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By Leona Griffin in Featured

While we all work to beat the competitors for targeted search terms, hoping to land that top ten ranking; Google’s Universal search provides additional opportunities to increase your website’s exposure by mixing in universal search results.

Most companies are not taking full advantage of universal search and are really missing the opportunity to increase their exposure and interact with their visitors in a new exciting way. We’ll show you how you can utilize Universal Search to push your website to the top of the search results and drive more traffic to your website with this exciting addition to Google Search.

Introduction to Google’s Universal Search

While Google offers up the paid search results via Google Adwords and organic search results within the center of their search results page; they are now mixing in other types of results in attempt to give visitors a taste of everything that is related to their search. This includes:

Benefits of Universal Search

For visitors, the benefits of universal search are that they can see various types of results without having to leave the organic search results page. Another benefit is that it breaks up the page adding images, video still shots and information in a way that is appealing.

For site owners, there are quite a few benefits. First, there are now multiple ways to have your products and services listed on the 1st or 2nd page of Google.

Second, if visitors did not select your organic listing, they may select your image, blog or business listing; offering more opportunities to obtain targeted visitors to your website.

And finally, some Universal Search results are bumped ahead of the organic listings. If your website is listed in the #12 spot on page two and you just can’t get your site to the 1st page, you may be able to have your images, videos or products listed above the organic results for specific search terms.

Users Intent

If you searched for the word “Apple” using Google in 1999, you were presented with various types of informational websites; discussing the various types of apples, how to use them in recipes and other great apple related information. But over time, people who typed in “Apple” would complete their search and then run another search for “Apple computers“. As this trend continued to happen, Google’s Algorithm learned that a trend was emerging. Most visitors who typed in the word Apple were looking for computers, not fruit.

Now when you type in “Apple” into Google, you are presented with the Macintosh Apple website, websites that review Apple computers and e-commerce stores where you can purchase an Apple computer. Google’s focus is to not only provide searchers with relevant search queries based on their search term, but to emulate the thought process that is derived from the search term itself.

When a searcher enters a query, Google’s artificial intelligence attempts to understand what the visitor may want to see before returning the search results. They have come to learn that when a visitor types in a brand name or a product, that searchers may want to:

  • See Photos of the Product
  • Read Product Reviews
  • Purchase The Product
  • Research The Product

In an attempt to give the visitor what they want they try to return the types of results related to the users intent.

To use Universal Search to your advantage, you must understand the user’s intent when they type in the search terms related to your website. The best way to see which universal search products are being used for your search terms is to search them within Google. Once you enter the search query, above the search results in the top left area of the screen you will see a listing for the products pulled into the results. For example, if I enter the search query “red scarf” I see the following Google Products listed at the top left area of the screen:

1. Web

2. Shopping

3. Images

Essentially this means that Google attempted to pull in (web) organic search results, Google Product Search and Google Images.

The Strategy

Creating a strategy to increase your rankings through Universal Search can allow you to locate opportunities that your competitors missed; giving you more exposure and targeted traffic.

In the example of the “red scarf”, you will notice that although Google attempted to pull in images, there aren’t any images displayed within the results. This essentially means that you could possibly receive a listing on the 1st page of Google via Google Images if you optimize your images and submit an Image Map through Google Webmaster Central. Additionally, you can upload your red scarves to Google Base to get them listed within the Google Shopping results.

Now if you visit the second page of results, you’ll see that they are now showing different universal search results.

  • Web
  • Video
  • Images

Towards the top of the results you will see 1 video; however in most searches where videos are in the results, you will usually see two. This indicates that you could potentially have a video listed towards the top of the second page. As you continue to view the remaining results on page two you will again notice that you don’t see any photos on page two; another opportunity to gain exposure over your competitors.

Once you have completed this type of research and analysis for the keywords important to your website, begin creating and optimizing your shopping feeds, videos, images, blog posts and other universal search products to gain the competitive advantage before your competitors do.

Optimizing Images

You can increase the chances of your images showing up for relevant search queries by optimizing your images. There are a few key areas that will help improve your ability to increase rankings for your images in Google Image Search, as well as where images are shown in Google Search.

Although these tips are for Google Images, these examples can be used throughout various areas of your website; to improve all of your universal search results.

File Names – Give your images accurate names rather than defaulting to what your camera or image editor provides. If the image is of a cashmere red scarf, then consider naming our image cashmere-red-scarf.jpg. This help to further classify the image and show relevancy to the search terms you are targeting.

