I’ve grouped various tools into different  categories (alth0ugh some tools do belong in multiple categories).  Most of the tools listed below are free, some are paid, and many of the paid services also offer a free (cut down) version of the tool as well.

Keyword Analysis Tools

• Google Instant – an often overlooked but very quick and easy way to check for high volume search keywords
• Google Keyword Tool – Allows you to enter trial keywords or a website name. Shows list of related search counts globally and locally
• Google Insights – A great tool for for showing trend data – you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties
• Google Analytics -  Looking at your own analytics data is a good way to see which keywords are already working well
• PPC Data – setting up a PPC campaign and analysing click and conversion rates can be a very effective (and quick) way to get data about high converting (as opposed to high traffic) keyword phrases
• Your Customers – Talk to your customers to see what keywords they would/did use to find your business
• Brainstorming – talk to friends/colleagues to brainstorm related keyword phrases (don’t just rely on the keywords that you think are good)

Many of the “traditional” Keyword Tools used by SEO Pros (such as Wordstream, Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker) were felt to be of limited use to Australian users – although they can be very useful for very detailed analysis, because their data is sampled, and largely USA biased, for the most part they were not considered to be useful for Australia based keyword analysis.

Browser Plugins

Firefox was widely accepted as the web browser of choice  for SEOs – largely because of it’s plugin capabilities , with other browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Flock etc) mainly only used for compatibility testing.

• SEO for Firefox – considered one of the most comprehensive (and useful) of the many SEO plugins available
• Chatzilla – useful IRC plugin to ask people for advice suggestions on SEO
• Firebug – possibly for of a developer than SEO tool but VERY handy for debugging HTML/CSS and lots of other web page/ browser based issues

WordPress Plugins

With WordPress becoming increasingly important as a blogging platform / Content management System (CMS) we felt that we simply had to imnlcude some of the many SEO related plugins for WordPress

• All In One SEO- one of the original and still arguably best general purpose SEO plugins
• Google XML Sitemaps – auto generates a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.
• Google Analytics for WordPress – easy setup your Analytics code, allows you to track your blog easily and with lots of metadata.
• SEO friendly Images – automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images.
• SEO Smart Links – can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.
• Sexy Bookmarks – adds an attractive social bookmarking menu to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three.
• WordPress SEO by Yoast - all in one SEO solution for your WordPress blog: SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.
• And also a number of Search Engine Friendly Themes got an honourable mention – e.g. StudioPress – Genesis Theme, and Thesis

 Analytics Tools

Pretty much the ONLY tool discussed was of course Google Analytics.  Way too much about this tool to cover here, but it is likely to be the topic of a future Meetup

Ranking  Tools

We were pretty pleased to discover that no-one was particularly interested in PageRank, and that even our clients had started to get the picture that PageRank in itself is not something worth obsessing about.  However, ranking reports can be a quick and easy way to monitor the impact of SEO strategies over a period.  Many of the SEO Suite based tools (see below) offer rank tracking tools and

BackLink Tools

• Yahoo Site Explorer – once recognised as the single best way to get fairly decent backlioni data on your competitors site – is now seen as no longer reliable and on it’s last legs as a useful tool
• Webmaster Tools – the most accurate source of backlink data for your own site – not available for competitors though (dammit !!!)
• Open Site Explorer – SEOMOZ’s famous Link Popularity Checker + Backlink Analysis Tool
• Majestic SEO – perhaps the worlds most comprehensive source of backlinks information
• Market Samurai -  a Suite tool (see below) that offers some good backlink reporting
• Backlinkwatch – enter a website URL to get detailed information about quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to the site
• Blekko – a “search” engine with a difference.  “slashtag” capabilities extend the info that Blekko offers – try www.yourdomain.com /seo

Conversion Optimisation Tools

There are hundreds of specialist tools that can be sued for Conversion Optimisation – here are a few that were mentioned :

• Google Website Optimizer – Google’s free website testing and optimization tool makes it quick and easy to implement A/B split testing and monitor and measure results.
• ClickTale - discover everything visitors do on your website. Visitor Recordings, Mouse Move Heatmaps, Heatmap Suite, Form Analytics and more…
• CrazyEgg – simple and affordable heat mapping tools that allow you to visually understand user behaviour
• Screenr – web-based screen recorder makes it a breeze to create and share your screencasts around the web.  From a CRO perspective this is a great tool to record test users behaviour – including their commentary on what/why they are doing thing.

