Social Web Tips

by Jennifer Laycock

Sometimes it’s the really simple advice that can have the most impact on how you do business. That’s the basis of Tim’s advice over at Convert Offline this week. Tim harkens back to his Yellow Pages days and offers up some great suggestions on building a better local search presence. Now some people might find it odd to learn SEO lessons from something as old school as the Yellow Pages, but Tim offers up some good advice on improving your site.

Tim explains that he fell naturally into strong rankings for local search terms simply by implementing some lessons he learned while crafting good Yellow Page ads.

The first site I got to the first of page of results for a specific keyword, I did so, quite by accident. When I designed the site I did so with PPC in mind and I included all the copy points that I knew from years of yellow pages ad design were necessary to motivate a potential buyer to call.

Tim goes on to explain the value of including all of your services, listing your service areas and preparing your content based on what your competitors are presenting.

It’s simple, practical advice, but it can go a long way toward improving your rankings. Well worth the read.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

by Jennifer Laycock

Sometimes it’s the really simple advice that can have the most impact on how you do business. That’s the basis of Tim’s advice over at Convert Offline this week. Tim harkens back to his Yellow Pages days and offers up some great suggestions on building a better local search presence. Now some people might find it odd to learn SEO lessons from something as old school as the Yellow Pages, but Tim offers up some good advice on improving your site.

Tim explains that he fell naturally into strong rankings for local search terms simply by implementing some lessons he learned while crafting good Yellow Page ads.

The first site I got to the first of page of results for a specific keyword, I did so, quite by accident. When I designed the site I did so with PPC in mind and I included all the copy points that I knew from years of yellow pages ad design were necessary to motivate a potential buyer to call.

Tim goes on to explain the value of including all of your services, listing your service areas and preparing your content based on what your competitors are presenting.

It’s simple, practical advice, but it can go a long way toward improving your rankings. Well worth the read.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

by Jennifer Laycock

I’ve read a lot of posts lately tearing down the public relations industry for what a poor job they do when pitching bloggers. I’ve also read (and written) quite a few posts about what a terrible job companies do relating to bloggers and having conversations with them. While there’s no doubt companies and PR firms have a long way to go, a blast from my past reminded me that bloggers need to share some responsibility in all this.

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Blogger Social event in NYC. It wasn’t a conference, it was just a chance for a lot of marketing bloggers to get together and visit with each other. I went because I wanted the chance to make personal contact with a lot of people I’ve met via blogs and Twitter over the last few years. At dinner one night, I found myself sitting with Connie Reece of Every Dot Connects. During the course of conversation, a mutual friend Aruni Gunasegaram of Babblesoft came up.

I unleashed my inner snark…

Last year Aruni was launching her new parenting software. I happened to pick up the press release right as it went across the wires and had some pretty harsh words for the idea on my Lactivist blog.

Apparently, the company feels that there’s an untapped market in parents with extreme breastfeeding OCD issues, so they’ve made available some snazzy (I use the word loosely) new software that will allow these Ezzo-wannabes the absolute, total scheduling control that they long for.

It got worse though. In fact, rereading that post I made more than a year ago I found myself chuckling and wincing at the same time. Chuckling because some lines in my post were really funny, but wincing as I realized just how biting and scathing my critique was. I’m generally a pretty easy going and nice person. I don’t tend to like to rely on snark, and yet there I was, throwing out snark like I was Perez Hilton.

As you can imagine, Aruni was crushed by the review. At the time, my blog was one of the leading blogs among her target audience. The Lactivist would have been a site she’d hope to score a positive review from and yet, before she even had a chance to pitch me, I’d found her product and ripped it to shreds.

And this is where Aruni did things EXACTLY right.

She didn’t get defensive, she didn’t get angry, she didn’t even respond.

Instead, she called Connie Reece and asked for help. Connie helped Aruni understand how to do some research on me (which quickly revealed I’m also a marketer) and how to read through my comments and posts to get a take for the best way to approach me. Connie outlines her response in an online reputation management case study she just released.

So What Did Aruni Do Right?

When Aruni did respond, she was able to calmly and rationally explain her point of view and her reasons for developing the software. In fact, I was so surprised and pleased to see her respond the way she did, I ended up eating a bit of crow for going overboard.

That’s the great thing about this blog. If I go on a rant without thinking something through from all angles, my readers aren’t afraid to call me on it.

