Ask Google, search engines love links. Of course, they love some links more than others. For example, a simple link exchange (reciprocal link) doesn’t have as much value to search engines and so, it doesn’t receive the same weight as a non-reciprocal (one-way) link — the theory being that a one-way, in-bound link is a recommendation from a site owner to visit this linked site. The link, itself, is testament to the quality of the site being referred.

Article Syndication
In recent years, many sites have employed article syndication to develop links. These site owners write (or have written) articles of interest to a particular audience. The site owners then offer these articles to other relevant sites free in exchange for a link back to the originator of the content in the “about the author” section of the article. In this way, a single site owner can submit dozens of articles for syndication receiving an inbound link from each article in return for the free use of content. They can also watch other sites post the content virally to keep their sites fresh, as well.

Sites need fresh content so many will happily display your article and provide a link to your site. It’s a tried and true link building tactic. However, search engines are programmed to seek out the most natural, and therefore valuable, links they can find.

The way articles are syndicated is through sites like goarticles.com and ezinearticles.com. The standard format for the display of the article is: headline, article body followed by a small blurb about the author with a link back to the author’s site. Since those links appear in the body of the page, they appear to be more valuable in comparison to most purchased or reciprocal links which often appear at the bottom of a page column, or in the footer surrounded by lots of other links — somewhat effective, but not necessarily the best way to acquire inbound links.

In addition, syndication leads to duplication when a single article appears on 10 sites all at the same time. This diminishes the quality of the text and the back link to the author’s site. It’s still more valuable than a plain link exchange but search engines are placing less emphasis on syndicated content. So, what’s a site owner to do?

Hosted Web Content
It goes by many different names: content swapping, advertorials, pre-sell pages and hosted content — all basically the same idea.

The way hosted content works is that you, the author, pay a site owner to display your article. However, now, instead of the back links to your site coming at the end of the article, you embed those links in the body of the text surrounded by your target keywords and actually useful content for the reader. In the “eyes” of a search engine, this is among the highest valued back link.

Hosted content is basically renting a page on another site with links to your site embedded in the main body of the article. The web site that hosts the content receives payment from the author plus fresh content, the author gets a valuable back link and visitors to the hosting site get useful content.

This strategy isn’t new. It’s simply doing what search engines want us to do — produce content that’s useful, beneficial and appears on quality sites. Not only does a quality piece of content receive more visibility when hosted on an authoritative site, it also delivers increased benefit to the author, and the page may even rank itself for target key phrases. When a major site hosts your content, you gain from its page rank in strong testimonials and referrals. Whether or not the site owners want to monetize their site by allowing approved authors to post content is the same debate as whether or not links should be bought and sold. However, publishing high quality, unique and useful content, rather than just creating inflated link popularity with diminishing returns, is, in comparison, a tested SEO tactic.

Designing a Hosted Content Page
You’re paying for the placement of this content so you want it to be good. In the eternal quest for successful link bait, you also want the content to be ranked by search engines because it provides real value to the reader and is hosted on an authoritative site.

Design the hosted content page using standard SEO conventions: a keyword
savvy title, header <h1>, subheads <h2> and a keyword density
of less than 5%. Any higher and search engines may consider the content
to be “spamish” regardless of where the content appears.

Now comes the most important part. As you write the article, carefully place links to topically relevant pages on your own site within the body of the article’s text. These are high value links that will improve your SEO. However, it’s also important to place your articles on sites that are topically related to your piece (and probably already rank for related topics). The authority of the site hosting your content, the relevance of the site (topically speaking) and that back link make your site look stronger as far as search engines are concerned. Also, remember that the quality of the content to which you link also matters. Link to strong pages (those with quality back links) on your site, as well. Your article should reference other authoritative, relevant articles so that search engines see that your piece was written to offer real value to readers.

It’s Not Quantity, It’s Quality
It’s no longer simply a matter of how many links point to a site. There are many cases of sites in which 50 quality links outrank sites with hundreds of links. It’s not quantity, it’s the quality of the links that improve ranking in the SERPs.

Editorial links (links in hosted content) are more “natural” from a search engine’s perspective and, therefore, more valuable because the article has, at most, two or three targeted links pointing to your site’s pages. Just like quality link bait, which is unique, original and useful content, quality hosted content on respected sites will also naturally develop its own back links — the ultimate validation and the desired outcome of placing quality content. Finally, because these links are found on pages optimized with your keywords, search engines will consider them extremely relevant to the subject at hand.

Start Your Hosted Content Campaign Today
It’s being done everyday, successfully building small sites into larger sites, providing free advertising for the thought-leader/author, delivering less duplicate content to search engines and more new content (plus revenue) to the hosting site and, perhaps most importantly, hosted content actually delivers useful, relevant information to readers — exactly what search engines rank in the first place. As with any link-building technique, hosted content can be abused, but topically authoritative sites are not going to accept content that does not meet their high standards — so everyone wins when the goals are white hat.

Start searching for websites that might be interested in hosting your next article, or start looking for a site owner interested in content swapping. Create content that’s unique, useful and well-written and you may find that you won’t even have to pay a site owner to share your content with their readers — exactly how it should be.

MDAs can be obvious or very subtle. For example, the MDA on a commercial site is to induce visitors to buy something. That’s obvious. Other MDAs include providing an email address, providing additional personal information, opening an account, signing up for a service, asking for a quote or opting in for the monthly newsletter.