Image Alt Attribute – Ensure that you have provided a quality description for your images using the image alt attribute. Try using product colors, sizes, materials, brand names, textures, manufacturer names etc. Remember not to overdo it, but provide an accurate description of the product to assist with increasing relevancy for desired search terms.

Captions – Include a caption for your image that describes or relates to the product. The text that surrounds the image helps Google to understand the subject matter of the image.

Anchor Text – The text you use when linking to the image helps to describe and classify the image. Try using descriptive anchor text rather than words such as “click here”, “larger image” or “more photos” when describing the link.

Google Image Labeler - While you can do your part in helping to optimize your images, you can also increase your chances of having your images appear in Google Image Search by allowing others to help classify your images through Google’s Image Labeler. By simply enabling the Google Image Labeler from the Google Webmaster Console, you allow Image Labeler users to provide words and phrases they believe accurately describe your images in a fun online game. As users are shown images from your website, they type in a few words they feel accurately describe the photo, which is later used to further classify the subject matter of your image.

Summary

Google has provided many new opportunities for you to reach searchers in the ways they want to be reached. Search engine optimization has been taken to another level; it’s no longer about who has the most number of pages, the best density; or who has the most inbound links. It is about who is utilizing the all their available opportunities.

Almost every aspect of your website is being analyzed and classified; use it to your advantage. Now is the time to take advantage of these opportunities and increase your visibility in every area of universal search; allowing you to increase your traffic and exposure in new and exciting ways.

About the Author

Leona Griffin is a SEO Specialist at 1st on the List Promotion Inc. As a 12 veteran search marketing professional, she specializes in universal search, on-page SEO and creating search marketing strategies that deliver long-term results for their clients.

By Bill Rice in Featured

With the growth of Web 2.0 consuming the internet some would say it has been way over used. But many companies are still trying to find out how they can implement this into the business plan. Web 2.0 has great benefits to companies and can greatly increase sales performances, unfortunately sales folks have been slow to pick-up the opportunities it gives us. Here are my keys to building the sales process in the Web 2.0 world.

The major definition of Web 2.0 is the rise of the social Web. People are connecting an communicating more than ever on the Internet. Long gone are the days of one-way websites and brochure-ware brands. The new Web has people commenting, interacting, friending, following, Tweeting, and getting involved with the products and services they want to buy.

Keys to Building your Sales Process and getting involved with your customers!

Attracting

What makes social networks valuable are the people. You need to find them and build your audience. Not just any audience but one that is relevant to your business. Fortunately, most social media makes this prerequisite a snap. They are designed to get you connected with relevant people. Here are a few key steps to attracting an initial following:

  1. Complete your profile–this is how people find old classmates, expertise, and friends
  2. Add what your do–this is a tactful way of selling your services
  3. Don’t forget the picture–helps feel more connected or confirm they have the right person
  4. Tell your friends, co-workers, and clients–they make a great foundation and referrals

These are four simple steps that you can take to easily attract a loyal following of several hundred folks, and the social proofing you will need to get to an audience of thousands.

Listening

Listening is probably one of the most profitable actions you can take in social selling. Consumers are telling you what they want, expect, and how to close their deal. You just have to be listening for the ques, the invitation to call upon them, the opportunity to help.

In order to do this efficiently you need to set-up a listening post. There are numerous ways to accomplish this, but I have found the best way is with TweetDeck or TweetGrid. The tool is really less important but keep your focus on the words (keywords) that people use to talk about the needs and wants that you can help with.

Engaging

Joining the conversation is the popular movement of the social media world. Getting in the conversation is how you build a strong audience. Just like Web search, social media search is becoming the cornerstone of how audiences are built.

Every input into your social network–every tweet, every wall post, every Flickr picture–becomes searchable content. The more compelling that content the more people will be attracted to your audience.

Your conversations will help build relationships, trust, and credibility these all being the elements of a good sale.

Play-Have Fun

This is the one element many first time social sellers leave out…Play! No one likes to deal with a person who is always business. Your social network wants to know who you are and what makes you laugh. People like to do business with people like themselves.

So, if you are in to music, sports, movies, whatever the interest let people know. You will attract an audience of people that like you and that always makes it easier to do business.

Increase your sales performance with Lead Management Software and start converting more leads. Learn the keys to connecting with more customers with Social Selling.

By Cory Threlfall in Featured

blogsAre you tired of searching the web for the best wordpress plugins for your wordpress blog? If so then today is your lucky day because what I have you here is what I think to be the best wordpress plugins every wordpress blogger should be using for there blog or blogs period.

