Tactical Execution

There’s a lot of talk these days about how to attract more people to your website.  Heck, I spend a lot of time talking about that myself.  I even host the hugely popular Internet Traffic Carnival every Tuesday!  But the conversation often leaves out an important part of the equation.  It leaves out all the structural elements you can add to your website to make it more search engine friendly.

The first thing you want to make sure of is the URL format you’re using on your site.  Take a look at the permalink of this post.  It includes all the words in my post title.  This is such a simple detail but is incredibly important.  It even motivated me to move my entire website over from Joomla to WordPress back in March 2008.  The words you use in your title are powerful keywords and you want them to be included in your URL.

Next, you need to identify the keywords you’d like to target.  Once you’ve decided on a few phrases, you need to start building your site around those phrases.  As an example, I wanted to target the phrase ‘Internet Marketing Services’ so I built 68 new pages on my website, all about Internet Marketing Services.  I did that by creating separate landing pages for every local municipality along with that phrase.  I also created a similar landing page for every single state, again including the keyword phrase in the title.

Having all these pages caters directly to the search engines.  They see all these URLs and index my site accordingly.  It also dramatically increases the odds that my page will pop up when someone searches for that particular phrase.  Will my site come up for every single state?  Of course not.  But it will come up for a bunch of them and I expect it will measurably increase my traffic once the search engines have cached all my changes.

The last thing I did was include a paragraph at the bottom of each page stating that Tactical Execution is located in Walnut Creek, California, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.  This text, along with all the links pointing to those pages, also increases the density of keywords while magnifying the exposure of my most valuable keyword phrases – the ones in my own location.

You will also notice that each page has unique content and the images also have keyword-rich names.  In fact, I even optimized the ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags for each image.  The end results is a series of nicely optimized pages that push my site higher on the search engines for the exact keyword phrase I’m targeting.

It’s important to realize that anyone can do these sorts of things.  Yes, it’s a lot of work.  It takes a lot of time.  But it’s an opportunity open to everyone.  And it works particularly well for businesses where you can add a locality to the keyword phrase.  By doing this, you dramatically reduce the competition you’ll be facing, making it a lot easier to get to the top.  These are all structural elements that play an important role in internet marketing.  Give it a try and see how your Google ranking changes.

Anyone who follows their own website traffic statistics is probably aware of their “bounce rate”, the number of people who land on their website and then promptly bounce right back off again.  That’s NOT what you want.  You want people to stick around for a while.  You want people to browse.  You want people to get to know you and learn to trust you.  That’s the objective.

Let’s back up and look at Internet Marketing in general.  At the highest level, all you’re really trying to do is (1) get people to your website and (2) impress them once they get there.  That’s it.  Two steps.  That’s Internet Marketing in a nutshell. I have a whole model devoted to this concept and you can see it by clicking here.

Breaking it down a bit further, you can take the second step and divide it into two pieces.  First, you have to build trust by providing value.  And then you have to monetize that trust.  Now, I’m assuming you’re building a website as part of your business.  I’m assuming you’re trying to make money.  If you’re not, that’s fine.  But for everyone else, there’s no point having a website unless it’s contributing to your business.

Back to the bounce rate.  If your bounce rate is high and most of your visitors are leaving your website shortly after they arrived, you have no way of building trust.  The only way they’ll learn to trust you is if they find value on your site; things that will make their lives better.  So you want a low bounce rate.  And that’s another way of saying that you want a “sticky” website.

The first thing to understand is that people who visit your website are in the submissive position.  They are in a receiving mode.  They have no control over what they see.  You do.  You have the control.  And that’s a huge opportunity that most webmasters never take advantage of.  You can present whatever reality you want and I have a whole blog post devoted at that topic.  It’s called Expand the Frame so check it out.

If someone is in a submissive mode, do you think he or she is likely to make their own proactive decisions?  No.  No, they’re not.  They’re in the receiving mode.  That means you have to tell them what to do at every turn.  Tell them what to do.  Always tell them what to do!  Every single page on your website needs to have options at the bottom, giving the reader ideas of where to go next.

Picture a large tree in the fall; a tree with no leaves on it.  Your homepage is the thick trunk.  Then, it splits off into 4 or 5 big branches.  These are the pages that your homepage directs visitors to.  From there, each branch splits into further branches and further branches, each becoming more narrow than the last.  These are the pages that link off your secondary pages and beyond.

The job of your homepage is to get people into the bowells of your website; into an area that provides value for them.  The job of the secondary pages is to qualify your visitors further and get them into a page that addresses their needs directly.  So the primary options on these various pages should be designed to quickly and easily funnel your website visitors to the pages that speak to them.

But at the end of the branches, on a typical tree, you end up with all the ends of each branch, hanging out in the middle of the air with nowhere to go.  Problem.  Absolutely none of your pages should hang out in the air with nowhere to go.  None.  Each page needs to circle back around to the bowells of the website again.  Read another article.  Schedule an appointment.  Visit our resource center.  Review advanced products.  What ever it is, it has to give your visitors an obvious direction of where to go next.

Tell your visitors where to go.  Tell them what to do.  Tell them where the path is; the path that you designed to introduce them to your business.  Whether you realize it or not, your website is having a conversation with your visitors and you need to think about that conversation and how you want it to unfold.  Then, at the end of every single page, include a link to something you think would follow logically from what they just read.

At the bottom of this post, you’ll see a link where you can subscribe to our free 1-year e-course.  You’ll also see related posts.  Both are designed to keep you on the site; keep you browsing.  The e-course is a free and content-rich program and most of our subscribers link to the page from a blog post.  And the related posts give you an option to keep reading and learn more.  Either way, you’re getting to know the way we do business and with any luck, learning to trust us too.

