Everyone Wants to Obamasize Their Website

What’s Obamacize? Well, I call it embracing the instrument of change and introducing technology that Obama used so effectively in his campaign for your personal use. Right now everyone wants to Obamasize their website. No, that does not mean putting up donation boxes, posting flags, or showing political messages but people do want to use technology in a exciting new ways.

So how can you embrace change the same way and Obamasize your website? Here are a few tips:

1. Get going with Twitter. Then use Twitter Feed to show your Twitter news on your blog and website. The big key is to make your Twitter posts witty, short, and interesting. Don’t Twitter about what you are eating for lunch. Obama used Twitter effectively for his campaign and you can use Twitter to move your business forward just as easily.

2. Get going with Facebook and LinkedIn. Well, Obama did not use LinkedIn, but man did he use Facebook effectively for his campaign. You can too! With an aggressive friend addition program and interaction with this fun social networking tool, you to can add your Facebook badges on your blog or website. Get connected with prospects, business associates, and clients.

3. Change the home page of your website. Obama’s election brings in fresh winds of change for our country, why not take some time to embrace change in your own back yard by changing the images on your home page, add interactive elements, add a video? 

Okay, I have to say this one was a stretch, but you get the gist of it, now it’s your turn to coin an Obama  phrase of what you will be doing to Obamacize your website, blog or life now that change is on the way. Just click comments below and let me know what you are going to Obamacize.

Build It and They Will Come – Well Maybe

Many small business owners ask me “Do I have good website traffic?” “How does my site compare with others?” “How can I get my website to generate more business for me?”.

The reality is that a website with under 10 pages of content that promotes a service or consultant will typically receive anywhere from 10 to 30 unique visits a day. Based on what I have seen, this is about what you can expect in regards to traffic. So how do you get more and how do you get your website to start generating leads?

For small websites, this is my advice:

1. Get blogging now! A site your size, to become competitive, needs to grow, and needs to have a regular content addition program. Blogging is absolutely the easiest way to do this. If you don’t want to blog yourself, you can hire us to blog for you, we are experts at it.

2. Don’t waste your time and money right now on website optimization. Unless you are in a niche market or provide a desired but unique item or service that does not have much web competition, your website can simply not compete and place at that size organically on the search engines. That doesn’t mean that you should not be doing other things for organic placement, but I do not recommend hiring us or another firm for search engine optimization at this point in your growth.

3. Get going with Google AdWords. You can drive qualified targeted traffic to your website and really get good results with AdWords. I recommend a minimum budget of $500 for clicks for the first 30 days. Get a good account manager to set up your account so you hit the ground running. You will most likely also have to invest in account management fees and should most likely plan on purchasing time to create targeted website-matching landing pages for your ad groups for the very best results. We do this too, so make sure to check out our Google AdWords services before you ask anyone else to help you. We’ll take good care of you and be good stewards of your click budget.

4. Start getting links to build organic position and traffic over time with feature articles and white papers. Using article directory syndication sites, you can post a well written article with a link in your author bio back to your website. The more people who choose to pick up your article for their own use from the syndication site, the more links you’ll get back to your website helping your search engine placement. Make sure your articles appeal to a very wide range and do not just speak about your product. What you are really looking for is wide syndication and the link back to you so focus on business, real estate or health issues and articles for the widest distribution. We can write articles for you if you desire. You should review some that we have written recently as examples of how to appeal to a broad audience even if you are not going to use our services.

5. Do a press release once a month and generate links and traffic with your news spin. Another way to build buzz, but particularly how to build more traffic and more one way inbound links is by writing press releases and using PRWeb as your distribution vehicle. You’ll get great exposure and excellent staying power as sites pick up your news and links. I recommend the Search Engine Optimization level. Distribution at this level is $200 (plus you’ll pay about $175 for us to write your press release), but the exposure is excellent and much better than the cheapest level.

