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Search Engines

Marketing the Old Fashioned Way: Earning It

by Robert Bruce on May 20, 2011

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The reign of image/display/brand advertising (particularly for small businesses) is fading fast.

You mute the ads during your favorite tv shows, or skip them entirely.

You block banners on websites, or even skip those sites altogether.

What’s a small business — or any size business — with tight budgets and tighter margins to do?

Can John Houseman save us?

There’s a relatively new way of attracting, engaging and converting customers online that’s deeply rooted in the independent, hard-working and profitable mom and pop stores of the past.

It takes work. But, it sure beats digging ditches. Or blowing revenue on an advertising ego-binge. And it can make you … highly profitable.

In this episode Sonia Simone and I discuss:

  • Is content marketing really worth the effort?
  • The 3 steps to earning loyal (and possibly rabid) customers
  • The real effects of content marketing on the bottom line
  • Why buying your customers is a difficult and dangerous game
  • The simple business plan that’s made Copyblogger (and others) cook

Hit the flash player below to listen now:

Other listening options:

Links from the Show:

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s resident raconteur and copywriter.


Scribe SEO software

SEO comes down to three basic things: 1. the language searchers use, 2. the way search engines view your content, and 3. the trust search engines have in your site.

Our Scribe SEO software makes these three basic steps easier and more efficient than ever:

  1. First, the Scribe keyword research tool tunes you into the right language before you write. Once your content is created, the Scribe keyword suggestion service shows you keyword phrases you might have missed.
  2. Second, Scribe analyzes your natural, reader-focused content, and tells you how to gently tweak it to spoon feed search engines based on 15 SEO best practices.
  3. Third, Scribe’s link and social tools help you build backlinks from other sites, crosslink the content within your own site, and identify influential social media users who will want to share your content.

Find out more about Scribe here.



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Copyblogger Weekly Wrap

by Johnny B. Truant on February 5, 2011

image of Copyblogger Weekly Wrap logo

So Copyblogger finally has a Facebook page.

I suspect that this has to do with psychology more than public relations. I mean, sure, Copyblogger has a lot of subscribers. On Twitter, it has a lot of followers and gets a lot of retweets. But does it have any friends? Does it have any fans? Well, it does now, and it’s about time….

Which leads me to conclude that Facebook today is kind of like a McDonald’s birthday party when you were a kid. All you have to do if you want friends is to sign up, and stay away from the clown. Now, if we could only get a PlayPlace around here. I have my fingers crossed that they’ll spring for the big slide, but Brian keeps arguing for a ball pit.

In any event, here’s what happened this week on Copyblogger:

Monday:

The “Common Sense” Mistake That Makes Your Writing Lifeless

Want your writing to be more effective and interesting? Ignore common sense. And yes, sure, you can read about some kinds of common sense to ignore in this post, but it’s best to be safe and ignore all of them like most unknown bloggers. I once heard about a guy who tried to remove a bunion with a shotgun. Now THAT’S senseless!

Read the full post here.

Tuesday:

How to Capture Your Reader’s Attention

Some proven ways to get attention: Yell “fire!” in a crowded theater. Streak at the SuperBowl. Fall into a neverending sequence of drug rehab and jewel thievery incidents beginning shortly after starring in a remake of The Parent Trap. However, I wouldn’t recommend any of those after having tried them all myself. And since you’re going to need to get attention if you’re going to be able to sell anything at all or move anyone to act, you’d really better read this post.

Read the full post here.

Wednesday:

The Straight Dope on Facebook, Twitter, and SEO

Finally… the long-awaited answer to whether my fifty Twitter spam bot accounts are increasing my ability to rank in search engines for the term “elephant examinations.” First Google says that social media doesn’t contribute to ranking, then they change their mind, and then they declare that all of the actual ranking is done by magical faerie savants. I guess we now finally have our answer. (Hint: faeries.)

Read the full post here.

Thursday:

Convert … or Die

I totally misunderstood the title of this episode of the IMfSP podcast. It’s actually about the need to convert readers and casual visitors into paying customers (with a detour into how a really popular way of doing business can sink you) but I thought it was literal. So, in a misguided panic, I sent my entire stack of 1980s action-adventure videotapes to the Ukraine, where they’re able to do VHS-to-Beta transfers using a process that somehow involves oxen and a yeti. The nice man I talked to on the one phone his village owns assured me that “American stereotypes seeing much better in glorious new Beta format,” but I remain skeptical.

Read the full post here.

Thursday Part 2:

Save $100 on Search Marketing Expo: Early Bird Discount Expires Saturday, 2/5

I think the headline says it all. Except for this sentence and the previous one.

Read the full post here.

Friday:

5 Steps to Captivating Readers with Your Secret Message

Did you know that you’re telling your readers something even though you may not be directly intending to do so? It’s true. You should read this post and figure out how to 1) maximize the positive impact of that message and 2) minimize the impact of the stupid things you’ve told them over the years. Example: Remember the time you ran out of paper towels and decided to use the cat to dust the top of the TV? Yeah, you told them about that, too.

Read the full post here.

