Often when you do a site-wide update of your design, your content and/or your site structure, it can affect your website’s rankings in search engines negatively. Facing a huge site update project myself, I recently spent some time doing research on how to prepare for a big site update and ensure your high rankings stay high. I wanted to share my findings with you here.

My research soon lead me to an article on the popular Dutch blog Marketingfacts.nl, providing a site migration checklist. The key takeaways from this article are:

• Try to keep your URL’s the same. Use 301 redirects for URL’s that have to change and ensure you redirect all changed URL’s to the content’s new location.
• Don’t change too much too quickly. If you do a redesign, content update and rebrand all in one, too many changes are happening and you’re likely to lose rankings on many keywords.
• Don’t change your domain’s WhoIs information. A changed WhoIs can give search engines the impression your website has changed owners, and they could reset all your rankings across the board.

An article from Jennifer Osborne on SearchEnginePeople.com added several considerations:

• Do a phased change-over: start with a small section of your site and evaluate, then proceed with the rest.
• Keep your internal link structure in mind when doing a redesign. Internal link juice is important as it tells search engine spiders which pages on your site are important. Don’t divert attention from your key pages with a poor structure.
• Track your web analytics and pay extra attention to 404 errors after the migration. This may indicate broken links, both internal and external, pointing to moved or deleted content.

Denver SEO adds the following point:

• Expect to see your rankings drop regardless of your preparations. A 25 to 30 day drop in search engine rankings is normal before levels return to normal or better.

Of course we can’t skip Google’s own recommendations:

• Add and verify your site on Google’s Webmaster Tools.
• Update your submitted Sitemap XML file to reflect the updated site.
• Keep track of crawling errors to detect 301 redirect problems and 404 errors.

And here are a few other tips I came across on various sites and blogs:

• Create a custom 404 error page to try and minimize the impact of broken links.
• If your site update is significant enough, publish a press release.
• Use search engine marketing to supplement your (temporary) drop in rankings.
• Update your robots.txt file to reflect any changes in off-limits content.

After this research I feel well-equipped to handle the SEO aspect of my own site migration project. If you have any further tips or ideas, please leave them in the comments.

SEO Concerns When Migrating Your Website is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

1. Part 1 – Choosing your keywords
2. Part 2 – Writing good ads
3. Part 3 – Create landing pages that convert

In part 1 of this guide to search engine advertising we discussed how to choose the right keywords to advertise on. In part 2 we showed how to make effective ads. Now in the final part we’ll tackle landing pages.

Search Engine Advertising – Step 3: Create Landing Pages That Convert

You’re targeting the right keywords and your ads generate a lot of clicks, so now you have all these extra visitors coming to your website. You’re paying for these visitors, so you want to turn as many of them into customers. The best way to do this is not to send them to your website’s homepage, but to a custom-built landing page.

Image you’re an average internet user. You’re looking for a new sofa for your living room, and you do a Google search for sofa’s. You see an ad on the search results page which appeals to you, so you click on it. You end up on a general furniture website’s homepage and now you have to look for their sofa’s section. Chances are you don’t have the patience for this, and you use the back-button to return to the search results and try a different website.

So you click on a second ad that seems interesting, and this time you land on a webpage that talks only about sofa’s. It shows you pictures of sofa’s, it has a nice offer for a discounted sofa on it, and there are many links from this page to various different categories of sofa’s. This site appeals much more to you, and you’re likely to stick around longer and maybe even order a sofa from these guys.

The first advertiser you clicked on made the classic mistake of sending search advertising traffic to the website’s homepage. From the homepage a web user needs to start his search all over again, navigating your website until he finds what he was looking for in the first place. The user has to go through more clicks and has to invest additional effort, something internet users are notoriously unwilling to do.

It’s much better to send the user straight to what they want to see, which the second advertiser does. This way the user doesn’t have to find his way through your website. He immediately sees content that is relevant to his search query.

Elements of a good landing page

1. Relevance: First and foremost the page you link to from a search engine advertisement needs to be relevant. Just like the ad needs to contain the keyword you advertise on, so does the landing page. If you advertise on the sofa keyword, your ad contains the word sofa, you can’t send users to a landing page discussing kitchens or chairs. You need to send them to a page that talks about sofa’s.

Be sure to include the actual keyword you advertise on clearly visible on the landing page, preferably in a headline. This tells a visitor that the landing page is relevant to the search query they typed in to start the whole process. If you use several different phrases to say the same thing, you’ll probably have to make different landing pages for each or use dynamic HTML code to show the exact keyword the user searched for.