Ultimately, many of my readers ended up checking out the software and seeing the value in it for certain situations and while I still think the software’s a little on the anal side for the average mom, I full recognize how helpful it could be for moms who DO need to track things.

Even more important to the story is the relationship that developed because of the way Aruni responded. Aruni became a regular reader of my blog and I became a reader of hers. We follow each other on Twitter and we’ve exchanged quite a few emails over the past year. Not long after the incident, I ended up sending her an email to share how refreshed I was at the way she handled things.

I want to compliment you on the way you handled your response to my blog post. I was pretty hard on you guys and you came in with class and style and really did a great job of turning the situation around to make yourself look good. I work in online reputation management and it’s rare to see a company respond so well. Just thought you should know that you gained my respect with that.

So what’s the lesson here for bloggers?

Sometimes it’s easy for bloggers to get caught up in keeping their audiences entertained. I look back and read my post and I can see I got completely carried away. It’s one thing to be funny, it’s one thing to critique, but it’s a whole other thing to attack something you know little about. Had I bothered to contact Aruni before writing my post, she could have given me some excellent examples of parents that might benefit from using the software.

Instead, I chose to entertain my readers at the expense of someone else…an action that could have resulted in irreparable damage to a company that wasn’t savvy enough or patient enough to respond the way Aruni did. While it’s fine for bloggers to entertain, to share opinions and even to get a little snarky…I think we sometimes forget just how powerful our words can be.

I don’t write all of this to excuse bad pitches or companies that bury their heads in the sand while shouting “we won’t engage with bloggers.” I write it to ask if we, as bloggers, might share some responsibility in creating an atmosphere that makes companies want to avoid engaging us.

Companies can learn a lot about how to respond to criticism by taking a cue from Aruni Gunasegaram and Connie Reece. Bloggers could learn a lot from them as well. I certainly did.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

by Jennifer Laycock

I’ve read a lot of posts lately tearing down the public relations industry for what a poor job they do when pitching bloggers. I’ve also read (and written) quite a few posts about what a terrible job companies do relating to bloggers and having conversations with them. While there’s no doubt companies and PR firms have a long way to go, a blast from my past reminded me that bloggers need to share some responsibility in all this.

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Blogger Social event in NYC. It wasn’t a conference, it was just a chance for a lot of marketing bloggers to get together and visit with each other. I went because I wanted the chance to make personal contact with a lot of people I’ve met via blogs and Twitter over the last few years. At dinner one night, I found myself sitting with Connie Reece of Every Dot Connects. During the course of conversation, a mutual friend Aruni Gunasegaram of Babblesoft came up.

I unleashed my inner snark…

Last year Aruni was launching her new parenting software. I happened to pick up the press release right as it went across the wires and had some pretty harsh words for the idea on my Lactivist blog.

Apparently, the company feels that there’s an untapped market in parents with extreme breastfeeding OCD issues, so they’ve made available some snazzy (I use the word loosely) new software that will allow these Ezzo-wannabes the absolute, total scheduling control that they long for.

It got worse though. In fact, rereading that post I made more than a year ago I found myself chuckling and wincing at the same time. Chuckling because some lines in my post were really funny, but wincing as I realized just how biting and scathing my critique was. I’m generally a pretty easy going and nice person. I don’t tend to like to rely on snark, and yet there I was, throwing out snark like I was Perez Hilton.

As you can imagine, Aruni was crushed by the review. At the time, my blog was one of the leading blogs among her target audience. The Lactivist would have been a site she’d hope to score a positive review from and yet, before she even had a chance to pitch me, I’d found her product and ripped it to shreds.

And this is where Aruni did things EXACTLY right.

She didn’t get defensive, she didn’t get angry, she didn’t even respond.

Instead, she called Connie Reece and asked for help. Connie helped Aruni understand how to do some research on me (which quickly revealed I’m also a marketer) and how to read through my comments and posts to get a take for the best way to approach me. Connie outlines her response in an online reputation management case study she just released.

So What Did Aruni Do Right?

When Aruni did respond, she was able to calmly and rationally explain her point of view and her reasons for developing the software. In fact, I was so surprised and pleased to see her respond the way she did, I ended up eating a bit of crow for going overboard.

That’s the great thing about this blog. If I go on a rant without thinking something through from all angles, my readers aren’t afraid to call me on it.

