[Nfb-web] Fw: 13 Ways to Get More Out of Your Website + SES NY 2007 Notes

Tue Apr 17 16:49:46 CDT 2007

Hello,

I wanted to pass this issue along.  Lots of useful tips
and links within.

Despite this issue being totally whored-out with
sponsors, it's ultimately, though I hate to say it,
worth the time of getting through all the sponsor-ads
within.  Lots of useful stuff within.

To Your Success!
Everett
www.everettgavel.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Chase's Web Digest For Marketers"
<larrychase at wdfm.komunik.biz>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 1:42 PM

Larry Chase's Web Digest For Marketers

Below are 13 ways to get your site to help pay for
itself.

WDFM is sponsored by...
***************************************
Website Optimization Starts with Actionable Insight

Learn how to implement a web analytics strategy which
focuses on measuring and driving more meaningful site
changes and customer experiences.

Watch the free webcast now:
http://www.webtrends.com/Resources/Take10Webcasts/Take1
0onWebSiteOptimizationMasteringtheProcessofLeveragingDa
tatoDriveSiteImprovements.aspx?CID=70140000000GuWz
***************************************

Coming Attractions: Next week's issue is all about how
to
get more inbound links to your site. Other issues we
have
planned for you are "Email Deliverability" and "10 More
Things to Measure on Your Site".

Subscribe to This Newsletter: Did someone forward this
email
newsletter to you? If so, I invite you to subscribe.
When
you do, you're entitled to download my "Essential
Search
Engine Marketing Resource Guide" (a $24.95 value).
Subscribe at www.wdfm.com

Publisher's Note: "Notes From SES NY 2007" is the title
of
this week's Publisher's Note. You will find it right
after
the 13 ways to get more out of your website below.

You've got a website on which you've already spent
loads of
time and money. Below you will find 13 ways to recoup
that
investment. Managing Editor Eileen Shulock and I
compiled
dozens of tips, but these below are our cream of the
crop.
Enjoy.

1. Ask for Optional Info: Conventional wisdom says to
make
the process for an email subscription or product
checkout as
brief as possible. However, asking for optional
information
at the point of purchase or subscription is an
outstanding
way to segment an audience. Even if you don't do
anything
with the info right away, it's an opportunity for
future
segmented marketing. For example, WDFM's Managing
Editor
Eileen Shulock is by day the ecommerce creative
director for
a hip retailer. 40% of the people who subscribe to her
Lust
List email update hand over cell phone numbers at
signup,
even though it's an optional field. This gives her
company
the option to do some mobile marketing to a highly
involved
audience in the future.

2. Talk to People On Their Wavelength: Some people
primarily
process and interact with the outside world visually,
some
kinetically (think "tactile") and some through the
audio
channel. "I see what you mean," "I feel your pain," or
"I
hear what you're saying" are the phrases (respectively)
you
might hear each type say. In her training session at
Search
Engine Strategies New York, SEO blog/RSS guru Amanda
Watlington suggested you communicate to each type on
their
own terms. Sure, a website is visual, which is just
fine for
the visual folks. But a podcast would speak better to
the
audio people. WDFM Managing Editor Eileen Shulock is
what
you would call a "kinetic" person. She loves clicking
on all
the buttons, taking quizzes, fiddling with calculators,
changing the colors and all that jazz.

3. Word Up: One of the tactical suggestions that your
humble
publisher (that's me) heard repeatedly at Search Engine
Strategies New York was to try testing responsiveness
when
you up the font size on your website, especially if the
website is aimed at folks over 40.

4. Find Out What People Are Searching For: Watch what
people
search for (and the words they use) on your site.
People
arrive there with different intentions. Some are
lookie-loos, some are ready to buy, some are in the
wrong
place. Many might be comparison shoppers, assuming you
have
an etail site. One of the best ways to get a bead on
what
people are looking for is to closely observe the
keywords
they put into your search tool. You do have a search
tool on
your site, right? In this way, you can watch trends and
make
your site more relevant. You might find seasonal
patterns or
frequent misspellings that you'll want to include in
your
metatags or product descriptions. If you find a heavy
emphasis on certain content or products, you might want
to
feature them more prominently on your site.

WDFM is also sponsored by...
***************************************
Optimize Your Website Search in 5 Simple Steps

Your website visitors are telling you what they are
looking
for in their own words. Are you listening? Optimizing
your
website's search can lower abandonment rates, convert
browsers to shoppers and build loyal customers. Learn
how to
leverage "The Other Search" and achieve success in this
free
five step plan from the Patricia Seybold Group.