I’m sure once you go through the list I have put together below and read through what each of these wordpress plugins can do for your blog you’ll soon agree that these are the best wordpress plugins you’ve been searching for.

By Richard Adams in Featured

As Twitter continues to grow in popularity at an alarming rate and new users are starting to come on board, it can be hard to figure out where to get started with Twitter. While it is a communication medium like email for example, it is used in an entirely different way. Twitter is more sociable and fun rather than practical and actually understanding the main concepts and principles of Twitter can take a little while.

So in this article I’d like to try and give you a beginners guide to Twitter and in doing so to give you a basic guide to what Twitter is and what Twitter does so you can more easily get involved.

In essence, Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Every Twitter user has their own little tiny “blog” that they can add messages to of up to 140 characters in length. They can also send messages of the same maximum length to other Twitter users and these messages will then appear on their recipients blog. Each of these little messages is known as a tweet.

As well as adding tweets to your blog, sending them to other people or even reading other peoples Twitter blogs, you can also “follow” any Twitter user of your choice. When you “follow” someone, their tweets then start to appear on your Twitter page. In this way you can keep up to date with what all your friends, family and business contacts are doing in one place. By simply following all your contacts and keeping an eye on your Twitter page you can see live what everyone you know is up to.

When Twitter first launched, you interacted with the service using the Twitter website but now you can interact in virtually any way possible. As examples you can access your Twitter feed live from a variety of desktop applications so you don’t have to be logged into the Twitter website. You can also send and receive tweets via text (sms) message directly on your cell phone.

Twitter is part of a movement known as “life streaming” where part of the aim is to simply reveal your actions and thoughts live as you go about your day. Initially this meant that people would add such interesting messages as “Just eating some cereal” or “Paying for gas”. These days such messages are understandably frowned upon though the more interesting tweets are welcomed.

This is a good way of not just staying in contact with people, but also learning about other people in quite a deep way. If you know what movie they’ve just watched or what they’re doing on the weekend you feel more of a part of their life. Twitter is as much about conversations and communication as just sending a practical email to someone.

The general advice for a new Twitter user would be to simply try it out and see if you like it. Some people love it, others loath it and you won’t know until you try it. Just sign up for a free account, find your friends and “follow” them, then get involved with the conversation. When they tweet, tweet back.

Richard Adams – For plenty more information on using Twitter for fun or profit please visit Life Streaming News

By Bradley Knell in Featured

When we speak about website architecture, we are talking about the design & layout of the web pages. There are some things that Google has a hard time with and so avoiding them is just plain smart both from a visitor point of view (vpov), and a search engine point of view (sepov).

You want a web design that looks great and appeals to the human eye, so visitors stay a while and come back often. I understand this is necessary. The problem is that often what is appealing to the human eye is not so appealing to Google’s algorithm. This can create problems getting your web pages to rank well in the search engines.

Google looks at text when it visits your web pages. It doesn’t “see” images and it doesn’t understand moving pictures too well. It sees text content on the page and in the code of the page – not much else. Websites that make heavy use of such things as “Flash” and “Java scripts” often have trouble getting decent ranking from Google.

Now Google is starting to get a “read” on java more than ever, and in some cases using it is ok. Placing it properly in the page code is important and your web designer needs to understand how to do it. For java scripts you need to place the script itself into a file, which resides in the root directory of the server. Then a link is simply placed in the code of the page where the script needs to be seen, so the script is called up through the link from the file in the root directory of the site.

Flash should only be used on a small portion of the web page, not the entire page! Flash files should contain keywords that Google is able to read. You see a lot of intro pages that are nothing more than moving images, and they take up the entire page – stay away from these designs if you can.

Static images should be kept small so they are not driving people away because the page takes too long to load. If you have to use a large image file, create a separate page that displays the larger version of the picture and use a small image link on the original web page.

Another problem that, fortunately you don’t see so often anymore, is something called “frames”. You know you are looking at a “framed” web page when it appears there is a smaller, scrollable window embedded in the larger page of your browser window. It is actually, a separate web page.

The problem with frames is that Google has to divide its Page Rank evaluation between 2 pages instead of one. If the larger page is being optimized for a specific set of keywords, and the framed page is not, this creates what we call Page Rank Dilution. If Google gave a value rank of 4 to the larger page, and only 2 to the smaller framed page, the overall ranking of the page may only be 3.

