so. If you are a business owner you are probably trying to reach out to the millions online and promote your products or services through search engine optimization, PPC or social media. In order to do this you not only have to get your website in front of people, you need to have a site that demonstrates good conversion tactics as well. All of these tips can be implemented by any Colorado web design company or developer without much effort.
The Beginning Steps
As more and more businesses work with SEO companies, you will need to make sure you have a proper seo campaign in place. Once you have reached the first page of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo & Bing) you will start getting traffic to your website. The important thing is having a good analytics program so you can analyze your visitors and their actions on your site. I would recommend Google Analytics as it is easy to follow, comprehensive and FREE!
Now that you have traffic to your site and analytics to see what patterns develop it is time to start trying to turn your visitors into leads. Here are some helpful conversion tactics used by many internet marketing companies to help produce more leads for their clients:
1.) Visible Phone Number. Have you ever had to search for a phone number on their website? One of the most common mistakes business owners make is relying on their visitors to go to the “Contact Us” page. You should have a visible phone number on all pages of your website and not in the footer. We always use the header to display our client’s phone number and address.
2.) Large Headings. Can you remember the last time you read a full story or article online? Most searchers today skim to locate what they are looking for and will then decide if they want to continue reading. Make large headings like a newspaper that describe what the paragraphs below are about. If your visitors cannot easily find what they are looking for they will leave which will certainly not develop into a lead.
3.) Include a lot of Images. Along with the short headings that describe what your content is about, images do the same thing. As an impatient society we love to get our information (ASAP). If we can avoiding reading altogether even better! At our Denver SEO company we try and give our client’s visitors the usual written menu as well as a picture menu on the bottom of the home page. It is important to appease the picture readers too!
4.) Give Visitors a place to Sign Up. Don’t forget your visitors need a place to volunteer their information! We use sign up forms for estimates or more information frequently on our web pages. Remember to keep your form simple, if you create any hesitation for the visitor such as a long form you will lose the lead. Get the bare minimum information and follow up with other helpful information you will need. Forms are really only for one purpose and that is to get the contact information of your visitor. This is your LEAD 
5.) List the Benefits. Keeping in mind that visitors like to scan, use bullet points to list the benefits of your products of services. Sometimes a short list can be the answer your visitors are looking for. An example being if a visitor is looking for a certain product that includes a certain aspect. If all they know is they want a widget that weights X then that is what they are going to look for. Listing specs of an item is also a good conversion tactic!
Often times people want to get all of the information and this is just not necessary. Online users know that information can be lost or stolen online so take that fear away. A simple form with “Name” – “Email” – “Location” – “More Details” is all you need to contact them. Once you get them by phone or email they will tell you all you need to know!
6.) Appease All Search Engines. Can you remember the last site you were on that didn’t load properly? Probably not because as soon as that happened you clicked “Back” and found a new site that loaded properly. It is important to work with your web developer and make sure your site pulls up properly on all the different versions of each major SE.
7.) Remove Uncertainty. The process of turning a visitor into a lead is pretty easy, build up your credibility and provide the information or a solution to what they are looking for and you will get the lead. Uncertainty will stop the whole process on a dime. Try and use pictures of your staff or sales team, add your credentials or awards as well as any organizations your company belongs to to help build credibility. BBB logos, top of the town certificates or other awards your company has one will help a visitor feel they can trust you and your company.
8.) Everyone likes A Movie. I’m not recommending putting an hour long film on your website but a 45 second commercial is perfect! For the non-readers out there it is always a good idea to have a video sales pitch as well. Not only will this help keep the visitors on your site to help with bounce rate, it will also build a little credibility as well.
9.) Cross Out Prices. You will be surprised how often a $99 – Now $79 will help you make your sale. By crossing out a price the visitor instantly knows they are getting a deal. To be honest it doesn’t even have to be a deal, just cross out a higher price than what yours actually is. .
