In preparation for the move to our new office this summer, and in an ongoing effort to cultivate a fun and Google-like atmosphere at work, we recently acquired a multi-game arcade cabinet for the space. Once we had set it up, however, we quickly realized that the machine’s GUI was bulky, non-intuitive, and obviously not designed to handle large amounts of content. Luckily, we had the option of either customizing or completely replacing the GUI on our machine, but it did get me thinking about navigation and structure when it comes to software, especially client websites. Even with smaller businesses sites and eCommerce stores with small inventories, ease of access to your content is key.

Of course, any SEO expert will tell you that your site is only as good as its content, but, just as important is how users are expected to be able to get to that content. If it’s hidden behind the wrong navigation link names, or buried in deeply-nested sub-menus, you can expect your bounce rate to remain fairly high.

I urge you to review your website and ask the following five questions:

1. Is your site navigation and information laid out in a way that makes sense to the user?

The original GUI that came with our arcade cabinet had no obvious navigation or file menus, which were revealed only after pressing various keys. How were we expected to dig into the configuration options and sorting functions if we were flying blind?

If your site has more than a few pages of content, you’re going to need a navigation solution that organizes those pages into a logical hierarchy. Put your most important information, such as “Services” or “Products”, directly on the main navigation of your site. Make sure your groupings and categories make sense– a page about “Our Staff “ would make much more sense under “About Us” than, say, “Our Services.” Your navigation should be obvious and legible, one of the functional focal points of your design. Use rollover effects to provide contrast and animation to indicate that users can interact with that content. Consider arrows or other icons to indicate that main navigation items contain one of more sub-menus. You should also consider investing some time testing or polling to determine what terms your users actively use or look for on your site. On one web project I worked on for a major hotel chain, it was discovered right before launch that the majority of their users were not familiar with the term “Amenities,” and so a new name for a major navigation item on their site had to be determined. Even though your navigation might make sense to you, your users might use a very different vocabulary when interacting with your presence on the web.

2. Can the user navigate to the information they need in one click, or in as few clicks as possible?

When it was time to configure our game machine, we found that many of the control options lurked deep within dense, technical menus instead of right on the main level of navigation.

One thing that businesses often overlook is the placement of one or more conspicuous calls to action on the home page of their sites. Instead of forcing users to dig for a contact form or specific product information, consider placing a button that links directly to these resources, or a short form to request quotes or schedule appointments. You can add call-out boxes to your main services or highest-selling products to give users a shortcut to what they’re probably already looking for. If you have a complex site with many layers and sub-layers of information, consider adding ways for users to drill down directly to that content or product if they already know what they need.

3. Are shortcuts, site search, or other measures in place so that users can sift through a large amount of content easily to find what they want?

Another issue we ran into at the office was that our list of available games was so long that it took quite some time to scroll through the entire list, much longer than necessary. A simple search function in the GUI would have solved the problem right away.

As your site gets larger, the need for a search box becomes readily apparent. Breadcrumbs or sub-menu drop-downs at the tops of secondary pages can help users easily dig down into one area of specific content, then easily climb back up to explore another route. A sitemap is another useful way to provide users with a visual representation of how an entire site is laid out, and submitting this sitemap to Google has become quite a useful tactic in the ever-evolving war to gain more search exposure. Internal page links, especially on such pages as FAQs, can be instrumental in enabling users to quickly move around the content on single, longer pages. Adding redundant site navigation to the footer of your site will also help users switch site categories without having to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page.

4. Does your site have a wide variety of content to engage users and keep them on your site longer?

With our arcade machine, some GUIs offered little more than a text list of available games, while others had colorful logos and screenshots of actual gameplay next to them to help tell us what each title was about. Without these visual aids, we might not remember that a certain game had been a childhood favorite decades ago.

Having well-written content is simply not enough. Most users will turn off and leave a site if they have to wade through page after page of text, even if that text is keyword-rich from a search engine point of view. Make sure to add appropriate graphics that correspond to the content on the page, and videos can be especially useful in expanding on a given topic or showing a product in use. You can definitely overdo it in this area, and break up the flow of text with constant graphical interruptions, but a moderate addition of visual interest will keep users on the page and engaged for longer periods of time.