Less obvious MDAs include submitting a blog entry, starting a forum thread, referring new visitors, book marking the site or reading critical sales or informational copy. You could also include coming back again as an MDA for almost every site. That repeat traffic is valuable in building your online enterprise.

Identifying the MDA
Before visitors can perform any MDA, pyoup have to determine what the MDA is for each age of your sitep. And though that may sound like a simple task, it’s not.

Multiple MDAs
Multiple MDAs can cause problems if not presented properly. It’s difficult to persuade visitors to perform one task much less two or three. There are several reasons for this.

Visitors aren’t very patient. They want to determine if your site is what they’re looking for, they want to conduct their business and move on to Mah Jong solitaire. Asking a visitor to complete a customer satisfaction survey after a sale is like asking visitors to take their SATs again. Not very likely.

Ambiguous MDAs
You see this quite often on NFP sites and sites designed to provide informational content. For many of these sites, the MDA is to have the visitor make a donation. However, on the same page viewers may be offered the opportunity to become a member, to receive regular updates or to be bombarded with affiliate spam. (Can we send you useful information from time to time?)

More than one MDA per page will deter many visitors from performing any actions. Too confusing. Too much time.

Linear MDAs
A common aspect of many service providers’ web pages, linear MDAs require visitors to perform more than one action in a series.

For example, the first MDA for a site selling debt consolidation services might be to motivate visitors to click on a link from the home page that will take them to a form to be completed in order to access the debt consolidation services. In cases of linear MDAs, each page of the site must clearly state the MDA for that page.

Continuing to use the example of the debt consolidation company, if the MDA is to click a link to a form, the link itself would appear on the home page. It would be very large and well labeled, i.e. Click here to get started. The home page copy would be directed specifically to the MDA. Urge and persuade the visitor to click on that link.

The next MDA, completing the form, would be addressed on the link from the home page. In fact, there are usually several (many) MDAs for a single site and each page of the site must specifically address the MDA for that particular page.

No MDAs
More commonly found on personal sites and owner-designed commercial sites, the lack of a clearly stated MDA will leave many visitors scratching their heads and wondering just what they’re expected to do. Not only should you have a clear picture of the single-most important MDA for your site, you should make sure your visitors know just what that MDA is, as well.

Optimizing the Homepage for Maximum MDA Conversion
A site’s conversion rate is nothing more than the rate at which visitors perform the MDA. If one in 10 performs the MDA the conversion rate is 10%. If only one in 100 performs the most desired action, the site’s conversion rate is 1%.

The site’s homepage is the first place to clearly introduce and identify the MDA to the visitor. The MDA call-out should appear on the home page above the fold. It should be the first thing visitors see without scrolling. For example:

Welcome to Nutty Nick’s Wicker Hut
20% Off Everything You Buy

That header identifies the MDA &MDAsh; buy some wicker from Nutty Nick. Here’s another headline that defines an MDA. What do you think the action is here:

Sign up for our FREE newsletter and
you may win a free trip to Bermuda!!!

Obviously, the headline is intended to persuade visitors to opt in for a newsletter. It’s clear, unambiguous and it offers an incentive for completing the action.

MDA Incentives
“Why should I?” and “What’s in it for me?” are two questions many visitors ask when the MDA offers no clear benefit to them. That’s why incentives are useful in many cases.

What kind of incentives? Well, anything FREE is always good. Free shipping and handling, a free extended service warranty, free (and really useful) information, the chance to win something &MDAsh; there are plenty of incentives you can employ to encourage completion of the MDA.

Just make sure that the incentive and the MDA are closely tied and closely positioned as in the example above. The incentive doesn’t have to be expensive but it should deliver clear benefit to the visitor.

Also, when more than one MDA is the goal, limit the number of calls to perform an action to exactly one on the home page. Other, less critical actions can be introduced on landing pages, aka zone pages, within a site.

Optimizing Zone Pages for the MDA
Once visitors have navigated the home page (and performed the MDA), they next click a link that takes them to a zone page or landing page (same thing). Once again, the MDA should be clearly displayed above the fold on each zone page.

Zone pages serve different purposes. A link off the home page to a description of company services looks and sounds very different from the zone page for the check-out or contact us page. In all cases, visitors must recognize the personal benefit to them when they choose to perform the action for that specific page. They will save money. They will receive something useful. They will find a solution to a specific problem. Any discriminating visitor is going to ask, “How does this help me?” Provide the right answer and you convert. Provide the wrong answer, or no answer, and that visitor is a click away from gone.

That’s why every site owner must consider the MDA for each page of a site. MDAs must also be specifically targeted on individual pages within the web site. Directions for performing the MDA must be clear, unambiguous and persuasive. Finally, on every page of your site, the visitor must see the clear benefit of performing the MDA &MDAsh; even if the most desired action is clicking on the link back to the home page. Clear, straightforward and persuasive.

If you don’t have a clear understanding of the MDAs for the pages of your site, neither will your visitors. So, if your conversion rate isn’t where you’d like it to be, develop text for MDAs and optimize every page of your site.

A landing page is the page that visitors first see after becoming curious enough to click on a link to your site. The link may be found on search engine results pages, within a specifically-targeted email, on the site’s navigation toolbar or within another website.

In many cases, these are links you pay for. The organic results delivered by SERPs are free, but, unless your site appears on the first two SERPs, it’s unlikely that visitors will connect.

In many cases, the landing page is the site’s home page — but not always, even within SERPs. Landing pages can appear anywhere within a web site.