For page text, use a color for the text that is not close to the background color of the page. Black text on white background is best. Don’t use a print font smaller than 10 or 11. Both of these issues can cause Google to think you might be ‘spamming’ its search engine.

Links

Make sure your page links are text links, not image links. Remember, Google reads text very well and it’s trying to offer pages that most accurately relate to a search term. It does that by checking the page text content against the query searched on. If the relationship between the two is very accurate, it will help your pages score well.

Links should be found in your site menu (usually placed at the top, or in the left or right column of the page. It’s a good idea to also include the menu links horizontally across the bottom of each page. Links should also be added in the body text of your pages wherever there is an occurrence of a keyword or key phrase. Use these links to link to other pages of your site that contain more information relevant to those keyword links.

Summary

Web design can sometimes cause problems when optimizing your website for Google. Strike a good balance between visual appeal and search engine appeal for best results!

Check with your web design person and make sure that care has been taken to ensure none of the above are issues with your website. If they are, edit the site so they will not be a problem in the future.

Brad Knell is a professional search engine optimization consultant who has helped many business website owners improve their search engine rankings using a wide range of ‘white hat’ methods.

By Paul Marshall in Featured

se-optimizationAs an Internet Marketing Consultant, I know that whether using pay-per-click (PPC) or organic search engine optimization (SEO), the process begins with our research keyword.

This is true whether you’re doing your work yourself or working with an SEO Consultant.

The search engine ranking for our chosen keywords consumes us, causing ecstasy when we succeed and sleepless nights when we fail.

But increased sales happen only IF:

By Donna Gunter in Featured

I had lunch several years ago with a colleague in a networking group. We talked about many things and were trying to get to know each other so that we could better understand what might make a great referral for the other. One of the things he told me caused me to chuckle because it was so true, but it seemed to surprise him somewhat.

He told me that he liked my website because I was straight-forward, to the point and I just “put it all out there”. By that he meant that I outlined what I do, how I do it, the benefits of what I do, and that I let the visitor decide to either buy into it or not. Most surprisingly, I didn’t seem to have any attachment to the visitor’s decision either way. I didn’t waste any time trying to convince visitors that I was always the right choice, regardless of circumstance. However, if the visitor does “buy” into what I’m offering, they have ample opportunities to get on one of my lists and/or purchase something from me.

My response to his observation was that, as a small business owner, I had the responsibility of discouraging as many people as possible from wanting to do business with me. I know this philosophy sounds crazy, especially in this day and age of a downturned economy.

Here’s my belief: I’m not out to sell my services or my products to the world, nor do I want to sell my services to everyone. I only work with clients who meet my ideal client profile and only market to those in my target market. Period. And, that’s only a very small chunk of the world. Why? Because I truly believe that there’s enough business for everyone.

My business and my life are so much more fun and joyful when I work only with clients that I love. I do that through what I call the WYSIWYG approach, or “What You See is What You Get.” I am who I am and let that center of authenticity come through in all that I do–my speaking, my writing, my website, my coaching, my personal interactions.

If you don’t “buy” into the business that is me, that’s wonderful! You can continue your search for a coach/consultant/infomarketer that better meets your needs, and I still have room in my practice for clients that I’d love to work with. If you do “buy” into what I do and who I am, you’re doing it because on some level, you’re buying into “Donna the Person”, and the good, bad, and ugly that accompanies that.

Now that I’m firmly entrenched in middle age, I finally feel that I’m fully coming into my own in all aspects of my life, and I have stopped running away from those aspects that I thought others might not like or might be offended by. Being myself for a living is so much easier than trying to live up to an image (or create an image) that doesn’t really exist.

When working in higher education, I always felt that I was split in two halves, Donna the Human Being and Donna the Housing Administrator. Rarely did the two Donnas meet — they were almost separate personalities, and quite frankly, Donna the Human Being (my true self) didn’t really care for Donna the Housing Administrator at all. It’s no wonder I felt exhausted all the time in that job — I was living two distinct lives, and one of those lives I really hated.

The creation of my own business — and my own set of rules — has freed me to be me — and probably saved me thousands in therapy fees.

My role model in life is the late Ann Richards, former governor of the great state of Texas. Ann was bold, brave, humorous, bright, and embodied the best in a Southern/Texas woman, and made no bones about that. Long ago I decided to embrace my being a “southern girl from the sticks” (English translation–lived in the country in a small East Texas town) rather than trying to make myself over into something more palatable to a wider group.

A former client used to get the biggest kick out of the stories I would tell her about living in a small east Texas town while at the same time telling me I needed to move away from there to a more civilized place. I told her if I moved, she would lose her great source of funny stories that she could incorporate into her speeches, and I would lose what makes me “me.”

