Link Building Tips and Tricks (Part-2)

Case Example 1: Suppose you are a software engineer developing an open source tool for testing printed circuit boards. Your software only runs in Ubuntu/Linux. This means your website is highly relevant to Ubuntu applications. You look for linking opportunities in Ubuntu.com and find this page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuEngineering. You then contact the editor in charge of that documentation and request that your application be added. Of course, your site will be added right away, because you worked hard for your website content and explained your developed software that will run on Ubuntu in a detailed manner.
 
Case Example 2: Codex-m developed a useful piece of website traffic monitoring software in MS Excel that will help webmasters detect out-of-control situations in their website traffic using Google Analytics data. The application is released as open source, and everybody can use it. Codex-m decides to contact the official Google Analytics website and suggests adding the application and making it available to its users. The application is then added to its gallery, as shown here: http://www.google.com/analytics/apps/about?app_id=1080001
 
Case Example 3: You are an expert in Adobe Photoshop and you decide to write all your tips in a blog. You then decide to go to the Adobe Photoshop official website and examine it for linking opportunities. You land on their community page, http://www.adobe.com/community/publishing/download.html, where they allow users to submit tips. You decide to write a guest post and ad a link to your blog, like the one shown here: http://kb2.adobe.com/community/publishing/895/cpsid_89560.html You might notice that if your website has no value or less value to offer, you will find it hard to execute this tip to get some links. Ensure that your site has some value to offer before you ask reputable websites to link to you.

Clever Reciprocal Link Exchanges
This does not mean you will trick users or search engines. Reciprocal link exchange is not always bad at all; it is “excessive” reciprocal link exchanges which are not advisable. Here is a scenario where you can cleverly take advantage of reciprocal link exchange. In one of your quality posts, you have explained something in detail, but not as well as it is explained on site X, so you decide to just put a link to website X, as it is much better explained in detail. You then proceed to finish your content and publish it. Next, you contact the owner of website X and thank him/her for a much better explanation in one of the articles on that site, which you linked to. Both of you are experts in your niche, so invite him to check out your blog; maybe he can also link to you. Gratitude begets generosity, so it is highly possible that he/she will link to you also.
 
Link Building Tip #2: Get Attention from New Products or Services by Doing an Expert Review
One of the easiest ways to get links yourself is to simply search for new products or services released on the Internet and take the opportunity to write a detailed review of the services. Of course, you need to impress them, so make sure you only publish reviews of products that you find yourself happy using.  Here is how you do it. Say that your website is about mathematics, and you publish your own mathematical proofs of numerous theorems, which users look for as references in their academic studies. At first, you find it very difficult to write mathematical formulas, because they're not properly rendered on the web page. You search the Internet and you find a newly released product about writing mathematical formulas that is 100% compatible with HTML. You then decide to purchase it and use it for an entire week. You are happy with the product, because it helps make your job easier and very productive. You then write a review about the product in detail. You discuss the functionality offered and how the product helped you save a lot of time writing difficult formulas. You also mention the price (perhaps comparing it to other products in the niche and whether it is a good value). Of course  you talk about what "edge" the product has over other products  you have tested. When you publish it, leave it for a while. Ninety percent of the time the marketing departments of the company that manufactured the product are searching for happy users; with the use of Google, they might discover your review.

What happens next? Most of the time, they will thank you for the review and decide to publish it on their company home page or other prominent pages of their website, linking back to your site. Or even better,  they may make you their expert user, which allows you to submit some guest posts containing tips on how to use their product. You can always put a link to your website whenever you need to substantiate that your website content has the answer. When it is edited by them, they always allow your links because it is useful in a relevant context; therefore, the link will be editorially given.

Link Building Tips and Tricks (Part-1)

In this search engine optimization tutorial, we will be looking at some tips and tricks for doing DIY link building in an effort to increase your standing in the major search engines.

The most common solution for website owners in regard to link building is to hire either an SEO company or a link builder to do the job. This approach might work, provided the techniques and methods implemented are in accordance with Google search quality guidelines. Those techniques will also work provided the links built count not only on the basis of quantity, but quality and relevance as well.

The down side is that hiring SEO companies and link builders can be a very expensive investment for a beginning webmaster who does not yet have a positive return on the online business. It can also be risky, because a lot of SEOs and link builders practice techniques which are in violation of Google quality guidelines. As a result, your site can be penalized if it gets involved in one of these link schemes (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356).

This article will list the best practices for “do-it-yourself” link building techniques, which can help your site rankings in the search engines (particularly in Google). This way, you will not only learn to build links yourself, but be actively involved in the online community/niche where your website belongs.
Remember that success using these techniques is highly dependent upon what you are doing on your website. You cannot expect a link from a reputable website with authority if all they find on your website is crappy content and cluttered ads. Remember: content is still king. Let’s get started.


Link Building Tip #1: Let Them Know That You Have Quality Content to Offer
If your site is extremely new and getting only a few visitors, it would not make sense to rely on link baiting techniques. This technique is only effective if your website already receives a lot of visitors coming from other sources.

What would make sense is to let your community know that you have quality content to offer. Why? Even sites with authority that are trusted by Google are not complete; they still need improvement, particularly when it comes to content. To do this, follow the steps below.

1. Wait until you have at least 30 or more pieces of content. Fifty high quality/originally written articles is a good start to exposing your site to your related niche. The content must meet the following specifications:

• Substantial and detailed. You need to impress upon them that you have the details, and not just content with one or two paragraphs.
• Useful tutorials and guides that are rare to find in authority websites. You can search websites that are related to your niche which have authority and high rankings in Google. Examine these website thoroughly for portions (i.e. topics) that are in need of content and details.

2. Show your background and history in your website's “about” page. It helps your visitors to get to know you better and begin to trust you sooner. Show your pictures and biography. If your website is about car repairs and you are a certified car technician by profession, you can say this in your bio and provide a link to the organizations that grant your certifications.

3. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and professional-looking. Avoid cluttering your website with too many ads; it is a big turn-off, and has an adverse impact on your professionalism. I recommend you hold off on ads until the later stages, when you are already earning a lot of links and receiving a lot of visitors. For now, I recommend you turn them off.

4. Avoid having a link page with links pointing to nonsense, spammy and unrelated websites. It is much better to have no link page at all. You need to convey a professional image to other website owners in your related niche, which you will invite to your website later.

5. Include your contact information. Some people might be willing to contact you in person. So a phone number, contact form or even an email address on your website will be useful. Avoid listing just the email address and no official business address. They need to know that you are for real.