Ultimately, many of my readers ended up checking out the software and seeing the value in it for certain situations and while I still think the software’s a little on the anal side for the average mom, I fully recognize how helpful it could be for moms who DO need to track things.

Even more important to the story is the relationship that developed because of the way Aruni responded. Aruni became a regular reader of my blog and I became a reader of hers. We follow each other on Twitter and we’ve exchanged quite a few emails over the past year. Not long after the incident, I ended up sending her an email to share how refreshed I was at the way she handled things.

I want to compliment you on the way you handled your response to my blog post. I was pretty hard on you guys and you came in with class and style and really did a great job of turning the situation around to make yourself look good. I work in online reputation management and it’s rare to see a company respond so well. Just thought you should know that you gained my respect with that.

So what’s the lesson here for bloggers?

Sometimes it’s easy for bloggers to get caught up in keeping their audiences entertained. I look back and read my post and I can see I got completely carried away. It’s one thing to be funny, it’s one thing to critique, but it’s a whole other thing to attack something you know little about. Had I bothered to contact Aruni before writing my post, she could have given me some excellent examples of parents that might benefit from using the software.

Instead, I chose to entertain my readers at the expense of someone else…an action that could have resulted in irreparable damage to a company that wasn’t savvy enough or patient enough to respond the way Aruni did. While it’s fine for bloggers to entertain, to share opinions and even to get a little snarky…I think we sometimes forget just how powerful our words can be.

I don’t write all of this to excuse bad pitches or companies that bury their heads in the sand while shouting “we won’t engage with bloggers.” I write it to ask if we, as bloggers, might share some responsibility in creating an atmosphere that makes companies want to avoid engaging us.

Companies can learn a lot about how to respond to criticism by taking a cue from Aruni Gunasegaram and Connie Reece. Bloggers could learn a lot from them as well. I certainly did.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

by Diana Adams

If you’re new to working with PPC, you may be like every other newbie in the world and be confused by the jargon often used. PPC, CPC, CTR, DKI … It doesn’t take long to figure it all out, but in the beginning it would have been nice to have someone lay out the soup for me, so I thought I’d lay it out for you. The obvious ones are: PPC = Pay Per Click; CPC = Cost Per Click; CTR = Click Through Rate; and lastly and maybe not so obvious, DKI = Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion
When I was first learning PPC, I had no idea what DKI referred to, so as part of Boot Camp, I hope to help others understand. Essentially what DKI does, is insert the searcher’s keyword into the ad text. With search terms bolded in the ad text, your ad stand out among the other advertisers. Because the search phrase is actually displayed in the ad, exactly as the searcher entered it (well, almost exactly), it also makes text more relevant to the searcher. They see your ad written and advertising exactly what they’re looking for! In finding this, the searcher is more likely to click your ad.

Take a look at these two ads. If you were looking for Mad Rock climbing shoes, which ad do you think you’d click? Which site do you think actually has what you’re looking for?

As the advertiser, Mountain Gear is paying a lot more per click than Zappos, not only because they’re ranked higher, but the ad is not as relevant to the search. Relevance is key to quality score and lower CPC bids. Relevance is also key to higher CTR. I happen to know for certain that Mountain Gear do sell Mad Rock shoes, but I certainly couldn’t tell from their ad. If they were to use DKI in their headline, they could use the same ad text for Mad Rock, Sportiva, Five Ten, Montrail and Evolve. Each search would display an ad that is unique to the search term.

DKI is entered using code like this –> {Keyword:default text} the {Keyword: part is what tells the search engine to enter the users search phrase into the ad. What follows after the colon :default text} is the default text, or what is inserted into the ad if the user’s search phrase has more characters than the ad will accommodate. (see SEM Boot Camp: Paid Search Rules for an explanation on character allowances). The brackets and code {KeyWord: } are not part of the character count, but anything that is between the colon and the closing bracket are.

Instead of manually entering in the headline: Mad Rock Climbing Shoes or Sportiva Climbing Shoes, and having to create a separate ad for each, enter the headline using Dynamic Keyword Insertion like this: {KeyWord:Mad Rock Climbing Shoes}. How you capitalize the code has a big effect on how the DKI text appears. Take a look at these advertisements:

Both ads are likely using DKI in their headlines, but notice the difference in capitalization. Sportiva climbing shoes vs Sportiva Climbing Shoes. Capitalization is controlled by how you enter the Dynamic elements.

