What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the way you structure your website and your content so that it can be found and indexed by search engines like Google. When you optimise your website for search engines, it makes your site visible to search engines and therefore to the users.

Why is SEO important?

Studies show that 95% of NZ adult Internet users research goods and services online before making a purchase. This means that even though people might see your offline advertising offline or a sign they are highly likely to jump online to search for the products or services.

It's also well known that most users only browse through the first page and if they don't find answers to their query, they will click through to the second page but very few go past the second page. So if your website is not listed in the first couple of pages, chances are no one can find you. Instead, the users will probably find your competitors. Therefore, being seen on the first page of the search results should be one of your priorities when promoting your website.

To get your website ranking highly on Google, it pays to understand how Google actually works.

> Read our article on how Google works

This post has been updated - May 2016.

Recommended reading prior to this blog post:
The importance of identifying the right keyword phrases for your website and how you can do it yourself.

So how does Google Adwords work?

When you did the keyword analysis as detailed in the link above, you would have ended up with a whole bunch of keyword phrases which are part of keyword segment groups. For each of these segments you will create an Adgroup. For each Adgroup, you will create an advert that Google will display when a user searches for any of the keywords within that keyword segment. If a user clicks on your ad, you will pay Google an amount that you specify.

The structure of a Google Adwords account

The structure of Google Adwords is made up by a campaign (which could be area specific like NZ or Australia). Under each campaign, you have an Adgroup (which is the keyword segment) and you will create an ad for each Adgroup, which will use the keyword phrases under that particular segment.

How does Google position your ads?

Google calculates your position in the paid search results based on two main things: Cost per click (CPC) and  Quality Score (QS). If there are no competitors for your keywords, you will pay the minimum cost of 5c per click and be at the top of the page. When you do have competition, you'll need to outbid them in order to gain placement. It's not always the highest bidder that wins however, and that is where QS comes in. A lot of how Google determines QS is kept secret (for obvious reasons), but we do know it takes into account factors such as landing page, ad relevance, click through rate, web design, historical statistics etc. Basically, Google will serve the highest quality ads to customers that are going to be most interested in the offering, even if it means they will make less money per click.

Make your ads and landing pages relevant to your keywords

If there is one thing that you should always keep in mind when setting up a Google Adwords campaign it's relevancy. It is very important that you make your ad and landing page highly relevant to your keywords. This is why we go through so much trouble to segment our keywords. With our 'Give a duck' example from this post, we determined a segment 'bath toy' which contains many phrases centered around the theme: 'bath toys', such as 'baby bath', 'bath for baby', 'bath toy', 'water toys', 'bath for kids', etc. So with this in mind we would create an ad using these keywords and we would also make sure that these search phrases were incorporated into our landing page so it all ties in together and makes sense for the user.

Create new campaign

Before you create a campaign you'll need to sign up to Google Adwords account. Simply follow the directions supplied by Google.

You can create campaigns to target customers who browse the Internet:

• from a specific geographic area
• using a specific language
• with a certain type of device like mobile phones/tablets

If you need to, you can set up different campaigns for targeting different geographic locations. For example, we might decide to sell rubber ducks to New Zealand and also Australia. We would create a separate campaign for each country and label them 'Rubber duck NZ' and 'Rubber duck Aus'. We can also create a campaigns specific to regions within a country like Auckland or Wellington. A photographer based in Wellington, for example, will likely target Wellington only. Keep in mind that it can be difficult to keep track of multiple campaigns, so make sure it is something you absolutely require.

Setting up your campaign on Google Adwords:

1. Name your campaign
2. Select the relevant location. This can be either entire country, a city or a radius from a certain point or an arbitrary shape that you can draw on the map.
3. Select the language.
4. Choose the device type (we generally recommend starting with all devices).
5. Choose a network. We recommend just the search network to begin with. You can always set up a new campaign to target the display network.
6. Select your bidding option (we generally recommend starting out with automatic bidding to maximise clicks).
7. Set your budget, which is the amount of dollars you want to spend per day. This means that if you have a budget of $200 per month you would divide by 30 to give you about $7 per day. We generally recommend that you start with at least $200 per month, but a maximum of $500 to a $1000 per month. This is a good start for testing purposes, but budget can be analysed after keyword research when CPC's have been defined.
8. Don't worry about advanced settings for now.
9. Click next.

 

Steps for setting up an Adgroup

1. Choose a keyword segment for your first Adgroup. We have decided to start with the segment 'bath toys'.
2. Review the top most popular search phrases to work out the keywords that you should use in your ad. Our top phrases include: 'bath for baby', 'bath toy', 'water toys', 'bath for kids', 'bath toys', and 'toys bath'. We would use phrase 'bath toy for baby' in our ad which includes most of the words from all our top phrases, especially the headline.
3. Write your headline.
4. Write each description line.
5. Set your display URL. Again use your target keywords or phrases that help to qualify the user. For example we used www.giveaduck.org/RubberDuck. Note this does not need to be the actual URL. It is there to give the user an idea of where they are going to be taken. It must also incorporate your domain (giveaduck.org).
6. Set your description URL. Find the most suitable landing page that the visitor is taken to when they click on your ad. Make it specific to your ad, make it relevant and ensure that it uses the target search phrases. Avoid sending people to your generic homepage.
7. Copy and paste all the keywords associated with the chosen segment from your research, into the keywords field.
8. Save your ad. Once you have set this up, the ad will be sent to a real person at Google for authorisation.

Set up an Ad

1. Use your most popular search phrases in your ads, especially the title of the ad. 
2. Check out what local competitors are doing and also look at what might be working globally. Try a google.co.uk search for the same keyword phrases and see what the ads look like.
3. Convey your unique selling proposition (USP) in your ads: 'Money to charity', 'Largest range', 'Good price', etc.
4. Add a call to action and it's always great to create a bit of urgency: 'Buy Now', 'Don't miss out', etc.
5. Add a compelling offer: 'Free delivery', 'Mothers day sale', 'Half price', etc.
6. Think about qualifying your customer. We don't want to incur the cost of people clicking on our ad if they are not interested in our offer. You need to make up an ad that compels quality clicks that result in a sale.
7. Include prices if possible;this is a great way to make sure that people that click on your ad are actually willing to pay the price. It's also a great way to convey discounts.
8. Split test multiple ads. This means for each Adgroup, create at least two ads with one or two elements that are different so you can find out what's working better. So you can choose to change the headline to see if that makes a difference or you can choose to change the offer in the ad to see what's perceived as more important. It will also allow you to test which ad clicks actually result in sales.
9. Avoid using competitor brand names.

 

Split test your ad

It is very important that you split test your ad. This means just changing one or two aspects of a Ad group to test out what's working better. It will allow you to test which offer is perceived as being more attractive and which ad click actually converts into a sale. Keep in mind an effective split test needs a large audience, so you may want to wait on this until you're getting a lot of interest in your ads.

