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Landing page design strategies are all about achieving your objective, either to generate a lead or create a sale.  In this podcast, we’re talking mostly about lead generation.

This podcast is a summary of a blog post on landing page design strategies.

Landing page design strategies apply for both SEO and PPC strategies.

When someone finds you in a search engine, the page they land on is the “landing page.”

Landing pages should be clear, uncluttered, to the point with a strong headline and some easy to understand call to action.

Landing page design significantly impacts results.  Search engine rankings alone don’t produce results. 

The landing page should have a strong headline with a call to action.

The call to action should be compelling.  Offer them something.

People on B2B landing pages are not there to make a decision.  They are doing research.  Help them out in their evaluation.  Give them “bite size chunks” of information.

Call to action ideas may include an invitation to sign up for a webinar, white paper or something FREE. If offering a webinar, make it as strong as possible with interesting topics and speakers. Guest speakers with name recognition can be a good draw and works well.

Getting people to fill out a form on a landing page can be challenging.  It often makes sense to offer the form on the click through from the landing page, in other words a second level landing page.  Often, people will not fill out a form on the initial landing page.   The call to action which takes people to the next page is often the most effective way to capture the lead in a form fill.

Pay careful attention to designing landing pages which will achieve your goals pertaining to your target audience, whether you drive the traffic to the landing page from pay per click advertising or SEO. 

Tags: landing page design, pay per click advertising, PPC, SEO

While it’s recognized that only about 12% of the Fortune 500 have a corporate blog, those that do take it seriously.  Companies such as Intel, Google, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Dell and Kodak have devoted people resources to their corporate blogging strategies.

The companies in this list are Fortune ranking companies.  But, companies like Junta42 and Hubspot are not Fortune ranked companies (in fact considerably smaller) and they devote equally impressive resources to corporate blogging.

I’ll single out two blogging trailblazers from each category above.  Matt Cutts is the corporate blogging face of Google.  And, Mike Volpe is the corporate blogging face of Hubspot. 

Matt Cuts is often seen at Internet conferences in a t-shirt and jeans talking about whatever topic is hot at the conference de-jour.  Matt is also very active in his blog which appears to be sponsored by Google, or at least sanctioned by Google.  Matt is the official “webmaster” guy who represents everything Google.  In my opinion Google has very effectively humanized their corporate identity through Matt.  He is a regular guy.  He is not an executive.  He doesn’t speak over any one’s head.  In fact, he is a like-able guy who speaks in plain English.  Even if you don’t like Google’s position on topics as represented by Matt, it’s hard to have a hostile view of Matt, as the face of Google.  He is truly a regular guy.

Hubpot’s blog is branded under their name.  In full disclosure, I am a fan of the Hubspot Internet Marketing platform.  One of many things Hubspot does well is devote time and energy to their blog.  The main guy who is the corporate blogging face for Hubspot is Mike Volpe.  Mike’s title is V.P. Marketing, a pretty mundane title for a cutting edge Internet company.  I’ll forgive him for this because Mike does an excellent job of blogging on a myriad of Internet Marketing topics (he has help from some of his colleagues too).  In essence, Mike is educating and evangelizing the benefits of corporate blogging for Internet Marketing benefits.  Hubspot is a young company.  Their rapid brand growth is evidence of how effective corporate blogging can be. 

Corporate blogging can’t be effective without first deciding that it is important to your business.  Those businesses who think the benefits can’t be measured haven’t studied it enough.  These are the same companies who will eventually be blind-sided by their competitor’s corporate blgging strategy. 

The biggest risk to a corporate blogging strategy is not recognizing that it should be part of a bigger picture social media strategy.  You wouldn’t launch an advertising campaign without first setting the corporate marketing strategy.  The advertising should support the corporate marketing strategy.

Social media is fast becoming a strategic element in corporate marketing.  In some businesses people’s jobs are being defined under the social media umbrella, and in some cases whole departments.  We’re starting to see titles such as “Chief Blogger,” and “V.P. Communities and Conversations.” 

The commitment these companies are showing is to a strategy of conversations with people they want to converse with. 

Being in the conversations is everything in a social media strategy.