Capitalization
The capitalization in the code controls the capitalization in the ad. Capitalize the K in Keyword, and the first letter of the search phrase is dynamically capitalized. Capitalize the W also (KeyWord), and each word in the search phrase will be dynamically capitalized. Don’t capitalize any of the code, and none of the text will be capitalized. Capitalize the entire code, and all the text will be capitalized (although Google does not allow for all caps, so don’t use this there).

Keyword = Sportiva climbing shoes
KeyWord = Sportiva Climbing Shoes
keyword = sportiva climbing shoes
KEYWORD = SPORTIVA CLIMBING SHOES

Recall earlier where I said … the search phrase is actually displayed in the ad, exactly as the searcher entered it (well, almost exactly). I said almost exactly because the search phrase may be capitalized in the ad differently than how it was searched. They may have searched sportiva climbing shoes, but if you’ve using KeyWord as your DKI, then the text will appear as Sportiva Climbing Shoes. Look again at this Sportiva ad by ShopZilla:

The DKI in the headline would have been entered like this {Keyword:default text}, where the second description line would have been entered like this: Deals on {KeyWord:default text}!

Quirks to work around
If the display of the second description line were to have read Hot deals on climbing shoes!, the default text could not be sportiva climbing shoes, because Hot deals on Sportiva climbing shoes has 37 characters, two characters too many. In this case, your default text might be climbing shoes. When the search phrase makes the line have too many characters, as would Sportiva climbing shoes, the DKI would insert the default text, instead of the searched phrase, and would read Hot deals on climbing shoes!

Preview your DKI
As long as there is room in the Headline (or description if you’ve used DKI there), the DKI will use exactly what they’ve entered. This can be a bit funky sometimes if the search phrase is exact match or even phrase matched. If you want to see the DKI in action, use Google’s Ad Preview tool. Use this tool any time you want to see your ads and not get unwanted impressions that lower your CTR and increase your CPC.

Check out what your ad will look like with each of your terms (or a random sample of the odd ones). Say for example you’ve bid on the broad match term lasportiva mythos, and used DKI in the Headline and Description, you’ll get something like this:

This looks weird to me, but maybe that’s how the person searching spells La Sportiva. By using DKI, the ad shows them what THEY searched, not how you prefer to spell it. As with anything, when you’re experimenting with your ad text, and DKI, test one ad creative against another. Maybe you’ll get a better CTR without DKI, or maybe you won’t. Write the same ad but use DKI in one version, and no DKI in the other version. Which is going to convert better for you, DKI or not? You won’t know if you don’t test. So test.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

by Jackie Baker

Quality content is one of the key ingredients for improving search engine placement, gaining links, and driving conversions. If your content isn’t written well, isn’t asking for the conversion, and is hard to read, you’re losing a whole lot of sales and leads from your website. People can sniff out your “marketing speak” from a mile away, and won’t respond well to fluffy “we’re the best” claims. Your content needs to focus on your audience’s needs, answer all of the questions they could possibly ask, and tell them what you want them to do.

This week’s site clinic features CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com, a service that offers counseling to parents and high school students as they select and apply to colleges.

Target audiences: parents of high school sophomores and juniors who want help finding the right college for their child; high school students who are looking for help finding the right college.

Unique selling proposition: years of experience, personalized attention from a professional, and availability during most hours including evenings and weekends.

Website goal: qualified leads, contact by phone or online form.

The content is the area most in need of improvement on the College Admissions Partners website. Answering the following questions in your web copy will make all the difference in the world between a site that doesn’t perform well and one that ranks well, attracts links, and gets qualified leads.

Is my web content easy to read?
Before I can even address improving the copy itself, CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com needs to format the content so that it is easier to read. It currently uses a fluid width, which is preferable, but it doesn’t have set minimums or maximums. As a result, the text stretches as wide as the window, which gets very difficult to read as the lines get longer and longer. Width is relative to font size, so as a general rule each line should be no longer than 72-80 characters at the most. On a fluid site, your content should never be 100%; you always need some inner and outer padding for better usability.