6. Get a list of reputable, related and authoritative websites in your niche. You can use the following tools:

• Google search engine - Try searching for your targeted keyword, or even the most relevant keyword that describes your website content. Get the domain names and contact information for the top 20 websites.
• DMOZ – Try searching for your targeted keyword in the DMOZ search box. Select only those websites that are updated, and include both contact information and quality content. Sometimes DMOZ is not updated at all, and has a tendency to list dead sites.
• Technorati - If your site is a blog, you can use the Technorati blog directory (http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/)to look for relevant blogs with high authority.

7. Now that you have a list, it is time to do your homework. Go through each website and look for opportunities for them to link to you.

How To Increase Google Trust (Part-3 Complete)

Tip #4: Make yourself availably known: Trust Factor
How many times have you visited a website and could not even find the following information: name of the website owner, who is in-charge of the website, contact information, phone, etc. These are very important factors that can contribute to overall website quality. Remember the following equation about website quality:

High website quality = High content quality + High trust factor

It’s not enough to build a high quality website by just establishing content quality. You need to build trust with your readers/visitors. The following guidelines are helpful:

1.) Add some history or information about you. This is often found in the "About" page.

2.) Add a real picture of yourself.

3.) Add a picture of your office or establishments. Some websites even add a live video of their office where their clients can see them working, e.g. http://www.taxi.com/abouts/webcam.html

4.) Add your business address, official contact form and email address as well as an active phone number.

5.) Include some business certificates and accreditation (e.g. Better Business Bureau accreditation) you have earned or awards given to you from the industry you belong.

6.) Include your Official Facebook page widget where they can find user comments about your services.

7.) Always add some “real” testimonials and where your product/services have been successfully used/deployed.

8.) Protect your user privacy. Be careful when asking personal information such as name, phone number, etc. Some users are very sensitive to this. Include a link to your privacy policy that explains how information is handled. When your user submits highly sensitive information using your website, make sure you use SSL. This will encrypt the communication and protect your user privacy.

9.) Make sure you add a terms and conditions page about how you conduct your business. If you accept payments, ensure that they are protected in case of a mistake. Most consumers nowadays do not even trust websites that do not accept refunds. It is just too risky.

10.) Associate yourself with reputable companies you have worked with or do business with. Adding what professional organizations you belong is also very helpful. Add trust logos of these reputable companies and badges on your website. And make sure they are there because you are really affiliated with them.

How To Increase Google Trust (Part-2)

This is included in the Google quality guidelines already: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 . But some are not even aware or just take this for granted, so I'm adding it as a tip.
 

Beware: nowadays webmasters often receive emails from link building companies requesting you to add their client link to your website for an exchange of a monthly fee. This violates the Google quality guidelines and falls under the paid link scheme, because more often than not these websites are not  related to your website's content and you are giving a link to them without editorial merit. Even though they make sense, these companies are requesting you to place these links on your homepage, which is not advisable because it drains out a lot of link juice to your other website pages. Why does participating in these link schemes not help your overall website quality? 

1.) These companies force you to remove the rel=nofollow attribute, aside from the fact that the link is sponsored in nature and should be placed with rel=nofollow. 

2.) Even though they convince you to make the link look as natural as possible, it can still be classified as a “sponsored link” by analyzing the text that surrounds it - ditto with the targeted page.This is easy to detect, if your website homepage content is talking about “collecting antique widgets”, your reader is expecting the target page of the link to be exactly what your content is talking about. Most citations and links provided with editorial merits are pointed to inner pages of the domain. 

The primary reason is that the homepage is rarely used as a reference to details because it’s used in introducing visitors to what the website is all about.  But these link building companies are building links to their client's homepage, which of course is not editorial and does not look natural.
 

Tip #3: Limit Your Advertisements and Speed Up Your Website
It is understandable that every website owner needs to find some way to earn income from their website. But it does not mean that the user experience should be compromised. Some website owners are not aware of this and just decorate their website with a lot of annoying ads that scare users away.
A common measurable aspect is your bounce rate. If your website is ad-heavy and your bounce rate is very high, it indicates that your ads are affecting your user-experience. Some ads are also known to slow down the website and confuse your visitors from distinguishing content from advertisements.
Below are some recommended guidelines: 

1.) If you are using Google Ad Sense, place the ads in strategic locations so as not to confuse them with website content. 

2.) If you are using in-text advertising, consider limiting the number of links to a minimum (for example 3 links per page). Infolinks for example, recommends that you should maximize the number of links to 12 for maximum earnings. But in reality, your website content can look very spammy with a lot of in-text links. Try to wear the user-hat; try reading your website content with this in-text advertising on it. If it disturbs your reading experience - for example you accidentally click on it - maybe it is time to minimize or remove them, as it affects the reading experience. 

3.) Optimize your website loading time with ads. Make sure they are loading fast. Remove any pop up banners and welcome banner ads, as they can distract your readers from going directly to the content.  

Some useful resources: 

Average loading time study: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Average-Page-Load-Time-of-Top-Ranking-Websites-in-Google/

Speed up your website using Page Speed: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Speed-up-Web-Page-Loading-Using-Google-Page-Speed/ 

3.) Remember that every ad added to your site cheapens your site content quality. Limit them.

How To Increase Google Trust (Part-1)

If you are a webmaster looking to increase rankings and organic traffic from Google, then this tutorial will definitely prove helpful. You may have heard of Google's Panda / Farmer update affecting low quality websites - this tutorial will answer the questions of what does Google view as low quality - and more importantly - how do I make my website a high quality site? 

Tip #1:  Add Original, Useful and Substantial Content on a Frequent Basis
In this page: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html , Google stresses the importance of having original content on your website. Below are some good content guidelines you can implement: 

a.) At least 500 words. Most readers need details - especially if your content is a tutorial or how-to guide. If your content does not explain the details, then your content is not good enough, which also reflects the overall quality of your website. Having a thin amount of content, your site can be labeled as a “content farm” by Google. Make a habit of writing content with details instead of generalizing everything in one or two paragraphs.

b.) Content should be original and not copied. As suggested by Google here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html , some great ideas about writing original content are based on research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis.

c.) Articles should be well written, clear, concise, and direct to the point. The readability of your content is also important.

d.) Content should contain images or videos. Content with images or videos reinforces learning and helps the reading process. Make sure you have rights to these images and videos. Make sure to ask permission first if you do not own them.

e.) If absolutely necessary, cites references to external sources as proof. Sometimes when you are writing something in your blog or website, you need evidence that can substantiate your point. In this case, you need to link to a quality external resource. This linking process should be given with editorial merit.

