I love Twit Cleaner!

Some of my work recently has involved creating a follow policy as well as helping manage a Twitter account for a software protection company called Wibu, through my job with illuminea (they’re illuminea’s client, not my own).

Anyways, I was going through the people Wibu were following and realized loads of them were irrelevant – based on their bios/descriptions – but that checking for dead accounts, bots etc isn’t easy based on Twitter’s web interface alone.

The problem is that the web interface will only show you a person’s 3 most recent tweets, and that you often need to click through to see each account, one at a time, after seeing the initial three.

(The reason you need to see more is that you’d have to check if this is someone who is self-centered, only tweets based on RSS feeds or otherwise uses Twitter in a way that won’t allow you to build a relationship with them.)

Also, you have to remember to open the user profiles in new tabs. Otherwise, when you click back, you start at the top of your followers list, and may need to wait for the AJAX to load more followers when you scroll down (the “view more followers” function that loads their profiles when you get to the end but without loading a new page) .

So there’s lots of points where the web interface slows you down when trying to prune who you’re following.

Enter TwitCleaner which is a Twitter app that will check all these profiles for common patterns of anti-social behaviour and generate a report for you. From there you can just click user profiles to unfollow.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

2011 was a beautiful year for guest posts on SEO ROI as more and more of the web’s top SEOs shared advanced ideas and original material, right here on this blog. I don’t publish rehash, and it shows in the unique tactics, case studies and tools reviewed.

If you want to guest post, read the guest posting guidelines then contact me. Benefits include links, the attention of 2600+ RSS subs, 1600+ emails subs and social love…

Guest Article Case Studies & Research

What Do CTRs Look Like By Position In 2011? – This excellent research piece by Phil Golobish (T: @saintphilip) of Slingshot SEO was a preview of their massive research piece featuring data from 170,000 visitors to their client websites.

Not to be outdone, a glorious case study on mobile web analytics and conversion optimization came to us from the skillful Stephan Croome, who sells ipads, talks about hair styles and dreams up marketing ideas like www.startupbeanbags.com.

Longtime contributor Everett Sizemore taught us about affiliate marketing, and specifically how an affiliate got merchants to promote him! Everett blogs about e-commerce SEO on his website www.esizemore.com. You can follow him on Twitter and connect on Linked-In.

Ben Jackson wrote me a clever link request email that turned into a case study on his approach. As a result, Ben published his experience with broken-link link building (broken link building for short), where you look for dead pages or sites and go after the people who linked to them… Ben writes at SEO Discovery, an SEO blog with link building strategies, amonst other goodies.

We got another two case studies in a single article by Liz Krause, on how to reverse negative reviews. Liz writes for EtherSpeak, a company specializing in Unified Communications for internet phone service. They are a Microsoft SIP provider and also offer internet encryption for business class VOIP.

Guest Posts on Tactics:

Post-Panda, Here’s How To Beat Scrapers Outranking You With Stolen Content was a guest post from Everett Sizemore, who is an eCommerce SEO consultant operating off his 38 acre farm in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. He enjoys gardening, collecting eggs and tackling tough SEO problems.

How To Recover From A Wild Panda Attack: 3 Cheap Tools
This post was written by guest Brian Patterson, a partner at SEO consulting firm MangoCo.

4 Advanced Ecommerce Tactics

This guest article was by James Agate, the SEO director at Skyrocket SEO, a leader in eCommerce SEO & Conversion Optimisation for small and medium sized online retailers.

Can you rank on page 1 for one-word keywords? Find out the inside details how in another great guest post by Brian S Patterson, partner at a Virginia SEO firm known as MangoCo. You can also follow Brian on Twitter!

How do you produce professional video for your blog? We learned all about angles, lighting, editing and more in a guest article by Andy Havard, a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions, a UK based Internet video production company that also does corporate vids.

Guest Posts About Tools:
… Or Tools for Guest Posts: How to Use Scrapebox to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities/

This guest post came from Andrew Breen of Outshine Online Marketing who offers SEO, PPC management, and CRO services.

6 WordPress Plugins That Automate Your SEO was an experienced based guide by Pedro Cardoso who runs a site teaching folks to fix their slow @#!*% computers, as well as his blog, slices of life.

Found the content here interesting? You can be featured here in 2012! Read the guest post guidelines then contact me with your idea. Preference is obviously given to case studies, tactics and anything original you can share!

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

This is a guest post by Everett Sizemore, who blogs about e-commerce SEO on his website www.esizemore.com. You can follow him on Twitter and connect on Linked-In.

Today is Free Shipping Day and thousands of online stores are participating in what is going to be one of the largest online shopping holiday of the year. The title of a press release from comScore last year says it all:

Free Shipping Day Punctuates Heaviest Week of U.S. Online Spending in History as Four Individual Days Eclipse $900 Million

Gadgets rank at the top of the growing “computer hardware” category for the holiday season with purchases of handheld devices like the iPad, iPhone and Android phones driving sales. Mashable took note of this yesterday when the posted the Top 10 Tech Retailers Delivery in Time for Christmas, featuring Free Shipping Day as a reward for procrastinating tech junkies. But Mashable isn’t breaking any stories here. A search on Google News will reveal a flood of media coverage about this event.

With all the hype around Free Shipping Day, one would think that it is like any other similar shopping holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But it’s not. The big difference here is that Free Shipping Day™ also happens to be a trademarked day that belongs to the affiliate website FreeShipping.org.

Luke Knowles is the “super affiliate” behind this $1-billion dollar day. When looking into marketing and retail stats he discovered that holiday shopping online peaked around December 10th because consumers were worried that they may not get their orders in time to wrap and put them under tree before Christmas if they ordered any later.

So Knowles, who was already an affiliate with thousands of online merchants via FreeShipping.org, had the idea to get stores to commit to guaranteed delivery by Christmas nearly a week after the December 10 peak. The extended shipping deadlines, combined with coupon offers, was an instant hit with consumers.

