You ARE Optimizing Your Product Descriptions, Right?

Given the recent Google Panda algorithm change, it’s now more important than ever for businesses to take steps to insure that their content is fresh and original and not just copied verbatim from other sources. Retailers may have unconsciously been publishing unoriginal content by failing to optimize their product descriptions. Instead of taking the time to write their own unique product descriptions, a lot of retailers either copy from their competitors or use the exact same verbiage from the suppliers. While it may be tempting to do that, it can penalize your site for scraping content, so it really is worth the time to go through and start replacing any copied product descriptions you may have with fresh, original copy. Even though it may seem difficult to come up with new and interesting way to describe the products you offer, there are ways to accomplish this rather easily.

Learn All You Can About the Product

This may seem like a no-brainer, but a lot of retailers really don’t take the time to know the ins and outs of the products they’re selling. They will just copy down whatever description supplied by the manufacturer and call it a day. Instead of doing this, take the time to dissect the verbiage that came with it and rewrite it in a way that will be easily understood by your customers. Oftentimes, manufactures use jargon that is vague or unclear to the average person. If you run across copy like this, put yourself in the mind of whom you are marketing to and use terminology that’s easy to understand. You should also take this opportunity to address common questions customers may have had in the past about a particular product and to build the answer into the description.

Establish a Voice and Personality

Most product descriptions are dry and boring, yet they don’t need to be. This is your chance to establish a definite voice and personality for your brand. Weave in a little story about how the customer could use a particular product and describe how it could make them feel. Tapping into someone’s emotional state and mind and showing that by buying your product they can fulfill a certain need or provide a sense of security can be some very powerful stuff. Before writing descriptions, it might be very helpful to first write down information about your typical customers and how they might sound. By taking the time to do this step, you will find it easier to write creative content that will not only inform your customers, but will draw them in emotionally.

Implement SEO into Your Descriptions

Another benefit to rewriting your product descriptions is that it gives you the chance to optimize your content for the search engines in addition to your customers. Make sure you’re using keywords in your product titles and descriptions, but don’t overdo it. As a rule of thumb, use the keyword, or product name, once every 100 words. For each product description, you will want to link the most important keyword to the home page, preferably the first link within the description. Try and make your copy at least 250 words for maximum SEO benefit. It has been documented that search engines value variety, so, if appropriate, consider using a video to demonstrate how to use your product or highlight certain features. This is your chance to get creative so that you can showcase your products in the best light possible in a way that’s unique, exciting and attention getting.

Although the prospect of rewriting thousands of product descriptions is certainly daunting, you need to tackle the project one step at a time. First, identify your most popular, best-selling, highest-margin items and start with them. Then, after taking care of your most important accounts, tackle five products a day and, before you know it, you will have it done in no time and will be increasing your sales AND your search rankings!

Do You Have Bad Twitter Habits?

There’s no question that engaging in social media is an essential part of any company’s marketing strategy. Twitter is an extremely popular platform for connecting with your audience and establishing brand awareness. But, if you don’t follow the Twitter “netiquette”, you will be doing the opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish and will drive people away. Keep reading to make sure you aren’t unconsciously alienating your followers.

Don’t Automate

While some people use the auto-post option to streamline their efforts, this really isn’t a good idea. The whole purpose of engaging in social media is to forge meaningful connections with your customers and bombarding them with auto-generated content is the antithesis of that. Instead, take the time to find material yourself that you feel will be of interest to your followers. Similarly, do not send mass, automated direct messages. When you automate everything, you are basically telling your followers that they are all just faceless, nameless prospects that you really don’t care about.

Be Discerning

Don’t tweet about every single article you have ever written. You will not gain the attention and recognition you seek by force-feeding your content to your audience. Instead, take some time to look through your library and pick only the cream of the crop to Tweet about. Avoid tweeting old content; the very nature of Twitter necessitates content that is extremely current and up-to-date. No one wants to hear yesterday’s news, keep your tweets fresh. Also, do not Tweet too much. If you flood someone’s Twitter feed with dozens of messages, they will unfollow you very quickly. Choose quality over quantity to ensure that your followers will be hanging on your every word.

Mind Your Formatting

Tweets consist of up to 140 characters—that’s it. So, when you tweet, be mindful of this limit and word it so it falls within these parameters. You definitely do not want to break up your messages within multiple tweets; it will be too confusing and difficult to follow. If you are going to use Twitter effectively, you must operate within its framework and learn how to write so you can leverage its microblogging format to your advantage. You also want to avoid using too many abbreviations or text chat lingo. Yes, your text real estate is limited on Twitter, but you don’t want to alienate and confuse the majority of your audience by crafting tweets that are unreadable.

Yes, getting the hang of Twitter can be a bit challenging, but with a little bit of time and effort, you will get the hang of it. Before tweeting, make sure what you’re posting is relevant, is of high quality and is something that you feel casts your business in the best light.