5. Is your site built in a way that works and looks good on a variety of devices and/or screens?

We found that our gaming machine had the ability to accept a wide variety of monitors, from CRT boxes and sleek flat screens to television displays. Some of the GUIs, however, looked better at a certain size or horizontal/vertical alignment than others. The key was to find one that not only worked for our current situation, but that could also adapt for an inevitable future display upgrade.

As we now live in an age where visits from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets account for 25% of all web traffic in the world, you simply can’t afford to leave mobile users in the dark. Depending on who you ask, different experts will champion separate, customized mobile sites while others will endorse responsive design– that is, building your site in such a way that it shifts and resizes the layout dynamically to better fit a wide variety of internet-enabled devices. The biggest detractors of the former method are that most businesses simply don’t have the time or budgets to build separate versions of their site for every possible mobile device out there, and that depending on how one builds these mini-sites, they may end up having their own copies of the main site’s content that will need to be updated separately. The latter method, on the other hand, should provide a decent fit to most of the common mobile devices currently on the market, and if it’s built right, many of the ones yet to come… and it displays the same content as the main site, so you only need to do your updates once.

In short, you can never underestimate how important your navigation, content hierarchy, site design, and information layout are in terms of the overall user experience your site provides. A clean, intuitive, adaptive site will allow users get to the information they need quickly and efficiently, and is more likely to generate repeat visits and recommendations to other users.

Remember when you used to log into Facebook and browse your friends’ walls and leave a funny post on your own wall and then go on about your day? Ahh the good ol’ days! Yes, of course you can still do that, but there are so many more distractions – Friend A just unlocked a new level in Candy Crush Saga, Friend B and Friend C like Subway, Friend D just listened to Ho Hey on Spotify… you get the point. And, on top of that – all of the ads!

As a marketer I say, “Fantabulous!” but as a loyal Facebook user I say, “meh.”

I have been wedding planning and am currently researching flowers that will go with the theme and color scheme of the wedding. My brain is on overload – hydrangeas, lisianthus, roses, cornflowers, OH MY! So, I took a break and logged into Facebook only to find – ARGH! – an ad from one of the websites I had just been on featuring cornflowers! How did they know!?

Retargeting. That’s how. What is retargeting you may ask? Ad retargeting is a way to market to the people who have who have been to your website previously.  In this scenario:

1. I went to FiftyFlowers.com…
2. a cookie was downloaded to my browser…
3. which followed me to Facebook…
4. and triggered an ad to show up on the right hand side of my news feed.

You may not notice that an ad is actually retargeted unless you’re paying close attention.  The retargeted ads will not only show up on the right hand side but are now showing up within the news feed.

Okay, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Retargeting, also sometimes referred to as remarketing, is a great way to keep your brand top of mind within an already interested audience. In many cases, retargeting can be one of the most effective ways to obtain conversions on your website. Yes, it can be a little strange, to feel like “Big Brother is watching” but, for the most part, it’s harmless. A great way to use Facebook’s retargeting ads would be to offer some sort incentive to entice your audience back to the website to make a purchase. A coupon discount or free shipping – now you’re talking!

Next time you’re browsing Facebook, take a look at the ads – can you spy any ads that may be retargeted? What is the messaging? Are they doing a good job?

Make no mistake, copywriters are the worker bees of the web marketing world. They toil over dozens of pages of content daily, sometimes switching gears several times depending on the day’s schedule. Here at Page One, we may start our morning with a bagel and industrial sheet metal fabrication pages, take lunch over a country décor blog and round out the afternoon with yet another cup of coffee and criminal law sub categories. Our job seems mundane to some, but the truth is, there is a lot more to quality copy than meets the eye.

First, there is always research to be done. We can’t be experts in every field, so we educate. One of the best indicators of quality copy is that it adds value to the website. A good writer always writes for the audience first and the search engines second. The facts on the page should be accurate, yet flow together in such a way that visitors will not only be charmed into purchasing the product, but also gain valuable insight about it.