Steps to create a split test

   

1. Create a new ad under the ad group. You can do this once you have saved your ad.
2. Avoid making too many changes to the ad - just change either the headline, or your offer or your USP.
3. In our case, we want test out our offer vs. the USP. So we are trialing out to see if users are more motivated to click an ad because of charity or because of free delivery.
4. Allow for an appropriate period of time to gain significant results before analysing the data and implementing changes.

Note that Google will start monitor your split tests and if one them is really under performing, it will cease to run that ad so as to make sure that your click rate is high.

Billing

We like to recommend that you use the Postpay billing option to ensure that your ads are running smoothly. Often a prepaid balance will run out and your ads will dry-up, meaning once your prepaid balance is out, you will have no click throughs. This means that you will start to lose traffic and more importantly you will lose important test data. It makes it difficult to test and tune your ads and your landing pages if you have big holes in your reports.

Postpay billing isn't a scary option either because you will have set your budget beforehand. There is no way Google will let your spend go over your budget. If you decide that you don't want to spend anymore money on Adwords, you can go in and cancel anytime you like.

Going Live

Your ads will not go live straight away because Google will need to review the ads to make sure that they pass their criteria. This will usually take around a day or so before your ad can go live.

 

We've tried to make this process as simple as possible but you can always get us to help you with it instead. Contact us to find out more.

If you've read our article on the importance of doing a keyword analysis, then you know identifying the right search phrases has a number of advantages. It is the most important step before setting up a Google Adwords campaign and helps in optimising your organic search engine ranking.

Before we get started...

In this article, we will take you through a simplified version of the process our Google Adwords specialists follow to find the right keywords and phrases. We encourage you to follow this process but please note that it is still complex; we've simplified it as much as possible without losing value. If you feel that the full process is too difficult to follow, you can still get started on the first couple of steps which will give you a good idea of what your customers are searching for on Google. Otherwise, you might be interested in some help from our Google certified experts, which includes a keyword analysis: contact us to find out more.

Tools for the job

We recommend that you use a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a similar package to follow this process, and you will need to have some proficiency to complete this process. You will also need access to the Google Adwords Keyword tool.

Step 1: Brainstorm seed keywords

Brainstorm all the phrases your customer could be typing into Google to find your business. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and imagine yourself performing a Google search. What would you type into the search field to find a solution to your problem? This means starting with 'seed keywords' which is a certain topic or idea, and then thinking of a few search phrases under each seed. So for Zeald's 'Give a duck' website (which sells rubber ducks for charity), one seed might be 'rubber duck', another might be 'toy'.

• Think about the primary search phrases that describe your website or industry in general. For the rubber duck website we would use children's toys'.
• Make a big list of phrases. Think of every possible scenario including local searches like 'rubber duck nz'.
• Consider famous brands that you might also stock as part of your business, be careful to not use a competitor brand though.
• Also consider related themes like 'baby shower gift' that might have lower competition than 'childrens toy', but still has high traffic.
• Solve the problems of your target market.
• For large catalogues consider different product categories. For example, rubber duck is a small catalogue, but it might be just one category of a larger children's toys website.

Step 2: Segment the keywords

Group the phrases you have come up with into various themes, usually the 'seed' you start with can be the segment heading. The segments might be for different product groups that your company offers. Or they could be different target customer groups searching for your company's products and services in different ways. Consider different uses of the same product or different target customers or the same customer at different buying stages.

For a traditional website that does not have a large catalogue, you should have up to 5 different segments initially.  You will use these to optimise your homepage and the site in general.

A large catalogue website may have many more than 5 segments. For example an automotive parts website might have many different themes, such as brakes, windscreens, wheels, oil, cleaning products, etc. To begin with, you should focus on the general theme of the website which would be something like "auto products", or "car parts", etc. You can repeat this exercise later to research the different categories.

Step 3: Determine search volume

We can determine the volume of each of the search phrases you have brainstormed using Google's Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool also allows you to determine search volume of a phrase specific to New Zealand or other geographic locations.

1. Once you have setup a Google Adwords account and logged in, click on 'Reporting and Tools' in the menu bar and select 'Keyword Tool'.
   

2. Firstly change your geographical location to match your business. For 'Give a duck' this would be New Zealand. Click on 'Advanced Options' (next to United States and English) and choose the your desired location.

3. Now copy and paste your seed keywords, one segment at a time into the 'word or phrase' box and click 'search'. Google will come back with a big list of search phrases related to your seed word segment along with search volumes for each.

4. On the left hand menu, Set the 'Match type' to be 'Phrase'. Google will return the search results with quotes around the phrases which are the exact search phrases in the order that you typed into the box. It might have additions around it like adding 'buy'. This step will be very helpful later on when you start a PPC campaign.

5. Export the results to Excel using the 'download' button. Copy and paste the results into an Excel spread sheet (call the tab something like 'Primary keywords').

6. Keep the words in keyword groups by adding a new column at the start of the sheet and filling it with the segment title, in our case, 'rubber duck'. So every keyword should have the relevant segment heading next to it.

7. Repeat this for each segment and make sure that you run a separate keyword search for every different geographical location. Keep adding the search results back into the 'Primary Keywords' tab and write the name of the segment heading next to the words for each keyword.

Step 4 - Shortlist your words

We now need to shortlist the phrases into a more manageable number:

1. Tidy the spreadsheet

You can do this by removing unused columns, and leaving just the following columns:

• Global Monthly Searches
• Local Monthly Searches
• Estimated average CPC
• Advertiser competition
• Plus keyword phrases and segment headings of course

2. Shortlist by search volume

• Order by 'local search volume' or 'global search volume' depending on the location of your primary target market so that the most popular terms appear at the top. Use the Excel sort function for this operation.

• Delete all the rows which have 0 or low search volume, maybe 10% or 20% of your total search phrases depending on how many you have and how thorough you want to be with this process. The less phrases you have the quicker it will be but the greater the chance you could miss out on a golden opportunity.

3. Shortlist by relevancy

• Remove all duplicates. Because we have researched the popularity of each keyword segment separately with Google Adwords, there is bound to be some cross over. We need to remove this crossover. You can use the 'Remove duplicates' option under the 'Data' tab within Excel. Make sure that you choose the 'Keyword' column only.
• Work your way down each keyword/phrase and remove any rows that are obviously not relevant to your business. For example the phrase 'Toy story 3' is the name of a movie with a large number of page views and not really relevant to our business. Likewise with 'wooden toys'.
• Consider removing competitor brand names. It is not considered good practice to use competitor brand names. For example with the 'Give a duck' website we would remove the phrase 'Toys are us' because this is a competitor.
• Consider commercial intent. There is a tool available online which can give you a bit of guidance on commercial intent if you are not sure of a certain phrase yourself. Click on the 'query' button, type in the search phrase and click go. The result is a percentage so 'commercial intent of .29' indicates a commercial intent of 29% and 'non-commercial intent .29' indicates a commercial intent of 81%. Phrases with really low commercial intent can be removed as well.

This is a long and can be tedious task that requires a lot of concentration so have lots of caffeine on hand.

Once you are done re-order the spreadsheet based on the 'Group' first and then the 'local/global monthly searches' using the 'Sort & filter' function.