Paid Links Demand ROI
If your landing page receives prominent display within search engine results pages, congratulations. Upward of 50% of visitor traffic found that landing page through an SE query. However, only 20 to 25 sites can appear on page one of Google’s SERPs. What about the other 10,000 links Google delivers to its users?

Often, smaller sites employ paid links to drive site traffic. Google Adwords, for example, is a PPC (pay per click) means of building business. The important point is this: PPC programs have to more than pay for themselves in order for your site to remain a viable business.

Any form of paid linkage to one of your landing pages must deliver a nice ROI. And to do that, you need a fully-usable, engaging landing page. Otherwise, visitors won’t stick around long enough to read about your low prices and free shipping.

The Purpose of the Landing Page
While all site pages have a purpose (at least on well-designed sites) a landing page typically has a special or singular purpose: to sell a particular item, to announce a product sale, to entice visitors to opt in, complete a questionnaire or perform some other MDA (most desired action).

First determine the MDA the landing page addresses. Then, design everything — from headlines and text to graphics and pictures — to support the completion of the MDA.

Try to keep to one MDA per landing page. Again, the landing page has a specific purpose. Extraneous information, slow-loading videos and a confusing call to action are distractions, along with affiliate links, text links and unnecessary animations. All distract the attention of the viewer from your MDA.

Landing Page Design Principles

1. Create a headline that accomplishes the following:

   • tells the visitors that they’re on the right page;
   • clearly states the purpose of the landing page — the MDA;
   • engages the visitor, piques interest, encourages the reader to continue.

   The headline should be a grabber and appear “above the fold” — the top of your home page. That’s the most valuable real estate on your site.

2. Use short blocks of text and single sentences surrounded by negative space (white). Visitors tend to scan rather than read the entire page, even if the text is pure poetry.
3. And because readers scan instead of read site text, use lots of headers, sub-heads and bullet lists.
4. The first sentence of each block of text should provide the critical information you want to impart, again because visitors scan, often reading just the first sentence of a paragraph or block of text.
5. Employ an unambiguous call to action. “Order Now!” “Call now before you forget!” Leave no doubt what action is expected of the visitor. Calls for action can appear throughout the landing page text and a call to action should be the last thing visitors read.
6. Choose a type font that’s easy on the eyes. Avoid script fonts and fonts with lots of curly-Qs.
7. If the landing page sells one or more products, provide visitors with pictures of the products.
8. Prices, including shipping and handling costs, should appear below the fold. But they should definitely appear.

Creating a Prominent Landing Page
If your landing page is also the home page, by definition it has prominence to visitors and to search engine spiders. However, if your landing page or pages are within the site, it’s important to make sure search engine spiders recognize the importance of this page within the site — its prominence.

Spiders use a number of criteria to determine a particular page’s prominence within the context of the entire site. Location is one criterion — the more clicks away from the home page, the less prominent — at least to the limited capabilities of current search engines.

Text is another criterion used to assess prominence. Keywords, keyword density and an automated comparison of keywords in the text against keywords in various HTML tags is another indicator of a page’s prominence.

Finally, the number of links pointing to a particular page is an important factor in assessing page prominence. The more links connecting other pages to your landing page, the more prominent it will be to search engines when your site is indexed.

This is especially important when landing page product offerings differ significantly from other products sold on the site. Search engines employ a mathematical taxonomy to classify each site within a particular category. So, if you market educational toys but introduce a landing page offering children’s books, it’s important for search engines to reevaluate the site’s taxonomy and to expand the site’s classification to include ’sellers of children’s books’. One way to do this is to create links within the site all pointing to the landing page.

Landing pages are useful as motivators, as site directories, information sources and for many other valuable purposes. However, the development of an effective landing page takes careful thought and an understanding of what drives both humans and search engine spiders.

Generate increased site traffic and improve your conversion rate with a well-designed, well-written, well-placed and well-connected landing page on your site.

Too often, site owners design site pages and generate site text based on their personal likes and dislikes. It’s a natural thing to do. But, is it the smart thing, the right thing to do? The answer lies in every site owners’ understanding of what attracts and keeps humans on site and on point to perform the most desired action (MDA).

SEO Falls Short
It’s not about SEO. SEO is, by definition, designed to optimize the site for accurate, complete and beneficial search engine indexing. It only marginally applies to the drives and motivations of those with credit cards. Buyers. In fact, many SEO strategies actually work against visitors performing the MDA. Keyword dense text, for example, often reads like spamglish. SEs may like it. It’s off-putting to many humans.

The focus on SEO should take place in the design of the site’s “backstage” architecture, hidden from the audience. Eyeball optimization (EBO) takes place on the presentation layer. SEO gets them there. EBO keeps them there and converts visitors to buyers.

Eyeball Optimization
Often the most overlooked aspect of site design is the first impression it makes on visitors. It takes the average visitor less than 10 seconds to decide if a site is what s/he is looking for. That means the home page has to be right on target.

Right color scheme. Right text font. Right tone to the copy. Right graphics and images. But how do you know what’s right?

First, define your target demographic with the utmost specificity. This is the ideal buyer for your products or services. Imagine this individual. Determine and list all of the following:

• male or female
• age
• education level
• income level
• associated interests & hobbies
• core personal values
• community status and association
• family size; family role
• core needs
• desires and expectations

This often requires making reasonable assumptions regarding visitors. For example, if you’re site markets high-end homes, it’s safe to assume that serious visitors come from high income brackets. Conversely, if you’re marketing legal bankruptcy services, it’s safe to assume that income levels don’t meet spending levels.