When you advertise on many different types of keywords, you will have to create a lot of different landing pages. It’s a lot of work, but it will always pay itself back in a higher conversion rate, higher revenue, and more return on your advertising investment.

2. Clickpath: Sometimes the landing page can be the conversion page. If you offer a downloadable ebook or small specialized item, your landing page can also be the page where users can place an order. But often you’ll need to give your users additional information to guide them to a conversion – product options, specifications, accessories, etc. Guide them through the sales funnel, from general overview to detailed information to actual conversion.

An important aspect of the clickpath is that you shouldn’t make it too easy for users to diverge from it. Take away your regular site navigation if you can, try to keep the visitors of your landing page in a clickflow that guides them to a conversion. If users sidestep your clickpath and instead go to your site’s homepage or another page, chances are you’ll lose them there.

3. Calls to action: Once you get a user to click on an ad and arrive on your landing page, don’t leave them hanging. You need to take them by the hand as it were, show them where to go and what to do. Use action words like ‘learn more, ‘click here’, ‘order now’ in your content and in your links to additional pages.

4. Easy conversion: It should be as easy as possible for a user to place an order. Don’t ask them for information they don’t really want to give up. Keep your forms short and simple and only ask for the very basic information you need to complete the order.

5. Persuade: Selling is the art of persuasion. Employ tried-and-proven persuasion methods such as testimonials, special offers, guarantees, authorative sources, instilling confidence, and more. Include them on the landing page itself and on every subsequent page you send your users to.

6. Fast loading: Your landing page should load very quickly. If a user has to wait for a bit before your landing page is displayed properly, the urge to click that back-button will grow. Make your landing pages lean and efficient to optimize loading times.

7. Measure: It’s not as simple as putting your landing page out there and waiting for the money to come pouring in. It’s imperative that you know what users are doing on your landing page. Do they stay and read your content or do they leave? What links do they click on? Do they convert into customers right away or do they bookmark the page and come back later? Do they follow the whole clickpath or do they leave prematurely? If so, where do they tend to leave your site the most?

All these things and more can be measured and analyzed with a good web analytics package. A good place to start is Google Analytics, a free service that contains all the web analytics functionality you’ll need. Use the data you gather to make informed decisions about what to improve on your landing page (and your website as a whole).

8. Experiment: Creating good landing pages is never an exact science. All aspects of a landing page, from the headline to the color of the buttons, can have an impact on the conversion rate. Experiment freely, but do it in a controlled manner. Tools like Google’s free Website Optimizer allow you to perform extensive tests with all kinds of different aspects of your landing page to optimize your conversions.

Don’t test too many things at once – experiment with one or two changes at a time, no more. Allow your test to run for enough time before you make up your mind. And once you find a landing page setup that works well, use that as the basis for a new round of further tests. Never stop testing and improving.

9. Conform to the guidelines: Last but certainly not least, be sure to read the editorial policies and guidelines of the search engine you advertise on. Google, Yahoo and Live all have strict policies about advertising on their search results pages. There are guidelines you’ll need to conform to for your ads and your landing pages, or you’ll risk paying more for each click or worse, not getting your ads shown at all.

Conclusion
Creating good landing pages for your search engine advertising campaign is not an easy and straightforward task. To do it well you’ll need to invest a lot of time and effort in building and perfecting your landing pages. But it’s never a wasted effort. Again and again the results show that good landing pages turn many more visitors into paying customers, and help earn back the money you invest in seach advertising several times over.

Search Engine Advertising: a Step By Step Guide – Part 3 is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

1. Part 1 – Choosing your keywords
2. Part 2 – Writing good ads
3. Part 3 – Create landing pages that convert

In part 1 of this guide to search engine advertising we discussed how to choose the right keywords to advertise on. This second part will talk about making effective ads for your search marketing campaign.

Search Engine Advertising – Step 2: Writing Good Ads

Now that you have a good set of keywords to advertise on, it’s time to write the actual ads themselves. Most search engine advertising is done with text-based ads, so I will focus on those. You can also do more visual ads such as banners, but they’re more difficult to make and you have much less freedom to experiment and fine-tune them. With text ads you can make as many changes as you want, tweaking and optimizing them until you get the best results.

