Website Pages – Products & Services

June 15, 2013 by Ray

Your home page should motivate visitors to click through to the particular product, service or contact page to they can successfully find the solution to their specific need or problem. Depending on how many categories you have, there may be one overview page or simply links to any category of interest. That Products/Services page needs to contain enough info to drive them to “buy now” or contact you.

Products / Services Overview
Display a brief summary of each product or service line. Then link to the individual item detail pages. This page can help visitors quickly narrow down exactly what they are looking for while motivating them to learn more. Give just enough details to lead prospects to the next step of the sales process.

• Name, photo and brief description of each item.
• Lists of sample uses or top features for each item.
• Links to individual item pages.

Product / Service Details
Each item (or sub-category of items) can have it’s own sales page with photos, descriptions and specifications along with a call to action to purchase now, email for more info or call now! Additional info can be included using links to it so that it’s optional to be bombarded by the specifics.

• Begin each page with a brief summary of the product/service. When people search for information, they want it immediately
• One or more photos or a video demonstration (it’s fine to use You-Tube)
• Description including any available options or choices (colors, sizes, package deals)
• Customer reviews specific to the item.
• List of sample uses, actual customers, features or benefits.
• Prices (specific or range), terms of use, warranty information.

Before / After or Case Histories
Besides a sales page for each product or service, you may want a page of real-world samples of your work for prospects to more easily identify with than generic descriptions and sales copy.

• Before/after photos or slideshow or video of an example project
• Description of the problem, customer requirements, timeline, difficulties overcome, and final solution.
• Names of satisfied customers along with testimonial.

Always use a call to action to prompt visitors to next step of the sales process.

Contact Webmaster Ray for more ideas that relate to your project.

Website pages – About & News

May 1, 2013 by Ray

There are many possible secondary pages that can help close the deal for visitors to contact you or request information. “About Us” isn’t critical to your product or service, but the information you include can help to set you apart from the competition or give visitors “another” reason to contact you. Stand out from the crowd and explain what makes you special!

About Us
This page (aka “About Us” or “Our Company”) may include any kind of background information to make visitors more comfortable with you. Company history, mission statement, introduction of staff members, awards and honors, or explanation of what separates you from the competition. On the surface, you may provide similar products or services as others, but certain secondary facts displaying your unique qualities can close the deal. Maybe you assist a charity that’s important to some potential clients. Maybe you’ve won an award. Maybe you have a unique certification.

• Photos of owners or employees – show that you are human beings and not just “brand x”
• Logos of industry affiliations, chambers of commerce, well-known vendors and even large customers
• Mission statement, warranty or guarantee, message from President
• Background of the company and certifications earned – use this page to brag about yourself! Include miscellaneous items that don’t fit on other pages.

News Page
News or “Announcements” pertaining to your products, industry or company can be a great way to show that you are active and conscious of keeping customers informed. Web surfers will often view to check for the latest information. It is another opportunity to tout your accomplishments or show involvement in the community.
Stay current, to prove that you’re on top of everything

• Announce new products, product lines or improvements.
• Press releases, new testimonials from customers, related topics
• Sales, special deals, promotional offers
• Honors received, partnerships formed, new staff members

Events Calendar
Events list or ‘Upcoming Events’ or ‘Schedule’ can provide details of meetings, trade shows, seminars, or any type of events that occur on a regular or periodic basis. You may wish to include a page of past events as well, to possibly include photos and a recap of the activity.

Show people how involved you are in the community and how you provide great support. Show people that you’re busy!

Contact Webmaster Ray for more ideas.

Website pages – home & splash

April 21, 2013 by Ray

Each page of your website contains elements that contribute to it’s overall success. They must complement each other in achieving your goal — a call to action on the part of visitors. Home page is the main portal, and therefore deserves extra attention.

Maximize the value of each website page
Every page of your website contains elements that contribute to it’s overall success. They must complement each other in achieving your goal — a call to action on the part of visitors.

Avoid Splash pages
Some sites start with a “front page” or “landing page” containing merely a brief video or static image, along with an “Enter” link. In most cases, this is unnecessary and requires surfers to click again to get to the information they came for. This can be frustrating to people and a page like this contains very little information for the search engine tigers to chew on! Skip this and get to the point right away…

Home (index) page
The home page is by far the most important part of any site. It is the main doorway to your organization by which the vast majority of visitors will arrive at. First impression is key to help them decide to view internal pages. You have 3 to 7 seconds to capture attention and convince visitors to stay, so the initial appearance, site title and headline should draw them into reading a brief introduction to your company.

   • Official company logo – use similar colors and design as printed materials
   • Website title or company name – state your topic or name of organization
   • Main Headline – grab attention with a question or solution to a problem
   • Text – at least one or two paragraphs of introduction to your company and what you can do for your customers (or members). Squeeze in as many “search terms” as possible without making copy hard to understand.
   • Images – one or more photos or graphics should reinforce the text and be a visual representation of how the site will help visitors
   • Slideshow or video – if a picture is worth 1,000 words, moving pictures could be worth a million! Use your very best images to tell your story
   • Contact information – all pages should make it easy for visitors to request more information, but it is imperative that a phone number, email address or mailing address be visible to people ready to contact you based on their first glance at your site!
   • Current info – update home page regularly with a news item or mention a recent event to prove to visitors that your site is actually current.
   • Bullet lists – to avoid overwhelming visitors with lengthy text, use concise lists of features, benefits, samples or reasons for people to delve deeper into the site.
   • Newsletter sign-up – Opt-in area for eBulletin, free gift, or membership to capture contact information for additional marketing opportunities.