Download Today!
http://www.websidestory.com/promotions/other-search/reg
ister-002.html?RT=23&SCMP=NLC-WEBDIGEST&RA=OTHERSEARCH-
D041607-POS2-TEXT/
***************************************

5. Segment, Segment, Segment: You often hear the word
"segmentation" used when talking about email lists and
direct mail. But there's also good reason to segment
the
users of your website. In his training session at
Search
Engine Strategies New York, SiteLogic's Matt Bailey
suggested you segment your traffic by inbound links, by
keyword phrases used at search engines to find your
site and
by those who buy and those who don't. You're apt to
find
that people who use certain keywords are more likely to
buy
from you than others. Both in the offline and online
marketing universes, it's really all about
segmentation.
Remember, there are audiences within audiences and it's
your
job to identify each one. Examine their intentions and
your
desired outcomes.

6. Expose All the Details: One of the main reasons for
shopping cart abandonment is that it isn't made clear
how
much the item being purchased will cost to ship until
after
you pull the trigger. It seems like a majorly obvious
thing
to do, but many companies have a purchase process that
hides
this important detail.

7. Ask For More: "Upselling", or the art of asking for
more,
is a favorite retail tactic. A good example is Amazon's
offer to gift wrap your purchase or to sell you a gift
certificate during the checkout process.

This doesn't only apply to etailers, of course.
Co-registration programs asking folks to subscribe to
another email newsletter are an example from the
publishing
world, ie., "If you like this newsletter you'll simply
adore
the five newsletters below." Once someone has taken an
action on your site, the chances of them taking another
action are pretty good.

8. Add RSS Distribution: You've heard all about RSS,
but
maybe it's time you start using it (if you haven't all
ready).

Build a pool of RSS subscribers and you can send them
instant alerts when new content is added to your site.
Or
you can let them know when new products are available
or
offer a discount on "hot" or clearance items. Your RSS
feed
and alerts can be added to RSS directories and external
feeds, which increases your site's visibility. Be sure
to
measure the results of each feed. In an RSS session at
Search Engine Strategies New York, Feedburner's VP of
Publisher Services Rick Klau pointed out that his
company is
now sending out 60 million feeds daily. He wryly
observed
that there are not 60 million early adopters on the
planet,
so we can now easily consider RSS to be a mainstream
channel. This is an impressive figure to me, and at the
end
of the day it doesn't much matter whether people
realize
they're reading RSS feeds or not. It's sort of like
driving
a car and not understanding exactly what your catalytic
convertor is doing under the hood, but that's OK.

WDFM is also sponsored by...
***************************************
Automate PPC Management - Just $399/month

Taking too much time on SEM "grunt work?" Get off the
PPC
hamster wheel!

Save time & money, plus improve results - use
SEM-in-a-Box
software to manage PPC.

Free yourself from manual campaign analysis & updates.

Get control of your SEM for $399/month with
SEM-in-a-Box.
https://sem-in-a-box.adapt.com/?utm_source=wdfm&utm_med
ium=20070416
***************************************

9. Lure Links With a Blog: These days, "Where's your
blog?"
is just as popular a question as "What's your email
address?" was ten years ago. You may not want to invest
the
extra time to accept outside comments on your blog.
However,
Netconcept's CEO Stephan Spencer made a very good case
for
doing exactly that. He says acceptance help build "link
juice" because you're inviting interactivity, and
therefore
more inbound links come your way. In turn, the search
engines hold you in higher regard. If you do elect to
accept
comments on your blog, do be sure to filter them before
they're posted, as there's a lot of link sp0m out
there.
Also, some comments that aren't sp0m would still be
inappropriate for posting on your site.

Also, let's face it. There's a lot of noise out there.
If
you want your blog to be effective, you're going to
have to
publish something that gets above the noise level if
you
want people to come back day after day.

10. Analyze Wisely: Many of us fall prey to "analysis
paralysis" and either spend too much time pondering
arcane
site analytics or getting overwhelmed by the deluge of
information and not analyzing anything at all. Look,
there's
the day-to-day package of stats you need to know if
you're
going to keep your finger on the pulse of things. Then
there's the bigger picture. For example, I know Mondays
are
typically the highest traffic days for the Web Digest
For
Marketers website, because that's when we publish the
newsletter. If we see a spike on another day, we look
for
the reason why in our referrer logs. This is sometimes
how
we discover that another media outlet has quoted or
mentioned us.

