If you want to be ranked well for a search term or phrase, you need to have these elements in place.

1) The phrase you want to be listed under must be in the text on your homepage. It needs to be repeated a few times, and also expanded on by speaking about the  terms. Google’s search engine now has the intelligence to determine whether your content is relevant. It analyzes the full content of a page and uses factors to score it including in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. They also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query. What this means is that you need to have a story about the keyphrase on your page.

2) Your heading – headings tell the truth and in search engine optimization your main heading, called the <h1> heading in the coding, tells the search spiders what the page is about. This heading is critical on a home page to target your primary search term.

As an example, if I wanted to be clear to the search engines on what this article is about, I would have this heading:

Search Engine Optimization Starts On Your Home Page

if you look at the top of your browser, you’ll see this title is also the title on the page.

3) Your page title – this is set in the <title> code, and it needs to align with the heading. If you want to be ranked well under the term Tires in Tucson Arizona, your page title needs to include this. You company name is secondary… unless you want only you customers to fin your website. JohnsTucsonTires.com is not your company name.. use Johns Tucson Tires.

4) Your meta description – This should also include the keywords you are targeting and should be in a sentence form. Think of it as an advertisement inviting users to click. In a search result, it’s the text that shows below the title of the result. Search engines use your page title and meta description for the search result listing.

This overlooked concept is why you end up seeing results like this:

Lexani Performance Tires
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. SITE BY EKKO MEDIA GROUP. Today is Sunday, Jul 25, 2010.
You are here – Home » Company » About Lexani Tires …
www.lexanitires.com

Instead of a search engine optimized result – that will get searchers to click – like this one:

Discount Tires, Custom Wheels, Rims, Goodyear, Michelin, Cooper Tires
Offers discount car tires and wheels. The easiest way to buy Goodyear, Michelin, BF Goodrich,
Nitto, Falken, Yokohama, Cooper Tires Online.
www.onlinetires.com

If your serious about getting the benefits of search engine optimization, it takes more than telling your webmaster to add keywords in your code… try the above approach on your home page with one search phrase, and watch the results.

And remember that getting on the first page of a search phrase isn’t useful without having a homepage that speaks to the search. The more you answer the search, the better you’ll find the results from search engine optimization.

If you have questions, or would like to have your website reviewed to see how your search engine optimization stands today, just fill out the free report to at the top of this page. We’ll get a search engine optimization report to you within 24 hours.

If you’ve searched for your company, and your website has a good page structure, you’ll notice that Google had added more pages in your listing, as well as adding other pages that they deem interesting to your audience.

From the Google Blog:

Today we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will  make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a  single site.  For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a  particular domain, we’ll now show more results from the relevant site:

Prior to today’s change, only two results from  a domain would have appeared for this query.  Now, we determine that the user is  likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so eight results from the increasevisibility.com domain  appear.  Since the user is looking for the specific company, it’s  far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster.  The  last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some  diversity in the results.

We’re always reassessing our ranking  and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year.  We expect  today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single  site, while still providing diversity on the results page.

This is great new from a user perspective, and you’ll want to make sure your website has the proper meta tags so the results are compelling for people looking for your company.

We are #88 in the Advertising and Marketing  and #48 in Los Angeles Fastest Growing Businesses

Being chosen for this list is no small achievement in today’s business environment.

I’d like to thank the staff at Increase Visibility for all being a key part part of such a monumental award, as well as all of our clients, both new and old.

Being on this list means that you are in a market segment (search engine optimization)  that continues to grow, and that your product is filling a need. This past year has shown that more and more companies are seeing the benefits of what we do, and are thankfully choosing Increase Visibility as their SEO partner.

I would also like to think that our SEO services are also helping our clients to also grow with us. The true reward is when a client comes into our office, or gives us a call, to let us know what a Google ranking has done for their business.

This is not a time to rest on our laurels though. We realize just how competitive it is out there, and that there are many others biting at our heels. This is what drives us forward each day, and we’ll continue to do all we can to keep providing the best in search engine marketing services, and hope to see a number of our clients on this list next year.