Also critical to readability on the web is making your pages easy to scan. People will read a page of 1,000 words as long as it is broken up into sections that are easy to glance over quickly. Visitors don’t often want to read every single word on a page; they want to find what most applies to their needs. A few tips for easy to scan content:

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short
• Use alternating paragraph lengths for visual interest
• Break into sections of no more than 2-3 (short) paragraphs each
• Use keyword rich headers to label each section
• Use bulleted and numbered lists when appropriate
• Keep your most important information at the top of the page
• (see how I formatted this article?)

Am I answering the questions WWWWWH?
If you aren’t answering the questions

• Who?
• What?
• When?
• Where?
• Why?
• How?

you aren’t addressing all of your audience’s needs. We all probably learned to answer these questions when we wrote our first essays in elementary school. But as we grow up, we forget.
CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com answers the what and the how, but all of the others are prominently missing. Who is the person offering the service? I found a little bit of information about him buried at the bottom of a large text block, but there was no picture and not a lot about him. Where is the office? Do they do regional or national work? Why should I pay that much money to have someone tell my kid where to go college? Can’t we research on the internet, visit schools, and decide for ourselves? These are just a few of the questions I had after reading over the main site. And this is information that parents will want to know. Without it, the copy isn’t convincing enough to get the conversion.

What’s in it for me?
If you aren’t telling your visitors exactly “what’s in it for them,” you’re going to lose their business. All of the copy on your website should be geared towards answering this question. It can never be all about you (small business owner); it must always be about them (customer).

A strong call to action is the single most important tactic for driving visitors to your conversion point. It, too, should always answer the question WIIFM? The great thing is that your call to action (contact us) can be paired with your benefit statement (free consultation) to be most convincing: “contact us for your free consultation” (with a link to your contact form, of course.)

If you aren’t asking straight up and offering a benefit, you probably aren’t going to get that sale or lead.

Am I backing up my claims with facts and testimonies?
Nobody is going to read copy, or convert, if all it says is that you are the world’s best fill in the blank. People don’t want fluff, they want facts. And they need a reason to trust you.

You always need to back up your who, what, when, why, where, how with hard facts and testimonies. For example, CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com could incorporate:

• Statistics on families served, students placed in colleges, how many graduated from their initial college choice and in how many years, how many stuck with their original major
• List schools that have been recommended in the past to show variety and knowledge of each
• Include testimonies/recommendations on every page from students and parents who used your service successfully
• Incorporate a “student of the month/week” and highlight their strengths, interests, extracurricular activities, volunteerism, the college chosen and why, and how they’ve been successful in that choice.

Is this mechanically correct?
Please, please, please proofread your copy, or have someone else who is a good writer proofread your copy. Misspellings, misplaced or missing punctuation, sentences that aren’t parallel, and incorrect word usage all detract significantly from the professional-ness of your website. This seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many typos I find on websites of all sizes.

CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com doesn’t have major mechanical issues, but there are enough small ones that a parent looking for oversight on college applications would be wary of having the company reviewing their kid’s essay. Review the content carefully, especially for parallelism and word usage.

One of the best ways to comb your copy for mistakes is to read it out loud; this forces you to slow down and read what is actually on the page, not just what your brain thinks should be there.

Quality Content Focuses On Visitor’s Needs
Above all, remember your visitors and their needs as you develop content for your website. Always ask “What’s in it for me?”; answer the questions who, what, when, where, why, how; and ask for the sale using a benefit statement. Good content goes further towards increasing your sales and leads, the main goal of any site, than any other online marketing tactic.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

by Jackie Baker

Quality content is one of the key ingredients for improving search engine placement, gaining links, and driving conversions. If your content isn’t written well, isn’t asking for the conversion, and is hard to read, you’re losing a whole lot of sales and leads from your website. People can sniff out your “marketing speak” from a mile away, and won’t respond well to fluffy “we’re the best” claims. Your content needs to focus on your audience’s needs, answer all of the questions they could possibly ask, and tell them what you want them to do.

This week’s site clinic features CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com, a service that offers counseling to parents and high school students as they select and apply to colleges.

Target audiences: parents of high school sophomores and juniors who want help finding the right college for their child; high school students who are looking for help finding the right college.

Unique selling proposition: years of experience, personalized attention from a professional, and availability during most hours including evenings and weekends.

Website goal: qualified leads, contact by phone or online form.

