Onsite SEO refers to changes made directly to your website that you have total control over.  Many web developers and business owners overlook these easy to implement steps into their website.  These changes can help boost your search engine rankings and should always be done with every website you create.  Keep in mind if you abuse some of these in an attempt to spam your keywords that can have a negative effect when trying to achieve higher rankings.

This is a generic list that some of you experienced web developers and internet marketers may already be doing.  If you have other advice to add, please leave a comment below so you can share it with other readers who are looking to learn more.

Page File Names

Try and name the pages for your website with what they talk about and what keywords you are trying to target. Never spam your keywords in your file name, but do not be afraid of the length either.  The file name does not have to be short and the extension (.html, .htm, .php, .asp) will not hinder the page so any of those file extensions will rank the same.  Try to avoid using underlines _ in the page name, instead use a hyphen – to separate each word.  The same rule applies for image names or downloadable content.

Page Titles

Make sure each of your web pages have a unique title, in most cases this page title is what will show up in the SERP’s when people are searching for something.  Create a catchy page title that may entice the reader to click on your website.  You want to avoid spamming keywords in your page titles and keep the stop words (and, for, a, etc.) to a minimum.  Most search engines will only read the first 60 characters of your page title, this includes spaces and | character.

Meta Description

As with your page title, you want to have a unique description for each page of your website that sums up what that page is about.  Using the keywords you are trying to target for that page is a must, but do not go overboard with trying to use them all.  The page description will show up in the SERP’s under your page title, so remember to be informative to help entice the reader to click on your link.

Meta Keywords

Over the years this tactic has been used less and less since Google (most used search engine at the time of this article) does not even consider what you put in your meta keywords tag.  Instead Google takes the content from the page itself along with links to help determine what that page is about.  It will not hurt to still use this within your HEAD tags, just keep in mind spamming keywords or using keywords that are not relevant to the content of the page will get you nowhere.

Unique Page Content

Ensure that the written text on the page is unique and not copied straight from another website or event pieced together from several websites.  Search engines are smart and will see that the content is duplicated from other sources and more then likely not rank that page or even your entire domain name if the content is copied.  Incorporate your desired keywords you are trying to target with that page within your content, if you are a believer of keyword density then ensure you have your 2%-7%. Avoid using all images or all flash in your content, the search engines love text.

Heading Tags

Ensure you are using some of your targeted keywords within your H1/H2 tags for paragraph headings and sub heading.  Split the content up with headlines using these tags, just never try and hide extra content with CSS placement tricks of these tags.  Remember the search engines can read your css files to.

Proper Link Anchor Text and Title

It is always a good idea to inner link between your own website pages, never use the infamous “click here”, “more information”, “our products” as the anchor text.  Use some of your keywords for the page you are linking to as the anchor text and do not forget to give that link a title=”title goes here”.  If you are linking out to another site, you can use the rel=”nofollow” attribute.  This can be a good idea if you have a lot of links on a single page or are linking to a not so good website (adult, gambling, etc.)

Image ALT tags

Never forget to assign the ALT text to each of your images that you use within a web page.  Some marketers think by stuffing keywords in their image ALT tags that will help with their rankings, that worked a decade ago but now it will have a negative effect to your rankings.

.htaccess Settings

Make sure your .htaccess file is configured properly.  To a search engine the following links are all separate, but when you view the content it is all the same.
www.yoursite.com
yoursite.com
yoursite.com/index.html

Make sure you specify how you want your website URL to be displayed.  I always use the www.yoursite.com version, this way if someone types in just the domain name into their browser, they will be directed to the www.yoursite.com url.  The search engines will then rank all three of those URL’s as one which is what you want them to do. You will not have to do this for every page, but having an .htaccess file configured properly is important.

Robots.txt File

Ensure you have a robots.txt file, you can either leave it blank or you may specify which spiders/bots are allowed to crawl your site.  You can also set up instructions as to what directories or files within your site you do not want the search engines to crawl and index.

Install Website Stat Tracking

Google analytics is a very common and FREE website stat tracking script that you can implement in a matter of minutes to any page of your website.  I consider this a must with SEO so you can track just about everything from your visitors.  Analyzing this data can show you what areas you can work more on to help improve a specific page or set of pages on your website.  With most tracking software, you will be able to see what keywords were used to find your website along with the website they came from.  A gold mine of information if used properly for both organic SEO and PPC campaigns.

Webmaster Tools

Using free webmaster tools from search engines like Google and Bing are a great way to find out how the search engines not only rank your site for keywords, but also how they see your website on the internet.  From duplicate page titles, duplicate URL’s, special filters you can manage to viewing keyword search results for your website.  As usual these are free resources for you to use to benefit your not just your SEO efforts, but your overall internet marketing strategies as well.