Second, a great copywriter has to channel their inner Google—after all, optimizing for search engines is (literally) the name of the game. So, how do we make our words stand out like beacons of light, beckoning the Google spiders to crawl, index and hopefully rank at the top of the SERPs? We conduct more research. Picking out prizewinning keywords can be like fumbling for a needle in a haystack unless you know where to look. A copywriter must hone this skill, and then apply it thoughtfully to their paragraphs—never over-stuffing, but making certain that a page is indexed not just accurately, but to its full potential.

Third, if you think that copywriting is all about hitting that 250 word count and moving on, you’d make an efficient writer, but not a successful one. The clients we write for come from every inch of the spectrum. The copy we produce, therefore, is unique as well. Each industry requires a fresh voice, appropriate to the level of formality, technicality, and audience. A great copywriter will effortlessly bounce between a tone worthy of the lecture halls of academia to witty, youthful banter without blinking an eye. Need a provocative press release on the fly? We’re on it. Five hundred words on a range of specialized metal alloys? Playful fashion blog? Done and done.

An additional suite of skills including tricky back end CMS navigation, writing under harrowing time constraints, and of course tirelessly proofreading everything in sight, is all the more reason to high five the nearest copywriter today—and thank them for being crazy enough to do the job!

Link building is hard.  Before taking the first steps in what can be a difficult process, you have to communicate its value to your client. Depending on your audience this can be quite the undertaking. I often use the popularity contest metaphor; ranking on Google is determined by how many votes you get, and those votes are links. Getting traffic from links is great but making the distinction that they have more than that purpose can be a leap for a lot of people.

Once you have buy in on the value of link building, you can get down to work. Depending on the savviness  of your client’s previous team, or lack thereof, you may want to start grabbing low hanging fruit. I’m not a big fan of directory submission without a plan e.g. a software solution or outsourcing, but some verticals actually do have great repositories of information and getting a link from them can be invaluable. It takes time, patience, and research to curate lists of these link opportunities, but it is worth the investment.

If you are link building for a site that is tied to a brick and mortar location you can you can hit two birds with one stone and build some links and grab some local citations at the same time. Local citations are the sites that allow you to list your URL and address info, think Yelp and Merchant Circle. This is not a local SEO post so I won’t get into detail here.

Once you have built yourself a solid foundation of back links you can move onto more advanced techniques. These include, but are not limited, to guest blogging (if you have writers), infographics (if you have design resources), building linkable assets, traditional PR techniques, leveraging existing relationships, and above all building new relationships.

Building relationships is often cited as the most necessary component of link building. Behind every site is a human being and to get links from the most relevant high value sites you need to start a dialogue with those individuals. This will take some personalized emails (no form letters please) and maybe even a phone call <gasp>. Networking has never been bad for business so get out there, meet some people, and build some links.

We’ve been getting this question a lot lately… when you look at your Google Analytics keyword traffic and see “not set” or “not provided,” what does that mean?

When you see “not provided” in your keyword reports it tells you that someone was either logged into their Google account when they were searching or that they were using a browser that is specifically keeping their searches hidden (Chrome does this and calls it “incognito” mode).

In an effort to adopt stronger security standards as they move into the realm of personalized search results, in late 2011 Google started encrypting searches. When people are logged into their Google account, the URL changes from http to https and Google Analytics will still capture that your visit came from Google but it no longer tracks each individual query and the associated information.  The reason we have seen more and more “not provided” keyword traffic in our analytics is most likely due to the growth of people using Google accounts both personally as well as professionally.

Google describes the “not set” data as a placeholder when it does not have the information for a particular dimension. Many times, in our experience, it’s found in the Advertising reports. We love this support page created by Google Analytics that describes various items to review in order to get access to the “not set” data in your reports.

It has created quite a headache for many internet marketing professionals who rely on keyword data to understand site traffic and improve organic rankings and paid performance. A blog posted by Kissmetrics has been very helpful in learning new ways to “unlock” the “not provided” data set in your Google Analytics.

One of the most common ways marketers are overcoming this challenge is by utilizing Webmaster Tools and integrating that data with Google Analytics. This way you are able to get a better overview of keywords that are bringing people to the website under the “Search Queries” menu; as well as organic impressions your website receives for particular keywords.