Merchants don’t typically like to help their affiliates with marketing efforts, and for good reasons. But this doesn’t seem to apply to the Free Shipping Day franchise (which is now growing in Canada and the UK as well). Below are some of the ways this affiliate manages to get merchants to help promote their site…

Vanity URLs

Every store gets their own URL to share with their brand evangelists and customers via email and social media channels. But having thousands of pages of thin content (i.e. a couple of coupon codes) isn’t a viable SEO strategy these days.

So instead of making these URLs pages the site appends a parameter to the URL that changes the sort order to show each different store’s coupon first. By having Google and Bing webmaster tools ignore that parameter, and by using a rel canonical tag, the site manages to funnel all of that pagerank into their home page.

Social Media Interaction

The next step is to get brands to share their vanity URLs. In addition to sending each merchant an email with their URL, the site encourages them to share it on social media channels (example). In addition to the custom link, they also provide the hashtag to use: #FreeShippingDay . Imagine hundreds of small, medium and huge brands tweeting a link to your affiliate site along with your own custom hashtag. #WouldBeNice

Badges

Every merchant also gets a badge with custom code that links to their vanity URL to display on their website, while badges with a link to the home page are available to all. Badges are nothing new, but it amazes me how often websites create badges, put them on a page and just expect people to use them. What’s the motivation? In this case, it is to show off that you are participating and to link shoppers directly to your vanity URL.

Sharing The Love

If you are an affiliate who is out hustling via guest posts, PR and social media to get traffic and build your own brand, it should be a no-brainer to let the merchants you work with know that you are benefiting them beyond just sending direct sales via affiliate links.

When the LA Times mentioned BestBuy and Toys R Us in an article about Free Shipping Day, an email quickly went out from FreeShippingDay.com to the marketing departments at each company to let them know about it.

Is this possible for all affiliates to add this kind of value? Probably not. There won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution to building links and traffic into an affiliate website. But this example should illustrate that it is still possible to compete with big brands with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of marketing sense. I’ve heard the masses predicting that affiliate marketing is dead, and with recent brand-boosting, affiliate-punishing changes from Google – not to mention stuff like this – you have to admit it is an uphill battle. The days of putting up some reviews on your blog, or publishing coupon feeds from LinkShare and raking in the dough while you sleep are long gone.

The moral of the story here is this: Add value for the merchants and treat your affiliate site like a brand and you may still stand a chance.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Did you know I used to rank #3 for SEO on Google.ca – without being logged in or anything – behind only two Wikipedia results? So de facto, I was the #1 top ranking SEO in the country .

I had taken screenshots at the time which I never got around to posting on the blog, and while visiting my parents (who have the computer I was using then), I found the proof pics and sent them to myself. Here ya go:

Incidentally, I also once dominated all of the top 3 results for link building on Google.ca . I couldn’t find that screenshot, but here’s one of me at #1.

Before somebody asks, no I didn’t edit these photos in Photoshop or the like. If I had, I wouldn’t write this post about it because some Photoshop pros could analyze things and show what a photoshop amateur (and general idiot) I am.

What do I attribute the rankings to? You mean, besides my good lucks, charm and humility?

Mostly efforts at building relationships and sharing attention with others, which they were courteous enough to reflect back on me . My Internal Link Building plugin (currently over 25,000 downloads) was a pretty sweet piece of linkbait, too.

Want to be #1 for your terms? Get my latest posts sent to you free by email or RSS and learn your way to the top.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

This guest post is by Ben Jackson, founder of SEO Discovery, an SEO blog with free tutorials, link building strategies, and more.

This is a case study of my broken link building campaign. These are the steps I took, the successes I had, and the mistakes I made.

What is broken link building?

In case you’re not familiar, broken link building is the process of finding an old resource that is now a 404 error page and rebuilding it. You then contact anyone still linking to this page and inform them that they have a broken link on their site and you have a similar, updated version of this resource on your site they can link to instead.

[Editor's note: It's like cloning expired sites for links.]

The Benefits of Broken Link Building

An advantage of broken link building is that the pages you recreate were already great link bait. Tons of people linked to it in the past so they will likely link to you now.

After your broken link building campaign you can also get more current links by sharing it through social media, social news sites, and any other outreach plan you have.

• It’s a great way to get in-content authority links.
An in-content, dofollow link on an authoritative page on an authoritative domain is arguably the best kind of link you can get.
• It bypasses most of the brainstorming involved with linkbait
The 404 page was already link bait, so you KNOW you’re going to get some links and the type of resource you’re going to recreate
• It’s an ever-green source of links
If you feel like you’re starting to run out of link sources, you can always get more links by doing some broken link building

Resources You’ll Need:

Xenu – for finding broken links
SEO Quake – for checking backlinks

There are a lot of ways to go about broken link building. Here’s the path that I took…

I started by finding some SEO and Internet Marketing blogs listed in Dmoz. I purposely selected a few sites that hadn’t been posted on for a year or longer. Current sites also have broken links, but I thought I would have a better picture of the sites of yester-year like this.

Once I gathered a list of about 5 sites, I ran each one through Xenu. Xenu is a site-wide broken link checker. My jaw drops every time I see someone checking for broken links page-by-page. There was just a post in SEO Moz about a plugin that checks one page at a time quickly. YAWN! Turn on Xenu, and walk away.

I had Xenu create a report for each site and then looked through the broken link section for any outgoing links leading to 404 pages.

Tip: You’ll find all kinds of links that won’t help you at all, but you can tell right away by the URL if a page is going to be good to recreate.

When you come across any link that could be a good page to rebuild, visit the page and check the backlinks it has with SEO Quake. If the link profile is good then you have a potential winner, save it in a notepad or other file. If it only has a few links then move on.

Tip: Don’t be discouraged if you go through a couple sites without luck at first. After your first time you can build a network of go-to sites in your niche.