Pheeeew ! Well done!

If you have followed this whole process, well done! Now you have a comprehensive list of keywords grouped into relevant themes, and ordered by their popularity.

You should also have a sound understanding for the type of language that your target customers are using online.

You should have had many different insights and hopefully discovered some nice little opportunities.

What next?

Now you can setup a PPC (Google Adwords) campaign using these search phrases and the themes you have created will form your Adgroups. You can then craft your ad-creative using the search phrase from each group with the highest popularity as your headline.

If you've understood and implemented everything above, then well done! If you haven't managed to figure it out on your own, please don't hesitate to contact us for a free consultation.

Directories can have a serious impact on the results that you achieve in the crawler-based search engines.  Submitting to the directories is a good idea – but they can take a substantial amount of time to list you. So start early!

One of the most important things that you must prepare before submitting yourself to a directory is an objective description of your website.  Directories will frown upon any description that seems promotional in nature and will reject your listing.  Make sure you prepare an objective, well-written description of your website before you start.

Some of the key directories to list in are:

• www.dmoz.com

If you are a New Zealand-only business then submit your site to New Zealand-based directories.

• www.yellow.co.nz
• www.searchnz.co.nz
• www.indexnz.com
• www.linknz.co.nz
• www.accessnz.co.nz
• www.netfinder.co.nz
• www.nzs.com
• www.nzsearch.com
• www.nzpages.co.nz

Find more directories relevant to your business

Search for relevant and quality directory websites using Google. Type in the following search string. 'Directory:[keyword describing my website theme]'.  You will need to choose a very generic keyword.  For example a website selling meat to a New Zealand market could try the following searches to find relevant directories. “New Zealand” “Meat” “Butcher” “Recipes”

Keep track of your inbound links

Keep track of your list in a spreadsheet and constantly add to it. Signup for Google Alerts and then Google will notify you when they have found a new website linking to your website.

Christmas is pretty much around the corner now so it's a great idea for you to start preparing your business and website so you can make the most of the busy sales period.

We have a few tips to help you stay ahead of competition:

1. Research the competition

It pays to spend some time finding out about your competition. What are they doing? What products are they pushing? What extras are they offering? This will give you an idea about what everyone else is doing and maybe give you a chance to think of something that others haven't already thought of doing. Even looking at similar companies overseas to see what they have come up with can be really insightful – you might be able to localise something someone has done successfully.

2. Make sure you spend a bit of time on your website as a customer

Go through the motions and check that everything works - and even better if you can get a friend to do it. Set them objectives and watch them use your website and get their feedback. There is nothing worse than having someone visit your website and go through the process of making a purchase decision and then getting an error. Check all your processes and pages so you can rest easy knowing that there won't be any last minute hiccups.

3. Use email newsletters

Email newsletters are a great way to inform your customers about special Christmas offers and new product releases. Even if you don't have an ecommerce site, you can run specials on your services and tell people about it via newsletters. Therefore, if you don't already have a newsletter, it's well worth investing in one before the holiday period so you can take full advantage of all the benefits it can offer. Make sure that you also give every website visitor the chance to sign up to the newsletter even if they don't purchase your products or services – have a clear area on your homepage where they can sign up for updates from you.

If you'd like to enquire about Zeald's Email Marketing package, drop us a line and we'll give you all the info you need to know.

4. Introduce special offers

Once you have a newsletter in place, you can use it to create all sorts of great Christmas related offers. Maybe a countdown to Christmas with an offer each day – like a 12 days till Christmas campaign or if your products or services have mass appeal, you could even try approaching one day sale websites such as Grab One or 1-day sale to ramp up sales.

Also create urgency by letting them know the last day for ordering their presents to have it delivered it in time for Christmas. This will remind them to get in before the rush and it will make it easy for you to handle the delivery schedules.

5. Use social media

Remember to use social media and blogs to promote your offers. Social media is a great free tool you can use to grow your community so you can effectively promote your products and services.

6. Give your store or premises a festive make over

It doesn't have to be drastic, even a few subtle additions can give it a bit of the holiday cheer. Same goes for your website, have a few festive images and maybe update your logo to create a bit of a holiday theme.

7. Add vouchers

If you don't already have vouchers available, it's a great time to introduce them to your store and your website. Lots of people struggle to think of the perfect present so vouchers are a popular option for Christmas.

8. Free shipping

If you have an ecommerce or ecommerce+ site, free shipping around holiday time will give your visitors an incentive to order from you. If you don't want to offer this on small purchases you can set a certain value, maybe free shipping on orders more than $50 or $100. This might even motivate your users to spend more to qualify for the perk.

9. Gift wrapping

Gift wrapping and Christmas card could add a nice touch to your ecommerce business as well. You can do it for free or maybe include a small Christmas card along with the gift and charge a small amount. But think about the bigger picture and the fact that you could be giving yourself the edge with a small perk like this.

10. Think about the late shoppers

There will always be people that will leave Christmas shopping right till the end so offer some form of last minute pick up or an urgent delivery system.

11. Offer gift ideas on your website

Create gift idea sections such as 'by gender', 'by type' and 'by price' making it easy for your website visitors to find what they are looking for. You could even have categories like 'for chocolate lovers' or 'for someone that has everything'. That way you will increase the chance of your website visitor finding the right product on your website.

12. Extend your return period

Holiday period can be very busy and and some people do buy gifts well ahead of time so add a nice touch and extend your return or exchange period. This will help make your visitor feel more at ease when purchasing online or even in your store.

Adding video to your website can help attract visitors, add value, and also improve the site's persuasion.

Over the last few years, there have been huge improvements to the Internet speeds thanks to broadband, the readily available video formats and also the cell phone technology which allows users to take videos and also watch videos easily. This means that we are able to produce videos and consume videos easily compared to say a few years ago. And studies are showing that people consume a LOT of video online. According to Youtube, viewers watch 4 billion videos online each day.

Video entertains and educates

Video is both audio and visual which makes it not only more entertaining but also more memorable. It's no surprise that these days more people watch movies than read novels, and scientists have found that using audio and visual content together makes people retain more than twice as much as when using only audio or visual components. We live in an increasingly multimedia based world.

Video gets shared

Website users share videos more often than they do websites or blog posts. Videos are more likely to be shared by email and the ever popular social media websites.

Videos make a site dynamic

Videos add dynamic appeal to a site by their mere presence.  These days website users are overloaded with text information and a video provides a great change from the text.  Videos also show that you are more savvy with technology and possibly a leader in your industry.

Video is great for Search engine optimisation (SEO)

YouTube as a search engine

YouTube itself is now the second largest search engine online. Without video this massive market cannot be reached.

Google searches

Google own YouTube and have been actively pushing a more multimedia online experience. Google now list video results separately. For an example type “farming” into Google and you will see a section titled “videos for farming”. This effectively means that if you have video content then you have two chances of showing up in any Google search. Either your site or your video could show up independently of one another. That gives you a big advantage when it comes to getting noticed.