10.) Remember the “F” Pattern. I am not talking about the flying V from Mighty Ducks, i’m talking about the pattern people use to read. We start at the top left and go across and make our way down the page. The top left is the hottest real estate on your page. Make sure to include your important information down the left side of your page. There has been a ton of eye tracking experiments done to back this up. Below shows the eye at work on different types of copy on a website. I found an interesting article here: Read Pattern
The main reason we have a website is to trap leads for our business. It is important to decide what the main purpose of each of your pages on your site and then figure out what and how to stress that information. Understanding your audience and what their needs are will ultimately help you satisfy them. Use your analytics and see what pages are being hit the most, what pages your visitors are viewed the longest and take advantage of the traffic. Follow these steps and you’ll be sure to get more leads out of your website, even without increasing the number of visitors.
Bring these tips up with your web design company and you’ll be rockin!
SEO Tips for Your Web Design
Written by: Nick Hantge
SEO Tips for your Web Design - image from www.desleepyhead.com
It is funny how many people want a website that looks “cool” or “edgy”. I have had countless meetings this year with business owners who do not understand who their target market is and just want a website that has a nice flash piece to represent the young atmosphere at the company. These businesses are missing the point of a website and are willing to spend countless dollars to do so. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how much you spend on a website if nobody is visiting it. If your website is not constantly attracting new visitors/prospects it is really just an electronic business card. In this post I will talk about some SEO techniques to incorporate into your new web design to help your site rank better in the search engines (SE) and start getting your business in front of prospective customers.
1.) Website Load Times. There has been rumors out there that search engines will start incorporating website load time into how they rank websites. What this means is you will not only want to make sure your website loads quickly for your visitors but soon for Google as well. An easy component to check is the size of your images. You will want to make sure you have images on your website that are no bigger than they need to in size. A lot of times web developers will use a large picture and scale it down to fit an area on your site. The problem with this is the file is still large, it just appears small to the viewer resulting in a longer load time. There are several other ways to help your website load quicker… here are a few resources to check out: Increase website pagespeed – Speeding up Your Site.
2.) Optimize your H tags. If you do not know what an H tag is, chances are you are working with someone else on your web development which is perfectly fine. If this is the case you will need to tell them to use H1, H2 & H3 tags on the important pages of your site that you are trying to rank. I say you need to tell them because most web developers are concerned with the look of a site and not the actual way it will rank in the SERP’s. “H” tags or Heading tags should be used throughout your site to explain what your content is about to your visitors. In these H tags you will want to use your keywords for that page. We have found that using keywords in your H tags has helped improve rankings. Our Denver SEO company tries to use H tags in all of our websites for the search engines and visitors as people are getting more and more lazy/impatient these days so they like to easily skim instead of reading to find the information they are looking for.
3.) Title each Page Uniquely. For every unique page in your site you should have a unique title with appropriate keywords. You want to make sure and tell the SE that all of your pages differ and what information is on each page. Often times you will get a website to rank for long tail keywords you are not even trying to rank for because you have optimized each page correctly. I can’t stress enough how important title tags are and how the correct use of them will impact your SEO campaign.
4.) Title your Images. Have you ever checked out what your website looks like to Google, Yahoo or Bing? If not next time you are on your site right click and click on “View Page Source”. You do not see colors, flash, images here.. you see the code that the SE see. This is why you need to make sure and title your images with keywords for that page. If you have a picture of the rocky mountains, make sure to use the “alt” attribute and describe the picture. Often times I see businesses with images on their site names “www.abc.org/images/11929384.jpg” and without an alt text the SE will only know that image is about “11929384″.
5.) Get rid of “Read More” links. If you know anything about onsite optimization you understand that internal linking is important. SE like multiple ways to get from page to page throughout your site which is why we do it. You also probably know that links with anchor text are better than just the standard www.abc.org which is why we need to start using keywords in your internal links instead of the standard “read more” or “learn more” links a lot of people use. You will want to tell the SE what the page is about with the link anchor text. This will also help you with your keyword density!
6.) Increase Your Page Total. If at all possible create more pages to create a resource instead of a small five page brochure. SE like large websites so if you can increase the number of pages you can also increase the number of internal links etc.
7.) Create a dynamic element. It is important to always have your website changing, growing and improving. Every time the crawlers visit your site they are looking for changes. It is simple to include a RSS feed on your home page of a valuable source that can update with new content that is useful for your visitors.
Hopefully these seo tips will help you with not only your design but your rankings as well. Although they are simple to implement many website owners do not. The most important thing you can do is ask your Colorado web design company questions about latest SEO techniques and what they know about search engines.