Second, don’t go with what appeals to your tastes, likes and dislikes. You’re much too close to the project to determine the “rightness” of the chosen color motif. But, it’s easy enough to research what works and what doesn’t. Just Google up the top-tier competition to see what colors they’ve chosen. You can’t copyright colors and you don’t have to be a graphic artist. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Just do a little research.

Third, consider questions of accessibility. How accessible is the site’s message? This includes everything from the readability of the type (size and font) to the number of clicks a visitor must make to reach the MDA. The more clicks, the fewer MDAs.

The Value of MDA Analysis
An analysis of the marketplace, and the development of a target demographic, contribute to the completion of the MDA by increased numbers of visitors (higher conversion rate).

With commercial sites, the most desired action is to get visitors to buy something. That’s why you’re there. But as an MDA, “Get them to buy something” is too expansive. It’s not specific enough.

A broadly-stated MDA is much less helpful than a specific MDA. With a specific action in mind, your site’s design, layout, architecture and site text can be more specifically targeted to encourage visitors to perform the MDA.

What do you want visitors to buy? How much would you like each buyer to spend? How important are repeat buyers? What are the stumbling blocks between the visitor and the MDA? Answer these questions and your well on your way to designing a site that delivers the highest possible conversion rate.

Here’s a sample of a specific MDA designed for a site selling after-sale motorcycle accessories: I want men under 40, who ride motorcycles and have discretionary income, to purchase at least two items with a combined retail value above $50 on their first visit. I want that buyer to return within six months to make another purchase of equal or greater value.

With an MDA like this, the site owner is in a much better position to:

• define demographic motivations (price, status, problem solver, etc.)
• design a site that appeals to this individual
• set product prices and pre-determine margins
• write copy appropriate to the demographic
• develop an actionable strategy to retain customers
• meet and exceed expectations of visitors

The Call to Action
Believe it or not, many site owners skip this essential element of overall site design. The call to action tells the visitor what to do. For example, when you hear advertisements on the radio or TV, they often end with the words “Call today” Act now” or “Don’t wait another minute.” These are calls to action, telling listeners what the next step is. “Pick up the telephone and place your order. Do it now before you forget!”

Calls to action should be spread throughout any website. These calls to action should also be contextual, providing visitors directions on what they should do next from their current location within the site.

In some cases, the call to action might be something as simple as, “To learn more, please click here.” On another page, the call to action might be “Please proceed to our secure checkout to process your order.” Think of these as helpful directions to visitors as they navigate your site toward the MDA.

Also think of them as important sales tools. The call to action should be targeted directly to your ideal buyer. The language and the message should be unambiguous. For example, a mutual fund site might employ the dignified, business-like “To obtain a prospectus or to speak with one of our customer care representatives, please click here.”

The site selling skateboards would employ a different tone. “Order 3 jammin’ wheels right now and we’ll give you the 4th roller FREE! We’ll even ship FREE so you keep more $$$ in your pocket. Now, that’s HOT!!!”

Design your call to action to suit the sensibilities of your target buyer.

Conclusions
There’s no doubt that search engine optimization is important (critical) to the success of an ecommerce site. However, search engines don’t make purchases. Your site designer can make the site readable to SEs to ensure that it’s optimized for search engines and properly indexed.

However, you or your designer should pay just as much attention to eyeball optimization (EBO). This includes everything from colors to text layout to graphics and pictures. These are the things that attract attention and keep visitors from clicking off.

Finally, create useful calls to action throughout your site. These visitor directions tell potential customers what’s coming up and what to expect. They also tell customers what to do next. Buy an item, complete a form, opt in for a newsletter or pick up the telephone — the MDA may vary, but a potent call to action is the best, no-cost way to improve conversion rates.

Ease of navigation is one of the most-often overlooked facets of site design. Site owners want slick looking graphics, an eye-catching logo and compelling sales copy. After that, many e-biz owners don’t know what they need for an effective, on-line sales tool.

If you don’t know the fundamentals of your potential site’s information architecture, designing site navigation is something best left to professionals — those with experience in directing visitors to the proper information and seeing that the Most Desired Action (MDA) is accomplished. This is how site owners improve their conversion rates.

Sites that are user intuitive — that anticipate the needs of site visitors — will be used more frequently. Repeat traffic will increase and, along with it, site sales. Repeat visitors usually come back for a reason. To buy something.

Determining a Site’s Content Needs
The first step in the development of site architecture is to develop a list of needed components and content. Naturally, this will change from site to site. For example, a small corporate site selling services might have an ‘About Us’ page detailing the careers of company principals, awards and recognitions, a client list and work samples.

This information would not be necessary on a retail site. Here, the objective is to sell the goods. This requires clearly-delineated product heading links, detailed product descriptions and large photos of each item. A ‘Contact Us’ page will direct visitors with product questions to an email or telephone contact.

There are literally dozens of possible site elements: FAQs, client or customer testimonials, a visitor log-in, privacy statement and on and on. To develop a list, visit similar sites to the one you envision. Make a list of what works and what doesn’t.

A word of caution, here. Many site owners overstuff their pages with information, pix, unnecessary and confusing links, promos and extraneous content that doesn’t help the visitor. This “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to site design may be daunting to the first time visitor.