SEO Tool Suites

• SEOMOZ SEO Tools – A comprehensive (and sexy) array of SEO tools : Link Building, Competitor Analysis, Keyword research, Optimisation, and more….
• SEO Powersuite – offer a range of SEO Tools from LinkAssitant – including Rank Tracker, Website Auditor,  SEO Spyglass and Link Assistant
• Raven SEO Tools – Internet marketing tools for SEO and Social media  (tends to be higher end, more sophisticated/complex tools for SEO professionals/agencies)
• Market Samurai – Great general purpose and good value tools for internet marketing and SEO

THE Most Important SEO Tool of All ??

And the single most important tool for any self respecting SEO is of course…  EXCEL.  Excel is critical for Collating, Filtering, Analysing and Sorting the reams of data that most SEOs accumulate in their day to day activities.

Once upon a time (not so very long ago), simply having a website might have been enough, but these days, with more and more business realising the benefits of the web, and far greater competition for top search rankings, most businesses are finding they also need to ensure their site has been optimised to be found easily ion search engines. The best way to do this is through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – which is not simply a matter of popping in the right key words. Keywords are a certainly an important part of it (and probably the place you should start), but there is a lot more that could (and should) be done  to increase traffic to your website.

While SEO can be a full-time job (and is for me) the average small business (and many medium to large businesses as well) probably can’t justify a full time SEO on their payroll.
However, Businesses still have the option of handling SEO on a part-time basis, either  in-house or outsourcing it. There are a number of issues that should be taken into consideration before deciding whether or not to outsource your SEO.  I’ve outlined below,  the main things to consider when planning to outsource your SEO or keep it in house.

When to Outsource SEO?

The main factors that might influence your decision to outsource SEO to an SEO  professional or consultant are:

• Workload – If your staff are already flat out dealing with their normal day to day tasks,  adding another task or responsibility may not be possible. Assigning another task to an already stretched role, is a great way to ensure that it is not done properly – and may also cause a distraction and impact on the effectiveness of tasks that are so far running smoothly. If you don’t have the man hours or staff available to allocate to your website’s SEO then outsourcing may be your only option. Because SEO is so important to the success of your website, and your business, you can’t afford to assign it to an employee and expect it to be done properly if they are making a half-hearted attempt at it in their “spare time”.
• Experience – If none of your staff knows the first thing about search engine optimisation, or only has limited experience, letting them “experiment” on your business website could be very risky.  You are probably much better off getting a specialist SEO company or consultant to handle your website’s SEO needs. Search Engine Optimisation is a dynamic and constantly changing field, and learning and keeping up with what’s happening with SEO can be a lot of work. If your company doesn’t have anyone interested in keeping up to date with current  SEO, trends and strategies, the optimisation of your website won’t be as effective as it otherwise might be.
• Tried and Failed – If you’ve already had a go at handling your company website’s SEO in house and you haven’t seen an increase in page ranking or traffic to the site, letting an outside company handle your SEO needs is probably your best option.

When NOT to outsource SEO

• Limited Budget – If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money. While outsourcing your SEO doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive, it does cost money.   SEO is rarely a “quick fix” and is likely to take some time to be effective. To ensure it is done properly, you will probably need to engage an SEO consultant for at least  a few months while things are analysed and set up. If you are a medium to large sized company you may be able to re-prioritise, and rework your budget so that you can afford to hire an SEO consultant. But if you are a new or small business, you may not be able to justify, or afford it.  If you really don’t think you can afford an SEO to do everything for you, you may be able to commission a consultant to provide some SEO training, or at least advice on what optimisation steps that you can afford to take, so it is probably worth at least talking to an SEO consultant to see what the options (and costs) might be.
• Inside SEO expertise – If you already have a staff member who understands SEO,  enjoys it and keeps up to date on the changing dynamics, then there should be no need to outsource. Give them the time and tools that they need to keep up with the website’s SEO needs, make sure that they are monitoring, measuring and reporting on the outcomes of their activities, and  you’re ready to go.