Sincerely,

James Lisi
President
Increase Visibility, Inc.

Inc. Magazine Listing Of Increase Visibility

Understanding how Google works and following the rules is how Increase Visibility gets your site ranked for the search terms that bring you prospects.

We follow the best search engine optimization practices that align with how Google works, in order to get your website found on Google’s search results.

Click image to enlarge:

Infographic by the Pay Per Click Blog

A marketing path is a clearly defined path through your website for first-time visitors. And it all starts with your home page.

You home page should tell visitors what to do.

When you let visitors self-select their way, they typically will bounce around and leave without taking action. People need to be led through a path of engagement…

What do I buy first? What will you give me? How will I benefit?

Notice that YOU don’t enter the equation – yet.

When you map out your marketing path, you define what words you’ll need to SEO optimize for.

Example:

Home page offer: Free Trail of XYZ drafting software.

The benefits of XYZ drafting software are:

Increase your drafting productivity

High quality drafting blueprints

Enforcement of Drafting standards

etc…

Can you see the SEO terms you’d optimize the page for? They leap out at you, and you can actually rank for these terms as the content is on your home page.

Now that you have a home page offer.. what is the next step?

Once I have registered for the free trial, I would be taken to an upsell page. Or, a one-time offer page.

The idea is that now the visitor has taken action, they have shown commitment. Reward this commitment by offering a low price on the software I have shown to be interested in.

You’ll also have the name and email address to use for further marketing to the next steps along your marketing path.

Working together with a Search Marketing consultant to build this type of marketing path accomplishes two powerful elements of your website marketing:

Qualified traffic with a high percentage conversion.

Call us to find out how Increase Visibility can help you with your SEO and Marketing Path Optimization.

(877) 736-2384, option 1

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The point of having a website is conversion… if your visitors don’t take action, your website isn’t doing its job.

What’s a good conversion rate?

Sites cant convert opt-ins or free trials anywhere from 10%-70%. It comes down to your offer. Offering a free sign-up for a newsletter just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Free trials, Free Guides, Free Access, etc… you notice the word “Free”? Free is the best offer online. Put effort into coming up with an offer that sets you apart from the others.

Once you have a compelling offer in place, getting the best possible conversion means testing.

1) A/B testing: This is where you test different versions of a web page to see which gets a better response. The winner becomes the “control” and you keep working at it to continually improve the results.

2) Multivariate Testing: This is where you change specific elements within your webpage to find out what combination of images, text and offers work best. Again, once you have a winning combination, it becomes your “control” and you keep testing to improve.

Depending on your traffic, the initial conversion rate testing period can last anywhere from a few weeks to a month. Once your control is established, make conversion testing an ongoing part of your website marketing.

How do you actually run conversion rate optimization tests?

There are online applications that do the work for you… and I’d like to introduce you to one that makes is easy.

It’s called Reedge. They offer online marketing software that not only runs the tests and gives you the results, but also offers deeper insight into who is actually visiting your page.

Reedge offers the tools you need for free, and all you need to do on your website is add code to your pages.

It does: Multivariate testing – A/B testing – Geo targeting – Content targeting – Conversion optimization – Behavioral targeting

Right now you can get access to this platform for free.

Click here to start your conversion optimizing now.

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SEO vastly improves the probability that your site will be displayed on the short list when a consumer inputs a query about products, services or information offered on your website. And that short list is where you want to be.

Studies have shown that most consumers never click beyond the first page of search matches. The goal of SEO is to get your site ranked highly enough by Internet search engines to put it as close as possible to the top of the first screen of query responses.

As we mentioned, there are tricks to every trade and SEO is no exception. With more than 20 years of combined experience in search engine optimization and Internet marketing, the SEO experts at Increase Visibility have developed and perfected specific techniques proven to drive maximum traffic to your website. Among the most important of these SEO techniques are keywords, title tags, URLs and linking.