Improvements in video search technology

It used to be true that video couldn’t be “read” (keywords extracted) by the search bots, but now it is! YouTube have introduced closed captioning options when a video gets uploaded which means not only is the description indexed (along with the selected keywords), but also every word spoken in the video can be indexed as well by uploading a transcript along with it. This improves your chance of getting to the right people by adding a massive amount of text that can show up on any given search query.

Ideal for new and small sites

Video SEO is also a powerful tool for new and small sites. Normal website results gain strength over time and for their size but video works differently. Google takes no account of how old a video is or its length etc when determining its rank. This gives you an equal footing with more established videos on the results page.

Inbound links

Having videos uploaded to other sites allows you to gain inbound links. Not only can those links be followed to your site but also the fact of having them gives you an advantage with Google pagerank system.

With input from Nathan Hawkins from Insite Media (www.insitemedia.co.nz)

Stay tuned for our follow-up post on how to produce video for your website...

If you already have videos you'd like to add to your website, learn more about how to embed them on your website.

What is a blog?

A blog (from the term "web log") is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging (such as twitter) is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112,000,000 blogs.

How are blogs good for business?

Blogs are a good way to publish and organise content that changes on a regular basis. They are a great way to keep your potential customers, your customers and your staff informed about changes or learnings you or your company have made. Some common examples include:

1. Company news - Let your customers and potential customers know what your company are up to, great for building rapport and trust and credibility
2. PR - Let your customers and potential customers know how well you are doing in the media - Great for trust and credibility
3. Sharing knowledge - Share helpful information and learnings with your customers and potential customers. Great for building trust and credibility, great for customer retention. Prove to everyone that you are knowledgable, interested in providing great value, and helpful; that you are the leader in your industry.
4. Internal help files - Blogs can be used just for internal use, for example these help files could be defined as a blog

Good for Branding
Blogs are a great way for a company to engage with their customers and show their true colours. Blogs are written in a more "personal" manner to a standard website article. They are not laboured over and they give a customer a real and honest window into who they might be or are dealing with.

Searchable
Blogs grow at a rapid rate, and the information is usually archived by time and categorised which allows users to find information from the history of previous posts. The information is searchable, either internally or via the search engines.

Centralised
The information is centralised and available to everyone. Blogs work very well with promotional announcement tools such as email marketing, Twitter, Facebook, etc. When you have something to announce in an email it is often a great idea to publish just snippets in the email and link through to a full article in a blog.

Great for Search engines
Search engines love "up-to-date" content. Search engines are always looking for the most up-to-date information to serve to their users, based on the search query. This is becoming more and more important with the development of social media tools such as Twitter and Google Buzz.
Blogs are a great format to publish regular up-to-date information to the web. Search engines love them. If you are looking to improve your Search engine presence, you need to publish a blog.

'Link bait' - For good search engine results you need to provide quality  content that other people will want to link to. There are so many million blogs out there, you need to differentiate yours by finding a niche and  providing really good quality, interesting, informative, funny, perhaps controversial content. If people read it, enjoy it, and link to it, you have generated an inbound link which is like a "vote" for your blog in the eyes of the search engines when they come to rank your website.

Because of this it is a good idea to setup your blog on the same "domain" or address as your business website. For example www.zeald.com/blog or www.blog.zeald.com

So what is involved in setting up and running a successful blog?

Resource - You need to have someone to write your content. This is the common flaw with most business blogs. You need someone who:

1. Understands and has a passion for your business
2. Someone who is a good efficient writer
3. Someone who's "voice" or "style" matches your companies brand
4. Someone with a spot of "X" factor. Someone who is maybe opinionated, funny, quirky, creative, or very knowledgeable
5. Someone with the time. set aside some days per month to create blog posts, and promote them

Intel - You need some ideas for what to write about. This is especially important if you are setting up a blog to generate qualified search engine traffic. You need to find out what your potential customers are searching for with regard to your product / service. This is where keyword research comes in handy. Another good method is to use your customer FAQ. What questions are your existing customers commonly asking you? Chances are your potential customers are asking the same questions.

Method to publish - You need a blog itself and a method for publishing the content to the web. Remember a blog is essentially a website so any content management system will allow you to do this. There are plenty of free blog publishing software out there such as blogger or Wordpress.



Method of promotion - Of course a blog on its own is not much good if you cant tell people when you have published some new information. You need a way to tell all interested parties that you have some interesting news for them. The best method for promoting blog articles is really your trusty email. You can also use Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds and a multitude of other social media applications.

Make it easy for users to share - Once you get people to your blog, make it easy for visitors to share it with their friends and colleagues. Chances are if they like it, they will know someone else who will like it. Some common methods for sharing links include: a "Share this" badge, a "Tweet this" badge, or a "Buzz this" badge. You can get a Share this badge from  Addthis. You can then add the code to each page of your blog or website yourself. Or you can get Zeald to add it to the template of your website for you. This means the badge will appear in the footer of every page of your website automatically.

Followers - Once you have the content and the method of broadcasting, you then need some interested parties. This involves building an email database, building a Twitter fellowship or a Facebook fan club. You might already have a good database of customers that you can start with, but you should look to continually build and refine this database.

Engage - Blogs work best when you can engage with your users. Blogs are a core element of the Web 2.0 revolution, where the content is driven and generated by the end user. Users will expect to interact and post comments and discuss issues directly and publicly with you. This can be scary to begin with but once you get past that, you will find it very effective. Let your users write your content for you, let them voice their opinions, ask their questions and have your say.

Setup a third party blog
This is a good free way to setup a blog for your business. You can very easily and quickly setup a new blog with a specialist blog software such as blogger. Using such software you are able to design a "header" and choose from a number of pre-formatted templates to fit with your companies brand.

You should link to your blog from your website in a new window.

You should setup your blog with a sub domain of your primary website address. For example www.blog.zeald.com is a subdomain of the primary www.zeald.com website address. Blogger help will explain how you can do this.

Limitations of Blogger:

• The design options are also very limited and templated.
• Because it is free it is very DIY. You will need to design it yourself or pay a design company to help you. 
• Blogger does not have a phone helpline, so you are reliant on just help files.
• Unable to incorpoarte it within your website. The external blog must remain just that. You will need to link to it in a popup window - It is never a good idea to "Iframe" an external blog into your website, for usability and SEO reasons

Setup a Zeald blog

Try the Zeald blogging tool that allows you to easily post news updates and articles to your sites. It integrates nicely into the front end and back end of your Zeald website. 
Learn about our Blogs and Social Networking product and fast track your blogging and Social media.

Email marketing

Which ever option you choose for your blog platform, if you are setting up a blog, you need to setup email marketing. The two go hand in hand. Build up a database of followers. Send out religiously a new campaign every 2 months. You might like to send more regular campaigns, but make sure that you are not annoying your customers and make sure you have enough good quality content. If you leave it much more than 2 months, your audience might forget who you are.
Email marketing is the method you use to broadcast, how you let everyone who is interested know that you have new content on your blog. You should also consider building a social network using tools such as Twitter and Facebook.
Learn about Zeald email marketing

In Summary

Ultimately it is your call, but really the technology you use is the small investment you will be making. The bigger decisions will be in your management resource. Who is going to own this task and make it work for you?