In discussing this with our team, David shared  one of the things he assumes about keywords when the keyword data isn’t provided. He pointed out that when a website gets traffic to multiple landing pages, not just the home page, it is a reliable way to conclude what keywords are driving traffic. For example, if you own a hardware store and you get a lot of traffic to yourhardwarestore.com/garden-hoses and you know that page ranks well for the term “garden hoses,” you can assume that “garden hoses” is a term that drives organic traffic. Thanks Dave!

What ways have you discovered that help to overcome this challenge? Please share in the comments section below.

In the expansive land of internet marketing it is becoming ever more difficult for businesses to navigate through the growing number of communication platforms. For many businesses it may seem as though a new method for delivery of their marketing message becomes available each day. Although amassing new Twitter followers, expanding connections on LinkedIn and increasing the number of likes on Facebook are still valuable channels for growing brand awareness, traditional email marketing still takes the cake for providing the highest return on investment. In a 2012 survey taken by ExactTarget, when surveyors were asked their preferred channel for promotional messages from companies, the resounding majority (77%) said Email, Direct mail (9%) and Facebook (4%) did not even come in a close second or third.

However executing an effective email marketing strategy is very different than just using an email marketing strategy. Although fairly straight-forward to implement when it comes to execution, you would be alarmed to learn how many companies are eating through precious hours of their day with unsuccessful, ambiguous marketing campaigns. In order to grow your number of dedicated subscribers and continuously provide highly relevant and interesting content, you must come to fully understand your customers and their changing internet behaviors. What’s more you should be learning to properly harness the power of data; data gathered from well implemented email campaigns.

How to Create an Effective Email Today

• Use “Opt-in” permission marketing –Email when utilized as an opt-in version, becomes a form of marketing unlike many others. By requiring action from the customer first, you are ensuring your marketing efforts are not done in vain. In effect; consumers are empowering the marketer to send them promotional messages about a specific interest. The marketer then is able to tailor their intended advertisement to these interests. Permission marketing fosters improved targeting and establishes a certain level trust amongst your customers, allowing you to build long-term relationships.

• Focus on mobile-email design—Consumers are more frequently turning to their mobile devices to access vital information on the internet and stay up-to-date with incoming emails. A study by ReturnPath showed that year over year from March 2011-March 2012 emails opened on a mobile device increased 82.4 percent. Understanding this trend is crucial to implementing an effective email marketing campaign, as well as gathering vital data on your customer. Some companies design their emails specifically for mobile devices; others have taken a relatively new approach in utilizing responsive design in their emails. What is responsive design, well that could be a post in itself, but for the short and skinny it is a website that responds to its environment regardless of the platform in which it is being viewed, i.e. mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop. (Click here for examples.) Using mobile-friendly email formats will equate to increased opens, higher click-through-rates, and a greater ROI.

• Leverage Analytics—Not only is it paramount to have an email that people want to open, and one that is easy to read, but it is crucial for marketers to integrate email marketing services designed to help collect and manage data. Complementing your email marketing service with a customer relationship management (CRM) solution would be a great place to start. CRM encompasses all aspects of interaction between the customer and the company. A properly implemented CRM solution will provide you with extremely valuable insights into customer behavior. In effect it will allow you as the marketer to retain more customers by creating a better client experience.

Email marketing is cost-effective and relatively simple for any sized business to integrate into their marketing strategy mix. Making sure it is done right may take a bit of time and finesse. So be patient, create a list of actionable steps you can take, and get started today by implementing the three suggestions above. They will help get on the right track to delivering impact, data rich email campaigns.

David Zwickerhill brings vast knowledge in search engine optimization, micro site advertising and online conversions

(December 1^st  2012) – Page One Web Solutions, specializing in providing a wide variety of search engine optimization, SEM, Social Media, website design and development services, announces the hiring of David Zwickerhill as new head of the search engine optimization department. Having a highly skilled and experience search engine optimization expert like David will improve on an already excellent record of client relations and marketing execution at Page One. David will be heading up a team of 4 SEO employees. Due to year over year growth within Page One, there is a need to bring David on board.

“Page One could not be more excited to bring aboard David as head of the Search Engine Optimization Department”, says Patrick Robinson, VP of Sales. David has worked in the SEO field for over 5 years, honing his skills in Optimization, Social Media integration and lead generation for business to business sales.