11. Create a Useful Press Section: It's astonishing to
realize how useless many company's online press
sections
are. You're not going to get press, get quoted or be
included in an article if your company information is
as
impenetrable as a Rubik's cube. Press releases
optimized for
SEO and for news engines and selected press coverage
are
no-brainers. Other good things to offer from an
editor/writer perspective are:

  a. High and low res versions of your logo
  b. A succinct explanation of what your company does
  c. A brief outline of business segments or products
in
     easy-to-understand language
  d. Quotes from a CEO or high-level spokesperson
  e. Brief bios of key officers along with photos, if
     possible
  f. Contact forms that send email requests to real,
     important people
  g. An outline of "goodies" to be found at your site,
such
     as tools, a resource center, current white papers
for
     download, etc.

The bottom line - please don't make us search for
press-worthy stuff in your website, wait for a response
from
a PR person or rely on Google for information about
your
company. And for heaven's sakes, post your phone
number. We
can't count the hundreds of times we've gone to a given
website in order to call someone only to find there is
no
phone number. "Oh," you might say, "Some of these are
pretty
basic and obvious tips." Then why is it we experience
this
frustration on a weekly if not daily basis?

WDFM is also sponsored by...
***************************************
Emetrics Summit 2007 - Optimize Online Success
San Francisco May 6 - 9

Match your online marketing activities to your business
goals. Learn about the tools & techniques that make up
the
art, science and business of optimizing your online
marketing value

Make your website more valuable to your customers
Make yourself more valuable to your company

Register today for the Emetrics Summit, San Francisco.
http://clk.atdmt.com/OVM/go/eme0010000066ovm/direct/01/
***************************************

12. Submit Your Site Map: If you're a big company then
don't
read this tip, because you probably have a department
that
handles the site map submission and other SEO issues.
Mid-size to small firms are less likely to pay
attention to
the submission of site maps to search engines each and
every
time they update their sites. Lots of companies don't
have
blogs and don't publish to their sites on a regular
basis.
Therefore it's not part of their routine to send a site
map
when an update happens, but it should be.

13. Help Your Own Page Reputation: Instead of labeling
the
hyperlink to the next page with the word "Next" on your
website or saying "Page 2 of 4", do yourself a favor
and
write keyword-rich navigational hyperlink tags instead.

====================================
Publisher's Note
====================================

Notes from Search Engine Strategies NY 2007

It's a gas to go to SES each year, I must say. The
energy
level is extremely high, and the sessions I went to
were
rich with examples, tactics, trends and personality
from
some of the best and brightest in the SEO game today.

Pre-Show Training Day

This year there was a pre-conference training day for
an
extra fee (that was not inconsequential), and let me
tell
you, it seemed to be fully subscribed.

In a training session, SEO-PR's
(http://www.seo-pr.com/)
Greg Jarboe gave good ideas on how to optimize your
press
releases for news aggregators. He pointed out that
Yahoo
News has more readers than any other news site. Your
press
releases are quite apt to show up there and on other
news
filtering sites used by end users. In other words, a
well-optimized press release can bypass traditional
media
outlets that heretofore might have filtered your
message
away from the reader.

Greg also encouraged his audience to routinely post
their
optimized press releases on their own sites (which I am
now
planning on doing). He told us that press releases
typically
cycle out of the news aggregators within 28 days, but
if
they are posted on your website they will live forever
and
show up in standard search engine results in the
future. His
clients can attribute real money in large amounts to
press
releases hitting their targets.

Searching For Profit's
(http://www.searchingforprofit.com)
SEO/RSS guru and all-around brainiac Amanda
Watlington's
advice was keen as well. She pointed out people
typically
relate to the outside world in one of three ways: some
related visually, some by audio, while others are
kinetic
("tactile"). So why not address each of these audiences
in
the channel they use best? Web pages are inherently
visual.
Making your message available in a podcast will please
those
among us who relate better through the audio channel.
Give
the kinetic people something to interact with.

WDFM is sponsored by...
***************************************
Website Optimization Starts with Actionable Insight

Learn how to implement a web analytics strategy which
focuses on measuring and driving more meaningful site
changes and customer experiences.

Watch the free webcast now:
http://www.webtrends.com/Resources/Take10Webcasts/Take1
0onWebSiteOptimizationMasteringtheProcessofLeveragingDa
tatoDriveSiteImprovements.aspx?CID=70140000000GuWz
***************************************

In another pre-conference training session,
Alliance-Link's
(http://www.alliance-link.com) Debra Mastaler offered
intriguing ideas on how to get more inbound links to
your
site. Find out who's "borrowing" your content by
selecting
key sentences or paragraphs from your site and throwing
them
into a search engine. If your content shows up on other
websites, contact them and remind them they've "ahem"
borrowed your content. If they'd like to keep it up on
their
site, a link into your site is what's needed.