All the best with it! If you have any further queries with regard to setting up a blog on your website, please use our comments or speak with your Zeald ebusiness consultant

Stay tuned we will be adding to these articles to offer further advice and guidance.

Create a keyword rich signature to include at the bottom of your post whenever you discuss topics in an online forum.  Determine relevant forums and blogs to link to your website and contribute to the discussions that are occurring in these places.  Don't forget to include your signature whenever you post. 

Take care to spend some time in the forum getting to know the people, and the etiquette. Do not use forums and blogs to "advertise" your business or your products. This will be viewed as spam and you could find that the exercise has a negative eff

Finding relevant, quality forums and blogs

To discover good forums and blogs, search for relevant and quality forums or blog sites using Google.  You can use a search string similar to the following -'forum:[keyword describing my website theme]' You will need to choose a very generic keyword. For example a website selling meat to a New Zealand market could try the following searches to find relevant forums. “New Zealand” “Meat” “Butcher” “Recipes”

Hint. Keep track of your list of relevant forums and blogs in a spreadsheet and constantly add to it. If you haven't already, don't forget to sign up for Google Alerts.  Google will then notify you whenever they find a new link to your website.

The success of any website is measured by the results that it achieves - and it can be attributed to two main metrics - the amount of 'targeted traffic' to the website and the conversion rate of the website. By 'targeted traffic' we mean that the traffic to your website is well qualified and targeted, i.e., people are actually looking for services or resources offered by your website. By conversion rate we mean the number of visitors that are persuaded into taking action.

The traffic and the conversion rate need to be continually measured together as they are tightly connected - you can have the best marketing and advertising campaigns but if your website is not persuading your visitors to take action, then it's all wasted. Likewise, you can have the best website in the world but if no one can find it, there is no way that it will be successful.

PPC is a great promotional tool available to business owners like yourselves to generate targeted traffic to your website. Not only that, due to the nature of PPC, it is the best and the most cost effective way to manage, measure and optimise the continual improvement of your website.

So what is PPC?

PPC is short for Pay Per Click Advertising, which is a form of internet advertising. In this model, you will need to the pay the provider of this service only when someone clicks on your ad, which makes it a highly results driven approach. You might have heard this being referred to as Google Adwords - Google is a large provider of this type of service.

How does PPC work?

To set up a PPC campaign, you will have to start by researching the top keywords or phrases that people are typing into Google to search for your services or products. Then you choose the search phrases you want to use for your ads so that Google can display your ads next to the search results every time someone types in that search phrase. Then for each phrase you have chosen, you decide how much you'd like to pay each time someone clicks on your ad - this is called your bid for the ad.

If your bid for the keyword is too low, Google will let you know that this won't appear in the first page, which means that you will not get enough clicks or sales from this ad. For each keyword/phrase that you choose, you will have to create an ad that matches and a landing page on your website that relates to the keyword and the ad. 

Once your ads are up, every time someone types in one of your researched keywords, your ad will come up in the Google ads section on the right hand side of the page and a select few ads will appear at the top of the search results on the main part of the page (see picture below).

To decide your ranking in the results, Google will take into account the relevancy of your ad as well as your bid amount. Relevancy is calculated by how relevant the search phrases are to the copy of your ad and also to the copy on the landing page. Therefore PPC is not just about how much money you are willing to pay for the ads - it's about your content as well. Both your ad copy and the landing page copy should use the same or very similar phrases across them so the user has a seamless and consistent experience - they need to get the information that they are expecting when they click on your ad.

Google will give the best ad space, which is at the top of the main part of the page to the most relevant ads that also have the highest bid - as shown in the example of a search for 'wedding photographer' below:

 

You can set up and manage the PPC campaign yourself - if you'd like a bit of help managing your PPC campaign stay tuned for our next article that will tell you exactly how to set up, run and manage a PPC campaign.

How can your business benefit from PPC?

1. High ROI

PPC is one of the most profitable and cost effective channels for advertising and marketing an online business. Most of the top online marketers share this view - a Forbes study of the top marketers in US showed that PPC is considered one of the top 3 online marketing channels for generating conversions, with SEO and email marketing ranking 1and 2 - see the right hand column in the table below:

As you can see from the table above, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is seen as the most effective online marketing tactic. SEO is the process involved in optimising your website and the copy so it ranks highly in the natural search results. So when someone types in a search phrase related to your services or products, SEO will help you rank higher. We believe that while SEO is highly effective, PPC has a lot of other great benefits that make it a perfect compliment to SEO activities - in fact if you want to see an instant return on your investment, PPC is your best option.

2. It is instant

Unlike traditional forms of advertising, with PPC you can setup a campaign and generate traffic to your website in a matter of minutes. There is no need to contact advertisers, or have to work with deadlines - you can get your ad up whenever you are ready to do so. You can also run it around specific time of the year and for a short period, for example say you are a wedding photographer, you can choose to run a short campaign around non-wedding season to drum up some more visitors and see how effective this is as a strategy.

Also, with PPC the results are instant. To have your website rank highly in search results naturally, you'd have to use SEO (search engine optimisation) and this could take months or even years, so we highly recommend investing in PPC. This will start getting traffic to your site immediately, therefore generating significant sales within weeks. SEO has its own benefits and is a great compliment to PPC activity so we recommend using both strategies in parallel to get the best results. Read more about SEO.

3. Testing

Because of its instant nature and great reporting, you can also test certain offers by looking at exactly what your potential customers are interested in and what gets them going. For example, as a wedding photographer you could test what offer works best for your customers - you could run a campaign to offer 'free photo album' and maybe with another group you could try 'free CD' to find out what your customers find more valuable. PPC allows you to get inside the minds of your customers so you know exactly what they are looking for.

 

4. Measurable

Unlike other forms of advertising, with PPC it is extremely easy to measure the success of a campaign - you have access to information like page impressions, clicks from the campaign, and conversions and from there it's easy to measure your click through rate (CTR), conversion rate and cost per lead. This kind of reporting makes it very easy for us to see if we are on track or not.

PPC also allows you to determine exactly what search is producing the greatest number of sales. With PPC you have the chance to test hundreds of search phrases, but it's always hard to guess if the most popular search phrase will result in sales for your business. For example, using Google Insights, you will find that there are a lot more people searching for the phrase 'wedding photos' compared to 'wedding photographer' (as shown in the image below). But once you run your campaign you might find that the more targeted phrase 'wedding photographer' actually results in more customers. 

5. Helps improve conversion

PPC also helps you find problems with your conversion - with PPC you get highly targeted traffic to your website and if this is converting poorly, you know that you need to investigate your website to see what's causing the hiccup. Low conversion rate after a PPC campaign usually leads PPC managers to investigate what's wrong.