Valid XML Sitemap

Within your webmaster tools, their is a section for submitting an XML sitemap.  This is important as it notifies the search engines of the pages within your website making them easier to find and crawl.  Their are plenty of free XML sitemap generators on the internet for you to use and keep in mind you will have to update your sitemap xml file when adding new pages to your website.

Custom 404 Error Page

Setting up a custom 404 error page is a one time thing.  This allows you to customize what page the viewer will see if they are taken to a broken link on your website.  Instead of getting the default page cannot be found, give them other options to view information on your website.  These could be links to other products, featured articles or other content they can read over instead of just leaving your website. 

External Javascript and CSS Files

Instead of having your javascript code or CSS styles within the web page itself, put them in external files and simply link to them.  This will help keep the page size down and also allow you to easily edit your pages in the future. 

So their you have it, a basic onsite SEO checklist for you to use with any website you are either currently developing or looking to help rank higher in the SERP’s.  Ignoring a lot of these steps can be the reason as to why you are not ranking as well as you want to.  Take the extra time to ensure each of your pages are setup properly as in the long run it will only benefit you in your efforts to achieve better rankings.

Ebook marketing can be a challenge to anyone new to internet marketing.  I am sure you have read countless stories online how the latest internet marketer has become rich off of selling his ebook. So you go out and create your own ebook, thinking it will be the next big thing. They either create a small website in an attempt to promote the ebook, or they try and sell it on their blog that receives little traffic. Getting discouraged, they give up the idea of that ebook making them any money online and wonder what other people are doing to sell their ebooks.

Like I have said before in the past, it is all about the internet hustle and making it work for you. Unless you have a subscriber list of thousands of people all ready to buy your latest and greatest product, you are going to have to work to get your ebook sold. Let me run you through some things you can do that will help you in your efforts.

1. Word Of Mouth Marketing

Using places like facebook, twitter or even myspace is a great way for word of mouth marketing to take over for you. Interact with people, respond to their questions and build a relationship with them. This will not happen overnight, but in the long run you will be glad you did this. When it comes time to release your next great idea, you will already have a good list of friends to easily advertise it to with a few keystrokes and a click of the mouse button.

2. Give The Ebook Away For A Free Review

Contact other bloggers and see if they would be interested in reading over your ebook and offering a free review of the product. Many people would gladly do a free review since you are giving them the ebook to begin with. Use their reader base to help promote your ebook, it only thing you are doing is contacting these blog owners via email, instant message or even twitter. I would not contact any of the bigger bloggers unless you already are on speaking terms with them. They do not like to be bothered with emails pitching a product to them as they get so many each week. They will do nothing but delete that email and move on to the next in line.

3. Paid Review Of Your Ebook

If offering a free copy of your ebook for a review does not work, you can always purchase a review from sites. Some SEO’s will argue that this is link buying and will suggest in not doing this. Buying links is against Google’s rules, however with a paid review you can always have the link go to a separate site if you are worried about it. If you do not care, then simply have the review link right to your landing page or purchase page. If the ebook has good information and not just full of fluff, you can see a good increase in sales from larger sites who offer paid reviews.

4. Create And Utilize A Good Landing Page

This landing page can be used in conjunction with several of the tips throughout this article. You want the landing page for your ebook to look professional and not give away to much information to the viewer. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating a landing page for your ebook.

• Create an attractive header with the product name and even a catch phrase if you have one for the ebook.
• Have your call to action above the fold, this will allow the viewer to see what they need to do next to buy your ebook or view any free chapters.
• Show the cover on your ebook above the fold, this will allow the viewer to see what it is they are purchasing.
• Be descriptive in the first paragraph, but do not make it sound like a sales pitch.
• Use bullet points to show the reader what your ebook has to offer and why they should buy it.
• Try and get testimonials from people who have reviewed your ebook, if you do not have any, make sure to get them and add them as soon as possible. You need to establish trust with your landing page, solid testimonials only help build that trust with the viewer.
• Refund and Privacy Policy information should be shown to the viewer, they want reassurance that you are not going to just steal their money or information.
• Make sure that not matter where they are on your landing page, the option to buy the product is one click away.

5. Create Teaser Chapters

Take pieces from your ebook and offer them to be read right on your site, this is just like giving someone a piece of candy with the hopes they can buy the whole bag from you. After the teaser excerpts, give the viewer the option to buy your ebook to read it in full. You can include one teaser on your landing page, or several teasers from multiple chapters if you have a multi page website.

