NetSecrets Blog : Web Design and SEO

Landing Pages For Google Adwords

You know the one about the plumber with the leaky tap or the mechanic whose car keeps breaking down. Well there's another story about the SEO specialist who gives everything he can to his clients' sites and neglects his own.

For some time now I've been getting great results for other people by building specific landing pages for Google Adwords campaigns. The landing page can echo very closely the language in the searcher's query and repeat text from the advert they clicked on which establishes rapport and relevance. The landing page can also offer restricted options enabling the visitor to be sent in the direction we want to send him or her.

Well I've finally got round to doing some for our own websites and an interesting "before and after" comparison can be made by looking at 2 pages on our PlanetStream site. The first page is here and is where those searching for "live streaming" and associated phrases were sent. It worked OK but has now been replaced by a new landing page, here. The first is fine as an information page but doesn't "sell" the idea of working with us. The landing page is much more to the point, tells the visitor what to do next and emphasises why they should choose us.

I know we can go a lot further with this idea and I am quite excited to measure the results of the changes. I'll keep you posted.

Finding Duplicate Content

Most of us are well aware that some unscrupulous website owners are not averse to stealing content off your site and sticking it on theirs. This is not only a rip off of the hard work you put into producing your content but it could potentially damage your search engine rankings through the issue of "duplicate content".

Obviously the search engines don't want results 1 to 10 for a given search to be identical. Good search results need variety which is why Google and the others frown on duplicate content and can penalise sites that are guilty of it. Now it is believed that Google only penalises the second and subsequent copies it sees of any given content so in many cases it will be OK because Google will have seen the original first. But you can't count on that happening every time. If Google sees the plagiarised version before it sees the original then the original will be penalised.

Anyway I have found a terrific tool to help overcome this kind of thing, Copyscape.

Basically you feed it a url click go and it searches the web for any other pages that have copied any significant part of your page. And it really works!

I found a number of sites that had ripped off content from FastSMS, PlanetStream and NetSecrets and have taken first steps to getting them removed. There's no guarantee the plagiarisers will comply in all cases but Copyscape also gives some advice on tackling that.

Give it a try and if you find anything interesting please come back and add a comment.

Why Most Websites Fail (And What To Do About It)

Why Most Websites Fail (And What To Do About It)

If you run seminars or any events where you address business or development issues I would be pleased to offer a contribution based on a paper I have already presented several times. The abstract is as follows:

The I-Myth : Why Most Web Sites Fail (and What To Do About It) by Tony Burt

Tony Burt is the founder of NetSecrets and has been involved in the building of many successful web businesses for himself and for others. Through this he has evolved some very clear notions of what works and what doesn’t when looking to create commercial advantage through use of the internet.

He is outspoken in his disdain for the methods (or lack of them) used by most web design companies which result in mediocre results for the disappointed site owners. He will detail the most common omissions in most web sites and give solid, practical advice on how to achieve success. Topics covered will be:

• What constitutes a successful web business?
• How you can use the internet to increase your income and reduce your costs.
• Who do businesses typically use to build their web business? And why do they get it wrong?
• The importance of applying design and technical and marketing skills to the task. All three must be present.
• How to attract large numbers of “relevant” visitors – using search engine optimisation, pay-per-click advertising, link building.
• How to turn them into prospects and customers. Calls to action, embedded commands and great content.
• How do we get benefit from “social networking” or Web 2.0?

Tony will offer all attendees a FREE web site audit. This has been developed by NetSecrets to highlight any weaknesses holding you back and many of the remedies are so easy to implement that you’ll be shocked your existing webmaster didn’t know about them!

If you have an event where you think this presentation would be of interest email tonyb@netsecrets.co.uk

Excellent Tool For Responsible Link Building

I've just started using a very helpful tool called RealLinkFinder - click here to download it for free.

Basically you give it a keyword or key phrase and it will go find a number of blogs which appear relevant to that phrase. It can limit its results to only those blogs that do not apply the "nofollow" attribute which means any comments posted there will most likely be followed by search engine spiders and benefit your search engine rankings. It's not a spamming machine as it does not generate the comments themselves and strongly urges you to add high quality, relevant comments so that they get accepted by the moderator of the blog.

It's easy to use and saves time but you still need to put effort into the content, which is how it should be.

More stuff on link building here.

JoeAnt Web Directory

Most people now understand the importance of being listed in high quality web directories. The Open Directory and Yahoo! are the two best known but there are many others worth considering.

A directory I particularly like is JoeAnt - www.joeant.com. I'm an editor there so have a good idea how it works and have added hundreds of sites over the past year or so.

You can request a review which costs a few dollars or you can become an editor and add sites for free. But in either case they have strict rules and high standards so poor sites will be refused and there are stringent guidelines dictating how to write meaningful titles and descriptions that avoid "keyword stuffing" and marketing hyperbole.

It won't necessarily send you huge numbers of visitors but the links are picked up by the search engines so probably do you some good that way. It's also quite enlightening to review your own sites using their rules. It really helps to see the essence of what you have created and where you have fallen short.

Search Engine Optimisation - What Does It Do?

People often say to me, "So you supply search engine optimisation then?" or "Can you quote me for search engine optimisation".

I have to explain that SEO to NetSecrets is like an engine is to Ford. A car without an engine will get you nowhere but if you go into a car room and ask to buy just an engine they'll think you are mad. Just the same a successful web site needs SEO but SEO alone will achieve little.

