Customers Search to Buy

Do you even know what your Web URL is? Do your customers? Probably not, but that’s okay–assuming Google knows where it is.

Here is a quick test to see if we should be talking.

1. Go to Google
2. Be a customer looking for your products or services
3. Type in a search to find what you are looking for
4. No luck? Try again
5. …and again

Did any of those searches show your website? If you are like 95% of business I talk to, “No” is the answer.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engines are the number one way people find what they buy on the Internet. If you do not have a consistent strategy to market you products and services through these popular search engines you website is anonymous.

Without a search engine strategy your website is just another zombie, adding little value and invisible to consumers that want to buy.

A good Internet marketing campaign is one that consistently produces and distributes relevant, valuable, customer targeted content to the major search engines.

Improving Search Engine Rankings

Getting your business to show up in the search engines more frequently and higher in the search results is a steady process. Here are a few important elements to get you started:

• Make sure your website has customer relevant content
• Register with the search engines and local directories
• Regularly update or generate news feeds on your website
• Encourage other websites to link to yours for relevant topics

These kinds of activities tell Google, Bing, and Yahoo that your business website is a good, relevant, and current source of information about your products and services.

RICEinteractive SEO Services

Our SEO experts can help you move your business website into a leadership position. We can help you get the search results you want and attract the customers you need.

Call us at 734.775.4487 and help more customers find you.

Probably nothing!

95% of business websites do absolutely nothing for their businesses–no phone calls and no revenue. Fortunately, the solution is relatively simple, but few web design firms know the secret.

It’s about words…

Search Engine Marketing

Here is a simple test to prove my point. Think about your own behavior on the Internet. What do you do when you need something or want to buy something on the Web? You go to Google, right?

So does everyone else. They go to Google and they type in…that’s right words. In Internet marketing we call these keywords.

Your website needs to be more than pictures of your office and employees. Your website needs to be filed with relevant words, keywords that help customers find you.

RICEinteractive can help you build the right keywords and content to attract more customers to your website. Our search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) services will have your website booming with new consumer visits quickly.

Copywriting

Of course, getting customers to the site is only half the battle. You need those visitor to call or email you. You want buyers not shoppers.

This is the job of good copywriting. The art of selling with words.

Simply having a website that lists you address and phone number is not going to generate revenue. You need to give your Web visitors a reason to call.

Good copywriting can help generate the need and desire to solve their problem, and solve it right now. We call this the “threshold of resistance.” It is a retail term coined by Taubman, a famous retail architect. Like more traditional retail stores your Web storefront can create resistance–allowing consumers to wait on their purchase.

RICEinteractive specializes in writing content and copy for your website that sells. We will break down that resistance and communicate your value proposition in a way that makes waiting to buy impossible.

What are you waiting for?

Why are you waiting to give us a call?

You know…

• You already invested in your website
• It isn’t attracting consumers
• It isn’t generating any sales inquiries
• It might even be creating resistance to sales

Let’s fix that today! You call and initial consultation is free. We will review your website and tell you the exact steps we will take to increase your sales.

Call me 734-775-4487.

This is one call that will make YOU money.

Creating To Write List(s)

I like to form lists of titles and topics that I think will be interesting to tackle. This list is often scribbled on a legal pad, extracted and tucked in my notebook.

My notebook is my writing desk. Even though I am typically toting my MacBook and do most of my writing there, the notebook is my repository of ideas and home to quick impromptu writing sessions.

However, there is another fountain of inspiration that I use almost as often and it is of a more technical design. And that makes it a more dynamic inspiration tool.

Using Delicious to Track Writing Ideas

My first step involves delicious.com. I still use good old delicious as my preferred bookmarking tool. It is simple and fits tightly with my Firefox browser, where I do my online reading.

I do the majority of my Internet reading over my morning coffee and breakfast. I catch up on my favorite news and blogger via my Google Reader.