• Keywords. Deciding which words to optimize for search engines is the most crucial and most difficult task in formulating a SEO plan. The words selected as keywords must match those most often used by consumers to search for what you sell. Finding the specific words that are most popular and create the highest search volumes is as much art as science. There are tools that measure search volumes for specific words, but it’s selecting the right combination of highly-relevant keywords that will bring paying customers to your site.
• Title Tags. For successful search engine indexing, the text that appears in the title bar of your browser is the single most important element on your web page. Loading this title tag with keywords maximizes indexing when search spiders crawl your web pages. Each page should have a unique title to ensure indexing. Otherwise it’s like having a shelf of books all with the same title. No one knows they’re different books.
• URLs. URL structure is equally important. Because search engine spiders crawl URLs much as they do individual web pages, your URL should be constructed to make use of keywords rather than the default numbers assigned by many publishing systems. To avoid confusing search spiders, each page should link to a single URL.
• Linking. The way in which other sites link to yours impacts your search engine ranking. Including keywords in linking anchor text improves search engine rankings. You can encourage this by providing copy-and-paste HTML code for linkers.

The SEO tricks to increase website really start with following the rules of what Google is looking for. Once you have the elements firmly in place, the next step is to create content with the right Title tag, headings and copy – all that use a specific search term that is relevant to your website. This “rinse and repeat” formula allows you to keep broadening your reach through the search engines, and is the foundation of good SEO.

If you’d like to see how your site is performing, just fill out the form to the right and we’ll put together a SEO report for you.

There are typically a few reasons people want to do a “Do-Over” of their website:

1. The website is a failure as far as the niche they targeted.
2. The business has changed.
3. New products or services do not fit in the current website’s focus.

Depending on the age of the existing domain, how many links there are to it, and how well it has been indexed, keeping the domain usually wins out.

Here’s how we decide:

A) Failure. Deciding whether to keep the domain or not comes down to the question of is it relevant to the new focus. If it is, keep it, if it isn’t get a new one. Long-term, walking away from a domain that has no relevancy is a good thing. The other question we ask is if the domain name carries any negative baggage due to the failure.

B) Branding and re-branding are big these days.

One of the things that some organizations do to re-brand is to change their name.

Most people who were around to see the first name are not going to forget it, but over time their perception of an organization may change if that organization puts effort into going in a new direction and doesn’t just make a cosmetic name change.

Most of us still remember Phillip Morris, so it will take time before we can really grab a hold of the company’s new name, Altria. Philip Morris has been around for so long that it is hard to see it as anything else. Depending on who you ask, some would say the company changed its name to encompass all that it does, since they do more than sell cigarettes and tobacco-related products. The more cynical among us would say that the name change was done to distance the company from its tobacco-selling past, even though it still sells tobacco.

It is one thing to change your company name because you feel as if the current name is somehow tainted or really does not represent all that you do.

It is another thing entirely to change your company’s domain name solely on the premise that the name change will increase web traffic, as some people attempt to do.

One very strong argument against such a name change is that of the many things that Google considers when ranking sites, one is the longevity of your domain name. So changing your domain name is not a quick fix to bring in more traffic.

Rather than change your domain name, change the actual content of the site. Having a site that has relevant, timely content and is rich in keywords can make all the difference. Look at your press release section–is that last press release from last year? Do you even have a press release section?

Getting your website up to date will make a big difference in the kind of traffic that you see.

Another reason to keep your domain and change your content is that you will index fast for new content, and you’ll leverage off of the content that is already there.

C) New products

Sometime a new product launch has the potential of either impacting existing sales, or cannibalizing the current market. If this isn’t the case, and you want to “retire” you old products, you can refocus you home page with success.

If you don’t want to cannibalize your existing market, a new domain is a good idea.

Each specific case is different.

Call us, or have us do an evaluation to see what is right for you.

If you are keeping your existing domain and want to increase your website traffic, Increase Visibility can also help. Starting with a no-cost website analysis, we can tell you the areas of your website that need updating and help you implement a comprehensive web marketing plan.

