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Optimizing pages is an integral part of search engine optimization. When you are working for an SEO company and are offering link building services and guaranteed SEO, it is imperative that you routinely optimize and polish your site according to search engines such as Google’s various and habitual updates. However, with so much to do and so many pages to optimize, SEO specialists barely have any idea where their workload begins. The first step in optimizing a page is to realize the importance search engines place on your title tag, meta description, heading and body content. These are the crucial and imperative elements one should focus on as these are the areas search engines place prioritize.

Herding potential clients and increasing viewership are already hard enough by itself, complement that with proper optimization of your site and SEO specialists have a whole lot on their plate. To make sure that all your optimizing efforts are not for naught and would be most efficacious, this article offers guidelines in ascertaining which contents to prioritize first so that you can put more focus on areas that will help you in improving organic search performance that, in turn, would drive more consumers to your website to convert.

BUSINESS GOALS

Determine what your business goals are and from there you can identify which contents to optimize first. Company resources are most quickly approved when projects align with the key initiatives every team is working together to attain. When it comes to optimizing content, those that support your company’s business goals will come naturally be prioritized or would, at least, be high on the list of contents to optimize.

Great dynamics becomes apparent between SEO, and the demands of consumers are parallel. Additionally, it makes for a great important channel for driving sales when the business goals align with the products and features consumers already seek. This makes it easy for SEO marketers to exploit their products through SEO techniques. However, there are times that business goals center all their focus on raising awareness of a new product or a concept that is fairly new and unheard of. For this to be a successful endeavor, SEO marketers need to realize that their consumers would need to be exposed to these terms before they can search for these as potential consumers cannot search for something that they are unaware of.

So, before an SEO channel can be truly effective, marketers would need to raise the appropriate level of awareness of these products and concepts first. Succinctly put, albeit a great option for knowing which contents to optimize first, business goals should not be the sole criterion.

PERFORMANCE AND POTENTIAL

Another way to discern which pages to optimize first is to compare performance and potential. This occurs when the SEO program is already beyond the initial stage of optimizing the first pages. To determine which of your pages have the most potential to drive most customers, check the visit, conversions, keyword data and rankings. A page generating a lot of conversions and are driving more views and visits would be a website that may be better optimized than a page that is not doing as well. Do not run the risk of harming a page’s performance by “optimizing” it when it is already faring well.

Instead, look for pages that are not doing so well and those that drive traffic but are not performing as well as your top performing pages. Complement performance data comparison with comparing keyword research data to identify the advantages of optimizing a page. Optimizing pages which have low-demand phrases will all be for naught and would not do very well performance-wise.

DUPLICATE AND DEFAULT TITLE TAGS

Title tags are crucial in determining the ranking signals of a page. Title tags that have not been optimized is a likely sign that the rest of the page has not been optimized either. Use software that assists you in revealing every title tag that is similar to yours sort it alphabetically and identify the large clusters of pages that all have the same title tag.

To drive organic search customers, have a title tag that is both unique and relevant to the content on that particular page.

The post SEO 101: Which Pages should You Optimize First? appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.

Recap of Part 2:

STEP THREE – Evaluate the first impression

STEP FOUR – Determine the emotional resonance

STEP FIVE – Craft a compelling value proposition

STEP SIX – Reinforce the message through images

STEP SEVEN – Integrate social proofs and testimonials

By now, you must already have social profiles. Now, what you can do is to track brand mentions on the social web so you’d know what your target market is talking about and why they talk about your brand. Afterwards, use tools to discover which high authority websites are linking back to your landing page.

Reach out to your target market armed with the stats especially those sites that your target market deemed high authority sites. We call this implicit egoism where we naturally gravitate towards people, objects or places that provide favorable self-association.

Send emails to your users if they can give a short testimony about the brand and publish it on the landing page. This is brand advocacy that, according to study, increases awareness by 12%. Did you know 63% of the online users are more likely to purchase from a site with reviews and ratings?

STEP EIGHT – Communicate a clear call to action

A call to action (CTA) must clearly say what it actually does aside from triggering a response. The design of the CTA should contrast with the rest of the site, but still within the same aesthetic frame as the website and other marketing collateral (same color, same wording, etc.).