Take a look at your website.  See where the loose ends are.  Make sure that each page links to somewhere else and funnels your visitors towards what they are looking for.  Done properly, you’ll see your bounce rate go down and your average time on the site go up.  You’ll also see your pages per visit go up.  And sooner or later, you’ll see your revenue go up as well.

A past client of mine had a business selling wine jelly.  Yes, that’s right.  Wine jelly.  Apparently, it tastes really good.  But that’s not the point.  Before we met, his website had products ranging in price from $4 to $28.  They included different sized jars and one package deal with 4 large jars.  Now, picture what you might think when you stumble upon his website.

If it were me, I would picture a retail shelf vendor and nothing more.  I would picture a few jars with a particular label sitting there on the shelf, beside dozens of competitive products.  There is absolutely nothing that would jump out at me.  And that’s precisely the problem.  He was a retail shelf vendor and nothing more.

After working together, we introduced a once-annual 3-day retreat up in Napa, including an extensive tour of a winery on one day, an afternoon workshop on a second day (teaching participants how to make wine jelly in their own homes) and three gourmet meals per day, each featuring wine jelly in one fashion or another.  The price for the retreat is $3995 and he featured it on his homepage.  Now, picture yourself once again as you discover this website.

In the first case, you have found a retail shelf vendor selling little jars of jelly.  In the second scenario, you have found a parallel universe that you never knew existed; a world full of romance, passion and good food.  You have discovered a world you have never seen, a potential hobby and a rich addition to your life.  It’s a totally different frame.  It’s a totally different experience.

Keep in mind, nobody needs to buy it!

Listen.  When someone clicks onto your website, they are in the submissive position.  They are in the receiving mode.  They have absolutely no control over what they are about to see.  You do.  You control everything they see.  That’s a huge opportunity that few businesses take advantage of.  You can present a small timid frame with your little product or service available for sale.  Or you can present a huge overwhelming presence full of opportunities to change people’s lives.  Your choice.

I’m not suggesting you be deceptive in any way.  I’m only suggesting you think bigger.  Expand the frame of your business.  Think about the personal objectives of your prospective customers.  They are people.  They have their own passions and goals.  Think of ways to let them pursue their own objectives within the context of your business.  Cater to their inner most desires.  Cater to their human side.  Cater to their emotions.

Don’t ever underestimate the passion of your customers.  They might not all buy what you’re offering and that’s okay.  But some will.  Trust me.  Some will.  You’ll see.  Some will engage and see your business as a way for them to improve their own lives.  Cater to them.  Build your business for them.  They have friends.  And if your business is improving their lives, you can bet they’ll be telling their friends.  And some of your other less-passionate customers might just get a bit jealous and engage more themselves.

Think bigger.  Redefine what you do.  Include your customers’ personal objectives into your business plans.  Present an overwhelming online identity and watch your customer interactions change forever!

As of December 2007, Technorati was following over 112 million blogs.  112 million!!  There’s no question that blogs are quickly dwarfing the rest of the internet and the search engines are consistently ranking them higher because of (1) their volume of relevant content, (2) their ongoing flow of new and fresh content and (3) the incredible link structure characteristic of the blogosphere.  But the fact remains that most people who blog don’t really do it “correctly” or at a minimum, could be blogging more effectively.  If you’re a blogger, here’s a process you can follow that will massively expand the reach of your posts.

First things first.  I highly recommend you find the top bloggers in your field and subscribe to their feed.  Select a reader (like Google Reader) and add all your subscriptions.  Technorati is a great place to find the top bloggers in any particular field.  Google is another.  Do some research and find about a dozen bloggers you like and respect.  Okay; having done that, let’s get to the process.

Obviously, it begins with your idea.  You’ve decided what you’d like to blog about.  That’s step number one.

Before you write your blog …

• Check your reader to see if the other bloggers you follow are talking about the same thing.
• Put a few keywords into Google to find other resources you can link to in your post.
• Put the same keywords into Technorati to see if anyone else is discussing the same topic.

Writing your post …

• In the blogosphere, outbound links = currency.
• Constantly link to other bloggers and valuable resources in your post.
• You want your blog to be a single portal to ALL the resources that exist on your topic.

After you publish your new post …

• Write an email to the bloggers you linked to, letting them know and giving them a link.
• Bookmark your new post on Delicious, DIGG and StumbleUpon (among others).
• Submit your blog post to any relevant carnival on Blog Carnival (do this once each month).

Taking these simple steps will ensure your blog post gets nicely integrated into the ongoing conversation that defines today’s blogosphere.  You want to engage in the conversation.  Conversations are markets.  If you want to access a market, participate in a conversation.  Blogging is one of the best ways to do that but you have to let the world know you exist.  The steps above will dramatically accelerate that process.

The last thing to keep in mind is that you can get far more traffic from referral websites (other blogs) than you can from search engines.  Once you’ve linked out to a lot of popular blogs and some of them have linked back to you, you can quickly grow your traffic as part of their audiences become aware of you.  That’s the game.  Find the bloggers in your field and engage in their conversation.  You might be surprised how quickly it can all take shape.

Edith Yeung is a good example of this.  She grew her blog from zero to over 1000 visitors per day in under 10 months by using some of the steps I’ve outlined above and the vast majority of her traffic comes from referral websites (other blogs) and social bookmarking platforms like StumbleUpon.  Give it a try.  Done properly, it can completely change your business in less than a year!