Brisbane SEO Consultants

WebConsulting provides a specialist SEO Consulting service to small medium and large businesses in Brisbane, South East Queensland and throughout Australia.  We specialise in Search Engine Optimisation, Conversion Optimisation and Analytics Review, and can work with your existing team or provide training, analysis or advice to help optimise your business website – to improve rankings, traffic and increase your online sales or enquiries.

We don’t typically work on a monthly retainer basis, but provide consulting as and when required.  This ensures that the most effective optimisation strategies can be provided when you need it, and you are not paying for any idle time.

If you’d like to discuss your SEO Consulting or Optimisation needs, please feel free to contact us to arrange an obligation free consultation.

The Call to Action for your site should reflect your overall business goals for the website. i.e. what are you wanting to achieve?  Your call to action may be to provide contact details , to buy a product, or to give you a call, but whatever it is, your website should be focused on achieving that goal.

That’s not to say that a website can not necessarily have multiple calls to action (for different types of users for example), however it should fairly quickly funnel the user to the area of the site that meets their specific needs, and should make it as easy as possible for them to achieve what they have come to your site to do. From your visitors perspective it needs to be clear and obvious where they need to click on your page to get them closer to their goal. If they have to spend time deciding where to look and what to do, they’ll most likely get frustrated and leave your site.

Is your Call To Action Clear?

If your call-to-action is not obvious, your website is not working properly and you are probably losing money. If your visitors can’t tell almost immediately what your page is about and how to get to their goal, you will undoubtedly lose conversions.

Here are four steps on how you can keep your landing page intent clear:

1. Clear headline – Each page on your website must be about something. It must have a clear purpose, which must be spelled out in a headline that spans the top of the page.
2. Clear “action block” – There should be a single place for the visitor to interact with your page, which should be visually separate from the rest of the page. This action block should draw the eye towards the desired activity on the page. The rest of the page should be plain and visually restrained.
3. Action block Headline – The intent of the action block must be clearly stated, with an obvious and descriptive headline.
4. Clear call-to-action – Within the action block, you must provide a single clear call-to-action. The call-to-action should describe what happens next and what the visitor can expect once they click on the button. Avoid general or generic buttons like the “Continue” or “Submit”. The wording of the call-to-action must be from the visitor’s viewpoint, and not your own”.
5. Remove distractions – Take a look at the content and navigation on the rest of the page, and remove as many other “clickable” options as possible.  This may even include the removal of the normal menu navigation for specific Call to Action pages on your site.  Ideally, the only clickable options on your Call to Action Page, are to either proceed with the conversion, or return to the previous page.

By keeping your call to action clear, ensuring it is the most prominent thing on the page, placed above the fold, and written in words that reflect your visitor’s perspective, you maximise the likelihood of your visitors completing the conversion.

If you don’t believe that your website is achieving as many conversions as it should or could, and would like advice about website conversion optimisation, please feel free to contact WebConsulting SEO.

Recently a client asked me what a “good bounce rate” should be, and in considering my response, I realised that Bounce Rate in particular was one statistic that site owners don’t really “get” – which is a great shame because it can be a very useful statistic. This post therefore focuses on the Bounce Rate – explains what it represents, how it should be interpreted, and how it can be used to help increase the effectiveness of your site by improving your conversion rates.

What is a Bounce Rate?

Google ‘s definition of a bounce rate is : “the percentage of single-page visitors, or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page” – i.e. the percentage of your site visitors that only view a single page on your site. So, the higher your bounce rate, the fewer visitors are actually spending time on your site.

A high bounce rate indicates that the 1st web page your site visitors see is not appropriate to them – there is nothing on these pages to encourage them to look further into the site – (although it may also suggest that the one page they looked at provided exactly the information they were looking for). A low bounce rate indicates that visitors have an interest, look at multiple pages and stay for a longer time on your site, and most of the time the longer visitors stay, the more likely they are to convert (purchase a product or make an inquiry).