The online publication B2B Online covered this topic recently.

I am sometimes asked about my title: “chief find officer.”  Hmmm…Maybe it’s time for a title change…

Tags: corporate blogging, Hubspot, internet marketing, Matt Cutts, social media

 

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This podcast is complementary to a post I wrote on May 13th about long tail keywords.

In this podcast I provide a brief explanation of long tail keywords from Chris Anderson’s book, appropriately named The Long Tail.  I highly recommend the book to anyone in marketing.

I have the impression that some marketers have yet to learn the concept of long tail marketing.  In SEO, effective long tail strategies require that we research and discover keywords that have some reasonable search volume and are relevant. 

Long tail keyword strategies allow you to be found for less competitive keywords that you can often rank on page one.  Compare that to broad and very competitive keywords where you may never rank in the first three pages. 

As Chris Anderson says in the subtitle of his book: The long tail is about “selling less of more.”

I would like to hear from you on this subject.  Please comment.

Tags: Long tail keyword strategies, long tail keywords, long tail strategies, SEO, the long tail

The deeper we (Find and Convert) dive into social media marketing, the more convinced we are it is fast becoming mainstream.  And, not participating is more dangerous than ever.

Social media isn’t just for early adopters anymore.  Consider that most searches you do in Google return traditional results PLUS a list of blogs found by Google.  What does this tell you?  It means that the blogosphere has become a viable source of answers and resources for us when we search.

The other big thing this tells us (as marketers) is that traditional SEO isn’t enough any more.  Our content must span various platforms to include blogs, social networking sites and content publishing sites.

Have you also noticed how some searches display video results too? 

What if your competitors are being found by prospective clients searching in Google but being directed to other social media destinations?  This is one reason why Google purchased YouTube (for video content) and Jaiku (for micro blogging content).  Admittedly, Jaiku hasn’t materialized yet, but it will.

I’ve noticed that the third biggest source of referral traffic to Find and Convert is from the blogosphere.  I’ve also noticed a growing trend of traffic coming to our site from Twitter, a mico blogging service. 

The other big factor that we can’t overlook is the word of mouth factor that occurs in social media destinations.  The power of word of mouth will never be diminished.  When people develop trusting relationships online, products get recommended, brands get strengthened and business happens.  The biggest risk is being absent from these conversations.  That’s where opportunity costs happen.

Marketing Sherpa has conducted much research on social media.  One of the studies they did in 2007 showed that B2B buyers seek out information on vendors in social media destination sites before making a purchase decision. 

This really levels the playing field.  It’s akin to the consumer who goes to buy a car armed with pricing details from the Internet.  The B2B buyer is now armed with information about the vendors they evaluate from social media sites.

This reminds me of the commercial with the slogan: “What’s in your wallet?  When it comes to social media marketing the question is: “Are you in the conversations?”

Tags: Marketing Sherpa, SEO, social media marketing, Twitter

How do you rank high organically for a competitive keyword?  Before we look at this, first consider if the competitive keyword you want to rank for is the right one.  Sure, there are obvious keywords in each business.  But, consider less competitive long tail keywords too for “winning strategies.”

If you want to make the investment of time and resources to rank well for a very competitive keyword, here are some factors to consider.

First, study the ranking results on the first page of organic search results for your desirable keyword.  If more than half of them are not relevant to your target audience, I take you back to the point above and consider other keywords. 

For purposes of this blog post, let’s assume all the search rankings on page one are relevant to your target audience and you’re not ranking on the first page.  Where are you ranking for this keyword?  If you are currently ranking on page 25 for this keyword, is this keyword really the best use of your time and resources.  If you are willing to make the investment and have the patience, read on.

So, you’ve decided you are willing to make the investment of time and resources to compete for this keyword.  And, you are willing to be patient.

First, study the websites ranking on the first page for your keyword.  Study their content, their meta data, their source code, their URL structure, their domain age and their link count. What is their PageRank and what is your PageRank?  As Sun Tsu wrote in the Art of War, the way to defeat your enemy is to know their strategy and defeat their strategy. 

When you study the content and links from the competitors on page one you will gain insight and ideas into how they got there and what you need to do to compete effectively for your desired keyword.