6. Forum Marketing

Join forums that are related to what your ebook is about, add that link in your signature if the forum allows it. Interact with the members of any forum you join, this can take some time as with using social media, but it can work. You will not sell hundreds of copies of your ebook, but if you do sell it to the right person they can tell their friends or leave positive feedback on the forum for others to potentially buy. This can be slow going, so do not expect any great results right away.

7. Article Marketing

You can write articles related to your ebook and submit to places like Ezinearticles. Remember the article is about your niche or related to it, do not make it sound like a sales pitch to sell your product. Use the bio box to tell the reader about you and link to your site using keyword phrases you are trying to target. All it takes is one article a day and over time they will bring you traffic and sales if the articles contain good information. If you are not comfortable writing articles, you could always outsource this for just a few dollars per article. Make sure to proof read any articles before submitting and double check with a service like Copyscape to make sure it is not just a copied article.

8. Offer Your Ebook on Clickbank

With Clickbank you can post your ebook in their system for other website owners to market and sell for you. You will have to give out a % of each sale to those website owners, but they are doing all of the work for you. Keep your eyes out for a full post regarding Clickbank, how it works and what you can do to use it to your advantage.

9. Do Not Over Price Your Ebook

This is where a lot of people go wrong, they price their ebook well over what people will actually pay for it thinking they are going to get rich. Think if you were the buyer, would you spend $80 for an ebook? How about $70? I didn’t think so, unless your ebook is always being updated and well known, you will not see that much money. Then again, if your ebook is already well known, why would you be reading this? Keep your price range between $10 and $40, depending on how many pages your ebook contains and how good the information is in it.

10. Run A PPC Campaign

When thinking starting a PPC campaign for your ebook, look to see how much the keywords you want to target is going to cost you. If they are running $3/click and your ebook is only $15 you might want to either find other keywords or just forget about running a PPC. However if the keyword is only $1/click and your ebook is $30 then I would be using PPC to your advantage. This is one of the quickest ways to see sales come in for your ebook.

Remember your ebook will not sell itself, you need to do the leg work to get the ball rolling. Do not expect to sell hundreds of books right away, the reality is their are so many ebooks online. What makes your ebook better? Patience is key for anyone new to marketing, you need to keep your patience when marketing your ebook. If you lose your patience right away for whatever reason, you are hurting your own efforts to make this work for you. Stay focused and work hard, you will see results if the niche is not over saturated and you have a good product. Make sure you keep a list of every person who has bought your ebook, you can offer them new products in the future or even offer an updated ebook with more information for a discounted price. Selling a new item to your previous buyers is a great way to take your next ebook sales to a higher level.

Today it is all about you and your marketing strategies.  Read the title a few times and I also want you to write it down and put it somewhere by your computer where you can see it on a daily basis.  Everyone wants to know the secret of how to make a living with internet marketing and what easy steps to take in getting them started.  They read a few websites or see a success story and want to emulate that person since they saw how much money that person made in that short amount of time.  Why do you want to be like someone else?  Why try and duplicate what has already been done?  Most people do not realize how much time, dedication and hard work went into producing those marketing results in the first place.  They just read the success an individual has had promoting a certain website or product and want to know the easy way to do the same.

What I notice a lot of is people trying to be just like the next affiliate marketing superstar.  The thing with being a successful affiliate marketer is not about copying people and what they have done in the past.  It is about being ahead of the game, thinking of what market to target next with the best product/service you can pitch to them.  Thing is people, that person did not make all that money that fast.  They spent hours and hours testing out there marketing strategies to see what works best for them in whatever niche they are trying to promote.  Successful marketers can spend those hours and see zero results from it, instead of giving up or just trying to copy someone else they move forward to there next idea.  You see these ideas are one of the driving forces behind what makes a person succeed or fail.  If you are just trying to use other people’s ideas then you will not get that far.  At first you might see some success and see that light at the end of the tunnel, but I bet you will end up falling flat on your face and that light will fade.  The reason why most will fail is due to the fact of wanting to be like everyone else you read about, you end up being one of a million, because there are probably a million other people out there trying to succeed by copying and emulating what they have read.  When you read a “new trick” or “new technique” do you really think it is new?  Boy I sure hope not, those tricks and techniques had been tested over and over again until perfection.  Then used to the fullest by that individual or at times group of people to profit the most money.  Only then might you see and read about what they did to achieve that success of making money.  Problem is that technique had been used previously by a select few, now the rest of the world can try it to.  How long do you think it will still work well?

