It's All Very Well Having A Website That Gets Lots Of Traffic, But Sales Are Its Life Blood

You have optimised your website, found the keywords that get lots of traffic and don't have much competition. All the keywords are added to your site (Title, Meta tags etc) and you have done some excellent flowing writing with your keywords peppering your homepage.

Great, you now have a website, it is fairly well optimised, you are getting lots of traffic and guess what there is still something else needed in the mix.

You need to juggle all of the above with excellent copywriting.

What is copywriting? Well it's the text that appears on your website, the bits that sell. And yes that's mainly what websites are for, they are your representative, they sell you places that you wouldn't have dreamed of looking or find people you just wouldn't have talked to.

For starters whatever is above the 'fold' of your page i.e. before you start scrolling is THE most critical area, you literally have about 8 seconds to grab the 'surfers' attention before they're gone to the next site.

What is said to your visitor when they arrive at your site is just as or even more important than getting them there in the first place! What would you prefer, 1,000 visitors a day with 2 sales or 100 visitors a day with 2 sales? Personally I would prefer the 100 visitors, at least then I would know my copy was working and could easily ramp up the visits.

So, what makes for great copywriting and a great landing page? There is lots of information out there and I can recommend a few people, just search for them on the web; Chris Cardell and Alan Forest Smith (Orange Beetle)

Some of the main fundamentals:

• Tell your customers the benefits of your service & what problem it is going to solve in their lives

• Talk about your customer (don't talk about you, your company etc blah, blah, blah). Everyone likes talking about themselves, your customers are no different. Include YOU and YOUR as much as you can in your copy.

• Start building a relationship with your customer, give something away for free, ask them to join your mailing list in exchange for something free.

• Break the text up and use bullets (bullets draw attention to areas of text)

• If you can, give your product away on a 30 day trail, with customers agreeing to return or pay on xxxx date.

• You need to write with some level of energy and passion.

• Test and Measure EVERYTHING

Well there are a few bits to start with. And remember test and measure, once you have got your new page up, ruthlessly test all the results and tweak your copy until you have something that just reels them in.

You can get something called Google analytics that measures all your traffic and where people go, where they leave your site etc and it's free. You will need to apply and there may be a waiting list, but well worth it.

Wishing you all the sales you deserve. Neil Swift

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and any changes you make to your website are done at your own risk. Neil Swift cannot be held responsible for any outcomes, unless you make millions and you want to say thanks…=) You may use this article for anything you want as long as no changes are made to any part including this footer.

Enjoy life and prosper. Regards Neil Swift owner of http://www.canvasimagery.co.uk Canvas Art and Photos on Canvas, http://www.makeamoneytree.co.uk Froogle Resource Guide,

[tags]sales,seo,optimised,copywriting,landing page,visitors,conversion,conversion rates[/tags]

An Introduction Primer To SEO

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

It can be defined as the process by which a site's rankings in the search engines are increased for the keywords it is optimized for. Good SEO keeps both the user and the search engine in mind. Things that look beautiful on your site may have a negative influence on your site's ranking. Good content ensures return visits. Keyword enriched content ensures that people will find your site.

How many people do you know who actually look at the fourth or tenth page of a search engine's results page? Most people only look at the first ten to twenty search results. SEO can get your site ranked in the first bundle of results.

Aspects of SEO: Content

The web is indexed with keywords. The user types in a keyword string, exact phrase or a single keyword to find a relevant page. Information specialists make use of advanced searching techniques to find deep web content such as information imbedded in databases or dictionaries, but the average user thinks of the first thing associated with his query and types it in. That is why broad keywords on your site will not generate enough traffic because many thousands of pages have that exact keyword. You need specific keywords and keyword phrases.

There must be enough content on the page. Too little information guarantees that the keywords cannot be repeated enough without keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is where there are too many of the same keyword on a page. Search engines will rank your page lower if they see your page as stuffed.

Keyword density must be balanced with their relation to the rest of the page. This means that your main keywords must appear in certain areas of the page. They must preferably stand out from the rest of the text. There are a number of ways to do this but it is a new topic.

SEO: Meta Tags

There cannot be enough emphasis on Meta tags. Meta tags are in the invisible part of your page. It forms part of the source code. This is where the Title, Description, and Keywords, are placed for the search engines. Most engines will not be able to find your site if a Meta Tag is not present. This area is very important because this is where you place your main keywords and the description of your site. Once again, the relation to the title, description and content becomes important. Don't stuff this area with long descriptions since the search engines will throw your page out if the description is too long, or the keywords repeated three or more times. Keep a balance.

You must write a robot.txt file for the spiders to exclude certain parts of your page. The reason is that most of them cannot read Java, and CGI scripts. There are a number of extensions to pages that will lead to exclusion from search engines.

Other SEO factors that also influence the way your page will indexed:

- ALT, TITLE, and AUTHOR tags.

- Number and quality of links to your site.

- Links from your site.

- Sitemap for search engines.

- Names of links to your other pages.

- Color and total number of links

These are just a few of the online and offline factors that influence your ranking. SEO is needed to make your page visible on the Internet where you have to compete with other sites.

eKzact Solutions Inc. http://www.eKzact.com - Learn more about SEO at the eKzact Website, this is one of 9 articles on SEO.

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[tags]SEO, search engine optimization[/tags]