The Big Show Begins

It seems like this show gets bigger every year, with
people
from all over the world speaking lots of different
languages
in the corridors.

On the first day of the regular conference, the "In
House:
Big SEO" session was filled to over capacity and there
were
lots of people sitting around in the corridor listening
to
the session on audio speakers. It seems practicing SEO
can
have its challenges, as it can conflict or get vetoed
by
other corporate departments. Sometimes the ad agency
isn't
totally ramped up on what needs to be done for a given
campaign as it relates to SEO. Some companies use
microsites
for very specific marketing campaigns to circumvent
this
bureaucratic log jam.

In a session called "Landing Page Testing & Tuning",
Tim
Ash, the CEO of Site Tuners
(http://www.sitetuners.com),
asked the audience who should be the designer of a
given
website - the graphics designer, the webmaster, the IT
department, you? The answer was, "none of the above".
Your
visitors should design your website. And the way they
do
that is by you constantly testing and tweaking your
site
based on their responses.

WDFM is also sponsored by...
***************************************
Optimize Your Website Search in 5 Simple Steps

Your website visitors are telling you what they are
looking
for in their own words. Are you listening? Optimizing
your
website's search can lower abandonment rates, convert
browsers to shoppers and build loyal customers. Learn
how to
leverage "The Other Search" and achieve success in this
free
five step plan from the Patricia Seybold Group.

Download Today!
http://www.websidestory.com/promotions/other-search/reg
ister-002.html?RT=23&SCMP=NLC-WEBDIGEST&RA=OTHERSEARCH-
D041607-POS2-TEXT/
***************************************

The first time I heard the term "link juice" was from
Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts
(http://www.netconcepts.com). He gave me very
compelling
reasons for accepting outside comments on your blog.
Why?
Because the link juice (or what I heard others call
"link
love") is far greater when interactivity is encouraged.
In
short, faster word of mouth. Put plenty of useful
comments
and links in your blog, as often links begat more links
in.
Do be sure to reserve the right to review those
comments
before publishing, as there is a lot of link sp0m out
there.

I noticed that in a couple of PPC sessions, presenters
cautioned attendees about bidding against themselves.
In
other words, you could be your own worst competition
and pay
more than you need to for a given keyword or phrase.

TopRank's Lee Odden runs one of the most closely
watched
marketing blogs, the Online Marketing Blog
(http://www.toprankblog.com). He told me that the tool
at
Google's Webmaster Central
(http://www.google.com/webmasters) will show you much
more
comprehensive inbound link results than simply Googling
for link:YourDomain.com . (Google's Webmaster Central
community is open to all but you will have to prove
site
ownership in order to get into the club.)

Future Now's (http://www.futurenowinc.com) co-founder
Bryan
Eisenberg repeatedly showed the audience a number of
different Web pages and asked the audience which one
they
thought would perform best. The intuitive guess of the
audience was usually wrong. The lesson is, don't just
go
with what you think will perform best. Test it, and
you'll
typically be surprised. He said one thing people often
test
are different call-to-action buttons. He suggested that
instead of putting "Submit" on your submit button, try
testing verbiage that spells out exactly what you'll
get or
what will happen when that button is clicked.

WDFM is also sponsored by...
***************************************
Automate PPC Management - Just $399/month

Taking too much time on SEM "grunt work?" Get off the
PPC
hamster wheel!

Save time & money, plus improve results - use
SEM-in-a-Box
software to manage PPC.

Free yourself from manual campaign analysis & updates.

Get control of your SEM for $399/month with
SEM-in-a-Box.
https://sem-in-a-box.adapt.com/?utm_source=wdfm&utm_med
ium=20070416
***************************************

Insider Tips & Talk

Posting identical content on your website multiple
times
(which lots of people seem to do) can cause the search
engines to penalize you. Naturally you don't want to
tick
off the search engines by posting identical content, as
they
do compare one page to the next and don't like it if
they
think you're trying to dupe them. But changing page
tags
when you are legitimately using similar content on a
different part of your site, such as a blog, does help.
Summaries at the beginning of the page that aren't
found on
the original content page are also helpful to avoid
penalization.

Blogs are found in blog search engines. Unless you're a
household brand or name, people are apt to find your
blog
from a search engine that searches blogs exclusively,
like
Technorati. So be sure to fill out your Technorati tags
so
you'll show up in their search engine.