All of these features should drive visitors toward a specific “Call to Action”. Failure to convert potential customers into sales leads is mostly due to homepages lacking primary and secondary calls to action. It may be a link that states, “Contact us for details” or “Tell us your situation and we will set up a conference call.” Guide web users along your sales process to convert more of them into customers. Read more tips!

Reciprocal links and link exchange

February 27, 2013 by Ray

Any inbound link is a good one, but there is a wide difference in their quality. One link from a respected, popular website may be worth more than ten links from low-ranking or poor quality sites.

Reciprocal Links: friends and associates
Trade links with business associates and anyone else you know with a website. Contact fellow members of associations, your chamber of commerce, social organizations, or any group you’re part of. Place links to each others’ sites since you already know and trust them. Maybe you’ll be allowed a longer description or preferred page placement because of your relationship.

It’s more helpful if the site content is related, but even being located in the same geographical area lends a degree of “relevance”. If people aren’t capable of adding links, they should contact Attraction Web Design for help [nice shameless plug].

Reciprocal Links: the open market
Trading links has always been a popular way to increase the number of inbound links. Exchanging links allows both sites to benefit, so everyone is happy (including the hungry S.E. tiger!!). This can be a time-consuming measure, so there is software that can be bought and there are online services to automate the process. One worthwhile service with both free and fee options is http://www.LinkPartners.com.

Links are more valuable from highly ranked sites with good traffic, so a link from Microsoft gives you more credit than one from Joe’s Computers.
Avoid FFA Link Farms – A FFA (Free For All) website enables any website owner to place their link on a web page. These are worthless, since search engines despise this practice and won’t give you credit.
Ensure that your link is actually posted on the other site and that it is not just a bogus “Link Farm” itself, meaning there is no site content.
Fewer links on a page means more “link juice” to be divided among them, so if your link is on a page with over 100 others, it may be virtually worthless.

Link Building – creating inbound links

February 14, 2013 by Ray

To link or not to link, that is the question! In general, the more the merrier, however some links can harm your site’s “reputation” if they are in a bad neighborhood.

Avoid questionable link building strategies
Be careful! If you see a link building opportunity that appears suspicious, ignore it. You could be wasting your time or even risk having your site penalized for significant periods of time by search engines. It’s up to you to verify legitimacy and value of any agreements.

“White Hat” SEO practices refer to safe, honest and trustworthy methods of obtaining links. “Black Hat” practices are unscrupulous site design or link-building methods with the purpose of cheating or tricking search engines. Examples of these “bad guys” are excessive use of keywords on a page or sites designed purely to list links.

Post links everywhere you can think of
Include your web address in any online information about yourself. Your fraternal organization, church, college alumni association, civic association, sports or activity club, networking group, support circle, may allow you to post a personal profile where you can add a link or even brief advertisement. Ask friends to link from their MySpace page!

Submit yourself to awards sites
Find sites that offer to post your link as a “site of the day” or any other reason. One place to start is http://CoolSiteoftheDay.com, which ranks highly in search engines.

Use affiliate programs to get linked
If you have a product, start your own affiliate program and email related sites who’d like to add another stream of income. Not only might you earn cash yourself, but each affiliate gladly provides another inbound link to help you climb higher in Google and Yahoo! http://Clickbank.com is an easy way to use a system already in place (for digitally delivered products only). Join for $50 and affiliates post a banner or text link to automatically receive credit for customers who purchase through their links.

Publish in other people’s newsletters
Offer to write articles for eZines or email newsletters of associates (and even competitors) in your industry. Anyone publishing regular materials needs content, so your “payment” may be a link to your site, along with a one-sentence description.

Internal page links
Even internal links (within your site) can help. This includes anchor links within a page to jump from one area to another.

From SEO-guy.com: “Anchors are used to reference specific locations on a page from other locations on that same page. These “on page links” are yet another place to get your main keywords in and boost that “on page” density.

An example is “back to the top” at the end of a page. Except as smart optimizers, we use our keywords instead of phrases like “back to top”. Here is an example:
At top of page I place my anchor: a name=”seo”
Farther down, I put SEO (instead of “TOP”)
I’ve now created a same page link containing my keyword and thus increased my density as well as received added weight by virtue of it being an anchor.”

Relative value of links
As with the entire “Google formula” for calculating rankings, the value of links has it’s own complicated formula. Anchor text, relevancy of the other site, page rank of the other site, number of links per page and the other factors play a role. Even the words [or search terms] in text surrounding a link affects it’s quality in the eyes of Google.
Just remember that all links are not created equal!