Use The Keyword In The Ad
The first and most important tip for writing good text ads is that your ad should contain the actual keyword you are advertising on. Having the keyword in your ad indicates to a user that your ad is relevant to their search query. This means the user is much more likely to actually click on your ad. Using the keyword in your ad is a vital aspect of writing successful ads.

As a consequence you’ll find yourself writing many different ads, one or more for every set of similar keywords. Sometimes you’ll write ads specifically for one keyword. This isn’t a bad thing – on the contrary, it’s the key to a successful search engine advertising campaign. If you want to save time by writing generic ads, you’ll appeal to no one and your ads will get very few clicks. It’s important to stand out and be relevant, and that means writing ads that contain the keyword you are advertising on.

An example: say you have a furniture company and you advertise on many furniture-related keywords. One of those keywords is the word ‘sofa’. What ad do you think a user is more likely to click on when he’s doing a search for sofas? This one:

High Quality Furniture
Many Different Styles, Very Affordable

Or this one:

High Quality Sofas
Sofas from $99, Many Different Styles

The second one is a more relevant, appealing ad and will attract more attention and generate more clicks. So divide your keywords into small sets (Google Adwords calls them ad groups) and write ads for each ad group that contain the actual keyword itself. Sometimes you’ll find yourself writing ads for one single keyword – this is not a bad thing. In fact, especially for high profile keywords that get a lot of traffic, it’s a very good thing!

Write Compelling Ads
Using the exact keyword in your ad doesn’t just make your ad more relevant, you can also be much more specific in what you offer. That’s  the second aspect of writing good ads: make it compelling.

In your ad you have limited space to make an impact on a search engine user, so you need to draw them in with a compelling offer or call to action. If your business is cost-competitive, try to include a low price in your ad. This will serve two purposes: it will filter out users who aren’t even willing to pay the low price, and it will compel users who are willing to pay that amount to click on your ad and look at what exactly you’re offering. This means the traffic you generate through this ad is more likely to yield actual customers.

Another way to compel users to click on your ad is to include a call to action. Urge users to “learn more”, “act now”, “free download”, or make use of your “limited one-time offer”. These are all classic marketing phrases that work well in search engine ads. Don’t be afraid to use them, as long as you keep one thing in mind: never deceive. Always deliver what you promise.

Proper Use of Language and Punctuation
Few things can lower a user’s opinion of a company more quickly than errors in spelling and grammar. Always make sure your ads are properly written, both in spelling and grammar, and don’t contain any errors. This shows a basic level of professionalism you need to project in order to win the confidence of your prospective customers.

Sometimes you may be tempted to use bad grammar or punctuation to make your ads stand out more. You may want to ad exclamation marks or special symbols to emphasize your text. Don’t. Ads that contain these tricks come across as amateurish, and many search engines like Google maintain strict editorial policies that forbids these practices. Your ad will get deleted and after repeat offenses you may even suffer penalties on your account.

One exception: capitalization of words. Even though technically it may be incorrect, it’s still a good idea to Capitalize Every First Letter in your ad. This makes your text stand out more and helps boost the success of your ads. Only capitalize the focus words, the smaller words like “the”, “and”, “in”, “up” and so on shouldn’t be capitalized.

Test, Test, Test
Once you’ve written a good ad, write another one for the same keyword. And another one. Vary your ads with different headlines, different offers, and different calls to action. The best way of doing this is to duplicate an ad and change only one aspect of it.

Then keep a sharp eye on how these ads perform. After you’ve gotten several hundred clicks on your ads you can see which ad performed the best. Take this ad and use it as the basis for a new set of variations. Take the best ad from this new set and use that for new versions. Once in a while throw in an entirely new ad with an entirely different setup and see how its performance compares.

Never stop testing. Always seek to squeeze that extra bit of performance out of an ad. Sometimes a small change, one different word in the headline or a minor variation in your call to action, can have a huge impact on the success of your ad. Test methodically and consistently and soon you will know exactly which ingredients work and which don’t.

In the next part of this guide we’ll go into creating effective landing pages for your search engine advertising campaign.

Search Engine Advertising: a Step By Step Guide – Part 2 is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

1. Part 1 – Choosing your keywords
2. Part 2 – Writing good ads
3. Part 3 – Create landing pages that convert

Sometimes, no matter how you try, it’s just not possible to get your website listed high in the natural search results. Your competition is too fierce, you’re new in the market, you have a new product launch and you can’t wait until search engines index your new content – there are a thousand reasons why regular search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t the right thing for you. That’s not to say your website shouldn’t be optimized for search engines. Doing good SEO is never a bad thing, and will help your website in many different ways.

