Archive for the ‘Web Design Tips’ Category

Does this sound familiar? You’ve read the books, blogs like this one and attended the webinars/conferences. You get it. Online content is important. You understand we are entering a huge shift in marketing and promotion going from product pushers to trusted resources and that drive, creativity and passion count more than a big budget, especially with all the amazing tools available online.

Trusted resources like you create valuable, interesting, educational and/or entertaining content.

This might be in the form of a blog, web show, online magazine, webinar series, ebook and the list goes on.

So, you decide to hop on the content train for your business either by creating or curating the best content in your niche.

But it isn’t spreading. Nobody is commenting. Nothing is really happening. You start to get nervous. “Is this worth it?” you begin to ask yourself.

Why isn’t it spreading? Sort of like looking in the mirror and saying, “Is it me or is it you?”

Normally there isn’t just one answer and it isn’t black and white. Some things directly matter and others go a little bit deeper with more abstract, yet equally important ideas like trust and authority. But, everything adds up.

Here are a few reasons why your content is lonely and how to get back on the right track with a few hundred or thousand friends:

1. Bad Web Design

If you website looks stuck in 1997 with a construction guy digging and music playing or like a run of the mill template, there is a lack of credibility and trust. Do you share content from sites that you don’t trust?

I wish it wasn’t true, but looks matter. Think about first impressions. It is worth investing in a site that is functional and reflects your personality and brand.

2. Lacking Ease Of Sharing

The best content is like peanut butter, easily spreadable. Easily spreadable doesn’t mean that it takes a scholar to find how to share easily via social networks, email, etc.

Enabling your community, no matter how big or small to share with ease can make a huge difference.

Do you have one click sharing?

3. Product Focused Content

The best content isn’t about your product. The harsh reality is nobody cares about any of our products. People do care about interests, passions, hobbies, solving their problems, getting answer to key questions, learning etc.

For example, let’s pretend you sell dog food. A mistake is to make the content about the food. Meaning features and benefits.

The fix here is to focus on an interest or passion. People aren’t passionate about dog food. Instead, I bet there are plenty of people passionate about dogs. Training dogs, dog health, etc. A better play is for the content to focus on the bigger picture and not just the product.

4. Not-You Focused Content

Injecting personality, passion and quirks into your content? Always a good thing. Making it about you and how amazing you are. Yikes.

Make it about them, not you. It will do better. Trust me.

5. Lack Of Passion

If you aren’t passionate about your content, it will show and will hinder progress. Nobody spreads half-baked material. If you can’t get excited and pumped up about your content, how can you expect anyone else to be?

6. Unclear, Boring Or Ridiculously Long Titles

I get it. Don’t judge a book by its cover or a piece of content by its title. Fair enough. However, the reality of the matter is titles matter, a lot. They matter for search engines and humans. When you have 50 titles in front of you, which ones jump out? Why?

Spending time on titles is worth the time.

7. Oops, I Forgot My Marketing

We have all fell into this trap. You spend all the time creating the content and posting it and then no time is left topromote it. You can have the greatest content in the world, but if you don’t spend time marketing and promoting it, then it will be the loneliest, saddest, greatest most useful content in the world.

My recommendation, especially when getting rolling is to spend 80% of total “content time” marketing and promoting.

This means creating one-on-one connections on social media sites, expanding your network, digital schmoozing, perhaps hosting an event or meet up. Often the best online marketing happens offline.   Content plus connections equals success. You have to give to get.

One bonus fun fact: Time. Trust, influence, authority and community isn’t built with just one post or overnight. It takes blood, sweat and tears.  While the opportunity to create has been democratized, that means you have to work hard to stick out. Keep at it, experiment, refine brick by brick, click by click, over time you might be the ruler of the next content empire.

What has been your experience? What would you add to the list?

This was a guest post by David Siteman Garland. Garland is the Founder of The Rise To The Top, The #1 Non-Boring Resource For Building Your Business Smarter, Faster, Cheaper.