Items that trigger thoughts or ideas for future writing get bookmarked with delicious.com and tagged with “towrite.” In addition, I like to use the notes feature to add any comments that may guide my writing later.

This little habit of bookmarking your daily reading will build a rich river of writing ideas and a huge repository of research material.

I will often print off this evolving river of inspiration. Tucking it in my writing notebook along with my handwritten list–many times they are complimentary.

Use Twitter to Get Audience Reaction

The next step is where your writing ideas list can become very dynamic and exciting. I use delicious.com’s relatively new integration with Twitter. Every time I bookmark something I have it broadcast as a Tweet to my thousands of followers.

This simple automated step brings me enormous value. Not only does every Tweet typically help add targeted followers, but more importantly it brings me reaction to the topic or article I just bookmarked.

These reactions can bring me additional ideas, insights, sources, or even clients. This little passive trick can bring even more inspiration and opportunity to your writing.

Engage to Build Expertise or Sources

Don’t neglect the opportunity to engage those who respond on Twitter. Many times these can be experts and sources of information that will add depth and credibility to your writing.

Writing can be a frustrating if every blank sheet of paper or screen involves generating a topic or inspiration. Having that first step dynamically flowing all the time makes each new project a little more fun.

Here are my 5 secrets to increase back links from your next article marketing campaign:

1. Keyword Rich Headlines: Back links to your website, blog, micro-sites, or landing pages are entirely contingent on the effective distribution and syndication of your article. That means your article has to attract attention and communicate value.

Publishers must believe in a fraction of a second, while scanning an article directory or article search, that your article will deliver value to their readers, traffic to their site, and revenue through their advertisers. This belief has to be communicated in your article’s headline.

Write your headline with a specific keyword in mind, a call to action, and long tail value. Every article headline should not only be emotionally compelling, but engineered for search optimization.

2. Keyword Rich Copy: Now that you have made it past the initial cut and a publisher is reading your article you need to pop with inherent value.

To a serious publisher that means high-value, high-returning keywords. Most publishers are syndicating your articles for search engine optimization, text link revenue, or affiliate ad revenue. That means your article need to be packed with keywords that sell.

The easiest way to fill your head and writing with valuable keywords is to spend a little time in a keyword analysis tool like WordTracker or Google’s Keyword Analysis Tool. Search your niche and find suggested terms that are paying the highest eCPM. These are the glasses that your publisher (article client) is looking through when reviewing your articles.

3. Call to Action Resource Box: Most resource boxes look like journalistic bylines. These “golden” little boxes are not designed to when you Pulitzer Prizes or even attribution. They are to pitch and sell your product or service.

No publisher or even reader cares who wrote the article. They want to know where to get more advice or (hopefully) buy the secret potion.

4. High Quality Anchor Text: Getting the most out of your anchor text is your prime objective in article marketing. Think about what you are trying to achieve, your perfect customer, and what they are looking for–then capture it.

Your anchor text is like a flashing, neon arrow pointing you site. Make it compelling and accurate.

Do not squander your precious link text on: your name, your website URL, company name or other non-descriptive text. Every anchor text should be a keyword or action you are going to deliver with every customer’s click. This approach will guide search results and consumers into your product or service for the buy.

5. Deep Links Too: Neglecting the development of deep link backs is the number one mistake I see in site development and article marketing. Don’t forget to develop the whole site–not just the home page.

In your resource box, on every article be sure to include not only the home URL, but also a relevant deep link to your site. This can be a landing page, resources page, or the original article.

Most article directories have a quality reputation and credibility with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN leverage this to expand the indexing of your entire site. The more you index the more likely you are to return in organic search and the more credible your site becomes.

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Bill Rice is an expert at Internet marketing and copywriting. His interactive marketing agency, RICEinteractive helps businesses increase their online sales lead generation.

Turning Blogs into Longtail Honeypots

If you already have a blog you probably have noticed the attractive keywords searches that naturally stream in. This is the wonder of mildly focused, frequently posted, haphazard content and Google’s love affair with blogs.