I want you to try and see the big picture, being successful with internet marketing is not about copying what others have done.  It is about laying your own ground work for your success and future.  You need to realize and understand that coming up with new ideas is all around you.  What products do you see around in your every day life that you could target to a specific audience?  What new websites are out that you can market on, what new marketing techniques can you use on these websites to increase your success.  You need to be able to think for yourself, you need to be that one in a million and push yourself to succeed.  I believe anyone can succeed if they have the will power and motivation to do so.  Now I ask you to go back to the answer you had wrote down or typed up before and post it here.  Being one in a million can happen, you just need to believe in yourself and set your goals in the right direction.  That direction is your own road to success, there is no need to be like anyone else and follow there road, you now need to start building your own.

You hear the phrase diversify from investors and wall street analysts alike, telling you to put your money in several investing areas to spread out your portfolio.  This way if one sector has gone bad, you have the other investments to help keep you going.  The same rule applies to your internet marketing strategy, diversify your efforts and never put all of your eggs in one basket.  By using only one marketing stream for your website, you are limiting the potential and possible business you could be gaining from using other marketing techniques.

Good Situation Gone Bad

I have read many times on marketing forums where a business owner has had success with either their SEO or PPC campaign then all of a sudden they lost the rankings or the price per click has shot up drastically.  They scramble to ask around for an easy solution to their problem, however in some cases their is no solution but to wait and see what the search engines do.  For the past year you may have relied on a few great ranking keyphrases for your traffic, then the search engine does a dance and you have vanished from the front page.  Yes the term dance (Google dance) is used in the marketing industry and that is when a change has been made to the ranking algorithm and rankings dance around for a few days to even weeks.

Another example that I have seen is a business owner’s PPC cost continues to go up and never seems to really straighten out for an extended period of time or they are the victim of click fraud.  Instead of being able to pause the campaign to see what changes can be made to help lower the cost, they continue to poor money to keep the campaign going because they have no other marketing streams.  Many people just continue on this one way path not realizing what else they can do to market the services or products they offer.

Build Forks In The Road

We tell all of our clients with a new website that are interested in search engine optimization services to consider a pay per click campaign (PPC) to help bring instant traffic to the site.  This is one way of creating a second marketing stream for your website, adding other PPC companies (Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, Etc.) will just create more streams.  Build these forks in the road for your internet marketing strategy so if one is not performing as well, simply go down another road you have already laid out and your business will not be brought to a screeching halt.

How Many Streams Can I Have?

The real answer to this is simple, what is your marketing budget?  If Google Adwords is charging $5 per click for some of your keywords, take a look at Bing, Yahoo or Facebook and see if the cheaper traffic will convert for you. Instead of putting what little budget you have into an Adwords campaign, you can create three streams for the same price to test with.  You could also look into different affiliate networks and run campaigns to produce leads or even sales to your website.  The amount of streams you can have can be high, but it really boils down to how much money can you afford to spend on advertising your website.

Think of it like a numbers game, the more streams you have, the better your chances for increased business and profit.  To manage this you would need to be testing the results for each campaign and make adjustments as needed to either help raise the conversion rate or lower the cost.  Affiliate networks are pretty set with a price unless you order more, then the price will go down.  Then again, if you sell products on your website, you could always setup your own affiliate structure and pay other people directly for everything that is sold by them.

Almost every business owner or potential entrepreneur has been guilty of sitting on a business idea and never doing anything with it.  In today’s economy people are taking more chances then they were in the past.  They feel they have nothing else to lose, so why not take the leap and see if the business idea works out.  As with life, not everything will work out as you had hoped and sometimes your plans make a sharp turn in another direction.  That is when you adapt and continue forward with your business idea and eventual goal you had set for yourself.  Sitting on a business idea and not doing anything is worse then failing, at least you attempted to do something and are not telling yourself “I should have tried that idea I had”.  Do not live your life in doubt and realize fear is not going anywhere, fear is a part of many decisions people make with business as for some it is charting into unknown waters.

The Door Is Open

Your business idea is sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for you to enter, what is your next step going to be?  Do like some and turn around never to see the light of day with that idea, or climb those stairs and see where that idea will take you?  The door is open and now is a better time then ever to act on that business idea.

Your Idea Could Be A Simple Reinvention

You are already in business and are looking to reinvent not only yourself, but your business as well.  After some hard thinking, planning and research, do the gains outweigh the losses?  If you see more benefits with your new business idea, why are you continuing to sit on it?  That idea could be the next big thing you, your company and family were looking for.  A new product launch, new services to offer, expanding, down sizing, launching a new website or rebranding your current material.  As a business owner you already understand the risk vs. reward or else you would not have gone into business in the first place.  Do not let fear be the one thing stopping you from reinventing your business.

