iWebEarth

Creating new landing pages for testing is getting cheaper. And scalable.

So there are fewer and fewer reasons for SMBs not to be testing their landing pages and sites to optimize conversion rates.

Testing landing pages has long been a preoccupation of mine, particularly because of the traditionally prohibitive costs.

Even if you use a design contest at a place like 99Designs.com, you’re still paying $300 – $500 for a good graphic look and feel. Plus you often need to pay about $100 for a competent graphics slicing shop to handle your job.

(Yes, others can do this for less, but you’re taking a few risks:

• Unreliable people vanishing with your money
• Getting crap code and being unable to evaluate that
• Getting an ugly, non-functional design)

And that’s just the first landing page – you need alternatives so you can test! A simple A/B/C split test (eg with three variations) could thus run you $1,200 -  $1,800 for graphics and code. (Assuming you start with completely different designs; if you just split test headlines or hero shots or calls to action, you’ll probably be able to do it for “just” $400.)

Oh, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You still need to buy traffic to send to those pages to test! All of a sudden, you’re paying $300 for the graphics, $100 for the code, maybe another $50 for finagling stuff and creating simple variations, plus traffic! This test is starting to sound like it’ll cost $1000, just to do a decent job of it!

Well, not necessarily. Here are some ideas and commentary on recent SMB landing pages I’ve seen.

1) Affiliate Theme – This is a Wordpress theme that comes pre loaded with various layout and graphical options, such that you can mix and match to customize your design.

The idea is excellent. I was partly happy and partly disappointed when I saw this, because my friend Tyler Shears and I came up with roughly the same idea on our trip back from SMX West, and it was a potential business / revenue stream. Now I’d rather not be second to market, but I am glad that this is available, affordably.

A single Affiliate Theme license goes for $97, says my friend Dev Basu in his Affiliate Theme review (which I wish were a little more review and a little less description ), while the top line one goes for $197.

The catch with Affiliate Theme, unfortunately, is that it’s Affiliate Theme.

Google hates affiliates (unless they’re Google Money affiliates or Eric Schmidt’s buddies…). Google is quicker to penalize affiliates in the organic results, and is more inclined to slap them in PPC.

Blackhats know that if their networks of sites show a footprint (a common pattern in the code), they’ll get banned more quickly.

If you want to use the same code as hundreds or thousands of other affiliates for serious projects… do yourself a favor and test things first. See how much of a leash Google gives you. I’m speaking theoretically, but this is a risk to be aware of.

2) You can use the following process.

1. Buy these three books: (i) Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug; (ii) Web Design For ROI, by Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus; (iii) The Elements of User Experience Design, by Jesse James Garrett
2. Read the books, and understand how to make usable sites that make money.
3. Draw up a detailed wireframe for your site, based on “2)”.
4. Get the graphics done cheap ($50 – $100) via a freelance site. With a wireframe, 99Designs is less valuable, because the graphic artists are just painting by numbers. It’s pretty hard to miscommunicate paint-by-numbers, even if your freelancer is a non-native English speaker imho.
5. Go to the pros to have the graphics coded.

As a member of the Jewish community, I’m usually critical of my community’s associations for not making more use of testing and advanced landing page ideas and knowledge. Yet I saw an ad on Facebook that lead me to this very impressive page. I’m guessing something similar could be done with the above process.

(Click to enlarge)

• No distracting navigation,
• Clear call to action,
• The form fits entirely above the fold,
• The features are explained in terms of the benefit provided (career, personal development)
• Pictures act as a sample of the experience you can have
• The only obvious issue is that their button is inconsistent with the form headline. I’m willing to bet the text “Get More Info” or some variant on that would beat “Submit Now,” in a split test.

3) If you do have a few hundred bucks for the design and then a few hundred more bucks for the traffic, you can do really impressive stuff.

An ad I recently saw on my favourite salsa site (which has some nice social media elements, especially for an SMB site…) lead me to a landing page for my salsa school, San Tropez.