Once you find a few broken URLs that have a good amount of backlinks, visit the Wayback Machine. Put in the URL and go back to when it was still online. This way you can see exactly what the resource was and how you can make the same thing, but much better and more modern.

Now this is a case study, so let me tell you exactly what I did…

One potential page to rebuild I found was a 404 page on a site called Dosh Dosh, you may remember it. The page had a good amount of backlinks, but it was very extensive and about a topic I didn’t feel particularly qualified to write about. What I then realized was that the site was still online, but every single page was a 404 error.

I then Googled “Dosh Dosh” and found a post listing 18 Must Read Posts at Dosh Dosh. I looked through this list and picked out the one I thought I could recreate with the most ease. The page also happened to have 690 backlinks.

Here’s the page I made on my site. I improved the Dosh Dosh version by including a few different metrics and putting the sites in one easy to use table.

While there were 690 links to the page at Dosh Dosh, the majority of them were repeat links from obscure and abandoned sites. However, I did find a good number of links with PR.

A lot of SEOs recommend developing a persona and building a relationship before requesting that the webmaster links to your page. Since I was emailing people mostly in the SEO industry I thought this would be annoying and I cut straight to the chase. I notified them of the broken link and also mentioned my similar and updated resource in my first email.

Who I emailed:

I emailed anyone who had a page with any PR. I also emailed a few who had 0 PR, but had decent Alexa rankings. I did this in hopes that the sites were still well-maintained and could potentially send traffic.

I ignored sites with 0 PR and very high Alexa rankings, and also pages that had tons of links on them.

Tip: Be careful not to email the same webmaster twice – that’s just awkward.

My Results:

I emailed about 40 different webmasters and got these results:

7 emailed me back and linked
3 emailed me back and didn’t link, 2 of them said they would
1 did not email me and linked
1 person emailed me back, linked to me, and wrote a blog post about how I was building links and linked to me again (an authoritative domain as well)

The PR break-down of the links:
PR 3 – 3
PR 1 -1
PR 0 – 5

It might seem like very little for a lot of effort, but there are many more benefits and potential links here.

• I emailed a lot of sites somewhat indiscriminately that haven’t been updated in a while – they might link eventually
• The post was a good addition to my site and easy to share and get traffic to since it was very useful
• Broken link building provides excellent insight for what makes for great link bait
• It can be a good way to make new contacts ie it’s why you’re reading this guest post now

Looking at my broken link page, you can easily discern a few of the keywords I was attempting to rank for. The only keyword that gained immediate traction was “social news sites“. My page is currently jumping between pages 2-3 for the keyword. Not bad for Keyword Difficulty score of “62% Highly Competitive” from SEO Moz.

Besides the links I got from my broken linking, I’ve linked to it once with partial match anchor text from a guest post I did for Business 2 Community, but I expect the ranking to increase relatively quickly once I begin building some exact match links.

What I Did Wrong

• I was not as organized as I should have been.

I didn’t copy down a list of URLs that I tried to get links from. This would have been especially helpful for the sites that I had to use an on-site contact form for. I would advise anyone doing this to copy down the URLs and email addresses of every single webmaster you contact, and what their response was.

• I didn’t have an outreach plan.

I got the links I could from the broken linking, but due to the nature of the page, I could have capitalized on my resource more as link bait. I shared the post on social sites, linked in a guest post, and also had a lot of “recent post” CommentLuv links from blog comments. This was okay, but not enough to get the linkerati on board.

• My page has a lot of outbound links

I could be getting more benefit to my site from the links I got if I didn’t have so many outbound links on the page. It’s a matter of SEO VS User Experience. Having the links clickable is draining the PR, but it also makes it easier for users.

[Editor's note: I think this is a good thing: we know Google rewards good linking out.]

What do you think? Should I un-link the names of all the sites?
For now, I’m just building some exact match links and waiting to hear back from the busy webmasters at Copyblogger for a potential PR 5 link. Wish me luck ?

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

My site was hacked for a few months now, in what was mostly a benign, but nevertheless annoying way. The hacker injected spam pages onto SEOROI.com about debt and financial products, which you can still see in Google’s cache. Only Vaultpress was able to remove the hack…

(To be 100% clear: there was no malware. Google detected none, McAffee detected none, CodeGuard detected none and so you weren’t at risk by visiting my site.)

The backstory…

Anyways, as I had once previously had a site hacked, I tried what worked last time – I hired someone from Odesk, for $100 one-time fee. The person in question successfully removed the injected pages… but the hacker outsmarted him and had a script that automatically replaced the injected pages within a day or two.

I then hired another person from Odesk, explaining what happened previously, but again this contractor could only delete the pages and not permanently remove the vulnerability.

In both cases, these contractors had previous experience and positive reviews in their Odesk profiles regarding site cleanups. But this hacker outsmarted them, and as we’ll see, Google too. (Not in terms of malware detection.)

The light at the end of the tnnel:

Finally, exasperated, I turned to the guys at Vaultpress. They offer a security service for WordPress whereby they

• Scan your site for vulnerabilities
• Recommend action to patch the vulnerabilities
• Remove hacks and other crap, including if it comes back
• Backup your site in 11 different places in the cloud, so accidental deletes or screwups aren’t fatal

And they delivered. I installed their plugin, gave them FTP access, and they cleaned up my site. (Also my sister the makeup artist Maya’s site.) Not only that, but they went above and beyond, doing miscellaneous stuff that wasn’t part of the official package, because I’m not tech-savvy enough to do it.

Their basic service including cleaning up your site starts at $15/month, but that doesn’t include security monitoring for the future, just a one-time cleanup. Ongoing security costs $40/month and it’s the plan I’m on, because it buys me peace of mind and stability for my business.

I highly recommend Vaultpress for WP security.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Here’s the gameplan to sell my advanced SEO book:

1) The main target is to get people to download a free chapter from the book. To drive traffic to that page, I’m going to focus on guest posting on SEO and search blogs, especially if they allow me to include my author bio or links at the start, instead of at the end.