A bounce rate also provides an indication of the “quality” of a page, and it is quite possible that the search engines might take this statistic into account among the factors influencing search rankings. Its also wise to bear in mind that bounce rate applies to a particular page and that each page on your site might have some other bounce rate.

What makes a Good Bounce Rate?

Exactly what makes a good bounce rate is a bit harder to specify, because it will very much depend on the type of your site and the market you are in. It will also rely on which page you are looking at. A high bounce rate on a contact page may be OK, because it suggests that the visitor was looking for your contact details and may be phoning or emailing you, i.e. they found what they were looking for. However, a higher bounce rate on your home page (or even worse your most important product pages) is much more of a concern because it indicates that people are not interested in this page, are being turned away by what they see, or are not being encouraged to click further into your site.

I generally see bounce rates of between 50% and 70%, however, many of my clients (mostly in niche areas) are obtaining bounce rates of 20% or less.

Why would I want a better Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is an indication of page quality. A higher number of pages on your site with low bounce rates means that users are spending longer on your site – and are therefore significantly more likely to convert. Reducing bounce rate is a Conversion Optimisation strategy, and can eventually be a lot more effective way to improve sales and inquiries on your site than conventional SEO techniques.

How can I improve my Bounce Rate?

Generally you ought to be trying to achieve as low a bounce rate as you possibly can. We recommend that you start off by examining the bounce rate of your key pages such as your home page, landing pages for PPC campaigns, and pages associated with conversions (inquiry form, product pages, etc).

Take a close look at these pages from a users perspective – do they provide the information or functionality that a user would want or expect?

The original source of the traffic to your high bounce rate pages should also be examined. You should normally expect a lower bounce rate for direct traffic than you would for search traffic. A very high bounce rate for search traffic may suggest that the page is ranking for keywords and key phrases which are not properly answered on that page. After some manipulation of Google Analytics, it is possible to ascertain which key phrases are ending in greater bounce rates for a certain page (if you’re unsure on how to do this, contact us and we can help you to analyse your usage stats).

If you are operating a Paid advertising campaign make sure you take a very close look at the bounce rate of your Ad landing pages – if these are receiving a high bounce rate, not only are you wasting cash on click costs, but your Cost per Click is also apt to be high because of a low quality score.

In this post we’ve really only had a chance to provide simple facts on the information open to you through your web site usage statistics, or techniques that will help you to enhance conversions of your site. If you’d like to discover more about Web Analytics or Conversion Optimisation, don’t hesitate to contact us at WebConsulting.

Precisely what Is Conversion Optimization?

Simply speaking, Conversion Optimization is the process of making it easier for your consumers to buy from you (or undertake whatever other conversion goal you have). However beginning to increase the conversion rate of your site is almost certainly less complicated than you imagine. Here are a number of steps in the process and how they can integrate with your search marketing campaigns and strategy.

Make improvements to Usability

Before anyone will want to buy from you, they need to feel comfortable with your web site. Here are some quick tips to help improve the usability of your website:

• Think like a user. Take a look at your site through your users eyes…how would the user feel about this site?
• How would a new user rate your navigation? Is it Useful? Intuitive? Easy or Difficult to navigate? Your sites navigation is one of the fundamental elements of usability so spend some time making this work for site visitors. You should aim at ensuring that users can get to your primary conversion goals in 3 clicks or less.
• Remove barriers. Is there anything in your site that makes it awkward or difficult for users to get to either your conversion goal or the information that they need? If so, fix it.
• Are the visuals pleasant and relevant or do they distract or annoy?
• Look at your competitor sites or those with similar functionality. Identify functionality that you like or features that you could be using.
• Use Search Engine and User Friendly URL’s so visitors can bookmark pages they like and come back.

Like SEO – Conversion Optimisation is an ongoing process, not a one off activity. To get the best out of your site, you should keep working through the conversion optimisation process throughout the life of your site, and with each cycle, it will improve (and so will your sales).

1. Go out and register a bunch of “keyword-rich” domain names. Duplicate the content from your main domain to each of these and link them all back to the main domain to “help” the main site’s popularity.  Make sure that you “Forget” to tell your SEO that you’ve done this.