1. Page Title is toot long
   A page title is the text shown at the top of your browser window. It is also the title of a page as shown in Google search results. Page titles tell visitors what a page is about. Search engines and browsers may cut off your page title if it is too long. In most cases, it is good to keep your page title below 70 characters long. From a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective, it is good to keep your page titles concise. If your page title is too long, it will dilute the importance of each term in the title. This might prevent you from ranking well on any of the words in your page title.  To fix, come up with a concise but keyword-rich description of your page that is under 70 characters long. Make that your page title.
2. Meta Description is too long
   Meta descriptions are important for drawing in visitors from search. The meta description is the text under a page title in search results. Like page titles, meta descriptions will get cut off and replaced by “…” if they are too long. to fix, come up with a meta description of your page that adds detail to your page title, but remains under 150 characters long.
3. The Page Title is not Targeting Realistic Keywords
   A key factor in search engine ranking is how closely the title of a page matches the user’s search terms. The page title should not be written like an advertisement. Users are not likely to search for the “#1″ casino game publisher. Avoid unnecessary descriptive words like this, because users don’t actually search for them. Additionally, their company name should not be the start of their page title. The first few words in a page title are the most influential in search engine results. Your want people that don’t know about your brand to be able to find you, so using more genreal industry keywords is important. To fix, think about (or look at using analytics) the words that users might searching to find you. Adjust your page title to remain readable, but match these words more closely.
4. Page Keywords Are the Same in all pages
   Each page on your website is a new opportunity to get found online. You don’t want to waste all these opportunities by reusing the same page titles or internal page keywords. Diversify your keywords. Think what each page has to offer uniquely, and target keywords based on that.
5. Domain Name Set to Expire Soon
   Search engines favor websites that are not set to expire for a long time. Having your domain name registered for the next few years shows committment, and means your website is less likely to be spammy.
6. Images Have No ALT Text
   Search engines do not “read” images. They scan primarily for text. Fortunately with the ALT tag, you can associate text with an image. ALT text does not have as much influence on the page keywords as actual text on the page, but is still worth having. Assign ALT text to a pictures whenever possible by adding something like the following to your HTML.
7. No CSS
   Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are not only a good way to ensure that your website has consistent design, they also help your SEO. Many websites still have layout-related information in their HTML. Since HTML is the language that search engines understand best, make sure your HTML is as concise as possisble. This ensures that search engines extract the most relevant keywords and other information from your pages. To fix, put your layout-related code into CSS, and take it out of your HTML.
8. Conversion Form Too Lengthy
   Conversion forms are crucial for converting traffic into leads. However, more traffic will be willing to become a lead if your form is done right. Do they really need the address information for a person in addition to their email addresses? As a site visitor, I don’t understand this. Would they actually send me snail mail? I’ll bet they’re better off communicating with leads via email for now, and requesting a home address only when they need to deliver something to them. Limit the content of your forms to only the information you need.
9. Too little (or Too Much) Text
   Search engines read text better than anything else. So, it’s important to have text on your web page. Knowing this, some people cram as much text as possible into a page. As a result, search engines then struggle to extract the relevant text. Make sure your page is readable and contains the keywords you are targeting. However, don’t add unimportant text just to have more of it.
10. Not Using Analytics
    Even after you’ve created interesting content on your website, optimized, and converted traffic into leads, your work is not done! If you want your website to be all it can be, you should analyze your results, and refine your SEO strategy accordingly.

This checklist provides 50 simple ways for you to make your website even better!