f.) Link to other content within your website. For example if your content is talking about “building widgets” then in some of your paragraphs you start talking about “configuring widgets”. If you already wrote a separate and detailed tutorial about “configuring widgets”, then have your “building widgets” page link to the “configuring widgets” content.  This method is really helpful for visitors who are in need of detailed resources about a certain topic (example “widgets”). You might notice that if you are reading a Wikipedia article, it links to a lot of related pages within Wikipedia, and of course helps improve the user experience and increases the retention time of your visitors.

g.) Allow user-generated comments. When you publish content make sure you allow comments to it. User comments are helpful to validate the accuracy and trust of the content. If certain content receives a lot of interaction and approval, then any future readers do not need to spend more time searching for quality content on the Internet because they already found one. They will stick to your website longer.

h.) Allow users to share your content on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites. One aspect of a quality website is that its content is highly shared, liked and added to a users list of favorite websites. You should take this opportunity, as search engines like Google are definitely using this data (source: http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389 ).

i.) Write as often as possible- this makes your website grow bigger with quality content. The end results are higher organic traffic due to long tail effect and higher link baiting opportunity because of your content. Google also loves to rank big websites (source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Choosing-Keywords-Help/Keyword-Difficulty-vs-Size-of-Domain/ ).

Keyword Research Gems From PubCon

I love keyword research and taking time to figure out which keywords will not only bring a large amount of traffic to a website, but, those keywords that will convert and bring additional revenue to a company. Because of this, I decided to attend a great session at PubCon this morning that was focused on keyword research. One of the speakers, Craig Paddock from Boost Research Marketing delivered an amazing presentation called “Organic Keyword Research & Selection”. I wanted to take a few minutes to share with you his keyword research wisdom that he imparted to a few hundred of us.

Keyword Research

When researching different kinds of keywords, you will want to take a look at a few different factors.

• Popularity of the particular keyword
• The click-thru rate of the keyword
• The quality of the keyword (conversion rate or engagement)
• The competitiveness of the keyword
• Your current ranking for that keyword

When analyzing each of these factors, you will be able to easily decide which keywords will be best for you to target to get the maximum return on your invested time or money.

Keyword Expanders / Variations

When doing keyword research, one of the best ways to drive organic search traffic to your website is by focusing on expanders and variations of keywords. These expanders or variations will help you take advantage of other, less obvious ways rank for particular keywords. You will want to focus on expanders such as best, online, buy, cheap, discount, wholesale, and accessories. Adding these to your keywords allows you to potentially rank for less competitive keywords and drive very targeted traffic to your site.

Another way to drive traffic to your website using expanders or variations is by adding reviews to your website. Allowing your customers or site visitors to comment and write reviews can help you easily and quickly add new content to your site that is very relevant. Not only that, but more people are starting to search for products services reviews. If your review pages or sections are highly optimized, you can easily show up in the search results when searchers are trying to find what you offer.

Keyword Selection

When doing keyword research, one really great way of finding keywords that will work for you and your business is by setting up and running a ppc campaign and collecting data solely for the purpose of selecting your keywords.

The first thing that you need to know about running a campaign for the purpose of collecting data is that you want to set your campaign up with no daily limit and make sure that it is on the 1st page of results. I know this might get expensive, but the data that you will glean is well worth it. You shouldn’t have to collect more than 72 hours of data to get a pretty good idea of what direction you need to go.

When setting up your campaign, you will want to make sure to set up two different campaigns, one that is targeting the exact [keyword] and another that is targeting the broad match.

Some metrics that you will want to analyze are the number of impressions or queries that keyword generates. This will provide an accurate number of how many people searched for your exact keyword and how many people searched for some variation of your keyword. You will also want to analyze the click-thru ratio, and the conversion data. Doing so will help you find the VERY best keywords for your business.

Another way to help you decide which keywords to select for your SEO campaign is by analyzing your analytics data, both ppc and organic traffic. You will want to analyze the conversion rate of your site visitors. You should see how much revenue each visitor is bringing to your business.

You should also look at how each visitor engages with your website. Take a look at how many pages per visit your visitors are looking at. Take a look at your bounce rate. Take a look at the pages they are visiting (terms of service and about us pages are engaging pages). Each of these things can help narrow your huge list of keywords related to your business.

Keyword Competitiveness

In terms of selecting keywords to target in your SEO campaign, you always want to look at the competition for each keyword you are considering. You definitely don’t want to go after keywords that will take you years to rank for (I know from personal experience). You want keywords that you will be able to rank well for in six to twelve months.

Some of the easy ways to determine the competitiveness of your keywords are by using certain tools like the SEO Quake plugin or the SEO for Firefox plugin. I think everyone here at the office uses the SEO for Firefox plugin for our competitive research for our clients. One of the most important things to look at with that plugin is the number of unique external links to your domain. This number will give you a good idea of how many unique domains linking to your competitors for any given keyword.

There were a few other things that he touched on, but I felt that these were some of the biggest takeaways and will change the way that I look at and perform keyword research in the future. In summary, you will always want to set up a ppc campaign for the purpose of collecting data to guide your organic search campaign. You should always remember that keyword research is more than just looking at the popularity of any given phrase.

There are many different factors to look at and study to ensure that you are targeting the right keywords now, not when you realize that you have been doing SEO on the wrong keywords six months down the road.

How to Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool for SEO

While the Adwords tool is meant for PPC, it’s also a vital tool when performing keyword research for SEO. Google Adwords identifies the number of searches for specific words or key phrases. However, many people leave with false information because there are several different filters with different numbers.

If you go to the keyword tool and search for “online schools,” “online degrees” and “online education,” you’ll get information about those keywords as well as many other related terms.

Underneath the search field is a checkbox as shown below:

Make sure this is checked; otherwise you will get a huge list of keywords that may not actually apply to your business.

Google automatically presets your location and language to serve you the most relevant results. It sets my location as “United States” and my language as “English.”

You can change this if it doesn’t happen to apply to you by expanding the Advances Search section.

The next step is to simply click search. This is where the tool can get confusing.

If you’re like many, it would appear as though there are 246,000 searches for “online schools” all over the globe. Likewise, somebody would think that there are 201,000 searches for the same keyword in your local area.

This is not true and I’ve had many people regret their decision to pursue these keywords because they just didn’t understand the data.