This week’s cool links:

  • Use YouTube to Build Your Blog’s Audience: I’ve always heard that YouTube can be a great traffic source but wondered how exactly you were supposed to use it. Now I know.
  • In Social Media, Everyone Can Hear You Fart: When I first heard that Kenneth Cole made a politically incorrect tweet about the Egypt riots, I figured people were overreacting. But then I saw what KC had done wrong. It was just a stupid tweet. One lesson from this: if everyone can hear you fart, at least fart in a clever or funny way.
  • How Small Business Can Get BIG Online with Content Marketing: This is a good “101-style” post that delivers what the title says. If you’re tired of drill-down articles on specific content marketing topics and need to see the big picture, read this.
  • Do welcome popups work?: Sigh. I’ve very seriously considered a popup myself for one reason: People are distracted online, so I figure putting something right in front of them might be a good idea. I’m now convinced it works, and the question is whether I want to be (more) annoying.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant specializes in selling through stories and is the proud creator of The Badass Project, a site profiling amazing people who make your excuses look stupid.

StudioPress Designs take WordPress further


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An interesting essay on search neutrality

by Matt Cutts on January 25, 2011

(Just as a reminder: while I am a Google employee, the following post is my personal opinion.)

Recently I read a fascinating essay that I wanted to comment on. I found it via Ars Technica and it discusses “search neutrality” (PDF link, but I promise it’s worth it). It’s written by James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at New York Law School. The New York Times called Grimmelmann “one of the most vocal critics” of the proposed Google Books agreement, so I was curious to read what he had to say about search neutrality.

What I discovered was a clear, cogent essay that calmly dissects the idea of “search neutrality” that was proposed in a New York Times editorial. If you’re at all interested in search policies, how search engines should work, or what “search neutrality” means when people ask search engines for information, advice, and answers–I highly recommend it. Grimmelmann considers eight potential meanings for search neutrality throughout the article. As Grimmelmann says midway through the essay, “Search engines compete to give users relevant results; they exist at all only because they do. Telling a search engine to be more relevant is like telling a boxer to punch harder.” (emphasis mine)

On the notion of building a completely transparent search engine, Grimmelmann says

A fully public algorithm is one that the search engine’s competitors can copy wholesale. Worse, it is one that websites can use to create highly optimized search-engine spam. Writing in 2000, long before the full extent of search-engine spam was as clear as it is today, Introna and Nissenbaum thought that the “impact of these unethical practices would be severely dampened if both seekers and those wishing to be found were aware of the particular biases inherent in any given
search engine.” That underestimates the scale of the problem. Imagine instead your inbox without a spam filter. You would doubtless be “aware of the particular biases” of the people trying to sell you fancy watches and penis pills–but that will do you little good if your inbox contains a thousand pieces of spam for every email you want to read. That is what will happen to search results if search algorithms are fully public; the spammers will win.

And Grimmelmann independently hits on the reason that Google is willing to take manual action on webspam:

Search-engine-optimization is an endless game of loopholing. …. Prohibiting local manipulation altogether would keep the search engine from closing loopholes quickly and punishing the loopholers–giving them a substantial leg up in the SEO wars. Search results pages would fill up with spam, and users would be the real losers.

I don’t believe all search engine optimization (SEO) is spam. Plenty of SEOs do a great job making their clients’ websites more accessible, relevant, useful, and fast. Of course, there are some bad apples in the SEO industry too.

Grimmelmann concludes

The web is a place where site owners compete fiercely, sometimes viciously, for viewers and users turn to intermediaries to defend them from the sometimes-abusive tactics of information providers. Taking the search engine out of the equation leaves users vulnerable to precisely the sorts of manipulation search neutrality aims to protect them from.

Really though, you owe it to yourself to read the entire essay. The title is “Some Skepticism About Search Neutrality.”



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5 Landing Page Mistakes that Crush Conversion Rates

by Brian Clark on January 19, 2011

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A landing page is a place you send traffic when you really want some action. And no, this has nothing to do with Craig’s List personals.

It can be a sales page, an email opt-in page, a video landing page, or even a content landing page designed to rank well in search engines. As you might have guessed, there are a lot of ways to screw these up.

Here are five of the most common mistakes people make with their landing pages. More importantly, I’ll tell you how to avoid making them yourself.

1. Blowing the headline

Landing pages live or die by the quality of the headline. It’s your two-second chance to overcome the swift and brutal attention filters we’ve developed due to information overload and poorly-matched promises.

Often, a better headline alone will boost the effectiveness of your landing page, and even overcome some of the other mistakes below. Split-testing different headlines is relatively painless, and can bring you much higher conversions compared with multiple other tweaks.

2. Using your regular site design

Most of us who use content marketing as an attraction strategy use a content management system, such as WordPress. That means we’re using design themes for the visual presentation of our sites.

While your typical sidebar and header approach to a blog post is fine, when it comes down to traffic hitting a landing page with a singular focus on specific action, all of that extraneous stuff causes confusion, distraction, and reduced conversions. Lose the clutter and create the cleanest page possible when you want some action.