Fear Of A New Business

Yes the economy is horrible right now, but did you know that many new successful start up businesses were started in the past two years?  People realize that the job market is not that hot, so finding a good job is far few and between they create one for themselves.  Do you have a passion for your business idea?  Take that passion, let it out of the box and get that business idea going.  Failure may happen, but then again so can success and the realization you should have done this years ago. If you are afraid to fail then finding success with almost any business will be a difficult task.

Overcoming Fear + Passion = Success

Once you overcome your fears of implementing your business idea and show true passion for what you want to do, your chances for success will be much greater.  Now this of course depends on the business idea you have, nothing is guaranteed to work but how would you know unless you try?  What is holding you back, money, fear of failure, time, not sure where to start?  This company was a reinvention and a realization that something new, bolder and stronger needed to be done.  The fears were put aside, the unknown road is being traveled on and we will see where this business idea takes us.  I hope to see you on the next road over venturing down your own path.

After a friendly discussion with @socialvation and @lisadmyers (who agreed with me) on twitter today, I made a few points in 140 characters or less in regards to why your business still needs a website in today’s social world. Jon made a point as to why have a website when you can simply market your articles in the social world.  My simple response was:

@socialvation @lisadmyers website = self branding, full control, ability to gain back links…why advertise a store front yet not own one?

Marketing yourself and business with only social media and not a website is like running a marathon with a weight around your ankles.  Yes you can get some business that way, but you will not be able to utilize the full power of the internet without a website.  Not having a website is like advertising your sales and specials, but not having a storefront for customers to walk into.  Lisa Barone just wrote about the same thing two days ago at Outspoken Media entitled 11 Reasons Your SMB Still Needs A Web Site.  No Lisa I am not stealing your idea, so please do not torture me to death.

Selling Tool

Your website is a great selling tool for both you and your business, so what benefit will you gain by not having one?  You use twitter, facebook and other social media avenues to advertise on, yet you really cannot send a viewer anywhere to convert them.  That conversion can be something as simple as collecting an email address to contact them in the future regarding specials or selling of a product down to your site actually selling products via an online store.  Let’s look at it this way shall we:

John Doe posts on twitter and facebook – Receive 20% off your order by replying today!

Now John Doe could be selling his services or products, either way if you reply to his tweet or facebook you get 20% whatever it is.  So you replay back

@JohnDoe John I would love to get 20% off, how do I get it?  Do you have a website?

John’s response could be something like this

@JaneDoe Sorry Jane, no website.  What is your email address, I can take your payment information that way!

So now Jane Doe is left with no real call to action to take.  All the article marketing you did to promote yourself and using social media to get the word out has left you slowly sinking without a life jacket and the fail whale is coming for you.

Full Branding Potential

With a business website you leverage not only yourself, but your business brand as a whole to new heights.  You are giving people somewhere to go to see what you have to offer, read about your company, get other contact information and see  you are truly legit.  Your brand should be part of your business marketing strategy, build your brand recognition and it can spread like a fire.  This holds true though to both positive and negative brand awareness, so online reputation management is key.

Articles Will Take You Where Again?

So your article marketing campaign has been in full swing, but where are you directing the readers and pointing your back links to…your twitter account?  I sure hope not, with a website you can be directing both to your domain name to help build authority and increase your chances to rank for keyword phrases.  Like in the above example, is Jane really going to place an order via email?  I highly doubt it, and like I said before you are using your website as a selling tool for the viewers.

Twitter/Facebook Goes By By

Highly unlikely anytime soon, but look at MySpace now.  At one time MySpace was one of the biggest players in the social media world, now facebook and twitter have blown past them without even looking.  Their is always someone or some company looking to build the next latest and greatest social media platform, facebook did and look at where they stand now.  However, what would you do from a business standpoint if people stopped using facebook and twitter?  All your marketing efforts will have to be switched over to something else and over the years you were not marketing your website so your starting from square one.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it pays off more to invest in a website for your business then it does to try and cut corners.  I do not care if you are a plumber, lawn company, clothing store, small restaurant, everyone is starting to go online to search.  How many of you still use a phone book?  I am sure their are some, but I do not even have one in my house.  With more and more people using cell phones, laptops, iPad’s they are searching from those devices.  Have your website be found and your sales will increase.  How many times have you searched for “city name air company” or “city name mechanic” and you saw a twitter account as the first result?  Your website could be in that spot, but wait, y0u do not have one so your out of luck.