Over on the left there is a column with “Match Types.” Check the box associated with [Exact]. This will change the keyword numbers to reflect more realistic search volume. “Why wouldn’t the keyword tool show me exact search volume from the beginning?” The default match type of “Broad” is referring to the number of searches that involve the phrase. For example, it’s giving you search volume numbers for the keyword “online schools” as well as search volume for all the other keywords that mention that phrase such as “best online schools,” “online schools degrees,” “online high schools” and others.

The other match type, “Phrase,” shows you keywords where the exact phrase of your keyword is used. This includes keywords where the term is used with other words within the phrase. For example, using the Phrase match type while searching “online schools” would give you search volume for other keywords like “best online schools” or “online schools degrees” but not “online high schools” or “online accredited schools” because the original phrase is being broken up.

If you’re looking for how many people search a specific keyword, stay with [Exact].

Now that the data has been changed to realistic numbers, you’ll notice the number of searchers go down drastically.

Because there are some terms that are searched worldwide, Google differentiates the two searches columns to Global and Local. The numbers underneath Global are the amount of searches all around the globe averaged out over 12 months. Searches in the Local column are referring to the location that you specified in the beginning. In our case, they’re showing the number of searches in the Unites States averaged out over 12 months.

That’s basically the gist of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. There are some other things you can do with this tool to improve your keyword research and discover additional relevant keywords. This is by no means advanced or the end to your keyword research, you still need to analyze your online competition, research the searcher’s intent and decide what’s worth going after given your time and budget.

How to Build Links with Infographics

It should be no surprise that infographics aquire links. Although they’ve quickly become a saturated tactic, they still work. I like infographics, because they’re a great intersection between traditional marketing and manual link building. In this post, I’d like to walk through my process of creating and launching a successful infographic. I’m about to tell you exactly how I’ve gotten clients hundreds of thousands of content views, thousands of social shares, and hundreds of links. It's a long post, so grab some coffee.

The Development Process

I’d like to cover my “process” for creating an infographic. This might not be for everyone, but it works for me.

#1 Full Team Brainstorm

At this stage, I’ll pull the whole project team together for a brainstorm. I may start with a seed set of ideas, but this is a wide open brainstorm, anything goes. We’re looking for ideas that are: interesting, appeals to the linkerati / socialrati, has real data, and some type of unique hook. An idea may come directly from a specific niche we’re targeting, or may go along with an event, such as a holiday. Try to look for angles that people don’t normally take or to present boring/common info conversely or in a off-colour way. Geoff, here at Distilled, is a beast at coming up with ideas.

 

#2 Research

I may only walk from the brainstorm with a vague concept and the target audience. From this point, I’ll start to research for data that can be used to form an infographic. I have a few goals for research.

1. Find information that can be organized.
2. Find information that can be visually represented.
3. Data does better than just information.
4. Focus on verifiable statistics I can cite.
5. Focus on chunkable, tweetable statements.
6. Focus on content that triggers an emotional response.

The output here is a Word document of information and URLs to its source.

 

#3 Email Brainstorm

Unless you’re a creative genius, you’ll find value in crowdsourcing for ideas and selection of data. I will send the results of the research to the entire office and collect input on best stats, how those stats can be represented, or any other cool ideas. My job is collect this input and distill it down.

 

#4 Develop Concept

Next up, I’ll start developing a concept. This is when you put your creative marketing hat on.

Things to consider:

• How your data can be visually represented
• Color themes (consider you topic and target market)
• How to visually create an emotional response
• Ways to add humor
• Creating “sharable” chunks of info for easy sharing and tweeting
• Media to be added, such as images and graphs

This is a choke point where infographics can fall short. Yes, you have a cool concept, you have the data, and maybe you even nailed your title. But what I’ve seen that works, is really catering to your target market(s) in the content of the infographic. Give them very specific, for lack of a better phrase, “Easter eggs” that will be meaningful for them. This might be a meme or a concept unique to their market. Try to play on a person's ego or emotions, or to build some form of relationship with them. This goes back to marketing and understanding the target market.

 

#5 Design

I’ll pass over all the information to our designer. I’ll touch on this more in a moment, but I’ve learned to be very clear in this communication. Working with a designer in the UK, in another time zone, whom you’ve never met, creates a unique work relationship. I think our process here though is valuable for any SEO working with a designer.

 

#6 Revisions

This should be simple, but likely won't be. After getting the first draft of the design, it’ll be passed around the office for feedback. This may include typos, content errors, or design considerations. If you don't fix, then mistakes in your graphic will be caught, and social media can be relentless in pointing them out (especially Reddit). Find the most detailed oriented person in your office and get them involved. Next, send it off for review from your client (or boss).This is the point where your skills in getting s#!% done can make or break your linkbait. Your job is to know your client (boss) and have built enough trust with them that you can manage any pushback. Getting close to your client can be the difference between a piece of linkbait that “ok” and “awesome”.

 

Working with Your Designer

Infographic design is a choke point. Concepts can fall apart during the design process if not effectively managed. Tucker Cummings, at Blue Glass, recently wrote about what makes a “good” infographic. She said “if it doesn’t make you say “Wow” when you look at it, it’s probably not attractive enough”. Although an infographic needs to look good, I don't want design requirements to scare you off. As long as the design is good, fun, and interesting - I'm more concerned about the content.

My goal when working with a designer is to get something the client will like, with minimum revisions, and without annoying the designer. This is done by doing one thing.

Communicating well.

To assist in this communication, I send my designer two documents (these are actually the headings used in my last brief).

Infographic brief.docx

Client Information

• Infographic Width
• Target Audience
• Client Expectations
• Deadline
• Hours

Infographic Information

• Overview
• Purpose
• Data
• Title
• Theme
• Images & Files

Infographic content.docx - Just the text in the infographic.

 

Tips for Working with Designer

• Get them involved early. I send over an email after the first brainstorm. I want them to be a part of the team, not just a tool I leverage to produce the graphic. I want them excited about it and feel a sense of ownership over the project as well.
• Don’t hinder their design. This is their job, it’s what they’re good at, so just step back and let them do it. Trust that they’re an expert at what they do (this means you have to hire a good designer in the first place.)
• Communicate clearly. Most issues can be solved with clear communication. I promise you this is important when the designer comes in while I’m asleep.
• Remember you’re a marketer. Trust your designer, but you know the market. Feel free to provide feedback to your designer if you feel the design won’t engage your audience appropriately.  I've had a designer change the color scheme on a graphic, because I didn’t feel it’d engage the target audience in the way I wanted. I think the revision made it a lot more effective at producing an emotional response.

 

The On-site Stuff

Everyone has their own way of launching an infographics.