Not only will this not help, but it may prevent even your main domain from being displayed in some search engines. While the search engines don’t actually penalise duplicate content, they will either ignore or eventually filter out the duplicates – and they might just decide that your primary domain pages are the duplicate ones!

If you haven’t yet done anything like this, but you’re thinking it might be a good idea, save your money.  You’re much better off spending your time effort and money on optimising your actual site rather than a half hearted effort on lots of sites.

2. Hire a web designer who knows nothing about SEO to produce a site for you. Bring the SEO in at the end of the process, after the site is already completed. Forbid your SEO from making any changes to the on-page display of your site.

Virtually any existing site, no matter how search-friendly it is, will need some changes. If your site isn’t search-friendly already, the changes may be significant indeed.

If your SEO tells you that you don’t need to make any changes to your site and everything can be handled “behind the scenes,” then you should think about getting yourself a new SEO! They’re either clueless, or they’re planning to use sneaky tactics that can eventually get you in trouble with the search engines (or both!). Solid, long-term results come from hard work, not trickery.

Of course, the best tactic is to bring your SEO and your designer together from the start, so your site will be search-friendly from the get-go.

3. Neglect to tell your SEO about previous attempts at optimisation, particularly if they involved questionable practices. After all, there’s no sense in dredging up ancient history.

If your previous SEO efforts managed to get your site penalised or banned, your present SEO needs to know this. There are things that can be done to try to rectify the situation, but those things won’t be done if your SEO doesn’t know they need doing.

Even if the tactics used haven’t yet caused any actual penalties for you, it’s important to let your new SEO know what went before, and what might still be lurking about in dark corners of the Web. This will help your new SEO get things cleaned up and avoid any unpleasant surprises on down the road.

4. Start calling your SEO approximately two days after they’ve first started work on your site, asking when you’re going to see your rankings go up for your favourite key phrase. Call back at approximately two or three day intervals from then on out until you rank number one for your chosen phrase, or the SEO jumps off a bridge, whichever comes first.

Optimization takes time to reach full effect. For instance, it may take up to a year before a new site will rank well on Google for competitive key phrases. Even for less competitive phrases, you could potentially be looking at a period of several months before your site’s natural rankings settle in. In the meantime, Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) can get your site on the first page even for highly competitive terms, as long as you’re willing to pay the cost per click.

5. Focus all your energies on a single phrase. No matter how much your SEO tries to convince you to diversify, or tells you this phrase isn’t going to be all that useful to you, insist on single-minded concentration on this one phrase. After all, your competition’s site ranks at number one for this phrase, and you have to beat them to get bragging rights.

Depending on its size, a well-optimised site should focus on dozens to hundreds of key phrases. There is simply no reason to limit yourself to one, or even a small handful of phrases. If your site doesn’t have enough pages to support all the useful key phrases recommended by your SEO, consider adding additional pages of content rather than shortening the list of targeted phrases.

Follow your SEO’s recommendations about which phrases should get priority. A good SEO will start any project by doing a detailed key phrase analysis to determine which words and phrases are most likely to be used by people who are searching for the kind of stuff you offer. There’s no point in ranking highly for phrases that no one ever uses for an actual search.

Don’t let your ego or vanity limit the potential of your site to rank well for multiple, valuable terms.

6. Check your rankings on a daily basis. Call your SEO to report (and, if needed, complain) about every fluctuation.

It’s a fact of life: rankings vary on a daily basis – sometimes an hourly or even minute-by-minute basis. Checking your rankings daily, or even more often, is simply a waste of time.

Sure, number one rankings are cool for bragging rights, but rankings alone don’t put food on the table.

The true measure of the success of an optimization campaign should not be rankings, or even traffic. It should be conversions – that is, how many people end up doing whatever it is you want your site visitors to do. (Buy your product, subscribe to your membership area, sign up for your newsletter, whatever.)

A good SEO will focus on this metric and will try to help you do the same.

Well, there you have it. Six easy ways to drive any good SEO insane. Now, of course, if you’d rather have a profitable web site, you might want to consider not doing any of these things. The choice is yours.

Better to show a banner than show nothing.