2) In addition to that, I’m going to seek out reviews from my contact network. Already I’ve been in touch with a number of people, giving away free review copies. I want to maximize press from the blogosphere. Again, this is to drive traffic to the free chapter download page.

But it’s also got the added benefit of pre-selling people, which should increase both the visitor -> free chapter conversions and free chapter -> buyer conversions.

A further benefit of that is that it should provide branding and hopefully search traffic.

3) To manage my outreach, I’m going to use BuzzStream CRM (probably focusing on the link building side of the tool). That will allow me to keep track of emails sent as well as Twitter messages.

4) I’m going to educate myself on Google Website Optimizer so I can run my own tests on the site and determine what are the most effective messages and so forth to use.

5) Continue usability testing the site and seeing where I can make improvements that will prove profitable.

6) Blog a lot over here so that I increase my sub count and get a variety of juicy inbound links. The focus will be on evergreen content that can be shared…

7) Eventually I plan to look into scaling traffic generation with an affiliate program and other ads.

Cut the distractions by reading much less from my RSS reader, answering email once or twice a day, and constantly ask myself if I’m being productive or just active. (Hat tip: Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Workweek )

Hopefully at the end of this I’ll be able to write a juicy case study on how I made a bajillion dollars and you can too!

Add my rss feed to your reader for progress updates .

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I recently came across what is to me a new SEO problem.

A site I consult with has some thin pages with a handful of ads at the top, some relevant local content sourced from a third party beneath that…

and a bunch of inbound links to said pages. Not just any links, but links from powerful news sites. My impression is that said links are paid (sidebar links, anchor text… nice number of footprints.)

Short version: They may be getting juice from these links. A preliminary lookup for one page’s keywords in the title finds it top 100 on Google. I don’t want to lose that juice, but do think the thin pages they link to can incur Panda’s filter. They’ve got the same blurb for lots of [topic x] in [city y], plus the sourced content (not original…).

So I’m thinking about noindexing said pages to avoid Panda filters.

Also, as a future pre-emptive measure, I’m considering figuring out what they did to get these links and aiming to have them removed if they were really paid for. If it was a biz dev deal, I’m open to leaving them up, but that possibility seems unlikely.

What would you do? One of the options I laid out above or something else? Why?

p.s. Good answers get dofollow links .

Add #1:

Stever is a local SEO Consultant
Miguel is a organic SEO Consultant

p.p.s. Related note: I’m looking for intermediate to advanced guest posts for this blog, which has 2000+ RSS subs. Email me at gab@ my site if you’re interested.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

In Adam Audette‘s recent link building column (via Wiep’s link roundup), he claims to have failed at link building (or more accurately, client relations). The client – a major corporation with 10 big websites – wanted results in a short time frame, so instead of going for high quality links that take time to build, Adam went for “freebie” links like profile links in order to boost up particular URLs on client sites.

As a result, though the SEO results were there, Adam’s client saw unimpressive reports about the actual links, so they left.

Adam blames himself for abandoning his normal M.O. and going for the easy links.

Did Adam really make a mistake though?

Some clients have a short-term mindset, and education won’t change a thing for them. If they’re just a run-of-the-mill client, you can pass on them knowing that 10 more are just around the corner.

But there’s a limited supply of big-budget companies. Not as limited as most SEOs think, but still not that common.

So if a company with lots of money to spend on SEO wants to see results in the short term, should you turn the revenue away? Adam thinks the answer is a clear-cut “yes, turn it away.” I’m not sure the issue is so black and white. Consider the pros and cons.

Pros:
1. Big short term revenue/profit boost
2. Relatively easy work, even though they don’t know it
3. The business results as measured in dollars of ROI will be there

Cons:
1. A savvy SEO in their company may criticize your mediocre links and cause the gig to be lost after just a few months
2. You’ve invested time into a project with a short lifespan, when similar time could be better invested elsewhere.

At times, business calls for you to seize the opportunities you get and take the easy money. In this case, Adam didn’t do anything unethical – the work itself was just easy. And depending on how open-minded or close-minded the client was, education may not have persuaded them to take a longer-term approach. So if some company was going to make the money, and no one gets hurt / nothing unethical has to be done, why not be that company? What do you guys think?

If you liked this post, add my RSS feed to your reader for more.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Today, Twitter suggested I follow Bill Gates. It’s the best suggestion I’ve received in a while on who to follow from amongst the advanced SEO community. How is Bill Gates part of the advanced SEO community you ask?

As I explain and detail in my book on advanced SEO, a key requirement of advanced SEO is the willingness to learn from everyone and to think laterally.

Bill does that exceedingly well, as he shares in the following post. He visited a Coca-Cola distribution center in Kenya and drew lessons for preventive health care. Read the post on his foundation’s site.

Update: The article and insights are actually written by Melinda Gates, as pointed out to me by Trish Thomson. I just saw it tweeted by Bill, and assumed it was his item. So yeah, Melinda Gates would be a great SEO!

Add my RSS feed to your reader or get my latest posts by email for more out-of-the-box thinking on SEO.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I saw this flyer at the busstop and had to grab it to share with you guys. I think it’s brilliant advertising, and here’s why.

First, the copy is cleverly written and memorable.

Direct Response Flyer with a clever title, "On Canada's best network, they're not just smartphones, they're geniusphones."

“On Canada’s best network, they’re not just smartphones, they’re geniusphones.” I grant you that it’s feature/advantage copy instead of being benefit oriented, but the witticism sticks with you, and encourages you to read on. I guess that’s another way to grab people’s attention, besides QPBC.

The subheadline does a good job clarifying what they mean, although it’s still advantage oriented rather than getting into benefits. What’s the point of fewest failures, clear reception and global coverage? “Do more things in more places” is a pretty vague benefit statement.