The (almost) amazing example

Around Valentine’s day, I saw what I think was an amazing infographic setup, minus one small thing. This infographic was the Valentine’s Day Spending [Infographic] by DegreeSearch.org.

This setup did a lot of things really well. It allowed the graphic to be published on the blog, but allowed them to promote it with a special landing page as well. This landing page removes almost all distractions, except for engaging with the content via social or embedding. It links back to the post and the site’s homepage. There is this wonderful share bar at the top, which allows visitors to easily share the graphic. It even sticks at the top as the user scrolls down the page. If there is one place this page may have gone wrong, it’s right here:

After the infographic, they’ve embedded Facebook comments, but placed the link embed code below it. Every time someone comments on Facebook, the embed box is pushed further down the page, to the very bottom. Since the Facebook comment box is at the bottom anyways, I would have placed the embed above the Facebook comments (unless of course the graphic's goal was to increase Facebook interactions).

My Setup

Typically, I’ll publish an infographic as a blog post and use the following setup.

Features:

• Infographic with good file name and alt attribute
• Share buttons (I like the style shown above the most)
• Embed code box, with JavaScrpit to auto select all (will show, one second)
• Embed code with good image name and alt attribute
• Embed code links image to post and has a secondary branded link after the graphic

There are three goals: 1) ease sharing 2) ease embeding 3) make sure the embed code gives good links.
Protip: When making your embed code text area, make it autoselect all the code for easy copying. Like this:

textarea style="font-family: monospace;" onclick="this.select();"

You can see this in action over at eLocal, where my friend Adria works, on their home improvement trends infographic.

 

Getting Links

Everything so far is preperation for the meat of the campaign, getting the links. Infographics depend on the success of the content's creation, but I won't pretend that good content gains links all by itself. However, good content is key. Good content, like an infographic, paired with strong outreach, can produce amazing results. But enough with the content talk, let’s get to links.

 

#1 Advertising

I use social media advertising to help seed info graphics. Facebook ads work, but I highly recommend StumbleUpon Ads. These are cheap social oriented eyeballs and you can put yourself in front of a lot of them quickly. Do not expect much from this traffic. It tends to bounce quickly and doesn’t convert in my experience. However, once in a while, you get in front of just the right person at the right time. On my last infographic, we spent about $500 to help seed, which lead to 10,000 paid views, but we ended receiving about twice as many SU views as that due to free stumbles. From my experience, SU ads can drive tweets and likes, which I’ve seen from running ads after tweet volume has died off.

 

#2 Seeding Content: Social Sites

You’ll want to submit to relevant social media sites, but put thought into these submissions. For example, Reddit has a large number of subreddits which may work better for specific types of content. Pay attention to how you tag posts on StumbleUpon. Also you can use accounts at your disposal to seed these submissions with strong early votes where possible. There may be times when you need to call in favors.

#3 Twitter

Just like other social sites, you’ll want to promote through Twitter. Leverage relationships to get tweets from prominent Twitter users.
Find twitter users for outreach, it’s pretty easy:

• Search on FollowerWonk
• Check Twitter directories
• Check niche sites for twitter accounts
• Find most influenced accounts to see who most RTs X person’s content. Use tools like Klout, TweetStats, or the Twitter API.

 

#4 Manual Outreach

Lastly, you need to do traditional link building outreach. You need to do outreach. The type of sites I’m reaching out to will be decided in the first full team brainstorm. I’ve already identified that market, and need to contact them for links. Outreach is an art and a science in its own right, but there have been several posts written on the topic.

• Outreach for Link Building
• How to Use Twitter for Link Building
• Science of Persuasion
• The Do's & Don'ts in Link Request Emails
• 5 Fatal Flaws in a Link Request
• Art of Getting a Link
• The Perfect Link Request
• Link Request Email Template
• How to Write a Link Request based on Tips from OKCupid

Don’t be afraid of outreach. It’s a lot like dating. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. Now, if only I was as good at dating as I am link building.

 

The secret sauce

At the start of this post, I said I’d tell you exactly how I get links with infographics, but that’s not entirely true. I left out two parts, but that’s because I can’t teach you those, but I can tell you what they are.

Contacts

Good contacts can make or break your content promotion. Do you have a PR team? Do you maintain relationships with major bloggers / journalist that can publish your content? Did you start nurturing relations with niche bloggers prior to pitching? We do.
I can’t emphasis enough the value that a handful of useful contacts, who actually reply to your emails, can have on your promotion.

 

Hustle

I believe hustle is my most valuable skill, in both SEO and life. Tom talks about the concept of hustle as a meme on Hacker News in his post on OnStartups about Distilled culture. Hustle is something that’s hard, maybe impossible, to teach. It's the willingness to “do whatever it takes” to get what you want.

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle"

- Abraham Lincoln

Success often means getting lucky, but I do believe “luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. You have to be out there hustling to find those opportunities. You have to be willing to do the work. The lengths I’ll go in outreach often result in rolled-eyes and chuckles around the office, but I get links. I get lucky with a lot of links, but I'd miss them if I wasn't out there working the process.

The "secret" to websites with few linsk and high rankings

This is mostly relevant to affiliate sites.

I've been around this community for quite a few years now and it seems a lot of people haven't discovered the real secret to websites with high rankings and low amount of links.

Why am i telling you this? Because it is not a magic pill and it benefits the user's experience using Google anyway.

Something I discovered which you should know first.

I believe that the algorithm Google uses treats different keywords/sectors of search differently.

For example, Google treats websites/search results for "Acai berry juice pills" differently than it does "home made orange juice" and "how to grow a tree".

Google will look at the intention behind a search query and the type of websites that target that query. So chasing a "buy" keyword is different from chasing a "how to". There are all different types of searches and Google's algo treats them differently.

What this means is that what you did to rank for X website may need an adjustment if you plan to action the same strategy to another niche.

So what's the secret?

Basically, the secret is that you don't let Google know you are an affiliate.

You have to play the long term game. 1 years is the mark before a website will become authority(1-5 top rankings for all pages). Now this doesn't mean you can't reach the first page with our normal spammy sites. You can, but i'm guessing most of you have hit the "invisible wall" at some point which you can't push past?

The best example I have for you is my old old site what-is-thrush.com You type in any thrush related keyword and it is number 1 above the NHS, Wikipedia, BBC, mayoclinic. For nearly every keyword. It receives 2,000 uniques a day and unfortunately it is not mine anymore because I sold it after a year(bummer!).

So the secret... in essence, you have to mimic a non-profit website. You content has to be spot on. Hire a writer to write 700 word articles and then edit them to make sure they make perfect sense and would actually help the people who visit your site.

