What Is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of manipulating the elements on your web site to increase it's ability to rank high for specific keyword phrases.

For example: Say you sell real estate in Concord, North Carolina. When a person types "house concord nc" into Google search, you want your website link to be one of the first five pulled up on the search results page. If you're on the first page of the results generated by the search engine, your website has achieved search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is all about making sure your web site comes up at the top of the list when a person initiates a search. Most web users won't click beyond the first page of search results, so you want your web site to appear at the top of the page.

Since users all think differently, the words and word phrases they use to initiate a search will be different. That's why it's important that your site be rich in a variety of key words and key word phrases to ensure that no matter what words the user types into the search screen, your web site will pop up on the results page.

How Do I Use My Web Site to Generate Leads?

The purpose of lead generation is to turn web site and blog visitors into clients. It's tricky these days. The threat of identity theft has made people paranoid about giving out personal information on the internet. On average, only 4% of site visitors will provide information that generates a lead. The trick is "to pick up leads, not deter response by over-stepping the visitor's comfort zone," says Jim Cronin on The Real Estate Tomato, a marketing blog for the real estate industry.

You walk a fine line between enticing visitors with promises of greater value and alienating them by being too pushy. The soft sell approach is often more effective. Try these proven methods for generating leads from site visitors:

• Short forms. Use an online form that asks for as little personal information as possible. The more you ask for, the less likely a site visitor is to fill out your form. Name and email required is all you need to produce an effective email marketing program.
• Offer value. Offer value in exchange for information. Visitors won't provide contact information unless you offer something they want in exchange. A subscription to a monthly email newsletter is a typical offering. Pump it up by promising subscription-only coupons and discounts to make the offer more enticing to visitors.
• Blog blast. On your blog, offer sign up for an email blog blast which sends out a RSS feed to subscribers each time a new blog article is posted. If your blog is well-written, informative or entertaining, readers won't want to miss new postings. Providing their email address to read your newest nuggets of wisdom is considered a fair trade.
• Expert advice. Downloadable articles, white papers and eBooks appeal to visitors and increase their confidence in you as an authority in the field. Reorganize archived blog articles into short hints, tips and how-to eBooks. Focus each booklet on a single topic to encourage repeat visitors and make each download email required.

What Is the F Pattern?

No, we're not trying to be rude. The F pattern refers to the way internet users navigate their way around a web site, blog, online data or search engine. A recent study by Jakob Nielsen tracked the eye movements of 232 internet users as they read thousands of different web pages and discovered that the most used reading pattern was F-shaped. (Click the link to read more about the study.)

Three common attributes characterize the F pattern:

• First, users read horizontally across the top of a web page. This is where you grab their attention with a dynamite headline.
• Next, users skip down the page a bit and read horizontally across the page a second time, but they only read about halfway across the page this time. This is where you put your most important content.
• Lastly, users scan the left side of a site in a vertical movement. Pack in your key words here to lure them deeper into your site.

How can you use this knowledge to improve your web site?

• As much as you might hate to admit it, visitors to your web site won't read every carefully crafted pearl of wisdom you write. They scan for something that catches their attention, then move on. If you don't snag them in the first line or two, they've clicked away and are gone.
• You need to get your most important points into the first paragraph or two of your text.
• Use keywords at the start of the header and opening paragraph. If the user doesn't see what he came for right away, he'll click away. Use keywords in major divisions, subheads, bullet points and in bold sentences. Pop keywords into the left column of your site to catch the user's final scan.

When you design your web site or web page, keep the F pattern in mind and you stand a better chance of catching the visitor's attention and keeping them on your site.

How Can I Improve My Web Site's Stickiness?

How can you make your web site sticky? Put another way, what can you do to make visitors want to stay (stick) on your web site instead of clicking away. (See our May 31 blog post for a definition of stickiness and why it's important.)

A sticky website immediately attracts the attention of the visitor and entices him to stay. Incorporating the following elements in your web site will improve its stickiness:

• Content. Interesting and creative content that immediately addresses the user's reason for visiting the site and encourages him to explore further is the key to creating a sticky web site. Know and write for your target audience.


• Organization. A well organized and uncluttered site that allows the user to immediately find what he's looking for and go there easily will encourage the user to explore further. Be guided by the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid!).


• Navigation. Make navigation to other parts of the site easy by using intuitive navigation and extensive hypertext cross-references.


• Interaction. The ability to interact both with the site and other users will help the user to develop a relationship with your site and keep him coming back to find out what's new. Try adding some of these elements to make your site interactive: personalization, discussion groups, user feedback, message board, games.


• Expertise. Become the go-to expert in your field. Post articles and white papers and link to other sites and articles to increase your exposure. Offer a free email newsletter. It will help build your relationship with site visitors and get them to return for new info.


• Sharing. Make it easy for visitors to let friends know about your site. Add an "email this page to a friend" link.


• Inventory. If you sell a product, provide an online inventory with pictures so users can see what you're selling.


• Forms. Use online forms to make it easy for the user to order a product or request a contact.


• Updates. Update your site regularly (at least monthly) so there's always something new when the user visits. He'll keep coming back to find out what's new. Newsletters, inventory, special offers, interactive features are all easy ways to create new content.


• Structure. Make sure any visitor can view and navigate around your site by designing the site in pure HTML with no obscure plug-ins. Use only the most common plug-ins for audio and video. Users who can't see or use all of the elements on your site will become frustrated and click away.