Treat your CTAs as the gateway to conversion. It is the culmination of all the steps discussed above. Whatever pain point they experience before coming to your landing page must be solved immediately or later, depending on the kind of solution.

STEP NINE – Check the copywriting

Read and re-read the content of the landing page. There is no such thing as ‘over-edit.’ After proofreading, read it again then ask yourself: is the content compelling enough to draw visitors to read more? Can you honestly say that it is compelling enough? Self-score the page. If it below five, you might as well consider suggestions.

Ask your friends and colleagues to conduct a simple peer review of the page. Solicit feedbacks. Remember that your visitor only has a second to decide if the site (and thus your brand) is trustworthy or not. If they decide you are, then they will naturally consume the contents of your page. If you want visitors sinking their teeth in, don’t forget the tone and mood you have already established with the headlines and images. Resonate with the visitors in the way they can relate.

STEP TEN – Start an A/B test

Create alternative landing pages and form hypotheses whether these will work too on the web or not or if they will perform better with your current landing page or the landing page that you have just created.

Documentation is a critical part of the process. Through this, you can have a record of which works and which not. Some of the ideas will end up wrong and thrown out, but at least you have a document which you can refer to from time to time.

Make the most of your time by winning customers in less than a second. Treat your landing page as a venue where you can present and pitch ideas on how can you make your customers lives better with your product and services. Create a ‘hook’ that makes your prospects get to want more. For us, optimizing landing pages is one of the few ways to tell stories that feel better every time they are told. Stronger ROI awaits those firms which can choose the best SEO provider for them.

Source: Search Engine Journal | MOZ | ConversionXL

The post Steps in Optimizing a Landing Page (Part 3) appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.

Recap of Part 1:

STEP ZERO – Understand the target market

STEP ONE – Set up actionable goals

STEP TWO – Match the ad message with the landing page

STEP THREE – Evaluate the first impression

Andrew Grant said, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Indeed.

Do a simple search of your best performing keywords on Google. Click on the landing pages of your competitors. No, this is not about copying what your rivals are doing with their landing pages. Observe their landing pages. Can you immediately tell the first impressions that your rivals are trying to make?

Now, compare your landing page with that of your competitors for the same keyword. How do you feel? Look at your landing page? What impression is it trying to make? Is this the same first impression that you have when you are creating the page? Your answers are important.

See, it only takes less than a second to make an impression. In fact, our brain can process images in 0.013 seconds. This means a user can form his or her opinion regarding your landing page in just 0.05 seconds! Such an opinion will inform the user whether to stay in the page or move out and proceed to the next available landing page.

Strong first impressions are the main reason why message matching is vital in creating a landing page. Also, this is the same reason there should be an apparent degree of familiarity.

STEP FOUR – Determine the emotional resonance

Apart from building a profile of who your buyers are (buyer personas), there should be emotional triggers. These emotional triggers are what will resonate with the readers of your landing page.

Emotional triggers are very different from first impressions. First impressions are about the perceived level of familiarity, at least in our context, while emotional resonance is about enhancing the familiar elements for them to build momentum, hook the user and draw him or her deeper into the landing page.

Joy, horror, shock, pleasure and surprise are just some of these emotions that you can design the page for. After picking the mood, you can start incorporating colors, fonts, images, etc. Of course, you should not deviate from the brand’s color palette.

If you haven’t had a color theme, you can refer to this as your guide. Remember that the overall mood of the landing page is mostly about the coordination of the elements on the page.

STEP FIVE – Craft a compelling value proposition

Value proposition is what sets you apart from the competition. Focus on your product and service offerings and how they can improve the quality of life when prospects use any of them.

The value proposition should directly address the target market. It should include information on what can your product or service do. Tell them why your brand is unique. Show what the direct benefits are.

After reading the dominant headline of the landing page, the user will decide whether to continue reading or not. The first question is: Can this site solve my problem? There are just two answers: YES and NO. If your site doesn’t have the solution your user is looking for, he or she will look elsewhere.