Why do this? Because once you get closer to the first page in Google they will manually assess your website, especially if you run adsense. The person who makes the assessment WILL give you a negative trust-score if they believe your website is simply there to channel users into your affiliate links. So play the game and pretend to be non-profit.

Did you know the advertisements on your website affect your Google ranking? If you have crappy dating or acai berry adverts on your website then Google will mark your quality down.

Build links moderately. The rules to follow when building backlinks are these;

Make sure the anchor text is varied. Also make sure the anchor text is not just exact keywords. Overlap your anchor text with the sentence it is in. E.G. You can find out more about acai berry here.

Also, don't vary your anchor text too much. It has to be relevant.

Also try to build small numbers of links reguarly. Whatever you do don't blast 100k links to blogs with 1,000 outbound links already on them. Google is sneaky, they do not "deindex" your website. They simply make it EXTRA HARD for your particular website to rank highly.

Make sure the template is user friendly. Google now scans the whole website with it's recent update, including the template.

So in a nutshell, simply make a website which helps users with a certain topic, ensure the content is great, leave it for around 3-5 months while building small amounts of baclinks regularly. After the website begins toh it the first page, add your affiliate links.

What is thrush was on the first page for it's search queries with around 100-200 links. Since then the new owner has been paying for seo services and has around 1,00 now.

I've tested this with many websites and it all comes down to simply providing a really good website which helps users with their problems. Once Google has manually vetted your site and you are hitting page 1 you can begin earning money form it.

It is the true secret. You hardly need many links at all.

To help prove it to you, i'll reveal one of my sites. It is a blog about facebook games. In 1,8 billion competing pages I am number 7-10 in the world for the keyword "facebook games". With 550-600 backlinks.

I also own affiliate sites which I didn't follow ym own rules on and no matter how many backlinks I create they won't move. Google's sneaky work

So that's the secret. Good content, good site, aged, no aff links and moderate backlinks.

On-Page Optimization Tips

There are many factors that contribute to showing up well in search engine results. Some of the most important items are found on the web site themselves and are called “On-Page Optimization.” Some of the areas of concern on websites include:

• Page Title
• URL
• Meta Description
• Alt Attributes for Images
• Content

Before doing anything with On-Page Optimization (or any other SEO for that fact) you first have to choose the right keywords for your site. You can learn more about keyword research on one of our previous posts.
Page Titles
Titles are very important to on-page optimization. The titles show up at the top of the browser and are often used by search engines as the title in search engine results. The title is a good place for keywords. Make the title direct, to the point and ensure that all the pages on your site have their own unique titles. For example, a page about PVC pipes on a plumbing site could have a title of “Cheap PVC Plumbing Pipes | Joes Plumbing Supplies” (I had to use Joe the Plumber as an example, couldn’t help myself). Notice that with one long keyword term many targeted words are included. By using this keyword phrase a search engine is likely to serve this page when people search for PVC pipes, cheap PVC pipes, cheap plumbing, cheap plumbing pipes, cheap plumbing supplies etc.
URL
Often when sites are designed using a Content Management System (CMS), the URLs on deeper pages look like you just spilled a cup of alphabet soup on your desk. Sometimes these URL’s are dynamic so they change every time you visit the page, making it a huge problem for the bots to properly index the pages. Unfortunately the URLs also have nothing to do with your targeted keywords unless you want to show up for po=J0ro57v. Many CMSs have modifications that can be added to make URLs search engine friendly. For example: www.joesplumbingsupplies.com/products/pvc_pipes is a URL that is Search Engine Friendly, because it is short, descriptive, and includes relevant keywords.
Meta-Description
The meta description shows up in the code of the page. Make sure each page on your site has it’s own unique meta description tag. The meta description is often used to describe the page in the search engine results after listing the page title. Having a relevant meta description increases the chances that people will click on your listing. It can also be used to include a phone number or some other call to action.
Code Structure
When structuring the body of the site, use h1 and h2 tags. The Search Engines place a high priority on words in the h1 and h2 tags. Getting ranked first in Google will be of little worth if the content on your site is not relevant or the content is confusing. Sometimes coders forget that people are reading this page and not just some random Google bot. When designing and coding sites, always place priority on the humans coming to the web site over the search engine bots. Be cautious about what content you place in flash. Although Google can now detect the text inside of flash files it is still better to place keywords in the html surrounding the flash. Some sites use Java Script extensively for site structure and navigation. Because bots tend to get confused when reading Java Script avoid using in this way. Many coding geeks have debated whether the bold tag or the strong tag is better for SEO. According to Matt Cutts Google places the same weight on both tags
Alt Attributes
Often times when people do on-site optimization they overlook placing Alt attributes on pictures. By properly describing the pictures on a site the search engines will see that even the pictures are relevant to the keywords. By doing this you are also more likely to show up in the results when people search for images.
Content
The last point is one of the most important. Whether you have content to sell your products or your product is the content it’s important to have enough relevant content all your pages. Make sure the entire page reads smoothly and is understandable because humans buy products not search engine bots. It’s good to link out to other sites as long as they are relevant. Be careful of having too many outbound links on any one page of a site. Many people have the misconception that you build a website and then kick back and watch the money roll in. Building a website is a job that is truly never done. You should always be updating and modifying information on your sites. If you want people coming back to your site you have to give them something to come back for. By adding new content to a site you also improve your chance of ranking well in Google. Regular updates will help your site get indexed faster. Search engines will see frequently updated sites as up to date, accurate and relevant.
On-site Optimization should be the first thing you do after determining your keywords. If you follow these simple guidelines you will find that you will rank much better in search engines.

How to Build a Website with SEO in Mind

To make sure your site is built for the search engines, be sure to balance these elements in your Web design.

URL Structure:

Don’t bother using page IDs for your URLs. Changing your URLs to a worded structure will not only help with SEO, but it will also help your users know what the page is about. http://www.example.com/services is much better than http://www.example.com/?page_id=41. If you’re using WordPress for your website, you can simply go to Settings > Permalinks > and enter /%postname%/ as a Custom Structure. Also, make sure to have your site go to the www or the non-www version, but not both. That can potentially create duplicate content problems.

Use Flash in Moderation:

Incorporating Flash into your website is not bad, but too much of it is. The search engines are limited by what they can read within the Flash file, so do not put any text or important information within it that you may want the search engines to index.  Also, do not build the entire website using Flash. It will basically shield all your site’s content from the search engines deeming you irrelevant for the majority of keywords you’re going for.
In addition, Google has the new instant preview feature. If you use Flash, it can turn out blank or empty:

Here is a good use of Flash, and a bad use of Flash. Photographers everywhere are notorious for using all Flash websites.