• Search engines. Optimize your site for search engines to help more users find it. Don't bother to list your site with every minor search engine, stick to the top ten as these are the ones most visitors use.


• Don'ts. Don't spam and don't sell user information. After all, you want your relationship with site users to be positive, not negative.

Want to check out some excellent examples of sticky sites? Try these: Amazon, Yahoo, Excite.

What Is Stickiness and Why Is It Important?

What is stickiness?
Stickiness refers to a web site's ability to keep visitors glued to the site and get them to return frequently. Like flypaper, sticky sites will attract and "trap" visitors, enticing them to stay on the site even if it doesn't offer what they were originally looking for. The more appealing a site is to visitors, the more reasons a visitor has to stay and return, the stickier the site is said to be.

Why is stickiness important?
Most visitors to your web site will click away within 30 seconds so you have just one quick moment to grab the user's attention and keep him on your site. The longer a visitor stays on your web site, the greater his opportunity to learn about your products and services, make a purchase, click on ads and patronize advertisers, and (this is the golden goose) begin to develop customer loyalty that will keep the user returning to your site and recommending it to others.

What makes a web site sticky?

• A sticky web site targets the user's immediate need, giving him the info he's looking for in a few brief sentences. That's the hook that keeps him on the site to find out more.
• It communicates the value and benefits of your products and services in an easy to understand manner and allows quick and simple navigation to each feature on your web site.
• It allows the user to participate in your web site, creating a positive dialog that will lead to a solid customer relationship.
• It is expertly designed to take advantage of all the behind the scenes tricks that make a web site user friendly and gourmet fare for search engine bots.

Want to know how to make your web site stickier? Stick around. We'll talk about that in our next blog.

What Is Click Fraud?

Click fraud is an internet crime in which a person, computer program or automated script clicks on an internet ad for the sole purpose of generating a pay-per-click charge with no interest in the ad's subject matter and target link. Some spammers generate hundreds to thousands of dollars in income every month by fraudulently increasing the number of clicks recorded by online ads. Others may click maliciously to drain a competitor's advertising budget. The phenomenon has become so widespread that the government is getting involved, classifying such internet fraud as a felony.

Pay per click (PPC) advertising has many legitimate uses. As a service to customers and a minor revenue generator, web masters include advertisements on their web pages with links to the advertiser's home site. Each time a user clicks the link, a fee is generated which the advertiser pays the web master. Unfortunately, unscrupulous entrepreneurs are abusing the system, turning it into their own personal gold mine. The internet is now flooded with sites that exist for the sole purpose of providing a home base for PPC ads. The sites offer no services or information; they simply direct you to other sites. Each time you click on a link, the web master of the host site earns a fee from the advertiser. Spammers can target these sites, using automated bots or low-cost foreign labor to scan the site repeatedly, increasing site traffic and fees. The fees may be small; but with the high volume, they add up quickly.

Advertiser-paid search advertising is a burgeoning market, expected to grow 25% this year to $3.2 billion. Click rates have also increased to an average payment of 45 cents per click. Abuse has become so widespread that major internet ad providers Google and Yahoo are starting to police their own. Google just sent out pink slips to a large group of owners of low conversion Made for AdSense (MFA) sites, notifying them that their sites will be terminated on June 1, 2007. The effort should create a healthier internet advertising environment on the web, benefiting both users and advertisers.

How Do I Create a User-Friendly Web Site?

How do you create a user-friendly web site that will pull in potential customers? There is no one right way to do it, no hard and fast rules for creating the perfect web site; but there are some tried and true standards that will increase your web site's usability (i.e., user friendliness). (See our May 21, 2007 blog post for an explanation of usability and why it's important.)

In creating a user-friendly web site, your goal should be to create web pages that are self-evident, "so that just by looking at it the average user will know what it is and how to use it," explains usability guru Steve Krug, author of the usability classic, Don't Make Me Think (see the book review in our May 21, 2007 blog post). If it's not possible to be self-evident, your web pages should at least be self-explanatory, requiring as little thought as possible to understand and navigate.

Follow these guidelines from Krug and your web site should have users coming back for more.

• Prioritize. Create a clear visual hierarchy on each page. A user should instantly be able to tell what is most important and what goes together. To indicate prominence, place important items at the top of the page. You can make key items stand out by using big, bold type; distinctive colors or more white space. Group or nest similar objects to make it clear that they belong together.
• Be conventional. Use conventions to your advantage. Conventions are the traditional, usual, conventional way of doing things. Don't waste time trying to reinvent the wheel. If it works, use it. Everyone looks for a table of contents in a colored bar along the left side of a web page. That's the conventional page design, so use it. It will help visitors find site elements faster and use them, which is the goal after all.
• Get organized. Break the page into clearly designed areas to make things easy to find. Most users glance at a page, looking for the one thing they want. Page zones help users zero in on that important information.
• Click it. Make it obvious what is clickable. Clicking should be mindless. Don't frustrate users by getting so arty that they have to guess where to click. Be consistent in the way you use elements on your site and use conventions whenever possible.
• Silence noise. Minimize the noise. It's the old KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid!). If there are too many distracting elements -- exclamation marks, bright colors, invitations to buy, etc. -- competing for attention on your page, none will stand out. If your page is cluttered, the information you want the user to receive will be lost in the background noise. Too much of anything negates its effectiveness.

This isn't everything you need to know about web pages, but it's a good start. Best advice: When you design your web site, think like a web user. Keep it simple and don't make me think!