The Secret to Choosing the Right Web Site Images

Yeah, yeah, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, yadda, yadda. The problem is, if an image isn’t right, your web site could have a thousand words against it before it even starts.

You need the right image. The one that gives you the most bang for your thousand words.

The first rule is: there are no rules. Unless you are a rock star designer, it’s difficult to say whether your snazzy shot of grapes will properly convey your toxic chemical manufacturing company’s green initiative.

For most of us, it’s best to choose an image that complements the web copy. If yours is a residential roofing company, a beauty shot of a home with a nice roof is a good, safe choice.

If you want to get creative, go ahead, but make sure the creativity enhances the connection to the content. For the roofing company, maybe a shot of a few homes in the rain, but one of them is glowingly dry (I don’t know – you get the idea).

Here’s the (not so) Secret Bit: Your copy should be about your customers; providing answers to what they seek on the internet. If your image is supposed to relate to your copy, and your copy should be about your customers, then… BINGO – make the image about your customers too.

What about a shot of a couple happily entertaining friends in the backyard of their stunningly roofed home?

By Stephen Da Cambra

Web Copy Migration - Expensive Cost Cutting

Eye candy is seductive. Web visitors who stumble upon a site with innovative design will stop to take in the eye-catching treat. That they have a creative design is a unique selling feature of many sites.

It’s the reason many small businesses put a strong emphasis on having a creative, “leading edge” design. There is nothing wrong with emphasising design creativity when it fits with the goals of your web site.

Problems arise when you sacrifice other important elements of your site for the sake of an off-the-chart design. Your web site’s copy and structure are just as important to your overall web design as colour, layout and effects (easy on the effects – remember the goal of your site).

As it is an important design element, you should create copy specifically for your web design, just as you do with other elements. Migrated web copy, copy taken from your brochures, sell-sheets or old web site, doesn’t fit. Not only will it make your web copy less effective, it could ruin your snazzy design and chase away your web visitors. Saving money by migrating copy can be very expensive.  

Happy Halloween, and go easy on the candy!

By Stephen Da Cambra

with thanks to New Thinking

Write for Everyman - & Every Person in Your Target Market

We recently read an interesting blog post that talks about engaging “everyman” with your web copy. The author is absolutely right; your copy needs to reach the masses and too many big words or industry jargon tends to drive the masses away.

You can also take the concept beyond your copy and use it across your entire internet marketing program. But be warned, while you have help for creating copy in layman’s terms, like keyword tools, there’s nothing similar to help you decide what web design, social media profile or viral message will work for the masses.

Beginning with your web design, you must appeal to the broadest range of potential customers. Not everyone arrives at your site looking for the same thing and they may not be at the same stage in the buying cycle. For example, if you develop a new High Tech Doodad and introduce it on your web site, you will attract a lot of traffic looking for basic information, like a product description. If you have competition for the Doodad, others will arrive at your site looking for more advanced information that will help them decide which HT Doodad is best. Fortunately, when it comes to high tech items, there’s a large contingent who simply must have the latest Doodad and they will come to your site looking to buy.

See what’s happening? Your site needs to appeal to visitors who are in search of a broad range of useful information. From looking for basic information to ready to buy, they all will arrive at your site and if you don’t give them what they’re looking for fast, you risk losing them, perhaps forever.

The same is true for all your other internet marketing initiatives. You should give the masses what they seek from you.

Get your message across to the everyman – and every person, or at least as many as you can, regardless of where they are in their search for information or products.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Time for Internet Marketing

Internet marketing takes time. Let’s say you started a new site today, including getting a new URL. It will be some time - weeks or months - before Google even indexes your site. It could be the greatest web site in cyber history - no matter, it will take time for the search engines to check out your site, make sure it’s legit and start presenting it in search results.

Your next step should be SEO and PPC. They take time. Many regard PPC as instant gratification internet marketing; it can get you on the front page of search results in no time. While that is true, only between 20% and 30% of surfers choose from paid search results. You need SEO and SEO takes time.

Other internet marketing methods take time too. Have you heard a lot about social media marketing? It takes time. Blogging? More time. Researching ways to optimize your social media and blogging campaigns? Full time.

Who has time for internet marketing? You do. Time is money. The more time you spend on your internet marketing – all of it, from SEO to participating in forums – the better the payoff will be.

You can hire others to do it, but that costs money. Get through the mystique of internet marketing, and you’ll find it’s DIY friendly. Indeed, you’re probably the best person to do it. If you have the time.

Where will you find the time? You’ll make time. Set it aside; regularly; daily; without fail. Do so, give your internet marketing enough time and you’ll start to be found, make contacts and generate business.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Content is King on the Internet

There is little else to say - on the web, content is king. In the interests of not leaving you with a blog entry of 10 words, let’s look at why.