This is another reason why having PPC at the same time as SEO (preferably when a site is being launched) is a huge advantage because with SEO alone, traffic can take months to ramp up to significant levels. If you have a usability or conversion rate problem in those first three to six months, you may not have enough data to detect it or to fix it quickly, and you could be losing valuable sales!

6. PPC offers great control

With PPC you can optimise your landing pages exactly as you wish unlike with SEO. SEO is when you optimise the copy on your pages so that it appears in the search results naturally. This requires the key phrases that people are typing into the search engines to be used on your website repeatedly so that it is recognised as a relevant source of information for the user. Therefore, you need a lot of relevant words on your website.

But this can sometimes be restrictive. Say you don't really want to use a lot of copy, you want to let the images do the selling for you, like in the case of a wedding photographer, your pictures will do the selling. This means that you probably don't have much of a chance for people to even find you on Google if you were to simply use SEO. PPC gives you the chance to show up on the search results if you have a high bid for your ad.

7. Targeted

Besides providing qualified traffic, PPC also allows you to setup campaigns specific to geographical locations. So you could specify that the ad is shown to users that are in a 100km radius of North Shore in Auckland - this way you are not paying for irrelevant traffic to your website, and you also get a good insight into the size of the local market.

8. Strong branding

With PPC you get free branding - even if the users  don't click on your ads, they might still see them and you don't have to pay for that impression. Branding is strengthened by repetition - when people see your name every where, it makes an impression and slowly burns into their memory. So when they do have a need for the kind of products or services you sell, they know exactly who to look for.

9. Improved SEO

Usually, when you set up an effective PPC campaign, it should naturally lead to the development of good content on your website and help you rank well in the organic search results. This is because when you setup a campaign you'll need to investigate which search phrases generate high volumes of relevant traffic and then create a relevant ad and landing page - which is one of the requirements of SEO.

In our PPC work with our clients and on our own website, we've discovered that by incorporating target search phrases in our landing page, we began seeing the ranking on organic search results also improve - which proves that PPC can help with SEO activity.

10. Banner advertising

When you set up a PPC campaign through Google Adwords, you get access to the Google Adsense network which means that you can run banner advertising on other websites that are part of the Adsense network. So for example if you want to advertise your wedding photography service, all you need to do is specify to Google that you'd like to run an advert on all websites that have a theme of photos and weddings. You could even specify the geographical location like North Shore if you choose. This way you don't have to contact every website that offers banner advertising and ask them if they get people searching for photos or wedding related things - it is all done automatically.

The advertising through Adsense network will also report back with the exact same detail as your Adwords campaign so you know exactly which banner designs are working better, which banner messages are more compelling and what sites are bringing more clients.

> Learn how to set up, run and manage your own PPC (Google Adwords) campaign.

Working with the Zeald marketing department I have noticed this issue on a number of occasions

Companies bid on the name of a competing company to show their Google Ads at the top of the search results. In fact it happened to Zeald on numerous occasions. I won't name names, but a number of companies were bidding on the search phrase "Zeald" and "Zeald.com" to trigger their ads for their web services.

As you might imagine, we have issue with this. It was blatently obvious these companies were trying to scrape away our valuable leads and ride on the back of our hard earned marketing dollars.

The problem with this...

We do not recommend that our clients or anyone for that matter utilise such underhanded technique with their Google Adwords Advertising. Sure there are occasions where the company name is very generic and is not really a company name anymore. FOr example "The web design company" is the name of a New Zealand company. But it is also a very generic and common search phrase. Whereas the word or name "Zeald" is a made up word and can only be associated with our company.

As a company we invest significant amounts of time effort and money into building our brand. So when people think of websites, they think of Zeald. It is a very important element of building an effective business. We spend money and effort advertising our website address and encouraging leads to visit our website. is might be newspaper ads, word of mouth, radio etc. Of course these days, most people use Google to help them find a website and will simply enter "Zeald" into Google to find us. Now when they do this and a competitors ad shows at the top, and entices a percentage of those hard won leads away from our website, our marketing department are not so happy.
The other issue is that these underhanded businesses show at the top of the results and our potential leads associate them with us which does not reflect well on our brand

Googles Adwords trademark policy

So we looked into ways that we could stop this. We discovered a great article from Google which outlines
Google's AdWords and AdSense trademark policy

In this article Google explains that they take this issue seriously and prohibit intellectual property infringement by advertisers as outlined in their AdWords Terms and Conditions . Advertisers are responsible for the keywords they choose to generate advertisements and the text that they choose to use in those advertisements.

Google Adwords trademark complaint form

However that does not of course stop some businesses from leaching from another businesses marketing spend. To enforce this Google ask that you make a formal complaint and tell them about the infringement. They provide a Google Adwords trademark complaint form that is reasonably painless to fill out.

Some important points regarding this form:

1. Your company name will of course need to be officially registered with the companies office and you will need to provide a registration number as proof
2. Google do not investigate use of trademarks as keywords in certain regions but New Zealand and Australia are on the list of countries that Google do investigate
3. You will need to specify exclusions if you would like to allow agencies to use your trademark to advertise on your behalf

Google do not guarantee that they will action your complaint

Once you submit your complaint, you should not hold your breath. Although the Zeald case was actioned in a few weeks, some cases are not so cut and dried. The name "Zeald" is a "made up name" and although using a made up name does not help with our SEO because it does not include important relevant search phrases like "website" or "design" it does mean that we own it and Google are sure that it belongs to us.

However if you had a company name for example "Website design company" then yes you will do well in the organic search results, however it is hard for Google to differentiate between the company name and a generic and common search phrase. Google will not allow dis-allow other Adwords advertisers from using this "Trademark" as a search phrase as it is also a very generic and common search phrase.

Before you optimise your website for the search engines you need to decide what keywords and key phrases you will target in the search engines.  You will want to target keywords and phrases that your target customers will be searching on.

Try to think about keywords and phrases that are not too common. Also think about combinations of keywords such as “barbeque steak, order online, New Zealand”.

Think about your target customer– put yourself in their shoes.  If you were your customer, what would you type into a search engine if you were searching for your product or service?  Unless you have a well-established brand, they will definitely not type-in your brand name.  They are going to search for the type of product or service they are looking for, or the features of the product or service they are looking for.

Start brainstorming a list of keywords and phrases that your target customer is likely to be searching on.  Think about what your product or service does.  What are the features?

Check out your competition to see what keywords they are targeting.  You can use the Meta Tag Analyser on the Zeald website to check out the keywords your competitors use. (www.zeald.com/Resources/Free+Tools/Meta+Tag+Analyzer.html)

Think about misspellings, variations and strange ways of typing your key phrases. It’s amazing how much traffic you can receive based on words that are spelt incorrectly.

Geo-Targeting Keywords
Geo-targeting your keywords is where you target your keywords at a particular geographical region or population segment.  Remember – most search engines are global.  But if you can only deliver products or services within a specific geographical location, then consider targeting your keywords at that geographical area.  For example, if you deliver Indian meals in Albany, Auckland, then use keywords like “New Zealand, Albany, Indian Food”.