Even if you decide to do these items yourself or decide to hire another firm to do them for you, know that these five tips do work to help build your website, create your unique web authority, and help to improve your organic search placement.  The key to remember when it comes to a website is, just because you build it, does not mean that they will come to visit it. You need to be proactive and aggressive to build your authority and web visibility position to put your website to work for you as a lead generating machine.

Writing Web Content

Writing quality web content is a craft. I tell website owners that readers have the “Burger King syndrome” – they want it (content) their way right away. When it comes to website content, you need to deliver the “goods” quickly, succinctly, and in a winning way.

Short and sweet is best and so is get to the point, but don’t get too carried away keeping your content short especially on the home page. You’ve got to have enough content to build a great keyword density on your top performing words to get traction in the organic search results.

The web is scanning medium. You should write for the web differently than you do for the print medium. Make sure to use headings and sub headings to break up your content. Make sure to use bullets, lists, and tables to direct the user to other pages or sections. Use anchor text to deep link keywords on products or services to help search engines travel deep into your inside web content.

I don’t recommend bolding keywords or phrases as this may encourage readers not to read your page content at all, but Yahoo and MSN do more heavily weight bolded words in their organic algorithm and you may be an extra boost on those engines if your top keywords or phrases are bolded. Google used to do the same, but does not take into account bolded words at this time. Not all websites are candidates for using bolding as a technique for organic placement it may impact the appearance and readability of the page.

Keeping your font size small also encourages reading versus scanning of your content page. But don’t work to defeat usability by keeping your reader from being able to increase the size of the font using tools and text size with their browser. It is best to have your font be set in percentages. My favorite for a typical size is 85% which is about 10 pixels or 10 pts.

The best home page for a website gives an overview of services and products and deep links in the content to important web sections. Ideally it should be more than 300 words long and less than 800 words long.

Anchor Text Explained

Anchor what?Anchor what? Anchor text- this is the phrase that appears underlined in any link, and search engines consider anchor text highly important.

Here are few examples fo good and bad anchor text in use as a quick tutorial:

Poor use of anchor text:

Click here to download our white paper of Google AdWords. (Note the anchor text in this example is click here.)

Great use of anchor text:

Review our 9 page white paper comparing Google AdWords to Yahoo Sponsored Search now! (See the difference? Much more meat for search engines and actually more descriptive of what the link is actually about.)

Not only should great anchor text be used in websites, but in blog posts, e-newsletters and any online content including feature articles and even press releases. If you provide reciprocal link exchanges change your anchor text to not underline your business name, but rather your services using important keywords.

Using improved anchor text in all you do online is just one small yet simple way to boost your organic search placement.

Blog Writing Under Your Own Name

Your pen name is your brand. Just like any brand, it should be protected. I only write articles showing my own name for my website. When I supply ghost written articles, I do not brand them with my name.

Personally, I feel that by name should only be used to promote my own services and my own website. I do not lend out my name or for that matter my content to others. I want to retain close control of my brand and my intellectual property. Before you write for someone else under your own name you may want to consider these important points.

1. Will the content you supply be changed in any way after you provide it? If it will be you may not like the changes or the meaning of your original piece may be different.

2. Is the site where your content will reside a good match for your ideologies? How about types of advertisers? Remember your name will give credibility to the site. Are the products and services one with which you would want to be linked?

3. If you are writing under your own name, remember the Internet archives all content literally forever. Will joining your name to a site or cause be a problem in the future for potential clients or job opportunities.

4. You may even want to consider receiving a higher level of compensation for any pieces that you write for other websites using your own name.

Once you let something go, it is nearly impossible to get it back again, that goes not only with your reputation, but with the value of your own brand or pen name.

Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck – Special Issue

You’ll want to click in to read our November e-newsletter that tells you how to get the most bang for your buck on the Internet. Learn our top picks for pay per click, search engine optimization, and e-newsletter services.

With the economy tanking and business climates slowing, now’s the time to check out our tips to see if you can easily implement some of them to get your own business rolling again.

Here’s the link!