Not advertising at all means no sales at all. People have to get to know about you before they’ll buy from you. Compare banner advertising to a newspaper of 50 pages. There are a lot of ads in a newspaper. Quite frankly, you’re not going to see all of the ads even if you look at each and every page. Most websites are designed in an organised fashion where only a few ads are shown at a time. This gives you a better likelihood of having your banner shown.

To make sure that your banner advertising dollars are spent well, your banners must be designed and implemented with the following characteristics:

1. Keep your message short and simple.

You only have a few seconds to capture the attention of the viewer. Hence, you must be able to get your point across in a few words, as a wordy ad won’t get read. Find the right words and images – including animated GIFs ofr flash that allow short messages to rotate – to trigger action. Too much clutter adversely affects the performance of a banner and negatively impacts on a banner’s ability to brand. Concise ads are successful because they deliver a message or name that the viewer can remember.

2. Provide something interesting to viewers.

It is not necessarily true that people do not read ads. People only read what is interesting to them – and sometimes, it can be an ad. Making the case for targeted placements, your banners will only be successful if you seek out people receptive to your message. You banners will simply be part of the clutter to be ignored if you serve up your ads to viewers who considers your message irrelevant to them.

3. Give people a reason to click.

Viewers will only respond to a compelling proposition. Your banners must be attractive or interesting enough to be successful in generating even the slightest flicker of response. People react favourably to banners that provide them a chance to win something. A banner where they can get something for free or a special discount also gets high click rates. Develop your banner’s message around the most persuasive reason why people would want to go to your site, be it the information you provide, special offers and promotions, or products that can make their life much better.

4. Develop follow-through mechanisms.

Leading users who clicked on your banners to your home page is acceptable if your advertising goal is to develop branding for your site. However, if you offered a special promotion or solicit a specific action from the user, you must create follow-through mechanisms for these users. A special page explaining the promotion in detail, for example, provides visual or messaging clues about what to do next. In addition, having a special page for each of your banners can help you determine which creative is more effective in bringing in traffic or sales.

5. Always test your ads.

Before going full-blast in your campaign, you need to test your banners with a subset of your target audience. You should experiment with various banner designs to gauge the appeal of your promotional offers and the type of message that brings a high-interest customer. Most ad networks now allow advertisers to conduct a test run.

6. Consider using rich media.

Rich media banners, which include animation, sound and other special effects, can increase your response rate. These banners could facilitate e-commerce and may even lead to instant revenues. Some rich media banners have a built-in order area, expandable order forms, and even secure server technology to protect credit card transaction.  The drawback, however, is that rich media banners will cost more to produce and place; and they are not available on all web sites. Plus,  the banners can sometimes slow down web page loading times. If you have the resources, try incorporating rich media in a banner and test how it performs with standard banners.

Finally…Some Quick Design /Content Tips

• Banner Ads are 468 x 60 pixels in dimension. This is a standard size.
• Banner ads should be 15k or less in size. Otherwise they take too long to load.
• Display your website address on your banner. This way, if nothing else, the viewer sees your website.
• Always include your company name on the banner.
• Include just one main benefit or interest point on your banner. Something that would immediately draw an interested parties attention.
• Use fonts that are easily readable.
• Use colours and designs that are attractive but not gawdy. If you’re not sure, ask some friends what they think.
• Look at the ad and ask yourself if you would understand what this banner is trying to advertise. Don’t assume that people understand what you’re trying to sell. If after looking at it, you don’t understand what you’re selling, please redo the ad. Ask your friends to critique the ad for you.
• Make the best use of ad space. Let’s face it, 468×60 is not a lot of space. You have to get the best value for the space.
• Make a few ads and then test them out to see which ones perform better. Even though you feel you’ve made the best ad in the world, you might find better results with different ads. It happens all the time.

Do this Now ! Run a search on Google and find your Pay Per Click (PPC) ad. Click on it. Where does it bring you? Your home page? I hope not. If it does you should consider creating a specific landing page for your PPC ads. A landing page is the page you create with the primary goal of converting your PPC traffic into sales or enquiries. This page should encourage your potential customers (that you have already paid for!) to go exactly where you think they want to go.

Here are some tips to create a good landing page:

1) Focus! Focus! Focus!