Accessibility
How does the visitor move through the site to accomplish the MDA? This is a question of accessibility. How easily can the visitor access the critical information needed to perform the MDA?

A site that’s difficult to navigate is a site that’s frustrating to use and, as such, it won’t generate a lot of repeat traffic. If visitors can’t find the information they need quickly, they’ll leave to find a site with a more accessible content architecture.

The Importance of Link Headings
Visitors have certain expectations when they use the Internet. One of those expectations is that a link will take them to the information they’re looking for. If it doesn’t, more often than not, they’ll just leave.

Example: A site selling high-end pens has a link off of the home page clearly labeled ‘Products’. The first time visitor rightfully assumes that this link will take her to a list of products and prices — in effect, the retailer’s catalog. However, when she clicks and finds herself reading through a long article on the importance of quality craftsmanship in pen design, chances are she’ll move on to the next pen retailer listed in the search engine results pages.

A better descriptor, in this case, might be ‘About Our Products’ with a second link labeled ‘Our Product Catalog’. This informs visitors of what they’ll find down this path versus another. Link descriptions must be clear and unambiguous to facilitate the needs of visitors and to make the sale.

Pay Attention to the Little Things
Critical.

For example, we’ve all visited sites that use a script font with lots of curly-Qs and other flourishes. It’s a design element. Unfortunately, at least some visitors will have difficulty reading this text. They may have vision problems or be dyslexic. They may read at an 8th grade level. In fact, the average adult American reads at an 8th grade level, so keep type fonts simple and the text large — at least 12-point type. It’s a little thing, but something that will make a big difference in a site’s success.

Color is another small thing that has a big impact on visitors. Yellow text on a white background is difficult for many people to read. Colors that clash, too many different colors or colors that send the wrong message will discourage visitors from performing that MDA.

Do the captions fit the pictures? Do the pictures make a statement or clarify informational content? Are links large enough for vision-impaired visitors? Many site owners focus on the big things but fail to consider the small details. These are the site owners who don’t usually survive on the web.

Add a Site Map
This may not be necessary for a small site with a limited number of pages, but it’s an absolute must for larger sites with numerous links throughout. A lost visitor is an unhappy visitor. By providing a site map, visitors can find their way back to the correct path with a simple click.

In addition, search engines spider site maps. If a site changes often with new promotions, special sales and price blowouts, a site map is useful in helping search engines identify new content — an extra bonus.

Substance Before Form
Substance is the meat of a site. It could information, it could be products, a description of services — it’s the reason the site exists.

Form is the shape the substance takes on. Form is a design consideration and includes everything from typeface and colors to how the text is laid out on the page.

Given that the average visitor will spend less than 10 seconds to determine how useful a site is, the home page must grab visitors’ attention. But after that, people are looking for the substance behind the glitzy home page.

Are the products easy to identify? Is the checkout simple to use and secure? Does the text provide useful information regarding products and their use? Sure, you need sales copy, but any site requires substance. Good products, clearly described services, money-savers, free shipping — this is the type of information that visitors want to see when they visit a site.

And substance should always take precedence over form. You may have the most compelling text ever written, but if that text is set in a hard-to-read font or appears in some oddball color, form has taken over. The shape, the look, the feel of the site is given greater importance than the content. And people want content, regardless of the site’s purpose.

Form attracts but substance sells.

Let the Pros Do It
By a large margin, most sites fail to accomplish their MDAs. In fact, only six out of 100 sites actually succeed in their mission. Now, some of these sites fail because the revenue model doesn’t work. Some don’t make it because the products are sub-par or overpriced. But some sites fail, not because the business model is flawed, but because the site design is.

Budding entrepreneurs are turning to the world wide web to put their visions of success into action. Unfortunately, many of these fledgling sites are undercapitalized. They’re constructed on a shoestring budget.

The owners of these sites must cut corners somewhere in order to get the on-line business up and running, and site design is the most obvious place to make cuts. Site design is outsourced to unqualified designers or, worse, the owners develop their own sites. They may be terrific businesspeople, they may be top-notch retailers. But if they don’t understand what visitors expect from a site, the time, energy and money spent will be wasted.

The conclusion? If you’re considering your own on-line enterprise, make sure you can afford to build a site designed by an experienced, knowledgeable professional with experience in SEM and SEO. Your site is your on-line business. It’s not the place to cut corners.

If you can’t afford a professionally designed site, wait until you can. Otherwise, you’re taking a substantial risk and, with an on-line failure rate in excess of 90%, the odds are not in your favor.

Cut corners if you must, but let a professional design your content architecture. It’s your best assurance that your site will thrive and your vision come to fruition.

Forget everything you’ve ever read, heard or seen about web marketing. Forget the marketing gurus and poo-bahs who tout the need for SEO (search engine optimized) text. The information upon which you’ve based your on-line marketing strategy is outdated. It is soooo last millennium.

Good site text, written by a professional, Internet copywriter, is engaging, informational, welcoming, even intriguing. It appeals to human emotions and interests — family, wealth, professional success, health, happiness and so on. Top-notch copywriting is what identifies your website — your on-line business. It’s also an important aspect of SEO.

But, the fine art of Internet copywriting is still evolving. That’s why you go for the best web design firm you can afford — one that understands the synergies of content and site design.

The Curse of Keyword Density
To rank individual sites by their relevance to a user’s query, early search engines relied heavily on keywords — words that appeared in headings and site text.