Heading Tags:

Heading tags range from H1 to H6 and are great ways of separating out topics and giving a title to each page of content. When creating content for each page, remember to have only one H1 tag. If it sounds natural, use your keywords within this H1 to maximize its potential.
Here is a good use of H1 tags. A bad example would be any page with more than one H1 tag.

One Topic per Page:

If you have a variety of services or products, do not put them all on one page. Have your homepage be the broad focus of your business and create menus that go over your categories. Only have one product/service per page. It looks better, it’s simpler for the user to find what they need and you’ll thank yourself once you start targeting pages with keywords.

Don’t Use iFrames:

1998 called and they’d like their Web development methods back. Rarely is there a reason to implement iFrames for your website. An iFrame is basically a portal or window into another page within your website. The search engines cannot read the information within that window and that is why they’re useless. For the most part, iFrames have fizzled out but some major sites like Amazon.com and weather information sites will use them to enable users to display their content on their personal website effortlessly.
Here’s a site that uses iFrames. View the source page and search for some of the content you see on the site. You can’t find it and neither can the search engines.

Call to Action:

It doesn’t matter how much traffic your website receives, if it doesn’t convert, it’s useless. Many people don’t understand or value conversion optimization but it can significantly improve your bounce and conversion rate. A simple way of improving your amount of callers, orders, e-mails, leads, subscribers (or whatever you are using to identify a conversion) is to clearly display what you want that visitor to act on. If they should fill out a form or give you a call, make sure that action item is above their face where they cannot miss it.
Here’s an example of a good call to action, and a bad call to action.

Text within Images:

Many webmasters put text within an image because they want a special font to display or they just don’t understand HTML. The search engines cannot read what is inside images, so just don’t do it. Save yourself from doing it twice by doing it right.
Here is an example of a website using text within images. The header, footer and welcome title are all in images.

JavaScript within Navigation:

When you use JavaScript to display your navigation, the drop-down pages and the links that go along with them, it can create a barrier for the search engines because they have a hard time reading it. JavaScript isn’t as cut and dry as HTML and because there are a million ways to produce the same product out of JavaScript, it can really confuse the search engines.
Here’s a site that uses JavaScript with their navigation. If you disable JavaScript in your browser, its functionality goes away.

Navigational Structure:

Keeping your websites navigational structure clean and simple can be somewhat of a challenge for some people. Use categories, use parent pages and don’t exclude key pages from the navigation. If you want a visitor to buy that product or see that service, include it in your menu.
Although I somewhat enjoy this site, it is an example of a website with a confusing navigational structure.

Use of Content:

Each page should have its own unique text and images at the very least. Having other elements like video can help you too. Make sure each page has at least 150 unique words and 1 picture with descriptive alt text. Use that pages keywords in the text and image alt tag but don’t overuse it. SEO is a delicate balance and using your keyword once per 100 words is always safe.
Here is an example of a website with no useful text and lists of keywords.

Using Splash/Doorway/Squeeze Page:

When somebody first comes to your website, they should see your homepage, not a trendy or fun page in between. When the use of a splash page is used, it creates an unnecessary barrier between you and your visitors. This will affect your bounce rate and conversion rate and unlikely for the better.
Here is an example of a website using a Splash page.

Become a Blogger:

Search engines like to serve fresh content and using a blog is a great way to keep your site growing and active. Continually having new content for the search engines to index keeps their bot coming back and can even help you rank for longer tail keywords.
Our SEO blog is a great example of an active blog that posts new content about the industry it’s in.

Pay Attention to Site Speed:

If your website takes too long to load the page, odds are your visitors are going to get impatient and leave. The search engines also don’t like waiting around so site speed should be something to be concerned about. Having too many HTTP requests, large amounts of JavaScript and CSS files and large images to load can all contribute to a slow site speed.
Hopefully these examples will help you in the future if you choose to build a new website. As with everything, there are exceptions to the rule. But for the most part, these recommendations will help your SEO efforts as well as visitors that come to your website.
Do you know of any others? Please comment and add to this list.

Google Changes Algorithm for Low Quality Sites

In an attempt to offer its users better search results, Google has just implemented a significant change to its algorithm. The change will help boost the rankings of what are deemed to be high quality sites, and it will push low quality sites, such as content farms, further down the rankings.Amit Singhal, a Google fellow, and Matt Cutts, a principal engineer who helps the search engine giant fight spam, announced the algorithmic improvement in a post on Google's blog. The change's main goal is to improve relevancy among search results for users. By rewarding high quality sites for their content and punishing low quality sites for their supposed lack of content, users can get more of what they are looking for without having to weed through irrelevant sites. Google considers high quality sites to be those that offer original content, in-depth analysis, research, and more.
Although the blog post did not name any specific websites, it is likely that content farms are its main target. Content farms produce short, low value articles that are created in response to popular search queries. One such site is eHow, which pays freelance writers small fees to produce short articles on a variety of subjects.
Many content farm articles achieved high search engine rankings in the past, but offered little actual value to visitors. Google sees these sites as a form of spam that clutters its results. Other sites, which post unoriginal content and even go as far as to copy content, are also targeted in the algorithm change. It is unknown exactly how long it will take for the ranking changes to actualize, but they should gradually appear.
Prior to officially changing its algorithm, Google announced the release of the Personal Blocklist extension for users of its Chrome browser. The extension allows users to block specific domains from appearing in search results, essentially creating a blacklist of unwanted sites. Personal Blocklist also allows users to provide Google with feedback and opinions on the blocked sites.
Google stated that it did not use the extension's feedback in making the algorithmic change, but there are some consistencies between the two. Approximately 84 percent of the most unpopular or blocked domains from Personal Blocklist have been negatively impacted since the change, which shows that it has worked in accordance with user opinion.
Algorithmic changes are nothing out of the ordinary for Google. The company tweaks its algorithm several times per year, and many times the changes are not officially announced. The latest change is worthy of an announcement because it affects 11.8 percent of Google's queries.
As of now, the change has only been implemented in the United States. Google does plan to make it global in the future, however. As time passes, it should be interesting to see how the change affects the Internet landscape. With any luck, the rewards of higher rankings given to quality sites should create an improvement in terms of the overall level of quality of online content.
For more on this topic, visit http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html