As a small business owner, how can you incorporate “you” into your business so that your ideal clients are naturally drawn to you? What natural gifts and talents do you possess but aren’t willing to acknowledge? I strongly encourage you to tell your story–your parable of why you do what you do. Playing to your gifts and being who you are for a living is an extraordinarily rewarding way to run your business. Most importantly, it’s what makes your business distinct — and helps you stand out in a sea of small businesses.

Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses by demystifying the steps needed to successfully market a baby boomer business online. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> http://www.OnlineBizU.com

By Richard Adams in Featured

After Google, YouTube is now apparently the most-used search engine in the world. YouTube now allegedly sees more searches than either Yahoo or MSN. I think that’s amazing. And I also think it is an amazing opportunity for those of us who want to increase traffic to our websites.

But does YouTube really represent a realistic option for increasing traffic to your site? Last year I set out to test this very theory because, frankly, I was a little cynical. My own suspicions were that most of these searches were from teenage kids looking for clips of their favourite bands or stupid stunts and I doubted that YouTube could be effectively harnessed for the sake of marketers.

So I created a small number of short (2-5 minute) videos on a topic related to one of my websites and published them to see what happened.

And I must say that the results truly impressed me. People were finding my videos either in YouTube itself – or on Google which tends to rank videos highly – and then watching my videos. Over a few months, thousands of people watched them and a decent number then clicked on the link pointing to my site.

As a result I saw a marked increase in my traffic as a result of this experiment and it really turned me on to the possibilities.

So how difficult is it to harness the power of YouTube? Honestly, the answer is not very, and I’d to tell you exactly how I did it in the hope that you too can benefit from the power of online video.

Making The Video

Nothing flashy is need to make a video to market your website. Personally I used a cheap digital camera and just basically spoke into the lens. For YouTube ensure your videos don’t go over 10 minutes in total length. Personally I pretty much read some of my more popular articles and tips so I was able to reuse much of my existing content rather than having to create plenty of new content.

I literally took an article that was generating traffic and then read it to camera.

Upload The Video

Sign up for a free YouTube account if you haven’t already and you will find how easy it is to upload the video. All you need to do is to locate it on your computer and press the upload button.

Once the video is uploaded the final step is to name it correctly. As you are basically reusing the content of an existing article, use the article title as the title for your video and include a link back to your website in the description.

That really is pretty much all there is too it. I recommend doing a number of these videos as they can be a little hit and miss and the more you have out there the greater the difference will be to your traffic levels.

One final tip is to enable comments on your videos in your YouTube account as I have found a surprising number of people are keen to ask questions about the videos I have uploaded and this can also be a good way to lure people back to my site by explaining that the answer to their questions is at this page or that page on my site.

Richard Adams – To find which cheap camcorder I recommend for online video please visit flip video cameras

By Paul Rakovich in Featured

pay per clickThere are two paths that you can take when it comes to managing your pay-per-click advertising campaign online. You can learn it yourself and make Google’s stock rise higher while you figure out the learning curve, then spend a lot of time keeping it running smoothly. Or, you can hire a professional pay-per-click firm to handle it for you.

I did both.

See, I know the position you’re in right now. I’ve been there. I’ve hired and fired 2 pay-per-click management companies. I was forced to learn on my own and spend tens of thousands of dollars.

By John Metzler in Featured

Small business owners may not have the resources to invest heavily in their web presence and finding solutions to problems can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You know something’s wrong but don’t have the faintest idea how to fix it. Is it a technical issue? Are your ads not performing well? Don’t know what kind of traffic you’re getting? Website problems can fall into a myriad of categories. So if you think your website sucks, a) it probably does, and b) you should read on.

1. You Aren’t Getting Traffic

You’re excited about the big, expensive job the design team just finished on your site. It looks like a million bucks! Well it’s a shame it isn’t making you a darn cent. Just because it exists doesn’t mean people know about it. Announce it to the world by submitting it to reputable directories and sharing your useful content with others on social bookmarking sites (you do have useful content, don’t you? If not, I’ll cover this later). You can even do some link exchanges — provided the sites you exchange with are reputable — just to get your site crawled early on. Further optimize it for search engines by following good SEO practices, building quality content and generating inbound links from other sites. Once you do that, you’ll need to monitor progress with web analytics software. Google Analytics is free and it has a slick interface. And we know you like pretty things seeing as how you broke the bank on your web site design.

