Blue Wave Concept's Blog

Websites should lead to conversions, but what can enhance your Lead generation, Website ROI website’s ability to have potential customers voluntarily give you their contact information. We’d all love to think that our product or service is incredible and that potential customers are clamoring to have us contact them. The reality is somewhat different.

Let’s say you did everything right with your search engine optimization. With the SEO done, your keywords and links have placed you number one on Google and Bing and Yahoo, and you are now getting a ton of traffic to your website. What’s wrong with this picture? That’s what you wanted, right?

Without ‘conversions’ the traffic to your site is simply that. Traffic. It’s great to get some of these visitors to ‘convert’ – that is, to share their information so that you can open the dialogue and potentially have them as a client.

SO, why aren’t they sharing their contact information. There are some things that you may be doing wrong, that could discourage conversions. Many web developers simply don’t realize that you could be getting more results, and they ‘follow your direction’ without adding their insights. Try taking a look at your website with fresh eyes, and see whether your website may be ‘guilty’ of some of these common issues:

1. No call to action. Without asking for the contact information, its much less likely that you will receive the contact info. Try adding a ‘call-to-action’ to your website. This can be a button or form that offers something in return for contact information.

2. Ask for too much information. Most people do not want to offer their life history to a website, and in fact, would rather skip filling in the form if you ask for too much information. If your form is complicated or you ask for too much information, you have effectively created a barrier and a disincentive for filling in your form.

3. No reason. If you have a form that doesn’t share a reason for people to fill it in, it’s useless. What’s the motivation? Why should someone give you their information? What are you offering?

4. Reason not compelling. Perhaps you’ve done everything right and now you have a reason for people to give you their contact information. However, the reason is just not interesting to your target audience. This will cause your call-to-action to fail, and have low or no conversions. Test your call-to-action by creating two versions and change just one variable. This will help you create more effective reasons for conversions.

5. You’ve buried the form. If your form is at the bottom of the website evaluation free, evaluate website page, or ‘below the fold’, you’ve essentially hidden the form. Also, if the form tastefully blends in with the rest of the page, your visitors may fail to notice it. Make the form bold, make it a different color, and put it above the fold. This way, it will stand out from the rest of the page and increase the likelihood of being noticed.

A website can be an incredible tool to customers finding you, and then enabling you to reach out to them. Starting with an optimized site, then building in the features that encourage interaction are important for creating a site that will ultimately help your business instead of being an economic drain.

City of Woodbury, NJ new site is now complete. This new site after six years of the prior one being used, is much improved from a design standpoint plus navigation and easy to find information. With this new site they now have the ability to update content very easily with a CMS.

(taken from Matt Winn, Online Communications Specialist)

SEO needs to die. Like, now. While at a party, I had three different people ask me about SEO. Not only did the questions kill my buzz, they made me angry.
This is what I endured while I watched the ice melt in my margarita:

“Can you help me be found on Google?”
“What do I do for Google to find my stuff?”
“How do I get ‘Googleized’?”

After hearing ‘Googleized,’ I lost it and screamed, “YOU’RE NOT WRITING FOR GOOGLE!”

Here’s what I mean:

1. The goal of SEO isn’t to be found. It’s to be consumed.

Here’s a news flash: search engines can’t buy from you. They can’t read, nor do they consume products (just your souls).

Remember, a search engine’s job is to provide links that answer a person’s question. Your job as a website owner is to provide content that answers these questions.

Even if ranked highly for a certain keyword, if people come to your page and bounce, you’ve accomplished nothing. Instead, you want readers to stay on your page and consume your information. If people consume your content, your pages will naturally become better ranked. Readers will then trust your brand, trust your product, and hopefully buy something from you.

Take that, SEO.

2. Algorithms change. People’s need for valuable information doesn’t.

Another reason SEO needs to die is because it intentionally ruins our lives.

Every time Google and other search engines change their algorithm, the marketing industry goes into a frenzy. And while we scramble to adjust, search engines laugh at us from their big offices.

In other words, we’ll never, ever know exactly how to get ‘Googleized.’

The good news is, regardless of algorithms, you’ll perform well in search engines by fulfilling customers’ need for helpful information. Start by asking what your readers want. You can also look at other popular blogs and forums to find common questions. Try various forms of content, like videos and webinars.

Whatever the case, stop fearing algorithms and start writing for your audience.

3. Good links are better than good keywords.

SEO also needs to die because it believes it has more power than the people.

