SEO: When Being Optimized Can HurtWritten by Lisa Packer
It’s a marketing dream come true: A potential customer, looking for what you have to offer, types a few words into her favorite search engine and voila! She is led directly to your website where she can go from “prospect” to “customer.”The best part is, it didn’t cost you anything (except time and elbow grease) to get to top of her results. Unless, of course you paid for someone else’s time and elbow grease. Even so, you’ve got a sale and your customer got what she was looking for. Sounds like classic win-win situation. So, what’s not to love about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Plenty – if your efforts stop there. Because getting your site to top of search result heap is only half battle. Leave other half un-fought, and you’re actually doing yourself more harm than good. Lets not forget that ultimate goal of this whole exercise is to eventually make sales. And last I checked, search engine spiders weren’t spending a whole lot of money. When an actual human being gets to your site and sees a page designed for a robot she feels a bit used. Kind of like being pitched to by used car salesman in polyester suit. She reads copy that, rather than telling her how she might benefit from what you have to offer, repeats variations of her search term over and over. This tells her you don’t care about her, you only want her money. She clicks away and searches some more.
| | How To Make Your Ad Copy More EffectiveWritten by Ash Trivedi
Telling a story or sharing product and service information is fine in an ad. But bottom line is that you want to close a sale. The difference in ad copy doesn’t have to be earth shattering. It can be very slight, in fact. Here are ways to make your ad a little more effective come closing time. 1. TESTS – Make public knowledge results of your product and service testing. Share how your items stand up against competition; how durable they are, how safe. Discuss quality and unique features. Let people know “why” they should choose your items. And present material in a professional way with statistics, graphs, before and after photos or other graphic images and a well-written report or case study documented. 2. YOU – While you’re at it, let them know why they should choose you! Don’t hide behind a P.O. Box and Yahoo email address. Add your background information, a nice executive resume, testimonials from clients, work samples, community involvement projects, industry awards, educational courses you continue to take for self improvement, workshops and seminars you attend, etc. let people know who you are. Add a nice, professional photograph of yourself, too, if you like.
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