Before we begin, for the purposes of this article, content means well researched, well-written and identifiable web copy and images.

Web content is a commodity. It is the main ingredient of the product offered by a growing number of companies. Search engines, social media sites and web directories that is, all of which need content to survive.

Pretend you started a search engine. As with any other business, the first task is to determine your product. That’s easy: search results. Step one done. Your products are the search results that your engine produces when a surfer enters a keyword.

Step two is to identify your market, or potential customers. Easy again: web surfers. Step two done. (This is so easy. I wonder why everyone doesn’t start a search engine or social media site – or did I speak too soon?) Your customers are internet searchers and you want as many of them as possible to use your search engine.

If your engine produces pertinent, high quality results for your customers, they will be happy and more likely to use your engine again; and maybe they will tweet about it.

If your engine produces poor search results, your customers may be confused or frustrated. When that happens, not only will they tweet about it, they will devote entire entries about it in their blogs and start a “Hate Your Search Engine” community on Facebook. The bad vibe will go viral and you will be out of business by teatime.

That’s why content is king on the web.

(Well, it's one reason anyway.)

By Stephen Da Cambra

Keyword Wars - Episode 2

If you joined us late, in Keyword Wars - Episode 1 we learned that keywords are the words and terms potential customers use to search for your company on the internet. But there is sometimes costly competition for the best keywords and you need to know how to put keywords to work for you without blowing your internet marketing budget.

In Episode 1 and a previous instalment of this blog, we spoke about the advantages of long tail keywords; those keywords that are not necessarily the most popular terms, but, collectively, form a significant proportion of the keywords for your product or business. It’s considerably less expensive to get search engine rankings for long tail keywords.

A large and growing portion of internet searches are local – that is, the searcher is looking for a product or service in their geographic area. About half of local searches include a place name to narrow the search. In other words, a large portion of web searches are for a product or service in a specific location – for example, auto repair in Springfield.

If you were in the auto repair business and wanted to get good rankings for the search term “auto repair”, you would need lot of time and effort (translation: money) because you would be competing with every other auto repair shop in the English speaking world. Unless you had garages in every major market, most of your effort would be wasted because you’d be listed in markets you didn’t service.

By including a location in your search term, you reduce your competition to the local market and reduce your chances of being listed in areas you don’t serve. Best of all, with only local competition to deal with, it’s much less expensive to get ranked for “auto repair Springfield” than simply “auto repair”. A side bonus is, by going for the local keyword term, you improve your ranking for the main keyword term too – “auto repair Springfield” improves your “auto repair” ranking.

Volumes can be written on keywords and putting them to work for your search engine optimization (SEO) and internet marketing efforts. We have touched on a couple ways here, but, if you expect to get business from the web, or to get more business from the web, you will do well to learn more.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Business Networking on the Net

Business networking is as old as business itself. It used to be called “rubbing elbows” or “working the room”, but it was all networking before the term became common.

Being a network, the internet is an great place for business networking – but you wouldn’t know it by how long it’s taken many of us to come to the realization. While LinkedIn, a business-oriented networking site, beat Facebook to the web by almost a year, it never had a chance against its more “social” rival and others, including MySpace and Twitter, which blew by LinkedIn in popularity after only two years.

Online networking is an important part of any business's internet marketing and LinkedIn is as good a place as any to start. A good example is Charlotte Business Professionals. In June, 2008, Jason McKinstry opened a LinkedIn account from his office in Charlotte, NC. While things were slow in the beginning, he began receiving messages from other LinkedIn members in town. Jason decided to start a LinkedIn group to bring together all of his Charlotte business contacts. One year later, the Charlotte Business Professionals LinkedIn group has over 4,000 members, monthly face-to-face meetings and has just launched their own website – www.charlottebp.com.

Fortunately, if you prefer to Tweet rather than link, social networking sites are not just for finding out your mother is getting her hair styled right now. Business groups and networks – and opportunities – exist on every major networking site. There might even be a networking site devoted to your industry or interests.

For most users, online networking success doesn’t just happen by joining a site. Networking requires action. In fact, it usually requires two actions: a) finding contacts, and b) being found by contacts.

When you join a network, you should actively search out those with whom you are most likely to make a connection. If you’re a real estate agent, you might want to search for mortgage brokers or lawyers. When you spot them, make contact.

Being found means developing a web profile that makes it easy for other searchers to find you and know what you are about. That way you are more likely to attract the sorts of contacts you want to pursue.

Finding and being found – that’s networking on the ‘net.

By Stephen Da Cambra