If you’re looking for high ROI, invest your own time in learning search engine marketing. Better yet hire a qualified SEO firm if you have the budget for it. Don’t settle for quick-fix promotional ideas. Build long-term exposure and a solid reputation by attaining high rankings, keeping email/newsletter lists, targeted ad placement and social media participation.

2. You Have Worthless Content

What defines worthless content? Without knowing what topic your web site covers it’s tough to say, but if you have nothing that sets you apart from your top competitors then I’d say you aren’t in good shape. If you don’t know what kind of content people are looking for on the Internet today, take a peek at what’s popular on social bookmarking sites. Observe some of the story titles on the front page of Digg.com:

  • “Guinness Stout Beef Stew Recipe for St. Patrick’s Day”
  • “In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air”
  • “Kim Jong-Il Interprets Sunrise As Act Of War”
  • “Automatic bacon dispenser?”
  • “The 5 Best Obama Photomosaics on Flickr”

Words I would use to describe these topics, in order, are: seasonal, informative, satirical, comical, and trendy. This information is popular because it’s appealing in its uniqueness and is relevant to today’s market. To set yourself apart from your competition, you need to get creative. If you’re the kind of person who had trouble painting by numbers, then hire someone creative. Professional copy writers can be well worth the investment. Create free tools your customers will want to use; write funny or interesting commentary in a blog about your industry; put a new spin on a traditional product or service or offer seasonal discounts. Create a comprehensive F.A.Q. on your site that covers topics your competitors don’t.

Take the time to beef up your content. Be innovative – don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Use the top competitor in your field as a measuring stick.

3. You Have No Call-to-Action

Poor promotional language can have a sabotaging effect if visitors aren’t drawn to your conversion pages. A conversion page is any page that acts as the final step in a visitor submitting a form, making direct contact or purchasing a product online. Obscuring those pages or confusing the visitor on where to go next can make them leave your site. Internet users have a short attention span – give them a clear direction when navigating your web site.

Use your web analytics software again to find out what pages visitors are landing on first. If your home page gets the most traffic, make sure there are clear links to your sub-topics. If inner pages are your most popular landing pages, find out if the traffic is targeted. Once you know the type of visitor and the specific page they land on, then you can start marketing your content more accurately.

The bottom line is to always make clear why, and how, visitors can buy your product. Don’t get too cute with multiple steps, options or convoluted language.

4. You’re Getting Traffic But No Sales

Are you sure the traffic is relevant? If you’re running a pay-per-click campaign, ensure your ads are geo-targeted properly and your ad text or landing pages appeal to your customers. For organic search engine placement, have you done keyword research and analysis before optimizing your content? Look at your web stats and see where your visitors are coming from. What keywords were they searching for when they landed on your site? Are the referring sites relevant to your industry or topic? How much time does the visitor spend on each page? Sales won’t come if your visitors aren’t interested in what you’re selling. This is why preliminary keyword analysis is so important to search engine marketing.

If you’re running ads it’s always good practice to experiment with different ad campaigns. If you put all your eggs in one basket you run the risk of losing out on potential revenue. Elements of your ads that you can change are:

  • ad text
  • landing page
  • specific network your ads are shown across
  • topics on which you focus the campaign
  • geo-locations targeted

Remember, it doesn’t pay to skimp on initial product/market research and analysis.

5. You’re Getting Relevant Traffic But No Sales

This problem could signal a technical error or navigation problem with your site. Make sure you thoroughly test all functionalities on various web browsers and systems. Submit test forms. Do a link check to spot possible broken links. Is your web hosting service reliable?

If you’ve ruled out technical issues as the cause then turn your attention to the content and customer base. Has your market taken a downturn? Can the lack of sales be attributed to the poor economy? Have you fallen behind your competition in product quality, selection or pricing? Does your web site’s navigation system confuse users? Your web site is the first line of contact between the business and potential customer, but it’s not the only step you need to worry about. Telephone operators or online payment systems can present their own issues.

This is moving away from web site problems but if any part of the sales process takes place away from the site, investigate those areas of your business as well.

If you’re pulling out your hair over a problem with your site and these tips still haven’t helped, feel free to post a comment and I’ll personally have a peek at your site.

With eight years in the search engine marketing industry, John Metzler of FreshPromo knows what works and what doesn’t regarding website success. His strong grasp on visitor usability and analysis, along with a highly-skilled SEO perspective, can be seen through his professional SEO services. Read the FreshPromo blog for more free tips and commentary.

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