Another thing I like about the top of this flyer is the bold blue stripes. They’re reminiscent of Bell’s corporate colors, and kind of steal credibility from Bell’s own branding efforts, which have involved lots of strongly branded ads here in Montreal.

Direct response flyer with good call to action usability

Finally, I want to point out the intelligent design of the call to action. Besides for numerous pull-and-tear phone numbers, the phone number is still listed at the bottom of the ad. Even if all the pull-and-tear numbers are torn off, the ad can still generate calls! Smart thinking. You also have the address on the bottom and the nearest metro station (torn blue square, at right).

If you liked this post on advertising, get my latest posts by email or add my rss feed to your reader for more similar commentary.

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
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This is a guest post by Troy Redington. Find him on Twitter @TroyRedington !

I’ve been into web development since 1995. I started dabbling in high school and just couldn’t stop. I felt comforted, and challenged by the vast sea of knowledge that I could learn. Plus, since the languages, technologies, and trends were always changing – I knew I wouldn’t get bored with it.

In the year 1999 I scored my first real, full-time web development job for an audio company. My boss was a man named Tim Storm. I learned a LOT working for Tim. I went from dabbling and hacking, to actually producing and innovating. Tim started Fatwallet.com (a coupon site) as his hobby while we were still working together. I felt honored to be a part of its community development in the first couple years. Tim quit his day job and went full-time on Fatwallet.com shortly after.

Fast forward to 2006. I was a web developer for Fatwallet, on a team of 4 or 5. I had been dabbling in SEO on the side for the last two years, mainly for my wife’s [former] online scrapbook store. I was incredibly passionate about Fatwallet. Tim, and his company, had both done great things for my career. Knowing some SEO basics, and seeing the major SEO problems and HUGE search traffic potentials of the site, I went to Tim and told him that the company needs to spend some time on SEO.

Maybe I wasn’t clear with my intentions since Tim transitioned a different coworker to SEO. The next six months were miserable as I was the developer in charge of implementing the new SEO’s techniques. I watched and fought tooth and nail as the SEO spent countless hours on extinct techniques like meta keywords. After several arguments with the SEO, and whiny complaints to the man in charge, old SEO out, Troy in.

I was given 3 months to see if I could make an impact on traffic. Tim and I both agreed that we needed a kickass metric system for measuring the efforts and results – so I spent the next 2 months doing nothing but writing a new search traffic analytic tracking system. I used it to monitor the current search traffic, and find opportunities for easy optimization.  I quickly found terms like GoDaddy coupon that were driving some traffic to pages that were NOT optimized (and quite unfriendly to search engines).

I rewrote URLs throughout the site, changed paging systems, implemented dynamic cross linking systems, cleaned piles of dirty, messy, pathetic code (that I had written in years past). Once the site was search engine friendly, and KINDA optimized, we watched the traffic increase day after day. After a few months, search traffic had doubled. Hell yeah, I felt like a winner.

Then I met with Tim again. Tim wanted to know which terms were converting, and how much traffic has increased to the terms that are the highest converting. It took another couple of months to tweak the system and start producing metrics that prove ROI. And then I became the full-time, in-house SEO for FatWallet.

The next couple years were brutal, as I fought many challenges. FatWallet’s search traffic is incredibly long-tailed, with a million plus members in the forums, the site is loaded with rich user generated content – and we all know how search engines love UGC. However the terms I was expected to target were far from long-tail, and often far from reality. Most people in the company didn’t really know what I was doing, hell sometimes *I* didn’t really know what I was doing.

I kept trying and kept learning…and more importantly, I kept finding search traffic opportunities that could align with our content. My passion for the company, and now for the industry, fueled debates with sales managers, designers, developers, and sysadmins. In the end, our results have made it all totally worth it.

My responsibilities, and respect for what I do, are higher than ever at Fatwallet. I’m producing results, getting involved with big projects, and even driving big projects.

Tim continues to inspire us, and is currently a finalist in the Entrepreneur of the Year contest.

My career has been created by passion and a strong desire to learn and succeed. What drives you guys in your search careers?

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

In response to Google’s efforts to block access to Latma’s We Con The World parody, which is another proof of Google’s political bias and unreliability, I am going to go a month without Google search. I look forward to seeing how this works, and will report back. If you want to make a widget to this effect, or do the same, please feel free, and do let me know.

Again, this censuring of Latma shows the problem we have with Google’s dominance in search. If you rely on the information highway for access to information, and people put roadblocks up on certain branches of the highway, the highway’s very essence is undermined.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Reading the post Common SEO Mistakes: CSS Image Replacement, I found myself criticized for making the logo here an H1 tag, as well as for making it the first link.  

First, I recognize my mistake on the H1 point.

That was done years ago when I didn’t appreciate fully the distinction between sites and pages, and wanted to rank for SEO on the homepage. The H1 is acceptable for that purpose, but it’s a sitewide element – other pages are also getting “SEO ROI” as an H1.

 Oops! Thanks Boston SEO !

Second, the first link question needs some context for newer SEOs. Various studies have been done (eg by my friend Branko, the SEO Scientist) on whether all links on a page pass value or just the first.

Some say only the first does, others say all do, and maybe there’s a possibility the first passes mroe value. So best to make the logo the second link, after a more anchor-text optimized link.

Well, I don’t recall the studies in depth, but I think the context was external  – not internal – links. Also, the testing by Branko says all links pass value. Third, I can spend time on more productive things.

If I couldn’t spend my time better and did believe that internal links, specifically the first one, pass more value, then the solution is simple: Use CSS to position the logo in its place, but have the code for the logo appear below the first properly anchor-optimized link on the page.

If you liked this tactical discussion on SEO ideas, add my RSS feed to your reader for more! And check out my upcoming advanced SEO book - you can download some free chapters!