You have visitors walk into a clothing store, look around for anywhere from 5-60 seconds then turn around and walk out.  Imagine if a majority of walk in traffic were to do that and the store owner does nothing to persuade these people.  Exactly, he would probably would not be in business for very long.  Instead the store owner sets up discount racks on each side of the aisles as soon as the visitor walks in, hangs signs from the ceiling of buy one get the 2nd for half price etc. and on each rack he puts the sizes of the cloths on a large sign to read from almost anywhere in the store.  That store owner has just increased his chances of not only keeping that visitor in the store longer, but possibly converting it into a sale.

What Exactly is a Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate for your website is nothing more a visitor leaving your site from the same page they entered on.  They do not click on any other links within your site, they just turn around and leave.  Higher bounce rates tend to lead to lower conversions because people are not doing anything once they visit your site, they simply turn around and leave.

How Can I Lower My Bounce Rate?

1. Call To Action – For a site selling something or wanting to convert from a free giveaway, this is a must have.  Your call to action instructs the viewer on what to do next, either “click here to purchase” or “click here for more information”, whatever.  Make sure your call to action is either at the top of the site or above the fold (above where the visitor will not have to scroll down to see it).  Testing out different colors of that image will help improve your conversion rate as well, but that is another story.
2. Overall Design Look – This is where having a clean, sleek and professional look will help you win over a visitor.  They say never judge a book by it’s cover, but with the internet people tend to judge a website based on the look and that can determine if they are staying or leaving.  Try to avoid using bright colors throughout your design layout, do not use to much animation as it can make the site look “busy” and deter your visitor.
3. Structured Content – Structure your content in a way that will not be confusing to the visitor.  Make it easy to scan by using paragraphs with headings, lists if you need to (like this post), images to show visualization to the viewer and avoid what I like to call a “wall of text”.  If you have sidebar’s, do not have the information cluttered and bunched together.  A cluttered page is like a co-workers desk, you would dread sitting down at that desk and attempt to get any work done.
4. Easy Navigation – Make your navigation menu easy not only for the visitor to see, but use as well.  Have them get to a page within one or two clicks.  Do not send them on a scavenger hunt looking for the information they are after.  Do not make your navigation menu to small or placed at the bottom of the site.  If you have sub categories for certain pages, a CSS drop down menu is the best route to take.  After all, you do want that visitor to visit other pages of your site, so make it as easy as possible for them.
5. Headlines That Stand Out – Write your headline so it stands out to the viewer, making the front size larger then the rest of the content and either use a different color or bold it out.  Now that you have a headline that looks different then the rest of your site, write one that will make the viewer want to read what is below it.  Does that headline reach through their monitor and make them want to read what you said, I sure hope so or they will be leaving.
6. Well Written Content – Now you know how important the structure of your content is, now you need to make the content really worth reading.  Does it offer good information, is it helpful and relevant to the page title you gave it, did you just copy it from an article you found?  If the content is long, make sure you put the important information higher up.
7. Avoid Auto Playing – This one you will want to test with depending on the type of site you are running before deciding to just axe the auto play feature.  Some visitors hate audio or video that automatically starts up as soon as they come to your website.  If you have this in place, you might want to stop it for a little while and see how the results are.  Make sure to implement the other tips within this post though as well.
8. Avoid Pop Ups/Slide Overs – These can be big turn offs for your visitors and potential customers, why piss them off as soon as they get to your site?  You can have a call to action be on the page or within the content, but not as soon as they hit the site.
9. Site Loading Times – How fast does your website load for the visitor?  If it is to long, chances are they are leaving and going elsewhere to find what they are looking for.  Avoid using a lot of javascript, heavy flash animation or to many plugins for your wordpress blog as these all cause slower loading times.  Clean up your site code and reduce your image size where possible.  Anything you can cut back on to speed up your sites loading time is nothing but a plus.
10. Test Test and Test Again – Either for a landing page or a full blown website, you need to be testing and tweaking to see what works best in lower your bounce rate.  If you do not have the time to test, find someone who can do it for you, it will pay off in the long run.  Never assume one time changes are the best, make changes and test again to find out what is ideal for your website.

Great Design And Poor Coding

A common problem many businesses face today is the fact their website either was designed heavily with no internet marketing in mind or the website looks so awful because it was designed only to try and appeal to a search engine.  These are both major problems as fixing either to meet in the middle may end up costing you more money in the long run.  If you are looking to start an internet marketing campaign (we will use SEO search engine optimization in this example) and you have a great looking design, yet it was coded poorly, you will end up spending more money fixing the on page problem before getting to the off page marketing techniques.  Trying to rank your site for specific search terms before fixing the on page problems is like trying to run the 100 meter dash with a weight around your ankle.  You may make it to the finish line, but you will spend more time, effort and money getting there.