While there are lots of things everyone should know about SEO (check out my introductory series on SEO), one important detail is that good links are more important than stuffing keywords in your content. Yes, keywords are helpful, but receiving links to your content is critical.

But guess what? Search engines don’t send links to your site – people do.

By creating good content, you’re going to get a lot more links than just placing a keyword in your title. Good content is inherently shared, whether it’s through social media or direct links. In other words, people have the power to make your pages rank better, not these dastardly search engines.
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Final Thoughts

Do the basic tenets of healthy SEO need to die too? No – you’ll always need to know the fundamentals to succeed. What really needs to shift, however, is the obsession of optimizing for search engines. Instead, let’s focus on optimizing for people.

Watch out, SEO. No one ruins a good margarita and gets away with it.

Search Engine Optimization is a process where a website is designed and positioned to achieve higher rank for selected key words or keyword phrases when a query is made using one of the search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. There are essentially two components that can be addressed to optimize a website -

1. What you can do on the page and
2. What you can do off the page

This article addresses the second part of SEO, and specifically link building, and the top 5 link building mistakes that can really hurt your website.

Yes, you read that correctly “hurt”.

In the algorithm that evaluates where your website will place when a query is done on Google or Bing or Yahoo, one of the factors is the credibility of your site. Just as in real life, where you are judged by the company that you keep, so it also goes with regard to the links you obtain. If you hang out with low-lifes (and sometimes you find this out too late) then you can expect that others will perceive you that way.

Try to find sites that have authority and credibility and that you are proud to have links with.

With that said, here are 5 ways your link building will hurt your website:

1. Pay for back links. Sometimes in the rush to get a website optimized and showing in search engines quickly, short cuts to organic optimization are made. Buying links or link building services is risky business. Ultimately this tactic can back fire and harm your site because the authority of a preponderance of the links are low. This is the ‘company’ that you are keeping and therefore your site will be held back to the level of these other low-ranking sites.

2. Use bad anchor text. Obviously, if the anchor text is ‘click here’ this provides little help for the search engines to understand what the link is about. Much better to use descriptive text to identify what the linked page is about.

3. Use an image for the link. Search engines don’t ‘see’ pictures, they can only ‘read’ text. If your link is a picture and you haven’t used ‘alt text’ that’s doubly poor optimization.

4. Get irrelevant back links. Obviously back links will help your site, however in the long run, the irrelevant back links will drain your ‘juice’ and pull your site down. It’s along the lines of the company that you are keeping. Irrelevant links may boost your site when your site is new and you have no rank at all, but, if you want to be a serious site and have true authority, slow and sure win over fast every time. (Yes, that’s the turtle and the hare).

5. Get link spam. I’ve been receiving a bunch of comments recently on my blog that are obviously spam. Anything from sneakers to diet aids and more – and yet the comments are glowing about the neat blog I’ve written. The greatest comments are for a blog that doesn’t have any posts yet, which really cracksFree SEO evaluation me up. Don’t fall for this nonsense.

Bottom line, the power and authority of your website are going to be best when you do things the right way. Follow Google best practices, Bing best practices, or Yahoo best practices in order to be sure that you won’t be penalized down the road.

It’s much easier to optimize your website correctly the first time than to attempt to correct penalties caused by black hat practices. Beware of anyone who is associated with Black Hat.

If you’re a small business owner, your website is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding. Potential customers visit your site specifically for its content—its appearance and usability are critical to its success and how those users view your company. Getting your Web design wrong can have a very negative impact on your business. Here are five common design mistakes to avoid in order to create a great user experience and grow your bottom line.

1. Poor navigation

Many small business websites fail to make navigation a priority, but without careful attention to how people navigate your site, you could unintentionally be creating a frustrating experience for any potential visitor. People visit your site for specific information, and if they cannot find it they will quickly go elsewhere, leaving with the impression that your business is disorganized in more than just its website. A good navigation structure should be seamless and will keep visitors on your site longer, which means potentially more readers, subscribers, sales or leads. Website navigation affects usability and accessibility, so make it a primary concern. Most websites and blogs use fairly common navigational techniques that are expected by the average visitor. The pages and sections of the site should be easy and logical for visitors to maneuver. Don’t make your visitors think about how to navigate your site: It should be effortless and natural. There are several principles you can follow to create an effective navigation structure:
• Use icons to aid navigation, as these are both visually appealing and easy to use and understand.
• Create logical groups of related links, with the most important links on the top-level navigation bar and functional (dashboard, account, settings, etc.) and legal (copyright, privacy, terms) located elsewhere.
• Provide location information so users know where they are on any given page and how to proceed to another area of the website. This can be achieved by using Breadcrumb navigation.