When you think of blog software, a picture of a long page with lots of copy – you can actually set up a WordPress blog to have the appearance of a normal website. If you look for “premium themes”, you’ll find a lot out there, and most cost between $24-$100, and can be customized.

When you are working with WordPress there are a few key plugins to have installed, and if you follow a process for each blog post, the optimized SEO for each page comes naturally.

In fact, this blog get’s new posts on Google’s index in minutes.

Here’s the plugins you’ll need for a SEO wordpress site:

1) All in One SEO Pack – this plugin adds fields to the post editor for title tag, meta description and meta keywords. All you need to do is copy your post title into the title field, a line or two from your text and a few keywords.

2) Google XML Sitemaps Plugin for WordPress – it creates a sitemap and lets Google, Yahoo and Bing know you updated the site.

3) WP Auto Tagger – creates tags for each post, which in turn creates tag pages – more content.

The other major thing to do is change the permalink structure to a search enginee friendly format. By default, WordPress URLs are structured to appear as “/?p12″, which does nothing for SEO. Use this structure - /%postname%/%category% – and you have URLs that are SEO friendly. (Found under permalink option)

Use the self-hosted version if posssible. The hosted version doesn’t allow you as much freedom for editing the theme, or adding plugins.

There are plenty of other reasons to use WordPress for your site… and when you have a website that is addressing the basic SEO needs on an ongoing basis, you’ll see the difference in the results.

It’s the procedure of maximizing the percentage of website visitors that take the desired action, such as purchasing an item or signing up for a newsletter.

Conversion optimization blends art with science. The science aspect takes the form of performing experiments to determine if the strategies of the webpage designer are confirmed by actual conversion data. The art aspect demands the website be designed by a talented designer who has the knowledge and skills to significantly improve the conversion rate.  Increasing the conversion rate is vital. You don’t want to waste all the time and money that was spent bringing traffic to your website.

Often internet businesses concentrate on convincing Google and the other major search engines to reward them with a first page ranking. They may spend huge sums of money to increase their search engine ranking for specific keywords and to increase their traffic. However, in the end, if the traffic doesn’t convert into paying customers the money was not well spent. High praise and a firm handshake for getting a first page search engine ranking may be flattering but making sales is the ultimate goal. Instead of tossing more money at advertising, Internet businesses can significantly improve their return on investment by increasing their conversion rate.

Can Multivariate Testing Increase Sales?

Multivariate Testing

Multivariate testing has become an important part of the optimization process. Multivariate testing software allows for the concurrent testing of web pages for the maximum combinations and variations of webpage elements that have been chosen for testing. It offers granular results and indicates through statistics the best combination of design elements for webpage configurations. Typically, the tests include changing portions of the copy, using different color schemes, changing some of the elements of navigation and changing the “point of action” (POA). These tactics when properly performed have shown to increase the conversion rate of customers.

Multivariate Testing Increases Conversion Rate

Based on testing, some websites have just changed the wording on the order buttons and have significantly increased their sales. Sometimes just an adjustment to a headline, perhaps a couple of words, can produce a huge increase in customer responses. Headlines typically provide at least 50% of the opportunity to increase the conversion rate. In addition, “the offer” typically provides the second best chance to increase conversion rates.

Testing various versions of text is well worth the time spent. The lead paragraph is another strong opportunity to increase conversions. The first paragraph must grab the reader’s attention and increase their craving for the product. Sure price matters, but emotions are a significant factor in the buying process and websites need to focus on enticing and persuading customers they have the product the visitor should purchase.

Describing the product typically won’t make the sale. The list of benefits helps to entice the visitor into action and increases the conversion rate. Images also have a big impact on conversion rates and various images of the product should be tested. Placing effective slogans and descriptions underneath the images also typically leads to more sales. Background colors and the placement of images and copy should also be tested. In addition, discovering the best combination of elements for the order-check-out procedure has been known to decrease the shopping cart abandonment rate by 25% and higher.