Great Coding And Poor Design

The same holds true for a website that was designed strictly to please a search engine.  To get that website to actually convert, you will need a design that is appealing to the viewer.  That look should be clean, professional and easy to navigate.  They say never judge a book by it’s cover, but sadly in the internet world people judge your business on how your website looks.  You can be the best accountant in town, but if the look of your website is horrible then many people will move on to the next business it finds in the results.  So now you will have to spend more money to have the site layout redesigned  to maximize the efforts of your search engine optimization campaign.

Conclusion

This is why many internet marketing companies will want to redesign your website, so it can have maximum effect on the outcome of your campaign.  Some marketing companies will not even touch your website until the design has been redone to better standards.  This is why website design and internet marketing should go hand in hand.  Find an individual or company that excel in both to get the best possible outcome for your website.  You may spend a few hundred dollars more in the beginning, but in the end you actually are saving yourself a lot more by having it done the right way the first time.

As a real estate professional you know that potential buyers judge a home based on how it looks from the outside.  The same thing applies with your website’s look and functionality.  You only get one chance to make a that great first impression with your viewers and in most cases it is decided within the first 15 seconds of them arriving to your website.  The look of your website speaks for both you and your real estate company, so do not take it lightly.  Ask yourself

1. Do I still convert as much traffic into leads as I did in the past?
2. How long are people staying on my site before leaving?
3. What are they looking at on my website?
4. Is my website still the same as the day it was developed?
5. Where does my site rank within the search engines?
6. Does your local competitors web site look and navigate better then yours?
7. Do you have the funds to have your website revamped?

Do I still convert as much traffic into leads as I did in the past?

This is where analyzing your website data becomes crucial and many real estate professionals either do not know or just skip this all together.  Look at the traffic data from the past (go back a year or more) and look to see the amount of traffic you were receiving compared to the amount of leads that were made.  If the traffic has stayed the same and the leads have dropped, a change will be in order.  If the traffic has dropped a lot, then a change in your marketing strategy is needed.  If you never had the traffic or the leads then once again, a change in our marketing strategy will be needed.  Your real estate website speaks not only about what you sell, but about you as a person and why viewers can trust you when either finding them a new home or selling their current home.  Traffic is nice, but if it is not converting for you then that traffic is not doing you much good.

How long are people staying on my site before leaving?

Again you will want to analyze your website traffic data and see how long people are staying on your website.  Are they hitting the front page and leaving soon after?  Are they hitting an internal page and not looking at anything else?  This is a problem for many real estate professionals and they think getting more traffic will solve that problem.  It will not solve anything, it will just lead to a bigger problem with why your marketing budget is costing you more then it should.  Do you have some type of call to action on the home page that stands out telling people what to do?  Can they easily find potential things they may be looking for?  Ex. search properties, find out more about you and your services, contact information, etc.  Keeping the visitor is important because you want them to continue looking through your website.  This is where properly laid out content, easy site navigation and a clean layout are important.  If your website has the look of 2005, cluttered with links to basically crap nobody clicks on, site loaded with banners or has a navigation menu that is a mile long it could be to much for the viewer and they will leave. People want information and they want it now, so give it to them and remove all he fluff and cluttered crap.

What are they looking at on my website?

Find out what pages your visitors are looking at and see what tweaks you can make on those pages.  Are they hitting the home page and then leaving?  Are they going to the search page but not looking at any properties?  Are they doing a search and only looking at one property then leaving your website?  These are all key factors in determining what changes you need to make within your website and why analyzing your traffic data is important.  Some search features you may think are nice are actually hurting your conversion ratio, like making the viewer fill out a short form before being allowed to search your site.  See how many people are hitting that form then leaving your website, in most areas people skip that and move on as they do not want to give out any personal information.  Google maps are nice, but does it make searching your site a pain in the ass?  Get rid of them and make it easier for the viewer to find what they are looking for.

Is my website still the same as the day it was developed?

This is a problem for many real estate professionals and they think it does not matter, just bring more traffic, more traffic and more traffic.  If your website is older and has the same boring layout or used a built in template from your hosting company, no longer looks professional or has the same out dated information then in most cases it is time to make some serious changes.  They say never judge a book by it’s cover, but on the internet how your site looks is a huge factor if people will stay or continue to look around.  The same applies when trying to sell a home, you may tell the owners “you might want to consider updating the kitchen appliances to help sell the house”.  Keep that in mind when looking at your own website, the same thing may hold true to you.

Where does my site rank within the search engines?

