Archive for the ‘Audio’ Category

[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/developing-copy.mp3]
There is a distinct difference between editing a site for search engines and making edits for visitors. Traditionally in SEO, adding keywords to a web page falls under the category of editing for search engines. But many don’t realize that adding keywords to your copy can and should be a function of making the site function better for visitors.

The copy of your website falls very distinctly into the marketing realm of website management. Yes, search engines look at copy too, and adding certain keywords can help you achieve search engine rankings rankings, but each page needs to appeal to your readers first.

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Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/seo-enlightenment3.mp3]

Developing your site so that it enhances your visitors’ shopping experience and improves conversion rates does not automatically mean that you have a site that is friendly to the search engines. Similarly developing a site that is search engine friendly doesn’t automatically make it user-friendly. But these things are also not mutually exclusive. You can please both search engines and website visitors.

While search engines are important, keep in mind that your visitors are even more important. When making edits to your site always consider the implications on both your human visitors and the search engines as well. Every change you make will have either a positive, negative or neutral effect on your human visitors and the search engine spider. You need to know ahead of time the effect any particular change will have and use that as a basis for determining if its worthwhile or not.

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Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/visitor-trust.mp3]

Trust is a key usability issue when it comes to running a successful online business. Most people automatically view web businesses with a bias against them compared to their brick and mortar counterparts. Your ability to convince your visitors that yours is a trustworthy business is one of the key components to getting visitors to convert into customers.

Creating a website that conveys trust can be tricky. There are rarely any answers that are always “right” for every visitor. There are, however, several factors that have universal appeal to the weary shopper.

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Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/seo-enlightenment2.mp3]

A website is much like a home. In order for it to function as intended it has to be built to be structurally sound top to bottom. On the web you can think of search engine spiders as the building inspector who come by from time to time making sure that all areas of your site can be properly access. This isn’t a perfect analogy of course because the search engines don’t issue citations if your site has blocked access to a bedroom. That, and they are also taking stock of your valuables, something that we probably wouldn’t appreciate any home inspector to do!

But you can also think of your human visitors as friends that you invite over. Not only do they admire the contents and aesthetics of your home but they also want to make sure they can find certain, ah, facilities, should the need arise.

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Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/success-quiz.mp3]

We all want to know if we have what it takes so succeed. Let’s find out by answering these three simple questions:

1) Are you happy?

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[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/shoppers-cart.mp3]
Since the “purchase” is the ultimate conversion, it is imperative that you remove as many obstacles from the customer’s research-to-buy cycle as possible. Providing your visitors the key ingredients in their shopping experience creates a smooth and worry-free transaction process. The easier it is to shop and buy the more customers will overcome the natural hesitations that many feel before they commit by hitting the final “complete order” button.

Search functionality
If possible, create an extremely robust and accurate search function for the website. A good search function should be able to provide visitors the information they are seeking even if products are misspelled in the search box or search products are not offered at all. Be careful, as anything less than a perfect search function only serves to frustrate rather than help visitors.

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Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/eo-enlightenment1.mp3]

Many SEOs obsess over search engine algorithmic details. They spend hours looking at the minutest of details hoping to achieve the perfectly “optimized” web page. In the process they often forget that the web page can’t just be optimized for search engines, but must also be optimized for human visitors.

Optimizing for spiders and visitors are both important for a web site’s overall success. But I don’t think they are necessarily equally important. In order for the search engines to be able to index and rank a site, a “search engine friendly” website architecture must be implemented. And while having a search engine friendly site is good, it must not be accomplished at the expense of the visitor. At best, it must complement the user friendliness of the website. At worst, it must be invisible.

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Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/social-media-branding.mp3]

Think of all the ways that companies use branding to build awareness of themselves or to promote their social awareness and customer service values. A few things come to mind such as greeters at the entrance of your my favorite store, go-green awareness issues, charity drives that “give back” to the community for every purchase made, TV screens playing music videos or news as you wait in line, and the list goes on.

None of these things lead directly to conversions but they do lead to higher company awareness and the good old fashioned fuzzy-feelings we get when we know that that we are valued as a customer. Most times we are probably not even be aware of these things on a conscious level. But the effect shows as we have a tendency to patron these companies more frequently than the other alternatives.

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Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/dissatisfy-visitors.mp3]

Since creating a website that is “user friendly” is often difficult and time consuming, I thought it would be fun to explore a few ways to create a dissatisfying user experience on your website. Unlike the dozens upon dozens of things that go into creating a website that provides a positive visitor experience, one that creates an atmosphere of trust and is likely to improve conversion rates, creating a dissatisfying experience can be done fairly easily in just a few steps.

In fact, while I’m sure there are just as many things that can derail a visitor on a website, there is no need to implement more than a few. We have found that any one of the four things listed below will do the trick!

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Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/big-picture-seo.mp3]

I’ve always been a baby steps kind of guy when it comes to SEO. According to Google, they, and probably other engines too, look at over 200 different signals when it comes to analyzing pages for rankings. To attempt to optimize each of these signals perfectly would require a significant amount of work and continuous tweaking in order to find the “perfect” combination. Or let me put it another way, the task of creating the perfectly optimized page is darn near impossible.

Some of these “signals” that the search engines analyze are on the page, some are site-wide, and others are entirely off the page where the SEO has no absolute control, if any at all. The goal of the SEO however, is to try to make all of these things work together. They must leverage those things they do have control over, to complement and/or influence those things they have no control over. The idea then, is to create a synergy with the whole that truly is more than the sum of its parts.

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