My measure of success for a website is whether it makes money for the site owner and to achieve that the site needs to receive increasing numbers of visitors who could buy and then it needs to convince them to take at least the first step to becoming a customer. You HAVE TO tick both boxes.

A poor website that fails to convert its few visitors will do no better with lots of visitors. A brilliant site that stuns its visitors can't stun anyone if they don't come visiting.

So when people say they want SEO, what the really want is whatever it takes to make them feel they are making good money out of their website.

My Hopes For 2008 (Business not Personal)

I firmly hope and believe that 2008 will see a significant shake up in the web design and development sector. More and more business owners are coming to the realisation that their web sites are not delivering the prospects, leads and orders they had hoped for, whilst a small minority of their competitors are cleaning up on their markets because their web sites among the few that are built and run successfully.

To succeed a web site needs to be found in search engines by significant numbers of people who could buy the products or services on offer. When they get to the web site they need to feel that the company represented by the site are credible and someone they could confidently consider doing business with. And they need to see clearly how they could take that first step towards having a business relationship with the site owner.

The emphasis will differ according to the market sector, i.e. a local provider of services will have slightly different priorities to a national supplier of products that can be purchased online but the principles are always much the same.

To build a successful web site three core skills are mandatory. Technical skills will ensure the site is built how search engines can most readily access its content; graphic design skills will create interest, impact and credibility; marketing skills will ensure the right message is delivered in the right way. I don’t believe any one human being ever has more than one and a bit of those skills so the large number of sites still being knocked out by “one man band” web design outfits are doomed to continue failing.

But even the “proper” companies producing web sites usually come from a print design background lacking technical skills or an IT background without graphic flair and so are no more effective. They either build elaborate graphical wonders, invisible to search engines, worried more about their design portfolio than the client’s profits, or they build dry, elegantly technical solutions, wonderfully efficient but jaw achingly dull.

So the change I hope for is the continuing emergence of expert web design and web marketing companies, knowledgeable about the web and its unique secrets of success. Not chancers looking to scrape a living from the web, happy to be a one-eyed king in the land of the blind!

Tony Burt

NetSecrets Ltd

Copyright © NetSecrets Ltd 2007 : All rights reserved

Gaining Commercial Advantage From Google Alerts

Google Alerts enables you to receive email alerts every time a new webpage, blog post, newsgroup item, etc. is spotted that relates to the keyword or key phrase Google Alerts is monitoring for you.

Typical uses include:

Your personal name and your business name: be aware of anything nice anyone says about you or your business but perhaps more importantly anything defamatory.

Your website name: find out immediately if your site is linked to from another site or mentioned anywhere on the web.

Your brand names, trade names, etc.: see who is talking about you.

Your competitors and their brands: find out what they are up to, pick up market intelligence, see where they get their links from so you can copy them!

The ideas are almost endless ...

You can set up a maximum of 10 alerts without having a Google Account just by visiting:

http://www.google.com/alerts

If you have a Google Account (and why not? it's easy) then the maximum is 1000.

Testimonial For NetSecrets

Can't help showing off with this one! This shows this stuff really works!

Just received the following email from Chris Hutchinson of Aardvark Consulting (www.aardvark-consulting.co.uk):

Hi all at NetSecrets,

I just wanted to tell you all a short story about some recent events (bear with me!),

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a business development consultancy based in Hereford, who were looking for a marketing consultancy to help them with some of their clients (their background is financial, so they struggle with the ‘fluffy stuff’).  I had an initial meeting with them, following which they introduced me to one of their clients and at a follow up meeting yesterday the client agreed to an initial marketing support programme from Aardvark Consulting for a significant fee.

Why am I telling you this? – because the consultancy found me through my website via a search engine! So this is my first definite piece of business won as a result of my new website which you guys created for me, and I wanted to say “thank you for a job well done”.

I always tell my clients that they need to measure the effect of their marketing investment – well I know my web investment has already more than paid for itself and I’m sure this will be the first of many.  I will be able to be more enthusiastic than ever in singing your praises to other businesses!

Thanks once again,

Chris Hutchinson

Aardvark Consulting

Mob: +44 (0) 7968 532 939
Tel:   +44 (0) 1905 753 589
Fax:  +44 (0) 1905 888 505
Web: www.aardvark-consulting.co.uk

Testimonials On Websites

I think it's pretty well accepted that websites are pretty impersonal and that it's a good idea to try to introduce more personal content to counter this.

One way to do it is to work hard on the Company Profile / About Us page, effectively introducing the people the potential client will be dealing with using photos and even videos, but more on that another day.

A very effective way of adding personal content is to include client testimonials. Often your business will be a new name to your visitors and they will probably not be local to you so word of mouth won't be a factor in establishing your credibility. However good third party testimonials will enhance your reputation and generate trust in visitors.

We at NetSecrets are members of BNI, a business referral organisation (www.bni-blackpear.co.uk), and receive written testimonials from satisfied clients on a regular basis through BNI. We have evolved a very specific way of using these on our website, as follows:

http://www.netsecrets.co.uk/testimonials.html

We include an image of the letter received from the client which links to a pdf of the same letter. This is to make it clear we didn't make up the testimonial. The client's full contact details are there so the potential client can call them to check out their views.

Secondly we include the text from the testimonial since invariably they include good keywords and so make the page attractive to search engines.

It takes a little bit of time to maintain the testimonials page but it's worth it for the benfits it brings.