This is one you have to be careful with as it can either boost your conversions or kill your ranking.  If your website is not ranking for any of your targeted keywords then change making changes (if done properly) can do nothing but benefit your website.  However, if your website is ranking well for certain keywords but not converting then you need to be careful as to what you change on the site.  Making drastic content changes may lower your ranking within the search engines, so you may want to consult with someone first.  The same thing applies to your website layout, going for a cleaner, less cluttered CSS based layout can be much better then the heavily coded table based layouts from years past.  Once again, be careful with what you update if your website is ranking well.

Does your local competitors web site look and navigate better then yours?

Look at other real estate website within your local area and compare it to your own.  Does it look more professional?  Is it up to date?  Is the layout much cleaner and information easy to find?  Remember people will judge a website simply on how it looks, you may have better services or more experience but if compared to a better looking website people will go with them instead based off of the look.  You want to out rank your local competition, so revamping your website can not only help you do that, but help you convert that traffic into leads for yourself.

Do you have the funds to have your website revamped?

I know times are tough for people in the real estate industry, but be warned hiring just anyone to revamp your website can make or break it’s success.  Trying to do these things yourself to save some money would not be wise either, if it were then you would not be reading this article.  Do not just hire anyone to revamp your website based only on price, I know several web design companies that do sites for cheap, but they are harder to rank for within the search engines based off of how they are designed.  You want someone or a company with not only design skills, but marketing skills as well.  Building a website that looks good is easy, building a real estate website that looks good and is built with future marketing (search engines included) plans is KEY.

You get what you pay for and that is why going the cheaper route can end up costing you more money later down the road.  If you do not have the funds to have your website done properly, you may want to just wait.  You want it done right the first time so you can have a website that not only looks good, but from a marketing standpoint acts and converts as good as it looks.

Conclusion

Keep these things in mind and realize why you should start analyzing your website traffic data.  If you have no way of doing that, Google Analytics is free and can be installed into any existing website.  Remember your website is the face of you and your company, you dress nice when meeting clients, so dress your site the same way to help boost the potential it may have on your business and marketing strategies.

For some of you reading the title to this post you may be scratching your head wondering what this is all about.  Many people believe SEO (search engine optimization) is all about what they do on their website and do not realize it also deals with what they do off of their website that can make a difference as well.  Gone are the days of “optimizing” your meta keyword tags with small variations of the same search phrase you want to rank for, stuffing your content, hiding text to make the search engines think that page is relevant and submitting your pages to the search engines.  All of the things I just listed above are so far from the island of truth you couldn’t fly there.

Sadly their are still individuals and companies out there looking to make a quick buck by practically scamming unsuspecting people with bogus information.  Ask them what they will do for both on site and off site optimization and they will have no real answer.  So today I will be going over what the differences are and why BOTH play an important roll in ranking your website higher within the search engines.

On Site SEO

On site SEO is everything within the coding of your actual website.  You can add, edit or remove content and code at an given time.  You have complete control over this factor and this is only one piece to the puzzle of achieving higher rankings.  Factors for on site SEO include:

• Page title
• Meta Tags (description tag is really the important one)
• Actual site content (what your pages say within them)
• Internal link structure
• Semantics
• Headings (H1, ect.) within your content
• Outbound links (who you are linking to)

Off Site SEO

Off site SEO is everything you do or try to do for your website that is not actually on your website.  Yes I know, sounds strange but off site SEO is about building back links to your website from other websites within your niche.  A niche is nothing more then a category for your website.  In this case let’s take your real estate website.  It would be better for you to be receiving back links from other real estate related websites then it would be getting links from a clothing website.   Google’s algorithm (how they rank websites) gets smarter as time goes on and now pass more weight (relevance) to that link from John Doe’s real estate website then that of Jane’s clothing website. I will go into further details regarding types of backlinks another time.

Press releases, article submissions, guest blog posts, social bookmarking are also forms of off site SEO and really focus around getting more links to your website.  With these you have control, for the most part to make sure your efforts are optimized for your website.  When you write a press release, article or be a guest author on someone’s blog you can control the links written within.  Instead of saying “click here to visit our site” you would say visit our “Dallas Texas Real Estate” website or John Doe is a licensed “Dallas Texas Real Estate Agent” and have keywords that you are trying to rank for as the anchor link pointing to your website.  Many people do not realize this and think a link is a link, please get me more.  It is not about quantity, but the quality of the link that really matters.

What Should I Focus More On Then

The real answer is BOTH on site and off site SEO, as they go hand in hand in achieving a better ranking for your website.  I suggest you first straighten up the on site SEO within your website since you have control over that and can make the changes rather quickly depending on the size of your site.  Once you have your on site SEO problem fixed, then start focusing on your off site SEO.  Keep in mind though, any new content you add to your current website you will want to make sure is optimized properly so you will not have to go back and redo any of the work.