3. Asking for more than one thing

The idea that more choices make people happier has been proven to be a psychological fallacy time and again. This “paradox of choice” reveals that when given multiple options, the decision ends up being not to choose at all.

An effective landing page asks for one specific action, and that’s it. And don’t forget to actually clearly ask for that one specific thing, which is an even bigger conversion killer if you don’t.

4. Ignoring basic aesthetics

Why is it when some people decide to ask for some action, they lose their minds on the appearance of the page? Bad fonts, garish colors, cheap highlighting, and silly clip art do not make for better conversions in most cases. What they do is crush your credibility.

While using your standard blog theme is distracting and confusing in the landing page context, there’s no need to become the typographical equivalent of a carnival barker, either. Great landing pages use fonts, colors, and visuals that are tailored specifically to the audience and action you desire, thereby enhancing the experience and boosting conversions.

5. Being lazy

Did you know that web users spend 80% of their time above the fold? Does that mean people won’t scroll down the page? No, it just means you can’t take it for granted that they will (instead of leaving).

Don’t be lazy about grabbing and holding attention. Don’t assume everyone instantly “gets” the benefit of your offer the way you do. Don’t overestimate your credibility. In short, don’t drink your own Kool-Aid. Think about it from their perspective, and you’ll realize you might not be all that (until you unequivocally prove you are with compelling copy).

Want more landing page tips?

From here, I’m doing an exclusive series on effective landing pages, but only for subscribers to our Internet Marketing for Smart People newsletter. You’ll get more landing page articles, access to multimedia content not otherwise publicly available, and the inside track (and an exceptional deal) on an exciting new product that makes landing page mistakes a thing of the past for WordPress users.

Sign up here for free.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Copyblogger Media. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

StudioPress Designs take WordPress further


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Scribe 3.0: SEO Made Simple

by Brian Clark on September 30, 2010

image of Scribe logo

Some people think search engine optimization is a dark and mysterious art. But for online writers and content producers, it’s really as simple as 1, 2, 3:

  • First, you need the right keywords, so you understand the language your readers, customers, or clients are using when they search.
  • Second, you need compelling content that people love and search engines know is relevant to those searchers.
  • Third, you need incoming links so search engines treat your site as a trusted and relevant source.

I’m proud to announce that version 3.0 of Scribe now goes beyond on-page content optimization. We’ve added upfront keyword research (in addition to our keyword suggestion tool), plus three great link-building features that help you cover all your search optimization bases.

Scribe 3.0 makes these three SEO fundamentals easier and more efficient than ever:

  • First, the Scribe keyword research tool tunes you into the right language before you write. Once your content is created, the Scribe keyword suggestion service shows you keyword phrases you might have missed.
  • Second, Scribe analyzes your natural, reader-focused content, and tells you how to gently tweak it to spoon feed search engines based on 15 SEO best practices.
  • Third, Scribe’s link building tools help you build back links from other sites, crosslink the content within your own site, and identify influential social media users who want to share your stuff.

With Scribe on your side, you’ll:

  • Discover the correct profitable keywords
  • Stay automatically up to speed on SEO best practices
  • Optimize your content better and faster
  • Avoid content that reads like it was written by a robot
  • Build quality links with less hassle and confusion

But most of all, you’ll achieve higher search rankings and increase the targeted traffic to your site!

As part of your subscription you get Scribe Web, plus integrated versions of Scribe for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. We’ll even throw in free educational seminars to help you get more out of Scribe.

Check it out.

Scribe Web:

Scribe Web allows content creators of any type to optimize any web content for search engines, regardless of platform or content management system. It’s especially popular among professional writers who create search optimized content for clients, and that’s why Scribe Web allows you to generate detailed content optimization reports so your clients can easily understand the work you’ve done.

Scribe for WordPress:

Scribe for WordPress allows online publishers and bloggers to optimize their content for search engines directly from inside the WordPress interface, by tapping into the Scribe software service on our servers. This means you’re constantly getting new-and-improved, state-of-the-art keyword research, content optimization, and link building tools.

Scribe requires the ability to enter a custom title tag and a meta description via your WordPress interface. Most popular themes and plug-ins, both free and paid, enable these two functions so you can use Scribe directly from WordPress.

Themes that work with Scribe for WordPress:

SEO Plug-Ins that work with Scribe for WordPress:

Scribe for Joomla and Drupal:

Scribe also helps you win the search engine game with the Joomla and Drupal content management systems. The keyword research and link-building features have been built in by our respective Joomla and Drupal ninjas, and are in beta testing as we speak. We expect the new and improved Joomla and Drupal plug-ins for Scribe to be live and kicking by next week.

New design, new videos, new offer:

Because these new Scribe features are kind of a big deal, we’ve done a complete makeover in their honor. We’ve got a completely new site design, new copy, a new video tour, and new demo videos.

There’s also a special offer that makes Scribe an even better deal (if you look hard enough). Hint: Look at the “test drive” page.

Check out Scribe 3.0 for yourself.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Copyblogger Media. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Scribe for SEO Copywriting


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