Truth hurts, but what hurts more is when your site has what the user needs and yet the user still looked elsewhere. This is the reason value propositions must be direct and precise and answer all the questions a user have in mind. When this happens, you have a higher chance at keeping the interest of the user down to the last line of the page.

STEP SIX – Reinforce the message through images

In the same way that you cannot just pick any color or font that you want, you cannot just put images onto the landing page. Speak directly to your target market by selecting, designing or capturing images that strongly reinforce the mood of the page.

Images must be representative of the brand’s target market. Beyond that, however, the goal is selling the emotional value of the product or service especially those that your customers will get post-conversion.

There are basic journalistic rules where to place images (pyramid, inverted pyramid, etc.). Nonetheless, they should be utilized to hack the user’s natural viewing pattern. Some images can be also used in directing the user to where he or she should look next.

Bonus: Landing pages may also include explainer videos only when static images and texts cannot deeply explain the benefits of your products, for instance. Explainer videos are great if the product requires demonstration to use properly.

It is rather easier to create an image-rich landing page. What is more difficult is to build a landing page that will resonate with the readers emotionally, drawing them closer to devising a favorable first impression. There lies the challenge for the optimizers.

Source: Search Engine Journal | MOZ | ConversionXL

The post Steps in Optimizing a Landing Page (Part 2) appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.

STEP ZERO – Understand the target market

A major step, you need to get to know your target market. Understand their pain points. If you have to conduct surveys and interviews then so be it. You can even go the extra mile to list websites that your market is exposed to. Build a scenario of the typical online experience of your market.

Some questions worth answering are:

• Who are you?
• Why are you using our products?
• How did our products/services improve your life?
• Do you consider other products/services? Why?

The questions can uncover the recent trends in your niche that analytics cannot reveal. The biggest problem in designing landing page is they it doesn’t truly reflect who the page is for. It doesn’t directly reveal the level of online exposure the page is created for. This is the very first thing that SEO specialists must understand – the level of appeal of the landing page is not universal.

Remember that landing page design is not a game that SEO companies in the Philippines are battling to win over. Landing pages manifest themselves as opportunities to tap into the conscious decision-making of the prospects. A landing page is a venue to connect with and communicate value to the prospects. Accept that the connection is on the prospects’ terms and not yours, a necessary step in making better landing pages.

By virtue of customer development, you can devise a simple questionnaire so your landing page will resonate with the needs and wants of future traffic. This is the secret to designing a landing page that follows the expectations of the target market, thereby reducing friction it takes for a prospect to convert.

STEP ONE – Set up actionable goals

Google Analytics is an indispensable tool in the SEO world. Metrics provide actionable insights. As simple as it may seem, by analytics tend to intimidate and overwhelm even the experts. Actionable analytics are critical in creating highly-optimized landing pages. Making the most of the analytics is the secret.

Conversion goals need not be quantitative. In fact, only a few experts know the use of action-completed goals. An example is the total number of pages a user visited on your website. Google Analytics can be set up to reflect less than, equal to or greater than a specified number of page visited. Evidently, the goal is mapping out landing page conversion goals based on the performance data.

STEP TWO – Match the ad message with the landing page

Ad copies and landing pages must be synergized. If you already have landing pages, check the bounce rates on such. If the bounce rates are too high and the conversion rates are too low, then there is a message mismatch.

Next, check the ad copies directly pointing to which landing pages receiving the highest CTRs (click-through rates). Are they using the same language and voice? Are the images similar or synchronized? If NO and NO are your answers, then your landing pages are destined to fail. Apologies.

The reason? The landing pages do not correspond to the ad messages. Nine in 10 users expect the same headlines and images when they click the ad. Most feel ungrounded when they land on a totally different page. They will look for the headline that actually grabbed their attention, generally speaking.

Here’s a bonus: Users expect the same keywords to be apparent on the landing page as these are on the ad copy. As opposed to creating a landing page and having loosely targeted ads pointing to it, create targeted pages that focus on a group of related keywords.

Evidently, any digital marketer cannot do the first and second steps without a good grasp of who the target market really is. Next, we will discuss the importance of first impression, emotional resonance and value proposition.

Source: Search Engine Journal | MOZ | ConversionXL

The post Steps in Optimizing a Landing Page (Part 1) appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.