David has been a sales and customer relations manager with a focus on long term and high profit web sales. His copyrighting and blog experience for a network of travel brands brings value for on page optimization and keyword density efforts. His last job saw him managing and training SEO copyrighters while overseeing content production, link building and social media campaigns. David has an emphasis on campaign monitoring and performance analysis.

Page One Web Solutions is renowned for helping their clients grow their business through ethical and effective search engine optimization campaigns on top search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Due to their recent growth the firm has been hiring search engine optimization marketing experts from diverse industries. The experienced team of experts help their clients build SEO strategies and also offers software solutions to assist in automating the sharing of content integrated with the clients’ blogs, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts and many other sources of content sharing outlets.

Jenika Scott brings vast knowledge in search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising and SEO

(August 1^st 2012) – Page One Web Solutions specializes in providing a wide variety of search engine optimization, SEM, Social Media, website design and development services.  Today, website design and search engine consulting can mean many things. Having a highly skilled and experienced search engine marketing expert like Jenika Scott is essential for client relations and marketing execution. Jenika will be heading up a team of 6 search marketing employees, including new hire Lauren Girouard. Lauren and Jenika are highly skilled in customer interaction and analytical return on investment assessment.

“Page One could not be more excited to have the opportunity to welcome Jenika Scott as head of the Search Engine Marketing Department,” says Patrick Robinson, VP of Sales. Jenika has worked in the SEM field for over 5 years, honing her skills in Pay Per Click and Social Media for business to business sales.

Page One Web Solutions is renowned for helping their clients grow their business through ethical and effective search engine marketing campaigns on top search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Due to their recent growth, the firm has been hiring search engine marketing experts, but had yet to find someone as knowledgeable as Jenika. The experienced team of experts helps their clients build social media strategies and also offers software solutions to assist in automating the sharing of content integrated with clients’ blogs, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts and many other sources of content sharing outlets.

We have had some questions lately from both customers and prospects regarding their blogs and what and how and who and why the best way to market them on the search engines might be. A lot of the questions have something to do with the concept that the blog is essentially a replica of the website, and so it should be marketed the same way on the search engines – or should it? And if so why or not??

Let’s take a look at a couple of concepts and tips that can help clear these kinds of questions up…. Continue reading →

Both the study of copywriting and what makes for good classified ads will help a lot with putting good Adwords ads together. What perhaps serves as an obstacle for many people is you don’t have much room to work with in PPC ads. If you want to see improvement in your PPC conversions, then continue reading to discover three points for writing better Adwords ads.

You’ll need to know the strongest benefits of your product or service. You can’t just use your ad space to write about the features of the product and expect to get clicks. For example, if you’re selling web designing software that can help you design websites quickly, the benefit here is that it helps the end user save time – and that’s what you highlight in your ad. People respond much better when they see what is in it for them – the benefit. Or you always conduct a test, and write an ad that explains the software language your great software was written in – we’ll bet you don’t get one single click, try it. So your benefits will speak to some people, not all, but some will click on it. So make a list of all the strong benefits of the product you’re promoting and sort out 2-3 benefits that you can include when writing your ad copy.

Of course, you will want to test your ads, always, and you can find the benefit that converts the best in your ads.

You will do what you want, but if you want to get good at this, then you will never steal the copy from other PPC ads. A common notion among new Internet marketers these days is to copy the ads of the successful AdWords advertisers to duplicate their success. But if that were true, nobody would be coming up with worthy ad copy! The only path to improvement is to learn how to write ads, and learn the principles involved with copywriting, etc. Your aim should be to create an ad that gives results and the best way to do that is to write it in your own way.

If you put into crafting out a unique ad copy for your campaign, your ad won’t get lost in the large chunk of ads that you see on Google.

Make sure your file extensions are optimized for the particular keywords you’re using. There are advantages to including your particular targeted keywords within the ad headline and possibly body copy, but also as we noted be sure to have them in the file extension for the display URL. Writing powerful AdWords ads is not hard to do, but you need to know how to do PPC advertising, and then you can work on your ads.