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

(We’re continuing our SphinnCon deadblogging, this time with coverage of the web analytics panel. Previously we’d been discussing PPC with material from Naomi Sela on the content network, ad writing and split testing with Ophir Cohen and Dan Perach, and mixed link building / ppc notes from my panel/ Dan Sumeruck.)

Adi Reguev – Go Internet Marketing – Internal Search

Some key questions…

1. What/how much people are looking for [something].
2. Does internal search answer your visitors’ questions?
3. Can they find what they need easily?

Case Study: Travel

Site search [analytics data?] shows locations in a drop down. They monitored destinations people wanted to go to and especially the top cities of interest.
- They inferred from searches for two tickets that the person searching was part of a couple.
- Home page navigation was not reflecting people’s interests.
- They understood that there were seasonal variances in people’s choices of destination. Bangkok was big in winter, London in summer.
o But volume [of searches] does NOT tell the whole story!
o You need to compare the volume numbers to the ecommerce report.
o Why? Because though the volume of searches change, that doesn’t necessarily correlate to average order values (AOV). So items with low search volume were still valuable because the AOVs were higher.

What does this suggest in terms of changes to the site? Dynamic navigation or highlighting of navigational elements that adjusts to demand and AOVs.

Final tip: Don’t allow yourself to create reports with so many parameters that you end up overwhelmed. View fewer parameters, and make them actionable.

If you enjoyed this post, come back tomorrow for more coverage of SphinnCon’s web analytics tips. Or, because we want to make life easier, you can add my rss feed to your reader for more (that link also lets you subscribe by email).

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

When I created my first websites, I have to admit that I was pretty naive about the graphic/visual side of things. SEO ROI is a good example.

When I was creating the specs for the site, I wanted a few things in particular made custom:

- The ability to change the logo

- The ability to edit and add to the call to action area in the upper left

- The ability to hand edit the top, sidebar and footer navigation

- An option to opt-in posts to the homepage of the blog so everyone who hit the homepage would see my best posts. (That’s the SEO ROI Quality category.)

- Similar options for news and testimonials lower down on the homepage. (Latest News and Testimonials categories, respectively.)

- A fluid width layout that would adjust to screen sizes.

- Top navigation with the appearance of buttons, but that was actually text.

Within those specs, I more or less gave the graphic designers free reign to do as it pleased, and then I chose the design which looked the best to my then-girlfriend and I, and best repeated my corporate colours for brand-recall purposes). 

Not particularly business savvy, you’ll agree.

What did this amount to?

- I haven’t once changed the logo. So that was extra coding for nothing and money down the drain. I don’t even remember why this was important to me at the time.

- I’ve spent countless hours updating the call to action areas, with mixed results. Since I was working with basic html and a limited space, I could only do so much…

- Likewise my experiments with the navigation have shown some improvements but also some significant screwups.

- Opting in posts was a worthwhile idea – except it made me overlook initially that I lacked a general blog page where all posts would be seen.

- I doubt very much that anyone cares about the news or testimonials sections, and anyways the way they appear and are updated isn’t really practical. (What RSS or email subscriber wants to see a new testimonial as a ‘blog post’ – accordingly I’ve had to backdate the testimonial posts so they wouldn’t be noticed when I add them.)

- Hassles with IE7 and my navigation buttons in terms of the fluid width layout messing stuff up on narrower screens (there’s no minimum range at which the site stops adjusting to window size).

More importantly, what did it NOT amount to?

1. Effective use of my homepage to drive interest in my SEO and usability services.

2. Lines that are too wide on most screens for optimally comfortable reading.

3. Poor monetization of my blog posts that is basically limited to the sidebar, which most people ignore.

As my high school science teacher, Mrs. Sadaka, taught us: “Form is related to function!” What she meant is true in just about every walk of life – function must define form or else you’ll get nowhere.

The story has a happy ending though. I’m currently working with a client on redesigning one of their sites with conversion and usability top of mind. Since many of their goals for the site align with many of mine for this site, I get to test-run my ideas (and some of yours!) for redesigning this site before finally (after much, much delay) going into production on my own redesign (coming sometime before 2099…).

If you liked this post on usability, add my rss feed to your reader.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I knew for a while that I wanted to try out UserTesting.com, based on the referrals from my friends at Closed Loop Marketing and various blogs on usability I read (Future Now, Usability Post), but I never really had the opportunity to go ahead and get on it.

A former client wanted to to hire me again for SEO, despite the higher return provided by usability / conversion optimization, so I decided I’d go ahead and put the site to the test and see if it might not convince him of the value in usability testing.

(They’re a former client because I let them go once they were ranking well and I wanted to work on other projects.)

The site in question is for this downtown Montreal hotel, the Hotel de Paris. (Yes, I realize Montreal is not Paris; that’s the original name.)

Rather than drone on about how incredibly valuable the service was, I’m going to share the raw data of 1 of the users I tested and let that speak for itself.

And the written summary provided by Tatiana, the tester:

What would have caused you to leave this site?

* I really wanted to see the special offers for this site, but clicking on that didn’t bring anything up.

* The text was also hard to read as there wasn’t much contrast between the background and the text colour on most of the pages, and all of the lists were horizontal (prose format) instead of vertical (bulleted lists) which saves space but makes it hard to quickly compare different choices.

* Having to agree to a policy that is written with abbreviations that I can’t decipher would have made me leave for a site where I didn’t have to guess what I was agreeing to.

* I don’t really like the idea of making an account on a site that I may only use once or at most once per year. I have enough accounts to keep track of online as it is.

What other ideas do you have about how this site could be improved?

* I had a real problem making comparisons between options on this site because of the way the information was formatted which started to become quite frustrating. Maybe adding icons or reformatting the lists so that they can be easily scanned would help.

[Me: Reformatting in a vertical table format for easy scanning would probably be a positive change; icons can help too if the legend explaining them is obvious enough.]

* The pictures on the front page were nice, but it wasn’t clear what the second picture was. It looked like a restaurant of some sort but didn’t say where. A label of some kind would have helped.