Insider Resources

Who would imagine you'd come across something as quaint
as
an email discussion list at an SEO conference? I did.
In
fact, I heard many of the presenters talking about two
of
them in particular. Many insiders are subscribed to and
participating in LED Digest (http://www.led-digest.com)
and
Detlev Johnson's SearchReturn.com
(http://www.searchreturn.com). Techmeme
(http://www.techmeme.com, another resource on the lips
of
many an insider) employs algorhythms to tease out news
and
trends from zillions of blogs on a number of topics,
including technology, so you get the skinny before it
hits
the mainstream press.

WDFM is also sponsored by...
***************************************
Emetrics Summit 2007 - Optimize Online Success
San Francisco May 6 - 9

Match your online marketing activities to your business
goals. Learn about the tools & techniques that make up
the
art, science and business of optimizing your online
marketing value

Make your website more valuable to your customers
Make yourself more valuable to your company

Register today for the Emetrics Summit, San Francisco.
http://clk.atdmt.com/OVM/go/eme0010000066ovm/direct/01/
***************************************

Party Time

I went to a number of parties. One of the ones most
interesting to me was the New York Internet marketers
party
held at a tavern in Greenwich Village. The room was
packed
with 20- and 30-somethings... a whole new generation of
youngins like Avi Wilensky who really know their stuff.
They
know where the money is in their business and their
exact
role in that food chain. They were open-minded and
listened
to each other to learn something new.

The attitude I saw at that party was a pleasant
contrast to
the arrogance I remember in the online marketing
business
leading up to the dot com crash. I think the arrogance
was
there because there were no profits to talk about. Now
there
are.

Whenever I see Ken McGaffin (who's now the CMO of
WordTracker, http://www.wordtracker.com), I find myself
in a
profound discussion about the ways in which people use
the
Net and its impact on marketing. This time he was
talking
about how keyword phrases are not static. In fact, they
are
quite fluid and can change substantially depending on
industry trends or what's going on in the news. This
gives
me food for thought for some time to come. As I think
about
this, it becomes obvious that when it comes to keyword
and
key phrase optimization, you cannot simply set it and
forget
it. You must stay on top of your industry and tweak
accordingly. More on this in future issues of this
newsletter.

Everyone I ran into at the show and subsequent parties,
including the WordTracker party, were engrossed in
conversations with each other, swapping insights and
tactics
and yeah, sure, some SEO gossip too. The same was true
at
lunch and coffee breaks during the show itself. Perfect
strangers were bonding over talks about title tags and
the
like.

One goes to such shows and lets all the information
wash
over them while taking copious notes. Then you pour
over
these notes on the ride back home, and for a good time
thereafter. The networking and information gathering at
such
shows are time and money well spent. When you consider
going
to such an event, remember the person giving the
presentation is every bit as important and often more
important as the topic itself. What I missed most was
my
good friend and SEO expert, Mike Grehan
(http://www.mikegrehan.com). LC

==================================
Internet Marketing Tip of the Week
==================================

How Fast Can Visitors Leave Your Site?

You hear a lot about search engine optimization. But
all too
often, page deliverability optimization is totally
forgotten. More and more, I'm hearing from those in the
know
that one of the main reasons people leave a site is
because
they get impatient with the time it takes for the pages
to
load into their browsers.

Often, there are things your webmaster can do to speed
up
the delivery of a page without change its look and
feel,
though sometimes pages are way too overloaded with
bells and
whistles that slow down delivery time.

Page delivery can never be too fast. Do everything in
your
power to speed it up, because your response rates will
suffer (or are suffering already). Why? People can't
respond
to offers they don't wait around to see. LC

==============================

HOUSEKEEPING

If you want to change the email address at which you
receive
WDFM, do the following:

1. Remove your email address as explained directly
below.

2. Then go to http://wdfm.com and enter your new email
address.

If you received this issue from a colleague and you
wish to have
your own free subscription, you can get that by
visiting
http://wdfm.com and filling out the subscription form.
It takes
less than a minute.

I encourage you to pass this issue of WDFM along,
provided you
do not change the copy, you keep the opening and this
closing
material, and you notify me:

http://www.wdfm.com/contactlarry.php

Ok, you don't have to notify me, but if you do, I will
thank
you personally. :)

Thanks for reading all the way down to the bottom of
this
newsletter! :)

See you next week!

Cordially, Larry Chase: Publisher
Web Digest For Marketers http://wdfm.com
Author: "Essential Business Tactics f/t Net"
Sample chapter at http://LarryChase.com
Ph: (212) 619-4780
Contact Larry: http://www.wdfm.com/contactlarry.php

Web Digest For Marketers, 79 Pine Street, #102, New
York, NY 10005