Finally, once you have a long list of keywords and key phrases it is time to do some analysis on them to see which are the best ones to target.  The best way to do this is to use a 'keyword research tool'.  An outline of the different keyword research tools is below.

1. Wordtracker
   The most popular of all the keyword research tools.  There is a simple free version and then a paid version that has more functionality.
2. Google Adwords Keyword Research
   Google Adwords contains a keyword research tool within it available for anyone who has a Google Adwords account. Google autocomplete can also come in handy.
3. Searchmetric's Keyword Analysis Tool
   Searchmetrics is an up to date keyword research tool with a huge database.

Based on the information provided by your keyword research tool, you should be able to narrow your list down to a small set of keywords and phrases to target.

It's important to note that although keyword research principles have virtually remained the same throughout the years, algorithm updates might render a few techniques obsolete. For instance, recent updates in algorithms have made Google more sophisticated. Instead of looking at search queries in terms of keywords, these queries are now analysed in terms of user intent.  

Now you should be able to produce a list of the following:

• No.1 Keyword or Phrase - Your No.1 keyword or phrase is the priority keyword or phrase that you would like to target in the search engines.
• Secondary Keywords or Phrases - Your secondary keywords or phrases should be a short list of secondary keywords and phrases that you would also like to target.

AIDA - the age-old copywriting success formula stands for:

• Attention
  You must get your visitor’s attention.  This is extremely important on the Web, as it is so easy to go elsewhere.  One click and ‘poof’, they’re gone.  You generally catch your visitors attention with a strong punchy headline and a 'opening hook' – a sentence that is designed to 'hook' the reader into reading the copy.
   
• Interest
  You must immediately arouse your visitor’s interest and curiosity.  You can do this by telling a story or identifying a problem that your visitor is having (remember to focus on exactly who your target customer is here).  Understand the goals of your target customer and identify with them.  Pre-selling is often incorporated at this stage as the information that arouses interest can also be used to reinforce trust and credibility.
   
• Desire
  Create ‘desire’ in your visitor.  This is usually achieved through clear promises that cater to the customer’s goals.  Focus here on your strongest benefits and outline them clearly and concisely so that they cannot be missed.  Maximise your visitor’s desire through good, strong ‘bonuses’ and bold guarantees.
• Action
  Finally, finish with a clear ‘call-to-action’.  Make it absolutely clear what actions they must do on your website to achieve the desired outcome.

The Headline (“Attention”)

Headlines are the crucial first element of your copy.  Their purpose is to grab the attention of your target customer.  Remember– everyone will see your headline– and that headline could be the difference between a visitor wanting to find out more and exploring what you have to offer, or just ignoring your page and moving on. 

Some ways to approach writing a headline:

• Promise a major benefit
  Reduce Your Waist Line By two Inches In 31 days!
  
• Offer a solution to a problem
  Learn How To Reduce Your Credit Card Debt Instantly By 30%!
  
• Flag your target customer
  Attention Homeowners! – Reduce Your Rates Bill By Over 50%!
  
• Ask a question
  Have You Ever Been Ripped-off By a Used-Car Salesman?
  
• Quote a testimonial
  “Thank You So Much! – My Website Sales Have Increased By 217%!”
  
• Sound a warning
  Your Air-Conditioning Unit May Be Killing You!

Use ‘power words’ within your headlines.  ‘Power words’ are particular words that convey strong emotions with your readers. Typically they are words that represent something people are looking for.  When placed in a sentence they draw your attention.  The strongest ‘power word’ is - Free.  Some phrases that incorporate the ‘Free’ power word are:

• Sign-up today to collect your free report!
• Register for our free trial
• Free gift (worth $19.95) for all new subscribers
• You get our e-book ‘Website Fundamentals’ free!
• Register today for a free demonstration
• Sign-up today for our risk-free offer.

Another effective set of ‘power words’ is the “How to” phrase.  For example:

• how to avoid…
• how to reduce…
• how to save…
• how to create…
• how to impress…
• how to become…
• how to generate…

“Learn” or “Discover” are also great power words:

• discover 10 wealth secrets that  every millionaire knows!
• learn the top 32 rugby coaching techniques used worldwide!
• you will learn the secrets used by New Zealand’s top investors, who generate millions of dollars  every year!
• learn my 10-point checklist for every property purchase!

There are many ‘power words’ that can be used effectively to give your headlines a boost. 

Here are some more ‘power words’ that work well: you, save, know, understand, results, proven, now, today, immediately, money, powerful, trust, create, and secrets.

Format your headlines to attract attention.  Use a large font size, with a bold style.  Try capitalising the first letter of every word, or put quotation marks around the headline.

The best way to come up with a good headline is to brainstorm.  Lock yourself in a quiet room and sit down and write out as many headlines as you possibly can.  Try to get out 20 or 30.  Once you have a good number of options go back through them all and pick out the top three.  Review and rewrite each of the top headlines – make them as sharp as possible. 

Then test each of the three different headlines for results and keep fine-tuning for maximum success.   A good headline will often require lots and lots of reworking.

The Opening Hook (“Attention”)

Now that you have caught the attention of your reader through the use of a strong headline, you need to ‘hook’ your reader and pull them into the main part of your copy.

An opening hook should continue from where your headline finished.  Present a problem, or outline the benefit to your reader in more detail and in a way that they can personally ‘identify’ with.  By doing this you are more likely to “strike a chord” with your reader.  Why?  Because you are demonstrating that you clearly understand their goals, needs and problems.

Sometimes it can be appropriate to emphasise the key points or benefit expressed in the main headline.  Give your reader a bit more detail.  Try to include the benefits of reading this website thoroughly.  If they want to explore and experience what you have to offer, it will be because you’ve given them a compelling desire to read more!

Headings (“Interest”)

Headings are used to summarise blocks of text  and paragraphs and you should think of them as being like mini-headlines.  Use them to summarise the main points for the accompanying paragraphs of text.

Less is definitely more.  These headings are there for one purpose only:  to provide your visitor the means to ‘scan’ your information, looking down your page to see if there is something that interests them.  For example, instead of a heading that says  ‘A Safe Boat is a Good Boat’ cut it back to ‘Boat Safety’  and let your text do some of the work. You get the general idea.

When drafting your copy regularly review your chosen headings and subheadings.  What they say must enhance the ‘scan-ability’ of your copy. These vital navigational tools are what many visitors will rely on in their reading - but be careful if you rework the paragraph text below them that they don’t become “out of context”.

Presenting content intended for a website is very different from communicating with your customers on an A4 piece of paper. Some visitors really just want to be able to visually skim your site. They do this by following your headings and sub-heading and highlighted text as visual markers, using them as their ‘sign-posts’.

If you have insufficient markers, your audience may become frustrated, bored, or worse, irritated.  Your target customers are online in the first place because one of their ‘characteristics’ as a customer group is that they demand instant information, presented logically, and in a manner that won’t hinder their objectives.

Once you have completed your sales copy make a list of the headings, by themselves, and put your headline at the top.  Review this list to ensure that your headings give readers a clear overview of your message.