These early spiders didn’t do much except count the number of times keywords appeared within the corpus. The higher the frequency, the more relevant the site. And thus was born SEO text.

Murphy’s Olde Time Canoes are all hand made. You won’t find a better hand-made canoe than a Murphy’s Olde Time Canoe. When it comes to hand-made canoes, Murphy’s Old Time Canoes deliver more canoe bang for your canoe buck.

Gibberish. Words written for a machine, not for humans. An SE bot that spidered Murphy’s website would have no trouble determining what the company sold. Unfortunately, to any literate carbon-based life form, this was hardly the stuff of which sales were made.

The Quality of SERPs
Search engines live or die based on the quality of their search results. That’s the whole raison d’etre for a search engine — to find the search engine results pages (SERPs) that list the most useful sites.

Google, Yahoo and other SEs spend a bundle tweaking the rating mechanisms used to assess and rank a site. These complex, algorithmic formulas are top secret, eyes only information. In fact, Google’s search algorithm is its most valuable asset. It’s the product it sells to all of us who use it everyday.

Search results must be accurate. That requires an iron-clad collaboration between the copywriter and the site designer to maximize the best of both. Integrated text in the ideal site design — that’s your goal.

So What Does Good Copywriting Do For Sales?
Good copywriting first captures the visitor with an interesting headline. Maybe two or three headlines.

But then, good copy keeps the reader’s interest. In other words, your copywriter should develop text that engages the reader. Warm, friendly, helpful, conversational — all key elements of well-written website copy.

Your copywriter will serve as the guide for visitors, describing where visitors are within the site (landing pages, et al) and how to get from here to there, i.e. navigation.

Finally, professionally written copy produces the MDA — the most desired action — on the part of the visitor. Buy something, complete a form, request additional information, pick up the phone — your site copy should hone in with laser precision on compelling that MDA.

And What Does Professional Copywriting Do For Your PR?
With each tweak of the algorithm, spiders became more sophisticated at determining the usefulness and helpfulness of a given site. Oh sure, keyword count still matters. So does the placement of keywords. But SEs are smart enough to detect SEO-keyword-stuffed-text. And they don’t much like it.

Instead, the sophisticated SEs employed by Google and Yahoo (the two biggies) want more than keyword density. A lot more.

Keep It Fresh
Google spiders at least once every two weeks. Yahoo makes the rounds every 48 hours. When a spider visits, it takes a snapshot of the site. When you do a Google search, simply click on ‘cache’ to see the site as it was when last indexed.

Now, when that spider comes back a few days or weeks later, it compares the cache with the current site looking for new content. Search engines like new content. No new content, you may lose a few points in the PR race.

Keep It Informational
SEs want to deliver quality results. Part of that means delivering good, useful information. Not sales hype. Quality content that visitors can read and use. Of course, because it’s your site, a good copywriter will provide text that’s informational and sells the product.

Is The Copy Helpful?
Is your site copy helpful to the visitor? Does it offer useful product information? Does it offer resources, alternatives and unbiased information? Will visitors feel that this is a site worth a bookmark? If so, that return traffic is gold.

How To Make Your Site Attractive to SEs and Humans
There are two layers to your site: the ‘presentation layer’ and the ‘behind the curtain’ layer. The new key to truly successful on-line marketing is to use both layers in a solid, licit, unified marketing strategy.

The Presentation Layer
Hire a professional copywriter with extensive experience in SEO and marketing to develop the text for your on-line business. Professional copywriting can adapt to your marketing needs.

Low and soft:

Are You Ready to Change Your Life?

or a rockhard pitch:

Do You Want to Earn $1 Million
In Just 21 Days?

Some Suggestions for Your Copywriter
Assume some intelligence on the part of the visitor. Sure, push the business and the goods. They’re the ‘best, cheapest, greatest, lightest, biggest’ in the world. No problem selling. Just be sure to include some informational content about the product.

Use a two- or three-column layout on your site’s home page. This allows for numerous headlines “above the fold” where spiders will easily pick them up. Good for SEO.

Break text up into small blocks. Also good for SEO.

Write like you talk. Good for humans.

Add pictures and graphics for eye appeal. SEs don’t spider graphics, so this is for humans only.

Behind the Curtain
If you don’t know a Meta Tag from a dog tag, call a designer or SEO expert. There are numerous ‘black hat’ tactics that can be employed to ‘fool’ search engines. Pure, 100% SE poison.

Example? Invisible text. Display white text on a white background and voila — it’s disappeared! Well, maybe to your eyes, but spiders read this text. So, while you’re reading about gift baskets on the home page, the company is also selling marijuana grow lights out the back door. SEs hate black (or gray) hat tactics. Because it’s deceitful, it diminishes the quality of the SERPs.

So, if you don’t know how to maximize your ‘behind the curtain’ marketing, talk to a site design pro. And if you’ve forgotten your 8th grade rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling, hire a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, Internet copywriter.

These professionals more than pay for themselves by designing sites that appeal to human sensibilities and SE bots alike.

The cyber landscape has changed and for the better. As site owners, we can develop site copy that appeals to humans — their wants, needs and desires. Real marketing and sales copy that compels human action. We’ve been liberated from keyword counts.

It’s quality that counts today.

You have the eye-catching banner, the Flash animation and some very high-end graphic elements there on your home page. Nevertheless, if the text reads like a third grade homework assignment, visitors aren’t going to stick around despite your great looking site. Today, every site not only has to look good — it has to sound good, as well.