1. Use .htaccess to redirect the non-www version of your website to the www version.

2. Extend the registration of your domain for at least five years.

3. Make sure that when a visitor clicks your website’s logo, they are taken back to the homepage.

4. If you think your font is too small, make it bigger!

5. Remove widgets that aren’t directly enhancing your website.

6. Include an easy to find contact link, e-mail address or phone number on every page of your website.

7. Use a CSS stylesheet to make your website printer friendly.

8. Fix or remove broken links (external and internal).

9. Add ALT tags to all of your images.

10. If your website is using frames, get rid of them!

11. If you don’t have a robots.txt file, create one.

12. Provide the same basic navigation menu on every page of your website.

13. Use the same color for links throughout your website.

14. Spell check your content.

15. Format your content so that it is easy to scan.

16. Add at least one picture to every page of your website.

17. If you don’t have an About page, create one.

18. Use your About page to show your brand’s personality.

19. Include at least three pictures on your About page.

20. If your website has pop-up windows, get rid of them!

21. Link to relevant social media profiles from your About page.

22. Add a search box near the top of your website’s layout.

23. Create a privacy policy page.

24. Place a link to your privacy policy at the bottom of every page.

25. Use dashes in filenames instead of underscores.

26. Add a link to Google Maps on your Contact page.

27. Add internal links from one piece of content to another.

28. Write a unique META description for all of your main pages.

29. Validate your source code and correct any errors.

30. If you have a link exchange page, get rid of it!

31. Add a site search box to your 404 page.

32. Create a sitemap for your website.

33. Add a link to your sitemap at the bottom of every page of your website.

34. Add a copyright notification to the bottom of every page of your website.

35. Underline your links throughout your website.

36. Turn off music that automatically plays.

37. Get rid of any flashing GIF animations.

38. Include your website logo at the top of every page.

39. Register the .net and .org versions of your domain and redirect them to your website.

40. If you don’t have a help or support section, create one!

41. When you answer a question via e-mail, add the answer to the help/support section.

42. Look at your contact forms and see if there is any information you don’t have to request from your visitors.

43. Add your analytics code to every page of your website.

44. Get rid of any pages that automatically resize visitors’ browser window.

45. Create a favicon for your website.

46. Only use email address that include @yourdomain.

47. Label each box of any forms on your website.

48. Show a confirmation any time a visitor completes a significant action on your website.

49. Create one new piece of quality content for your website every week.

50. Leave a comment under this post!

Some Things to Consider When Building your Website Your Website Should be Custom, Unique and Original, Something that Stands out from your Competitors.

• Don\’t be Too Wordy with too much Text and Content.
• Get to the Point. Customers should Immediately Find what they are looking for.
• Use Bullets or Outlines to Make your Points. They are Easier to Read and Follow.
• Your site should have a lot of \”Call to Actions\” (reasons for customer to Buy, Call or give you their Name and Phone Number). Once your Website is live, consider how you will Drive Customers to it. (Search Engines, Articles, Advertising, yellow page listing, etc.)

The following is a guest post by Leslie Mann, a real estate agent with Hallmark Sotheby’s International Realty of Hopkinton, MA and the real estate blogger for the MetroWest Daily News.

Most real estate agents have a social media presence, but are they really giving home buyers and sellers want they crave? Buying or selling a home is an important financial–and emotional– decision. Most people are full of questions when they undertake this endeavor.

They want more than someone who’s just experienced in the industry. They want someone who will protect their interests and help them navigate the complexities of real estate. It is important that the agent they choose is someone they’ll feel confident having by their side throughout the process.

That’s where social media comes in. If applied correctly, it can be a great way to open a dialog, share advice, and begin to forge a relationship.

Here is a handy list of social media dos and don’ts for real estate agents.

Do

• Invite buyers in – Home buyers want to know the good, bad, and ugly of each town they’re considering moving to. Yet most real estate blogs simply give buyers basic demographic statistics and perhaps some flowery language about the area. Give potential clients a far richer understanding of the markets you serve, letting them know the pros and cons of each area. Be honest and forthcoming with a wealth of information and opinions. Let them know why you chose where you live and they’re more apt to turn to you for advice.

• Be yourself - I’ve heard of many realtors who pay a ghost writer to write their blogs, yet this approach has its shortcomings. The copy simply doesn’t ring true; it fails to give clients a sense of who you really are. Studies show that consumers want to make a personal connection with those they do business with. Let your personality shine through. It’s a great way to open a dialog with a client, before they ever pick up the phone.

• Take advantage of controversy - Some of the most trying days as a real estate agent prove to be great lessons we can share with our clients. Tell readers about common real estate pitfalls to help them have a smoother home buying/selling experience.

• Chat - Home buyers today expect instant response to questions, day or night. Use a free widget like Meebo to allow home buyers to initiate a chat session with you, right from your blog.

• Respond to comments, good and bad – Respond promptly and courteously to engage readers who post comments on your social media sites. One caveat: Don’t feel compelled to respond to those who post abusive comments. The social media space does lure its share of online bullies. Resist the temptation to get into battle with them, instead help to solve their problem.

Don’t

• Shout about your home listings - It’s fine to let people know about the homes you’re marketing, but don’t make that the primary topic of your interactions. Think about common questions home buyers and sellers ask you, and turn these into posts. Provide valuable content and you’ll keep people coming back.

• Forget video - It’s tempting to skip this expense, but online video is an important element of home marketing. If well done, video creates an emotional connection with buyers—and improves search engine optimization. Video is 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google search results than a text page, according to Forrester Research.

• Assume you’re only connecting with first time buyers - The fastest growing Facebook demographic is women over 55. At last count, there were already nearly 30 million U.S. users ages 35-54 and more than nine million U.S. users age 55 and older on Facebook. It’s a great place to engage “fans” and learn what they’re looking for from their agent.

• Talk to yourself - Social media is more about listening than about talking. Pay attention to what people are saying about you and your brand. Solicit and gather feedback through informal polls or via free services like TweetBeep or Google Alerts.

• Ignore your existing clients - Invite your previous buyers and sellers to join your social networks. This way, your sites becomes richer communities of shared experiences and objective advice from those who recently completely the home buying/selling journey. These contributors may prove themselves to be your strongest advocates.