The content is the area most in need of improvement on the College Admissions Partners website. Answering the following questions in your web copy will make all the difference in the world between a site that doesn’t perform well and one that ranks well, attracts links, and gets qualified leads.

Is my web content easy to read?
Before I can even address improving the copy itself, CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com needs to format the content so that it is easier to read. It currently uses a fluid width, which is preferable, but it doesn’t have set minimums or maximums. As a result, the text stretches as wide as the window, which gets very difficult to read as the lines get longer and longer. Width is relative to font size, so as a general rule each line should be no longer than 72-80 characters at the most. On a fluid site, your content should never be 100%; you always need some inner and outer padding for better usability.

Also critical to readability on the web is making your pages easy to scan. People will read a page of 1,000 words as long as it is broken up into sections that are easy to glance over quickly. Visitors don’t often want to read every single word on a page; they want to find what most applies to their needs. A few tips for easy to scan content:

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short
• Use alternating paragraph lengths for visual interest
• Break into sections of no more than 2-3 (short) paragraphs each
• Use keyword rich headers to label each section
• Use bulleted and numbered lists when appropriate
• Keep your most important information at the top of the page
• (see how I formatted this article?)

Am I answering the questions WWWWWH?
If you aren’t answering the questions

• Who?
• What?
• When?
• Where?
• Why?
• How?

you aren’t addressing all of your audience’s needs. We all probably learned to answer these questions when we wrote our first essays in elementary school. But as we grow up, we forget.
CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com answers the what and the how, but all of the others are prominently missing. Who is the person offering the service? I found a little bit of information about him buried at the bottom of a large text block, but there was no picture and not a lot about him. Where is the office? Do they do regional or national work? Why should I pay that much money to have someone tell my kid where to go college? Can’t we research on the internet, visit schools, and decide for ourselves? These are just a few of the questions I had after reading over the main site. And this is information that parents will want to know. Without it, the copy isn’t convincing enough to get the conversion.

What’s in it for me?
If you aren’t telling your visitors exactly “what’s in it for them,” you’re going to lose their business. All of the copy on your website should be geared towards answering this question. It can never be all about you (small business owner); it must always be about them (customer).

A strong call to action is the single most important tactic for driving visitors to your conversion point. It, too, should always answer the question WIIFM? The great thing is that your call to action (contact us) can be paired with your benefit statement (free consultation) to be most convincing: “contact us for your free consultation” (with a link to your contact form, of course.)

If you aren’t asking straight up and offering a benefit, you probably aren’t going to get that sale or lead.

Am I backing up my claims with facts and testimonies?
Nobody is going to read copy, or convert, if all it says is that you are the world’s best fill in the blank. People don’t want fluff, they want facts. And they need a reason to trust you.

You always need to back up your who, what, when, why, where, how with hard facts and testimonies. For example, CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com could incorporate:

• Statistics on families served, students placed in colleges, how many graduated from their initial college choice and in how many years, how many stuck with their original major
• List schools that have been recommended in the past to show variety and knowledge of each
• Include testimonies/recommendations on every page from students and parents who used your service successfully
• Incorporate a “student of the month/week” and highlight their strengths, interests, extracurricular activities, volunteerism, the college chosen and why, and how they’ve been successful in that choice.

Is this mechanically correct?
Please, please, please proofread your copy, or have someone else who is a good writer proofread your copy. Misspellings, misplaced or missing punctuation, sentences that aren’t parallel, and incorrect word usage all detract significantly from the professional-ness of your website. This seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many typos I find on websites of all sizes.

CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com doesn’t have major mechanical issues, but there are enough small ones that a parent looking for oversight on college applications would be wary of having the company reviewing their kid’s essay. Review the content carefully, especially for parallelism and word usage.

One of the best ways to comb your copy for mistakes is to read it out loud; this forces you to slow down and read what is actually on the page, not just what your brain thinks should be there.

Quality Content Focuses On Visitor’s Needs
Above all, remember your visitors and their needs as you develop content for your website. Always ask “What’s in it for me?”; answer the questions who, what, when, where, why, how; and ask for the sale using a benefit statement. Good content goes further towards increasing your sales and leads, the main goal of any site, than any other online marketing tactic.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

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On this week’s EIC squared podcast we’re a bit rushed as Dan’s plane is about to take off–without him. Nevertheless, we go through the D6 coverage of the week, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s body language and Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer golfing.
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