Matt Taylor
SEO, Internet Marketing, and other things I don't know much about…
I’m Back!
Feb 3rd
As you may or may not know, MatthewTaylor.com.au went down for a couple of months. Unsure as to what caused the problem, but as I have been overseas I was unable to be bothered rectifying the problem. However, now that I’m back in the big bad world I have decided to get it all fixed, and thus we’re firing on all cylinders.
Many posts and updates to come!
Markup Your Site for SEO
Nov 18th
A simple aspect of SEO that is often overlooked, yet is vitally important, is having the correct HTML markup for your website. This simply means the use of the correct tags and HTML in the appropriate places. Using tags correctly will provide both SEO benefits, and should provide the user with the benefits of an easier to navigate website. It is something that should be done at the creation of a site, however if your site doesn’t have the correct HTML markup, don’t panic, as it shouldn’t take long to neaten up.
Try to Avoid <div> Tags
<div> tags are essentially meaningless tags that need to be defined by the editor. While they do have some use it is much easier and more SEO-friendly to use <h1>, <h2> etc. tags.
Use Header Tags Properly <h#>
By utilising header tags in the correct places you can show Google what are the important aspects of each page. For example, if your page is about “HTML Markup” use the following HTML towards the top of your page (wherever it should appear naturally) <h1>HTML Markup</h1>. This then shows the search engines that this is the main theme of your page. The <h1> tag should be kept quite similar to the page’s <title> tag.
If your page needs sub-headings, be sure to use the <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags.
Utilise the Right Tags
Use tags like <strong> and <em> instead of, <b> and <i>, as the search engines interpret these tags better.
When forming a list, don’t simply add text with a <br> tag between each line. Add a proper ordered or unordered list. <ul> for unordered, and <il> for ordered.
Image HTML
A little known HTML fact is the importance of optimising your images for the search engines. Google uses images and the HTML surrounding an image to determine if the image matches what they believe the theme of the website is. Make sure you enter “alt” text in your image with your keyword. This is a good way to markup the HTML for your images:
<img src=”http://domain.com/image.html” alt=“these are the keywords I’m targeting” />
Be careful though, as Google will know when you are cheating! For example, if you optimise and image of a dog and use the alt text “cat”, Google will throw that image in the Google Image Search Results for “cat”. If it gets no clicks, Google will know it”s not an image of a cat and punish you.
Site Speed
Matt Cut’s recently announced at PubCon that site speed would be a huge SEO factor in 2010. So if you are running a slow (possibly flash-based) website, expect to be punished in the SERP’s in the next 12 months.
Here is a quick video by Google with some tips on improving your page speed. Also be sure to check out their website www.code.google.com/speed
As always, be sure to let me know if you have any comments or suggestions!
SEO or CRO?
Oct 29th
First things first, what is CRO? CRO is (among other things) conversion rate optimisation. Put simply, this is taking an existing product or service for sale on the web, and improving the sale rate of the product, without a heavy focus on increasing traffic numbers. Although traffic may play a small part in CRO, the main focus is optimising the site itself to increase the amount of sales per visitor to the site. For example, XYZ.com may be receiving 1,000 hits per month and getting 10 sales (a sale rate of 1%). The job of a CRO would be to increase that percentage, not the number of hits.
Why post this on an SEO blog you ask? I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but sometimes traffic isn’t the issue, it’s saleability. Many SEO professionals can increase your traffic 10,000%, but will it increase sales?
Take a look at your current sale rate. Is it at what you think is a reasonable level? Anywhere between 0.5%-8% are good benchmark figures, with 1%-2% being good levels for a financial website for example, whereas retail websites can go as high as an 8% conversion rate. If you are somewhere in this conversion rate (5%-8% for retail, and slightly lower for most other services), then SEO is what you should be focusing on.
However, if have a conversion rate of 2% or lower, then maybe your first port of call should be optimising for conversion, not for traffic levels.
I am no conversion expert, but I have done some work with it in the past, and here are a few tips to help increase your conversion rate (yes, most of them are just common sense but remember a conversion is a different thing for each site, sometimes a conversion is simply a phone call, these are just simple points that should work on every website).
Direct the User
Don’t let the user aimlessly stumble about your website. Try to direct them to sales pages in the least clicks possible. Ideally you should be able to make a sale on the first page they land on. Have “Buy Now” buttons spread out so that one is always visible on the browser (but try and do it in a neat, attractive way).
Attractive Yet Simple
Having an attractive site is important. Think about when you buy something from a retail store, the look and feel of the store determines how much you are willing to pay, what you expect to find, how long you spend there etc. A website is no different. Make your website an inviting space for users where they can linger.
As with everything I seem to write there is a ‘but’. In this case it involves ensuring your website is attractive, while still maintaining it’s ease-of-use. Don’t overuse Flash or annoying animations, and make sure your images aren’t so large that they increase loading times substantially. Avoid clutter and superfluous information/images/text as this simply distracts the user from what they should be doing, buying!
Alter Your Pricing, Payment Options
By offering a range of payment and pricing options, you are making your product readily accessible to more markets. Not everybody has a credit card, not everybody trusts direct debit. Make sure you use PayPal as one of the options, as this tends to be one of the safest options for both you the seller and the buyer. Buyers tend to trust PayPal more than standard payment options.
Offer a Guarantee
By offering a guarantee of some sort, money-back is the most common, you can prove to the customer that you are so confident in your product you can guarantee they will be satisfied with it. How can they lose then? If they love your product (which they should) they simply completed the transaction that was expected, and if not they haven’t lost anything.
Be Open, Honest and Trustworthy
Don’t try and hide anything, or put extra charges behind a wall of tiny text and Terms and Conditions. Make the charges transparent, so the buyer isn’t hit with extra charges at the last minute (as there is no surer way of blowing a sale). If you have extra credit card charges, shipping costs etc, make sure the buyer knows about it early on.
Post some testimonials of happy buyers in the past, show that you are posting by courier and give them the reference number, give realistic time frames for delivery, anything to reassure the buyer.
I know these are all relatively obvious points, but I have used them all in the past to up the conversion rate of a number of sites. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or disagreements please comment!