Stay his organization 4 hours

Do you post PDFs on your website? Maybe you offer them as educational material for your visitors. If so, you're sitting on a search engine gold mine; you just need to optimize it. Keep reading to find out how.The YOUMoz section of SEOMoz (http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-optimize-pdf-documents-for-search) recently posted a checklist for performing SEO on PDFs, which is where I got much of this material. As with any checklist, the devil's in the details. It starts with search-friendly file names. You make sure the file names of your other web pages are useful to searchers who find them in the SERPs, so don't call it 1234.pdf, call it (for example) GrowTomatoes.pdf.
Tackle your PDF's title tag in the same way. You optimize the tile tags of other web pages, so why not this one? Hold yourself to the same character limits as you would for the title tag of any other web page.
If you're using Adobe Acrobat, you'll get a description field. This translates to the meta description of a web page, and will be displayed in the SERPs under your title tag. Treat this as you would the meta description for any other web page; if you use them, keep it informative and concise, so your readers will really know what they're getting when they click on the link.
Again, if you're using Acrobat, there's a way to view “Additional Metadata.” You'll find additional fields to fill out there. Some search engines may rank some of these fields, so you may want to fill them out completely. After this, you'll want to hit the Advanced menu and find the sub-menu for Accessibility. This is great if you want to help visitors with screen readers and magnifiers read your PDFs.
Do you use Alt tags on your regular web pages? Believe it or not, there are also ways to do this with images in your PDFs. Check your program. It's another way to help the search engine spiders get a better handle on what your document is all about.
Okay, so you've added all of the “on-site” details that you would to any web page; how about the “off-site” details? I'm talking about links. You'll definitely want to add a link in the document back to your website, for both the search engine spiders and your human readers. If other websites decide to host a copy of your PDF, that link in the document becomes a backlink to your website.
For obvious reasons, you won't want others to be able to easily remove that link – or otherwise edit your PDF. So make sure  you write-protect it before putting it online.
Finally, you may feel certain that a PDF is the best way to offer your material, but not everyone who visits your website will agree with you. It's always a good idea to offer different options to your visitors. So you might want to present HTML versions of your PDF documents. Many web surfers find them less of a hassle than clicking on a PDF and opening a reader when they just want to casually browse your site. If they like what they see in HTML, though, they may go to the PDF version to print it out later. So different formats are good for different purposes, and it's helpful to your visitors – both humans and search engine spiders – to have more than one available.
 [Source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/Remember-to-SEO-Your-PDFs/]

Google Algorithm Change Reduces Complete Review Traffic

Last week Google announced a change in its top secret search algorithm, adjustments aimed at placing “sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites” lower in Google search results.
Over at the high value global literature site Complete Review, Michael Orthofer noted that the change has reduced his traffic by 10 percent. While the change is aimed at improving search results and punishing websites that scrape other sites for content, it appears it can have a negative impact on useful sites as well.
Have any other literary sites been affected? Here’s more from Complete Review: “Searches drive most (ca. 80 per cent) of the traffic to the complete review, and Google is responsible for the overwhelming majority of that traffic (over 92 per cent in 2010), so any ‘Google dance’ has a profound effect on the number of visitors to the site. While daily traffic fluctuations make it difficult to say precisely what the immediate impact was, it appears that, despite only affecting US searches, traffic was immediately down some 10 per cent at the site.”

7 Basic Tips for Building Your New Website For Future Success

Startup? Thinking about building a website? In today’s real time web, putting together a website is fairly easy – buy the domain, sign up for a WordPress site, use one of their default templates, create a homepage, and there you have it; you now have a website.
The problem with the process described above is that it’s good for companies that don’t consider online marketing as part of their marketing mix (usually small businesses), or for companies who think they will never grow to be a big player. If you own or work for such a company, this blog post is not for you.
If you own, or work for a company who thinks about online marketing as an integral part of its strategy and has hopes of becoming the next big thing, the 7 tips below are for you.

7 Basic Tips for Building Your New Site For Future Success

Tip #1: Build it to scale
Too many startup companies are building a brochure website that later they need to invest an arm and a leg in redesigning because they outgrew their basic WordPress site. I’m not advocating putting your hard-earned funding money into an elaborate website structure, but at least think of scale and think about the different types of pages you’ll eventually have to have. Create your basic templates so they will be able to support rapid growth.
No matter what your business is, if your business grows, your website will have to grow with it. At a minimum, your website will have to include: a decent homepage, a pricing page, an About page, a Press page, a Contact Us page or at least a sidebar.
Tip #2: Build it to test
You’ll never really know what’s working with your target audience until you start testing. As my marketing professor used to say: “Marketing is about three basic things – testing, testing and testing.” Incorporate simple testing mechanisms, such as Google’s A/B testing or Google Website Optimizer to ensure future testing ability. At an early stage, use your website as the main channel to test your message with your inbound audience.
Tip #3: Build it to track
Whether you’re using Google Analytics or another tracking software (Optify offers a free visitor tracking feature–and a free trial), make sure you’re installing a visitor/lead tracking system on your site to start gathering data on your online performance – what pages drove the most visitors, what pages had the highest conversions, what industries are coming to your website and other valuable data to learn if you’re on the right track to success.
Tip #4: Build it to share
Unless you’ve been in outer space for the last 18 months, you should already know this; social media is the new, big thing. Social media has become the new facilitator of word-of-mouth marketing and you need to make sure your website is optimized for it. Make every page easy to share by including the main sharing buttons and a call to action. Treat social media networks as an extension of your site, pick the right networks for your business and resources (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, etc.), and customize and align them with your brand.



Tip #5: Build it for search
As a startup you need to first make sure your inbound marketing is optimized before you pour money into outbound. SEO should be the first thing you think about and it will also help you focus your positioning and messaging. Research your target keywords and optimize your pages – the few that you might have – for them (we created a basic work flow for you to do that – Build Your SEO Campaign in 15 Minutes).
Tip #6: Build it for press
As a startup company, there are a few press related events you will need to take full advantage of – funding announcement, beta release, public release, etc. Optimizing your site for press is crucial to make sure the press uses the right info and materials. Create a press page that minimally includes the About language you want the press to use, short bios of your executive team and board members and contact information of whoever handles your PR. A more elaborate press page will include the branding materials you approve (logo and tag lines, pictures of your executives and board members) and your old press releases. Make these pages easy to find and don’t bury them in your site; the press will not invest too much time to find them and will use the first thing they find on your site.
Tip #7: Just build it
Even if you’re only putting up one page with a Contact Us form, you should at least build it.

Read more at: http://www.optify.net/startups/7-basic-tips-building-website-future-success/?_opt_r=TWITTER&_opt_rdid=32