(Click to enlarge)

• Headline targets needs / desires
• Strong scent with logo, repeated “latin dance school in Montreal” phrasing etc.
• Video parallels offline live demos, which make people want to learn and become great dancers
• Video comes from national TV, and acts as social proof
• Additional social proof in “Why Choose”
• Bullets, headlines and short paragraphs for easy scanning.
• Clear call to action
• Simple form
• Multiple ways to contact them

Even though San Tropez’s agency is a competitor in my city, I have to give props to Amauta Marketing for the sweet ass job they’ve done both with San Tropez’s SEO and PPC (assuming they didn’t only do the landing page). I actually signed up for the school back in January after finding them via Google a few times.

In short, making landing pages is getting a lot cheaper, with numerous options available. And for those with slightly larger budgets, you can do really impressive things. That’s one less excuse not to test!

Gab Goldenberg shares advanced seo tips on his seo blog.

[The opinions of SEJ Guest Bloggers are not necessarily those of Search Engine Journal or Search & Social.]

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Landing Pages On A SMB Budget

The topic of your link neighbors is well discussed. It goes without saying that:

• a backlink from a resource linking to only reputable sites is good;
• a backlink from a resource that links out very seldom and is very conservative / lazy about out-linking is good.

But is it actually a separate profile for such sites (that are both selective and lazy linkers) in Google’s algorithm.

There is an interesting discussion over at WebmasterWorld.com (also mentioned at Search Engine Roundtable) calling those conservative linkers “stingy linkers” and discussing how Google may be treating them.

“links from authors who are very stingy outlinkers are more informative.”

When the number should matters:

• fewer outlinks can be a sign that they are less likely to be participating in link schemes in general;
• fewer links mean more PageRank is passed to each one;
• fewer outlinks are much easier to analyze; “stingy linker’s” out-linking strategy is in a way straightforward, while regular person’s one can be contradictory (one day he links to a good site, next he just drops a link to some “bad neighborhood”, etc.

Does the number matter actually?

If John Doe links to 20 thin affiliate sites from a page and Jane Buck links to Wikipedia, Nytimes.com, and the Internet Public Library from her page, which sends a more positive message to the search engine: The numbers of links on John and Jane’s pages, or the “TrustRank” of the outbound links’ targets?

If the number still matters…

… Then it contradicts to the statements of the official representatives who encourage webmasters to out-link generously.

So what’s your opinion?

Do you think Google profiles “stingy” linkers?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

What If Google Profiles “Lazy” or “Selective” Outlinkers?

Google has disabled a Google News feature that allows personalities featured on the news items to comment on the news stories. When this was announced not so long ago, news media couldn’t quite get the idea behind it. Although it received media coverage for its ingenuity, personalities though didn’t quite like it, well at least based on the low usage of the said feature.

And so, Google probably realized that this is a futile effort at making their Google News service as interactive and social possible, it was then deactivated sometime in May. Unlike the coverage it got when it was launched, Google disabled the feature as quietly as possible.

Quoting official Google statement, Media Decoder reports:

“We’re always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful, occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users.”

What could have gone wrong with this feature? If Google wanted to elicit comments, it should have elicited comments from the users instead of the personalities featured in the news. If you were featured in a news items that runs on Google News, would you even bother commenting on the news item on the site itself?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Disables Commenting in Google News

On Tuesday, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real were named in a lawsuit filed by some music publishing companies claiming that each of their online music stores – Zune, Yahoo Music, and Rhapsody – infringe upon their copyrights. If you’re shaking your head and wondering how that is possible, with all the royalties they pay out, you’re not alone.

This copyright business is  a real mess.  As consumers we know not to illegally download music or share it online, or we could potentially face crazy fines from the RIAA, such as the $1.92 million one recently handed down to Minnesota mom who downloaded 24 songs.  For websites and companies looking to distribute or allow the playing of music on their sites, it’s far more complicated than that and the stakes are incredibly higher.  In fact the copyright laws as related to music are so complicated that even places we consider to be legitimate sources are being slapped with lawsuits alledging infringements.

In the case of this latest lawsuit, the publishers claim that all three companies may have licensed the copyrights on the recordings, but didn’t license the copyright on the compositions.  There are a whole lot of details out yet explaining the legalities and issues at hand in the case, but it is assumed these music services struck deals with record labels, but somehow the publishers and labels are separate entities and the rights are separate.