Build Brand Awareness Online

If you want to be successful with your business, it’s vital that people know who you are and have a positive view of your brand. There are many simple ways you can create a buzz for yourself online; the trick is to get creative and think outside of the box to do so. With all of the tools and resources that are now readily available, if you put forth a bit of time and effort, you will be able to easily garner attention to your business and brand. Read on for a few ideas.

1. Match Your Blog and Social Media Profiles to Your Website

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s worth mentioning. It’s essential that the design of all your online content looks the same. Find blogging software that allows you to customize your design and lets you match the URL to your own domain. For social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, to name a few, you will need to create a custom social media avatar that you can use across these sites. But, since the image dimensions vary between these sites, you will need to tweak your logo for each account. If you don’t take the time to do this, you run the risk of your logo being cut off or stretched, which will look extremely unprofessional and tarnish your brand’s image. Although you cannot completely customize your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, Twitter allows you to do so, so make sure your profile matches the look and feel of your official website.

2. Cross-Reference All Your Profiles

Once you have all of your social media profiles looking their best, you will now want to link all of them together. Make sure your website and your blog have social media icons on them so users can go to them with a simple click of their mouse button. Similarly, you will want to make sure that all of your social media accounts link to your blog and website. By doing so, not only will you make it extremely easy for people to find your information, you will also be signaling to the search engines that all of your social profiles are related to your site, thus building relevance. If you correctly link all your accounts together, your social media sites will show up when someone enters your name into a search engine and will push any negative press or reviews off the first page of the SERPs.

3. Engage Your Existing Audience and Actively Woo New Fans

Being involved in the social media sphere presents you with endless opportunities to interact with your customers and reach out to potential ones. For instance, you can create contests, quizzes and surveys and provide fun rewards and promotions for the participants. Online gaming is huge, so if it fits in well with your niche, you may want to consider creating a game. Creating videos and interactive content such as infographics that aren’t directly related to your brand but are related to your niche will also go far in promoting your brand. You may also want to consider reaching out to your fans and brand loyalists to see if they would be interested in sharing a particular piece of content with their friends and followers. This move has multiple benefits—not only will you be increasing the chance of your content going viral, you will also be engaging in an open dialogue with your customers, which is another good way to boost your brand.

The above guidelines are but a few ways you can bolster your brand’s presence and gain credibility. You are only limited by your imagination and if you dedicate yourself to finding new and innovative ways to spread the word, you are certain to be amazed by the results!

Landing Page Optimization

Landing pages play an important part in converting visitors to customers, so great care needs to be taken when creating these pages. A landing page is a specialized page where someone is directed when they click on your link from an email or social media sharing sites. Since the landing page is the first thing visitors new to your site will see, it’s of the utmost important to make sure this page is optimized for optimum conversion. Following are a few suggestions for making the most of your landing page.

Keep it Simple

The primary purpose of a landing page is to tell your visitors what you want from them, whether that be purchasing a product or signing up for a service. Thus, you want to have as few distractions as possible to divert visitors from the main call to action. Avoid superfluous images and text that can overwhelm and divert a visitor from the reason why they’re on the page to begin with. Your landing page isn’t the place to experiment with different fonts and design elements. The best plan of action is to keep the fonts simple and easy to read and to use white space and headers to organize your information.

Put the Important Information Above the Fold

People want to be able to find the information they seek and do so fast, so it’s extremely important to place your call to action towards the top of your landing page. You definitely don’t want to make visitors have to scroll over halfway down the page to find the sign up button. Make it as easy as possible for them to find the appropriate information by putting it at the top of the page and list the less important data below it.

Hone Your Content

Since your landing page’s function is to achieve a conversion as quickly as possible, you’ll want to use text sparingly, yet effectively. You don’t want to throw up just any old content; rather, it needs to be carefully crafted so it has the most impact. After all, it is the wording that will be doing the selling, so you need to pay attention to every word, from the first line in the headline to the last one in your call to action. Just remember to keep your message clear and to the point to avoid any confusion or uncertainty.

Keep in mind that there’s no exact science to landing page optimization and that constant testing and experimenting is necessary to find what will work best for your particular company. If you aren’t getting the results you are after, try tweaking your headlines and the wording of your copy. Don’t get discouraged if at first you aren’t able to succeed—just keep trying!

The Importance of Meta Tags

Over the past couple of years, the use of meta tags have become widely debated, with many abandoning them because they don’t have a measurable affect in search engine placement. While this is true, meta tags don’t factor into how the search engines will rank your site, they still have an extremely useful function and if you aren’t using them to their full potential, you’re seriously hampering the effectiveness of your website. Meta tags control the information that’s listed about your site on the search engine results pages (SERPs) and it’s crucial to optimize it to generate traffic and conversions. Following are examinations of the most useful meta tags and how they can boost your business’s reputation.