2. No Clear Calls To Action

The fundamental error of many small business websites is the lack of a clear call to action. We’ve all seen bland small business brochure websites with nothing but endless descriptive paragraphs. If you aren’t leading the user to commit to an action—buy a product, contact you or subscribe—then you are losing them. Driving traffic to your website is important, but that traffic is useless if your primary call to action is a plain “click here” link buried in a sea of text. Call to action buttons are a great way to grab the users attention, and they can be the key to higher conversions. Investing time and consideration into creating successful calls to action can help guide the user and address their needs while achieving your own business goals. It’s important to keep the following best practices in mind when creating an optimal call to action:
• The design of a call to action can be broken down into 4 simple elements—size, shape, color, and position. Each plays a vital part in determining how effective the call to action is in directing the user.
• Don’t make your users work or think, or they’ll leave. It’s not that they aren’t smart, it’s that they want access to information quickly without spending unnecessary time searching for it.
• Don’t overdo it with multiple, competing calls to action on every page. Decide what your primary target is and then define a clear objective per page. Your content should have answered, “What’s in it for me?” and your call to action should now answer, “What do I do now?”

3. Color & Contrast

Color and contrast aren’t usually high up on the list of priorities for a small business owner when it comes to creating a website. But it should be, because if your website text does not have sufficient contrast compared to its background, people will have difficulties reading your content, especially people with poor vision or color-blindedness. Aside from plain readability, color and contrast are important because they can be used to create visual interest and direct the attention of the user. It can equally be effective in organizing and defining the flow and hierarchy of a page, and it’s therefore an essential principle to pay attention to during the design process. Here are some tips:
• Using a free a Color Contrast tool, which conforms to accepted standards, you can easily check to see how the contrast on your website measures up.
• Research how major sites use color and contrast to improve readability and highlight specific sections, and use this knowledge to experiment with color schemes.
• One of best ways to create contrast is via a size difference between two elements, making some things appear larger than others. This works especially well within a minimal color scheme, and it means you don’t have to necessarily rely on color.

4. Content, Content, Content

People visit your website for its content, and how that is structured is a huge factor in its success or failure. Unfortunately, an overwhelming number of small businesses get so caught up in overloading the user with information that they overlook how that information is presented. Most people do not read unless it’s absolutely necessary, and they prefer to scan through information quickly to get to the points of interest. This is why it’s so important to establish a strong visual content hierarchy so users can quickly scan your site and sifting through relevant information. A logical content hierarchy also acts as a guide through each page and creates a more enjoyable user experience. So when focusing on your content, it’s best to keep in mind these three tips:
• White space is possibly the most important factor to consider, as it will allow the user to focus on the meaningful content within each section.
• Break up lengthy pieces of information into digestible blocks of text, utilizing headings, sub-headings, bullets, blockquotes and paragraphs.
• Readable content is important, so use a good line height that is large enough to make content scannable. Margins and letter spacing also need to be taken into consideration.
Of course, when talking about content, it goes without saying that spelling and grammar cannot be underestimated.

5. Clutter

We all know at least one small business website that seems to include everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. Many small business owners tend to cram as much as they can onto a single page—the end result is a busy, cluttered and unreadable page. The more extraneous items there are on a web page, the more unprofessional it looks, and it becomes overwhelming, confusing and distracting for the user. A cluttered website will also affect traffic because visitors won’t return if they can’t understand or follow the content, which leads to low traffic, a high bounce rate and possibly a poor page rank.
Clutter also applies to images, as too many can be a huge distraction and just plain annoying. Images should be used to illustrate, capture attention and guide the user where required.
Follow these guidelines for a more streamlined visitor experience:
• Challenge every item on each page and ask, “Does it really need to be there? Does it serve a specific purpose? Can I live without it?”
• The key is to aid the visitor in finding the information they’re looking for, so make sure to differentiate between areas of content, advertisements and promotions.
• Prioritize your content and decide what is the most important to your visitor and potential customer—and sell it well.
Even the greatest content can become lost in a mess of words and graphics, so de-cluttering is essential.

click here to the article.