But when SEO isn’t enough, you can choose to invest in search engine marketing. Advertising on search engines can act as a supplement to (or even replacement of) SEO, as it gives you high listings in search engines for relevant keywords. The downside is that these are sponsored results, and as such will yield significantly lower clickrates than high ‘organic’ search rankings.

Nonetheless search engine advertising, as done through Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and Live Search Marketing, can be a very efficient and cost-effective marketing channel to generate more traffic and business for your website.

In this series of articles I’ll walk you through the necessary steps to create and perfect a search engine marketing campaign. I won’t use any single search engine as an example and so my tips and advice will be generic enough that you can apply them to any search engine marketing campaign.

Search Engine Advertising – Step 1: Choosing Your Keywords

I’ll start with what is arguably the most important step of your search engine marketing campaign: selecting the right keywords to advertise on.

Picking the right keywords isn’t as easy and straightforward as it might initially seem. You probably know your own business inside and out and have a solid grasp of the lingo and terminology used in your industry. But do your customers share that lingo? As I’ve blogged about before, there are dangers to using business jargon. When your customers search for ‘barcode scanners’, advertising on ‘imaging device” is probably not a good idea.

It’s important to do good research into the search words your potential customers are using to find your website and those of your competitors. One tool you can use for this is Google’s Keyword Suggestion tool. Just select your language and region, type in one or more keywords, and get a list of related and alternative keywords that people are using in Google’s search engine. You can sort the suggested keywords by popularity, expected traffic and competition.

Another way of using the same tool is to let it do a quick scan of your website or product page and find relevant keywords itself. Instead of using the ‘Descriptive words or phrases’ option you select the ‘Website content’ option and put in the URL of your website or product page. Google will then look at the content, determine what keywords fit the best with this, and give you a list of suggested keywords.

A possible problem here is that you may not use the right keywords on your website. (Why not?) It’s smart not to simply accept Google’s suggestions at face value, but to decide for yourself what the right words are that you want to advertise on.

Google’s tool isn’t the only one. There are many tools out there that can help you with finding the best keywords to advertise on. Each search engine has its own tool for finding the best keywords, and there are other free and paid tools around to help you get the best list of keywords for your search engine marketing campaign. Do a search for ‘keyword discovery‘ or ‘keyword suggestion‘ and you’ll come across dozens of websites and tools to help you further.

The initial list of keywords you get this way probably isn’t sufficient to start your campaign with. Search engine marketing is a popular means of advertising, and in most search engines the position of your ad is determined by, among other factors, how much money you can spend on it. With a limited budget it’s not smart to focus on big, popular keywords where all your competitors also advertise on. Because of the popularity of those words there will be plenty of competition and that means you’ll have to pay a high price to get your ad to the top of the search results.

And getting to the top is important. The lower your ad is shown, the less users are inclined to click on it. It’s important to get your ad high in the sponsored results list. This means you either need to spend a lot of money getting your ad high on search results pages for popular keywords, or you can choose to focus on more specialized, less popular search words.

These more specialized keywords are called ‘long-tail’ keywords. They’re usually a bit longer than regular keywords, consisting of two, three or even four seperate words. They’re not the words that users tend to start with when they search, but users who do use these longer keywords tend to have a pretty clear idea of what they’re looking for. That means the traffic you get from these long-tail keywords is more likely to actually buy from you. And because these long-tail keywords aren’t used as much, you’ll have to spend less money to get your ad listed high. So while you may get less traffic, you might end up with much more bang for your buck.

An example: say you have an online furniture store. You sell a lot of different furniture, but you specialize in colonial-style wooden furniture. You can choose to advertise on keywords such as ‘furniture’, ‘sofa’, ‘cabinet’, ‘chair’, and so on, but these are all big, popular search words with a lot of competing advertisers. A smarter strategy would be to focus on more specialized long-tail keywords such as ‘colonial furniture’, ‘modern antique cabinet’, ‘classic style sofa’, etc. These words are less popular, which means less traffic but also much lower cost to advertise on. And people using those search words already know approximately what they want, so if you send them to the right offer on your website you’re much more likely to turn them into customers.

The next article in this series focuses on writing good advertisements for your search engine marketing campaign.

Search Engine Advertising: a Step By Step Guide is a post from: The Great Websites Blog