In many cases, you may face a real uphill battle (refer back to the long tail strategy).  But, if you are able to get even to position #10 on the first page, that can be a good accomplishment.  But, you may need to be realistic.  If some of the rankings on page one have a combination of content, links, domain age and website architecture that you simply can not compete, then either be content with a lower ranking, or defer back to the long tail keyword (winning SEO) strategy.

Studying your competitor’s (ranking on page one) content will give you insight and ideas for what you need to do.  Because, if you are expecting this blog post to reveal some secret formula, you will be disappointed.  You will need to develop a lot of really good content and attract links.  And, there are many effective ways to do this. 

You can write content about how your (keyword centric) product is used, who uses it, why they use it and all the great things they accomplish by using your product.  I’m sure there are many people who also agree with all these great factoids, so they should contribute to your content.  For example, are there specific industries who benefit from your products?  Write about all of them, and write a lot.   

Writing all this content can take on several forms.  In addition to adding web pages with this content, you should consider press releases, articles which can be syndicated and blog posts.  If you don’t have a corporeate blog, start one.  If you do, add more content and look for relevant blogs where you can conttibute about these topics. 

You should promote some of this content in selected social media destination sites for visibility and natural link building.  After all you will need to build links for your content to compete for your super competitive, desirable keyword. 

If all of this sounds like time consuming, hard work, it is.  Did I forget to mention that?  Sorry….

Tags: long tail keywords, organic search engine rankings, SEO strategy

In a recent post on landing page design, I discussed the importance of beginning with the end in mind for an effective design of landing pages for your SEO or PPC campaigns.

In this post, let’s review the importance of testing landing pages for maximum results. In short, we’re talking about landing page optimization. In the course of implementing search marketing campaigns for Find and Convert clients we regularly implement best practices. Then, we test them.

In landing page testing, there are several variables you can test. The simplest test is the conventional A/B split test. In A/B split testing, we test two landing pages which are markedly different. The objective is to reduce the possibility of subtle changes making the difference in test results. If landing page A performs better than B, it should be for obvious differences between the two, e.g., a different layout or different graphics.

As discussed previously, understanding your audience is critical to successful landing page testing and optimization.

Document your current state of results as a baseline before you start testing. Keep good records as your testing progresses.

Test landing pages which have the potential to drive significant results to your business. But, it’s also a good idea to run your first test on a not-so-critical landing page just to learn something about the testing process.

Decide how many variables or elements of a page you are going to test. For example, you can test graphic images, their location, the navigation layout, a form or not, the location of the form, the buttons used on the page, colors, etc.

One very effective variable to test is the call-to-action on the landing page. As previously discussed, in some industries marketers ask for a conversion on the initial landing page with limited success. In those cases, try testing a link to another page of detail. The call-to-action to that other page is also worth testing. One call-to-action may prove more effective to the next level of detail, which may end up producing more conversions (your objective).

If you’re going to test multiple variables (known as multi-variate testing), you’ll probably need to use third party software to track the impact of each of the variables. Vendors such as Optimost and Omniture offer robust multi-variate testing tools. A cost free approach is Google’s Website Optimizer, if their feature set meets your testing needs.

As your testing experience advances, you can test the most profitable paths or funnel of pages which lead to your desired conversion. Varying the path you direct visitors may result in big changes in your conversion results.

Whether you are using third party software or not, consider these best practices in your testing:
Offer top left to lower right flow of information.
Keep the headline focused on the “main thing.”
Personalize the message as much as possible to your visitor.
Keep the landing page clean and focused. Remember the “less is more” principle.
Allow at least one month to measure test results.
Revise landing pages based on results and keep testing.
Test as many variables as possible.
Keep accurate tracking records.
Remember that what worked 6 months ago may not work as well today. Keep testing.

As with all aspects of search marketing, landing page testing and optimization requires planning, attention to detail and a fair amount of analytical scrutiny, not to mention time and patience to measure results. When it’s done effectively, landing page testing and optimization can provide good ROI (return on Internet).

Tags: A/B split testing, landing page design, landing page optimization, landing page testing, multi variate testing, Omniture, Optimost, PPC, search marketing, SEO