The Introduction (“Interest”)

The purpose of the introduction is to introduce yourself to the reader and establish your credibility; you might use a well-placed testimonial, or select some ‘one-liners’ or ‘partial’ quotes from your testimonials. 

Telling a story is a great way to work an introduction.  People love stories! 

A well-presented story allows your target market to identify with you.  It will give people further confidence that you understand their goals, problems and needs.  As mentioned earlier pre-sales copy is often incorporated here as it is designed to provide valuable information to the visitor.

Think about how you came to be in the position you are now.  What made you offer the products or services that you are offering?  Share some of your passion!  People also love passion!

To tell a good story with passion you will need to allow some of your personality, or your brand’s personality, to shine through. By doing this you help build your customer’s trust in you by seeing you and your organisation as real people.  People do business with people they like.  By ensuring you are perceived in a likeable and ‘real’ way, you become more attractive to your target market.

The Body (“Interest”)

Do you remember the six questions your visitors will ask? 

1. Do I trust you?
2. Do I believe you?
3. Do you understand my needs?
4. What’s in it for me (WIIFM)?
5. What do you want from me?
6. Is it worth it?

You should have addressed the first two questions right up front on the homepage of your website and in other supporting content pages (“About Us” pages etc).   Many times you will want to further reinforce your trust and credibility in your sales copy through further pre-sales information.   You can never have too much trust and credibility!

The third question should be addressed in part by your headline and the opening hook.

In the ‘body’ section of your sales copy you want to address the fourth question – “what’s in it for me’ (or “WIIFM”)?  

The best way to answer the fourth question is by showing benefits.  Remember, people do not buy a product/service because of the features.  They buy an end-result.  They buy what a product/service will do for them. 

Remember: “customers don’t want ¼” drill bits… they want ¼” holes”.  (Think about that for a second!)

This is the section where you should use your USP (in all its glory!), if you haven’t already. 

Think back to the list of goals for our target customer, with each of the benefits associated with those goals.  This is where you will focus on these benefits. 

Use bulleted lists whenever you can.  Keep things as clear as possible.  Don’t be afraid to really elaborate and give your reader substantial detail.  Your reader is interested in your product/service (which is why they are reading), so give them what they need, and keep it as benefit-focused as possible.

The Offer (“Desire”)

Now comes the time to present the offer.  Before you do this please ensure that you have covered everything possible to make it extremely compelling.  Have you created as much ‘value’ as possible through the presentation of your benefits?

Remind the reader of the goal, problem or need that is being solved/satisfied by your product or service.  Summarise the major benefits associated with your offering, and then … present your offer.

There are a number of techniques that can be used to make the offer as attractive as possible:

• Demonstrate the value of your offer with the financial benefits or cost-savings that will be obtained through the use of your offering.
• Show a price or offer that is discounted or different from the normal price or offer.
• Compare your offer with that of similar products or services.

Bonuses (Desire)

If possible, immediately after presenting the offer, present a bonus (or even better, a number of bonuses) that you will ‘add-in for free’.  This is not something that you absolutely must do but it will strengthen your offer substantially. 

When looking for bonuses, try and find something that has high perceived value to your visitor but which costs you little (i.e. products or services that have an extremely good margin). 

Great examples of low cost bonuses are electronic informational products (e-books, ‘wallpapers’, software, etc).  They cost a set amount to create, but then you can distribute them again and again for very little capital outlay.

If you can’t think of anything that you can offer as a bonus perhaps you are able to offer a discount that is available for a “strictly limited time only”.  This also creates urgency, prompting them to buy sooner rather than later.

The Guarantee (“Desire”)

Remove as much of the risk for your ‘target customers’ as possible and make sure your sales copy reflects that loudly.

Offer the most compelling guarantee that you possibly can.  As long as you have a great product or service often the general ‘rule’ is, “the stronger the guarantee, the less claims on that guarantee”.

A good guarantee will have a huge impact on the amount of sales or enquiries that you generate online. 

This is one of the most important elements of your sales copy and one of the most important fundamentals for your website.  People can still be sceptical at times about buying online, and although this attitude is slowly changing, it is important to reassure your buyers as much as possible, and remove any perceived risk.

Make a ‘song and dance’ about your guarantee, as it is a key tool in gaining the trust of your buyers.  Remember, the first order is always the hardest!

Take a risk with your guarantee– make it compelling.  Remember, people are generally honest!  It is likely that the extra sales and the profits your compelling guarantee generates will hugely outweigh any increases in claims you may have on your guarantee (such as an increase in ‘returns’ from customers). Besides, if it doesn’t work - you can always change it.

If you are unable to offer an iron-clad guarantee, because margins are too tight or the product or service is non-returnable for instance, then at least show a stack of top-notch testimonials from happy customers.

The Call To Action (“Action”)

Now is the time to complete the persuasion process. When you believe a prospect has been convinced that they should respond to your offer, move quickly to complete the transaction. 

• Summarise what has been outlined in the sales copy.
• Summarise the target customer's goal, need or problem and the proposed solution.
• Summarise the major benefits.
• And then spell-out to your visitors exactly what they need to do in order to respond to your offer.  Give them a firm ‘call-to-action’.

Make this as clear as possible.  There should be no room for confusion as to what the reader needs to do in order to place their order or lodge their enquiry.

I like to say – make your call to action primate proof.  Your call to action should be so clear that you could sit a chimpanzee down in front of a computer and they would work out what to do!

Many ‘sales’ have been lost simply because the seller did not ask for the customer’s business. Strange, but true; they did not complete the persuasion process!

So provide as many different methods for facilitating their order or enquiry as possible:

• Some people, no matter how good your website security is, will not put their credit card details over the Internet.  Remove this boundary to completing a sale by offering alternative means of payment (cheque, direct credit, money order, and so on).
• Some people would prefer not to buy online at all: provide contact details so these customers can place their order over the phone instead.

The P.S (“Action”)

The P.S is one of the most important parts of a long copy page.  Many experts claim that apart from the headline, it is read more often than any other part of your sales copy!

The “P.S” is simply a block of text after you have finished your sales copy, and provided all of your calls to action, headed with “P.S.”.  It's like something you might use in a personal letter or email.

Use a ‘P.S’ to:

• Re-state your offer one last time (and remind the reader of the major benefit of your offering).
• Encourage the reader to ‘order’ or ‘enquire’ immediately.
• Sometimes you might even wish to add another key benefit here, as a ‘surprise’ for your reader. 

These small and meaningful portions of text are often heavyweights in that last-minute decision-making process.

Sales Copy Outline

Using your keyword research and feedback from customers, determine further themes or topics that you could target with your optimisation efforts. Create web pages around certain themes and topics to target specific areas. For example a website selling meat may determine that many website users are searching for recipes. It makes sense to publish many pages of quality recipes. This not only provides great information for potential and existing customers but is likely to generate more traffic from the search engines.

When our customers ask us questions about websites in general we research, write and publish articles around each of these questions. This not only answers our customer’s questions and also saves time in answering that question in future, but it also provides a quality resource that users will send on to their friends and will rank well in the search engines.