Chances are, if you’re like most of us, you wouldn’t recognize a misplaced modifier from non-parallel sentence construction. In this case, hire someone who does know where to place her modifiers. Hire a copywriter to get it right.

Where do I find one of these copywriters?
You can’t swing a dead comma without hitting a copywriter on the Internet. In fact, there are over 8,900 hungry copywriters listed on elance.com alone, all just waiting to deliver drop-dead site text. In addition, there are plenty of other sites that list experts in crafting words. And, with all of this competition, you’ll love how low cost good words can be.

Carefully review the work of these service providers (posted on line), and if the site allows buyer feedback, read it over carefully. A copywriter with good feedback and experience in developing site text — that’s who you’re looking for.

Where should I not look to find a copywriter?
Don’t try to save a few bucks by having your spouse, seventh-grader, neighbor or college roommate write your text. First, it’s tough to be honest with loved ones — especially when you’re not paying them. Second, Internet writing is a specialized form of traditional writing, so hire someone who’s had a lot of Internet experience.

What should I do before hiring a writer?
Decide what needs to be written. In addition to the home page, what other pages could use a professional revision? Prepare a Statement of Work (SOW) detailing the assignment. This will ensure that you and the author know what’s expected before you start your collaboration.

What does the copywriter need to know?
Writing is part science, part art. There’s no one right way to present information or to express an opinion. In fact, there’s an infinite number of ways words can be strung together.

To get the most out of you copywriter, here’s what s/he needs to know. Parenthetically, thinking about these aspects of your soon-to-be e-commerce site will bring your business objectives into much clearer focus.

Your On-Line Products and/or Services
If you don’t know it, you can’t sell it. Your copywriter needs to understand what you’re selling on your site — everything from how it works to how it helps your customers or clients.

If it’s a product, make sure the writer has samples. If you’re selling a service, explain it front-to-back and be open to questions and suggestions from someone who writes Internet copy for a living. Also, if you have collateral materials like manuals, brochures, a feature sheet and so on, hand them off to your collaborator for background and reference. Finally, make sure the writer has access to the site and all pages that need content. Some sites require a logon screen name and password. Provide these to the copywriter.

Your Unique Positioning Statement
It will also be extremely helpful if you develop a UPS — a unique positioning statement. A UPS is a list of features and selling points that make your product or service unique. Don’t have one? Here’s what you do.

Visit competitor sites and perform a detailed analysis of each site’s offerings and business terms. Let’s say you sell racing bikes on line. When you check competitor’s sites, you note that each site offers a full, 90-day return policy. So, your 90-day return policy isn’t unique, it’s the norm, so it shouldn’t be part of your UPS. On the other hand, if you’re the only site offering a 120-day return policy…

The Target Audience (Demographic)
Who is going to be reading this text? The text for senior citizens, sweetheart, will read differently from text geared to shredders, dude. Who are you trying to reach? Who is most likely to visit your site? This will enable a good writer to create text that’s relevant and engaging to most of your visitors.

Take a moment to develop a list of the characteristics of your ideal customer or client. Under 30, male, professional, career-oriented, married, parent — who are you trying to reach?

The Tone of the Site Text
Going for the hard sell: BUY BUY BUY NOW!!!, or something a bit more dignified and understated. Some of this will depend on your target audience (see above) but some will also depend on your personal preferences.

Some e-tailers like the hard sell. Check out any site selling a single e-book or software. You scroll through pages and pages of:

Who else wants to make a million $$$
in just 60 minutes?

That’s right, with Dr. Feelgood’s
all-purpose back-support system
you’ll feel like you’re walking on air.
And it’s 100%, absolutely free!!!
That’s right, free!!!

You’ll note the liberal use of exclamation points, indicating unrestrained excitement. This is typical of many get-rich-quick-lose-weight-fast-make-money-after-you’re-dead products and you can’t argue with their success. These hard-sell sites move a lot of product and generate lots of passive income.

What tone best fits the image you want to project to visitors — friendly and engaging, professional and serious, trustworthy and caring, avant-garde. Provide some suggestions to your copywriter, but also allow a little wiggle room. A good writer will expand on your theme to develop the tone you’re looking for.

The Purpose of the Text
The purpose of the homepage text is simple — to get visitors to stick around. It should be compelling, engaging and even intriguing. Anything to get the visitor to spend some time browsing.

In some cases, and on some pages, you’ll want sales copy. On other pages, informational copy, background, motivational text, educational info — each site is different. However, as you develop that SOW, think about the purpose of each page. The text on the home page will read differently from the Contact Us page because the purpose of each page is different.

What about project milestones?
You bet. Before talking to potential authors, determine what you want to pay, when you want to pay it and what the author will do throughout the development process.

A typical ‘work-for-hire’ agreement includes:

• a start and end date (the deadline)
• the assignment of intellectual property rights (you own everything)
• payment schedule tied to project milestones, i.e., 25% upon signing, 25% when the first draft is delivered, 50% when you approve the final text
• contact information for both parties to the agreement

A word of caution: if you’re reaching for the work-for-hire agreement to check a clause, you already have a problem with your service provider. It’s always better to resolve disputes with writers, programmers, graphic artists and other service providers without resorting to Clause I, sub-para c.4. Don’t think of the agreement as ironclad. It’s more of a guideline for good behavior on both sides.