What did you like about the site?

* I liked that you could book online (although some of the dropdown menus didn’t work) and that availability was shown on the calendar.
* I liked that I could see the price breakdown before I paid. Especially since that seems to be the only place to find out about the taxes being charged and because the price looked wrong and it was a good way to check the calculations.

Anything else you would like to say to the owner of the site?

* I may have this wrong, but to me ‘double occupancy @ $89′ always meant that the price listed was per person (so the price for the room was 2x$89). But on your site when I book a room for two people, the price breakdown at ordering time shows 1x$89 for that same room for two people.

This seems wrong and the discrepancy affected which room I booked.

My Conclusion: I love the service and plan to use it much more in the future!

While I’d picked up some things like the non-working special offers button and limited amount of room pictures, other problems she raised were novel to me.

To wit:

- I hadn’t considered that outsiders to the hotel wouldn’t know there’s a little restaurant/bistro on the premises. Tatiana’s confusion about the bistro picture shows a need for clearer captions than “Experience the charm of Montreal.”

To the same effect, the separate explanation about the bistro on the Hotel Highlights page is clearly insufficient.

- The pricing clarity is obviously an essential issue for any online transaction, but as I’m single and only book rooms for one person, the per person/double occupancy pricing problem never occurred to me.

Other problems I noticed myself while reviewing the site, but this test clarified their importance.

- I guessed that the abbreviation Cxl probably meant cancel. But outsiders to the hospitality industry can’t be expected to know insider jargon.

(This is also true for mystery meat navigation, like date based blog archives.) Furthermore, as Tatiana’s video and written report highlight, this is something that could lose the sale.

- In the same vein, the pricing clarity thing is immensely important because you’re affecting your average order size if people think the rates are per person instead of the rate for the room.

The bottom line is that UserTesting.com is an easy way to double your bottom line.

If you liked this case study and usability  tool review, add my rss feed to your reader.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Yesterday, I described what I saw as a trend towards content communities becoming commodified. We ended on the question – how do you build a competitive advantage in such a case?

One idea that comes to mind courtesy of both Inc magazine’s article on Yelp, and from Kyle Lacy is to organize offline meetups.

Make your community more than virtual – get your users to meet offline.

The closer the bond offline, the more they'll frequent the site online.

As it is, the thing that brings people back to forums, Twitter, Facebook etc is the interaction with other members.

Domainers anxiously wait to hear whether their private message about selling a particular domain name got a favourable answer.

Hip-hop “textcees” (instead of being ‘emcees’, textcees write rap battles in text; yours truly was one in high school) can’t wait to see how judges voted on their battle against other textcees.

Facebook is a particularly potent community in this respect.

Facebook members can’t wait to get comments on their pics – and it offers users plenty of ways to interact, like pic, wall, and other comments. The interaction itself is a mini-high.

This also plays on another universal trait – humans love attention, and what better way to get it than posting interesting pictures, videos, status updates, notes etc? Indeed – one thing that you see Yelp has done, as described in Inc, is to have certain members of the community go around giving encouragement to other members for their contributions to Yelp, giving positive attention to their reviews, pics etc.

Facebook does still more to draw people into its community.

…It taps pre-existing offline communities. This started by having people only join from American colleges, who then were their ‘network.’

Facebook developed the concept by allowing people to show their attachment to communities of various religious, political, social, work and other affiliations, and has recently reinforced that with the introduction of ‘fanning’ .

And as with forums, Facebook enables direct messaging such that you can’t wait to hear back from that cute girl you messaged after meeting her at your friend’s party.

Another thing that largely explained Facebook’s meteoric rise was that it adapted a dating site’s people search function. You could look for people – in your network (college / and later city) – by marital status, sxual orientation, age (I think) religion, relationship interest (serious dating, casual dating, flings, friendship and the pathetic-sounding “whatever I can get”).

Wanted a Roman Catholic from Ohio State University in Cincinnati who wanted a fling? Well, you’d obviously fail since Catholics never have sx before marriage, but you might find one interested in casual dating.

(I’m not picking on Roman Catholics – I could just as easily say the same about Muslims, orthodox Jews etc.)

Takeaways:

- Offer multiple ways to interact and communicate.

- Enable and encourage behaviour that draws attention. Give attention yourself.

- Facilitate and help offline meetings.

- Allow people to identify with large (city / college) groups they belong to and narrower groups too (fans of Rick’s driving school, a real self-organized group that Rick didn’t start but just reflects his numerous satisfied students’ affection).

- Toss sx into the mix.

This post was guest-written by Mark for Red Fly Marketing, an Dublin internet marketing company providing search engine optimisation services in Dublin and web design, too.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

How Facebook Built A Competitive Advantage While Blocking Google

]]> http://seoroi.com/case-studies/how-facebook-built-a-competitive-advantage-while-blocking-google/feed/ 2 http://seoroi.com/case-studies/6-steps-to-more-engaging-copy-that-sells/ http://seoroi.com/case-studies/6-steps-to-more-engaging-copy-that-sells/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:44:18 +0000 Gabriel Goldenberg http://seoroi.com/?p=1594 Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon Wordpress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

6 Steps To More Engaging Copy That Sells

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Good copywriting does more than just explain the details of a website’s products or services. It needs to speak to a person on an emotional level, giving them hope while getting the point across fast. It also needs to compel a person to take action.

The biggest weakness of the average website today is its copywriting. Getting an awesome design is the easy part of having an online presence; saying your piece – intelligently – is much more challenging. Yet that’s what makes sales

This post looks at three internet marketing websites with exceptionally engaging copy. They lay out what they do in a conversational and clear manner, striking a chord with visitors that solves their problem and compels them to buy.

Traffic Geyser – The Power of Social Proof

In their video sales letter, Traffic Geyser does a great job of speaking to listeners as if he or she is a friend just hanging out right there with Mike Koenigs, Co-Founder of Traffic Geyser. While this video sales letter provides a little more hype than Infusionsoft’s does, it still offers friendly, informative, smart copy that includes success stories in an uncomplicated format that leaves readers wanting to learn more.