The landing page should be about your product or service. No links to other sites, no advertisements, no waffle. When people arrive at your landing page, they should already be predisposed to buy (since you wrote such an excellent ad to get them here in the first place) and are trying to either find out more information about your product/service, or click the “Buy now” button.

2) Specialise your landing page

Use a different landing page for each group of keyphrases. If you sell Widgets and Wodgets, don’t use the same landing page for each. Create a new landing page for each product (or each group of products) and send the clients directly to the page they are interested in.

3) Give them information

If they are not yet sold on your product or service, then they are going to be looking for more detailed information when they arrive at your landing page. Give it to them. You have to convince them that you have the perfect product or service to solve their problem. If they run out of information before they make a commitment to buy, then you have lost them. Nobody will spend money until they are convinced that your product or service is the right choice for them. So prove it.

4) Tell the reader what you want them to do

Use calls-to-action. If you want them to buy your product, than tell them often how to do it (“Click here to buy”). If you want them to call you, post the number up with instructions (“Call us now at 1800-999-999″). Repeat it throughout the text, then again in big and bold at the end.

5) Use graphics

Use pictures to sell your product or service. Pictures of the product or pictures of satisfied customers sell. Use them – and use them often.

6) Run tests

Set up two (or more) landing pages to see which ones convert better. You can use Giigles Website Optimiser toolf for tjhis or set up two identical ads and send one to each landing page, then compare conversion rates for each page. Figure out why one converts better and try to improve the other one. Then, run more tests until you are completely satisfied with the results.

Set up your landing pages so that your potential customers arrive for a safe and controlled landing. If all goes well, they will step out of the plane with their credit cards already in hand – and their money almost in your pocket.

It was found that 28% of online sellers were using customer ratings and reviews. More than half said they were considering it.

Asked about the effects of customer ratings on their Web sites, over half of online retailers in the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe said their overall conversion rates had gone up in the past year, compared with only 9% who said they fell.

Nearly eight in 10 online sellers thought a major benefit of such reviews was to increase conversions, while 73% thought improved customer retention and loyalty were major benefits. Nearly six in 10 thought the fact that customer reviews improved search engine optimisation was a significant benefit.

“Tapping into social commerce can be a great way of gaining a competitive advantage, for example through ratings and reviews,” Linus Gregoriadis, E-consultancy’s head of research, said in a statement. “But apart from the early adopters, this is something a large proportion of online retailers are only just starting to think seriously about.”

Unfortunately, companies love the idea of getting their messages into these channels and more and more adverts and marketing are finding their ways into blogs. Marketers are increasingly using  blogs, and social network pages specifically to promote their products or services.

Your Opportunity

Although it’s a shame that there is so much ‘advertorial’ out there , it also presents opportunities for you.   As levels of credibility and trust sink lower, readers will seek out content that is honest and useful. They’ll be hungry for information they can trust, and once you have their trust, you are more likely to be receptive to the products and services that you offer.

What not to do

There are some excellent, trustworthy sites around which support themselves through all manner of advertising and sponsorship deals. The trick is not to remove the advertising, but to clearly separate editorial from advertising.

People understand that information media needs to support their existence through advertising. What isn’t OK is when you try to trick your readers.

It’s not acceptable to:

• Write content that’s thinly-veiled advertising
• Try to make people think a certain page is editorial they can trust, when in fact it’s there to deliver a marketing message
• Write a blog entry that appears to be editorial when you’re being paid a fee by a company to write it
• Write poor content simply to attract readers in the hope they’ll click on an advert

These are the practices that dilute trust and make web users sceptical about the next blog, forum or website they visit.

How to build trust

Online, every marketer is in a hurry to make money. But if you just slow down a little you’ll end up doing better in the long run.

Create valuable, useful and honest content, whether it be in the form of articles, reviews, guides, white papers, or blog entries. Keep marketing messages out of your content. Add them separately, and keep them separate. Over time, people will come to trust your site and the information you provide.Trustworthy content will win in the end

So while we’re in the midst of an explosion of sneaky marketing right now, the smartest marketers will be investing in sites and  blogsthat are genuinely trustworthy. They will be the winners in the end.