In many cases we assume that the publishing rights were also covered by the major record labels.  But in some cases the publishing rights were owned by independent companies, and the claim looks to be that the publishing rights were never cleared with them. 

What this means is that Microsoft, Yahoo and Real were all streaming music that they only had partial rights too.  And since the publishers consider each instance a song is played to be an infringement… yikes!  They could be looking at some pretty hefty fines if the court agrees.

If you’re interested in reading the entire court filing, which I will warn you is a massive 104 pages long, here you go.  Have at it.  In the meantime, we’ll definitely be following this closely.  Any ruling in favor of the music publishers could potentially have major ramifications for all three companies.  I imagine that Google right now is pretty darn happy that they’ve stayed out the music game, and that their search engine competitors are being tested.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Microsoft, Real, & Yahoo All Sued for Music Store Copyright Infringement

One of the advantages of working at Google is that you get to see neat products and features before the rest of the world does. But that can also be a disadvantage. Sometimes I’d like to talk about a fun Gmail Lab or a new Calendar feature but I’m honestly not sure whether the outside world can see the new feature. I don’t want to leak something that the outside world can’t see, so I usually I play it safe and end up not talking about any Gmail Labs, for example. I’d enjoy giving more Gmail tips but I also don’t want to show my actual email that might contain secret stuff.

I think I’ve figured out a way to solve this issue. I’ve created a new Gmail account, siliconvalleyuser (at) gmail.com. Let’s say it belongs to John Q Public, a power user living in Silicon Valley. Feel free to send John non-Google-related emails about fictional events: “Hey John, want to come to the party on Saturday?” or “John, here are those pictures from the fireworks this past weekend.” or “Hey John, I saw in the newpaper that you won the California lottery–congratulations!” Then when I want to do a screencast or demo some power feature of a Google account, I’ll have some realistic email to show.

Just one note: please don’t email anything to John about Google. I get way too much email about Google already, and the purpose of this account is to show different features of Gmail or Calendar. To keep this email address completely separate, I created a filter that deletes any emails that mention Google or me:

Again, please don’t email about Google-related stuff, but feel free to email John about interesting fictional things at siliconvalleyuser (at) gmail.com! I’m hoping that I can do some blog posts or videos with good tips.

Posted by great scott!

Crawling and Indexing. Without them you can’t rank. If you can’t rank, you can’t get search traffic. If you can’t get search traffic, your online marketing efforts are going to suffer; and in our industry that is a colossal FAIL.

This seems like simple stuff we all take for granted, but it’s critically important to understand what you must do–and avoid–to make sure your site is regularly crawled and then maintained in the primary index of each of the major engines. Even if you think you know it all, take a few minutes to watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday…you may just realize you’ve been ignoring some critical ranking factors.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Crawling & Indexing from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Posted by randfish

I’m not always a fan of Guy Kawasaki’s work, but really enjoyed his post on the OPEN Forum – A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs. I thought I’d take a stab at replicating it with some of my biggest warnings for those in our field.

For the list below, the word "clients" is interchangeable with "marketing manager" or "executive team" for in-house SEOs.