Title Tags

Title tags define what your business is about, so you definitely don’t want to leave it blank. If you do, Google will create one for you and do you really want a third party defining your company for you? Of course not, so don’t overlook this crucial step. When choosing a title, make the most of the ~60 characters that are available to you by listing your organization’s name and a descriptive tag line. You will want to create a different title tag for each individual page within your website by acting as though you are placing an ad for each particular page. Take some time to come up with copy that will entice users to click through by thinking of what would lead you to be interested. This process sounds very time consuming, but it only takes a few seconds if you do them as you create the pages.

Description Tags

These tags generate the description that shows up underneath your website’s title on the SERPs. Again, while Google has acknowledged they don’t use this information for ranking purposes, it’s still very important to include it. This is your chance to list more in-depth information about your company and to represent your brand so people will be interested in learning more. Don’t merely repeat what you put in your title tag; instead, enhance your title, be as descriptive as possible and don’t waste this precious real estate with quotes, dashes or other non-alphanumeric characters. If you don’t create a description tag yourself, a random snippet of text will be chosen from your site by the search engine and it may not always make sense or be relevant.

When you take time to optimize your meta tags, you are signaling to those who come across your website that you’re a business that wants to be taken seriously and cares about its customers. While it’s desirable to be ranked well in the search engines, you need to keep in mind it’s actual human visitors, not search engine spiders, who will be buying your product!

SEO and Usability — What’s More Important?

We’ve all heard the old question, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” When it comes to creating a successful website, it’s easy to get bogged down by a similar issue; specifically, is it more important to create an amazing-looking website that dazzles visitors and is easy to navigate or is implementing SEO the most valuable use of time? If you want your website to be a success, it’s necessary to find the ideal balance between these two very different elements so your site is findable and engages visitors and converts them to buyers (or, whatever else it is you’re trying to accomplish with your website).

Another old adage comes to mind surrounding the SEO vs. usability debate: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” In other words, you could have the greatest website in the world, but if no one is able to find it, it may as well not exist. Therefore, it is very important to optimize your site with the use of keywords, links and quality content so it can be easily found when someone performs a search.

While there’s no denying the importance of getting your site to rank at the top of search results, it’s essential to make sure once users find your site, they will want to stay there. Having a well-structured, easy-to-navigate site is crucial in being able to convert visitors into consumers of your brand or product. Now that you have people in the forest to hear the tree fall, so to speak, you have to make sure your website will make them want to stick around.

Even though it can be a delicate balancing act to get SEO and usability to work well together, by following a few tips, you will get started down the right path. For one thing, these two components of your site should be weighed equally from the very beginning of the creation of your website. At the outset, if your SEO and design teams are considered equally important and work well together, you will be saving yourself from a lot of problems down the road. Also, at certain times, SEO will need to take top priority over usability and vice versa, so the ability to recognize this fact and make adjustments as time goes by will be key to your continued success. It takes careful planning to please both your human visitors and search engine spiders and with some experimentation, you will be able to accomplish this goal!

Are You Doing Anything to Build a Good Online Reputation?

When was the last time you Googled your name to see what others were saying about you online? If you haven’t done this in a while, it is a must to determine what others have to say about you or your business. Being aware of your reputation and then taking proactive steps to cultivate it is essential to your success. Even if you find that nothing has been said, this indicates you have a lack of reputation, which is not a good thing. Make 2011 the year you take control of your reputation and take active steps to ensure that when people Google you, only the positives emerge.

Actively Engage in Social Media

This point has been pounded into the ground but it really is that important. You must be proactive and set up a Twitter, Facebook and other profiles, for if you don’t, in time, others will and it most likely will not be complimentary. You really don’t want your Internet presence to be hijacked by someone who, for one reason or another, may harbor a grudge against your company. So, if you have yet to do so, the first step to take is to create social media accounts so you can control the message that’s being communicated online about your company.

Monitor What is Being Said and Respond Thoughtfully

Now that you have entered into the social arena online, it is crucial to actively listen to what is being said and, before responding to any criticism or complaints, to take plenty of time to research what happened and why. You should put twice as much effort into reading and analyzing what is being said as you do into responding to it. By taking ample time to simple “listen” to everything that’s being said, you will be able to determine the underlying issues surrounding a particular problem and come up with a solution that will bode well for the long term.

Analyze Your Weaknesses and Formulate a Plan of Action

Perhaps you have discovered a huge mistake your business recently made (it happens!) and before news gets out about your error, you need to address it online. Don’t ever try to hide anything, for your customers will find out one way or another and it is best if it is from you. By acknowledging your weakness and being upfront, you are establishing yourself as an honest and accountable enterprise that truly cares about its clientele and is willing to admit to its shortcomings. This openness and honesty is key in your being able to build a good reputation and although it may be a bit difficult, it is worth the payoff.

The key takeaway here is you must invest time and effort into building a reputation built on honesty, transparency and accountability. The masses can either sing your praises or they can destroy your brand—it is up to turn the tide in your favor. Your willingness to face customer complaints head-on and not letting stubbornness or pride lead you to make rash decisions are your biggest assets in ensuring your reputation is as good as it can be.