Feedback — Good Feedback
Even the best copywriter won’t necessarily get it right the first time. That’s where you come in. Review the first draft carefully. Identify specific changes you want and where. Don’t worry about hurting the author’s feelings. Professionals expect revisions and rewrites.

It’s not enough to say, “I’m not sure what’s wrong. Try again.” The writer needs to know specifics about what’s bothering you. Tone wrong? Did the author undersell the product or misrepresent the service? Only you know for sure, so take the time to read over the first draft with care. Think of it as the starting point for further discussion.

With good feedback, a good copywriter should have it nailed on the second or third draft. If you’re working on the fifth or sixth draft, you’ve either hired the wrong writer or you’re not giving specifics in your feedback.

Looks Count
Don’t underestimate the value of well-crafted text. Site text that’s full of typos, grammatical glitches and improper punctuation may not be noticed by every visitor, but you better believe it will be noticed by some. And, these readers may well think that if you’re this careless with your site text, how careful are you going to be with their purchase or the services you provide?

The key to developing the perfect text for your web site is collaboration — working with the copywriter as a team. You know your business. The writer knows the difference between a colon and a semi-colon. Working in tandem will produce the text to attract more visitors more often and with a higher conversion rate.

Words work. Really good words work really well.

The traffic you get on your web site got there for a reason — because your site ranked on the first page of a Google search or because the user clicked on a link to your site from some other site (that showed up on the first page of a Google search). In either case, the visitors got there because of the words contained within your site, aka the copy, aka the corpus, aka the content. When it comes to getting noticed by both search engines and potential buyers of the product or service you purvey, a picture is no longer worth a thousand words. On the contrary, a thousand words are worth a picture (gif) if they’re the right words. And that’s the key — your site content must contain the right words in the right place to get picked up by search engine spiders and the paying public.

The earliest search engines used a pretty crude formula for determining the relevance of a site to a user’s query. The formula heavily weighted the keywords submitted by the site owner and keyword density — how often you could squeeze the word ‘mango’ in your mango-related site — something the SE spiders gobbled up.

This led to some obvious abuse mango and some pretty strange text. Mango. In fact, mango, a lot of what was produced mango to attract the mango attention of search engine spiders (mango, mangoes, mango juice) was unintelligible gibberish mango. And the nice geeks who design SE algorithms were quick to catch on. You see, the better results a search engine delivers, the more repeat users of that SE, so these number crunchers went to work to figure out how to improve the quality (relevance) of the SERPs delivered as the result of user’s query.

Today’s search engines use a broad array of criteria to establish whether your site shows up on page 1 or page 224 of SERPs, but keywords and keyword placement are still important elements of every SE in use today. Words count. Gibberish doesn’t.

So what does this mean to you, the site owner who’s trying to improve page rank? Well, you can no longer load up pages of keyword dense text and expect respect from any respectable SE. It ain’t gonna happen. Quality content — content that says something and actually helps the user — matters. And if you can’t string words together to create quality content, you’d better find someone who can if you want to move up in PR.

High quality, SEO text is important for several reasons:

• it’s what SE spiders ‘read’;
• it’ll get higher quality buyers to your site, thus increasing your conversion rate, and;
• it’ll generate repeat visits because previous visitors liked what they read and saw.

If you’re working with a reputable web site design firm (not your daughter’s boyfriend who just bought one of those ‘web sites in a box’ software deals), no worries. The design firm will be aware of your site’s text needs and will provide copy that reads well, informs or entertains and highlights those still-important key words.

So, during that first skull session with your site design firm, make two things very, very clear: what you’re selling (your business plan) and to whom you’re selling (your target demographic). This will lead to a bunch of questions from the design team (“All teen boys, Bob, or just the 15-18 year old demographic?”) and, if they’re good, they’ll be able to take it from there.

If you’re writing your own text, take a lesson:

• Step 1:
  Develop your list of keywords. (There are lots of on-line tools to help you.)
• Step 2:
  Put your keyword list in a sealed box, in another part of the house and pretend you never saw it.
• Step 3:
  Write the first draft of your text without giving a single thought to your list of keywords. That’s why they’re locked in that sealed box on the other side of the house.
• Step 4:
  Rework the text to make sure it’s clear, informative, accurate and enjoyable to read. (This part could take a bit of time, but it’s time well spent.)
• Step 5:
  Proof it for typos, misspellings and other goofs and give it that final, editorial polish. (Remember, it’s ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’).
• Step 6:
  Retrieve and unseal your key word and phrase list.
• Step 7:
  Add key words and phrases to your beautiful text to ensure readability.

The placement of key words is just as important as the key words themselves, since spiders don’t read every word on every page of every web site they visit. So, here are some simple rules to maximize the effectiveness of every key word you use:

• Include at least one key word in the title or heading of your text. Check out the title of this piece, for example. It’s designed to draw visitors interested in learning more about key words.
• Use key words in sub-heads and use a lot of sub-heads throughout the body of the text — the corpus.
• Spiders love bulleted lists (like this one) so try to build at list one bulleted list into your SEO copy.
• Use at least one key word in the first sentence or two of every paragraph — but only if the text still reads like text and not gibberish.
• Finally, when in doubt, leave it out. Too many key words is worse than too few.

Look, if you don’t think you’ve got the writing skills to pull this off, hire someone experienced in developing SEO text. It’s not an area where you want to cut corners, given the importance today’s sophisticated SEs now place on quality, useful text. On the other hand, if you can write good informational or marketing text, read up on the latest SE algos and have at it. It’s your call. Mango.