The breadth and frequency of blog posts often open the filters and let us see search results obscured from our increasingly traffic engineered websites. This precisely the trickiness of creating an efficient process to draw in longtail keywords and not ruin the effectiveness of the technique.

Use Categories to Funnel Organic Traffic

The best way to get the right blend is to create a broad funnel. Start with a conscious topic area–a broad keyword. Then, much like you would with a domain, develop a good solid base of categories. However, maintain your normal non-SEO, informal blog-style content generation.

Some attempt to automate this process and get a little “blackhat” using a scrapper to seed keyword content into a splog.

Why I Don’t Advocate Scrapping

I tend to argue against this approach for a couple of practical reasons. Here are my reasons for maintaining my manual posting to these blogs:

• Monetize your affiliate program content research with Adsense by blogging what you learn
• Blogs can be great knowledge bases just waiting to be searched for future ideas
• Buy a domain for each blog and make them domain aging outposts for future projects

Collecting the Longtail Keywords

Don’t forget to actually capture all this data. Blog stats packages are great for quick temperature checks on blogs, but put Google Analytics in place so you can do some serious keyword databasing.

Don’t leave the data idle–flip new longtails into your keyword research queue. The good ones should be flushed out into a PPC or Article Marketing campaign.

Expanding the Keyword Capture

Always be looking new keyword opportunities. As new search phrases come in see if there are opportunities to expand your categories or your posts to bring in more keywords.

Also, don’t forget to check your link backs and trackbacks. Yes, they will happen even on a keyword honeypot. These are great opportunities to find other concepts and categories you should be capturing.

Turning it Into Profit

Well, that is simple. Kick it into you normal keyword analysis or marketing program. Here are a few ideas:

• Adsense on the blog itself
• eBooks built on longtail clusters of interest
• PPC campaigns
• Article marketing topics

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Bill Rice is the Principle at RICE interactive, a leader in lead generating copywriting and social media. He is a frequent writer, speaker, and consultant on marketing and sales. He is passionate about helping organizations execute more profitable marketing and lead generation strategies.

If you have any questions–contact me: http://twitter.com/billrice

Target Venture Capital

Finely written Web copy and experienced keyword research famously attracts search engines, motivates customers, and compels action. If you are an entrepreneur with a hot idea, but not quite enough capital to take it to its full potential angels and venture capitalist should be part of your target market in your marketing plan.

Keyword Research

Start with good keyword research and analysis an zero in on what venture capitalist are looking for–markets, benefits, ideas, and trends. Then create an SEO plan to bring vector in interest to your project or company.

Highlight Synergies

No one will know companies and technologies that are natural components of your value chain. These become powerful synergies when two or more of these opportunities are in one investor’s portfolio. Make sure your Web copy and marketing materials clearly demonstrate these connections and potentials.

Focus on Benefits

Like customers they are looking for benefits and need to be emotionally inspired to action. A professional copywriter can help you achieve this result on your website, in your emails, on your business card, and even in your pitch.

Get Emotional

Remember what drives venture capitalist to action: large markets, smart teams, and a passionate inferno. These are all qualities that a good copywriter can bring to vivid life your marketing.

Target Bright Entrepreneurs

This difficulty in connecting is not limited to entrepreneurs trying to raise capital. In fact, the problem of investors trying to locate the right ideas, quality teams, and attractive deals to meet their goals may be more acute.

Venture capital websites typically highlight past successes, current portfolios, and partner profiles, yet do little to attract targeted new opportunity.

A top copywriter can design a search engine strategy and experience that will efficiently attract, segment, and engage the types of entrepreneurs and ideas you want to fund.

Write for the Sale

Like any marketing or copywriting project, don’t forget to write for the sale. Hope and opportunity will still pass in the wind if you don’t ask for a conversation.

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If you have any questions–contact me: http://twitter.com/billrice