20 resources for landing pages
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- Discussion on SEOMoz on an article written by Rand Fishkin
- How to use Google website optimiser
- 10-step guide to optimising your landing page by Copyblogger - excellent how-to guide, plus worthy comments
- More landing page tips from Digital World
Are you doing your best to convert your traffic?
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Getting traffic is not the be-all and end-all of the SEO game: you’ve also got to do something useful with that traffic. If your conversion rates are low, check out this post on 50 Ways Your Web Site Is Discouraging Conversions — and How to Fix It
Video Search getting clever
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Looking Inside Video
Video search engines are starting to look inside the video itself. Here are some of the things that were mentioned during the SES San Jose session:
1. Detecting flesh tones to find adult content
2. Checking for audio match with the sound track
3. Logo detection
4. Face detection
5. Object detection
6. EveryZing generates a transcript from the audio
7. On screen text recognition
It will be fascinating to see how this marketplace unfolds. As broadband usage expands, and as more and more people become aware of the quality and quantity of videos which are available, this market will continue to grow. As video search engines get better and better at looking inside videos, the quality of their results will improve. Clever stuff!
In internet marketing, everything from the hosting service to the marketing moves matter. Plans like pay per click do help, but cannot make up for a disastrous web design.
Ask.com’s new search
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Ever asked yourself what would search be like without Google? Well, take a look at the new 3-column search at www.ask.com (doesn’t appear to be live as yet on regional versions, just www).
Once you’ve submitted your search query, you get a very interesting perspective on what to do next.
- On the left, you have your search box to refine your query, complete with a variety of options for narrowing or expanding a search, and related searches.
- In the middle, your search results, complete with the “Binocular” view to get a quick snapshot of the site before actually clicking on the result.
- Best of all, on the right, we have multiple modules, who’s content varies depending on the query. It might be videos, or weather, or images - whatever comes up, it’s an interesting way of exploring your original query.
Much more info on Ask’s new strategy.
Go, take a little traffic away from the Googlopoly and Ask instead. (Though personally, I preferred the butler!)
Link-baiting
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SEOMoz have posted a great video clip explaining link-baiting, both the logic and the process. Link-baiting : it’s about adding useful content to your site, and if others judge it useful, you get the link-lurve!
StumbleUpon
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I’ve finally got around to checking out StumbleUpon, in a few spare moments before catching a plane back to Barcelona. It’s an interesting concept, and a novel way to browse the web. Using this social networking site, or “stumbling”, takes you from person to person - either randomnly, or according to your interests. You can see what sites are popular with users, or visit profiles to find like-minded friends or contacts. Only downside is that you need to download a plug-in/add-on in order to vote for the sites you like, but it’s a painless sign up process.
How useful it will be as a means to generate quality traffic to your site remains to be seen, but some people have found it useful to get user feedback!
Why do I do consulting, when I have my own projects?
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Like many Web Marketing consultants, I divide my time between my own projects and consulting. Keeping the right balance is essential, and sometimes I ask myself the above question. There are several honest answers, in no particular order:
- I’m a nice guy, and I like helping people out. If I can help you succeed, I feel good - and even better if you pay me!
- Consulting cash today is sometimes better than potential cash returns tomorrow.
- I go insane staying at home constantly - I like to have the occasional client to get me out of the house and have new topics to talk about!
- Looking at a new business makes me think of new things - and new things often leads to new projects which lead to new cash
- Other people’s projects have other challenges, learning from them improves my own capabilities.
I learnt the need to diversify the hard way - I relied to heavily a passive revenue stream (well, more of a river) that suddenly dried up. Diversification means more work (surely the anti-thesis of old-school SEO?!?), but the rewards are more stable.
Barcelona Internet Marketing
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Yes, I’ve finally got round to setting up something remotely resembling a “proper” site. Ok, it needs work, but it’s better than a holding page! Now, the next step is of course to make sure that we rank for “Barcelona Internet Marketing“, nothing like being number 1 for your own name…game on!
Is SEO dead?
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I don’t believe that SEO is dead, but SEO in a vaccum will be dead at some point in the not too distant future. Smart SEOs have already begun moving towards a more holistic web marketing approach. One facet of this is the whole notion of Social Media Optimization, but there are other aspects including old fashioned PR and media relations.
This will be increasingly viewed as part of a bigger picture, that includes developing a matching content strategy. Your web marketing strategy will match up with a content plan with the needs of your prospective customers and your web promotional plan by necessity. It will be the best way to build your web business for the future. And I bet more and more SEOs will be calling themselves Web Marketers in the near future.
A word from Matt Cutts
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There’s a fork in the road, and people can think hard about whether they’re optimizing for users or whether they’re optimizing primarily for search engines. And the sort of people who have been doing “new” SEO, or whatever you want to call it — that’s social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz — those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract backlinks, attract lots of discussion. Those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward.
From an interview with Gord Hotchkiss published at Search Engine Land.