Increase Visibility, a SEO/SEM firm, has shown that multivariate testing can also help you discover where the weak places are in the sales procedure. Now you have an opportunity to run a multivariate test and discover the best solutions. It can also determine which page elements are the most powerful regarding conversion rates. For example, it will indicate if the headline or the product image had more influence with the customer.

Check out the essential webpage elements of the successful competition in order to get some ideas, but please don’t plagiarize. It’s also a good idea to test each element to see if focusing on peoples’ logical thinking or their impulsive or sensitivity factors increases the conversion rate for a particular product or service. Multivariate testing of copy may show different results during economic good times when compared to results from an economic recession. For example, during a recession, the impulse element of shoppers may be less of a factor.

Google Website Optimizer

The Google Website Optimizer is a free tool that provides the opportunity to run multivariate experiments on websites and it can be useful. However, without the expertise the testing can offer poor results. The software is easy to use but creating insightful test scenarios, properly evaluating the results of the tests and designing follow-up tests is vital for success.

Multivariate Testing and Novices

Sometimes website owners create a multivariate test that is badly designed and takes a couple of years to complete. After the test is over, often the results are of little help in increasing the conversion rates. Sometimes the time span for the test was too short and an insufficient amount of data was accumulated. Also, if a webpage receives less than 40 visitors a day the test may not be worth doing. The website owner makes changes based on the data and may actually decrease the conversion rate or doesn’t capture all the increase that was available due to basing decisions on an inadequate amount of data. Carefully designing the multivariate test is essential in order to prevent a test from taking years to complete.

Some Internet business owners put a lot of time in using multivariate software. After they add their test elements to the software and choose the number of options for each element they could end up with several thousand scenarios that will be tested. Also each scenario will typically have to be run over 180 times to ensure the data that has been gathered is statistically accurate. They sometimes end up testing hundreds of thousands of combinations of elements and then have the difficult task of figuring out what to do with all the data. They might be inspired to shout the word “yikes!”

Internet businesses need accurate information in a short amount of time, thus being prudent with multivariate testing is recommended. Internet business owners need to realize that multivariate testing software is just a tool; it won’t design the website. Talented people are still required to help ensure success.

Some companies actually spend two years or more to complete the process and by then a superior product could have entered the marketplace or their product simply has lost its popularity. The expensive, time consuming testing procedure can produce results that are no longer relevant. However, some novices that have spent the necessary amount of time required to become very knowledgeable regarding multivariate testing have been rewarded.

Multivariate Testing Reduces Uncertainty

Multivariate testing can decrease uncertainty. Often website owners have doubts about their choices for their landing pages and wonder if they should have utilized some strategies or specific words in the copy that they earlier rejected. Now they have the opportunity to try a variety of elements and see which versions have the highest conversion rates. Depending on the current conversion rate and the average number of monthly customers just an increase of 8% in the conversion rate could mean thousands of extra dollars in sales each month. Some Internet businesses that use an effective conversion optimization plan have increased their conversion rate by 30% or more.

A website that has been designed with conversion optimization best practices is appealing, attractive, builds trust, easy to use, offers a strong sense of security and includes top-notch copywriting. Also, the headline needs to be an attention grabber. If it’s intriguing, the visitor will most likely continue to read and not click off the website. The text should be compelling, tempting and offer precise promises.

After visitors have taken the POA, effective strategies need to be utilized to improve the conversion rate. Request the minimal amount of information required. Make sure the encryption method and privacy policies are prominent on the webpage. If the check-out process takes too long and requests too much personal information you may end up with too many empty shopping carts.

The staff at Increase Visibility believes conversion optimization is a vital aspect for the short-term and long-term success of internet businesses. Basically, once the visitors arrive at the website, utilizing effective techniques for converting them into paying customers is crucial. Conversion optimization requires a wide variety of skills and a strong understanding of the Internet. Multivariate testing is a very important tool for conversion optimization but it’s a tool that needs to be used wisely. Sure, increase your search engine ranking and your traffic but increasing sales with an effective conversion optimization plan is essential for success.