1. Don’t Create False Expectations
   Clients are just like everyone else – when you exceed their expectations, they love you. When you disappoint, they’re angry. Make it easy for yourself and don’t oversell. If anything, undersell your abilities to do great things and let them be surprised. It’s a hard thing to do, particularly in a competitive bidding environment, but humility and hard work often shine through in presentations and good clients will see that and honor it.
   _
2. Don’t Ignore Analytics
   Website analytics, both visitor traffic and third party metrics, are important parts of SEO. When things are going well, even if best practices aren’t being followed, it can be wise to match up data and trends to see what’s made a real difference. Don’t undertake an SEO project unless you have at least the essential data points (this also comes in handy once changes have been implemented and your work starts to have an impact).
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3. Don’t Always Take Your Client at Their Word
   If you talk to lots of clients, you’ll find that none of them have ever spammed the engines, bought a link, accidentally cloaked for Googlebot or hidden text, yet the statististics tell another story. Never assume your clients are being dishonest, but always watch out for activities they might not be aware of (or might not have realized were problematic). This goes beyond just white and black hat – we had a client who thought they had a couple dozen active domains; turns out they had nearly a hundred – canonicalization alone has been a big project and a big return.
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4. Don’t Get Into Projects with People You Don’t Like
   If ever you get a "funny feeling" about a client, move on if you can possibly afford it. Some people just don’t click together, and when interpersonal relationships aren’t working, projects have a way of not working out, either. It’s always better to get out before something’s signed than after.
   _
5. Don’t Give an Unqualified Answer Unless You’re Extremely Certain You’re Right
   If you’ve been reading SEOmoz lately or hearing me speak at conferences, you’ll notice that my advice comes with a lot more caveats than it used to. It’s been a tough lesson, but there’s very rarely a "this is ALWAYS better than that" in the field of SEO. Exceptions abound, so cage your language accordingly.
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6. Don’t Confuse SEO & Sales
   If your client comes to you wanting to drive sales with SEO, make sure they’re keenly aware of the multiple responsiblities inherent in such a request. Yes – SEO can drive lots of high quality, targeted traffic at the perfect moment for capturing the sale. But NO – SEO cannot convert that visit into dollars. If the website sucks at turning visitors into leads, do the right thing and recommend CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) before they dive into SEO.
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7. Don’t Rest on Your Laurels
   If you’re not paying attention in the SEO world, even for just a few weeks, you can miss massive changes. Look at June! We’ve had a reversal of position on nofollow and Javascript links from Google, a new engine/algorithm/brand from Microsoft, adoption of rich text formatting in the SERPs, evidence that header tags may not be as valuable as we thought and data suggesting that alt attributes are highly correlated with good rankings. Stay ahead of the curve and devote some resources to industry news – you owe it to your clients and yourselves.
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8. Don’t Undervalue Your Work
   SEO is hard work. For every consulting hour, there’s days of research, testing, reading, surfing and experimenting. Don’t undersell your services or accept that what you do doesn’t provide tremendous value. If you’re being undervalued now, consider how terrificly trackable SEO really is and show them the data. It’s almost always on your side.
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9. Don’t Believe Everything You Read
   Yes, even here at SEOmoz! We certainly try our best to provide high quality, accurate information, as do many other great sites on SEO, but no one is right 100% of the time, and, more importantly, not every piece of advice is applicable for every business or every situation.
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10. Don’t Underestimate Dev Contributions
    I was recently asked "what’s the biggest roadblock to SEO," and didn’t need to think for 10 seconds before quoting Mr. Ballmer’s infamous adage "Developers! Developers! Developers!" If you get bandwidth cycles for SEO projects, use them wisely. If the developers have made critical SEO errors, don’t be quick to criticize – you’ll make enemies, and, oftentimes, be guilty of hypocrisy. Stay humble, prioritize the big pieces and make sure you have the resources before you commit to improving traffic.
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11. Don’t Overstate Your Influence or Abilities
    Just because you have the ear of some important minds at Google/Yahoo!/Facebook/etc. doesn’t mean you can influence change within these large organizations. I’ve heard a lot of stories from companies that worked with SEOs of how they promised to get their penalty lifted or special treatment from an engine because they got a response to an email they sent to a search engineer. Perhaps an even better rule is – don’t promise something you can’t personally control and deliver.
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12. Don’t Get Overconfident and Dismiss Other Marketing Channels
    OK, yes – SEO rocks. But don’t forget how valuable other marketing activities like email, PPC, CRO, affiliate programs, even display advertising can be for the right scenario. Once you’ve found the SEO hammer, it’s easy to see every problem as a nail – I’ve certainly been guilty of it. If you can resist, think holistically and provide the best answer from a strategic (rather than tactical) level, you’ll become even better and more valuable to your clients.

Your turn – any "don’ts" you’d recommend to fellow SEOs?

p.s. If you haven’t read the whole Malcolm Gladwell vs. Chris Anderson with Seth Godin weighing in thing, it’s pretty worthwhile

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