Take Aways:

• Write conversational copy that sounds like it’s from a friend who really wants to help the reader achieve their goals instead of strictly providing information.

• When the goal is lead generation, always leave readers wanting more and provide an easy sign up form so they can get more.

Infusionsoft – Genuine Personalization

If there’s one website that gives serious internet entrepreneurs hope for turning their business around to really start making a profit, it’s Infusionsoft. Through their engaging, yet informative content, Infusionsoft shows how they relate to businesses that may not be doing well by giving their problem a name, ‘follow up failure.’

Going the extra step by having Infusionsoft CEO and Co-Founder Clate Mask speak the sales copy via video on the homepage, really takes the copy a step further in personally addressing the needs of entrepreneurs.

The true desire to help an entrepreneur that comes through in the video copy is enhanced by the professional and genuine nature of Clate Mask.

He’s believable, personable, and inspires trust while the straightforward, down to earth copywriting does an excellent job of compelling visitors to learn more.

Take Aways:

• Solve the reader’s problem in your copywriting by giving the problem a name and showing how your product or service can help.

• Choosing the right speaker for a video sales letter is crucial to its success, regardless of how compelling the copy is.

Butterfly Marketing – Selling Through Telling

Mike Filsaime’s website, Butterfly Marketing, opens with headlines that grab your attention before the sales copy takes you straight into the many incredible success stories of internet entrepreneurs using the Butterfly Marketing product. In fact, you don’t get to the actual sales letter until after reading a whopping 22 success stories, many featuring proof and audio testimonials.

The strength of this lengthy sales letter comes in knowing how to tell a story using testimonials, which builds trust. The length of this sales letter doesn’t detract from its success because it flows very naturally and is engaging, friendly, conversational, clear, and compelling. As you read the sales copy, it draws you in and makes you want to read more as it provides a ‘you can do it too’ attitude.

Take Aways:

• Create a collection of success stories from your clients. If you don’t have any on hand, create a campaign to build an arsenal of success stories that you can use to prove success, rather than just promise it.

• Short and to the point is not necessarily better when it comes to copywriting. Lengthy sales letters tend to outperform short letters that just get straight to the point.

Take Action:

To recap, here are six strategies you can apply to increase the muscle of your sales copy:

• Solve the reader’s problem and give the problem a name.

• Choose the speaker for a video sales letter carefully to ensure putting forth the right image for your product or service.

• Write friendly, motivational copy instead of stiff, strictly informative sales letters.

• When your copywriting is to generate leads, leave readers wanting more and you’ll get the lead.

• Build an arsenal of success stories instead of just promising success.

• Write long sales letters with headlines that interrupt [in the sense of grabbing people] and copy that engages and educates before making an offer.

Christine O’Kelly wrote this for Red Fly Marketing, an Ireland internet marketing company.Red Fly’s fine lads, in addition to sipping Guinness, also run a search engine optimisation company (though not simultaneously…usually); they also handle the techie/graphics side via a web design company.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

6 Steps To More Engaging Copy That Sells

]]> http://seoroi.com/case-studies/6-steps-to-more-engaging-copy-that-sells/feed/ 2 http://seoroi.com/case-studies/traffic-cop/ http://seoroi.com/case-studies/traffic-cop/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:08:34 +0000 Gabriel Goldenberg http://seoroi.com/?p=1246 Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon Wordpress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

How Do I Play Traffic Cop With This Site?

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“How do I sell more hourly consultations?”, I asked. Unfortunately, all the answers failed miserably, despite some of them being so brilliant that I gave away links and consulting time (Vinh Nguyen and Michael Galbus, you can still claim your 1 hour of consulting each ). Why?

1) All the answers assumed that the problem was with converting a sufficent supply of traffic visiting my seo consultations page.
2) I assumed that was the case myself, and didn’t bother looking at my analytics. Thus, I didn’t correct this widespread, but erroneous, assumption.

As it turns out, I got about 6900 visitors in the past 30 days, per Google Analytics (more per Sitemeter, which logs also visitors with Javascript disabled). Guess how many viewed my consultations page?

29.

Pathetic.

This isn’t just the shoemaker’s kids going barefoot. This is them having bloody feet that nearly need amputation! Similarly, my consulting services pages barely saw anyone go by, although there were more visitors than for my 1 hour consultations.

(Am I concerned about sharing this information? Will it hurt my credibility? Perhaps in the short run it might. In the medium term, I should hopefully be able to get more visitors to my money pages and make more money.

Also, I think this shows that I’m able to identify problems, and face reality. Those are much more valuable skills than the ability to ignore reality…)

So I’d like to redo that fun group brainstorm, and ask you guys:

1) How do I send more of my traffic to my SEO consultations page?

2) How do I send more of my traffic to my SEO services page?

Again, great answers will earn their authors dofollow links (you can pick the anchor text) and excellent answers will get free 1 hour consultations!

Here are some stats to help you guys out.

• Bounce rate sitewide is 67%, about average for blogs afaik.
• I get 1.73 pages a visit, and 1:44 average time on site per visit.
• 81% of visits were new
• My most viewed pages last month included forecasting seo roi, my Internal Link Building plugin, this page on measuring social media, my homepage, my blog and how to seo a splash page.
• 20% of my traffic was direct navigation (love you guys!), 36% was referring sites, and the rest was search traffic.
• Google sends more traffic than any other single source (blessing and a curse…)
• If you need other data and can explain why, I’ll try to share as much as possible.

Let me know what ideas you guys might have!

p.s. I’d love to hear what you guys think of these edited h2/h3 headers (smaller sizes and colors matching my theme).

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

How Do I Play Traffic Cop With This Site?

]]> http://seoroi.com/case-studies/traffic-cop/feed/ 15